Lies and lying

An Essay on the Effects and Affects of Deceit

The object of this essay is to examine lies and lying, and the ramifications of deliberate acts to deceive. It will not examine unintentional acts, like omission, faulty recall, and mistaken identity. Admittedly some if not all of the possible effects and affects can occur unintentionally as well, but this treatise is confined to deliberate acts of deceit.

The essay will not deal with moral authority, religion, or the right or wrong of deceitful acts, but merely an examination of them without deliberate judgement. Except that reference will be made to religious admonitions, like “not bearing false witness,” but only to illustrate and include some widely known examples of deceit.

An attempt will be made to define, categorize and provide a few specific examples of each category and kinds of deceit. That background will provide the field on which effects and affects and their interrelationships to human circumstance and plight will be examined.

In the final section a rational basis for human lying behavior will be examined with explanations of benefits and costs. These will not be situational ethics explanations. They will be explanations of which kinds and types of lies work or seem to work, and in what kinds of situations, and their expected benefits and costs.

Let’s review several possible definitions and by analysis and deduction select the one that meets most of the needs for the purposes of this examination.

First, only those purposeful acts spoken, written, symbolized, demonstrated or staged intending to achieve the desired effect or affect of deception are included. Next, the purposeful act must be less than completely true and accurate. The lie objective must be to withhold or exaggerate, conceal or contrive, minimize or embellish some piece of information pertaining to the truth of a matter.

The truth would be, not to act to cause less than a complete understanding of facts. Although, certainly the receivers of well-intentioned information may draw separate and inaccurate partial truths even though the provider intended complete, true and accurate information. The provider may have chosen the words and images badly, or be honestly mistaken.

Not all senders and receivers possess the same level of competence. The sender may not have determined the receivers’ level well. The sender may mistakenly believe they know the truth. Or even when the subject truth is known, the sender intends well and is competent, and the receiver’s level of understanding were correctly assessed, and they are attentive, often the intended image is missed. Even with abundant feedback between competent and attentive senders and receivers the message is seldom right on target. Mostly because of unintended effects of circumstance, the lighting, the setting, varying personal experiences of senders and receivers, individual information processing techniques, and a host of mood, attitude and other variables affect senders and receivers.

Let’s conclude for the purposes of this discussion that the senders and the receivers are of similar knowledge, experience, language history and image processing logic and they are competent to process the images similarly.

So what is a lie? Is it the intentional representation as truth something calculated to deceive the recipient into a desired understanding, and encourage or prevent a specific action?

We will also exclude from this discussion those senders who have deceived themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, because the message they attempt to send is not competent, and not true, although not intentionally false.

So where are we? We have explored some of what is truth and some of what is a lie. In order to continue we must determine our working definition of “what is a lie.” If it is everything other than the truth, then have we determined what constitutes the truth? I think we have.

The truth is, what a competent person knows to be the truth based upon facts, and intends to portray it in word and image, and the receiver gets the intended image, and understands or can act consistent with it as the truth.

A lie is anything the provider of word or image does on purpose to affect a less than complete understanding or to cause the performance or non-performance of a selected act by the receiver.

We are close to the definition of a lie for this essay’s purpose. We need only distill it to its minimum essence.

Lies are acts or images provided to deliberately cause anything untruthful to be represented as truth.

Now let’s list several representative kinds of lies as possible and explain them and group them into categories. I begin with some of the simpler forms of lies:

Little white lies or kind expressions. Lies of convenience, these representations are intended to provide encouragement or overlook failings or imagined failings, usually of appearance or circumstance to spare someone the personal pain of inadequacy or error.

“Oh my, don’t you look nice today,” when they don’t.

What would be gained or lost by reminding them of their hideous scar or badly chosen attire?

Embellishments and altered appearances. Make up, wigs, padding, cars, clothes, displays of stature, cultivating a certain reputation, the stigma of some careers, different public behavior than private, false esteem, fostering false esteem by allowing someone to pretend knowledge of something you know to be false, but unimportant to you.

