Comments

1. 

   Ramesh Raghuvanshi

   May 9, 2011 at 04:15

   Absolutely correct.Living in this world you must wear different persona at different time without that you could not survive. Manipulation,false laugh,false weep,false sympathy and all other tactics are essential for living.If you speak 24 hour truthfully no one co-operative with you.
2. 

   JRD

   May 9, 2011 at 12:41

   A lie is certainly more easily discernible than truth. Is truth what we believe? What we perceive? What we understand? Objective truth does exist but we live in a world increasingly overrun with subjective truth. Caveat emptor.
3. 

   Robert Landbeck

   May 9, 2011 at 13:50

   There may be an insight from the very title of Ian Leslie book, "Why We Can’t Live Without Deceit". Because we have been conditioned by culture and mostly by religion, even if one is not religious, to a conception of human nature that is itself false. But having to confront the unholy truth of that nature is too unpalatable; but we may be forced to do so, confronting the unsustainable values which are putting human existence at risk. Thus the first great 'deceit' is how we haved deceive ourselves, after that one can't sustain a successful identity without it! And there is the difference between morality and respectability! http://www.energon.org.uk
4. 

   marco mauas

   May 9, 2011 at 19:24

   Jacques Lacan in his "last teaching", from 1973 till his death in 1981, concentrated his effort in the difference between "truth" and "the real". He used to say since his seminar "L'angoisse" (On Anxiety) : "Anxiety is that what doesn't deceive. About the "truth", he based his approach on Freud's "Proton Pseudos" (1895) "the first hysterical lie"--a structural lie--and Aragon's "la verite menteuse" , the liar truth, the truth that inevitably covers with make up the real relationship of the subject with his jouissance, his knot of suffering and repetition in it.
5. 

   Steven Cox

   May 9, 2011 at 22:50

   I've spent the better part of 6 years telling the truth in every situation. And, I define truth as speaking fully what is in my heart and mind about any subject I am speaking of. In other words, don't edit, don't dissemble, don't lie, don't exaggerate so that everyone gets how much pain you're in. Don't do any of the stuff everyone thinks is necessary to make life go round. Don't say 'my back is killing me', because it isn't. It is just sore. Don't say 'sorry I'm late, traffic was terrible'. Yeah, traffic was terrible and that held you back 3 minutes, but you're twenty minutes late. So far in sex years...no problems. Firstly, what is true is almost never harsh, but it is almost always blunt. Truth is about yourself, it is seldom about others. Truth is immediate. It clarifies and simplifies. On occasion it ends something. But, in those cases it should end. Almost always problems go away with simply the truth. One very nice and unexpected side effect is things are seen to be more simple than they were when you didn't speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Life is way less confusing. Confusion is just the mind sown with lies. Mr. Raghuvanshi...people will cooperate with you much more than they are if you stop pretending. On some level they see through your lies. JRD...when you speak a lie it has no weight. When you speak a truth it causes everyone to sit up and listen. Lies are much less discernible than the truth.
6. 

   Aniruddha G. Kulkarni

   May 10, 2011 at 08:08

   I wonder what ancient Hindus really meant when they said: "Satyameva Jayate" ("Truth alone triumphs"). I am sure they did not mean it the way we often interpret it because they were wiser than we are. 'Absolute truth' indeed is over-rated.
7. 

   Jeffrey Gold

   May 13, 2011 at 15:26

   As Oscar once said, "the trouble about lying is that there are an awful lot of untruths spoken on the subject. One example is the commonly repeated falsehood that lying is immoral, indefensible and altogether a bad thing. And it's this sort of nonsense, of course, which gives lying a bad name."
8. 

   Rosalind Pearson

   May 13, 2011 at 15:29

   The whole idea of deceit takes on different meaning in different cultures, it affects you in different ways. As an English person living in Mexico it is really interesting to see how the idea of deceit permeates absolutely everything in society and it is extraordinarily frustrating. From politics (of course), to the police force (naturally), from education (surprising?) to television content (absolutely). Politicians lie the whole time and noone believes a word they say; the police are to be avoided at all costs or you could end up like the guy in Presumed Guilty; teachers claim non existent academic levels without a blink; and television excels through the genre of telenovelas where lying, deceit and gossip are what makes the story move. Ask anyone for directions in the street and never believe the answer; saying I don't know is not an option so making up directions is the norm. You get used to it, you have to or else living here would be impossible. Even the language doesn't help. Instead of saying "I missed the plane" you say in Spanish "the plane left me behind". Isn't that brilliant?
9. 

   Edward Harkins

   May 15, 2011 at 19:24

   I suggest that we have moved on from basic suppositions like humans are ‘born to’ do some things, or behave in certain predestined ways. Many of the early reactions and debate to the ‘Selfish Gene’ et al misconstrued the authors’ writings as some sort of attempt to excuse, for example, rape by men on women because they were supposedly genetically pre-disposed to do so. The authors’ intentions, mostly, were to point up that we are aware of these things because we are sentient, conscious beings. Therefore, we can also understand why such things are wrong and inculcate in ourselves better modes of inclination and behaviour. Hence, where some individuals may attempt to excuse wrong behaviour by recourse to "it's in the genes" or "It's only nature", we do not accept that and seek to sanction or even punish them accordingly. Hence still, we can laugh at situation comedies where the likeable rogue lies – and better still get’s caught at it. The point being that if we may well believe we are inclined to lie, we may also have taught ourselves that it’s (mostly) wrong to lie and so we (mostly) don’t do it.
10. 

    Kathleen

    May 26, 2011 at 19:49

    Mr. Leslie is forgetting a further step in human evolution: While the brain may increase in size with more and more skillful lying and self-deceit, brains will increase even more once such attained skills are self-examined and understood, and then the burden of responsibility NOT to use these learned skills is recognized and practiced. This involves a higher development of empathy then he notes is needed in lying to someone, and a full understanding and use of the Golden Rule.
11. 

    stephen kirby

    June 17, 2016 at 16:14

    The whole truth IS, regardless of whatever BS another entity or individual thinks, says, write, and/or does to infer differently