“Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object”

As the victims, the perpetrators, or the witnesses we all know lies and almost everyone, honest enough, would admit to lying at some point. It would, however be far more accurate to state that we all have lied and we continue to lie everyday of our lives. A number of recent studies by psychologists have concluded that on average we lie 200 times a day. It is reasonable to conclude from this that in our daily encounters with other people we are also lied to continuously. Yet almost everyone 

“The Sin of Lying” is one of the most damnable and common sins of the human race.” These are the words of Elder B. E. Echols, from a Christian Booklet written by him, which was published in 1946, and it is similar to the opinion of many staunch Christian writers. Echols booklet is interesting in that it describes 65 different types of lies in detail and each one, from the smallest to the biggest, he adamantly affirms is categorically immoral and must be avoided lest we be damned to hell. Even what he describes as “polite and mannerly lies” he tells us “will land one just as deeply in hell as any other lie that was ever told.” The writings of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, which possibly provided some inspiration for Echols, both saw all forms of lying as sins. Saint Augustine similarly divided lies into categories, nine in total, however took a lighter view to Aquinas, in that he recognised that fundamental to notions of the morality of a lie is intention. This concession is one, which Thomas Aquinas completely negated. Augustine suggested that a lie told with or for some good intention is not as immoral as one told to hurt. As he put it himself, “It seems certain that every lie is a sin, though it makes a great difference with what intention and on what subject one lies. For the sin of the man who tells a lie to help another is not so heinous as that of the man who tells a lie to injure another.” The greatest most damnable type of lie according to Augustine is one on the subject of religion. While the two types of lie, which he states, “are no great crime but not exactly free from sin” are those “spoken in jest” and those that “render some service.”

Although, writing from a philosophical standpoint, the philosopher Immanual Kant had a very grave view of lies and lying. He stated that “the greatest violation of a human being’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral being (the humanity in his own person) is the contrary of truthfulness, lying….by a lie a human being throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a human being.” He felt that even lies which were told with good intention were a crimes against the liar’s own person. Recent thought, on lies and their place within humanity, is less condemning. David Nyberg a professor of philosophy, Volker Sommer an anthropologist and Peter Stiegnitz a social psychologists to name but a few all tell us that lies are necessary for society to function and not all lies are necessarily immoral. Michael Lewis the author of “Lying and Deception in Everyday Life” provides us with one of the simplest most coherent categorisations for different types of lying and lies. His four categories are 1. Lying to protect others’ feelings, 2. Lies to protect oneself, 3. Self-deception, and 4. Lies to hurt others. He suggests that it is only this last type of lie, which one could undoubtedly say is always immoral.

Most would agree that the first type of lie, from Lewis’ list, is the least harmful of all lies. It is mainly this type of lying, which sociologists and psychologists are referring to when they tell us that lying is necessary for society to function properly. These are the ‘White Lies’ that help maintain relationships and friendships. Mark Twain wrote of this type of lying when he said, “I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built from the base to the dome, of graceful gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.” Etiquette, politeness and flattery are the foundations social interaction and each of these counsels against expressing the brutal honest truth when the truth might hurt or insult. 

The film “Liar, Liar” utilises the social necessity of these lies for comic effect, by having the main character, played by Jim Carey, unable to tell even the smallest lie for twenty-four hours. The result is a complete breakdown of his ability to interact socially, professionally and on any personal level. While the moral intention of this film, if indeed it had one, could be seen to have attempted to demonstrate the ills of lying, what it inadvertently showed was that lying is so ingrained in all our relationships that without it calamity would ensue. Women, we are told by some studies, lie more than men, because they, apparently, are more prone to telling these polite little white lies however this may be affirmation of simplistic stereotypes. Suffice it to say that for both sexes there is almost an unspoken obligation to veil the truth with lies in order to avoid agitating social and personal relations.

“Lying to protect yourself is the most common sort of lie, psychologists agree.”

The snake has historically been associated with lies, due to its Biblical significance: the serpent as Satan, “The Father of Lies”. Many writers and psychologists suggest that lying could be more universally associated with traits found in common to all animals. That the animalistic instincts to deceive, either to protect itself from prey or as an artifice of attack, are not all that dissimilar from the way in which humans lie to protect themselves. These are instincts of survival, but of course humans have evolved to a point where survival has become a far more complex issue than it is for animals. Therefore the faculties for deception in humans have also evolved, the development and evolution of language being the most obvious of these. “Of course, abstract thought and language- facilitating the capacity to communicate about things not immediately present- also opens up large possibilities for lying.” Nietzsche recognised the instinctual nature of lying, however felt that human beings have brought it to a new levels, due to the fact that survival is not a simple response to position on the food chain. “As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves - since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey. This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man.”

