Here's a question for you. Is lying bad? I mean, I'm only laughing because it's a silly question in
my mind because we all lie, right? So is lying bad or is it always bad? And I know that there's
probably going to be people out there that say it's not always bad. But what if it's a necessary
tool for our own survival if we have to lie? Hmm. And then the question to you, I ask is,
have you ever told a white lie to avoid hurting anyone's feelings? Could have been your kids,
your spouse, your bosses, a stranger? Or better yet, have you exaggerated the truth to get ahead
at work? That's a good one. In today's episode of Unscripted Life, the podcast that confronts you
with the hard truth that life has no script and much of what you've been taught is an illusion.
We're diving into the complex world of lying. We'll explore why we lie when it's considered
acceptable, how to detect lies and moral and philosophical implications of deception. I'm
your host Allen Stafford. Join me as we explore human deception.
Hmm. Boy, do I have a show for you? Or should I say boy or girl or non-binary? Do I have a show
for you? I've got to be inclusive here, folks. I got to include everybody. And I don't know who
to call what nowadays. So I'm just going to throw it all out there. But it's going to be an interesting
show. And here's why. Because it's something that we engage in. And we're going to learn that it's a
part of our biological, neurological makeup. And it's also something we do for various reasons.
In this first segment on the psychology of lying, we're going to take a look at
psychological reasons, evolutionary reasons, why we lie and the different types of lies that we
have named that we engage in as a species. And you'll find that even animals lie. Yes, it's true.
But they don't lie like we do. I mean, they don't come up and say, hey, Peter,
can't tell your cotton tail looks very fluffy today. I like it when it really doesn't. That's
not the kind of lie I'm talking about. So where do I begin when it comes to discussing the concept
or the topic of lying? There's just so much to cover. I mean, I think we're lied to on various
levels throughout our life every day, every second sometimes. I mean, from government down to family
members, down to the media to marketing, everything can be construed as a lie at some point.
And the question I have of you is why do you think people lie? What is your perception of why you
think people lie? I'll tell you why. There's a whole host of reasons. I mean, have you ever thought
about why a person lies or perhaps why you lied? And yes, you do. Don't say I don't lie, because
then that would be a lie itself, right? That would be the first lie you told today if this is the
first thing in the morning for you. But we're going to find out why people lie. At least we're
going to talk about some of the reasons behind their their lying. I don't know every reason. And I don't
know that psychology knows every reason. But I'm going to give you some of the major reasons why
people lie. And the first one up is self preservation, which makes a lot of sense, right? We want to
preserve ourselves. We want to protect ourselves from negative consequences. And I think this might
be perhaps the most common lie, especially amongst kids and even adults. But I think kids engage in
this a lot. I definitely did as a kid, especially if you have parents who don't want to listen to
reason who react with their amygdala right away without rationalizing anything and staying calm,
they might have low emotional intelligence, so to speak. And so as a kid, you have to lie in
order to preserve yourself. You want to maybe avoid punishment or embarrassment or the emotional
pain that you might feel based on the repercussion that your parents are giving you for the lie.
You know, you might get a spanking. And imagine for a moment that your spouse is hotheaded or they
lose control or they they snap real quick anytime you come to them with a truth. So what do you do
in that case? You want to preserve yourself, right? You want to preserve your emotions, you want to
reduce the negative consequences that you're going to feel from your significant other. So you
lie. But what happens when you lie and then you get caught in a lie that that admit that I think
that makes it worse. I remember as a kid, I had to I had to preserve myself quite often because my
mom would lose her mind. And I don't mean, you know, literally lose her mind, but she would lose
her mind if I lied about anything. But if I told the truth, she would equally lose her mind. So it
was like, I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't. So you can only imagine the amount of stress
that that a little kid feels going into a situation where they have to, you know, try to wiggle their
way out, get real creative on how they're going to get out of the situation. And it was never,
never good. The ending was never good, whether I lied or told the truth. So it was going to suffer
some sort of consequence. So but that's why the majority of people that I shouldn't say the
majority, that's why a lot of people lie, you know, to, to avoid those consequences, you know,
whether you're a child or an adult, even an employee, I've had employees lie to me. Let me
tell you a real quick story about that. Managing a marketing department, I had a marketing specialist
who handled email marketing. And so what I would do is set schedules based on when they told me
they can have a certain task completed or a certain campaign completed. So basically, they were
owning their own campaigns, their own deadlines. Well, whenever I would see that an email wasn't
prepared, I would ask, well, where's the email? And then the response would be, Oh, I'm working on
it right now, have it in a few minutes. But I would go and check the email program and find
that nothing's even been started. It's just there's nothing there. And then I check five minutes later
or 10 minutes later, then he's just starting. So that's a lie in my book. But he would do that
for self preservation reasons, because he did not want to get in trouble. I'm not a person that's
going to yell at you or getting, or getting your face if you lie, just tell me the truth. And we're
good. We'll figure it out. We'll figure out what the problem is, and we'll fix the problem. We'll
just keep moving forward. I'm all about failing forward, learn from your mistakes. You don't need
to lie about it. But I saw the stress and angst in this employee's eyes. And I told him finally,
I said, Hey, listen, if you didn't get it done, you didn't get it done, just tell me, you don't
need to be stressed. Not about this here. We can work something out. Well, in the end, he was fired.
But that's a dull different reason. We also lie for self esteem to enhance our self esteem. I'm
sure you probably know somebody. And if you don't consider yourself lucky. I had a friend growing
up who would always lie about people he knew when he didn't know them. I remember, and if you're my
aide, you'll remember the singer back in the 80s. Her name was Tiffany. And I don't know if she had a
last name or not, but she was popular for a few years or a year or so. And he would have this
poster on her wall and he took a picture of it had a wallet size print made put it in his wallet.
And then we'll try to convince me that his girlfriend, that's his girlfriend. And then he
would wave at all the cops. And I would say, why are you waving at the cops? He goes, Oh, well,
they're my friends. I know them. When he didn't know them. He basically was trying to enhance
his own image, his own self esteem, because he unfortunately suffered low self esteem,
as I found out later on in life. But, you know, some people do lie for that. You probably know
some people who exaggerate their achievements, you know, especially on a resume or a job,
you might work with a boss or know somebody who just sits on brags about stuff that they really
haven't done. So, you know, we lie for, we lie to enhance our self esteem to make us look better.
Also social desirability. I mean, lying can be motivated by a desire to fit in or be liked by
others. I've known people who lied just to fit into a crowd. And I'm like, what, you didn't do that.
Like, quiet. I'm like, no, you didn't do that. Why would you tell them that?
Lying for social desirability also includes white lies to avoid hurting someone's feelings in order
to maintain harmony in their relationships. And I know you guys know what that is. If your wife or
your husband comes up to you, especially your wife, because hey, do I look fat? You know, that old
adage, do I look fat? And you're like, oh, no, honey, you look fine. Perfect. I love you the way you are.
