Because it’s supposed to be de rigeur:

Rules:
# Grab the nearest book.
# Open the book to page 23.
# Find the fifth sentence.
# Post the text of the sentence in your journal/blog along with these instructions.

Several times recently, I have been faced with folks who were absolutely amazed at my honesty. It’s not that they were amazed that I, personally, was being honest, but that anyone in this given situation would be honest.

The first situation happened when an online retailer that I order from every month sent me some extra product that I hadn’t ordered. I contacted him and let him know and offered to return it. He seemed to be floored by that fact that I would admit to receiving “free” stuff and even more amazed that I would return it.

The second situation was at a local restaurant that I visit several times a week. My bank card wouldn’t work, so they gave me my lunch for free. I returned today to get lunch again, and to repay my debt. Well, they hadn’t written down my debt in their IOU book and they were surprised that I would just come in and offer to pay without being confronted about it.

This doesn’t say as much about my personal character as it does about society’s levels of trust and expectation. It’s a poor comment on most of us when we feel that other people will take advantage of us if given the slightest chance. I guess past experience with people makes us feel this way, but I wonder if this distrust, this sense of paranoia doesn’t help to slowly erode the social fabric. Our country was built on freedom and the underpinning of freedom is a sense of honesty. If I am free to believe, to speak and to act in pretty much any manner, then complicit in that is honesty when exercising those freedoms.

I am speaking mostly of personal relationships here, but how does this thinking apply to politics, business and other arenas in which humans are engaged. Think about how often we refer to our favorite artists (musicians, painters, sculptors, etc.) as being honest with their work. That’s one reason we find their work to be important. The political/economical world is slightly different in that deception and a lack of honesty seems to somehow be ingrained in a successful execution of one’s goals in those environments.

So, how do we extend the honesty many of us act on in our personal lives to our business and political lives?