Honesty
To honour only that which is known to be true - to be true to yourself and for yourself to reflect the truth as well. That is honesty.
Honesty is a virtue that gets you only so far, and hence is rarely cultivated. Found only in certain places - some research labs, pockets of friends and family here and there, it is a virtue that like many virtues is recommended by the rich to the poor and the powerful to the weak, but never practiced by those who espouse it. True honesty is a very dangerous thing - you can never delude yourself, never allow yourself to be deluded. The authorities will hunt you for this. You can never lie, never exaggerate, never embellish. You will go hungry. You can never with a clean conscience profit from the abundance provided by the large scale theft of resources and labour from those poorer or weaker than you. You will not sleep much, and your open eyes will see the scabrous, corrupt cancer of society devouring the lives and souls of millions. You cannot lie to yourself and you cannot lie to others, and keeping silent and inert in the face of wrong is just another form of lying. But taking on something so much bigger than you can get you killed. No government on Earth, not even the friendly, cuddly democracies, take it very well when their citizens start openly opposing the lies that underpin them. The greatest of these lies that government has foisted on us is that government is necessary (usually in its current form).
The compulsion to honesty is hence not a safe one, and is rarely followed to the brutal conclusion. To be truly honest is to forsake humanity also - you remove the little lies that bind us together. To never bend the truth to make anyone feel better, to never cover your minor wounds with little self delusions, to face the reality of death head on over and over again with no comforting words or beliefs to carry your morale forward would make the truly honest man a hard man indeed - and most likely an outcast among his own people. But whatever this man built would last an eternity and be remembered by all people.