Right. But no, I'm serious. We do these white lies for social desirability in order to preserve
someone else's feelings to keep that harmony. We don't want to fight. You know, I don't want to
argue with people all day long about stupid stuff. So I'm always like, yeah, yeah, you look good.
Oh, yeah, that's great. Oh, that's fine on you. Manipulation. Manipulation. I mean, that's probably
one of the big things, especially in politics and business, especially in marketing, to manipulate
your mind. We're always battling or people are always battling for space in your mind. You occupy
your mind to influence you. And that's through manipulation. And that's another reason people
lie. And they do it for personal gain, whether it be financial, social or anything else, love,
you know, sex, you name it. People try to manipulate for various reasons. And as I said,
manipulation or the deceit goes on in personal relationships, business, and specifically
politics, we're seeing it right now in this country. We're seeing, we're seeing deceit on both sides.
It's not just one side. I'm not here to make a judgment call on that because I don't know who's
lying about what, but I'm telling you there's lying on both sides to manipulate the masses
to get what they want. And they want to be the most powerful person in the world. And they're
doing whatever they have to do. And that includes manipulating the masses.
And that would be you and me, part of the masses, but I'm not buying it. So, and then avoiding conflict.
That can go along the terms of white lies. How many times have you lied to avoid a conflict?
I do it all the time. Because what happens is 99% of the time I can care less about one side
or the other on a point of view, because I understand everything's relative and pretty
much everything's subjective. So if one person has a strong opinion on something, and again,
let's say politics, it doesn't matter to me because I'm not going to change their mind. I'm not
looking to change their mind. They're trying to change my mind, but I want to avoid the conflict,
you know, especially in difficult conversations, which is typically, you know, politics, religion,
maybe even sex or finances, people just don't want to get involved with those conversations.
And so we lie to avoid, you know, any repercussion or judgment we would feel from that other person.
But one of the telltale signs that someone is trying to avoid a conversation or trying to avoid
a discussion, lying about it is like saying, oh, yeah, you're right, you're right. So if someone's
arguing with you and you go, yeah, you're right, you're right. And it's kind of a brush off. You
might try to try to find a different approach on that. But then another thing about avoiding conflict
and why we do it is, you know, for example, we might claim to agree with someone's opinion,
even if you don't, just to avoid that confrontation, think about it for a moment,
go back in time. Maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was a minute ago, maybe it was a year ago.
Can you remember a time when you just agreed with someone to avoid any type of conflict?
I do it all the time. And I'm going to be upfront and honest about it. I do it all the time,
because like I said earlier, a few moments ago, people have strong opinions about various ideologies
on this planet, you know, in society. And as a result, if you go against their ideology,
their thinking, religion, politics, freedom, marriage, whatever it is, they're going to snap
at you. They're not going to know how to self-regulate. They're not going to know how to keep things calm
and have an intellectual conversation. They're just going to lose their mind. So it's better
to lie about it. Yeah, you know what? I agree with you. We should do that. Or I agree with you. I
like that thinking. I think the same way type of stuff. How many times have you done that?
Do you probably have done that several times, if not more than that? You might have just done it,
you know, several times in the last few days, especially nowadays, if you're in the U.S.
Heck, you might even be outside of the U.S. And, you know, maybe in Belgium or Germany or something,
and you're doing the same thing with family members or friends there just to get along.
So there's a whole host of reasons why we lie. So it's not that we don't lie. So when someone
says I don't lie, let's just go ahead and say, well, that's a lie in itself, because we all do.
I mean, let's face it, we all do lie. And then we're going to get into why. I mean,
well, some of the reasons, psychological reasons why, but we're also going to get into
when is it appropriate to lie? Because there are times, I think, that are that are appropriate to
lie. And one of them is when you're telling your significant other, you look really good when you
don't think they do. So if we if we take a look, if we take a deep look at why we actually lie,
there's evolutionary reasons for that. And one is for survival and reproduction. And you may not
see this as a lie, but it really is because it's deception, it's deceiving another party. I mean,
lying itself from an evolutionary standpoint can be a survival mechanism. Because what it does
is the deception basically helps individuals protect themselves and their offspring or their
family from threats. For example, animals, animals, they use deception such as camouflage,
how many animals do you know that use camouflage, there's plenty of fish in the sea,
you know, figuratively and literally, but there's plenty of fish in the sea that lie or camouflage
themselves, even animals, chameleons, the lizard, you know, camouflages itself in order to evade its
predator. Some of them fake death. I figure what animal it was that rolls over and pretends like
they're dead. There's a few of them just to avoid it. What do they tell you? What do they tell you
when you come up against the bear? And I'm not even sure this is the right advice, but they tell you
to play dead, right? I don't know. I think I would just try to run and knock everybody outside of my
way as long as I'm the fastest runner. I'm good, right? But my point is that, you know, even from
human standpoint, people have faked their death, deceived their shooters in order to survive,
whether you're in combat or in an unfortunate situation at a movie theater or wherever.
And you may not think this, but social cohesion to people, social co-soap,
say that five times fast, social cohesion, we lie in order to be part of a group by flattering
people. How many times have you walked in and said to your boss, Hey, you look at today and you're
just really ingratiating, you're just lying to them. Hey, you look really good. Oh, I really
like what you talked about in that meeting the other day. Or, you know, you go to a friend, hey,
you did really good, maybe not even a friend in an acquaintance. Hey, I really liked what you did
with your yard or your car or something. When it's really, you know, it's BS, right? But you're
just lying in order to kind of blend in and bond and build that cohesive connection with them.
You know, we do that too from time to time. And deception can provide a competitive advantage
in the struggle for resources, like, you know, hoarding water and lying about it or the toilet
paper, the toilet paper during COVID-19. And I don't have any toilet paper when you walk inside
the garage is filled with toilet paper. I'm not giving you any. But, you know, it might be for
social status, they want to preserve their social status, or maybe they want to,
you know, secure a mate. And so they use, you know, deception in order to have a little bit
of a competitive advantage over their peers. And I'll give you an example, and especially in mating
situations, both in human and animals, you know, in mating scenarios, people or individuals might
exaggerate their qualities or resources to attract partners, go on a dating website, see how many of
these guys out there are sitting in a private jet, sitting in front of a Ferrari, you know,
looking, wearing Armani, all these here fictional reality, you know, branded items to make them look
and present themselves as wealthy when they're really nothing. I actually knew a guy who would do
that, who had claimed to be a businessman that flew around the world. And he had several women in
different cities across the US by doing that. Because he was a trucker, a trucker of all things.
