I despise lying. Is it bad? I think the question should be "Is it good?" What good comes from lying? Santa, the Easter bunny, and the pet goldfish that never dies...What good could come of those lies? That isn't some rite of passage nonsense, its bullshit and lazy parenting in my opinion. When the inevitable question comes up, I'll ask them what they think and then we'll have a conversation about their thoughts. Intent is not an adequate way to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable forms of lying. People are too quick to rationalize and shirk responsibility. What is that saying about having the best intentions?
Ah, but your examples come from it from the sole angle of parenting lies. Lies are much broader-sweeping. What about: - someone has gone to place a but is supposed to be at place x. Person B lies to cover up for "someone" when another person inquires why they aren't at place x. (I suppose it depends on the reasons why "someone" has gone to "place a." If they are cheating on their wife, probably a bad lie. What if they are desperately needed at place a?) - I eat my roommate's food. Before she returns, I replace it all. I do not tell her. Is this a lie? Is it bad? - I want to go somewhere, but I don't want to go with (person x). Instead of telling person x I want to go there but don't want them to come, I lie and say I am going somewhere else/not going out. etc. So if intent is not the adequate way, what is?
I used the examples of parental lying mostly because they were already being discussed in the comments section and I wanted to address a few points all at once. Also, because almost anyone can relate to being lied to as a child by an adult. It’s often viewed as harmless fun or a way to teach children a valuable lesson. I call it scare tactics. Why did you eat your roommate’s food and still have time to replace it before she noticed? If she wouldn’t care that you borrowed something from her then you have no need to lie. If she would care, and you obviously have no rights to her food, then eating and replacing her food is not ok—especially if you have time to go to the store and buy what you’ve used before she gets back to notice. Just tell her the truth. If your roommate gets angry because you ate her food—then she gets angry. I think the whole debate comes down to respect and communication. If you respected her, you would tell the truth and if she resected you, she would forgive you for your small offense. To me, there is no acceptable form of lying. To each their own, but I’m very black and white on the topic. Essentially what you’re saying (the collective we, not necessarily you specifically) is that if you chose to lie—and it is a choice—then the consequences for telling the truth must be worse than the lie. I think that is a matter of perspective. Who are the consequences worse for when lie is told? Probably the person being told the lie.
A counterargument. Sometimes, there are facts about oneself that one does not actively advertise. Maybe you're gay and you work in an openly discriminatory environment. It's not an option to come out and as a result sometimes, when people ask you what you did over the weekend, you can't say what you actually did. What gives anyone the right to know anything about you if they ask? Saying all lying is bad means that one must tell the truth to everyone, all the time, on demand. There are situations where that can be used against someone, and not because they have done anything "wrong" or that harms anyone else - just perhaps offends morality or is different. What if you are protecting someone from prosecution by a regime is unjust? Have you seen - what was it, Fargo or Argo - the movie where they smuggle a group of people out of a country pretending they are all actors. You're saying that that's unacceptable? Sometimes people have to lie to save lives. Are you arguing that it is better to tell the truth and allow people to die/be prosecuted/become targets than to lie? The conclusion to your argument is that somehow the prosecutors would be worse off if they didn't get to victimize people because the people lied about their status than the victim would be. On a more minute level what gives anyone the right to know what I am thinking at any given period? In ways lying protects privacy. If I am unhappy with someone but not ready to discuss it with them, and they ask me how I am feeling or what I am thinking about, don't I have the right to conceal it from them until I feel ready to broach the topic? If my credit card is declined because I'm over the limit, is it not OK to lie and say "the company must have done something, I know I have money in the account" to the cashier because I'm embarrassed?there is no acceptable form of lying
I make an exception for surprise parties. I do so only grudgingly. So while I'm not 100% black and white on it, I'm with you 99% of the way. People rationalize it away because lying makes their lives easier, and they are willing to pay for that using honor and respect as currency. Bleh.To me, there is no acceptable form of lying.
My exception is sarcasm, and you'll find none of that here: Genuinely, I think the root of the debate is honesty, and not the act of lying, but that is really a semantic debate. I have a long a deeply personal story about why I'm so passionate about dishonesty, aka lying, but the crux of the issue for me is that 1. I do not have an open door policy with trust--that is to say it is earned and not given. 2. I am uncomfortable with telling lies because it makes me feel dishonorable to do so. When I was 16, I went to a funeral where I heard something that stuck with me. I met a woman that told me a story about the man who's wake we were attending. She said that she had known the man for more years than I have been alive today, and that in those years she had never known him to tell a lie. I don't take her account at face value, however, I do hope that someday when it all ends, someone might be at my funeral to tell my grandson that I was an honest man. If I have no other legacy than that, I'll be ok.
