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How to tell a lie

by Jackie Randles

While truth-telling may benefit us all personally by creating communities based on trust, people often choose to tell a lie. Jackie Randles muses on the writings of Swedish born philosopher Sissela Bok, best known for her influential book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Lif, published in the wake of the Vietnam war.

Honesty is perhaps one of the most sought after attributes we look for in friends, partners, employees and professional associates. Most of us would actively seek relationships with people who we think will not lie to us.

When we establish relationships that we believe are truthful and honest, we develop trust and have a sense of control of our lives. Our choices are well informed. We believe we know what we are doing and where we stand in relation to another.

At the same time, we know that dishonesty is common. Media reports of public lies no longer surprise us, and let's face it, there are probably times when we deliberately deceive others ourselves. So is it simply naïve to be surprised, hurt, betrayed and outraged when we find that someone has lied to us?

Given lying is knowingly practiced by many, including ourselves, what are lies and why do they matter?

In her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, (New York: Pantheon, 1978), Sissela Bok defines lying as a statement, believed by the liar to be false, that is made to another person with the intention that the person be deceived by the statement.

Bok shows how insignificant lies easily become habit forming, and how deception by silence or omission can also be also dishonest. Accustomed to deception, the teller of 'white lies' can effortlessly move into situations where more serious lies roll off the tongue.

Through close examination of lying and deception in both public and private life-in government, medicine, law, academia, journalism, in the family and between friends-Bok argues that most of the important things in life are made possible by widespread trust, regardless of whether people tell the truth or not.

Bok pioneered the Principle of Veracity, a term commonly used today in codes of ethics, especially those developed for medical professionals. This principle makes a fundamental commitment to the practice of telling the truth as much as possible, except in the case of justifiable exceptions.

In determining whether to tell a lie would be justified, Bok offers readers an in-depth methodology that contains both introspective and active components. Although too lengthy to discuss here, the basic premise can be summarized as follows:

Bok asks individuals to firstly consult their own conscience. She then suggests consideration of all the truthful alternatives. Further issues to consider include the context of the lie, the relationships between the liar and the dupe, the pros and cons that will be brought about by the lie and a series of other questions that set out arguments for and against lying.

Following this introspective process, Bok asks the liar to consider how an audience would feel about the lie. After all, any defense would need to be acceptable to a reasonable public.

With lies flourishing in both public and private life, and many people expecting nothing less than lies from governments and big business, it may seem that truth-telling is no longer the norm. We all know that lies exist, so do we genuinely expect to be told the truth? Apparently we do.

Bok argues that we live in a world in which a great deal of trust continues to exist, for it is precisely this trust that makes it possible for people to deliberately deceive. Lies work best in systems where truth-telling prevails, because a lie that is not believed is of little value.

Liars therefore need to be trusted in order for their lies to be effective. They also assume that others will be honest with them. By having everyone else maintain the truth-telling system that supports a lie, liars reap the benefit without supporting it in any way.

But when lies are expected and even tolerated, are the duped themselves implicit in the cycle of deception? What kinds of choices do we make when nagging doubt lies at the heart of our decisions?

Whether it can be justified or not, the fundamental problem with lying is that liars will usually come up with a variety of reasons why their lies are for the best.

However, there will always be an alternative perspective in which someone never finds a good reason for lying - the perspective of the lied to. As those with painful first-hand experience know, recipients of masterful lies rarely concede that there was any justification for the lie that was told to them.

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