THE RADICALLY HONEST RIGHT

by James Lawrence

The main weakness of modern self-help books, as opposed to those written in antiquity by the likes of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, is that they begin not from truth but from the desires and aspirations of the multitude. Far from a teacher pointing the way toward virtue, the modern “self-help guru” is reduced to a servant, cannibalising certain philosophical techniques in order to help people achieve money, “success”, and heightened endorphin production more effectively. But there is at least one modern self-help book that in its essential content harks back to the older tradition, and that book is Radical Honesty, written by a Texan psychotherapist named Brad Blanton who describes himself as “white trash with a Ph.D.”. 

The self-help method of Radical Honesty and its sequel Practicing Radical Honesty is  simple: tell the truth, about everything, all the time, without lying or withholding anything. It is important to emphasise that Blanton does not advocate this commitment to honesty out of a moral opposition to lying. Rather, working back to traditional virtues through modern utilitarianism, he sees radical honesty as the only truly effective therapeutic path to health and happiness.

DEGENERATE MORALITY

                     

by William Solniger

Anyone who has seriously tried to practise any sort of virtue, however meagre, will know the necessity of making a habit of it – not just “knowing” it theoretically, but engraving it into his very being by constant repetition, so that he becomes what he repeatedly does. Because of this necessity for constant repetition, virtue cannot be left to the “important things” alone, but must permeate the insignificant and trivial ones as well. This is why the Hagakure contains the advice that “small matters should be taken seriously”; and this is perhaps also the reason behind the more arbitrary and petty aspects of religious and traditional codes.

In any case, it is a concept sorely neglected in the present day, as relativism provides the ultimate excuse to force all forms of virtue to bend and flex in the wind of particular circumstances and situations. But someone who cannot practise virtue inflexibly and habitually is very rarely able to practise it at all. Contrary to the belief of almost all of our contemporaries, someone who is accustomed to telling thousands of gentle lies and half-truths in everyday life cannot simply put down his habit of dishonesty to think about “important things” like life, the world, and himself; and this is similar to the truth that, despite much fantasising to the contrary, someone who is accustomed to avoiding confrontation in small matters of honour will rarely be able to draw his courage from its rusty scabbard on an occasion when he really needs it.