When the saying: “Let everybody look after himself, so everybody is taken care of” successfully circulated, the time had definitely come for our culture to say good-bye to honesty. Instead of by their parents, children are more and more brought up by TV sets. Trying to delegate this task to pre-schools or schools has failed, because those are places where educational efforts are not taken. Thus, the task of producing elites falls to the enterprises. And what do we learn there? If you want a career, be opportunistic and take a look at the famous shareholder value. Capital increase seems to be the only thing that matters. Globalization demands that we look for the best production conditions, the best political situation and the cheapest supply of environment. This years’ birth rate has, for the first time in the history of our republic, been lower than in 1946. Children have become a high-cost factor.
What is the matter? We keep talking about social and economic responsibility and nobody is prepared to take it. We are surprised that it is possible to earn less if you hold a full-time job than if you are unemployed.
A new kind of dishonesty erupts. In former times, if someone was behaving dishonestly, he at least knew it and suffered from a bad conscience. Today, we find a dishonesty where people misbehave and still feel they are perfectly honest.
Thus, the new dishonesty is characterized by being dishonest without noticing. We should and must do something about this. We need to re-establish a consciousness of what is dishonest and what will be considered honest in the future.
What happened? When, in 1903, George Edward Moore developed his emotivism in ethics, what we finally had was an ethics of inclinations. Since then, something is ethically acceptable if we feel well doing it. This emotional porridge is largely responsible for the new dishonesty. The second aspect is the tendency towards an ethics of attitude. Whenever their attitude is sincere, many people no longer ask whether this attitude is also paired with the right kind of behavioural competence. Thus, we have an unfortunate convergence of good conscience and incompetence. I can commit the gravest possible atrocities and feel good doing them. Thirdly, we have also developed a culture of being moved that calms down our conscience. Being part of a chain of burning torches looks more sensible to us than actually doing something. Some people are more moved by the misery in Africa than that next door. We are suffering from window love, while the love of our neighbour has been left behind.
To me, those seem to be the basic, general characteristics of the new dishonesty. Besides, we have developed European forms of the Cargo-cult. Cargo originally came from Melanesia. When US military airplanes containing all the wonderful products of this world landed there, they seemed like a gift from heaven, or the ancestors, to the Melanesians. On the planes it said »Cargo«. Now the Melanesians believed that if they prayed to such an airplane or imitated the American’s rituals, their ancestors, too, would send airplanes with these products. So they made small wooden airplanes, wrote Cargo on their sides, put them into their temples and prayed to them.
This is how we behave today. If being dishonest increases my Cargo and nobody will punish me for it, being dishonest is fine by me. Why have scruples? Everybody does it this way! Cargo cults determine our world today. Electricity comes out of the wall, the new market has magically increased my wealth, money is something I do not need anyway, because I have a credit card. Typical for cargo is imitation of stupid behaviour. My hairstyle is a copy of David Beckham’s, so I feel like him. I have the same watch as my boss, so I will soon be as successful as he. Our living room design is extremely important, because it helps our reputation, and dinner only tastes well if we eat it at “our” Italian. If you do not show these status symbols, you are ostracised. That is Cargo.
So what are the characteristics of the new dishonesty? Here comes a list:
I do not differentiate between truth and certainty, taking my own opinion to be the truth. I am always correct. My motto is: why should I bother with knowledge, since I already have an opinion.
We reduce people to their functionality. The answer to the question: “How can I benefit from knowing this person?” is more important than personal characteristics that should determine our relationships with another person.
The only values that are accepted are wealth, success, achievement and power. More and more, we turn a blind eye on the fact that the economic motivation should only be one among many others among humans. We disregard values like trust, gratitude, well-meaning and forgiveness.
Our only dogma is to behave politically correct. We no longer ask if an activity actually makes sense. All we ask is its political correctness. Thus, we almost commit semantic crimes when using words without asking whether changing a word should be accompanied by a change of attitude.
Values crumble. Almost exclusively, we are guided by values that prevent social punishment. “If only I will not get caught” is the motto.
We no longer do what we say. Trust develops through what we do, not through what we say. We no longer have a model function.
If we want the most important of our sources, the life culture, to remain intact, we need a new honesty. Every one of us could be a source of renovation if we all decided to make the new sincerity the centre of our behaviour.
There are silver linings at the horizon for a new honesty. For example, wars are generally not accepted and we get more and more conscious of our environment. We are also trying to find and define a new social justice.
For me, honesty is if a person behaves socially acceptable regardless of the social system he finds himself in. That has to be the standard. In order to get to this standard, several requirements defining a new honesty must be met.
Here is a list of some of them:
I differentiate between truth and certainty and I know that my own insights are certain, rather than true. That makes me socially a lot more acceptable than dogmatism.
I aspire to competence. Whenever I use a word, I know what it means, rather than just feeling that I probably know its meaning.
I act. That means that I have thought about the consequences of what I do and am aware of alternatives. Also, I have a goal and I am prepared to give reasons for what I do. Finally, I get a result and take responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of what I have done. I am willing to suffer the consequences.
I am upright, I say what I think.
I am reliable, others can trust me.
I show civil courage. I am prepared to stand up and defend my values against a predominating opposition.
I act according to “Epikie”, that is, I always try to act according to what is intended, not according to what the word-by-word text of a law says.
I nourish critical justice, which means that I still can question what seems evident.
My judgement is realistic. I focus on what is important
To me, those items seem a good basis for the development of a new honesty. Thus, if we do not want dishonesty, the question is if we want a new honesty. If we are interested in individual responsibility, independence, trustworthiness and a socially conscious society, we can no longer afford to ask others to do the job. We have to take up the role of model ourselves. We might fail, but at least we should have fought for a good cause. That is exactly where the bugle sounds for us, because if we keep waiting for others, we might be waiting for Godot, who, as we all know, never turned up.
UDP (translated be EG)
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