COMMENTARY by Steven K. Haught, Editor
Why do people lie? Such a simple question should come with a simple answer, but doesn’t, unfortunately. There are indications, that most of us share the same motives for telling lies and we do it often. Becoming accustomed to telling a fib, altering truth, whatever you would like to call it, can and does have profoundly negative affects on human health.
With repeated lies, the brain becomes less and less sensitive to dishonesty, supporting ever larger acts of dishonesty. Humans become desensitized to telling lies ad the truth becomes harder to discern.
But why do we lie and is it such a terrible thing if we do?
In 1946’s production of A Night in Casablanca, Groucho Marx’s character says to a co-star, “You know, I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the whole world,” to which she eagerly replies, “Do you really?”
He answers, “No, but I don’t mind lying if it’ll get me somewhere.”
The character’s sentiment lightly illustrates a moral and practical dilemma that we face almost every day: Are there times when it’s OK to lie? More importantly, what if we fib for another person’s benefit, not just our own?
This discussion seems illogical, since you were probably taught, like me, to never lie. Just don’t do it. Your parents likely preached the power of the truth. You hear stories of liars suffering consequences for their deception. A few countries can punish lying with the death penalty. Your life partner told you honesty matters most. Why would lying ever be acceptable?
What is a Lie? The boundary between lying and deception is often vague. It is even possible to deceive someone with the truth. I could, for instance, stand on the sidewalk in front of the White House and call the headquarters of Facebook on my cell phone: “Hello, this is Robert B. Devious… I’m calling from the White House, and I’d like to speak with CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.”
Deception can take many forms, but not all acts of deception are outright lies. My words would, in a narrow sense, be true—but the statement is most clearly calculated to deceive. Would I be lying? Close enough in my humble opinion.
To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication. This leaves stage magicians, poker players, and other harmless dissemblers off the hook, while illuminating a psychological and social landscape whose general shape is very easy to recognize.
People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions—the more consequential the lie.
Even the most ethical among us regularly struggle to keep appearances and reality apart. By wearing cosmetics, a woman seeks to seem younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would.
But honesty does not require that she issue continual disclaimers—“I see that you are looking at my face: Please be aware that I do not look this good first thing in the morning ...” A person in a hurry might pretend not to notice an acquaintance passing by on the street. A polite host might not acknowledge that one of her guests has said something so stupid as to slow the rotation of the earth.
When asked “How are you?” most of us reflexively say that we are well, understanding the question to be merely a greeting, rather than an invitation to discuss our career disappointments, our marital troubles, or the condition of our bowels. Omissions and lack of clarities of this kind can be forms of subtle deception, but they are not quite lies. We may skirt the truth at such moments, but we do not deliberately manufacture falsehood or conceal important facts to the detriment of others.
As the philosopher Sissela Bok observed… we cannot get far on this topic without first distinguishing between truth and truthfulness — for a person may be impeccably truthful while being mistaken.
To speak truthfully is to accurately represent one’s beliefs. But candor offers no assurance that one’s beliefs about the world are true. Nor does truthfulness require that one speak the whole truth, because communicating every fact on a given topic is almost never useful or even possible. Of course, if one is not sure whether or not something is true, representing one’s degree of uncertainty is a form of honesty.
Leaving these ambiguities aside, communicating what one believes to be both true and useful is surely different from concealing or distorting that belief. The intent to communicate honestly is the measure of truthfulness. And most of us do not require a degree in philosophy to distinguish this attitude from its counterfeits.
People tell lies for many reasons. They lie to avoid embarrassment, to exaggerate their accomplishments, and to disguise wrongdoing. They make promises they do not intend to keep. They conceal defects in their products or services. They mislead competitors to gain advantage. Many of us lie to our friends and family members to spare their feelings. The most severe usually involves at least one victim… and the least severe may be the polite lie of not telling someone the real truth; such as, “Your hairstyle is great… that dress looks terrific on you or your baby is soooo beautiful.”
Whatever our purpose in telling them, lies can be gross or subtle. Some entail elaborate ruses or forged documents. Others consist merely of euphemisms or tactical silences. But it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born. We have all stood on both sides of the divide between what someone believes and what he intends others to understand—and the gap generally looks quite different depending on whether one is the liar or the dupe.
The liar often imagines that he does no harm so long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to rarely shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the perspective of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.
While most people are generally honest, the opportunity to deceive others is ever present and tempting, and each instance of deception casts us on to some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever encounter in life. Few of us are murderers or thieves, but we have all been liars. Many of us will be unable to get into our beds tonight without having told a few lies over the course of the day.
Studies show that the average person lies several times a day. Some of those lies are big (“I’ve never cheated on you!”) but more often, they are little white lies deployed to avoid uncomfortable situations or spare someone's feelings.
