The culture of lying

[Dagan]

I should clarify. I have no love for the stereotypical, malicious lies. In theory, most jokes told are done in ways that come across as lies. "Pretending" or acting are technically being professional at lying, haha, and that's all cool with me.

 

[Misty Avich]

There are lies and there are lies. Telling white lies or bending the truth a little doesn't make one a bad or untrustworthy person. Frequently telling malicious lies that could hurt people is a different thing.

All people are different, and circumstances change all the time. So what someone said last week might not be true this week, due to a change of mind or circumstances.

And like someone else here already pointed out, often lies are used as a survival technique. There are some things that are just best left unsaid, and by "unsaid" it doesn't necessarily mean not saying nothing at all, but just by saying the opposite of what is true.

I find people who hate any lies worse than compulsive liars. Lies are a middle ground sort of thing, not black or white. It shouldn't be something like "you said you didn't eat the last cookie in the jar but you did, that makes you a stinking deceiving rotten liar and I'll never ever believe anything you say again!!" Because usually that same person would get offended if you told them something true like saying they look fat or something (if they are fat), they'd probably be like "you are a nasty hateful bigot for saying that, you should have said I look skinny!!" You can't win!

 

[Jonn]

War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength​

And lies are Truth...

 

[Hypnalis]

And lies are Truth...

I prefer "When a lie becomes the truth, the truth becomes a lie".

Unfortunately, we seem to be at the pinnacle of deception in my living memory.

IIRC my memory goes back further than yours, and that statement is also true for me.

There was a time when you could disprove false conclusions with logic. These days, every important false claim is protected by "thought-terminating cliches" carefully prepared by relatively smart people, and used by people who believe the lie.
It makes the "offense" (selling the lie) easier, and the "defense" (establishing the truth) noticeably more difficult.

So now, via "relative morality", the Sith (explicitly designed to be irredeemably evil) are the good guys /sigh.

 

[Jonn]

"I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Spoiler

Or maybe I will.

 

[thejuice]

As a traditional aspie, I have a problem with lying.
Unfortunately, we seem to be at the pinnacle of deception in my living memory.
Sad but true.

In a competitive world which rewards lying, deception, gamesmanship, being honest is seen as more of a liability than a virtue, especially when everyone else is bending the rules to get ahead, or has their snouts in the trough. An autisitc that dares to go against the grain will be seen as a naive fool. The honest person will act as a mirror for the liars, they wont like it, will feel insecure and the honest one will be marked out as a troublemaker to be bullied, ostracised and eventually expelled.

 

[Misty Avich]

I remember lying when I was a child and then panicking about being found out. No, I'm not talking about huge lies or crimes or anything. Just little lies that aren't really a big deal to adults, but being a child you often thought adults would go all Sherlock Holmes on a silly little white lie you told.

For example, I remember when I was 4 at school we all had to make a picture out of cut-out shapes on to a sheet of paper, of the front of our house. The whole sheet of paper represented the whole front of the house, so we just had to add the windows and doors with paper cut-outs. As usual I wasn't listening to the instructions, so I began drawing a rectangular shape in the middle at the bottom of the page to be my house and started sticking two windows in it.
When the teacher saw she said "no, remember, the whole sheet represents your house, no need to actually draw your house." I really didn't want to start over, so I lied and said that the rectangle I had drawn was my front door. So when she asked if my front door had two windows in it I said yes. So she believed me and I carried on, now doing it the correct way.
In reality, my front door did not have two windows, and I kept secretly worrying that the teacher was going to go to my house to see if my front door really had two windows and then scold me for lying.

True story.

 

[Misty Avich]

I have nothing against people who don't like lying.
I just don't like when honest people start angrily scolding others for telling white lies - when the white lies aren't hurting anybody.
It's okay to have morals but it's not okay to aggressively push their morals on to others if their immoralities aren't hurting anyone.

So me being scolded by an Aspie yelling "telling a while lie like that is a bad, crappy thing to do, you must never lie no matter how small, it's despicable!" isn't helpful and will probably just encourage me to lie more.

Yet I told one lie at work once to an NT and I've been bullied by him ever since.

 

[Jonn]

I prefer "When a lie becomes the truth, the truth becomes a lie".


IIRC my memory goes back further than yours, and that statement is also true for me.

