The First Step To Understanding The Role

Misconceptions too often mask lying’s prominence in our society and the ambiguities that surround its operation. So the first step to understanding the role of lying in our lives may be to consider the many ways we misunderstand it. A former student of mine, whom I’ll call Gary, moved to Santa Fe a few years ago to pursue a career in real estate. My only concern is to protect the innocent, as they say on Dragnet. Another member of this club was a young woman named Amanda. She and Gary fell in love. Amanda told Gary about her troubled upbringing. Her mother had died when she was young, and she was estranged from her father. As a teenager, she had battled cancer. Gary was sympathetic, and impressed at the courage and toughness she showed in overcoming these hardships. After they’d dated for a little under a year, Gary proposed, and Amanda accepted. They bought an apartment together and started to plan their wedding.

Crumbs from Your Table

In the following weeks, though, Amanda began to complain of feeling fatigued and lethargic. She showed little enthusiasm for putting together an invitation list or selecting a reception venue. Because she was anxious about her doctor’s visit, Gary offered to go with her. At the doctor’s office, Gary and Amanda described Amanda’s symptoms. Amanda’s doctor said that mononucleosis sounded like a potential explanation, but he would have to examine her. Gary then asked whether a diagnosis of mono was more likely based on Amanda’s history of cancer. As Gary described it to me weeks later, the doctor looked at him blankly. What she did have, or so it seems, is mythomania, more commonly described as compulsive lying. Amanda wasn’t estranged from her father, and her mother was very much alive. Amanda had hidden her fairly close relationship with her parents from Gary, along with a whole host of other facts about her basically happy and completely healthy background. The relationship, and the lies, unraveled quickly but not neatly. Gary had to explain to all his friends and family why he was canceling his wedding.

Sitting On Top Of The World

He had to buy out Amanda’s share of the apartment, which he eventually sold, at a loss. And he had to start a big part of his life all over again. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve heard stories similar to Gary’s. Perhaps you’ve personally encountered a compulsive liar and experienced the unnerving revelation that everything you know about him or her might be false. Compulsive lying is not a common condition, but the anecdotes that accompany it tend to be remembered. Now let’s consider another incident of deception, one that is also remarkable but that occurred in a far different context from Gary’s broken engagement to Amanda. Tobacco, testified before the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. The seven dwarfs, as they were later dubbed, had been called as part of the committee’s ongoing efforts to bring attention to the health dangers of cigarettes. All seven of these men were asked whether they believed nicotine to be addictive. And each man answered in turn, under oath, that he did not. The statement I believe that nicotine is not addictive was repeated again and again. What the seven dwarfs did not volunteer was research Big Tobacco itself had done, demonstrating that nicotine, in fact, is addictive.

I Don't Believe A Word

Nor did they mention that their companies had made efforts to enhance the addictive powers of the nicotine in the cigarettes they sold. Three months after their testimony, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into whether they had committed perjury with their nicotine is not addictive assertion. The stories of Gary and Amanda, on the one hand, and the seven dwarfs of Big Tobacco, on the other, would seem to have little in common, other than the fact that they both have lying at their core. But taken together, these stories provide a fairly comprehensive picture of how most of us believe deception functions in our society. She may be an extreme case, but liars are generally thought of as standing outside the norm for social behavior. The seven dwarfs embody another feature of the lying stereotype. We can see these men in the ruthless liar mold, displaying a willingness to sacrifice the truth in order to make a profit or to escape punishment. They aren’t crazy, but they are greedy or guilty enough to be dishonest. In both of these incidents of deception, too, we can identify innocent victims of the lies. Amanda tricked and emotionally manipulated Gary for her own purposes, whatever they might have been. The Big Tobacco executives perpetrated their fraud against a congressional subcommittee and, more broadly, against the American public in general. In other words, they lied to us. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in both cases the act of lying was a clear violation of conventional standards for behavior. Amanda’s lies violated the bonds of trust she shared with her fiancé, and so Gary broke off their engagement. The tobacco executives broke their oath to tell the truth, and legal action followed. In broad terms, the lies in both cases were wrong, and were censured as such. In sum, then, both of these stories, while different in their particulars, fit our common conception of how lying works. Indeed, because such stories are so remarkable and draw so much attention, they almost define the stereotype of deceit. As with the lies touched on earlier, those of the duplicitous mechanic and the dishonest date, when we think about lying, these are the kinds of dramatic events that shape our impressions. They are also consistent with the big deceptions found throughout the history of civilization. Yet the fact is that most of the lies to which we are exposed on a daily basis, the ones that influence us the most, do not fit the pattern we find in the splashier examples of deception. Indeed, the lies that matter most to our everyday lives come not from compulsive liars or depraved executives.