Have We Got Honesty the Wrong Way Around?

By Sandy Glanfield

What can we learn from Rai?

This is the question I have been sitting with since recording our latest Let’s Reboot the Future podcast with Rai Lewis.

As an autistic person, Rai speaks about finding it hard to perceive a lie, and hard to tell one. Listening to her, I found myself wondering whether we have got something the wrong way around.

Shouldn’t we all find it hard to lie?
Shouldn’t honesty be something we protect, rather than something we work around?

We are living in a time where so much harm has been caused by what is hidden, denied, or buried. We see it in the long shadows of abuse and cover ups, in stories like Epstein that were known and not acted on, and in the way truth is so often delayed until the damage is done.

We see it in the climate crisis too, where the gap between what we know and how we act continues to widen.

And still, it can feel like we are becoming more comfortable with it.

At the same time, we say we want honesty. We say we value people who “tell it like it is”. We see people applauded for speaking in ways that are blunt, harsh, even cruel. Figures like Trump and Farage are often described as honest for this reason.

But I find myself asking, is that honesty?

If something is said in a way that harms, divides, or shuts others down, is that truth, or is it something else? Is it more honest to speak in absolutes, or to say, I am worried. I am scared. I do not know what the future holds.

Where is the more useful place to meet each other?

Is it in statements that claim certainty, or in the honest expression of our fears, our hopes, and what we care about?

It feels like we are missing spaces where this kind of honesty can exist.

Spaces where we can say what we feel without being shut down, and without needing to harden or perform. Spaces where we can be honest with care, and where that honesty is held with responsibility for one another.

This is where I keep coming back to Rai.

Not only in understanding her experience, but in asking what it might invite in us.

There is something in the clarity she describes. A way of not getting pulled into all the distortion that we create. A focus on what matters. A kind of honesty that is not about performance, but about truth.

It makes me wonder whether what we sometimes dismiss as naïve is actually something else.

Something we have moved away from.

There is also something in the connection to nature that Rai speaks about. How it soothes the nervous system. How it brings us back to something more grounded, more real.

What can we learn from that?

What can we learn about how to relate to each other, if we were to slow down, to listen more carefully, and to speak with more intention?

Perhaps honesty is not about saying everything we think, or saying it in the loudest or most forceful way.

Perhaps it is about creating the conditions where we can be truthful with each other in ways that allow us to move forward together.

Which brings me back to the Golden Rule.

To treat others and the planet as we would wish to be treated.
To speak as we would wish to be spoken to.
To listen as we would wish to be heard.

And to extend that same care to the planet we are part of, not separate from.

Maybe the kind of honesty we need now is one that is rooted in care. One that makes space for truth, without losing sight of each other, and the world we depend on.

* Let’s Reboot the Future is a podcast exploring ethical leadership, moral courage, and the Golden Rule in action through conversations with social impact leaders.