I would be OK hearing that history. I really would. Mine is equally personal, and it is a subject I am clearly passionate about. My mother was mentally ill, and would routinely beat my brother and me for crimes such as "touching the floor" and "not washing your hands for the requisite ten minutes after you took off your shoes." No bones broken; no blood drawn. But also, not simple whippings. "Beating" is the accurate term. Tools were often involved, and when mom got tired, Dad would grudgingly step in, because matrimonial and parental solidarity. Lying became a way of life to escape violence. It sucked, every time. Sucked worse when I was caught or could not sufficiently prove that I did not do what I was accused of. That would make the beatings worse. I would be called a "habitual liar" at high volume, and more often than not, the charge was true. (Funny story, but I was genuinely more afraid when mom said that, because the word "bitch" was in there, and if she was cussing, she must be really pissed off. I was, like, six. I wouldn't learn the definition of the word "habitual" -- and that it wasn't actually a variation of "bitch" -- for some years yet.) But if there's a silver lining here, its that I became attenuated to the damage lying does. It is difficult to maintain a web of lies, and it almost always falls apart completely with a single sweep of the arm. Everyone a person lies to -- everyone -- suffers from it. If not immediately, than eventually. Lies poison everything they touch, and hurt just about everyone they affect. Sometimes this even includes the recipient of a surprise party, though I've only seen that once. Lying is the antithesis of trust and respect. And to bastardize a quote from a certain Mr. Raymond, the truth seems to have a mind of its own, and it always wants to be known. Lies are simply a matter of time; a delay tactic. ...anyway, once I left home, I decided to just tell the truth all the time. One quickly learns to take care regarding phrasing and delivery, for sure, but there's a line there in my life, and it is inscribed deeply. So deeply, that I have, in time, come to consider "sins of omission" or "lies of silence" as equivalent to purposeful and outright falsehood. I figure as long as you aren't getting beaten for it, you'll come out ahead. And I admit: It's a gamble. It may make you lose some "friends," but I've found that the ones that go? Years later, it often becomes clear that they are not people you would have wanted to keep in the first place. The ones that stay, respect the hell out of you so much that it is almost absurd. When viewed from this perspective, truth-telling is very much a win-win situation: I have the kind of friends, and the intensity of friendship, that other people wish for. I've no doubt that they are fewer in number, but I'm more grateful for them by an order of magnitude, and the amount of "failures" this attitude has caused in nearly 40 years of life amount to exactly two. And those two... over time, have not proven to be shining bastions of humanity and ethical behavior. A person who is a friend of lies and lying has almost always proven to be a negative force in my life, and the lives of many others. Is this in my own myopic, biased, personal (and uneducated, if the word of some is to be taken as fact) experience -- given, of course, a freedom from the threat of violence as a motivator? Sure. Of course it is. But I think, perhaps erroneously, that this counts for something. Lying is no longer something I will even consider as a viable option myself, a very few exceptions notwithstanding. And yes, I do almost reflexively consider opposing viewpoints as morally bankrupt, a fact I cannot really, at this stage, help. Perhaps this makes me a poor conversationalist on the topic. In fact, it may be likely. But I just don't have it in me to be apologetic about that. Edit: seriously, fuck lies.
I apologize in advance to the OP for derailing this post so blatantly... It is odd how simliar our lives have been to shape our thoughts and behaviors. The beatings started when I was 5. My perpetrator was a violent stepfather. He was ex-military and I don’t remember much else of him except for the fact that he was a very cruel man. My sister and I would be beaten for any number of reasons. If we neglected to do a chore or other biding, he would dole out the punishments, usually in some form such as writing the sentence ”I will not forget to do all of my chores before playing” 200 or so times. If we failed to complete the 200 sentences before the due date, we were beaten and the sentences were doubled, tripled, quadrupled….you get the point. This motherfucker was a sadist. At some point, my ill-equipped mother had the decency to leave him. So, she married a sociopath. No, I’m not kidding you—a self-described sociopath. What’s fascinating about his dysfunction was that he would scream in my face, call me a liar-repeatedly- and accuse me of having ulterior motives all while he was embezzling money and having an affair with an unknown number of women. As I mentioned before, when I was 16 I attended the funeral of my grandfather. Less than 1 month beforehand, my second stepfather (the sociopath) was released from a minimum security prison for his white-collar crime. Within a week of his homecoming he tore apart my room, empting dresser drawers and closets into a giant heap in the middle of the floor and then commanding that I clean it up. Why? He thought I might be doing drugs or worse, fornicating with my high school girlfriend. Well, I was fucking—but I was a good kid otherwise, no drugs, no cigarettes, no criminal activity. So about a month or two later, my grandpa dies. I hear this lady’s story and think: fuck him, fuck her, I’m going to do Me. I haven’t looked back since.
