What do we value? What is the character of our culture?
Do you value honesty? You likely do. What you mean by honesty, however, will in part depend on your culture. Cultures that champion clear, explicit communication will say honesty means never lying—that is, never stating an outright falsehood—even if people in those cultures often hide their feelings from each other. Cultures that intuit that most communication occurs nonverbally, however, will say honesty means never hiding one's true feelings, even if it's acceptable to state falsehoods from time to time, when it's convenient. Honesty for them will be more about being forthright of affect. Is there any wonder why people from different cultures often misunderstand each other?
Large scale societal issues are often characterized in terms of culture wars. Most liberal nations contain multiple cultures and subcultures. This can often be problematic since there's naturally a lack of understanding between people across cultures, even if those people are literally neighbors. Lately, especially as conditioned by the echo chambers and cultural silos built by social media, we haven't been dealing well with our multicultural world. When lack of understanding gives way to fear, we circle our wagons, resort to tribalism, and defend our tribes against perceived outsiders. We then fail to realize the actual opportunities our multicultural world presents. Through dialogue, all cultures can be enriched by a free exchange of ideas as we together, as members of one human species, negotiate broader, more inclusive sets of values.
Culture conditions us deeply, in ways we'll mostly never realize. While technology may very well be supplanting culture as the primary conditioning factor influencing our behaviors, goals, and values, it's our cultural heritage that keeps us grounded—rooted in a story much longer than our own. It's from these deep traditions that we can mine trajectories for our lives.
