I can't believe that we don't have a page on this topic already. Radical Honesty is an entirely new, but important concept for me. I just started really thinking about it this summer, after I attended Taber's workshop. Sometimes I think it's absolutely great, and should be practiced whenever possible. Other times I think it was invented just to screw up relationships. Whatever it is, it's damn scary, at least for me. But in the last few weeks, I've been radically honest in several "relationship" situations. In both of them, I had to be at the end of my emotional rope before I actually took action, and took the people aside to talk to them. But once I did, it felt so amazingly WONDERFUL to have that load off my mind, and lo and behold: one of the people I talked to had been feeling as mixed up as I had been, and had actually been feeling and thinking many of the same things that I had been about the whole situation! I think that experience has got to have been one of the most pleasant and releaving things that's ever happened to me, at least in the recent past. And most of my other excursions into Radical Honesty have had happy outcomes. So let's have a discussion on this whole Radical Honesty business. What do you think of it? Should it be practiced all the time, or are there times when it's best to just keep your mouth shut? What are your experiences with it? ~Becky~ radical honesty: a critique from the girl that grew up immersed in it: in case anybody desn't know, i (carsie) am the daughter of brad blanton, the dude who wrote the book. so i've given it a lot of analysis, from inside and out, and here is my general view. it's kind of like organized religion. they started out with a great idea, (aka: spirituality/or not lying), and then made it more and more and more structured and specific and exclusive until the great idea became almost totally obscured. (aka:can't see the forest for the trees.) the idea, in the first place, was that if you are unhappy, or uncomfortable, even slightly, with your relationship with someone... say what you need to say. then, if it hurts them, stick around 'till they're done bein' hurt. it's not so complicated as "i resent you for" and "i imagine" and "here is every little petty-assed thing that doesn't suit my view of the world". but then it became so complicated, and at some point, honesty turned into an excuse to be petty. a lot of these people, the religious radicalhonesters, are being very very petty, and are redeeming themselves for it because they are not lying like the rest of the world. another goal of this radical honesty business is to "pay attention", or stay with your experience. another great idea. however, at some point 'staying with your experience" turned into "he's gonna yell at you for being ugly and stupid, and when you get angry and hurt, take it out on him for his being ugly and stupid." my thoughts: if you can let it go, let it fucking go. if you can't, be honest about why. not vicious about it, just honest. if you're pissed because she said you were a bitch, tell her. if you're pissed because she gave you a look while passing the salt, get the fuck over it. i think the practice used to be to get in touch with being alive, and now it just obstructs it. also, there is no honesty format that works for everyone. i don't get pissed off often, but i get attracted to people all the fucking time. so what makes my life easier is being honest about attraction and appreciation. when i try to be "honest" about anger, i just make shit up. kay, i'll shut up now. but there was the inside scoop. ;) ~~~Carsie
==== I've been curious about radical honesty. People are talking about it. They either embrace it, or think it messes with people and is manipulative in a bad way. Everyone seems to think that it is scary/dangerous. I thought I'd discuss my thoughts on what I know of it. Of course we should not lie! It just seems like the wrong way to go about living. I want to hear the truth about things, I don't want to here what people think I want to here, I don't want to hear bits of truth suspended in fabrications either. I tell the truth. If something's eating me away about a person or something, I go tell them what's on mind. That's communication. It makes me feel better, and usually the person feels the same way. Just because I want the truth doesn't mean I want to know everything, or tell everything, either. There are some things that are not relevent to everyone else, but to myself. It's true that you can hide alot of stuff you are afraid for people to know behind this statement, though, and it can eat at you. If something is starting to get in the way of relationships with people then, yeah, eventually, I'm going to want to sit down and talk with them about it. But that's because something is really relevant... I'll give people what they need from me, what I have to give. The truth is very powerful, sometimes, it's a matter of life and death. I don't see why you should give the truth when it is going to be used against you, or when someone is going to use it to do something wrong. Also, I was thinking about the Miranda law, the right to remain silent (etc). And the Privacy Act. What do you think? There was an example of radical honesty I read that bothered me. This man met a woman who he found unattractive and had a mole on her face or something. What this man did was tell the woman he found her unattractive, especially the mole, and what did she think? She probably had alot of trouble with that, right? I thought this was absurd, pointless, and tactless. I think that tact is important, knowing when to say something, and when not. I think the best thing to do would have been to transcend her unattractiveness and mole and to take her as a human being! That really bothered me....
