Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who left the company where she worked because its culture required lying to maintain a certain decorum.
She said that if she were to be honest with her boss, meaning tell him the truth about herself and her department, she would have been fired. To keep her job, she had to lie.
This is what I see as a culture of simulation. A false reality is based on lies and false representations of reality.
My friend decided that she could not work in such an environment. She resigned.
This is one instance of many that I have seen where honesty is not valued.
Professor Christian Miller has written a book, The Honesty Crisis, that is the product of a multiple-year research study into honesty. Dr. Miller teaches philosophy at Wake Forest University and is the Director of the University’s Character Project.
He joined me on The Eddy Network Podcast (see below).
During our conversation, he told me two things that astounded me.
One is that this is the first such study ever conducted. No wonder honesty is in crisis.
The other is that, by a huge margin, the majority of people surveyed believe that honesty is essential.
So if people believe in honesty, and organizations don’t - Yes, I am oversimplifying to make a point - then what does this say about leaders of organizations?
It is an important issue, and I am glad to have Christian on the podcast to discuss it.
Christian Miller Profile Honesty is our most treasured virtue. Research has found that honesty is the single most important characteristic a person can possess when it comes to liking them, respecting them, and understanding them. But honesty is eroding at a frightening rate in many areas of society today, as we are confronted with a number of honesty crises. The frequency of deepfakes has skyrocketed, now that they are simple to make and untraceable. In our relationships, with the easy availability of online pornography, anonymous chatrooms, and infidelity websites like Ashley Madison, cheating in a relationship has never been easier. In education, many students are using AI to complete their writing assignments with little chance of detection. In politics, social media helps with the dissemination of fake news, and polarization reduces our tendency to condemn political dishonesty if it aligns with our own views. In public spaces, it is easier to become a celebrity than it has ever been in human history, and yet celebrity encourages greater dishonesty. In religion, religious leaders are increasingly confronted by temptations to plagiarize sermon material from the Internet and AI. Christian Miller’s The Honesty Crisis diagnoses this problem across a range of social phenomena, drawing on his years of research, and makes the case that the stakes are higher that we realize. Proposing concrete solutions, Miller’s urgent and timely book will interest anyone concerned about the moral character of our world, and its future.
A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC
Faculty bio - www.wfu.edu/~millerc
https://christianbmiller.com/the-honesty-crisis/
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