Radical Honesty
I rarely write about a book before reading it, but the premise of this one seemed so interesting I couldn’t resist. I bought the book Radical Honesty, The New Revised Edition: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth
In this Esquire article, a magazine writer meets Blanton and plans to practice radical honesty himself. Here’s how he describes the movement:
The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.
When the journalist meets Blanton, he encounters a man who totally practices what he preaches:
My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I’ve had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there’s a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I’d be insulting his life’s work. It’s my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it’s liberating, exhilarating.
When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, “You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago.”
“Thanks for telling me,” he says.
I tell him, “You look older than you do in the author photo for your book,” and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, “That just sounds like gobbledygook.”
“Thanks,” he replies.” Or, “That’s fine.”…
“I’m glad you picked your nose just now,” I say. “Because it was funny and disgusting, and it’ll make a good detail for the article.”
“That’s fine. I’ll pick my ass in a minute.” Then he unleashes his deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is “a little deceitful.”)
No topic is off-limits. “I’ve slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men,” he tells me. “I’ve had a whole bunch of threesomes” — one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.
What about animals?
Blanton thinks for a minute. “I let my dog lick my dick once.”
As I mentioned before, I haven’t read the book yet, but the premise really does interest me. I know that I’m just not the personality type that could totally follow the practices of the movement 100%, but I’d love to incorporate radical honesty into my life as much as I could.
What do you think life would be like if we embraced Radical Honesty all of the time? Hard to say, but here’s an example of what first dates might turn into:
Improvement over the current model or no?
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