[QUOTE="mrbojangles25"]
[QUOTE="MagnumPI"]
I disagree. I believe honesty is a reward, honesty is earned. Sometimes people deserve the truth and sometimes they don't desrve the truth. So I would say "Sometimes you have to lie" Nobody is entitled to the truth nor your respect. Truth is like anything else, it must be earned. You don't necessarily have to lie either. As far as they know you know as much as they do. ;)
MagnumPI
that is...interesting.
Almost sounds like you are trying to justify the act of lying.
I sort of agree...I do not like to outright lie to people, that is wrong, regardless of your opinion of them. But lying by omission is acceptable in many cases (that term was made up by psychiatrists to make money, anyway :P )
I don't try to justify lying, because lying is not always a bad thing so it doesn't need to be justified. Either I tell them the truth or I don't. No justification is necessary. I'm saying don't be a fool. Nothing is given, everything is earned. If I don't trust you or I feel sharing theinformation would do more damage than good I'm not going to inform you. Ultimately the decision would be "Do you need to know? Can I trust you?"
The fact is if you're perseptive you know when someone is making a up a story or not disclosing the full truth. Observation combined with logic often tells more truth than any person ever will.
Well...I don't think that people should ever lie. Well...that's not entirely true, I suppose. I'm sure there are extreme situations in which lying would be appropriate (telling the Dark Overlord that the Rebel Base is to the South, when it's really to the East, for example)...but in my mind, short of something like that, being honest is almost always the right thing to do. I don't see honesty as something that needs to be earned. Even if I don't like a person I'll still be honest with them, because to me lying is just...wrong. I don't like doing it and I don't like it when other people do it to me.
As far as lying by omission goes...I would not consider that lying. I tend to be relatively open about my feelings, but if I always went around telling everyone exactly what I thought of them with no provocation...well...things could get pretty ugly. So, like...I'm not gonna walk up to someone I dislike and randomly say, "You suck and I hate you!" At the same time, I'm not going to claim that I like them either. And if they ask me what I think of them, I'll probably tell them...hopefully in an at least somewhat diplomatic way. Being honest does not always mean a complete lack of tact (although I'm sure a number of people would agree that tact isn't exactly my strongest suit either).
I also believe that if you lie to a person and that person believes you...it's not their fault for being naive. It's your fault for taking advantage of them. Basically, if somebody is willing to believe what you say, even if it sounds outlandish, they're saying to you, "I'm willing to push aside my doubts about you because I believe you're a good person and that you wouldn't lie to me." I hate it when people assume I'm lying, and I try to give others the benefit of the doubt and hope that they'll afford me the same respect.
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