And there's nothing wrong with being a trucker. Let me tell you, I appreciate truckers because they
get product from point A to point B. But he wasn't a jet set and executive on a Lear jet or his own
private jet. But he was lying, he was deceiving people. So I think what we can do is take away
from the evolutionary reasons why we lie is that it's really ingrained into our human nature,
into our biology about lying. So it's nothing that we, you know, there's, we're going to touch on some
philosophical and religious perspectives online. But those are all manmade creations in order to
keep people from lying. But when you'll take a look at it, and we've just looked at some of the
evolutionary reasons, we lie because it's part of who we are as a species, and it's not just humans.
Other species do it. They may not be trying to flatter one another, like you got some big antlers,
baby. But, but the bottom line is, you know, they do it for survival reasons, for survival reasons,
for resource reasons, and such. Okay, folks, the checks in the mail. Just kidding. I love that one.
That's a nice little white lie. That's, that's one of the types of lies that we tell people. And
we've talked about that just a few moments ago, white lies. They're a little minor lies in order
to avoid, you know, hurting someone's feelings. Or even, you know, when you say the checks in the mail,
what is that doing for you? That's buying you some time, right? Let's say you owe somebody,
and you tell them, hey, the checks, I don't know if you can do that nowadays, but back in the 70s
and 80s, you can say the checks in the mail, it's got to get, you know, take a few days to get there.
Not like this here, one day, two day turnaround time that you have with priority mail.
So it would take a little while to get there. And then you would buy yourself some float time.
And then you would go get the money and put it in your bank account. Hopefully, if you weren't
being even more deceptive about lying about sending them the money. And another one of my
favorite ones is I'm on my way. Hey, I'm guilty of that one. I mean, I will, I will be in the house
calling my wife, hey, I'm on the way to the restaurant. I'll be there in a few minutes.
And I haven't even dressed myself yet. But it buys me some time. But these are little white lies.
I mean, yeah, she knows I'm probably not on my way because she can track me. But the bottom line is,
you know, we say these things. And another one of my favorites is it's not you, it's me.
But the blame on yourself, you know, kind of softens the blow to the other person when the
other person really is the problem to you. But, you know, they, you don't want them to feel bad.
So you say, well, that's really me. So we're going to end this relationship soon. I mean,
we can go on and on and on about white lies. But, you know, you get it. I know you get it because
you're involved in white lies all the time, just like myself. And I know that's pretty bold of me
to say that you're involved. But look at, we can argue about this all day long. The bottom line is,
it's going to come back to you're involved in white lies, just like I am. And there's nothing wrong
with that. I mean, not saying anything wrong or bad about lying. I know that we have the stigma
of lying. But we'll talk about when is it appropriate to lie and doing a white lie to preserve
someone's feelings? I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as it's done with tact.
And you do it with, you know, care and not be malicious about it. It's when you become malicious
or overly deceitful in order to manipulate someone to gain up to gain something from them.
And they lose something in that. And I think that's when it's wrong to lie. But telling a little white
lie and maybe exaggeration, if it's telling, so another, another type of lies, exaggeration and
exaggeration can be in my book bad. But, but sometimes people use exaggeration to sell a point,
politicians use it all the time, exaggeration. But I don't know that it's really good in that
situation. What do you think you think being a politician and exaggerating about a situation
that's really not as bad as it looks is bad? I think it can cause harm because it incites
because it incites people. And then another type of lie, which is probably the one in which most
philosophy and most religion frown upon. And that is deceit, just pure deceit. And deceit basically
involves deliberately providing, you know, false information
with the intent to mislead or manipulate others. It would be, it would be equal to,
let's say a call center calling you, how about these guys from India that call in and tell you
that your computer has a virus or that your PayPal account is overdrawn or something along
that line? That's, that's the seat phone getting these unsuspecting people to send them money.
Even the lonely heart scam is very deceitful and where a guy or woman
who tends to like you online and then they suck money from you without the intention
of ever meeting you or being with you. And that happens all the time. That is as old as man itself
that, that deceit, the lonely heart, you know, deceptive move. And so that's, that's the kind of
wrong, wrong type of deception be involved with. I wouldn't be involved with any deception. If I
can avoid it, you know, again, if it comes down to survival, that, that, that becomes a moral question.
If it comes down to survival, would you lie? Would you be deceitful to others in order to survive?
If you had to eat, would you lie? And I'm not talking about telling a white lie or embellishing
and, you know, exaggerating, I'm talking about being flat out deceitful and dishonest to gain
food without paying for it to survive or medicine. These are some age old dilemmas that have been
discussed in philosophical and law classes from time, you know, over and over again.
Think about that question. I'm not saying I wouldn't. I'm not saying I would. It would have to depend
on the circumstance, but would you, I certainly know people in high positions that would do that.
I mean, I don't know them personally. I'm talking about, you know, remember Nixon, and if you don't
remember Nixon, and if you don't remember Nixon, if you read history books, Richard Nixon, the
former president, basically involved in the cover up on the Watergate scandal. I mean, that was
deceit, but he did the right thing. He stepped down. He didn't continue the lie. He says,
I am not a crook. And then I resign, you know, Bill Clinton, after his affair with Monica
Lewinsky, you know, Lance Armstrong, who adamantly denied doping ended up saying he doped.
Saying he doped. What a deceitful lie. I mean, that's, that's fooling the public. That didn't do
him any good. Did it. Martha Stewart about her insider trading. I mean, there's a whole host
of people who were very deceitful in order to gain personally from their lies. So we don't have a
shortage of that anywhere on this planet. I don't think it's right. But again, there are times when,
you know, you do it and you get away with it. There are times you do it and you don't get away
with it. These people didn't get away with it. But I'm sure there's a lot of people that I don't
know. I can guarantee you that has gotten away with it. So what's the big takeaway for this segment
is that we engage in lying on a daily basis. And there's various reasons we lie. And lying
isn't something that we decide we're going to go do. It's evolutionary. It's part of who we are
for various reasons, you know, survival, you know, to be, to belong, to feel connected,
to impress other people, or to manipulate if we're deceitful people. So lying is part of a,
is part of who we are as a species. But does that make it ethically and morally right?
That's the question that a lot of people struggle with is on the morality and ethical part of lying.
And that's why religion and philosophy have a say in this. And we're going to talk about that
right when we come back. Now that we have a basic understanding of what lying is, why we lie,
the different, and the different types of lies that we make, even the fact that all species,
well, not all species, many species lie. We're going to turn our heads, we're going to turn our minds,
we're going to turn our minds over to the ethical and the moral side of lying.
