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Authors: A. J. Jacobs
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experiment wasn’t 100 percent pure. There was a devious aspect to Radical Honesty that attracted me. Here was a way to confront people without repercussions. Or with fewer repercussions, anyway. I could defendmyself by saying, “Hey, I’m just doing my job, people. It’s the project.” Then say sorry later.
I got to tell my mom that I hate the smoked turkey she serves at her holiday party. I got to tell some old college acquaintances of Julie’s that no, I’m afraid I do
not
want to have a playdate with them, since I rarely get to see my closest friends.
I still practice Radical Honesty—though only in certain situations. Call it Sustainable Radical Honesty. I’m especially fond of Radical Honesty about my own flaws and mistakes. I love the liberating feeling. No desperate scrambles to come up with excuses. No searching my memory banks to figure out what I told Peter versus Paul. It’s all out there. Yeah, I screwed up.
I’ve also learned my relationships can tolerate a lot more Radical Honesty than I thought. If I just don’t feel up to having lunch with a friend, I don’t say my grandfather’s in town for a special visit and I have to go on the Circle Line. I just say the truth. I don’t feel like it. I’ve got three kids hopped up on high-fructose corn syrup and I need to take a nap.
But Radical Honesty about other people’s flaws—that I can’t do. I’m still a pathological white liar. Blanton thinks it’s false compassion. I think it can be real compassion—especially if your wife asks you about her necklace on the way to the party, long after she can change it.
And after experiments with rationality and civility (see chapters 5 and 6), I’ve come to appreciate the filter between the brain and mouth. Words can be dangerous. Once they’re out in the atmosphere, they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. You say out loud that your wife’s friend is boring, then next time you see her, you perceive her as more boring.
Another confession: Since the article came out, the Radical Honesty concept has seeped out into the culture a bit more—and it kind of annoys me. A minor character on the Fox cop drama
Lie to Me
is a Radical Honesty practitioner. When I first saw the show, I said, where’s my credit? Where’s my cut? Like I came up with the concept or something. Deluded, greedy bastard I am.
The Radical Honesty meme also caught on with single men, oddly enough. I met a Wall Street banker who said that, after reading the article, he and his friends had started using Radical Honesty as a pickup line. They’d go up to a woman in a bar and say, “I’m trying this new thing called Radical Honesty. And the honest truth is, I find you very attractive and would like to go home with you.”
Nine times out of ten they’d get slapped in the face. But there was that one time . . .
And finally, regardless of what my editor thinks, I’m pretty convinced we’ll all soon live in a radically honest world, for better or worse. It’s going to be hard to keep secrets when every second of your life is Twittered and satellite-photographed and captured by tiny cameras. The truth will out.
Me as Noah Taylor.
Noah Taylor as Noah Taylor.
Chapter Four
240 Minutes of Fame
In my real life, I’ve had just the tiniest taste of what it’s like to be famous. Three instances come to mind:
1. The book festival in Texas where I met my one and only rabid fan—a man who took off his sweater to reveal passages of my book scrawled on his T-shirt in Magic Marker. (Later, Israeli writer Etgar Keret would tell me that one of his fans got a chest tattoo of his book’s cover, which made me feel small and inadequate.)
2. The time my mother-in-law called in a tizzy and said, “You’re a clue in the
New York Times
crossword puzzle!” This was a dream come true. A bona fide mark of fame.
“It’s forty-eight down,” she said.
I grabbed the
Times
and opened to the puzzle. The clue was “Reads the encyclopedia
I got to tell my mom that I hate the smoked turkey she serves at her holiday party. I got to tell some old college acquaintances of Julie’s that no, I’m afraid I do
not
want to have a playdate with them, since I rarely get to see my closest friends.
I still practice Radical Honesty—though only in certain situations. Call it Sustainable Radical Honesty. I’m especially fond of Radical Honesty about my own flaws and mistakes. I love the liberating feeling. No desperate scrambles to come up with excuses. No searching my memory banks to figure out what I told Peter versus Paul. It’s all out there. Yeah, I screwed up.
I’ve also learned my relationships can tolerate a lot more Radical Honesty than I thought. If I just don’t feel up to having lunch with a friend, I don’t say my grandfather’s in town for a special visit and I have to go on the Circle Line. I just say the truth. I don’t feel like it. I’ve got three kids hopped up on high-fructose corn syrup and I need to take a nap.
But Radical Honesty about other people’s flaws—that I can’t do. I’m still a pathological white liar. Blanton thinks it’s false compassion. I think it can be real compassion—especially if your wife asks you about her necklace on the way to the party, long after she can change it.
And after experiments with rationality and civility (see chapters 5 and 6), I’ve come to appreciate the filter between the brain and mouth. Words can be dangerous. Once they’re out in the atmosphere, they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. You say out loud that your wife’s friend is boring, then next time you see her, you perceive her as more boring.
Another confession: Since the article came out, the Radical Honesty concept has seeped out into the culture a bit more—and it kind of annoys me. A minor character on the Fox cop drama
Lie to Me
is a Radical Honesty practitioner. When I first saw the show, I said, where’s my credit? Where’s my cut? Like I came up with the concept or something. Deluded, greedy bastard I am.
The Radical Honesty meme also caught on with single men, oddly enough. I met a Wall Street banker who said that, after reading the article, he and his friends had started using Radical Honesty as a pickup line. They’d go up to a woman in a bar and say, “I’m trying this new thing called Radical Honesty. And the honest truth is, I find you very attractive and would like to go home with you.”
Nine times out of ten they’d get slapped in the face. But there was that one time . . .
And finally, regardless of what my editor thinks, I’m pretty convinced we’ll all soon live in a radically honest world, for better or worse. It’s going to be hard to keep secrets when every second of your life is Twittered and satellite-photographed and captured by tiny cameras. The truth will out.
Me as Noah Taylor.
Noah Taylor as Noah Taylor.
Chapter Four
240 Minutes of Fame
In my real life, I’ve had just the tiniest taste of what it’s like to be famous. Three instances come to mind:
1. The book festival in Texas where I met my one and only rabid fan—a man who took off his sweater to reveal passages of my book scrawled on his T-shirt in Magic Marker. (Later, Israeli writer Etgar Keret would tell me that one of his fans got a chest tattoo of his book’s cover, which made me feel small and inadequate.)
2. The time my mother-in-law called in a tizzy and said, “You’re a clue in the
New York Times
crossword puzzle!” This was a dream come true. A bona fide mark of fame.
“It’s forty-eight down,” she said.
I grabbed the
Times
and opened to the puzzle. The clue was “Reads the encyclopedia
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