How important culturally it is to be honest?

8 comments

1. It’s very important in the sense that one of Switzerland’s most important cultural values is trust. Mutual trust is what our entire society is built upon. In situation where you’d be checked, searched, questioned etc. in other countries, Swiss people and the Swiss government simply trust that you will behave like a decent person. Just to give one example, I have been to movie theaters where they didn’t bother to employ someone who checks/rips the tickets. I remember when my wife (who comes from South Korea) saw this for the first time, she couldn’t believe it. She asked: “But why don’t people just walk into the theater without buying a ticket? From where the counter is, you wouldn’t be able to see that! What’s stopping them???” I answered: “Technically, nothing. But Swiss people don’t do this because we want to be honest.” I think the point is that mutual trust can only function if people are honest with each other.

   However, there’s an interesting question to be asked; namely whether honesty creates trust or trust creates honesty. I used to believe the former but nowadays I lean more towards the latter. A good illustration for this is the US. In my opinion, the US is perhaps the most distrustful country in the world. It is the complete opposite of Switzerland. Everyone is paranoid, everyone distrusts everyone else. People walk home at night and when they see a shadow, they immediately assume it’s a psychopath who wants to abduct them. But it’s not just regular people who distrust each other, Americans also distrust their government and the government distrusts them (–> NSA etc.). I believe it is this ubiquitous distrust that breeds dishonesty. People don’t feel the need to be honest because they constantly get checked, searched, surveilled, questioned anyway.

   In Switzerland it’s the opposite. I believe our culture of trust also breeds honesty. If you know someone really trusts you, it suddenly becomes much harder to lie to that person. After all, you don’t want to be a complete asshole to someone who treats you with kindness.

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3. Exposing small kids to lies by their own parents is culturally normal. With age children learn to question and not immediately believe what even their own parents tell them.

   – existance of santa claus
   – religious thing being taught in a literal sense
   – birth not being explained properly, as in a biological sense, when a 4-10 year old kid asks his/her parents about it
   – same might be the case for sex ed

   I think that creates a person who questions everything. They question more than it’s good for them to question/be paranoid about.

   Media are and were rather free, as in they freely report on a lot, and always rather grim stories – that creates a lot of distrust. It makes people think that they’re more likely to be a victim of a crime or that there is more corruption/mismanagement than there really is out there.

   Generally contracts are longer and more detailed than in the UK – consequence of lower trust.

4. Strongly disagree with your disclaimer. I think there are no white lies, only lies. If you lie, I don’t trust you. If you can’t speak the truth, you shouldn’t speak at all.

5. Calling a spade a spade is frowned upon nowadays no matter where you live.

   Absolutely nobody is totally honest all of the time.

   Lets not get tact confused with dishonesty.

   Life is about finding a way to call a spade a spade and to be tactful at the same time.

6. Honestly I don’t think there’s a general cultural opinion on this over here..

7. Not very, I am not surprised when people are not honest. Actually I am most of the time sceptic of people I don’t know.

8. ”On täällä maassa itsepäinen kansa. jos ystävät nyt pitää toisistansa, ei siinä erottaa silloin voi muu kuin yksin kuolema ja virkavalta”