Defining Radical Honesty

Let me be honest: I can’t be bothered to write this article. It seemed cool when I signed up but then I procrastinated for days, now the deadline has passed and I’m writing under the pressure of an extension. My word document has been frustratingly blank for far too long and I’ve spent ages trawling through blog posts on the topic without finding any inspiration. I still don’t properly understand what it’s about, and the only way I’m coping with this is by refreshing Instagram every three minutes.

This is likely an experience most journalists go through, but you wouldn’t know it from their articles. I normally wouldn’t admit it either, but today I’m attempting Radical Honesty. Following this new principle sounds pretty straightforward – just be honest, right? – but many of its advocates online define it with appealing but convoluted therapy-speak like “liberate yourself from being at the mercy of your untrustworthy reactive mind”. There’s a reason for this; its founder Brad Blanton sells intensive workshops, self-help books and online courses on it, so of course it's made to sound seductive. But what, concretely, does it mean to be radically honest?

Its principal tenet is to be completely open and truthful to the people around us and ourselves about our actions, motivations, and shortcomings. This involves avoiding telling lies in any situation, because lying is a major source of human stress and brings distrust to relationships. I can appreciate this take; we put a lot of effort into pretending in our lives, be it on social media, where, obviously, we only post the good stuff, or even in conversations, where you choose the words that make you look ever so slightly better. Maintaining these performances is exhausting, so of course when you let go of the pressure to keep them up you’ll feel relieved. It can also, according to Blanton, influence other people into being radically honest, which will allow you to break down assumptions in relationships and become more in tune with each other.

All well and good, but radical honesty goes a lot further; it means sharing your opinions and feelings all the time. Things like telling a person you don’t like the gift they got for you, that they’re boring to be around, or that their essay was terrible. You may find these things to be true, but you should keep them to yourself, as they involve no consideration of their impact on other people. Here we’re veering into the territory of solipsism, a philosophy according to which only your mind is sure to exist, so why care about other people? They might not be real, after all.

I won’t delve too deeply into the cases for and against this, but in my opinion thinking in this way excuses pretty selfish actions that hurt other people. Maybe no-one else exists, but maybe they do, so why take that risk? I think being more honest in some areas of our lives would indeed be less stressful. The example of admitting to people when you’re socially exhausted and would rather read a book than keep talking is particularly appealing to me. But Blanton takes this way, way too far. The social taboos that radical honesty proposes to break are there for a reason: so that people help, and support, and show care for each other. So let’s keep them.