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Lies, Liars & Lying

Sorry, I don't care. At least, not a lot. I've been a loner all my life. but I am not enough a bastard to piss people off just because of the sake of it.

My wife of 25 years - equally someone whose trust in others had been destroyed by previous abuse - should be understood This because she was equally of the persona who had been seriously damaged by previous relationships with abusive bastards. She came to me because she thought I could protect her. Which I did. But I could not protect her against cancer so she is gone. This is not a subject I care to discuss.
That sucks, sorry for your loss :(
 
More widely, we all recognise the difference between history (what really happened) legend (romanticised stories with some historical basis but no pretence at accuracy) myth (a loose collection of shared cultural narratives with little or no historical basis) and fiction (stories deliberately created for entertainment). Each has its place.

The poet Wilfred Owen used this line in Strange Meeting: “truths that lie too deep for taint”.

Myth, legend, history. Myth is written in a language that cannot lie, the language of dreams. In myth, if one knows how to access it, one finds truths that lie too deep for taint. The creation mythologies of religions, for example, reveal how those religions came about. They reveal the psychological state of the people who founded them.

History is lies. Think of the child who lies to a parent. The parent then accuses the child of “telling stories” i.e. of lying. “Hi-stories” are just that.

Although I am talking science, not history, here, there are, for example, accounts of anomalies uncovered in paleontological digs. (Actually, palaeontology is a sort of history, the history of the early earth and life on it.) I believe that modern objects have been uncovered in layers of rock which would date the object at millions of years old. I believe that these inconvenient finds have been, as it were, buried by scientists. At the simplest of levels, then, palaeontology, the hi-story of the earth, is a lie.
 
I knew a guy who was quite the one for havering, but he was pretty harmless as I doubt anyone believed him. His favourite thing was to boast of his sexual conquests. Quite sure he was a virgin.
 
The list of atrocious behaviour perpetrated by our predecessors on this planet is utterly unquantifiable in its enormity. We may be bad - we are most probably bad in different ways, worse in some, better in others - but the idea that we are somehow 'worse' in general is so impossible to measure, and so prone to example being met with a counter example, that it's really pretty meaningless.

My own opinion - with due deference to the idea that there is no real way I can confirm this - is that we are pretty shite, but a damn sight better than many that have been before.
 
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I agree about the celebs etc flogging their books and lives.
I simply cannot be arsed with it I don’t watch the news or daytime tv I cannot stand the bbc news utterly negative and miserable.There’s better things to do with your life than listen to that shite.
 
Everybody lies. That's still not the same as it being a compulsion though.
I wouldn't say I never lie, but I do find it difficult to tell lies. Little white lies, maybe.
Generally speaking, I'm probably like a Vulcan. In most situations, it would be illogical to lie.
That said, I find that I can be making casual conversation with people and they seem to think I might be lying. I'm always giving good advice to my sister (for example), but she rarely takes it.
 
That sucks, sorry for your loss :(
I'm sorry, my post was not very coherent. What I was trying to say is that everybody lies, often enough to escape from past pain, or to avoid upsetting other's feelings. It's absurdly simplistic to talk about compulsive liars - I don't think there is any such thing. And I still make the point - what is a lie? What is 'truth'?
 
No. You get hurt if you lie.



No lies are harmless.

Lying is bad behaviour. It is a bad habit to get into, no matter how innocent the intention. And the problem with bad behaviour is that the person who, for example, lies, eventually gets hoist by their own petard. In other words, lying is more harmful to the perpetrator than to the person being lied to. That is the psychological effect of any bad behaviour. (I might add here that “good” behaviour only has beneficial effects on the well-behaved person as well as on those around them.)

A common wisdom which people have forgotten: when people look at the world, they do not see the world, they see themselves.

So, for example, when a liar looks at the world, they see a world of liars. And thus, being unable to distinguish an honest person from a dishonest person, they lose their grip on reality. That is harmful. If a person is paranoid, then they see a world in which everyone is out to get them. And thus, being unable to identify a person’s real intentions, they also lose their grip on reality. That is very harmful. (Think of the film “A beautiful Mind” in which the main character is paranoid. He was suspicious of everyone, was a conspiracy theorist, in fact. So, I wonder where conspiracy theories come from, then? What might their root psychological cause be? Answer: paranoia.)
Sorry - thats MASSIVELY simplistic
Everyone lies at some point, and everyone knows this, and most people can tell a lot of the time when someone is lying.

