Lying (3 page)

Faint Praise

There have been moments in my life when I was devoted to a project that was simply doomed, in which I had months—in one case,
years
—invested, and where honest feedback could have spared me an immense amount of wasted effort. At other times, I received frank criticism just when I needed it and was able to change course quickly, knowing that I had avoided a lot of painful and unnecessary work. The difference between these two fates is hard to exaggerate. Yes, it can be unpleasant to be told that we have wasted time, or that we are not performing as well as we imagined, but if the criticism is valid, it is precisely what we most need to hear to find our way in the world.

And yet we are often tempted to encourage others with insincere praise. In this we treat them like children—while failing to help them prepare for encounters with those who will judge them like adults. I’m not saying that we need to go out of our way to criticize others. But when asked for our opinion, we do our friends no favors by pretending not to notice flaws in their work, especially when those who are not their friends are bound to notice these same flaws. Saving our friends disappointment and embarrassment is a great kindness. And if we have a history of being honest, our praise and encouragement will actually mean something.

I have a friend who is a very successful writer. Early in his career, he wrote a script that I thought was terrible, and I told him so. That was not easy to do, because he had spent the better part of a year working on it—but it happened to be the truth. Now, when I tell him that I love something he has written, he knows that I love it. He also knows that I respect his talent enough to tell him when I don’t. I am sure there are people in his life he can’t say that about. Why would I want to be one of them?

Secrets

A commitment to honesty does not necessarily require that we disclose facts about ourselves that we would prefer to keep private. If someone asks how much money you have in your bank account, you are under no ethical obligation to tell him. The truth could well be, “I’d rather not say.”

So there is no conflict, in principle, between honesty and the keeping of secrets. However, it is worth noting that many secrets—especially those we are asked to keep for others—can put us in a position where we will be forced to choose between lying and revealing privileged information. To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden. At a minimum, one must remember what one is not supposed to talk about. This can be difficult and lead to clumsy attempts at deception. Unless your work requires that you keep secrets—which doctors, lawyers, psychologists, and other professional confidants do routinely—it seems worth avoiding.

Stephanie and Gina had been friends for more than a decade when Stephanie began to hear rumors that Gina’s husband, Derek, was having an affair. Although Stephanie did not feel close enough to Gina to raise the matter directly, a little snooping revealed that almost everyone in her circle knew about Derek’s infidelity—except, it seemed, Gina herself.

Derek had not been discreet. He was in the film business, and his mistress was an aspiring actress. Once, while traveling with Gina and the kids on vacation, he had booked this woman a room in the same hotel. He later hired her as a production assistant, and she now accompanied him on business trips and even attended events where Gina was present.

As Gina’s friend, Stephanie wanted to do whatever she could to help her. But what was the right thing to do? She was a second-tier friend, and the person who had told her of Derek’s affair had sworn her to secrecy. She also knew women who were closer to Gina than she was—why hadn’t one of them said something?

Stephanie saw Gina a few more times—they had been having lunch regularly for years—but found that she could no longer enjoy her company. Gina would speak about the completion of her new home, or about plans for an upcoming trip, and Stephanie felt that by remaining silent she was participating in her friend’s ultimate undoing. Simply having a normal conversation became an ordeal of acting as if nothing were the matter. Whether Gina knew about her husband’s behavior and was keeping it a secret, was self-deceived, or was merely a victim of his cunning and the collusion of others, Stephanie’s pretense began to feel indistinguishable from lying. As if by magic, the two friends quickly grew apart and have not spoken for years.

I was close enough to this situation to find it sickening. I am related to Stephanie and had met Gina and Derek on several occasions. Although I had no independent relationship with them, I knew a few people who had direct knowledge of Derek’s philandering and were quietly severing relationships with him—all while keeping Gina in the dark (or allowing her to keep herself there). It was simply uncanny to see someone living under a mountain of lies and gossip, surrounded by friends but without a friend in the world who would tell her the truth. And this was Derek’s final victory: People who could no longer abide him because of his unconscionable treatment of his wife nevertheless helped maintain his lies.

Lies in Extremis

Kant believed that lying was unethical in all cases—even in an attempt to stop the murder of an innocent person. Like many of Kant’s philosophical views, his position on lying was not so much argued for as presumed, like a religious precept. Though it has the obvious virtue of clarity—
Never tell a lie
—in practice, this rule can produce behavior that only a psychopath might endorse.

A total prohibition against lying is also ethically incoherent in anyone but a true pacifist. If you think that it can ever be appropriate to injure or kill a person in self-defense, or in defense of another, it makes no sense to rule out lying in the same circumstances.
^[9]

I cannot see any reason to take Kant seriously on this point. However, this does not mean that lying is easily justified. Even as a means to ward off violence, lying often closes the door to acts of honest communication that may be more effective.

In those circumstances where we deem it
obviously
necessary to lie, we have generally determined that the person to be deceived is both dangerous and unreachable by any recourse to the truth. In other words, we have judged the prospects of establishing a real relationship with this person to be nonexistent. For most of us, such circumstances arise very rarely in life, if ever. And even when they seem to, it is often possible to worry that lying was the easy (and less than truly ethical) way out.

Let us take an extreme case as a template for others in the genre: A known murderer is looking for a boy whom you are now sheltering in your home. The murderer is standing at your door and wants to know whether you have seen his intended victim. The temptation to lie is perfectly understandable—but merely lying might produce other outcomes you do not intend. If you say that you saw the boy climb your fence and continue down the block, the murderer may leave, only to kill someone else’s child. You might, even in this unhappy case, believe that lying was necessary and that you did all you could to protect innocent life. But that doesn’t mean someone more courageous or capable than you couldn’t have produced a better result with the truth.

