"We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions. Like most people, I indulge in small falsehoods and still think of myself as an honest person. Sure I lie, but it doesn't hurt anything. Or does it?"
I recently read this essay in my book for my composition class, and something about it stuck out in my head, I went crazy with the pen, underlining and scribbling notes in the margins. Unfortunately, recent events in my life made me think directly back to this essay. It's funny how something can stick out in your head so much, and then it has a direct connection with an upcoming event, like it was a warning sign or a red-flag or something.
Have you ever tried going an extended period of time, without telling a single lie? Maybe you weren't aware that you were lying to start with, maybe you don't consider lies to be what they are...lies. If you had to stop and catch yourself at every single little lie you told, it could be utterly paralyzing. If you have never tried to consciously be nothing but 100% truthful, I urge you to give it a try, just for a week.
"What far-reaching consequences will I, or others, pay as a result of my lie? Will someone's trust be destroyed? Will someone else pay... We must consider the meaning of our actions."
If you can't get yourself to not lie for an entire week, then perhaps you could try justifying every lie you tell. Step back and ask yourself some questions to see if your justifications are actually valid reasons for telling an untruth. If justifying lying is acceptable, does that make you any different from politicians telling you what you want to hear, I mean, they want your vote, isn't that justified?
"Saying it's ok to lie one way and not another is hedging. I cannot seem to escape the voice deep inside me that tells me: When someone lies, someone loses."
I had this notion in my head that whatever possible reason anyone could give me for telling a lie, whatever justification they could muster up, I could always come back at it with "Bottom line, lie."
Deception, lies, capital crimes, and misdemeanors all carry meanings. Webster's definition of lie is specific:
1: a false statement or action especially made with the intent to decieve; 2: anything that gives or is meant to give a false impression.
A definition like this implies that there are many, many ways to tell a lie. Here are few of my favorites from this essay.
And I guess for copyright or plaguerism reasons I will tell you now that anything from this essay is either a direct qupte, paraphrased, my reaction, or my personal story, which may or may not pertain to Stephanie Ericsson's The Ways We Lie.
The White Lie
A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.
--Bergen Evans
The white lie assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple, harmless untruth. Telling a friend he looks great when he looks like hell can be based on a decision that the friend needs a compliment more than a frank opinion. But, in effect, it is the liar deciding what is best for the lied to. Ultimately, it is a vote of no confidence. It is an act of subtle arrogance for anyong to decide what is best for someone else.
Yet not all circumstances are quite so cut-and-dried. Take, for instance, the sergeant in Vietnam who knew one of his men was killed in action but listed him as missing so that the man's family would recieve indefinite compensation instead of the lump-sum pittance the military gives widows and children. His intent was honorable. Yet for twenty years this family kept their hopes alive, unable to move on to a new life.
Facades
Et tu, Brute?
-- Ceasar
This writing about facades was pretty interesting, but the writer used personal experiences to make her points. Basically it's stating that putting on a facade is the same as pretending to be something we aren't, to fool somebody into thinking that we are more professional than we are. Like when a writer puts on a suit to go see a client, in order to obey the expectations that serious businesspeople wear suits rather than hanging out in sweatpants or pajamas all day long.
Facades can be destructive though, because they are used to seduce others into an illusion, and the simple fact that facades work very well, is what is keeping con-artists in the market.
Ignoring the Plain Facts
Well you must understand that Father Porter is only human...
--A Massechusetts priest
In the '60s, the Catholic Church in Massechusetts began hearing complaints that Father James Porter was sexually molesting children. Rather than relieving him of his duties, the ecclesiastical authorities simply moved him from one parish to another between 1960 and 1967, actually providing him with a fresh supply of unsuspecting families and innocent children to abuse. After treatment in 1967 for pedophilia, he went back to work, this time in Minnesota. The new diocese was aware of Father Porter's obsession with children, but they needed priests and recklessly believed treatment had cured him. More children were abused until he was relieved of his duties a year later. By his own admission, Porter may have abused as many as a hundred children.