Imagine if you came across a car accident, and were unable to save the person burning to death inside. Would you tell their loved ones they were already dead or at least unconcious, or tell them the truth that they were pinned by their legs and spent their last 10 minutes in screaming, agonising terror?

Do you tell a child that his father left because of some convenient reason or because he never wanted the kids and he would ahve stayed with mummy if she'd had an abortion?

At this moment you're lying to yourself, ironically.
 
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That's appalling.

My father was a liar. For example, he used to come home at night for his tea and when my mother put his food down in front of him he'd pick at it. Finally he'd get up from the table declaring that he wouldn't eat that "muck". We found out later, much later, that when he did this, it was because he'd had tea at his mother's, so he wasn't actually hungry. ( BTW: My mother's cooking, while plain, was wholesome and tasty.)

My father was a businessman. The shop had a half-day closure on Wednesday afternoons. He used to tell my mother when he went out on those afternoons that he had work to do at the shop. We later found out that he spent those afternoons "working" on the golf course.

These are but two of his lies. My parents finally divorced when I was in my early 20s.

Did it take you long to discover your husband was lying?
Thankfully I never got married to him!

We were only together for just under a year but even though that was a relatively short time, he has done so much damage.

I'd describe his lies as evil one's too.

They weren't just silly, white lies but really nasty and cruel.

He'd tell stories about his family and life but little details would continually change as he obviously struggled to remember what he'd said.

It was an emotionally abusive relationship and I've since learned that he was in effect doing an adult grooming behaviour coz I had to get in contact with a domestic abuse charity to help me recover somewhat who explained all his behaviours.

Towards the end I got a lot more suspicious about the lies he was saying but every time I questioned him, he would get really angry and I also learned that this is a tactic used to stop you from asking and throw you off the scent.

I'm lucky to have escaped him.

It's his children I feel desperately sorry for and his family.
 
Thankfully I never got married to him!

We were only together for just under a year but even though that was a relatively short time, he has done so much damage.

I'd describe his lies as evil one's too.

They weren't just silly, white lies but really nasty and cruel.

He'd tell stories about his family and life but little details would continually change as he obviously struggled to remember what he'd said.

It was an emotionally abusive relationship and I've since learned that he was in effect doing an adult grooming behaviour coz I had to get in contact with a domestic abuse charity to help me recover somewhat who explained all his behaviours.

Towards the end I got a lot more suspicious about the lies he was saying but every time I questioned him, he would get really angry and I also learned that this is a tactic used to stop you from asking and throw you off the scent.

I'm lucky to have escaped him.

It's his children I feel desperately sorry for and his family.
But that isn't compulsive lying. it's deliberate manipulation, as used by possibly 90% of managers and about 50% of partners. I base the latter estimate on the fact that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I have been out with for long enough to discuss the issue has had an abusive previous partner, as I have mentioned on here before. I don't hold myself up as a saint, I just recognise women as fellow human beings, something that seems to be beyond the grasp of many members of my sex.
 
It’s the stupid, idiotic, obvious BS lies that really twist my noodle.

Once, when I was out in the Middle East and it was feckin’ hot......like, really brain boilingly hot, I took a call from a guy who I knew from a previous role (let’s call him Cpl Bullshitter) who was due out to replace one of my troops and we got to chatting.

I happened to mention that I couldn’t wait to get back to somewhere a bit cooler. “Oh, we had snow here this morning” says Cpl BS........Seeing as the UK at that time was going through one of the hottest summers for years, I found this statement a little hard to believe so I absolutely called him out on it. This lead to some serious backpedaling and he relagated the phantom snow to it being “a bit frosty”......still complete bollocks!

He did have a well earned reputation for talking shite so I was already expecting him to come out with something daft but really, what could he possibly get from telling such a pointless and easily discredited lie?
 
My mum was terrific for maintaining to anyone who listened that I was a scatterbrained, disorganised slattern who could barely put her pants on the right way round most days. She always had this kind of 'sighing resignation' about me. I was clearly not going to live up to her dream of becoming a hairdresser...
As I read your post, Catseye, it seemed to me that your mother was actually speaking of herself, but displacing her self criticism onto you. It can happen with parents and their children. No self-reflection, no healing, no sense of boundaries, and damage ensues.
 