We're going to take a look at also the philosophical and religious implications and what they say about
lying. But first, morality, what is morality? Let's understand that first. And I know that you've
heard morality, you know, it's like he doesn't have morals or she doesn't have morals or he's very
moral. So morality basically refers to the set of principles or rules that concern right or wrong
behavior in humans. I don't know that we can get into every species on morality because other
species just don't have the consciousness to understand morality. So we're just going to refer
this to humans for anyone who might be thinking I'm talking about other species. Morality refers
to, again, like I said, the principles or rules for what's right or wrong. But the question is,
who decides the morality? You see, when you have a civilized society, you have to find, you have
to have a set of rules in order to function where everyone gets along and everyone can coexist
and live a happy life. And part of that is developing morals for that society, whether it be,
you know, a small group of villagers to a large nation like the US or even the Soviet Union or
Russia, I should say. So morality basically is concerned about what's right or wrong. Now ethics,
on the other hand, is a philosophical study of morality. It involves a systematic analysis
and evaluation of moral principles, values and rules. So ethics basically seeks to understand
and explain why certain actions are deemed right or wrong. So ethics concerns itself
with why something's right or wrong and morality concerns itself with what is right or wrong.
Sounds like a bunch of hoopla to me. But seriously, so we have to go back and ask ourselves,
why does this matter? You see, because morality and ethics is really contingent upon your own
belief system. It comes down to what you believe in a Christian, a Muslim, a Jewish person,
Buddhist, a pagan, they're all going to have different views of morality, morality, even
though there is a common thread of morality throughout all religions, they're going to be,
they're going to vary across different religions, even within cultures that are not religious,
people that are not religious that live within society or different cultures
will have a different set of morality. So when it comes down to what we're talking about is,
I'm not talking about a universal principle that's been cosmically written by the universe and saying,
this is the way it is. This is what man has created, man has said, this is what's moral,
this is what works for our community, this is what works for our belief, or our country, or
culture, or whatever. And we're going to abide by this, and we're going to get everyone to abide
by this here. And if they break the moral code, we're going to, there's going to be consequences,
whether it be in incarceration, whether it be gossiping about them, trying to oust them from
our society, condemning them, or whatever the consequences might be. So I just wanted to give
you a little bit of that background so you understand that this isn't some sort of universal
principle across all of humanity. This is something that's decided upon as a culture, as a religion,
you know, as a philosophical ideology. So whatever you believe in, that's great.
But I want you to come to me, I want you to come with the understanding that
it's open to interpretation. There is no set rule for morality, even though
there is a common thread across, you know, different, different belief systems and different
cultures. So what we'll do is we'll start off with philosophical debates on online.
So turning our minds towards a philosophical understanding of line, we're going to take
a look at Kantian ethics and utilitarianism ethics online. So Kantianism born goes back
to Immanuel Kant in the 1700s. He was a German born philosopher who argued that line is always
morally wrong, regardless of the circumstances, which is interesting. I want you to keep that
in mind because some religions and philosophies allow, they allow for some line. But within the
Kantian ethics or philosophy, there are no circumstances that allow for line, which is
interesting, because it goes against the fiber of human nature. We've already seen that line as
part of our human nature, as part of who we are. And it goes all the way back to the beginning
of man. And so Immanuel Kant believed that, you know, basically we have a moral duty to tell the
truth because line undermines the respect and dignity owed to all individuals. And again,
we're getting into words, which are ideas or ideologies that are predicated on what you believe
in. So you may not necessarily believe in that ideology. So there is no, again, I'm going to
emphasize no universal rule or law on morals or ethics. It's just what a group of society or group
of people have decided that that's what it's going to be. And so Kant's own belief is that
there is a moral duty to tell the truth, because line itself undermines any respect and dignity
owed to all individuals, which I mean, it's a utopian way of looking at things, right? Sure,
it would be great if nobody lied, but lying serves a purpose in several situations, as we'll see,
for the mere fact that lying helps perpetuate survival with many species, even human species.
I mean, right there, it tells me that Kant does not understand that lying is inherently a genetic
right. It is part of who we are as humans. It is part of who we are as a species. So it comes down
to Kant stating that one should act only according to maxims that can be universally applied.
So basically, in other words, you should only do something if you believe everyone should do it.
So the question is, if you lied, think about this for a second, if you lied, you think everybody
else should lie? I mean, that's a good question. I mean, according to Kant and Kantian ethics,
yeah, I mean, sure, if I lied, everybody should lie. But then again, we would have a very deceitful
society under that kind of mentality, under that kind of ideology. And then there's utilitarianism.
This is an ethical theory that evaluates the morality of actions based on their consequences.
The central idea behind utilitarianism is that the right action is the one that maximizes overall
happiness and minimizes suffering. Again, it's very self-explanatory. Utilitarianism believes that
morality's action is based on consequences, and that the central idea is that the correct action,
the action to be taken, is the one that gives you the most happiness and reduces suffering to the
least amount. And you've heard of the greatest good for the greatest number, and that basically
sums up utilitarianism. So utilitarianism believes that lying is not inherently wrong.
The moral value of a lie depends on, well, basically, its outcome, right? So we go back to,
you know, if a lie is, if a lie results in greater overall happiness or less harm, it can be considered
morally acceptable. I can buy into that ideology. Again, it goes back to a white lie,
if I'm going to protect somebody, I'm going to tell a white lie, according to a utilitarianist,
that would be an acceptable lie. Whereas Kantian would not accept that lie because there is never
a reason to lie unless everyone is going to lie. And again, folks, this isn't a lecture on which way
to think or believe. This is just an open discussion on the different viewpoints of lying,
because it really comes down to the morality and ethics in which you subscribe to. If you are a
Christian, if you are a Muslim, if you are a Buddhist, a Jewish, a pagan, if you are an atheist,
agnostic, it doesn't matter because it comes down to what you believe in, what you believe is in
right or wrong. But the consequence of that, the consequence of not following along with the common
good of society or what the common morality of the society is, is that you might end up being an
outcast and you might end up in prison, depending on the lie that you make. So these are some of
the consequences. It doesn't mean you have to follow everyone's morality. I believe that you
can follow your own morality, write your own ethics, but you have to be prepared to suffer the
consequences if it does not fit within the realm of that culture, that society or that group's
morality and ethics. That's a tough pill to swallow. I mean, I've marched to the beat of my own drum,
but I still have to play the game within society. So, you know, there's things I can and cannot do
within society if I want to get along and be part of that group. Does it mean is it compromising
myself? I don't think so. I think I'm just playing the game. It's the same thing I tell everybody,
play the game. It doesn't compromise who you are, just play the game because life is one big game,
right? So if you have to play the moral game or the ethical game, in order to survive,
there's nothing wrong with that. Just play the game. And then there's religious teachings online
because religion is a doctrine that teaches people how to live their life in a certain way.
