To Tell The Truth

Ah yes, if life were just a game show!  One where lying convincingly is a part of the fun. One where the ‘big reveal’ is applauded. And the stakes are considerably lower for ‘being fooled’. 

A New York Times podcast (This American Life) caught my eye — well, more properly, my ear — this week. The focus: That’s a weird thing to lie about. The opener, a short interview with a neurodivergent journalist, asks a simple question: ‘do you ever lie’. Her considered answer was a qualified ‘yes’ — but, as it turns out, only when the cost to another individual is extremely high. The rest of the time, ‘no’, with tag-on query, ‘what would that achieve?’. Her reference was to all the ‘little whites’ that most of we ‘neurotypicals’ pass along without a second thought. Or the overstated and gushy greeting (‘we must do lunch’). Or the compliments paid without any conviction — and often just patently false (‘love your new look’) — that are essentially unheard and unheeded at best, barefaced untruths at worst. Convivial conventions — with little value added.

We’re currently working our way thru’ two excellent series, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Astrid — must be neurodivergent month on Netflix! Aside the compelling story lines, the bit about figurative speech (call it what you will, but essentially departures from literal truth) and lying are central themes — as much to highlight the chaos and confusion these practices create for the protagonists as to hold up these commonly accepted behaviours as weirdly ‘normal’. 

I did in fact sit through all 98 minutes of the quasi state of the union ‘address’ a few evenings ago. Almost as taxing were the talking head analyses — a significant chunk of which was devoted to the (inevitable) ‘fact checking’. And, wait for it, the guy lied! This is not news. We’ve had it confirmed by every news source east of Fox. We had it waved at us on the Dem’s myriad ping pong paddle signage. And, before he was summarily marched out of the room, old Al Green, the Texas congressman, shouted his cane-pointing message at the man himself. 

To return to our journalist, perhaps more newsworthy is ‘why bother’. You won the election. Your party controls both houses. You have a majority of the Scotus nine in your pocket (although some hint of balanced and independent thought does surface from time to time on that front). And you have an entirely, sycophantic following, prepared to cheer your every utterance, arrayed in front of you. So why embellish, distort, or flat lie about so very, very much? 

A quick Google of motivations underlying (pun intended) that ubiquitous but generally reviled practice (fibbing) produced way too many links. But one such look offered the following:

Motive ‘A’	Motive ‘B’
Avoiding punishment	To win the admiration of others
Obtaining a prize (when other ways are not available)	To exercise power over others by controlling the information they receive
Protecting another person from being hurt or punished (a la our journalist)
Protecting oneself from physical harm
To get out of an awkward social situation
To avoid embarrassment
To maintain privacy without notifying others of the intention

As far as my late night viewing, I’d have to go with door number 2 (if I can mix game show metaphors). Some recent reading on the consuming power of social media kicked up the following reference from Leo Braudy’s four decades old book, The Frenzy of Renown: 

The lust for recognition has become so great in the twentieth century as to manifest itself in outright insanities.

Seems attention’s the thing . . . wherein to catch the conscience (if such exists) of the ‘king’.