He did have a well earned reputation for talking shite so I was already expecting him to come out with something daft but really, what could he possibly get from telling such a pointless and easily discredited lie?
I did not hear the conversation and I don't know the person concerned so I could be barking up the wrong tree, but I wonder if he was one of those people who doesn't quite "get" how humour works.

Much humour depends on the absurd, and on the contrast between what is expected and what is then said: a change of reference frame. Sarcasm — a popular form of humour among working men — is, at its crudest, saying the opposite of the truth.

I have come across people who appear to think that anything that is the opposite of the truth, or inherently absurd, is enough to qualify as "a joke".

There is of course a lot more to real humour, including timing, context, rhythm, and the scale of the change of reference frame. Analysing it can kill it. However, there are plenty of people who simply don't understand it but still want to "play the game".

Either that, or perhaps he had craniopenile syndrome.
 
No lies are harmless
Have you ever seen the film Liar Liar? It is a funny film but it neatly shows the social consequences of always telling the truth.

What happens when you meet an acquaintance in the street on your way to the bus stop and they say "how are you?" Do you stand there for the next 30 minutes regaling them on how your dog just died, there are whispers at work about redundancies, your boiler is broken and your piles are keeping you awake at night or do you say " fine thanks, yourself? "

Life is a constant negotiation with other people and you really don't need to tell everybody everything and in fact you really shouldn't.
 
Have you ever seen the film Liar Liar? It is a funny film but it neatly shows the social consequences of always telling the truth.

What happens when you meet an acquaintance in the street on your way to the bus stop and they say "how are you?" Do you stand there for the next 30 minutes regaling them on how your dog just died, there are whispers at work about redundancies, your boiler is broken and your piles are keeping you awake at night or do you say " fine thanks, yourself? "

Life is a constant negotiation with other people and you really don't need to tell everybody everything and in fact you really shouldn't.

Yeah. A world of full disclosure doesn't bear thinking about. I mean, who can honestly claim that they operate on that level even with themselves?
 
But that isn't compulsive lying. it's deliberate manipulation, as used by possibly 90% of managers and about 50% of partners. I base the latter estimate on the fact that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I have been out with for long enough to discuss the issue has had an abusive previous partner, as I have mentioned on here before. I don't hold myself up as a saint, I just recognise women as fellow human beings, something that seems to be beyond the grasp of many members of my sex.


Yeah but have a look at:

https://www.healthline.com/health/coercive-control

and tell me how many of those are not at least tropes of girlfriends and wives, often used for comedic effect and only a problem when used by men against women. How many men are gradually seperated from their friends because their girlfriend does not approve of them, or does not trust him to be out without her?

Have a look at the saga of Helen and Rob in the Archers. Rob was very much the mustache twirling villain, Helen was the innocent - despite, at various times, committing purgery, driving while under the influence, weaponising her children, indulging in a very creepy 'mothering' with the daughter (who then fled!) of her suicided ex, tantruming whenever crossed, and knifing someone in the gut. Once might think that a pair of monstrous narcicists came together and Helen, for once, found herself outclassed...

The point is what one sex is allowed to call 'abuse' the other is expected to put up with...
 
Have you ever seen the film Liar Liar? It is a funny film but it neatly shows the social consequences of always telling the truth.

What happens when you meet an acquaintance in the street on your way to the bus stop and they say "how are you?" Do you stand there for the next 30 minutes regaling them on how your dog just died, there are whispers at work about redundancies, your boiler is broken and your piles are keeping you awake at night or do you say " fine thanks, yourself? "

Life is a constant negotiation with other people and you really don't need to tell everybody everything and in fact you really shouldn't.
You will have to remind me, what is this 'meeting people' of which you speak? :p
 
Yeah but have a look at:

https://www.healthline.com/health/coercive-control

and tell me how many of those are not at least tropes of girlfriends and wives, often used for comedic effect and only a problem when used by men against women. How many men are gradually seperated from their friends because their girlfriend does not approve of them, or does not trust him to be out without her?

Yes, to be fair, I have seen that as well. Mild compared to what I've been told about, but still abusive.
 
I was thinking more about this subject last night. Of course, sometimes one has to lie.

