Love The Way You Lie

SIAN DOLDING faces a moral dilemma over lying to friends

Lying

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.” A provocative line from Mike Nichol’s 2004 hit film “Closer”, but is this necessarily true?

Personally when I lie there is an impending sense of doom, because I will inevitably be found out. I cannot execute my lies effectively and always wind up looking a fool. Even worse than this though you will look like a liar, and nobody likes to be thought of as a liar, although I prefer the term “inventive truth-garnisher”.

Acclaimed neuroscientist, Sam Harris’s new eBook “Lying” posits that lying is always an unethical habit. It’s a firm stance to take, so how should we feel about consciously withholding the truth, often from those closest to us?

Now I’ll be honest, when I first heard the notion behind this latest offering from Harris I was a little wary. Of course lying is seen as bad but everybody does it, and besides this is England, the land of “the tut”. We English are infamous for our retreat from openly expressing opinion unless it is with a click of the tongue. But according to Harris, all lies (even the little white ones) damage the trust within friendships and cheat us out of reality.

Imagine all those white lies you’ve told in the past, that toe-curling moment when someone asks you which dress makes them look fattest and you want to cry “All of them! Every single bloody one!” and shake them until they realise this salient fact. But you mustn’t. Societal propriety demands that you mustn’t tell them the truth. In situations like this Harris advocates talking honestly with a friend, it’ll make them respect you and plus they might just act on your thoughts and open their mind a bit.

We know this though; I think deep down we all know that if we just spoke frankly that life would be different and our relationships would be a lot different, probably even better. What we are afraid of is breaking the status quo just simply because it is the status quo and we are creatures of habit.

Harris’s eBook does certainly make for a powerful read and made me re-asses what it means to lie as part of our everyday discourse with one another. It does seem pretty logical that to sustain a relationship with another human, something many are wont to do these days, you need to let people know they can count on you for honesty. And sure, I’ve read articles in the past that humorously insist on the necessity of lying, and while I used to laugh at this cynicism it just seems that lying has become a bit of a waste of time.

Say your friend is a truly terrible actor and is thinking of pursuing a career in film, you know that years of rejection and virtual poverty await them if you encourage them to chase their dreams. In the moment it might seem cruel to tell them that they’re actually sh*t but in the long run it’ll be the best thing you ever do.

So this week I’m going to try and fight my instincts, challenge myself to be a bit more honest and see where it takes me. And it is now that I am reminded of the quote “With freedom of speech comes the freedom to be thought an asshole”. Wish me luck; I think I’m going to need it.