"(…) we have based our society on the assumption that deciding to lie or to tell the truth is within our conscious control. But Harvard’s Joshua Greene and Joseph Paxton say this assumption may be flawed and are probing whether honesty may instead be the result of controlling a desire to lie (a conscious process) or of not feeling the temptation to lie in the first place (an automatic process)..."
This claim, if proved to be true, may have significant impact on our perception of lying – changing it from a much criticized characteristic to a more tolerable form of evolutionary trait. Indeed, deception is the most common survival tactic used by man today replacing ancient man’s need for protected space and the use of sharp tools to defend at the top spot.
This Psychology Today article says
"Most people (…) lie once or twice a day—almost as often as they snack from the refrigerator or brush their teeth. Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30 percent of those with whom they interact one-on-one. Furthermore, some types of relationships, such as those between parents and teens, are virtual magnets for deception: College students lie to their mothers in one out of two conversations"
Even without the study, it is a well known fact that people need to deceive in different forms to succeed in life whether it be flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention or playing a role for others and for oneself-in short. Whether it be that extra embellishment of the resume, that odd excuse for showing up late for work or that hobby mentioned at the first date. Neitzsche in his 1893 essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” says
"As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey"
He goes further to add
"(…)man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power."
Surprisingly, man who is quite the expert at deception and (supposedly) learning from failure is quite the sucker in getting deceived himself. In fact he permits it willingly. The biggest example of this is the entertainment industry in the form of movies, where day after day he will watch fantastic recreations of his fantasies on celluloid, knowing it to be unrealistic and yet deluding himself to the point of blind admiration of the actors on screen.
"(…)Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation. But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes."
If deceit is what we claim it to be - a tool needed for survival - where then, Neitzsche tries to understand, does man’s drive for truth come from? It comes in settings where he can drop his guard, mostly in the presence of family and close personal friends. He also indicates that while it is supposed to be common knowledge that everyone lies, we tend to ostracize those that confess to it, and adopt as friends and business partners those who do it covertly but don't confess to it.
"(…)What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined."
Another very important derivation from the essay is that a myth that is perceived by the society at large as acceptable, very definitely becomes the “truth” and part of the canon, is duplicated and replicated for generations to come. Any deviation from these myths is deemed scandalous under the rubric of tradition. I can obviously give hundreds of examples from our blind faith in religious practices that hold no relevance to this day and age.
From the perspective of understanding truth and lies a classification that helps, is the division of man into two categories – the rational man and the irrational/intuitive man.
"(…)They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty."
All our lives we struggle between these two poles. Scientifically proven fact is truth for the rational man, but that is immaterial and uninteresting to the intuitive man, who wants to believe a myth that keeps him safe, secure and happy. The rational man tries to measure distance to the sun but the intuitive man calls it God, creates anthropomorphic stories and worships it. Who can say who is better? After all, many of us are both rolled into one.
A dark and perfectly rational way of looking at our species is that we are extremely hypocritical. We deceive, because we have to survive, yet refuse to accept that we all do it, ostracizing anyone who tells the truth about the deception. Conveniently we don’t want to hear it. We lie in our daily lives, and yet want our politicians and business leaders to be honest! Talk about double standards. The takeaway from this should not be that we should not lie. Indeed if Joshua Greene and Joseph Paxton are right, then it is innate to us and there is no escaping it. No, we should instead stop expecting that our leaders will be perfectly honest. The expectation should be, that they be only as dishonest as to not harm the interests of the country and its people in a big way. The whole capitalistic model is based on greed (profits) but it is excessive greed and not greed that is the bane of our system.
In the end the debate between truth and lies is equivalent to the confrontation of Gandhi and Nietzsche - Who wins?
Further reading:
Arthur Miller’s famous play “Death of a Salesman” and the popular Hollywood film “The Invention of Lying” are highly recommended. Find Nietzsche’s original essay here.
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