Bluntness and honesty vs. politeness and white lies

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I repeat, that's between you and the moderators now.

You shoud listen to yourself. What age was Holden Caulfield again? You'll moan and moan about this type of behavior in other people (who happen to be different from you) but when you do it yourself you're completely righteous aren't you? Bigotry and prejdice are some of the most phony activities to get involved with.

What she explained is one version (a pretty accurate version) of how NT society works. Doesn't work for us but that's not their fault and it's not ours either it just is.

Last edited by Hmmmn on 16 Jun 2009, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn't rude to him at all. I just swallowed and accepted what he said.



I had plenty to say about what Greentea was asking me. I gave her the example she wanted, only to find it wasn't good enough for her. And she challenges, and she challenges. And when I give her the direct response she keeps demanding, suddenly it's a personal attack?

No matter. You proved Greentea's point very well. I'm bailing on this thread too. Anyone who read it knows what happened.

A point that appears to have been missed is that I'm not sure we really have a conscious choice whether to tell a white lie/blunt truth (or anything else for that matter) at the moment we speak.

Verbalisation happens so fast, in reality, it is virtually automatic. We speak from habit. And then we use after-the-event reasoning to justify our habitual manner of speaking because deep down, we know it too difficult to change ourselves.

For a bit of lighthearted entertainment, next time you feel the urge to deliver some blunt truth, try telling a white lie instead. And then again..and again. Or the reverse if you tend to habitually tell white lies.

Yay!! !! That's very similar to my viewpoint too! A bit more honesty and we'd have less corruption in high places and a much fairer world all round.

Now....refresh my memory....exactly what are NT's here for again? (I'm not even going to risk a smiley on this, I'll state it clearly: ONLY JOKING!! !)

I think, simplistically put, that NTs tend to view any unsugarcoated telling of unpleasant truths as a deliberate, vicious attack, while Aspies tend to view anything other than telling the complete, direct, unadorned truth as hypocrisy of the worst kind. I don't think either view is correct.

Good example of when lies are better than the truth. And I'm sure we can all come up with examples in which telling unpleasant truths is being 'cruel to be kind.' Morally, I don't think you can say that you should never tell unpleasant truths, nor that you should never lie.


Greentea, you're not the only Latin American here that loathes telenovelas (taranovelas? tele no-verlas?)

I didn't know those!

But I used to like telenovelas very much, especially when they had my lifelong favorite Argentinian actors.

Talk about NTs not having obsessions! Just see the addiction to telenovelas...

No, but I'm not going to say it's good either. I'd say something along the lines of 'this part is good, but you need to work on that part', pointing out the best part and how she can improve it.

and later:


Please do not misquote people.

Honesty does not have to be rude!

If a woman asks, "Does this dress look good on me?"
You don't have to say, "It looks absolutely hideous and your choice of fashion is horrible!"
You could, instead, say, "Hmm, the dress does not accentuate your best features. Perhaps you should try on a different style."

Now, both examples are honest. The first example is 'mean' honesty. The second example is 'tactful' honesty. Please note that the second example is not a white lie, but instead it is a more polite way to tell the truth.

A white lie would be, "That dress looks good on you."
Complete dishonesty.

Even here, it's situational. Whether you should use tactful honesty or the dishonest white lie depends on whether she has the option to pick another dress at that time and how much she needs to feel she looks good in that dress at that time. (And I realize that figuring THAT out is something bound to drive AS people bananas.)

When to use the tactful honesty:
You are shopping together- stop her from buying it.

You are getting dressed for an event together-your tactful honesty can get her to change into something else.

You are out together. She's already in the dress with no option to change but looking her absolute best isn't that critical. Maybe you are just getting lunch together. Your tactful honesty could get her to retire the dress from her wardrobe at a later point.

When to use the white lie even though it is completely dishonest:

You are somewhere together where she has no option to change yet it is critical that she feels like she looks good. Perhaps she's just about to give a presentation in front of a bunch of people or go up on stage to perform. If she asks you how her dress looks at that moment, she needs to hear that it looks great regardless of whether it does or not. She has no option to change it and being told that it looks great (even dishonestly) frees her mind from the worry that she looks like crap and allows her to concentrate on her presentation or performance in blissful ignorance that she could have looked better. The (true) information that it was a bad clothing choice would have stuck in her head at a critical time and hampered her presentation or performance.

That is an example from my own life. I had no idea that the dress I'd chosen to give a presentation in was a color choice that looked weird with my skin and I looked pale and unhealthy. (And it was a new dress too! One I'd bought special for the presentation. Damn those fluorescent lights in dressing rooms.) I didn't realize this till I saw photos. Had I been tactfully told this right before the presentation it wouldn't have helped because I couldn't change at that point and it would have stuck in my head and I would have been thinking "I look like crap!" which would have distracted me from giving my best presentation. So the people saw a good presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Had I been tactfully told, they would have seen a bad presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Same dress in either scenario. The only thing that would change would be the quality of the presentation.

Hmm, that's a very interesting point that I've never considered. Thank you for clarifying!

Please do not call my personal inferences, quotes or misquotes.

Janissy, that's another example of unsolicited and untimely criticism, not of honesty.

I have had to learn to be tactful which isn't the same as lying or dishonesty, its a way of avoiding telling a truth that would be inconvenient at that time.

My poor daughter has often been on the end of my honesty and not so long ago turned around to me and told me that some things I say are hurtful.

Aspies don't have much of an excuse to be rude since we may not be so tactful, but most of us are intelligent and it only needs for us to take time to respond and think about what we are saying before we wade in with our version of honesty.

The best thing an NT can do for us is to tell us very nicely that maybe we could have considered our response more carefully. I see good examples of that on this board, thank you NTs of the board

Depends, sometimes you have to think on your feet and can't go away to quietly think over how your response may come across, and often figuring that out is a matter of intuition rather than intelligence.

Ironically enough probably the rudest person I know is NT.



Never liked telenovelas, though I've been known to watch something I would normally have no interest in because a girl on it catches my attention - don't know if your motivation was similar.



And football - 'it's not a matter of life or death, it's a lot more important than that.'

What country are you from, if you don't mind my asking? I'm Mexican, specifically chilango.