The Lie (12.10.86)

George Steiner calls it counterfactuality: the ability to imagine something which is not.  It lies at the root of man's creativity and the progress of civilisation. The day a child lies for the first time marks great leap forward in its growth as a human being.  And yet telling lies is universally held to be anti-social and reprehensible.

The reasons are clear enough.  Lies propagate dissonant world-views which cloud and curdle the great pond of perception. The world is based, as a first approximation at least, on the assumption that people tell it as it is.  Without this faith, everybody's every statement would need to be verified personally before proceeding - clearly an impossible task.  It would render knowledge, and written knowledge in particular, useless.

So truth has evolved as a pragmatic solution in the face of this anarchy.  Like children, the first humans probably arrived at lies some time after rising to consciousness.  Initially, you could only think true things, since thought itself had no meaning without a corresponding external reality.  The first lies probably threatened the fabric of those fragile early societies to such an extent that we can imagine lying as an offence against the tribe, punishable by death.

As a result, telling the truth, like obeying authority, has been built into the fundamental assumptions of society ever since.  And this even though neither is truly in the interests of the individual.  Yet parents scold children when they lie, and schools inculcate for years the habit of obedience.  Both play into the hands of those in power.

Furthermore, this intensive training in early years leaves its mark on the adult.  To such an extent that even when lies would be better for all concerned - society too - we are unable to utter the untruths.  It is as if we believed that reality and facts existed as absolutes, and were too important to sully with muddying fictions.  Instead, we resort to feeble evasions, implausible half-truths which salve our consciences but betray us as clearly as if we had admitted everything.

It is almost touching to see the amateur way people lie.  They do not seem to realise that lying is an art, and a demanding one.  Just as lies send out ripples of disturbance through others' world-views, so lies must be part of a huge spreading web of deceit.  The very best liars can weave these as they go along, twisting and turning a few concessions to truth until they end up with an elaborate tapestry of greying lies.
 
This is what makes the policeman's job so easy.  When pushed hard and far enough, most people give up in their make-believe stories, simply because they are caught out, or cannot go on inventing.  This also gives the true, studied and inveterate liar an incalculable advantage over the rest of us.  He or she is able to mould reality to their will, trapping us in a fine-spun tissue of lies which obscures both reality and its own factitiousness.  If these people can combine such skills with a largeness of vision, they are well-nigh unstoppable.  And yet we pretend that lying is for losers.  Perhaps that is the biggest lie of all. 

(16.10.87)

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