All human motives can be split into two competing objectives: feeling better right now or becoming better right now. These are almost always mutually exclusive because feeling better in the shortterm tends to come at the expense of feeling best in the long-term. Feeling best in the long-term requires doing whatever you need to in the present to become the best you can be in the future.
Humans are naturally opposed to what is actually best in the longterm1 at a fundamental, unconscious level.2 Almost all people are almost always motivated by the desire to feel better right now at the expense of feeling best long-term. Dishonesty is used as a tool to this end.
People lie in order to feel better in the present than they otherwise would. People will warp or ignore their thoughts, their feelings, and their actions in order to feel good right now. Dishonest people seek to maximize present pleasure regardless of how much they diminish future pleasure. They will ignore, distort, or deny any aspect of themselves or the world around them as they see it to feel better right now, even if it guarantees feeling worse later. A much more honesty approach is to face the truth in all things and change what you wish was better.
Footnotes
- 1. “...there is nothing which is good save it comes from the Lord; and that which is evil cometh from the devil.” (Omni 1:25) For I say unto you that whatsoever is good cometh from God, and whatsoever is evil cometh from the devil. (Alma 5:40) But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God. (Moroni 7:13) ↩
- 2. What is best is God’s will (see 2 Nephi 26:24), but what God wants will be different from what you want as long as and to the extent that you are different from him (see Mosiah 3:19). ↩