Honesty

In a recent post I provided David Whyte’s thoughts on honesty, ones strong on psychology. With a lighter, but still important note, a friend wondered what role honesty has when, say, an artist friend asks my opinion about his latest painting, one that I find poorly done. Does honesty compel me to state my opinion exactly and directly? Sure, many might say, he did ask.

When I consciously tell the artist that I think this work is great, that surely is lying. But is that acceptable to spare his feelings? Is lying ever justified by that motive? Personally, I have to say no. But perhaps I have an alternative. What if I don’t lie, but answer indirectly?

Perhaps I say to the artist that I have always enjoyed seeing his new work, or ask him about the inspiration for this particular piece. I am not lying; I have not said anything false or which does not reflect my thinking. I have simply not answered his question, deflecting the conversation slightly. If not lying, am I perhaps being at least somewhat dishonest, at least disingenuous, by withholding what I really think?

There are people who believe you should say exactly what you think and feel when asked, often regardless of the impact on others. Failing to do so would in their minds be lying directly by saying something you do not believe, or lying by omission in avoiding or deflecting the issue. This directness may cause pain, usually unintended, and just as often sincerely regretted. Nonetheless, their main goal in the interaction is to fulfill their own value of honesty. They see honesty as an all-or-nothing affair. You are honest or you are not. While valuable at some level, this view is often inflexible, failing to account for context subtleties.

Context means seeing honesty from the standpoint of compassion, having the well being of the other person in mind at all times. Compassion informs honesty, broadening its scope and depth. Honesty without compassion can be harsh and unkind.

With the importance of the other’s well being as a foundation, context includes a number of elements. The relationship’s established openness and candor level. The expectation of the listener, very different for support than for problem solving. The goal of speaker, such as to be directly honest or to avoid conflict. The urgency or seriousness of the situation. The potential outcome, good or ill, for both parties.

Imagine you ask your small daughter to draw a car, which she does with great delight. What she gives you has little resemblance to a car. Knowing a child’s sensitivity, you do not critique the drawing. Instead, you might ask her about what most interested her in making the drawing, or something similar. That is context. Of course, as the child gets older, a supportive parent may work into constructive critiques, but always sensitive to the situation. No different for adults.

Whyte’s critical observation is that we cannot be straight with another if we cannot be straight with ourselves. The latter condition makes it nearly impossible to address context. For the context factors to be usefully considered, the respondent must have a high level of mental and emotional awareness, and the discipline to implement that understanding.

Imagine you encounter a friend you have not seen in some time, and you notice that he has gained quite a bit of weight. It may be honest in one sense to comment to him that he looks heavier than the last time you met. But that honesty may come at a cost, the possible perception by the friend that you were being unkind. Honesty prevailed over compassion. What was gained by the comment? Was the relationship enhanced?

Or, perhaps your friend asks you directly how you think he looks. You think he may want you to tell him that he looks fine. Do you say what you think, or do you take another tack, as with the artist? As before, what will be gained by telling him your true opinion? Will the relationship be enhanced?

Can we improperly sacrifice honesty to compassion and context? Surely there is that danger if the respondent has little self knowledge, and is unable to make useful judgments about what to say, and how. Such a reaction can result from fear of a potentially troubling outcome, such as an unpleasant conflict scene. Or from an excessive worry about upsetting the other person, even if no overt conflict arises.

And so?

·       Honesty is rarely a matter of either/or.

·       Context is critical in responding.

·       Underlying context is compassion, a sincere concern for the well being of the other person.

·       A healthy contextual assessment is nearly impossible without self-awareness.

Control or Influence---What Shall It Be?

Our lives are often spent trying to make our desires come out exactly as we want. A futile effort, especially since it may involve attempting to control others, an interaction or relationship dead-end. Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to obtain an outcome in a conversation. Like conflict itself, persuasion is normal. Both can be carried out poorly or well.

None of us likes being controlled, and we resist the manipulation. In the post titled “What’s Wrong With ‘No Borders’”? I gave examples of devious methods boundary invaders use to control others, such as anger, guilt trips and a victim posture. Boundary invaders MUST HAVE their outcome, justifying repellant and counter-productive tactics. And adding to the unique interpersonal challenges around control, societal uncertainty pushes us all the more to get what we can from others.

You can easily spot a conversation controller. He asks no questions. If he does, the questions will be attacking and inquisitional, loudly voiced and often accompanied by sarcasm and anger. Having THE answers, what is there to know? Most often, though, the controller avoids questions and deluges his opponent non-stop with anything that will aid him to win, regardless of accuracy or relevance. A controller will concede nothing. There is no point, no matter how valid, that deserves anything other than attack. Counter-punching at its worst! But even without overt hostility, an adversarial, “I-win, you-lose” style means nothing positive will come from the exchange.

