Radical Honesty
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Radical Honesty is the name of a self improvement program developed by Brad Blanton PhD that challenges people to give up their addiction to lying. The method focuses the practitioner on being present with what is happening within themselves and separating their objective observation from their subjective judgment and having a higher level of consciousness as to which is which.
The Radical Honesty technique includes having practitioners state their feelings directly and in ways typically considered impolitic. For example, "I resent you for X" where X is a statement of objective observation about the person who the comment is being directed towards.
The Center for Radical Honesty conducts 8 day workshops which train people in the collection of techniques which shift them out of typically socially acceptable patterns of "white lying" and into a more truthful relationship with themselves and others. The material in the Radical Honesty workshop is drawn from an eclectic collection of sources including Sufism, clinical psychology, Gestalt therapy and the comic spiritual belief (developed by Blanton) called Futilitarianism. Futilitarianism claims it is futile to have any belief whatsoever. The significant majority of participants in the Radical Honesty workshops report dramatic changes in their lives after taking the course, though they are not always comfortable and positive.
These workshops are usually held in Stanley, Virginia at the Center's offices, and Blanton travels widely and occasionally gives workshops in other locations.
Blanton has written a series of books to help guide readers in the Radical Honesty technique.
[edit] Critics
In the anger chapter Brad Blanton recommends to call a person and tell him or her that one wants to meet each other to blame him or her. This is being seen as unrealistic, because it is a widely accepted fact that no one lets others ballast him or her.
The source states "You see a foreigner on the street and you don't like him because he reminds you of someone you don't like. Do you hover next to him and tell him that you resent him for reminding you of XY?".
Brad Blanton is said to come from the doubtful point of view that all people who make a person resent them do so unintentionally. Critics state that this has never been proven by any scientific measurements.
[edit] Books
- Blanton, Brad 2005, Radical Honesty, The New Revised Edition: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth, SparrowHawk Publications; Revised edition, ISBN 0-9706938-4-2
- Blanton, Brad 2004, The Truthtellers, SparrowHawk Publications, ISBN 0-9706938-3-4
[edit] External links
- Center for Radical Honesty
- I Think You're Fat, an article in Esquire magazine on the subject of Radical Honesty, containing an interview with Blanton and a description of the writer's experiment in Radical Honesty.
- The book being criticized