I told a lie.
I am older than I appear to be.

There was a time when you could disprove false conclusions with logic. These days, every important false claim is protected by "thought-terminating cliches" carefully prepared by relatively smart people, and used by people who believe the lie.
It makes the "offense" (selling the lie) easier, and the "defense" (establishing the truth) noticeably more difficult.

The problem is not the liar.
The problem is with people who haven't developed their critical thinking skills and embrace their emotional/selfish needs rather than credibility/objectivity and integrity.

So now, via "relative morality", the Sith (explicitly designed to be irredeemably evil) are the good guys /sigh.

I have seen so much of this, in my later life.
It is appalling how evil masquerades as being virtuous, while virtue is cast as villainy, simply through the employment of lies.

Once again, this can only be achieved through those who are ignorant and/or have no moral compass.
Some people will ignore the facts if it suits their personal narrative.

It is both appalling and fascinating.

 

[Misty Avich]

I told a lie.
I am older than I appear to be.

How dare you!! Now I'll never believe anything you say ever again!

 

[Jonn]

I remember lying when I was a child and then panicking about being found out. No, I'm not talking about huge lies or crimes or anything. Just little lies that aren't really a big deal to adults, but being a child you often thought adults would go all Sherlock Holmes on a silly little white lie you told.

Come clean.
You really did know you were stealing chocolate from "The Candy Man", and it wasn't for general consumption.

For example, I remember when I was 4 at school we all had to make a picture out of cut-out shapes on to a sheet of paper, of the front of our house. The whole sheet of paper represented the whole front of the house, so we just had to add the windows and doors with paper cut-outs. As usual I wasn't listening to the instructions, so I began drawing a rectangular shape in the middle at the bottom of the page to be my house and started sticking two windows in it.
When the teacher saw she said "no, remember, the whole sheet represents your house, no need to actually draw your house." I really didn't want to start over, so I lied and said that the rectangle I had drawn was my front door. So when she asked if my front door had two windows in it I said yes. So she believed me and I carried on, now doing it the correct way.
In reality, my front door did not have two windows, and I kept secretly worrying that the teacher was going to go to my house to see if my front door really had two windows and then scold me for lying.

True story.

Is she still alive?
If so, your worries aren't over.

 

[Jonn]

How dare you!! Now I'll never believe anything you say ever again!

Don't I get credit for admitting to the lie?
So much for honesty.
Humph.

 

[Jonn]

In a competitive world which rewards lying, deception, gamesmanship, being honest is seen as more of a liability than a virtue, especially when everyone else is bending the rules to get ahead, or has their snouts in the trough. An autisitc that dares to go against the grain will be seen as a naive fool. The honest person will act as a mirror for the liars, they wont like it, will feel insecure and the honest one will be marked out as a troublemaker to be bullied, ostracised and eventually expelled.

"He's back!"

Never a truer word.

 

[Misty Avich]

Come clean.
You really did know you were stealing chocolate from "The Candy Man", and it wasn't for general consumption.



Is she still alive?
If so, your worries aren't over.

Imagine she found me in the street and made me serve a detention for lying about my front door 33 years ago.

 

[Hypnalis]

I told a lie.
I am older than I appear to be.


The problem is not the liar.
The problem is with people who haven't developed their critical thinking skills and embrace their emotional/selfish needs rather than credibility/objectivity and integrity.


I have seen so much of this, in my later life.
It is appalling how evil masquerades as being virtuous, while virtue is cast as villainy, simply through the employment of lies.

Once again, this can only be achieved through those who are ignorant and/or have no moral compass.
Some people will ignore the facts if it suits their personal narrative.

It is both appalling and fascinating.

To me the mechanism is clear. I believe it's a deliberate process, designed to persuade most people. As such, I don't think it's a failure of "average" people's critical skills. Those are being bypassed deliberately by subverting cultural norms.

Morality is at least 50% a social construction, and while that part can "evolve" naturally, it can also be manipulated. In that case, we can't reasonably expect average people to deal with the gradual transformation of cultural norms by malicious actors.

It's certainly interesting. But if it's not reversed (or at least moderated) it will be quite destructive.

IMO if this was to continue, and it stayed in step with the population collapse, it would make the transition to whatever comes next much more difficult.

On the plus side, rapid depopulation might well sort out the current climate issues