Basically, I would call it a rulebook for how to live your life morally and ethically according
to the scripture or the guidance, the directions within their, their Bibles or their books. And
if you take a look at all religions, they generally condemn lying. You have in Christianity the 10
commandments that include the directive, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. And
that's Exodus 2016 or Proverbs 12 22 that states, the Lord detests lying lips, but the heat, but
he delights in people who are trustworthy. And even Jesus emphasized the importance of telling
truth. And John 8 44, he refers to Satan as the father of lies highlighting the association of
lying with evil. And again, we can get to hold, get into a whole discussion on what evil is in
their history and origin of that prior to Jesus. That's a different podcast. But the point I'm
trying to make here is that even in religion, even in Islam, you know, in the Quran condemns lying,
basically stating and do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know
it, because honesty and truthfulness are highly valued traits in Islam. But again, so let's take
a look at this, whose honesty and whose truthfulness, because if you take a look at Islam, especially
the radicals who are fighting in the name of Allah and the name of their their Quran, their
teachings, that is directly opposed to Western ideology. But they believe they're fighting for
the truth. So it's their truth, right? And we're lying. But then we think we're telling the truth
in their line. So we have this clash, this moral and ethical clash of cultures here. And who's right
in the end, who is right about this? I don't think anybody's right. I think, I think each and every
person is right. And they're wrong. They're right for their own lives. But they're wrong for the
culture in which they live. And if they go against the cultural norms, if you can, if you can follow
me on that one. I mean, and then you have Buddhism, Buddhism and Buddhism, it emphasizes the right
speech, which includes abstaining from lying. The Noble Eightfold Path guides Buddhist towards,
you know, the ethical conduct and mental development of the person. And one of the Buddhist Five
precepts, which is basically your ethical guidelines for Buddhist is to abstain from false
speech. Yeah, try telling that to a politician. I guess we don't have too many Buddhist politicians
out there, do we? Or actually practicing Buddhist politicians who follow that.
We would have everybody tell them the truth. Maybe they're all telling the truth and we just
think it's a lie. I mean, have you ever thought of that? You know, and then there's Hinduism,
Judaism, Confucianism, all of these, all of these here have central tenets that lying is morally
wrong, you know, such as in Judaism, do not lie, do not deceive one another. So as we look at
morality and ethics and philosophy and religion, we see a common thread. We're going from the
extreme of never lie, it's never acceptable to it's okay to lie if it's for the greater good
of the community or the mankind. But all of them have an underlying presumption that lying
is bad. And you should not partake in lying because it is morally and ethically wrong.
And again, this is if this is if you subscribe to their ideology, and there's nothing wrong
with subscribing to a specific ideology, as long as you live by that ideology. It's one thing to
say, I'm a Christian, and I don't believe in lying, but then I'm gonna go stab somebody or rob
somebody because then you're, you know, are you really a Christian? I mean, that's again,
a whole nother podcast right there. But if you're going to follow a doctrine, follow the doctrine
by all means, but live it all the way through, don't just pick and choose pieces. I can lie today,
but I can't lie tomorrow, but I'll lie the next day after I robbed the bank type of thing. So the
point I'm trying to drive to you in this segment here is that lying, according to many cultures,
many philosophical ideologies and many religious doctrine is morally and ethically wrong. But
I'll leave that up to you to decide whether it's right or wrong for you. And I'll leave you with
this thought before we take the break. Considering the viewpoints we've discussed, the philosophy,
the religion, the morality, the ethics of lying, how do we reconcile our actions
with any of these moral frameworks? How do we do it? Or do we just pick and choose like we've always
done? Think about that and we'll be right back. Would you say that lying to protect someone's
life is different than lying to deceive someone? But before you answer that, think real hard about
the difference, because both are involved in deception. And your answer is going to be based
on moral, your morality, what's morally correct in your mind. And for the majority of people,
they're going to say lying to protect someone or to save someone's life is more acceptable
than it is to lie, to be deceptive in order to get personal gain from somebody, thus running
the chance of hurting that person. But really, when you break it down, both are lies and both
are deceiving, but there's varying degrees. And that's how we look at lying. So I asked the question,
when might lying be necessary and even ethical? And remember, ethics is the understanding or
trying to understand the elements of morality. So the point I'm driving here is that
it's subject to interpretation, when it might be necessary to lie and ethical, as we've seen with
philosophical ideologies that any lying is not acceptable to some lying is okay,
as long as it's done for the greater good. So in this case, I'm asking you to reflect on yourself
and think about it for a moment. When might lying be necessary and ethical according to your ethics?
So when might lying be necessary and ethical? Well, we just mentioned it. And that's when we
want to present somebody from getting hurt or harm to ourselves, or other people or even our community.
Or if we want to bring about a greater good to the community, or even to our family,
then a lie may be acceptable. And again, when I say may be acceptable, this is just based on
again, your interpretation, you might think it's good to lie every day. And some people do. Some
people don't even know they're lying and they're lying. The narcissist. But in any event, let me
give you some examples. So of lying used for positive outcomes. So for example, doctors sometimes
use therapeutic privilege, meaning they withhold information or certain information from patients
to prevent undue distress to the patient, to prevent the patient from being even under more
stress when they're when they're being sick. And as an example, you know, a doctor might not disclose,
for example, a prognosis, a really bad prognosis to a patient to maintain. So the patient can
maintain their hope and their mental well being. And that's important because your mental well
being is just as a part of your healing process. And also, you know, lying and personal relationships,
we've talked about white lies, little white lies, basically protecting someone's feelings
in sensitive situations, you can read your significant other or your family members,
or even your friends, your close friends. If they have a complex about something with their body,
for example, they feel like they're overweight, or they might have, you know, a pimple or something,
and they ask you, do they look good in this dress? Or, you know, do they do they look
presentable? And you say, yeah, yeah, you do when really you don't think that they do. And that's
okay to lie because you're really preserving their emotions, you're preserving their feelings
and building their self confidence, or at least maintaining their self confidence.
We can take a look at history as well, when people lied for the greater good, and that was to protect
Jews. I mean, take a look at Anne Frank being hidden, you know, in the house from the Nazis.
Again, that is a lie, even though it's a situation created by another man to persecute a group of
people. But the downside would be is if Anne Frank was caught, which eventually they were.
But if if they had been given up and not lied about, they would have been,
they would have met their demise a lot earlier. And here's another time which I find that is okay
to be a little deceptive. And that's when you're seeking a job. Let me explain something to you.
