The trouble with honesty

The trouble with honesty is it’s bad for your brand.

I work in an industry that’s obsessed with image: putting your best foot forward and giving the most positive impression about a particular marketable item or service. Any whiff of negativity is just NOT ON. Edit it out. Don’t give the competitor an inch.

It’s perhaps why I’m equally as obsessed about spirituality that does NOT play these same games.
I LOVE honesty in religion.
I LOVE honesty in art.
Images that do NOT sit well with the whole picture or the ‘grand narrative’ I find particularly appealing.

Take these quotes, for example.
“Everything is meaningless”
“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief”
You wouldn’t guess they were straight out of the bible (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 1:18), especially if you only listened to the well-marketed Christianity of our western civilisation.

It’s also what makes Mish Mumkin so gripping. If I was Ramzi, devout Muslim, I would have edited out the scenes with the father, or at least re-shot a few lines. Rising in aggression, Father orders his son not to see his girlfriend, saying “even if your eyes came out and burst from their sockets, you’re still not to see her!” You CAN’T SHOW that kind of thing as a Muslim in Australia…

Unless you’re honest.