Most descriptions of Radical Honesty often start with a description of the person giving the description. This is because Radical Honesty is a movement based on telling the truth at every moment of the day and doing so aggressively. “Lying is the major source of all human stress”, says its website. “When people engage honestly, energy that was wasted maintaining a performance to make an impression is suddenly available for real creativity. When we admit our pretenses we can refresh our relationships and powerfully create our future together.” It’s a provocative idea, straight out of the Jim Carrey Liar Liar school of thought, the type of thing journalists run towards for stunt pieces. Could you do it, the idea seems to ask. Why wouldn’t you want to do it? Why wouldn’t you want to be less honest?
Two journalists have taken on the subject, with very different results. A.J. Jacobs, who later compiled a book of all his human experiments on himself, took on the task in an Esquire article in 2007. He started with a long description of himself and his true intentions for the article, “I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired.”, etc. He then proceeds onto Radical Honesty itself, both the idea and the person behind it, Dr. Brad Blanton. Not only does Blanton recommend telling the truth in all personal matters (he has no problem lying to the government), he recommends having no filters at all. Say it, feel it, think it, repercussions be damned. Jacobs finds himself electrified by the experience: “In his book,” Jacobs writes, “Blanton talks about the thrill of total candor, the Space Mountain-worthy adrenaline rush you get from breaking taboos. As he writes, ‘You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing risk taking.’ This I felt.”
As time goes on, Jacobs finds his energy for the project waning. He doesn’t necessarily like all of his thoughts and wishes he wouldn’t cause people as much discomfort as he does. There’s no difference in the world of Radical Honesty between lying and concealing a stray thought. Women start to feel more uncomfortable around Jacobs as he begins to tell them all how attractive he finds them. He gives up the project when he tells a friend who has recently suffered a trauma a white lie. He finds himself envious of Blanton, wishing he could live a life of truthfulness with such enthusiasm. He resolves this by promising to be at least 40% more truthful.
Writer Starlee Kine found a much different experience when she started to look into Radical Honesty. Writing a book on the self-help industry, she stumbled upon Blanton’s group through a bad break-up (she recounted the story during the storytelling event The Moth). Unlike Jacobs, Kine actually visited one of Blanton’s eight-day seminars and what she found was very different than the gruff-but-energetic man who met Jacobs and took his calls. Rather, she found a verbally abusive situation where she was constantly pressured to sign up for more seminars.
Even if the actual Radical Honesty program itself is a wash, the idea is an intriguing one. What if everyone just kept saying whatever they thought? A variation of the idea came up on that bastion of leadership, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Two characters, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher, become psychically linked to one another while captured by enemies. During their escape attempt, they become distracted by each other’s thoughts, at times biting and harsh. Picard makes a quick decision, characteristic of his leadership abilities: “We mustn’t punish each other for stray thoughts”. Radical Honesty promotes a directness and a transparency that any business could learn from. The best way to quash a rumor? Face it head on. Don’t like that you have to give a certain answer? Change how you approach the problem so you can give a different response next time. But let your head be your head, a place where you can rest and find comfort in your own privacy. Taking this sort of thing to extremes is pointless.