{"id":29340,"date":"2016-03-05T01:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T06:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29340"},"modified":"2018-09-18T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T19:28:09","slug":"qotd-honesty-is-the-best-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/03\/05\/qotd-honesty-is-the-best-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Honesty is the best policy&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Ben Franklin said \u201cHonesty is the best policy.\u201d The full subtlety of that proverb is lost in modern English, because the word \u201cpolicy\u201d has shifted in meaning. In Franklin\u2019s time the word had connotations of willed manipulation and deception that it has since lost. Translated into modern English it reads like \u201cHonesty is the most effective way to manipulate people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And so, the <em>wu-wei<\/em> paradox of effective advocacy. To manipulate, <em>speak truth<\/em>. But it\u2019s not enough to have the truth to speak; you need to be able to say it without strain, in a way that flows naturally from who you are. What is powerful is not just to speak truth but be <em>made<\/em> of truth clear inward to your bones.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m speaking lived experience here, not theory. I have spent decades becoming the kind of person to whom speaking the clearest truth I can formulate, even when it\u2019s uncomfortable for me or socially frowned upon by others, comes as naturally as breathing. Audiences sense this naturalness and respond to it. This is why, when I speak difficult truths in public, I am much better than most people at inducing my listeners to actually grapple with them.<\/p>\n<p>Eric S. Raymond, <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6583\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Truth-telling and <em>wu-wei<\/em>&#8220;, <em>Armed and Dangerous<\/em><\/a>, 2014-12-16.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Franklin said \u201cHonesty is the best policy.\u201d The full subtlety of that proverb is lost in modern English, because the word \u201cpolicy\u201d has shifted in meaning. In Franklin\u2019s time the word had connotations of willed manipulation and deception that it has since lost. Translated into modern English it reads like \u201cHonesty is the most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41],"tags":[1235,400],"class_list":["post-29340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-esr","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7De","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34294,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29340\/revisions\/34294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}