Self-deception is a far more complex form of lying. Kant saw this type of lie a perplexing contradiction. The paradox of self-deception is that to lie, one must know that what one says is not the truth, but once someone deceives them self, by definition it ceases to be a lie. Psychologists tell us however that we are all prone to it. In some cases, however self-deception can be taken too far, resulting in a compulsive or pathological form of lying. Psychologists generally explain this as being the result of self-esteem problems. Pathological self-deception is used compulsively by an individual to enrich their life and embellish on their experiences. Lying becomes so much part of the character that for these liars, often the actual act of lying, and of course getting away with it, becomes more important than the subject of the lie itself. In extreme cases what is known as “Pseudologia Fantastica” can develop, which is defined as a “matrix of fact and fiction.” This is generally seen as a form of repression, the painful and difficult facts of reality are hidden by daydream like fantasy that become real and true in the mind of the sufferer. The psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel referring to this phenomena proposed that “if it is possible to make someone believe that untrue things are true, then it is possible that true things, the memory of which threatens me are untrue.” Many psychologists argue that a certain amount of Self-deception is both necessary and healthy. It can provide a sense of wellbeing and contentment or can help us overcome our fears and achieve things, which present great difficulty by providing a false sense of confidence. We lie to ourselves about our performance or importance in workplace, our health, our weight, our appearance, our habits or addictions, our spirituality, our use of money and the list goes on and on. No one seems fully aware of how much we deceive ourselves, which may be because these lies only become issues when we are forced to face the truth. For example deceptions concerning our health can and are often exposed by a subsequent illness. Many of these deceptions feed into our relationships with others and, “often, we unconsciously use deceit in our daily interpersonal interactions to reinforce our own self-deceptions.”

Children themselves can of course be very creative liars inventing wild stories to excuse their behaviour or in response to their imagination. If not done compulsively these childish lies are often harmless and seem quite healthy. The stories of Pinocchio and “The Boy who cried wolf”, with their themes exploring of the consequences of lying, attempt to teach children the ills of dissimulation and prevarication but it is difficult to ascertain their effectiveness. The onus falls back on parents and teachers to inform a child’s mind and conscience; providing adequate distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and lies. It must be remembered however, that children learn best from example and many of the values that we attempt to pass on to them, we hypocritically do not practice before them. It may be no wonder that many end up with mixed up values and confused distinctions between truth and lies.

In this contemporary world there is an added hindrance, to forming coherent values, in the form of the mass media. We are lied to constantly by the mass media, most obviously by advertising, which presents unattainable dreams of better lives, if only we drink that soft drink, eat that food, wear those clothes or drive that car. As advertising evolved throughout the 20^{th Century it continually improved in its ability to persuade and affect the masses. It has become more subtle and complex, its greatest artifice is to play on our instinctual and unconscious desires, which explains why sex is used to sell so many things. As much as we may be aware of all the devices they use and as much as we can study the semiotics of advertising it is difficult to be immune to it and almost impossible to avoid exposure to it. More and more individual identity is being formed by consumption, which is being controlled, or at the very least being influenced, by mass-media advertising. One photographic stylist describing his craft said: “I create the image that people want to see. It’s up to me to fake people out….to, in a sense…Basically you lie to people. You create…You create a picture and then they adapt to that picture.” Jean Baudrillard argues that it is too simplistic to say that advertising deceives, rather, he hypothesises that, it is “beyond the true and the false”, it is a “prophetic language” in that it promotes hope, creates myths and within it “truth is ‘artificially synthesized.’”}

^{Baudrillard also saw journalism as being in the business of creating myths and synthesising truth; “Journalists and advertisers are mythic operators: they present the object or the event as drama, as fiction.” Journalism is the main element of the mass media which we actually place trust in. It is our source of information about what is going on in the world around us: the newspapers, television news programs and more recently Internet news reports. Depending on the reputation of the producer we tend to trust some more than others, however it is practically impossible to find a completely objective source of news coverage. Either tainted by some political agenda or commercial motivation the news we receive cannot be trusted wholeheartedly. The facts may be there in full but the slant, the presentation, is rarely ever objective. It is an intentional manipulation of truth, which one could easily go as far as to call a lie. In the most extreme cases reports can be complete fabrications. The possible explanation for this is that the fierce competition between different news sources demands shocking and eye-catching headlines, which very often are not possible with true reflections of the reality. There is, quite understandably, much fear and suspicion concerning the power of the mass media: that what it presents are carefully orchestrated lies and regulated truths to control the masses. Naom Chomsky said that the purpose of the media is “to turn people into submissive, automized individuals who don’t interfere with the structures of power but rather serve those structures.”}

