Authors: Sam Harris
Lying (4 page)
Big Lies
Most of us are now painfully aware that our trust in government, corporations, and other public institutions has been undermined by lies.
Lying has precipitated or prolonged wars: The Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam and false reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were both instances in which lying (at some level) led to armed conflict that might otherwise not have occurred. When the truth finally emerged, vast numbers of people grew more cynical about U.S. foreign policy—and many have come to doubt the legitimacy of any military intervention, whatever the stated motive.
Big lies have led many people to reflexively distrust those in positions of authority. As a consequence, it is now impossible to say anything of substance on climate change, environmental pollution, human nutrition, economic policy, foreign conflicts, pharmaceuticals, and dozens of other subjects without a significant percentage of one’s audience expressing paralyzing doubts about even the most reputable sources of information. Our public discourse appears permanently riven by conspiracy theories.
Of course, certain controversies arise because expert opinion has come down on both sides of an important issue. Some questions are genuinely unsettled. But confusion spreads unnecessarily whenever people in positions of power are caught lying or concealing their conflicts of interest.
Consider the widespread fear of childhood vaccinations. In 1998, the physician Andrew Wakefield published a study in
The Lancet
linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. This study has since been judged to be an “elaborate fraud,” and Wakefield’s medical license has been revoked.
[11]
The consequences of Wakefield’s dishonesty would have been bad enough. But the legacy effect of other big lies has thus far made it impossible to remedy the damage he has caused. Given the fact that corporations and governments sometimes lie, whether to avoid legal liability or to avert public panic, it has become very difficult to spread the truth about the MMR vaccine. Vaccination rates have plummeted—especially in prosperous, well-educated communities—and children have become sick and even died as a result.
An unhappy truth of human psychology is probably also at work here, which makes it hard to abolish lies once they have escaped into the world: We seem to be predisposed to remember statements as true even after they have been disconfirmed. For instance, if a rumor spreads that a famous politician once fainted during a campaign speech, and the story is later revealed to be false, some significant percentage of people will recall it as a fact—even if they were first exposed to it in the very context of its debunking. In psychology, this is known as the “illusory truth effect.” Familiarity breeds credence.
One can imagine circumstances, perhaps in time of war, in which lying to one’s enemies might be necessary—especially if spreading misinformation was likely to reduce the loss of innocent life. Granted, the boundary between these conditions and the cases of gratuitous or malignant deception cited above might be difficult to spot—especially if lying to one’s enemies also entails lying to one’s friends. In such circumstances, we might recognize a good lie only in retrospect. But war and espionage are conditions in which human relationships have broken down or were never established in the first place; thus the usual rules of cooperation no longer apply. The moment one begins dropping bombs, or destroying a country’s infrastructure with cyber attacks, lying has become just another weapon in the arsenal.
The need for state secrets is obvious. However, the need for governments to deceive their own people seems to me to be exiguous to the point of nonexistence—an ethical mirage. Just when you think you’ve reached it, the facts tend to suggest otherwise. And the harm occasioned whenever lies of this kind are uncovered seems all but irreparable.
I suspect that the telling of necessary lies will be rare for anyone but a spy—that is, if we grant that espionage is necessary in today’s world. It is rumored that spies must lie even to their own friends and family. I am quite sure that I could not live this way myself, however good the cause. The role of a spy strikes me as a near total sacrifice of personal ethics for a larger good—whether real or imagined. It is a kind of moral self-immolation.
In any case, we can draw no more daily instruction from the lives of spies than we can from the adventures of astronauts in space. Just as most of us need not worry about our bone density in the absence of gravity, we need not consider whether our every utterance could compromise national security. The ethics of war and espionage are the ethics of emergency—and are, therefore, necessarily limited in scope.
Conclusion
As it was in
Anna Karenina
,
Madame Bovary
, and
Othello
, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.
Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.
By lying, we deny others a view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they
can
make—and in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is a direct assault upon the autonomy of those we lie to.
And by lying to one person, we potentially spread falsehoods to many others—even to whole societies. We also force upon ourselves subsequent choices—to maintain the deception or not—that can complicate our lives. In this way, every lie haunts our future. There is no telling when or how it might collide with reality, requiring further maintenance. The truth never needs to be tended in this way. It can simply be reiterated.
The lies of the powerful lead us to distrust governments and corporations. The lies of the weak make us callous toward the suffering of others. The lies of conspiracy theorists raise doubts about the honesty of whistleblowers, even when they are telling the truth. Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste—everyone is potentially harmed by their spread.