What does this bare-knuckled reality of lies and deception say about us as humans… personally and institutionally?
Trust is the bedrock of social life at all levels, from romance and parenting to business and government. Deception always undermines the foundations on which we construct our belief systems and world views.
Because truth is so essential to the human enterprise, which relies on a shared view of reality, the default assumption most people have is that others are truthful in their communications and dealings. Most cultures have powerful social sanctions against lying.
There are two powerful institutions that influence every aspect of human life… politics and media. Neither can function without the other and yet they seem unable to coexist in an atmosphere of honesty and truth. Politicians frequently rail against the news media, but rarely has the criticism been as harsh as it is today.
President Donald Trump has made little effort to conceal his contempt for the press, calling unfavorable stories “fake news” and the mainstream media “the enemy of the people.”
Research reveals that most Americans’ trust in the news media has declined, and conservatives and evangelicals show a marked lack of trust in all forms of media.
However, it would be a mistake to attribute the recent drop “trust” to any one institution, individual or event. “The conservative skepticism of the media runs deep,” CNN’s S.E. Cupp wrote. “Believe me, President Donald Trump didn’t invent it.”
There are many government officials and leaders who believe the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information, based on the circumstances and desired result to be obtained from the lie.
People who imagine that their government is on their side, you know the ol’ “We the People” notion… may wonder why a government should be endowed with the unchecked power to deceive -- a power that may be exercised without any judicial review or penalty.
Are foreign policy and truth compatible? Some presidents have had their doubts. The Bush administration recently announced a plan to distribute misinformation to foreign media through the Pentagon's proposed Office of Strategic Influence.
After misinformation hits the media, the “whisper down the lane” effect is quick and alters any semblance of truth. The lies compound and compound becoming more intricate and complex until some altered version becomes truth, even though it itself is far from what actually happened. That’s what “media” does… sort out the versions of lies, filters them against ratings and declares one to be the truth.
The U.S. Government has often been caught in the lies it has disseminated in the interest of maintaining the global power balance. Even a president can and has frequently done so, claimed to be acting on principle, for the benefit on the American people or in actuality something, a power struggle, the citizens know nothing about. A leader can profess firm disapproval of any lying initiative, with a belief that telling the American people lies is good for our democracy.
Is lying ever justified? Depends on who’s doing the lying and how embarrassing the situation. Bill Clinton clearly felt justified in lying to lawyers investigating his sex life. If they had no moral right to ask the questions, you imagine him reasoning, he had no moral obligation to answer them honestly.
Richard Nixon retained tape-recorded evidence of his own lies about the Watergate break-in and other scandals, and felt so secure in the presidential power, that he did not fear being unable to morph another version of a lie” to distort truth and through off investigators from uncovering the real story. If the Nixon affairs would have happened today, in the 21st century, he would have easily gotten away with his crimes.
George W. Bush was only caught uttering relatively small lies. The extraordinary secrecy that surrounded the Bush administration obviated some of its need to lie but, like the Catholic Church, it’s lies may someday come to light and those responsible held accountable for the moral corruption that secrecy spawns. Probably not.
The worlds alleged moral exemplars, from presidents to popes, along with lesser beings (the rest of us) tell lies in the belief that they serve a greater good.
Lies are often imbued with transcendent instrumental value by the individuals and institutions that utter them. Sometimes the lies are self-serving, but the tendency or temptation to lie in service of justice makes it virtually impossible to condemn all lying categorically.
Some events of history teach that lesson in hindsight… what would you do? When the Gestapo bangs on your door, you had better lie about the Jewish family you're hiding in the basement.
The moral choice, however, is not always so clear: Do you have a right to lie to governments or other interrogators whenever you believe they are acting unjustly? If you consider the tax code oppressive, are you justified in lying to the IRS about the false tax return you filed?
If you oppose the death penalty because you consider it immoral, should you lie if you're called to serve on a jury in a capital murder case that could result in a death penalty being imposed? Should you tell the court that you have no quarrel with capital punishment in the hope of qualifying as a juror and thwarting an execution?
I'd tell the truth, partly in the belief that truth is easier to discern than justice and partly because I imagine that, if everyone always told the truth in court, we'd end up with more justice, not less.
In such highly charged debates such as capital punishment, truth telling might be viewed as immoral, because taking a life even when seemingly justified is immoral. That’s a dilemma most of us would like to avoid.
Still, truth often seems the safer choice in life, though it's bound to be the wrong choice on occasion. At least it saves us from the self-deception to which many liars are prone. To rationalize their lies, believing their private interests and desires as justified.
Clinton may have lied to preserve his power while telling himself that he was lying to protect "the people" who benefited from his presidency. Liars, especially liars in power, often combine their interest with the public interest.
Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations.
Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. We can't condemn lying categorically, but we should categorically suspect it.