Progressively, over the last two centuries in the western world, religion has been loosing its influence over the masses. Once it provided complete moral guidance and absolute notions of ‘truth’. Of course it still does this for many people, but while it is difficult to say if they are in the minority now, it is possible to say that religion does not have the power it once had. In the nineteenth century it seemed that the avant-garde artist might act as a guiding force, “or art itself become a substitute for religious experience.” Now the mass media could easily be seen as having replaced religion; providing us with a new value system; preaching to us from the sacred texts of newspapers and fashion magazines, and from the pulpit of the TV screen. Its ubiquity is phenomenal and it would seem that its power to influence is growing exponentially. The question could be asked whether the mass media has helped foster a less honest world, not only by frequently deceiving the masses, but in doing so influencing our relationships with others, promoting the attitude that lying to attain ones goals is not only acceptable but also the norm. “Everyone ‘solicits’ and manipulates, everyone is solicited and manipulated. This is the foundation of the new morality.”

“On one hand, the Gulf War showed how politicians have reason to fear the media; or, rather, have reason to fear public reaction to what the media may show…. On the other hand, the Gulf War showed… that a scenario of lies can be written for the media which will then transmit it, with excitement, commentary, analysis etc., as if it was truth.” Nicholo Machiavelli advocated that to achieve and hold power a leader must not be afraid to deceive. “But it is necessary to know how to disguise this nature well and to be a great hypocrite and a liar: and men are so simple-minded and so controlled by their present needs that one who deceives will always find another who will allow himself to be deceived.” While this may seem to be advice for dictators and totalitarian leaders, the politicians and government in democratic countries are also susceptible to dishonesty action. Many of them striving for personal gain over and above their role of working for the common-good and others using tactics of manipulation to influence public opinion in favour of their policies. They lie, we know they lie, we joke about it: “show me an honest politician…” we not only accept it but we have come to expect it. It is a cliché, which is explained by another cliché: that power corrupts. More and more it seems the reputations of our past leaders and politicians are being questioned and inevitable being tarnished with revelations of dishonest and dishonourable conduct while in office. Conspiracy Theorists would have us believe that there are bigger and greater lies still to be revealed both about our past and present politicians. They purport that even in the ‘civilised’ and ‘democratic’ First World we are constantly being fed on a diet of elaborate propaganda and that there is very little that we should trust. According to them we live in an age not so dissimilar from Orwellian prophesy; in which the ‘Newspeak’ of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is not so far removed from the rhetoric that we hear from our very own politicians.

“ ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ …..‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.”

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four described a fictional example of an extreme control of history but many would say that our own history books contain some of the greatest lies ever told. History is intended to be an objective account of events from the past, but very often, as with journalism, there is a suspicion that what is presented as objective, is in reality only one side of the story.

Movies and novels more and more are turning to history for inspiration, and both fictional and non-fictional accounts of historical events are being presented for entertainment. The problem with the non-fictional accounts is that sometimes the truth has to be rewritten to make it more entertaining. Of course the fictional accounts are presented as such, fiction, and cannot therefore be called lies but the danger is that these accounts, which reach a vast wide audience, will become accepted as the real thing.

It is always a question of trust; who or what can you trust. Once it was simple, religion provided almost everyone with answers and people by in large believed these answers, even if they did not fully understand them. The code of morals and values which religion provided showed how to live by informing and moulding the consciences’ of the masses. But as religion began to loose its all-powerful guiding force it became less clear, who or what one could trust and which values were ‘right.’ At present it could be seen these dilemmas have become even more perplexing, most notably due to the influence of the mass media. However, while one might hypothesise as to whether the world has become a more dishonest place, it must be remembered that people have always lied and people have always been lied to. Some tells us it is natural; it has always and will always be that way. It is difficult not to ask what this world would be like without lies, would it be a painfully dull and unemotional place or would it be the ultimate utopian society? We more than likely will never answer this question.

“You see, a person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. I’ll let you choose which case suits me best.

But what do I care? Don’t lies eventually lead to the truth.”

"Lies", will be the introduction to Mr. Roger Fides next book