“Gee, your hair looks great.” “Have you lost weight?” “What a nice car, is it new?”
“Everyone said they admired how well you handled that job.” “What a nice person she is.”
“Did you hear Mary’s getting a raise?” “Yea, I heard she was a good person and did a great job.”

Exaggeration. Embellishments intended to bring color, excitement, interest, or promote self-esteem temporarily.

“That fish was this big.” “Boy did I get a good deal on that car.” “My bonus was $1,000 more than I expected.”

Minor Lies. Whereabouts of someone like; I haven’t seen them. He’s not here. Bob didn’t say anything about you. I have a boy friend. I’m not really married. I’m a lesbian. Lies for personal amusement like intentional mis-guidance, misdirection, or confusion.

Unofficial lies. Usually to avoid an individual or social engagement in which one wishes not to participate.

“I can’t make it, my wife’s sick.” “We’re expecting relatives this evening.” “I’m sorry we already have plans for that day.”

Rumor mongering. A made up or embellished story intended to make others think you are in the know about something private, or calculated to cause harm to others usually out of jealousy or envy, including anonymous notes, usually to cause malicious disharmony in relationships.

“Did you hear about Mary and Bob?”

More Moderate Lies.

Half-truths and misrepresentations. Leaving off elements that are pertinent or that would present the whole truth.

These pose a grouping problem because if only spoken in informal settings they are minor. If written or published and distributed without quantifiable damage they maybe moderate. If provided as sworn testimony or they produce damage, like liable or slander, they maybe serious.

Advertising. Carefully and professionally chosen exaggerations to cause expectations that something could be worth what it costs.

“New and improved.” “Absolutely free.” “Yes, that’s original miles.”

Bold face lies. Pretending to know something important. Authoritative sounding false verbal declarations.

Press releases. Used frequently by politicians, business, and the Government to distribute disinformation, to create a climate or appearance that will discredit some widely held or popular opinion. Often used to make some group or individual appear stupid, incompetent, or dangerous.

Deliberately announcing the discovery of witchcraft tokens, satanic materials, or pornography at the home of someone officials intend to arrest.

Political Speeches. Understood by nearly everyone to be exaggeration, misleading and deliberately false to encourage the uninformed to vote for them instead of someone else. Both types, those falsely acclaiming themselves, or maligning their opponent, are often believed by the easily mislead.

Serious Lies.

Lies of Record. False testimony, false alibi, forgery, scams and stings, larceny and other acts perpetrated for personal or financial gain. False proceeding or process. Institutionalized fostering of false promise, religious salvation, affiliation equates to rightness or protection, or privilege.

Libel and slander. False public declaration, writing, statement, or pictures entered in public distribution.

Employment fraud. False application elements, education, experience, criminal record.

Payroll fraud. Paid for not working. Calling in sick, but not. Paid when not present, paid at an unearned rate (overtime)

Fraud. A misstatement of facts of record for unfair or unlawful gain. Impostor, pretending to be something you are not.

Suborning perjury. Asking, paying, extorting, encouraging or cohersing someone to bear false witness to a lie in formal court proceedings under oath.

Perjury. Lying under oath, either in testimony or document, in formal court proceedings.

False Witness. Falsely accusing someone of a crime. This act widely regarded since before biblical times as unacceptable. Testifying that someone did or didn’t do something illegal or harmful, knowing they did not.

Today it is institutionalized in Equal Opportunity and Sexual Harassment proceedings on the belief had current systemic and institutional behaviors require an exception, so that the aggrieved can get their grievance heard around procedural roadblocks that require substantial evidence of a wrong. Often the evidence of such wrongs is intangible, only perceptive, or fleeting and not witnessed except by the effected party. It is also a common criminal practice used to harass the foes, mislead the police, or gain favor for them in pending legal actions.

Lies to accomplish good are acceptable. Lies to achieve unearned gain are occasionally acceptable. Lies to do harm are unacceptable. All can be beneficial, or costly, or both.

When is a lie not a lie? Never! A lie is always a lie.