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Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
Sissela Bok
JLJ - Truth, or Consequences...
A lie might disrupt the social fabric of a community, but are we not fools to trust without verifying? At core a lie is - among other things - an option in a predicament for going on, which might, due to the poor predicted outcome of other choices, or even an unexpected opportunity, emerge as an option worth considering, and rarely, as an an option worth trying. But as always, when you choose the behavior you choose the consequences of the behavior.
Society often recovers quickly to the 'lie damage' - in fact the fabric that holds society together is likely a patchwork quilt made of lies, partial truths and mostly unfulfilled promises. 'Truth' is indeed a rare bird to be sighted, disappearing quickly, and replaced by clever imitators.
What also matters is the response of society to the specific act of lying, and the promise of future punishment for future lies told. Who will tell the truth - at all times and places - if there are no consequences for substituting a lie?
Can we even have a civil society if we are restricted in critical cases of commanding certain individuals to tell the truth, or else, a "Wonder Woman lasso"...? Like literary figure James Bond's 'license to kill', is there a 'license to lie'? Who would or could claim to possess such a token?
Ralph B. Perry's observation that 'Truthfulness is a condition of any collective undertaking' gets to the core of the matter. We don't lie, simply because we often must out of necessity lean on our colleagues for information when acting collectively in a predicament, and lying distorts collective perceptions, damages the social fabric, and ultimately limits what can be accomplished.
We lie to a potential murderer who asks us where his potential victim has gone because the social fabric is already damaged and is likely to become even more damaged, and the 'lie' told to the murderer allows the victim to escape and participate in the collective and possibly accomplish great things, versus the alternative... sorry, but society is filled with aggressive individuals seeking personal information for marketing or advertising purposes, or just nosy neighbors hunting for gossip. Can one 'justify' giving an improvised evasive, vague or partially true answer, in these cases?
Ultimately, if one chooses to lie, for whatever reason, one must offer a justification for lying, and this justification is either deemed acceptable or not acceptable to society, who will judge and act accordingly. We spin a web of lies of our own choosing, and like a spider, lie in it and live in it and deal with the consequences of it, whatever those consequences happen to be. Ladies and gentlemen, there are dire consequences of saying 'I like your earrings, they match your top,' when you only meant a weak social compliment. Yessir, 'How nice to see you, you're looking great, have you lost weight?' better be 100% fully intentioned and truthful, or else you will be forever be branded as a liar and cast out of civil society...
Much of this book misses the practical observation that in most cases we 'aim for the truth,' and in this case, we can hardly be called 'liars' if later proved to be 'incorrect.' Often we have limited or one-sided information, or perhaps only lies told to us, and if later confronted with accusations of deception, we can then be clever and can argue that we ourselves were misinformed, or misled. A TV news reporter is currently (10 October 2020) under fire for making claims of his Twitter account being "hacked," which curiously happen only when he is being accused of making tweets implying he is biased to one political party rather than the other. Is he "lying," in a way which is socially acceptable? How will society hold him responsible for his actions?
To those who argue that 'we should never lie,' I would counter argue, should we instead tell the truth at all times and situations, to people of all backgrounds, affiliations, and intending various and counter schemes or purposes? What right do we have to protect our private information, and indeed our private lives, from those who ask aggressively, without reasonable or civil purpose, for information they have no clear right to obtain, and which they may share? In justifiable cases of an information shakedown, do we have a right to lie if such private information is deemed to not be adequately protected from further disclosure...? Counterintuitively, we should ponder the fact that telling the truth has risks and consequences, much as telling a lie.
Truth be told, Bok presents a readable work which can help the reader form a personal philosophy of lying. One unknown individual, when confronted on an internet chat room with the observation that the company whose stock he is attempting to buy is presently in bankruptcy, replied: "Everyone pumps garbage."
StihlsawsRule: You had best read the chapter 7 bankruptcy they filed, after the sleazy deal (in my opinion) they did with SOSi. The only way this sees $1 again is if the bankruptcy court throws the case out, which I doubt will happen.