Ignoring the facts may not in and of itself be a form of lying, but consider the context of this situation. If a lie is a false action done with the intent to deceive, then the Catholic Church's conscious covering for Porter created irreparable consequences. The church became a co-perpetrator with Porter.
Deflecting
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
--Cicero
I am guilty of a form of deflection to an extent. I deflect my feelings as a way to keep people at a certain distance. It isn't fair because they end up feeling a lot closer to me than I do them, because they think I have let them in, when all I've really done was figured out a way to get them to quit questioning me.
I've discovered that I can keep anyone from seeing the true me by being selectively blatant. I set a precedent of being up-front about intimate issues, but I never bring up the things I truly want to hide; I just let people assume I'm revealing everything. It's an effective way of hiding.
Any good liar knows that the way to perpetuate an untruth is to deflect attention from it. When Clarence Thomas exploded with accusations that the Senate hearing were a "high-tech lynching," he simply switched the focus from a highly charged subject to a radioactive subject. Rather than defending himself, he took the offensive and accused the country of racism. It was a brilliant maneuver. Racism is now politically incorrect in official circles--unlike sexual harassment, which still rewards those who can get away with it.
Some of the most skillful deflectors are passive-aggressive people who, when accused of inappropriate behavior, refuse to respond to the accusations. This you-don't-exist stance infuriates the accuser, who, understandably, screams something obscene out of frustration. The trap is sprung and the act of deflection successful, because no the passive-aggressive person can indignantly say, "Who can talk to someone as unreasonable as you?" The real issue is forgotten and the sins of the original victim become the focus. Feeling guilty of namecalling, the victim is fully tamed and crawls into a hole, ashamed. I have watched this fighting technique work thousands of times in disputes between men and women, and what I've learned is that the real culprit is not necessarily the one who swears the loudest.
Omission
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
--R. L. Stevensen
I think that everyone has a pretty good grasp on what omission is. I think this is the easiest form of lying to actually justify, because technically there wasn't an actual lie being told. The lie comes from the fact that aspects of the truth were actually left out, in order to make the person on the recieving end of the explanation believe something that is indeed, an untruth.
Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely. You break a pair of glasses that are guaranteed under normal use and get a new pair, without mentioning that the first pair broke during a rowdy game of basketball. Who hasn't tried something like that?
What about an omission of information that could make a difference in how a person lives his or her life? What about an omission that could change somebody's perception of you? What about an omission that leaves someone feeling betrayed because they left out the truth out of fear of losing their current relationship with you?
Stereotypes and Cliches
Where opinion does not exist, the status quo becomes stereotyped and all originality is discouraged.
--Bertrand Russell
Stereotypes and cliche serve a purpose as a form of shorthand. Our need for vast amounts of information in nanoseconds has made the stereotype vital to modern communication. Unfortunately, if often shuts down original thinking, giving those hungry for truth a candy bar of misinformation instead of a balanced meal. The stereotype explains a situation with just enough truth to seem unquestionable.
All of the "isms"--racism, sexism, ageism, et al.--are founded on and fueled by the stereotype and the cliche, which are lies of exaggeration, omission, and ignorance. They are always dangerous. They take a single tree and make it a landscape. They destroy curiosity. They close minds and separate people. The single mother on welfare is assumed to be cheating. Any black male could tell you how much of his identity is obliterated daily by stereotypes. Fat people, ugly people, beautiful people, old people, large-breasted women, short men, the mentally ill, and the homeless all could tell you how much more they are like us than we want to think.
Groupthink
Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, of the man afraid of the flight?
--Maurice Freehill
Irving Janis, in Victims of Group Think, defines this sort of lie as a psychological phenomenon within decision-making groupes in which loyalty to the group has become more important than any other value, with the result that dissent and the appraisal of alternatives are suppressed. If you've ever worked on a committee of in a corporation, you've encountered groupthink. It requires a combination of other forms of lying--ignoring facts, selective memory, omission, and denial, to name a few.
