The Truth DNE

17.09.07

Posted under: Life, Relationships, Thoughts

(Does not exist - for you math nerds)

So I’ve been reading Freakonomics as a class textbook (one of two, don’t worry) for a while and it got me really thinking about the things that people do.

It basically all summed down to the point where people do what they do because of the incentive. People lie because of many reasons, but it’s mostly for some sort of good result (though there are cases that would refute this statement of mine). People lie because they don’t want to hurt anybody, they lie because what they are doing will hurt somebody, they lie because they don’t have the heart to tell the person what is really going on.

I remember as a child, I would try and disobey my father by being sneaky. Well, he was sneaky too because he would always find out, but he would wait for the right time to catch me in the act instead of confront me. I always remembered that although what I was doing was a bad thing (or something that he didn’t want me to do), he was more disappointed at the fact that I had to lie. That was my father, always ashamed that I had to resort to such things.

What I remember most about what I’ve read so far is how far people go for incentives. Teachers have been known to cheat, sumo wrestlers included. Real Estate agents have been known to use their expertise to their advantage, withholding information that might be valuable to a potential buyer or purposely creating manipulative ads.

People do so much to lie, but is it really worth it in the end? Now, I’m not saying that there’s someone out there that doesn’t lie and I have been known to do my fair share of distorting or bending the truth, but there are just some things that a person should not withhold from another, you know? But how can you judge or measure the severity of a lie? Does it depend on how upset it makes you feel? Does it depend on the act that was covered up? Or is it just the lie in general that is awfully damaging?

Either way, I think that although it may hurt the person to tell the truth, it’s better to say it upfront and from you than for the person to find out from another person or through another means. It always hurts more when the person or people you care about are lying to you.

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Tags: cheating, deceit, deceive, games, lie, lies, Life, lying, People, reality, truth

7 Comments »

Julie announced:

Monday, September 17, 2007 @ 8:46 am GMT-8

I think people lie because they don’t want to admit what they’ve done wrong or get themselves in trouble. They think of themselves first, and the not wanting to hurt someone is a secondary reason to lie. I think the severity of the lie is often judged by the act covered up and the consequence of that act. This usually results in an emotion that he persons affected feel in result of the act covered up, and that is what matters in the lie. Cause for example people who don’t care about lies or cheats won’t be as affected as someone who gets very hurt by such an act.
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Alicia remarked:

Monday, September 17, 2007 @ 12:28 pm GMT-8

heyy, its Alicia . I’m extremely sorry I haven’t been able to comment you in so long, I’ve been so busy. I still, am loving the site, by the way. Cute layout =]
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Marsha typed:

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 @ 7:37 am GMT-8

I agree with you. I hate it when people lie to me, or when I lie to someone but sometimes, it’s inevitable. :/
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Destiny answered:

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 @ 7:48 am GMT-8

That was really insightful…. and I absolutely agree. If you ran a red light and get pulled over, first instinct is to say “it was still yellow!”
It’s really enlightning to see how many people would lie in order to advance themselves…
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Kaz replied:

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 @ 12:14 pm GMT-8

You know when I was younger I had this terrible habit of lying, even when I look back now I still can’t believe I did that. Thankfully I eventually got caught out and the humiliation was such a lesson for me that I never did it again. Now though I too hate it if someone lies to me and I hate telling lies but I agree sometimes inevitable.
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Avinash stated:

Thursday, September 20, 2007 @ 3:12 am GMT-8

When you are younger, many of us are expected to fall into order, obey rules or we have kinder parents. Eventually we grow out of this mindset and either deceive harsh parents or manipulate kind parents to get what we want. We learn to lie at an early age to achieve an effective result as children.

Now when we get older we have to unlearn these activities. In high school it might have been daring and risky to lie, but now people aren’t willing to put up with this shit. We lie under extreme pressures and circumstances, where incentives (money, girls, whatever) override the possible costs.

(As a math major, this post made me happy inside.)
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Mari declared:

Thursday, September 20, 2007 @ 7:23 pm GMT-8

Mari has been trying to be ultra-truthful recently. Mari used to have a big problem with lying.

Lying is such a strange thing. Most people know what the downside of getting caught lying could be, but they do it anyway. Sometimes, white lies are okay, like saying that someone’s hair looks nice even if it’s not particularly flattering on them, but aside from that, the entire rest of lies are just awful. Even lying to save your own butt.

If people really want to be truthful, just don’t say anything at all if you have nothing nice to say. Or tell the truth. Most people prefer if you tell the truth rather than lie to try to cover up what you did. And sometimes, even white lies can hurt the person/people you lied to.
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