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.