For example, in a Game of Thrones world, you are a captive and are being tortured, say. You know that if you tell some lie, it will get you out of trouble and you will be released. Then, of course, you lie.

Another example: when faced with totally unreasonable demands by bosses, then I have lied. A friend of mine, formerly a research scientist, was told by her boss to have experimental results on his table in a couple of hours. She knew that this was totally unreasonable, that it couldn't be done in the time. She also knew that this boss was showing off in front of visitors and that he would not tolerate any protestations. She therefore made up a set of phoney test results and handed them to him within the allotted time. He was none the wiser. I have done similar sorts of things in my work.

On the other hand, I have been in situations where telling a lie would have been spotted and got me into trouble, not out of it. In fact, the incident I am thinking about was one where I was completely up front and open. I had been stopped for speeding by the police. The policeman said to me: Do you know what speed you were doing? I replied that I did not, but, looking over my shoulder at a nearby road sign, commented that it must have been over the speed limit otherwise he would not have stopped me. I also told him, truthfully, that I had been too intent on watching the view ahead (I was by scenic Loch Ness, on a quiet, minor road) and hadn't seen the sign. He gave me a pep talk about speeding, but let me proceed without a fine. In that case, it was being up front and honest that got me out of trouble. Even my passenger commented. He told me that he thought I had handed the situation well.
 
Another example: when faced with totally unreasonable demands by bosses, then I have lied. A friend of mine, formerly a research scientist, was told by her boss to have experimental results on his table in a couple of hours. She knew that this was totally unreasonable, that it couldn't be done in the time. She also knew that this boss was showing off in front of visitors and that he would not tolerate any protestations. She therefore made up a set of phoney test results and handed them to him within the allotted time. He was none the wiser. I have done similar sorts of things in my work.
The only problem with this approach is that a boss like that will come to expect the same speed of delivery, every time.
Over a period of time, this may skew your results.
 
Have you ever seen the film Liar Liar? It is a funny film but it neatly shows the social consequences of always telling the truth.

What happens when you meet an acquaintance in the street on your way to the bus stop and they say "how are you?" Do you stand there for the next 30 minutes regaling them on how your dog just died, there are whispers at work about redundancies, your boiler is broken and your piles are keeping you awake at night or do you say " fine thanks, yourself? "

Life is a constant negotiation with other people and you really don't need to tell everybody everything and in fact you really shouldn't.

No, I have not seen this film. I shall keep an eye out for it. Sound interesting.

However, as to the scenario you describe above, withholding information is not the same as lying. I might have said "fine thanks" in the past, but now I might be more non-committal if I don't feel fine. However, if I don't want to talk to someone, I will just end the conversation and move on. I won't necessarily give an excuse.

Another reason for not wanting to spend hours talking to the other person about oneself comes from a desire to be competent socially. I want to communicate well, and hogging conversations does not help with developing social skills. I had a friend who dominated every social gathering she was part of, and every work meeting. She lost friends by doing that because she was just not interested in people, only in hearing the sound of her own voice.

I do take your point, though, about life being a constant negotiation. But I prefer not to lie during these negotiations.
 
The list of atrocious behaviour perpetrated by our predecessors on this planet is utterly unquantifiable in its enormity. We may be bad - we are most probably bad in different ways, worse in some, better in others - but the idea that we are somehow 'worse' in general is so impossible to measure, and so prone to example being met with a counter example, that it's really pretty meaningless.

Yes, I can see why counter example vs. counter example is a problem. However, one has to stand back from the detail and take a more general view. An interesting exercise is to look at history from the point of view, a theory if you will, that things have been getting worse. Then, perhaps, ask if you have experienced that over your own lifetime. Of course, there is a lot of hype about, for example, the supposed wonders of digital technology that on the face of it might make it look as if things have improved. But question the hype and one will eventually realise that it is hype, mostly promulgated by scientists, business and politicians.

My own opinion - with due deference to the idea that there is no real way I can confirm this - is that we are pretty shite, but a damn sight better than many that have been before.

I do not agree. In the first instance, during my own lifetime I have seen things gradually go downhill. Life was better when I was younger. Food was better. There was far more freedom. People were less gullible. My job as a teacher was far better. Behaviour generally was better. There was more sense of community. People were less isolated. You could buy the local gossip for the price of a newspaper in the newsagent. There were newsagents, greengrocers, fishmongers etc. In the town where I live you could find out what jobs were going locally by talking to folk in the street. There were telephone kiosks. There were bank branches. People could make their own entertainment. When you did business, paid bills, you talked to people face to face. I could go on and on…….


