On Lying

Can we survive without lying? For people who have access to high morality, the word "lying" becomes a dispiriting concept. It leads me to think of the melancholy moments in childhood, while we were taught to value honesty above all, we had to write thank you letters for unwanted gifts and make eulogies in front of hypocrites.

There are various reasons of why we lie. The retired Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, in his "The Selfish Gene", assures us that lying ensures a higher chance of survival. As our society becomes more populated, however, our genes will evolve to make room for cooperation. Driven by this reciprocal altruism, we outwardly display our good-will while inwardly enjoy a perverted form of egoism. However heartfelt our generosity may seem, our self-interested motives are glued to the underside of every benevolent act. Our goodness has never been more dishonest.

Perhaps that was when religious moral codes, our most cautionary, prosaic rules, came into play. Forceful injunctions to be benevolent and cooperative reflects our innate tendency to be selfish, to take advantage of what is available. Religious moral codes were created to held our vindictiveness in check.

If we become so irresistible to the act of lying, it is perhaps because most minutes of our days are devoted to scurrilous gossips about celebrities and politicians over packs of biscuits and cups of coffee. What seems so trivial and insignificant in our daily life suddenly becomes socially desirable. The way paparazzi delicately articulate their pencils across pages of magazines enforces a sense of moral relativism. That they have the ability to blur the distinction between honesty and lying which which allows us to cover up our lies with our unusual displays of virtue. In return, in order to avoid the verdict of the herd instinct, furious celebrities choose to lie over the matters that are of insignificance to the public.

It is not hard to see why our moral conviction collapses under the teaching of our parents. Upon receiving unwanted gifts, rather than enforcing the virtue of honesty on us, our parents urge us to follow the convention of etiquette at its best. They want us to be gentlemen rather than barbarians. To the moralist, such tradition of etiquette should be worthy of suspicion, something invented to cover up our lies through ambiguous language. But to the ordinary, this may instead offer a piece of conclusive evidence of the giver having good taste.

Should we then teach our children to speak the truth and tell our celebrities to expose their privacy? The reality, however, compels us to admit the otherwise.

Suppose a group of people who derive sadistic pleasure from beating a cat asks us where the cat is gone, are we supposed to restrain our display of sympathy and point them to the right direction? A man who is not completely deprived of the slightest degree of sympathy, I fear, would rather choose to lie over than being honest.

If politicians are more susceptible to such moral criticism, it is perhaps their act, to use George Orwell's words, is "the defence of the indefensible". The fact that they deliver political speeches with contorted tangles of language that is rendered impassable to the public is because George Orwell's words bear the unbearable truth:

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

There lies at the heart of every politician the unspeakable virtue of lying because politics has always been a grim and nasty business. The habit of lying works in perfect harmony with politics. No one should be foolish enough to believe that political parties will act solely in the interests of the general public. Politicians are no moralists. Only power, fame, and money are worthy of their consideration.

In a world where stupidity becomes the hallmark of social eminence, we lack guidance, self-control, and direction on how and when to lie. We should not teach our children to be honest at all times, rather we should teach them how to use lying intelligently. Not knowing how and when to lie and not striking a balance between lying and honesty we will only bring to our own ruin.

W