How would your relationships change if you resolved never to lie again? What truths might suddenly come into view in your life? What kind of person would you become? And how might you change the people around you?
It is worth finding out.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the editorial work of my wife and collaborator, Annaka Harris. The editor’s job is always crucial, but with this essay my debt to Annaka is especially great, because the topic itself was her idea. I was, in fact, writing on assignment. In all my work, Annaka improves the content, structure, tone, and syntax—true love takes no greater form than this...
I am also indebted to my mother, whose comments improved the essay throughout, and to my friends Emily Elson, Tim Ferriss, and Seth Godin for their very helpful notes. LYING also benefitted from the expert copy editing of Martha Spaulding.
Other Books by Sam Harris
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003V1WT72/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwsamharri02-20
Letter to a Christian Nation
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JMKTNM/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwsamharri02-20
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VUCIZE/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwsamharri02-20
About the Author
Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers,
The End of Faith
,
Letter to a Christian Nation
, and
The Moral Landscape
.
The End of Faith
won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
Mr. Harris's writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in
Newsweek
,
TIME
,
The New York Times
,
Scientific American
,
Nature
,
Rolling Stone
, and many
other journals
. His writing has appeared in
Newsweek
,
The New York Times
,
The Los Angeles Times
,
The Economist
,
The Times
(London),
The Boston Globe
,
The Atlantic
,
The Annals of Neurology
, and
elsewhere
.
Mr. Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of
Project Reason
, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. Visit his blog at
www.samharris.org
.
Notes
[1]
Howard has put much of his material in book form: R.A. Howard and C.D. Korver,
Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code to Guide Decisions in Work and Life
(Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 2008).
While I do not entirely agree with how the authors separate ethics from the rest of human values, I believe readers will find this a very useful book.
[2]
Some have argued that evolution must have selected for an ability to deceive oneself, thereby making it easier to mislead others [see William von Hippel and Robert Trivers, “The Evolution and Psychology of Self-deception,”
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
34, no. 1 (2011): 1–16; discussion 16–56.] Whether self-deception actually exists is still a matter of controversy, however. There is no question that we can be blind to facts about ourselves or about the world that we really
should
see—but truly believing one’s own falsehoods is tantamount to honesty. Thus, we need not worry about self-deception for the time being.
[3]
S. Bok,
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
(New York: Vintage, 1999).
[4]
B.M. DePaulo and D.A. Kashy, “Everyday Lies in Close and Casual Relationships,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
74, no.1 (Jan. 1998): 63–79.
[5]
B.M. DePaulo, et al.,“Lying in Everyday Life,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
70, no. 5 (1996): 979–995.
[6]
P. J. Kalbfleisch, “Deceptive Message Intent and Relational Quality,”
Journal of Language and Social Psychology
20, nos. 1–2 (2001): 214–230; T. Cole, “Lying to the One You Love: The Use of Deception in Romantic Relationships,”
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
18, no. 1 (2001): 107–129.
[7]
There is a related distinction in practical ethics between negative and positive injunctions: Negative injunctions are actions we should avoid; positive injunctions are actions we should perform. The asymmetry between these two sets is impressive: We can comply with an infinite number of negative injunctions without expending any energy at all—I can abstain from killing, stealing, or vandalizing others’ property without getting out of my chair. Positive injunctions, however, demand that I
do
something—raise funds for a specific charity, for instance—and whatever I choose to do will compete with all the other ways I could use my time and attention.
Another important difference between negative and positive injunctions is that it is quite clear when one has fulfilled the former, whereas the latter are often beset by ambiguities. I can be absolutely certain I have not committed murder today. But with respect to any act of generosity, I may always wonder whether I have given enough, to the right people, in the right way, for the right purpose, etc.
To not lie is a negative injunction, and it takes no energy to accomplish. To tell the
whole
truth, however, is a positive injunction—requiring an endless effort at communication.
[8]
K.A. Broomfield, E.J. Robinson, and W.P. Robinson, “Children’s Understanding about White Lies,”
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
20, no. 1 (2002): 47–65.
[9]
Bok (1999) makes the same point.
[10]
B.J. Sagarin, K. Rhoads, and R.B. Cialdini, “Deceiver’s Distrust: Denigration as a Consequence of Undiscovered Deception,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
24, no. 11 (1998): 1167–1176.
[11]
http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/06/study-linking-vaccines-to-autism-is-fraudulent/