History books tell us often that things were far worse in the past. However, take the Industrial Revolution. That took people from bad jobs working on the land to even worse jobs in factories. Then came the Technological Revolution. It took people out of bad jobs in factories and put them into even worse jobs in call centres and into the hell of open plan offices. people have become more and more isolated. Less and less in contact with their environment. None of that is healthy.

If you look at history, much is made re the advance of civilization when people settled and became farmers. That is tosh. When people gave up their hunter/gatherer way of life, a few people took ownership of the land. These few people took more and more land, dispossessing those over whom they had power to gain even more power. More recently there were the Enclosure Acts in England. More dispossession. The Highland clearances. More dispossession. In the history of the US, free grazing of cattle was prevented by land owners building fences. Settlers were marginalized. These refugees from Europe had really just switched the frying pan for the fire as the more powerful ensured that the less powerful became utterly dependent on them for work, food etc. This allowed the more powerful even more licence to abuse their dependents, the less powerful.

Moving to a settled existence weakened people psychologically. Hunter gatherers had, of necessity, more awareness of their environment. They had to have. Thus their senses were not dulled by living a predictable, farming life. For example, they had to deal with wild animals, not domesticated animals. Living off the land, hunter-gatherers had to be more resourceful, had to think on their feet. They started to loose all these abilities when they settled. The settled life has weakened people over the millennia. People are less physically and psychologically robust today. They are less resourceful etc. They have become dependent on the state for, basically, their lives. In what way can it possibly be said that any of the aforementioned is an advance? In what way can any of that have benefitted people?
 
Towards the end I got a lot more suspicious about the lies he was saying but every time I questioned him, he would get really angry and I also learned that this is a tactic used to stop you from asking and throw you off the scent.

I hope you take pride in the fact that he was not able to pull the wool over your eyes.
 
Everyone lies at some point, and everyone knows this, and most people can tell a lot of the time when someone is lying.

I do not agree that most people can tell when someone is lying. For example, when I was young, people KNEW that business was corrupt. (From "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World": everybody knows that business lies and cheats and steals from folks every day.) However, over the years, business has whitewashed itself and is now claiming to be environmentally friendly, ethical etc. etc. People today swallow those lies where they didn't 50 years ago. Politics has similarly whitewashed itself. People were more savvy in those days.

For example, in those days bosses pretty much assessed for themselves who they would hire. Now they use batteries of psychological tests and various other aids to "advise" them. They do not use their own senses any more, but have become dependent on these aids of extremely dubious quality. In teaching, it was forbidden to use one's own personal experience to assess pupils. As with the aids used by many bosses, being unable to use one's own experience disables a person's critical faculties. People today are far more gullible than in the past.
 
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The only problem with this approach is that a boss like that will come to expect the same speed of delivery, every time.
Over a period of time, this may skew your results.

My friend used experience and judgement when she acted the way she did. She knew that her boss was showing off and that there would not be repercussions. In the end, however, my friend left the world of science. She left science when she realised that lying and cheating is endemic in science. Scientists are too busy trying to be successful and will do anything - lie and cheat and steal - to get to the top. Science is a dog-eat-dog world.

As to my own experience of this sort of thing - I started small. When I increasingly saw that my bosses didn't have a clue about my work then I took bigger risks. Thus I gained the sort of experience and judgement my friend had. And it was an eye opener, I can tell you. For my bosses, my superiors, proved themselves to be blind, ignorant and stupid. This realisation showed me clearly what a mockery it was that my bosses were in a position to assess me, yet they were so inept themselves.
 
...I do not agree. In the first instance, during my own lifetime I have seen things gradually go downhill. Life was better when I was younger. ..

I'm kind of lost. What is it you actually claiming? That there was a pause in the entropic journey of the human race just long enough for you to enjoy a couple of decades of better - presumably some time after Hiroshima, but before all these awful younger people arrived on the planet.

You do realise that's what every generation in the history of human existence has thought when faced with the realisation that they aren't going to live forever (apart from the Hiroshima bit).
 
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