Although we might deny it, most of us at least occasionally act out the controller. We continue this in spite of the lousy outcomes until we learn there’s another way.

“Influence” conversations are very different, even though they arise out of the same conditions as adversarial ones---two people disagreeing about something, and each desiring something from the other. But with influence, there is no manipulation in which one party loses while the other gains. At least one of the parties recognizes the interpersonal dangers inherent in a difference of view. She changes how she interacts with the other, who is usually primed for a knock-down, drag-out match. She manages the interaction for the positive benefit of both, ensuring that her desire for a particular outcome does not depend on the other person losing something. Critically, she gives up the needs to win, change or punish the other person, all of which will produce resistance and hostility. In Zen terms, she is not attached to an outcome. She sees that if she wants to influence the other, she cannot pose a threat. Her actions will more likely be indirect than direct, including the removal of all unhelpful non-verbal cues.

A client who owned a number of businesses once told me about a potentially volatile interaction with a staff member who stormed into his office and angrily shouted, “What is this crap about transferring me to another department without even talking to me?” Instead of following the employee’s lead and starting a screaming match, my friend used influence. Anger or fear meant only bad outcomes, so control of his emotions and actions was vital. He remained seated, consciously removing all adverse non-verbal signals and adding only beneficial ones---he relaxed his body, softened his voice, and spoke normally but a little slower than usual. He calmly asked the employee to sit and tell him what was going on. Apparently expecting a battle and not getting one, the employee was a bit taken aback, a questioning look in his eyes. He sat down, but was on the edge of the chair and still visibly upset.

My friend asked again what was going on. The employee said that another employee told him about the intended transfer. After thanking the employee, which further calmed him, my friend told him that no such transfer was in the works. The employee sat back, embarrassed, and stumbled through an apology. A potentially unpleasant interaction was avoided. Once the employee’s issue was resolved, my friend did deal with the employee’s aggressiveness and anger.

My friend recognized immediately that the first thing he needed to do was assist the employee in calming, but he knew that saying something like, “Calm down” would only make things worse. Instead, he used non-verbal cues to signal receptivity and safety. At no point did my friend interrupt or try to counter the employee’s incorrect view. Beyond the calming his goal was to understand. Only then could he properly deal with the issue, in terms of both content and behavior. My friend wisely allowed the employee to get his story out and dealt with before bringing up his issue of how the employee initially addressed him.

Although this example occurred in the workplace, the same influence technique can be used at home with family or friends. Failure to control hidden agendas or strong emotions will be readily apparent to the spouse or life partner, and those will get all the focus. What is said is no longer part of the conversation, even if it looks like it on the surface. The interaction will be all about one person’s emotions overwhelming the other’s, a nasty but common occurrence.

There are critical influence lessons for all of us from this story, even if persuasion is not involved.

·       The first person to bring up an issue has the floor, with no interruptions, denials, or counter-punching.

·       The listener has the job of gaining clarity and understanding (not necessarily agreement), and only that.

·       The listener must maintain control of emotions and behavior, and be acutely aware of  non-verbal signals that can obstruct or enhance the conversation, choosing the helpful ones.

·       Understanding is best accomplished by fully attentive, non-judgmental listening, and by the use of carefully phrased, non-inquisitional, questions.

·       The listener must assist the speaker in reaching some resolution, if only partial or temporary, before bringing up his/her concerns, if any.

·       When it is the listener’s turn to raise a concern or issue, she must maintain the same non-attached, non-emotionally driven posture as when listening.

This post can be coupled with the recent one entitled “Conversations: Restrictive and Expansive,” offering a prescription for healthy conflict interactions.

Approaching Honesty

Approaching Honesty

In his beautiful (no other word describes it) book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, the poet David Whyte examines a number of common words. He interprets and invigorates those words with a freshness, insight, and value that stirs the soul. His thoughts offer a new and unique sense of understanding the universe, our place in it, and how we can develop into higher quality individuals. He does not tell us what to do or not do. He instructs us indirectly, his wisdom all the more powerful for that. One of those words is Honesty, addressing it in part by looking at dishonesty .

From Whyte:  

Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in our understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.

The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.

Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live without knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.

Whyte says that the root of all our dishonesties is fear of loss, of which we are seldom conscious. Were we to experience that fear for what it really is, we might be able to address our unconscious dishonesties. But they and the fear that spawned them remain conveniently  unknown to us, suppressed as Pandora’s box casts its frightening image. Denial of the fear and of the unconscious dishonesties takes enormous psychic energy, for which we and others pay a great price.

