You read my post correctly. When we take for granted what we have been taught to be true, self-honesty means that we come to act on these teachings. And this is where self-honesty harms us, to the degree that the teachings are harmful.

There are many Muslim scholars that prohibited many, many things that Islam has not only classified as permissible, but as valuable or even essential.

Interestingly as Haider [as I interpered] put that someone will be in a state of confusions if he finds out that doing some thing which he knowingly feel dishonest would be against the ethical norms as well as morality.And this is “damaging”.

I Totally agree with that Haider. But then I would consider other parameters that engulf our sense of self-Honesty. Factors such as norms,pre- knowledge, morals/value, judgements and alike play significant role towards our sense of HONESTY. I find that most of our respectful parents, religious gurus, scholars define or set the above set of parameters are so rigids and restricted which are contradicted to the true teaching of Islam [to a certain degree].

I remembered a day when our nation was full of publisities about Man First Mission of Apollo by the American Astonauts. And I asked my parent is it possibile for a man to go to the moon? My parents as wll as the majority of my muslim elders denied the possibility. And somebody said, “God will punished” them for entering His universe. I tend to agree at that age. But then as years passed the Muslim have to redefine, re-tune and upgrade their knowlege about space explorations [sciences].

Giving that scenerio above is that, if for instance a Muslim scientists were assigned for that mission, they would surely having a parodoxical state of situation. More over they might be labelled as KAFIR. But we cannot blamed the muslim societies at that time because their religious guru said so.
By Allah Will, late last year, Malaysia had sent their first Muslim to joint the Russian aerospace mission.No Muslim make an out-cry.

What I am trying to postualate is that Self-Honesty will be deterimental if our preknowledge in Islam is ill-equipped.

I hope I am not “beating around the bush”.

Salam from Bruneian.

And I’m certainly not postponing the topic for a later time, but only the exercise I wanted to go through.

Self-honesty involves evaluating yourself to a criteria, and being willing to admit whether you are fulfilling this criteria or not. The criteria is not reality. If you are objective and rational, your view of reality can be very accurate. But if you will assess yourself based on a corrupt criteria, you will only damage yourself by forcing yourself to conform to this criteria, because you are being honest.

The solution isn’t to abandon self-honesty, as I have said before, but to approach it correctly. We need to be honest and willing enough to question the criteria itself. This is what I wish to deal with before presenting the exercise.

Your point is extremely valid, and I don’t intend to undermine self-honesty. But I want to equip my readers with the tools that will help them gain as much as they can from self-honesty, without forcing themselves on wrong paths.

But it’s leads me to another question. You talk about ‘being exposed to different ethics’, which I understand as ‘initiated by the outside world’ rather than initiated by the individual in a pro-active sense.

In other words, I am not sure that the challenging of ethics must come from the society, but should be searched for by the individual. Otherwise the ‘blaming’ will be on society and this will lead to a sense of helplessness for the individual. Also it has implications on the issue of accountability to think about.

The example of rational self-interest you mention is a global one. As I see it there is at present no society which proclaims it, and I do not foresee any society to proclaim it in the near future.. So that leaves us on an individual level to ‘play the game’.

Staying with that example: I was brought up with the virtues of altruism too. My school taught it. My parents taught it. My present social context is acting on it.

As I see it: you first need to be aware of your values, only than you will be able to challenge them, not the other way around. I see self honesty as a function of self-awareness.

Sure enough it can happen that in life you meet people that inspire you to rethink your values. To others it may not happen. Still, it is the responsibility of every individual to choose the set of values he wants to live by. As I see it he cannot escape this responsibility, regardless if he has the opportunity to be exposed to it.

Difficult is that is, and it really is, it is not a privilage of those who are lucky enough to be exposed to it, but the self-responsibility of every mature human being. You can choose to ‘expose yourself to it’ or not.

I still do not see how self honesty ever can be damaging. I see that it can be very difficult and hard at times. I know it is. But damaging no. Self honesty, meaning admitting and seeing the inner reality improves your relation with reality. Improving your relation with reality always makes you stronger as I see it.

Hope it makes sense to you. Take care, Ralf

No, this isn’t what I’m saying. You should always rethink your values and be prepared to change your ethics. But some people are not exposed to the right ethical principles, and their self-honesty will lead them to embrace the only understanding of ethics they were brought up to know.

Let me give you an example which you might be able to relate to: some people do not have a proper understanding of ethics, but they were always brought up to believe that ethics means that you should make sacrifices for others. Some would agree with this principle and act on it, others might struggle to act on this principle, knowing that there’s something missing or wrong in their lives, while others might *avoid* acting on this principle and, instead, pursue their rational self-interest.

Since the last group isn’t able to connect their actions to morality, they think that pursuing their self-interest is wrong, and so they choose not to think about morality. If they are honest with themselves, and still lack the knowledge to view self-interest as moral, they may say to themselves that it is immoral for them to do what’s wrong (being selfish), and should, therefore, do what’s right (sacrifice for others).

Here, self-honesty is damaging, because it led them to embrace the wrong understanding of ethics. They weren’t being dishonest, but they do not know any other way of understanding ethics. They are not lying to themselves, but they were lied to, and their honesty will lead them to accept the lie.

Therefore, the solution for them wasn’t to be honest with themselves, but to first gain the proper understanding of ethics, and then compare their actions to that. If one is open to considering new ideas, then his honesty will serve him. But if he’s not exposed to such ideas, then he’ll only be led to accept the falsehood he inherited.

To clarify, I’m not asking people to abandon self-honesty. I’ll be writing more about it in upcoming posts. But I won’t be going through the self-honesty exercise before I elaborate on some tools that we require for self-honesty to serve us, rather than harm us.

I hope I’ve made it clear what I consider the danger to be. If I haven’t, let me know.