Why lying works

What is lying? Why do we do it? Why can't we all just get along?

Dictionary.com defines lying as "the telling of lies; untruthfulness." That is a start.

What is a lie? Well, for most of us it is when somebody wants to hide the truth from us. They are looking to gain from our ignorance, to profit from our lack of knowledge. Most of us are familiar with a young child saying "I didn't eat the cookies" or some such. You will often hear somebody say, indignantly, "That is a lie!" This is accompanied with a look of disdain, shock, surprise or being hurt. We all say that we don't like being lied to.

But is that really true? Do you always want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I doubt it.

This brings me to my next point, "When do we like being lied to?".

There are many types of lies. There are friendly lies and evil lies. There are lies to hide embarrassment and lies to cause embarrassment. Some lies are made to save a person from hurt while other lies are full frontal assaults on a person's dignity. When your wife asks "does this make me look fat?" or your husband asks "what do you think of the dress I bought you?" it may be the best thing to close your mind's eye and dig up something you heard in a movie.
Does it really serve any purpose to tell your best friend that you saw his/her girl/boy friend with somebody else at the movies last night? Especially if you know that there is tension in the relationship already? You don't know the circumstance and you may well cause more pain than less by the comment. What is the harm in saying you didn't see them? Probably, not much.

We will often lie or hear lies for the "greater good" or something like that. We will also make "little lies" to avoid a seemingly irrelevant inconvenience. What did you say to yourself or your kids when noticing that you were going 65 in a 55 speed limit zone? Did you really contribute that much cash to charitable organizations? Did you really intend to take out the trash? Does the public really need to know about the prisons we operate on foreign soil? How do you define "having sex" when it comes to cigars? And, my eternal favorite "I am sorry, I have no recollection of that conversation, your honor."

Did you know that teachers lie to students almost every day? Yup, it is true. So do parents to their children (and children to their parents), governments to their constituents, leaders to their followers and so on. I'll get back to teachers in a minute, but what about parents and children? Most of the lies we tell our children are as encouragement or to add mystery to life. And children will often do anything to please their parents so "Yes, I cleaned up my room" shouldn't surprise any rational parent when they actually check.

But teachers? What blasphemy is this that I say teachers lie? Well, I am sorry, Virginia, they do. My favorite example is from the field of economics. I will apologize to anyone that hasn't taken an introductory economics course. This is just one example and can be extrapolated to nearly every corner of education.

When we begin our foray into the field of economics, we are taught about the fundamental laws of supply and demand. As more suppliers provide more product, there comes a point when prices will fall. This is because when there is more demand than supply, prices are high; when there is more supply than demand, prices are low. Just look at Beanie Babies during the insanity of the 1990s and "Britannia Bears" selling for 350 British Pounds or, conversely, Sara Palin's parody of writing "Going Rogue" which Amazon was selling a deep reduction during the pre-release sales period. (But, I digress.) The relationship between supply and demand is obvious. So obvious, in fact, that you will spend your first semester drawing little X's on graph paper to show supply, demand and the intersection where the "optimum price" is.

Now, do you really believe in supply and demand curves? Really? They don't exist. They are a lie. You were sold a bill of goods which, by the way, don't show up on a supply and demand curve. Before anybody gets up in arms about this assertion, think about it. Can anyone accurately (or even inaccurately) draw a demand curve? Are you prepared to include the shift in the curve that varies as prices are rising which differs from the way it shifts as prices fall?

The interesting bit is that we learn from well designed lies. Let's go back to that introductory economics class. What would be the benefit to try to explain the elasticity of demand, irrational purchase habits, brand-bias and so on when all you are trying to show is the fundamental idea that as demand increases, price will likely increase and, on the other side, the more that are available, the less people are willing to pay?

The reason we don't mind these lies is that they are designed to be stepping stones. Once we understand the underlying mechanisms that drive these abstract concepts, we are able to throw away the crutch and walk on wobbly legs until we are more sure-footed. We actually grow from some well planned lies. In fact, we often grow to the point that we can see, before being told, that they were lies and we begin to form our own view of reality. With luck, we begin to ask questions and are then introduced to the next set of crutches to help us hobble to the next level of knowledge. More lies. :)

There are many forms of these instructional or educational lies. Some are more benign than others and some are meant to shape and form our entire lives. If you have ever heard somebody talk about the sun coming up, you have heard what started as a misunderstanding which has turned into a convenient lie. I will not (for the moment) get into the interesting discussion of Santa Claus, God and population control.

I guess the important part here is that as the lies become unnecessary, we need to discard them to grow. We need to continue questioning everything we are taught because, in most cases, we were taught instructional lies. There are some that have a problem with this but, really, I find it quite refreshing as long as it is taken at face value. This is why it is so important to teach kids the value of questions, as well as teaching them to learn from lies; to use the lies as a path to the truth.

The truth will set you free...