I can see how radical honesty is helpful in relationships and communicating. I think that I shouldn't lie to myself, or keep who I really am and what I want hidden inside myself, away from others. When something really bothers me, and it is something people can help (people cannot help whether you think they are attractive or not) I try to speak up. I think that there are times when it is better to keep my mouth shut. This isn't new to me, though. I've always thought this, and so have the people I know. How is this radical? That's all for now. I think Radical Honesty is a wonderful wonderful idea... in theory. In practice, for myself I've found that most times I try to be Radically Honest 1) I end up sharing things that really aren't much of the other person's business 2) I'm so confused that what I say just doesn't hold even 15 minutes later, and 3) it's just impossible to tell everything I'm feeling. So I'm going to try to focus more on being open, telling people what they need to know... oh gods this sounds hard. Knowing when and what to tell who... yikes. :) I think being honest is the best idea most of the time. But don't take it too seriously. you know what sucks everyone?? Radical honesty!! It doesn't work!! -NickV
I am extremely honest, and always have been. I was pretty much brought up that way. It's natural. If I don't tell someone something that I feel I need/want to tell them, it eats me up, and I start festering and rotting. Fester Fester Fester. Rot Rot Rot. And then, out with it, I've got to. It's nice, I think. But it is real hard when I'm nervous and can't corellate thought with word. That's when I blubber like an idiot. Tee hee. I am a big supporter of honesty. I am even a big supporter of being more open than most people are, and being completely open in certian relationships. But I don't support Radical Honesty the book or the workshops a hell of a lot. Because I think a lot of the details make it too hard to be honest. Honesty, to me, comes naturally. It feels good to tell people the truth. But when you start nitpicking about how to tell people the truth ("I resent you for ____" blahblahblah and so on and so forth) and how they should think about everything, than it becomes hard. For me, when I was at radical honesty workshops at camp, I actually felt (telling my secret) that I was being less honest than I usually am. I kept being pushed to share details I wasn't sure about, and to phrase things in a certian way, and I knew everyone was about to be invited to share their judgement. It was a harsh, nitpicky environment and I ended up saying things, under pressure, that I later realized weren't really the truth. That's not honesty at all! To me honesty is all about being yourself, saying things the way that they come out of your mouth, and making those decisions. It's a very special thing that you can share with a few people, and the style of Radical Honesty cheapens it to me. (~summer) I've never read the text or been to the workshop, but my impression of radical honesty, is that it puts too much stress on some mystical thing called "truth". Somehow, the impression I have, is that radical honesty requires there to be an actual truth, that if everyone knew everything will work out fine. But my thought is, I can't know the whole truth, and whats true for me keeps changing. If I tell someone, in a moment of attempting "radical honesty" that I dislike such-and-such about them, they'll feel hurt, and its quite possible that tomorrow, I'll like them for that very same thing. Any truth I try to tell about myself, is truth only for that moment and sometimes, even by the time I've said it its no longer true. More than trying to be honest, or concerned with truth, I want to be genuine. I want to understand why I'm acting the way I am, and what things trigger which reactions in me, so that I can learn to deal with the world, and be at peace. I want to be as honest with people as I can, but I think in some ways real honesty has more to do with actions than with words or truth... I don't know... - Christy Maybe honesty shouldn't even /be radical./ I mean, honesty is a value, and
it's easy to see why people would value it. Common sense, though not
exactly common, could tell you that lying often causes more problems than
you started out with ("oh what a tangled web we weave"...) My thought is
that if people were to think more about what the effects of any sort of
dishonesty could be (including some of the more positive effects, since
honesty obviously isn't always positive) they wouldn't need to be "radically
honest"; they would know when to be honest and when to just shut up.
Honesty, to me, is more about treating people the way that I would like to be treated. Since I don't like being lied to, or having someone keep something from me that I need to know, I would want to avoid doing that to someone else. Also, since I don't like when people tell me something that I don't really need to know , I would avoid doing that to someone else, too. To me, this is another one of those things where it's more about being balanced and less about consciously deciding to go one way or the other. -Mari NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 30 times, last edited on April 23, 2001 by toodamnperky@nbtsc.org. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
