I take issue with those who claim to be honest. There can be something childish in a person who says they tell the truth whatever the circumstance. This is an infantile view of what it means to have integrity. What if they are wrong? What if the thing being uttered with complete honesty comes from faulty thinking or suspect information or bad emotion? What if the thing is simply factually inaccurate? What if the honesty is going to inflict pain on someone else?

With these questions honesty is complex. There are infinite shades of honesty dependent on context, appropriateness, measure, temper, the way something is said, its intention, when it is said, who it is said to. There are an endless amount of considerations that influence honesty. Another is that one might not be honest with oneself yet be unaware of that in which case the outward claim is a nonsense and likely to create further confusion.

Those who claim honesty for themselves and demand it in others are just as often those who have not yet learned ethical responsibility. This would be one measure of immaturity. In an all-things-equal world where truth and falsity are clear, where there is no middle ground with shades of opinion, where there are no hidden agendas and no complicated matters of emotion and psychology, then I suppose the stark honest-brokers would have their valid place. But in the world as it is they are usually just ignorant.

Good honesty like most others things requires skill. It needs timing, degree, style, compassion and sensitivity as well as a well-honed feel for the context in which truth is spoken. It also acknowledges that in general humans don't know the truth but only at best an approximation of it. They have perspective and some perspectives are closer to truth than others. Never do they hit the spot. Self proclaimed truth-tellers are almost by definition wide of the mark.