Out-and-Out Lies
The only form of lying that is beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.
--Oscar Wilde
Of all ways to lie, this is the easiest to see through. Sometimes you just get tired of trying to figure out the real meanings behind things, and it's easy to just give a simple answer that you can't argue.
At least when this sort of lie is told it can be easily confronted. And as the person being lied to, I know where I stand with the liar. The bald-faced lie doesn't toy with my perceptions--it argues with them. It doesn't refashion reality, it tries to refute it.
Dismissal
Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain! I am the Great Oz!
--The Wizard of Oz
Dismissal is perhaps the slipperiest of all lies. Dismissing feelings, perceptions, or even the raw facts of a situation ranks as a kind of lie that can do as much damage to a person as any other kind of lie.
The roots of many mental disprders can be traced back to the dismissal of reality. Have you ever considered the idea that madness is actually a sane reaction to an insane world? Psychologist R. D. Laing supports this hypothosis in Sanity, Madness and the Family, an account of his investigations into the families of the studied was a deliberate, staunch dismissal of the patient's perceptions from a very early age. Each of the patients started out with an accurate grasp of reality, which, through meticulous and methodical dismissal, was demolished until the only reality the patient could trust was catatonia.
Dismissal is a dangerous tool, because it's nothing less than a lie.
Delusion
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
--Eric Hoffer
Delusion, a cousin of dismissal, is the tendency to see excuses as facts. It's a powerful lying tool because it filters out information that contradicts what we want to believe. Alcoholics who believe that the problems in thier lives are legitimate reasons for drinking rather than results of the drinking offer the classic example of deluded thinking. Delusion uses the mind's ability to see things in myriad ways to support what it wants to be the truth.
Delusion is a survival method, we all use it. If we really thought about the consequences to what we do as a precaution, we would be so stricken that we wouldn't be able to function on a day-to-day level without a multitude of side effects. We cut reality from our lifes because too much would be too paralyzing. I tend to differ on this one in the same way that I am similar. I can't watch the news or read the paper, because I get so affected from the media, and worry myself into such a frenzy that I can't focus on the things I need to do at hand. I have extreme emotional reactions to things, but I kind of like it that way. I can't imagine being desensitized to the emotions that I feel, and to try an decrease that level runs the risk of emotional desensitation.
Delusion acts as an adhesive to keep the status quo intact. It shamelessly employs dismissal, omission, and amnesia, among other sorts of lies.
It's most cunning defense is that it cannot see itself.
These are only a few of the ways that we lie, or are lied to for that matter. It isn't easy to eliminate lying entirely from our lives. No matter how hard we try, we will still embellish, hedge, and omit to lubricate the daily machinery of living. But there is a world of difference between telling functional lies and living a lie.
When we get to the point where we accept lies, it becomes a type of cancer that eventually distorts our perception of reality to the point that our morals start slipping out the window.
I recently had somebody very close to me tell me a series of flat out lies, and I feel betrayed, confused, flustered and hurt. I don't know at this current point in time, if this person's justifications for lying will be an effective excuse for me. I'm not sure if forgiveness is in the cards at this point in time, and I even wonder if I do decide to forgive this person, am I going to doubt or question everything that is said to me by this person?
I blame myself because I feel like I set up the situation, and I created the environment around us where this person feels like they are unable to be truthful with me for one reason or another. Afraid of my reaction, afraid of damaging our relationship beyond repair, or just plain not wanting to deal with it.
I have a lot of thoughts shooting around my brain about this one. I'm not sure what I should think or what I should be feeling. I'm still trying to see from both aspects of things, but I don't know that I posess the mindset to even begin to understand.
Hahaha, he was pretty proud! 
Here he is putting PETA stickers on Gramma while rocking his pretty sweet fanny pack. Isn't he a stud?! 