Once we understand that we are powerless, paradoxically we gain all the power for living as Whyte’s truly honest “spiritual warrior.” Once we give up the story that we are always honest, once we face the unconscious fear, complete honesty is in our lap.

“…honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all….”

Cognitive Complexity

Having made a pitch in the last post for the problems of psychic complexity, I will now turn the tables and argue for the healthiness of cognitive complexity. I mentioned in that note that I was taking liberty with the words psyche, emotions and mind. Now I will be more specific.

Psychic complexity is an attribute primarily of our emotional set-up, a messy mélange of over-lapping and often contradictory sensations and needs, of which we are mainly unconscious. The lack of emotional order and discipline mean poor outcomes for the person and those with whom she interacts. Thinking, decision-making and interpersonal interactions, among other things, are compromised by this condition. Cognitive complexity could hardly be more different.

“Cognitive complexity is the psychological characteristic or variable that shows how complex or simple the frame and perceptual skill of a person are. It is the extent to which a person differentiates and integrates an event. A person who measures highly on cognitive complexity tends to observe gradations and subtle differences while persons with a less complex cognitive structure for the task does not.” (reference.com)

“Differentiation is the number of distinctions or separate elements (i.e., factors, variables) into to which an event is analyzed. Integration refers to the connections or relationships among those elements.” (faculty.css.edu)

These characteristics are vital for problem solving, whether in science, government, business, or everyday life. The more separate elements and nuanced differences a person can see, the more she can bring to a challenge and the more sophisticated the outcome.

What else can we draw from these quotes? They express an expansive view of the world (and conflict conversations), rather than a disordered and restrictive view. Individuals with high cognitive complexity are more open to new information, and have more cognitive tools at their disposal. They are more likely to deal well with uncertainty, and may be more willing to actively search for contrary information. And they can be highly creative in rearranging the various elements in a complex setting to produce a unique and beneficial outcome. All of these require flexible and adaptive thinking.

People with low cognitive complexity tend to see the world in simplistic terms. Lacking subtlety and flexibility, their impoverished thinking leads to undesirable outcomes. Also, having unrefined views of the world may lead people to expect things to work out as their simplistic structure dictates. Happening rarely, such folks are generally unhappy and often disillusioned, frequently blaming their troubles on others or events.

We must recognize that cognitive complexity is not an either/or condition. In most cases people have varying degrees of it. Also, a person can have a healthy level of cognitive complexity in some areas of life and not in others. I know a lawyer who appears to have high cognitive complexity at work and very little when he is in conflict with someone outside of work. This is a classic case of a person who has selective high cognitive complexity possibly being overcome by his psychic complexity.

As we saw in the last post, when others disagree with us, our psychic disunity often surfaces, with bad results all around. A person with high cognitive complexity, seeing the world more expansively, has at least a chance to make a disagreement productive. Someone with low cognitive complexity may be unable to do that. He lives in fear of contrary information and lacks a subtle and nuanced view. Anyone who disagrees with his formulation must be severely dealt with. Counter-punchers, who see every opposition in child-like, either/or terms, reflexively and instantly defend their position and attack the other’s. There is no gray, there is no inquisitiveness, no expansiveness; there is only the need to prevail---low cognitive complexity.

Political partisans are my poster children for low (zero?) cognitive complexity, and for aggressive counter punchers. They live in an artificial world of absolute certainty, often detesting those with different views. Disagreement entails demolishing, and often demeaning, their opponent. They would sooner disembowel themselves than accept or search for contrary information. The only acceptable information confirms their existing views. And making things even worse is a rock-solid and profoundly intense emotional commitment to their belief.

Cognitive complexity is obviously beneficial to individuals and to society. But even if we have some, it can easily disappear in conflict settings. Naturally, this is deniable since the positive stories we tell ourselves about ourselves must remain inviolate. But not everyone wants to remain in this delusional and troubled state.

Becoming a person of high cognitive complexity interpersonally asks much of us since it involves our often long-conditioned adverse behavior patterns. Because the latter are often invisible to us, we need others to assist us in becoming aware. Soliciting and listening to these observations may fill us with dread. After all, who wants to hear bad news about themselves? But there is no easy way. The only way to the other side is through, not around. Fearlessness, perseverance and discipline are vital.

Psychic Complexity and the Damage It Does

In the 19^th century novel, Virgin Soil, Ivan Turgenev's character Nejdanov commits suicide and leaves the following message: "I could not simplify myself."

