Honesty

Before I go into deeper issues such as what is truth, and thinking about why I seek after it, and in what cause I do such things, I wish to get into the real purpose of this blog. Analyzing myself and trying to find improvements. This is of crucial importance, or the blog will be useless as a tool for self-examination.

I shall begin by analyzing my honesty. I realize none of this will be informative or shocking or a huge revelation, but please bear with my and what may be a very uninteresting post.

 I work sales at a small company. I was supposed to be an engineer doing verbal technical consultations, but I turned out to be a salesman in a failing company. My boss is the one who orders all of the material for the company and starts all tasks. All in all this would take about an hour out of his day, each day, to do properly, but he rarely comes to work on any given day, or if he does, he does not work.

My problem is that he makes promises to customers on when he can finish his work, and it is my job to communicate it to them. I communicate what he tells me, but he is a liar. He does not tell the truth, and he breaks his promises not out of accidentally human frailty, but on purpose, deliberate human frailty. And it is part of my job to communicate his promises and explain why he has not kept them when the deadlines pass.

I attempt to be an honest person. But then, so does everyone. That is how a world is filled with dishonesty. I do not deliberately lie, even if it would benefit me in the short term. I consider it un-virtuous, and not beneficial in the long term at all besides. That is not to say I do not think of lying sometimes. I am not sure why. Sometimes the thought or idea of lying will pop into my head. Most of the time I will ignore it, or try to reflect on how nonsensical and useless it is. If I am being frail of character, I will think of how funny it would be (the lies that tempt me are often humorous in nature, for some reason.) Again, I do not wish to imply this happens all the time, but merely make it clear that I do think of lying.

I am not certain how to reduce thinking of lying, though I have had, I believe, some success in controlling the thing itself, since there is always a choice, and it is relatively simple to just choose not to lie. There is very little habbit forming or tempting about it, it is merely a moral decision one can choose to make. But I am not certain how to discipline my thoughts so that the -idea- of lying does not occur to me. And of course, sometimes I will accidently lie, which upsets me afterword.

This leads to another problem. Despite all of this, I continue working for this job. It is not a good-paying job, but it pays more then anything else I have ever gotten, and I have a large number of bills, and another person who depends on me for that income. If I lived up to my principles, I would not lie for him. I try not to lie for him. I do so by taking him at his word each time, and being as honest as I can in my position.

But that is only self-justification. If I do not wish to lie, I cannot work for this man. The moral thing to do would be to sacrifice the job and accept the income change. But I cannot guarantee my next job will be more moral, and there are others relying on me. So I am not certain what to do.

This moral issue, at first simple, has now become more complex. I can attempt to be virtuous, but find myself violating even a simple virtue I am very committed to, out of desire for money, and desire to benefit others.

I have no solution for this as of yet.