I too only have a few close friends. What is freaky is that, until this moment, I have never analyzed the people I trust. My best friend: Father abandoned his family. Other very close friend: Father absent. My wife: Father died young and tragically. Like you said, at this point it is too late for things to be different for you. Your viewpoints and positions have been shaped by the ”lessons” you have learned. I'm not apologetic either, except to the extent that I hope to be a better person today than I was yesterday. I am who I am, but I'm trying to be better is my weird motto.
I doubt that. He may never understand your value of truth, but he will understand what it means to be an honorable and truthful man. He will certainly form his own position of what truth means to him, but your influence will add depth to that position. For all my mother's faults, she always said that family was the most important thing to her. While she didn't always live her life that way, that notion also stuck with me. It may not have been a dream she was able to realize, but I'm trying to live that dream for her.
Suppose my mother-in-law is a terrible knitter. But suppose she loves knitting. She loves to knit me sweaters I hate every year. Suppose I've mentioned that it's too warm in LA for a sweater every year since I've moved here. Suppose I've also mentioned that I'm rarely out in any occasions where a sweater makes sense. Yet suppose the sweaters keep coming. Now suppose I'm a terrible liar, and that I hate having to tell people things that are untrue. I can do one of two things: 1) Tell my mother in law that I love this year's sweater. 2) Tell my mother in law that I don't like this year's sweater. Condition (1), for me, involves lying. I don't enjoy lying. It involves me wearing a sweater I don't like. Condition (2), for me, involves telling the truth. I enjoy telling the truth. It also frees me from this and all future sweaters. Condition (1), for my mother in law, involves the joy of giving. It involves recognition for her labor. It validates our relationship. Condition (2), for my mother-in-law, negates the joy of giving. It invalidates her efforts. It further calls into question all the effort she has put into her knitting for me up to this point and requires her to do something else for me in the future that she will not enjoy as much. I'm going to pick (1) every time because I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort and "moral code" in order to make my mother-in-law happy. It's all cost to me and all benefit to her, and I don't even have to think about it. "Not lying" in this instance makes my life so much easier, but I'm not going to do it. Most people wouldn't.lying makes their lives easier,
Another way to view this: You do not enjoy feeling guilty, and because you believe the truth would hurt your mother in law's feelings, you've decided that avoiding this pain is worth more than giving her that truth -- even though that truth might actually, in the long run, cause her to improve her knitting skills. I'm not saying that the above is true, and if it is, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that you wouldn't be doing it on a conscious, purposeful level. But it is, certainly, a way to see it. I suspect both stories are true to some degree.
Your statement was "People rationalize it away because lying makes their lives easier." My counterexample was one in which my lying makes my life demonstrably harder. You disregard that and instead decide that I "do not enjoy feeling guilty" and further, I lack the self-awareness to make this choice on a "conscious, purposeful level." In doing so, you disregard my statement that "I don't enjoy lying." I'm in a lose-lose position - By your assertion, I do not enjoy feeling guilty. By my assertion, I do not enjoy lying. To further use your assertion, I probably feel guilty that I'm not "causing her to improve her knitting skills." No matter how you slice it - my arguments, your arguments, anyone's arguments - I lose. The only question is by how much. From an emotional standpoint, however, my mother-in-law either loses or wins. So I choose "big loss" for me in exchange for "mother-in-law wins." Lying doesn't make my life easier. It makes it harder. You are, again, wrong.
It's like you have five interpretations of everything I say, and are just determined to pick the one that is the most insulting to you, and then frame it as what I actually said. Why do you enjoy doing this so much? That depends on when you choose to end the story. If you end it in the moments after you tell her how much her sweaters suck, then sure. However: You don't think it is possible that immediate pain would give way to eventual (but far greater) pleasure, when she no longer is a bad knitter, or has, instead, found something she really is good at? You don't think it's possible that she may eventually, at some point down the road, come to thank you for setting her straight, and bond with you more securely due to your honesty? If not, then... well, that's interesting, I guess. Yes yes, I know how much you enjoy saying that. Good on you, here's some more internet points. Gotta admit, though, I am surprised you are so ready after such a relatively short cool-down period.You disregard that and instead decide that I "do not enjoy feeling guilty" and further, I lack the self-awareness to make this choice on a "conscious, purposeful level."
From an emotional standpoint, however, my mother-in-law either loses or wins.
You are, again, wrong.