Liar! Liar!
How truthful are you? Have you been brought up by your parents to tell the truth all the time? Do you tell your children to always tell the truth?
If so then you are rebelling against nature. Children learn to lie from a very young age. 90% of children are liars by the time they are four years old. It’s human nature to lie.
Why? Well because it helps create social cohesion for one thing. We probably lie the most to the ones we love. Mainly because we don’t want to hurt their feelings by telling the real truth that their body shape isn’t perfect, or their latest hair style looks a mess, or their bum does look big in that dress. We lie to our friends for similar reasons though more about the fact that we don’t want to tell them that their jokes are absolutely awful.
Another reason for lying is to keep ourselves one up on the competition and protect ourselves from enemies. When food was scarce we would have hid our food and lied about having it. When in a fight with our enemies why would lie and deceive to make our side look more powerful. We lie when going for a job interview to gloss over our failings.
Even plants lie to protect themselves. Some orchids pretend to be lady wasps.
So should we fight against our nature to lie the same way we fight against our nature to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, judgemental?
One organisation thinks we should. They are called the Radical Honesty Movement, a movement set up by Brad Blanton, a psychotherapist. The say that adults should not be hypocritical and should follow the advice they give children and always tell the truth. Basically think of Jim Carey in Liar Liar! They say you should tell your boss about your secret plans to take over the company. Confess to your wife that you have fantasies about her sister.
Some of the reasons for putting forward this idea is that lying uses more energy, wastes time, and requires extra work. If you only told the truth all the time then we wouldn’t need inquiries, court cases would become a mere procedural task without juries, wars would become a thing of the past. You get the idea.
But bear in mind that Bad Blanton doesn’t follow his own advice. Or rather he qualifies it by saying that you should always tell the truth in personal relationships. When it comes to the IRS (HMRC in our case) or other government official knocking at the door, he wouldn’t hesitate to lie.
Is he deluded in thinking that humans can be truthful a 100% in personal relationships or is it something we should aim for?
SBML
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1
May 21, 2012 at 12:12 -
I must confess to a habit of compulsive truth-telling, and yes, whilst originally the way I was brought up – it has been largely developed over the decades through unadulterated laziness.
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2
May 21, 2012 at 13:32 -
I discovered that I am a poor liar in my early teens. To lie successfully you have to remember the lie. HOPELESS! Generally people (children) lie when they feel the truth would not be “safe”…
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3
May 21, 2012 at 13:51 -
I can’t agree that everyone telling the truth would make “wars …. a thing of the past.”
Honesty doesn’t preclude greed or covetousness.
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4
May 21, 2012 at 14:46 -
Manners are a form of lying…. I am with the ‘social lies’ camp on this one. And – to quote Quentin Crisp more or less accurately ‘manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine’
honestly
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5
May 21, 2012 at 21:09 -
What a depressing senario you describe, if everyone lied we would be unable to do any sort of business, unable to trust anyone at all even on the smallest issue, unable to administer any sort of justice and be completely uncertain as to what was going on anywhere out of our immediate sight.
So yes, I was brought up to be honest and I try to remain honest because once everyone starts lying randomly civilisation will break down into chaos. However, being honest doesn’t mean we have to say everything we think or tell everything we know. -
6
May 21, 2012 at 21:46 -
7
May 22, 2012 at 02:18 -
Actors, governments, advertsing agencies, cosmetics,women,job applicants , used car salesmen, funeral handlers,diplomats, greens,etc would all be out of business.
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8
May 22, 2012 at 07:17 -
Were I to tell Mrs SAOT I wanted to jump on her sister, I rather suspect that may take up some energy, mostly her throwing stuff and me ducking.
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