{"id":1374,"date":"2015-06-01T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T20:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1374"},"modified":"2015-06-01T12:35:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:35:46","slug":"dont-tell-dont-ask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/01\/dont-tell-dont-ask\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Tell, Don’t Ask"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postaday for June 1st: Truth or Dare<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>Is it possible to be too honest, or is honesty always the best policy?<\/em><\/p>\n

I have no patience for people who are proud of the fact that they \u201ctell it like it is.\u201d You know, letting her know that the dress does\u00a0<\/em>make her butt look huge. Or, being honest, telling his buddy that his band sucks. But that\u2019s not really \u201chonesty,\u201d is it? It\u2019s opinion, and why does it need to be said at all? And if one really does want to hide behind \u201cI\u2019m just being honest!\u201d then why doesn\u2019t one truly be<\/em>\u00a0honest and \u201ctell\u201d everything<\/em>: \u201cHey Larry, your band sucks, and I was raised with no formal musical training, the bands I respect are hated by the vast majority of decent people, and my opinions on most things are born from withering self-hatred and a seriously abysmal IQ.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you wife asks you, \u201cdoes this dress make my butt look big?\u201d she\u2019s not asking for you to be honest about the size of her back side. She wants to know if she\u2019s going to catch sight of herself, during a vulnerable moment, reflected in a window or nearby mirror. She wants to know if she can carry herself with confidence in an environment built to tear her down just for trying to look nice. You want \u201cjust to be honest\u201d? Then answer the real question. Tell her you can\u2019t really decide unless you see her without<\/em>\u00a0the dress on first, and you\u2019ll have to take your own pants off in the meantime, just to be fair.<\/p>\n

Opinion aside, in my opinion, truth is relative, if only in terms of language and context. There\u2019s philosophical truth (\u2019beauty,\u2019 according to Keats) and maybe even universal truth (Newtonian, Einsteinian, or otherwise) but for everything else, it\u2019s all relative. What\u2019s that mean? It means sometimes it\u2019s \u2018dishonest\u2019 to ask a question in the first place, and so any answer is appropriate, whether it\u2019s the truth or not.<\/p>\n

Someone asks you if did drugs when you were a kid. Who\u2019s asking? Why is it his business to ask? Is he asking for rhetorical purposes, to make a point about your lack of judgment and class? Screw that guy. Say, \u201cNo.\u201d Don\u2019t even bother saying, \u201cnone of your beeswax, Bert.\u201d People will take your \u201chonesty\u201d and re-contextualize it to make you look dishonest.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, I asked Dale if he did drugs as a kid. He told me he did! Can you believe we\u2019ve got a junkie working here!\u201d And now, because you smoked one joint at a party when you were 19, you\u2019re the company drug fiend.<\/p>\n

No thanks. Everyone has a right to privacy, and I do not cotton to the idea that \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t complain if you had nothing to hide.\u201d That\u2019s BS. Because everyone<\/em>\u00a0has something to hide, so why should someone else<\/em>\u00a0get to create the context where my<\/em>\u00a0secrets are on display but his<\/em>\u00a0aren\u2019t?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have anything to hide.\u201d Bert says. It has been my experience, every single time, that the person who says that has the most to hide\u2014 and is incredibly adept at changing contexts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Postaday for June 1st: Truth or Dare.\u00a0Is it possible to be too honest, or is honesty always the best policy? I have no patience for people who are proud of the fact that they \u201ctell it like it is.\u201d You know, letting her know that the dress does\u00a0make her butt look huge. Or, being honest, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Don’t Tell, Don’t Ask”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[225,224],"class_list":["post-1374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postaday","tag-honesty","tag-truth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-ma","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}