When you go in for a job, and you might have some exposure to a certain type of a skill set,
and you exaggerate that saying that you have a lot of exposure to it, it's okay, as long as you
feel comfortable enough to learn that quickly and understand the full scope of what you're supposed
to know. And sometimes you can learn that on the job without anyone knowing. But I'm not going to
go online and say I'm a brain surgeon when I have no idea how to cut open a person, let alone a brain
or even poke at it. So that would be an exaggerated, a grossly exaggerated lie. And that would also
be very unethical, immoral, and illegal. But what I'm talking about, let's say I don't understand
this, like a certain software, I've been exposed to it, I know how to use it a little bit, but
there's plenty of tutorials online to learn it. I will say, yeah, I do, I do that very well, I've
been using that for five or six years. And that's a requirement to get the job. And then I'll make
sure that I'm sitting there at night learning that before I start my job. You know, so little
exaggeration lies like that, people do it all the time. It's not really, you know, it's not,
I guess some people could say it's unethical, but I don't find it unethical, I don't find it
immoral, you know, and it's not really, I mean, yeah, it's for personal gain, but it's not hurting
anybody. If you can correct the exaggeration, then I'll be it, go for it. I give you permission to
lie. I now say you can lie about anything you want on your resume as long as you can back it up. Okay.
So what are some strategies that we can employ for, you know, discerning whether we can lie or not,
you never thought you'd be sitting and listening to someone talk about strategies on,
deciding when you can lie and when you can't lie. And I think you innate, innately know this,
when you can and can't lie, what you can and can't get away with. And I think, you know, when you do
grossly exaggerate, or you make a deceptive lie that you in the back of your head, you're thinking,
oh, I'm going to get caught or, you know, I don't want to get caught for this here, and so forth.
So the first thing you're going to want to do is, you know, basically evaluate the potential for
consequences of lying. Is there a great consequence? So let's, let's say you do exaggerate on your
resume, and you get the job and you go and you train online a little bit, take some of these
free courses that they have for some of these software platforms, or even pay for the course,
or the tutorial, or you get some help from a friend who knows the software, whatever the case is,
and you go to work and you're doing the job. What's the worst case scenario? I mean, they
may think you don't know it. If you're not really quite 100% sure, you might get a chance to prove
yourself or you may get fired. Okay, that's worst case scenario. I don't think it's really too
earth-shattering to be canned from a job. I mean, some people do, but I don't think so. I think
that's, that's the least of it. You know, if you got arrested, then that would be something different.
So you always want to evaluate the potential consequences of lying versus telling the truth.
I mean, if telling the truth is going to lead you down a road where you're not going to get that
job, then you know, maybe you might have to exaggerate or telling the truth might have some negative
repercussion when you're telling your friend, no, I'm sorry, your hair sucks today. You look bad.
I mean, there are people that will say that, you know, and that will create hard feelings for
your friend. And if you don't care about your friends feelings or your significant others feelings,
well, then go for it, I guess. I mean, that's really up to you. And another strategy,
another strategy is assessing the intentions behind the lie and the overall context of it.
I mean, is your lie designed to be deceitful enough to where people can get hurt to where you're
trying to get personal gain, financial gain? Maybe if you're, I don't want to use this term
car salesman because I think it's overused. And I don't really believe that all car salesmen,
car salesmen are deceitful. So let's just say you're a person in a business that's involved in
some sort of an exchange, but yet you need to make this exchange happen. And so you have to be a
little deceitful, you know, you're going to be deceitful. And you know, the person that you're
trying to get the money from, get them to make the purchase, or get them to make a decision,
you know that it might not be in their best interest, but it will be definitely in your
best interest because you'll get a commission. So when you assess your intentions there,
look at it as though, is this really going to help benefit the greater good? And again,
it's really what you subscribe to the ideology in which you subscribe to, do you even care?
And I would hope that most people care because I don't think lying in general is bad. I think
it's when it's done to hurt people or to steal from them. I think that's when the problem comes
into play where lying is unethical, it's immoral, it's just wrong. So while whether the tell a lie
or not tell a lie is really up to you, it's up to the individual to discern whether that's going to
be a lie for the greater good, it's going to protect someone, or it's going to be something
that's deceitful. There are people that are just wired to lie. I mean, and you probably have known
and you probably have known some or you know some now, they may even be family members or friends
or even coworkers. But in the end, lying isn't in itself a bad thing if it's done ethically.
And what I mean by ethically, if it's done again to protect people from harm, you know, if it's
if it's to help boost someone's confidence and not put them down or make them feel inadequate
in any way, then lying is fine because it's not hurting anybody. It's when it's deceitful that
it begins to become a problem in society and becomes a problem in your relationship too.
I mean, what about lying when you have an adulterous affair? Not that everybody has one,
but those that do, they tend to lie because here's what's going to happen if you're married,
and you go out and you lie, and you have an adulterous affair, and you come home and you say,
you know, you deny it or you just don't ever tell the truth and then someday,
your significant other finds out. What are the consequences of that? I mean,
nine times out of 10, you're getting a divorce. And that's painful to go through all that.
So these are things you want to think about before you engage in any activity. Do I lie about it?
And what are the consequences of the lie? So far, we've discussed why we lie as a species,
you know, in the various types of lies and the moral and ethical dilemma of lying from a philosophical
and from a religious viewpoint. Next, we're going to take a look at how to detect lying. And again,
this is not 100% scientific because it's never 100% scientific with people, but this will put you,
this will give you some insights into the majority of how people would react in certain situations
when they're lying. And I'm going to give you a little tip on how to tell if someone's lying,
which tends to work most of the time. And we'll talk about that in our next segment.
Research shows that even trained professionals, and we're talking law enforcement officers here,
have an accuracy rate of about 54 to 60% in detecting lies. This is only slightly better than
chance itself. So it goes to say that detecting a lie is very difficult. I mean, even the polygraph
test, I mean, they can measure, they can measure, I can speak, they can measure physiological responses,
you know, like heart rate and sweating, but their accuracy is constantly debated. And I'm not even
sure that it's admissible in court as evidence. So having said that, I'm just trying to prepare you
to understand that detecting lies is not something that we can easily do. I know you're probably
sitting there and if you're a parent, you take you, you look at your kid and you say, I know you're
lying, you know their behavior, you know when they're going to lie, and especially if you're
close to somebody, you kind of know when they're going to lie. And I'm going to give you a little
tip, a little game to play. Once we wrap this segment up on how to tell if someone's actually lying.
And again, it's not 100% accurate, but it does come in handy when you want to learn about a
person's behavior before they lie. Some common signs, though, that professionals usually deploy
to determine if someone's lying is obviously body language inconsistencies, you know, usually gestures
can indicate deception in a person they can if somebody's lying, they're not processing information,
they're not sitting there and thinking about it, they're just speaking off the cuff, and they're
giving a lot of gestures, typically. And you can even detect verbal cues, verbal cues like changes
in speech patterns, inconsistencies in their stories, and that's a that's a big one. Now,
people do tend to forget over time, I wouldn't even say they tend to forget people forget details
over time. But if the story takes a big swing, if it changes, if there's a lot of inconsistencies in
it, then you know there's probably something going on here is probably not 100% truthful.