Telling the truth in such a circumstance need not amount to acquiescence. The truth in this case could well be, “I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew. And if you take another step, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.” But if lying seems the only option, given your fear or physical limitations, it clearly shifts the burden of combating evil onto others. Granted, your neighbors might be better able to assume this burden than you are. But
someone
must assume it. If nothing else, the police must tell murderers the truth: Their behavior will not be tolerated.

In any case, it is far more common to find ourselves in situations in which, though we are tempted to lie, honesty will lead us to form connections with people who might otherwise have been adversaries. In this vein, I recall an encounter I had with a U.S. Customs officer upon returning from my first trip to Asia, nearly twenty-five years ago.

The year was 1987, but it might as well have been the Summer of Love: I was twenty, had hair down to my shoulders, and was dressed like an Indian rickshaw driver. For those charged with enforcing our nation’s drug laws, it would have been only prudent to subject my luggage to special scrutiny. Happily, I had nothing to hide.

“Where are you coming from?” the officer asked, glancing skeptically at my backpack.

“India, Nepal, Thailand…” I said.

“Did you take any drugs while you were over there?”

As it happens, I had. The temptation to lie was obvious—why speak to a
customs officer
about my recent drug use? But there was no real reason not to tell the truth, apart from the risk that it would lead to an even more thorough search of my luggage (and perhaps of my person) than had already commenced.

“Yes,” I said.

The officer stopped searching my bag and looked up. “Which drugs did you take?

“I smoked pot a few times… And I tried opium in India.”

“Opium?”

“Yes.”

“Opium or heroin?

“It was opium.”

“You don’t hear much about opium these days.”

“I know. It was the first time I’d ever tried it.”

“Are you carrying any drugs with you now?”

“No.”

The officer eyed me warily for a moment and then returned to searching my bag. Given the nature of our conversation, I reconciled myself to being there for a very long time. I was, therefore, as patient as a tree. Which was a good thing, because the officer was now examining my belongings as though any one item—a toothbrush, a book, a flashlight, a bit of nylon cord—might reveal the deepest secrets of the universe.

“What is opium like?” he asked after a time.

And I told him. In fact, over the next ten minutes, I told this lawman almost everything I knew about the use of mind-altering substances.

Eventually he completed his search and closed my luggage. One thing was perfectly obvious at the end of our encounter: We both felt very good about it.

A more quixotic self stands revealed. I’m not sure that I would have precisely the same conversation today. I would not lie, but I probably wouldn’t work quite so hard to open such a novel channel of communication. Nevertheless, I continue to find that a willingness to be honest—especially about truths that one might be expected to conceal—often leads to much more gratifying exchanges with other human beings.

Of course, if I had been carrying illegal drugs, my situation would have been very different. One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. 

Mental Accounting

One of the greatest problems for the liar is that he must keep track of his lies. Some people are better at this than others. Psychopaths can assume this burden of mental accounting without any obvious distress. That is no accident: They are
psychopaths
. They do not care about others and are quite happy to sever relationships whenever the need arises. Some people are monsters of egocentricity. But there is no question that lying comes at a psychological cost for the rest of us.

Lies beget other lies. Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality. When you tell the truth, you have nothing to keep track of. The world itself becomes your memory, and if questions arise, you can always point others back to it. You can even reconsider certain facts and honestly change your views. And you can openly discuss your confusion, conflicts, and doubts with all comers. In this way, a commitment to the truth is naturally purifying of error.

But the liar must remember what he said, and to whom, and must take care to maintain his falsehoods in the future. This can require an extraordinary amount of work—all of which comes at the expense of authentic communication and free attention. The liar must weigh each new disclosure, whatever the source, to see whether it might damage the facade that he has built. And all these stresses accrue, whether or not anyone discovers that he has been lying.

Tell enough lies, however, and the effort required to keep your audience in the dark quickly becomes unsustainable. While you might be spared a direct accusation of dishonesty, many people will conclude, for reasons that they might be unable to pinpoint, that they cannot trust you. You will begin to seem like someone who is always dancing around the facts—because you most certainly are. Many of us have known people like this. No one ever quite confronts them, but everyone begins to treat them like creatures of fiction. Such people are often quietly shunned, for reasons they probably never understand.

In fact, suspicion often grows on
both
sides of a lie: Research indicates that liars trust those they deceive less than they otherwise might—and the more damaging their lies, the less they trust, or even like, their victims. It seems that in protecting their egos, and interpreting their own behavior as justified, liars tend to deprecate the people they lie to.
^[10]

Integrity

What does it mean to have integrity? It means many things, of course, but one criterion is to avoid behavior that readily leads to shame or remorse. The ethical terrain here extends well beyond the question of honesty—but to truly have integrity, we must not feel the need to lie about our personal lives.

To lie is to erect a boundary between the truth we are living and the perception others have of us. The temptation to do this is often born of an understanding that others will disapprove of our behavior. Often, there are good reasons why they would.

Pick up any newspaper and look at the problems people create for themselves by lying—problems that seem to require more lies to mitigate. It is simply astonishing how people destroy their marriages, careers, and reputations by saying one thing and doing another. Tiger Woods, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener—these are men whose names now conjure images of the most public self-destruction. Of course, their transgressions weren’t merely a matter of lying. But deception was what prepared the ground for their humiliation. One can get divorced without having to issue a public apology. It is even possible to live a frank and utterly unconventional life of sexual promiscuity, or exhibitionism, without paying the penalties these men paid. Many lives are almost scandal-proof. Vulnerability comes in pretending to be someone you are not.