BroadwayGaming: Everyone pumps garbage. Chapter 7 doesn’t matter
If "Everyone pumps garbage," shouldn't we focus more efforts on validating what others say, rather than taking their words at face value? Practically, we should - or ought to - develop quick and clever ways to check what others say, and invest more efforts in this validation the more important matters are. Insurance companies often hire private detectives to use practical methods to gather the 'true' facts surrounding the claim, when they suspect - or statistics might indicate - a deceptive or dishonest claim has been filed. We owe it to ourselves not to expect the truth, but instead to be prepared for others to embellish or lie, in what would otherwise make one look bad.
The other quote of the day (someone actually said this to me, when I told him I was on the board of directors of my community) is, "You can't bullshit a bullshitter." Liars have ways of determining the truth. Shouldn't we also be as practically minded...?
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p.12-13 [Lawrence Henderson, physician]
Far older than the precept, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," is another... So far as possible, do no harm. You can do harm by the process that is quaintly called telling the truth
p.14 I shall define a lie as any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.
p.14-15 Grotius... argued that speaking falsely to those - like thieves - to whom truthfulness is not owed cannot be called lying.
p.16 a... wider... definition of a lie: an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement.
p.20 All our choices depend on our estimates of what is the case; these estimates must in turn often rely on information from others. Lies distort this information and therefore our situation as we perceive it, as well as our choices.
p.34-35 The simplest answer to the problems of lying, at least in principle, is to rule out all lies. Many theologians have chosen such a position; foremost among them is St. Augustine... He claimed that God forbids all lies and that liars therefore endanger their immortal souls.
p.39 Grotius... argued that a falsehood is a lie in the strict sense of the word only if it conflicts with a right of the person to whom it is addressed... Grotius was a lawyer
[JLJ - Well this explains a lot...]
p.51 Erasmus, well acquainted with zealots, observed that a rigid condemnation of all falsehoods is simply unworkable.
p.76 Most of us doubtless come into more frequent contact with white lies than with any other form of deception.
p.82 Just as lies intended to avoid serious harm have often been thought more clearly excusable than others, so lies meant to do harm are often thought least excusable. And lies which neither avoid nor cause harm occupy the middle ground.
p.95 [Ralph B. Perry, The Moral Economy]
Truthfulness is a condition of any collective undertaking.
p.96 To justify is to defend as just, right, or proper, by providing adequate reasons.
p.148 We have already discussed the occasions when deception in self-defense and in countering unfair coercion is justified.
p.149 The larger the deceptive scheme, the more likely it is to backfire.
p.256 Nearly every kind of statement or action can be meant to deceive... We lead our lives amidst all these forms of duplicity. From childhood on, we develop ways of coping with them - of believing some, seeing through others, and consciously ignoring still others. We may end by tolerating even certain practices of outright lying without knowing how to distinguish them from those that we reject out of hand: tolerating, for instance, lies believed to serve the "best interests" of groups or individuals, those undertaken for purposes of advocacy, or those construed to serve the objectives of self-defense.
p.277 What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
p.280 [Hugo Grotius] The character of falsehood, in so far as it is unpermissible, consists in its conflict with the right of another
p.285 "To tell the truth is a duty, but it is a duty only toward one who has a right to the truth."
p.302 "telling the truth" means something different according to the particular situation in which one stands. Account must be taken of one's relationships at each particular time... "Telling the Truth," therefore, is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. The more complex the actual situations of a man's life, the more responsible and the more difficult will be his task of "telling the truth."
p.303 Telling the truth is, therefore, something which must be learnt.
p.305 Every utterance or word lives and has its home in a particular environment. The word in the family is different from the word in business or public... Each word must have its own place and keep to it.
p.308 In practice, of course, though there may be very few persons indeed whom we take to be non-deceptive on all occasions, we do manage, and rightly, to trust quite a lot of the people quite a lot of the time; but this depends on the supposition that, while sometimes they may have special reasons, which with luck and experience and judgment we may come to understand, for resorting to deceptive performance on some occasions, they do not do so simply whenever it suits their book.
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