And also evasive responses, how many times have you gone up and talked to somebody and they evade,
you know, the question they don't want to respond or they come up with a whole different,
you know, response to something. That happens quite often. I don't know if you've ever watched
this here airport show, this Border Patrol show, I think it's on Netflix, in any event,
when you watch it, you see the cameras are showing people fidgeting when they're carrying drugs across,
you know, the border and they're coming into the US and Customs and Border Patrol are screening them.
Some people are just typically nervous. So going through Border Patrol makes you nervous to begin
with, I'm a citizen in the United States, and I still get nervous when I come over, come back
into the States when I'm overseas. And I don't even know why I'm getting nervous, but I'm thinking,
well, maybe they think I'm not a citizen. When in fact, I am a citizen, and I haven't done anything
wrong. So people can get nervous. However, nervous behavior is a typical sign of that someone is
hiding something or they might be, they might be lying, such as, you know, fidgeting, a lot of
fidgeting. It's that anxious behavior inside of them because they're afraid they're going to get caught,
you know, avoiding eye contact. But again, remember that this is cultural, because not all cultures
will stare you in the eye like the Western culture, like people in the United States will give you
that eye contact, you know, in the East and Asia, you have a lot of those cultures that look away
or look down. It's not respectful to stare in someone's eye. So you've got to consider the
source too. Also, when you're trying to detect a life, you're dealing with someone from an Asian
culture who was brought up in Asia that happens to be here in the States, and you suspect them
of lying. If they're not looking at you, that doesn't mean they're lying to you. So you got to
take that into consideration. And have you ever seen, have you ever seen or listened to somebody
overcompensate, you know, too with too much detail when they get too much into it? You're like thinking,
okay, what story are you trying to tell me here, buddy? Because when you give out too much detail,
and it's like you've got this whole elaborate plan thought out, and all it needed was just a
single answer response, but someone goes into a whole diatribe, then they're probably hiding something
as well. You know, something to look out for again, this is not 100%, but they're good telltale
signs, especially if you're getting a lot of these cues, both verbal and nonverbal cues,
in a conversation with somebody. And taking a look at psychological and behavioral cues,
to determine if someone's lying, look at their micro expressions. Basically, these are brief
involuntary facial expressions that reveal their true emotions, despite their attempts to conceal
them. So you can tell through these little micro expressions on their face and their eyes, but
you got to be paying attention, you can't just be glossing over their face, you've got to stare
intently, which can make them nervous as well. So be careful how you do that. And even frequent
blinking or looking away may indicate some discomfort or deceit. You know, when people are
uncomfortable, when they don't want to tell the truth, or they're not telling the truth,
it makes them uncomfortable. And so they typically will start looking back and forth,
you know, moving their head back and forth, and also blinking a lot because they're just
not comfortable with the situation. And listen to their speech patterns,
hesitations, again, not 100%, because some people do hesitate when they speak, I am one of those,
but hesitations, you know, stuttering when they're overly stuttering, if they're not typically
stutterers, or overly complex answers can be signs of lying. And those overly complex answers
might be the same thing as giving out too much information for just a simple question. These
are some signs to look for, you know, both verbally and nonverbally, when people, when you suspect
someone of lying. And again, you have to take it into context, the case, the person, you know,
how are they feeling? Do you know them well? Are they, are they just a stranger? You got to look
at all of this stuff. So I wouldn't just jump to the conclusion that, yeah, you're lying because
you're blinking your eyes a lot, maybe they have some sort of nervous tick to begin with. I mean,
you want to establish that that's a good way is to establish, you know, a baseline for their
normal behavior, what do they normally behave like, you know, then start looking for deviations from,
from, from their normal behavior. So let me give you an example in a game you can play with people,
if you want to ever find out if someone, you know, what someone's, when someone's lying.
And this is something you want to do in advance at some point, maybe at a party. What you do is
you get a few friends and you play two truths in a lie. And you might have heard this game,
it's a good icebreaker as well, that a lot of companies involve their employees in when they're
doing some sort of a seminar. And what you do is you have them think of two truths about themselves
that are true and a lie about themselves. And what I do is I observe facial expressions when
someone plays that game, when I play that game with someone. And nine times out of 10, I can
determine if they're actually going to lie to me based on their behavior. So if one set of
facial expressions leads to a truth, and then the second one follows that's similar,
then I can deduce that the third time around is going to be a lie because they're inconsistent.
Again, this doesn't always work, but it's a good way to set a baseline with somebody that you really
don't know, and you're having a conversation with. So this way, in the future, let's say it's a
coworker and you play this game with a coworker, you'll know that in the future, if they maybe,
you know, look up and down and flicker their eyelids or something as an example, they might be
they might be lying, you know, so something to keep note of. And another thing to narrow down
whether someone's lying is to basically look for a cluster of cues, meaning what you want to do is
look for a combination of signs rather than relying on just one sign. So if it's fidgeting,
don't just rely on that. If they're fidgeting, if they're sweating, if they're inconsistent,
they're not looking at you and they're not Asian, you know, from our Eastern culture,
you know, they're from, you know, a Western culture that, you know, does value that eye contact.
All of these signs together could start leading towards, you know, deception that this person
is probably deceiving you in some way or others and consider the context in which the person is lying.
What I mean by that is, are they in a high stake situation? Do they have a lot to lose here? Because
if they have a lot to lose, then lying, you know, they might be motivated to lie so that they
so that they don't lose whatever it is they're afraid of losing. So typically, higher stakes
leads to probably more pronounced signs of lying in an individual. And this, we see this when
people get interrogated in the police station, you know, for murder. That's pretty high. You're
going to end up, you know, being put away for life or the death penalty in that case. So while
detecting lying is not a pure science, as we've seen, because research shows that about 60% of
even professionals can only detect lies, which is just slightly better than chance. You want to take
a look at the entire package, so to speak. You want to look at the person and see, you know,
are they, how many of these signs of lying that we've talked about, are they, you know, exhibiting
in this conversation? Now, albeit if it's a family member, somebody or a kid of yours or child,
you're going to probably know their line just based on the fact that you deal with them on a
daily basis. And hopefully they're not lying to you every day, which becomes normal for them.