His message may resonate with many people, at least at a much less tragic level. Too much household clutter, too many texts, or too many children’s events---conditions that can certainly complicate our lives. But Nejdanov pointedly refers to simplifying himself, his inner condition. Even if we do not know the story, most of us appreciate Nejdanov’s tragic emotional condition. And even considering the heavy demands of everyday life today, few of us are in that sad place. Still, many of us have messy internal states characterized by psychic complexity rather than simplicity. Chaos of the mind.

I am not suggesting that in general simplicity is better than complexity, for each has its place, even in the psyche, and I will explore the simplicity side in a later post. This post focuses on the liabilities of psychic complexity. Importantly, a person is not either psychically complex or simple. Most of us exist on a complexity/simplicity continuum. Sadly, we often fail to recognize the existence of our inner messiness (yes, we all have some) and its adverse impact on others. This leads to a continual merry-go-round of interpersonal upsets at home or at work, with friends, and even strangers. In our ignorance, we are mystified at what is happening. Since the problems can’t be us,…

For those steeped in formal psychology, a trigger warning---I am taking liberty with “psychic complexity.” I am using an off-beat version of it to illustrate in what I think is a unique way how psychic complexity is evidence of diminished emotional health and is a negative factor in our relationships. For the same reason, I am intentionally blurring the lines among psyche, emotions, and mind.

Psychic complexity exists when our inner life is not in harmony and is not in sync with the outside world. Multiple goals, emotions, expectations, needs, and motivations swirl around in our mind pulling us into undesirable states that cause us to act out, harming others. Being mostly unaware of these conditions, we cannot see the trouble we cause, and thus it continues.

Our poor behavior can arise for many reasons, and a very important one is that we have needs that MUST be met, no matter what. This state practically guaranteeing that our behavior will not be fair, reasonable, accurate or respectful. Examples include the needs to be right, to win, to be loved, to be perfect, to avoid conflict, or to control.

Think of the person who needs to control---a husband, for example who must control the TV channels he and his wife watch. When he is present, he refuses to let his wife even hold the controller device, or removes it from her hand. He makes unilateral decisions about what to watch, avoiding or dismissing her input. In his complexity (driven by a psychological dynamic), not being able to control the channel choice represents a huge threat to his wellbeing, which takes complete precedence over that of his wife.

Or think of the person who needs to be right. He will use any tactic, fair or foul, to prevail. His “conversation” is not about exchanging views or gaining understanding. It is about winning, and only winning. Recently I was having a discussion with a friend about increased military spending, something I generally support and something he does not. After a bit of easy conversation about how we each saw the topic, he started to get angry, regaling me about how wrong I was and why. The anger was a clear indication that his mind was off balance, that some need (to be right, to win, to punish me?) related to my differing view was frustrating him---my view represented a threat in some way. He was for the moment at least in a psychically disturbed state.

You might think that the word complexity implies lots of something, which it often does. In this case, lots of ways a person can respond to challenging situations. But the opposite is true. Our psychic complexity is in fact very rigid. The acting out, for whatever reason at whatever level, is programmed to achieve one outcome---expressing myself in any way I need to to ensure my wellbeing is maximized. Since my psyche has invested great emotion in a very problematic inner messiness, I am very likely to run completely roughshod over anyone perceived to be in my way.

Adverse behavior ranges from very bad to light weight. Severe examples include sarcasm, anger, ad hominem attacks, the silent treatment, yelling, blaming, or dismissing. Harmful for sure. Less severe examples include interrupting constantly, talking endlessly or loudly, not listening, misrepresenting, counter punching, thoughtlessness, or being hyper-sensitive to slights. The latter group may not look like a big deal, and at one level it is not. But even so, the behavior indicates a person whose attention is not on others, but solely on himself---a common denominator of psychic complexity, regardless of level.

Nejdanov’s tragic example of psychic disunity is obviously extreme, and at one level he suffered and died in silence. But today suffering in silence is rare. We liberally export our messy inner states, even in the least challenging interactions. And our psychic complexity not only affects our relations with others, it also affects our thinking. Lacking attention, awareness and discipline, we see the world filtered through our unchallenged inner messiness. Automatically, and usually unconsciously, we have a biased view. We know from the last post on objectivity that such unmediated filtering is an irrelevant factor, getting in the way of rational thinking or discourse, and even fairness and respect.

I see psychic complexity as a nearly ubiquitous problem. Thus it has important implications for society in general and for our relations with others in particular. Moving toward psychic simplicity now becomes a critical developmental issue.