The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [59]
We’re all stuck inside ourselves; what we see is partial, and only fickle language is available to comprehend it. Worse, our truths reside in memories, which aren’t static entities but unreliable, imaginative acts, each recollection a minor physiological miracle, as electricity and chemicals surge, switching on allied brain cells—physical alliances that themselves ebb and shift with fresh experience and time’s sifting sands. In a sense, we are but figments of our imagination.
So why don’t we go mad?
➺ Rule three: We’re biased to believe and tell convenient truths
In Consciousness Explained Daniel Dennett reflected:
Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs, but telling stories, and more particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others—and ourselves—about who we are.
Stories save us, thanks to our amazing capacity to fit evidence to expectations and believe the best of ourselves. Paradoxically, the self-serving editing by which we confect our identities shows how important integrity is to us, how much we long to be right—whether screwing a good deal, saying an affair hurts no one, or claiming bitchiness isn’t rude.
By contrast, politic social awareness asks us to sense that truth is a contest between facts, their relevance and their meaning, which, like memories, alter with time and new information; to acknowledge that others see things otherwise, and our truth isn’t The Truth. Thus conversational caution keeps us honest, by reminding us to take turns, hear other points of view, and frame our words accordingly. Thank goodness.
Imagine if truth were all that mattered, and a one-size-fits fundamental law identified it? We could forget ethics, humility. We certainly needn’t worry about getting on, having a conversation. No, we could disappear up our fundamentals, stamp on all who disagreed, assured of our own supreme righteousness. Even former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, unbending in war, appreciated relativism:
Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said.
THE GOOD LIE: A USER’S GUIDE
So what is a lie? Concealment? Fabrication? Deception? Omission?
A useful recipe for an active lie comes from William Hirstein:
I lie to you when (and only when)
1. I claim p to you.
2. p is false.
3. I believe that p is false.
4. I intend to cause you to believe p is true by claiming that p is true.
➺ Rule four: A bad lie is antisocial
If we accept the premise of doctors’ Hippocratic oath (do no harm), we can define a bad lie by the test set in 1999 by the British judge who backed the Reynolds defense (named after the former Irish prime minister, who felt he had been libeled, but lost the case):
Is the untruth stated knowingly, maliciously, recklessly?
Which implies that:
➺ Rule five: A good lie may mean sincerely well
This fits with thinker Bernard Williams’s evocation of truth’s dual personality, as consisting of sincerity and accuracy. The laws of good manners—don’t impose, don’t embarrass—resolve the problem of when sincerity and accuracy don’t get along (you sincerely want to thank your hosts; mentioning the cat is superfluous).
And after all, competing truths redefine facts. Is the attentive, deferential doctor a docile wife or a walkover mother? Should she be? Different rules govern each role we play, and not framing our words to a particular situation or relationship courts hazard. (So if your sister had taken you to the restaurant, the cat might not be off-limits after all.)
Do as Emily Dickinson ordained:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.
TELL A LIE?
If we depend on convenient untruths, surely we need also to detect them. But while evolutionary psychologists view lying as an adaptation to aid social survival, one that hastened