But you know them and you'll know when their behavior changes when you ask a question
that requires them to give you a truthful answer. So am I a bad person if I lie? You might say that
I'm a bad person. But are you a bad person if you lie? And you probably say that you're not a bad
person because you're not going to say that you're a bad person. We always don't, we don't really
tend to criticize ourselves and look at ourselves as bad, not even a criminal, not even a crook
looks at what he's doing is bad. There was that movie American gangster with, I think it was Denzel
Washington who played the gangster who's out, given out turkeys at Christmas time, you know,
money that he's selling crack in the neighborhood. He didn't consider himself a villain. He considered
himself a community do gooder, basically doing good for the community by providing for them
through the money he made from drugs. So he wasn't a bad criminal. He was just more of a
good Samaritan or good community member giving food to the community, give him back to his
community in which he's selling drugs to. But are you a bad person if you lie? I mean, that is a
moral dilemma. We don't want to be known as liars. Nobody wants to be known as a liar unless a liar
wants to be known as a liar. In that case, that's completely different. And that's really nothing
related to what I'm talking about. But are you a bad person? You know, what, what, what kind of
internal conflict or ethical considerations arise when you decide to lie? And you know, you're
going to lie about something, you know, I mean, how many times have you faked being sick and called
in and coughed a few times, told you about, hey, I'm sick. I mean, that's a lie. But what are the
internal conflicts that you feel? Or do you feel anything at all? I mean, I mean, does it make
you feel like a bad person? I don't think it should. I mean, again, because we've talked about
there, there are proper ways or proper times that you can tell a lie. And that is, you know,
to protect somebody or to even maybe protect yourself, maybe you're not feeling good. And
you know, you can go to work, but you don't really want to go to work and you want to rest.
That's kind of self preservation. But I do know that when we do lie and we have that
internal conflict, we have, we kind of feel guilty about it. I mean, we got that internal,
internal guilt. And we also experience what's known as cognitive dissonance that comes with lying.
I mean, we're at odds with our belief system, right? We might not believe that lying is good.
At least we don't want to be known as liars. But yet when we lie, we're like, wait a second,
I have a conflict of interest in my own, my own values here. What do I do? I think that I think
it comes down to understanding the difference between harmful and deceitful lying versus
non harmful and deceitful lying. What are you engaging in? What is the context in what you're
lying about? And is it to prevent harm or to keep somebody from feeling, you know, low self-esteem?
And what about strategic lying? Strategic lying might involve something like a whistleblower who
exposes a corporate misconduct, but had to lie to get that information. Is that wrong? Think about it.
If a company, let's say, is spilling toxic chemicals into the ocean, and a whistleblower
exposes that corporate misconduct, but he had to do so through lying, maybe he posed as a reporter,
or maybe he posed as a another department head to gain access, whatever the case is,
but he lied to get the information. Is that justified? I mean, can you justify that?
Think about why you can justify it. And I know why, and I know you know why by now, and it's for
the greater good, because we really don't want toxicity spewing into our oceans, killing our fish,
and ruining our environment, do we? I mean, some people may not care if they don't live near the
area, but for most people, that's not something they want to see. So they'll engage in lying and
deceit in order to get that information to nail the corporate of the company. I mean, and this
happens a lot in politics, you have diplomats who lie to prevent basically international conflict
all the time. You know, you might have to tell a lie. I mean, what about countries that bomb other
countries and then lie about it anyway? I mean, we know they did it. I know we didn't do that,
because they don't want to suffer the consequence of being bombed themselves in retaliation, right?
So they lie. So it comes down to this, how do we navigate basically our moral compass in situations
where lying seems justified to us? And again, I use those terms lightly because lying can always be
justified if it's part of your reality. Okay, it doesn't make it great or good for the greater good
of society. It might make it good for you in order to survive in the environment, but it doesn't make
it great for everybody else. But how do we navigate our moral compass? Assuming you have a moral compass
in situations where lying seems to be justified, we can always weigh the consequences and the
intentions, right? We can always take a look at it. What are the consequences? They're small. What
are my intentions? Are they good? Well, I'm going to lie, you know, and that's okay. And you might
even want to go so far as to establish personal guidelines. I'm not kidding, folks. Establishing
personal guidelines online. What is ethically and morally correct to lie about and what is not?
And maybe build yourself some sort of set of core values and build that personal guideline into the
core values. So this way you don't suffer, you know, cognitive dissonance or guilt when it comes to
actually lying. Maybe have a contingency plan too in case you find yourself in a, you know,
very difficult situation and you have to lie to get out of it and it seems to be deceitful and
hurtful to other people. Maybe you have some sort of contingency plan in your core values that
allows you to do that. But whatever you can do up front to help mitigate any guilt that you have
about lying, I recommend doing that. And again, this isn't about going out and being deceitful.
It's about being able to cope and deal with your own, you know, morality when it comes time to lying.
If you're not okay with little white lies, we don't want you going out being deceitful and
hurting other people. But, you know, that some people just, you know, get a thrill out of that.
Folks, we've talked a lot about lying, you know, is it good? Is it bad? Is it moral? Is it ethical?
I mean, it really comes down to the individual, right? In the context in which they're going to
lie. So we've seen that lying is not, you know, bad on its own merit. It becomes bad when it
goes against the greater good of society, when it goes to deceive others and bring them harm.
We've learned that there's a psychological and evolutionary reason for lying. I mean, we've,
we did it to survive. It's deeply embedded in our human behavior for self-preservation,
for social cohesion, and just pure survival. And then there's the types of lies we tell.
We, you know, we label them, and we tend to label everything on, you know, in our life.
Why not label lies? There's little white lies we tell. There's exaggerations and deceit.
And they serve different purposes and have basically varying moral implications. And again,
it comes down to what can you tolerate morally when you lie? So it comes down to this. Lying is a
complex and multifaceted. I'm talking multifaceted behavior with extreme, well, not maybe extreme,
but with significant implications for personal and professional relationships.
And sometimes while lying can be justified, it does often raise moral and ethical questions
that require careful consideration, considering you're buying into the morality and ethics of
that collective group that you're part of, which I hope you are. If not, well, then that's a different
story. You know, and then we've understood that lies can protect, you know, they can harm,
they can manipulate, they can benefit. It all depends on the context. And when it comes down to
this here, folks, lying is like walking on a tightrope, you basically need to navigate those gray
areas. When it involves balancing honesty with strategic deception, always taking into account
the broader impact on trust and integrity, because all you have is integrity. Everything else is
materialistic. And if you ruin your integrity, chances are people don't want to deal with you
too much. You know, I want to encourage you as you go out into the world,
as you go to work, as you interact with your family members, I want to encourage you to
examine your own use of lies and consider the reasons that you lie in the consequences behind
your actions, you know, the actions that can happen. Think critically as well. Think critically
think critically about the ethical implications that your lies may have, and always try to strive
for honesty whenever possible. And as I've stated earlier, develop some sort of personal
guidelines for lying. I mean, it sounds funny. Hey, I've got a personal set of guidelines for lying.
But you want to devise a plan or a strategy or guideline for lying that basically aligns with
your own values and the well-being of others. So take it into consideration for the greater good
of the society in which you live in. And I want to thank you for listening and leave you with
this closing thought. In a world where truth and deception often intertwine, how do we ensure that
our lies protect rather than betray, build rather than destroy, and ultimately reflect our deepest
values and intentions? Thanks for listening to Life Unscripted.