Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    
    Sometimes the reasons for lying are complex, sometimes not.
    
    Take for example your average american teenager who occasionaly
    gets into a bit of trouble: he lies to keep himself from being
    scolded by his parents. Thats simple lieing.
    
    Take a friend of mine for example. He has very watchful, careing
    parents who are too overprotective of him. He doesn't get into
    trouble of sorts but likes to have a good time once in awhile
    which sometimes his parents worry about. There is no harm done
    to him by having this good time but his parents worry needlessly.
    So instead of telling the truth, "I'm going out to party and have
    a good time.", he says, "I'm going to a movie". This is lying
    to prevent people from worrying which is bad or good. He can tell
    the truth and have them worry or lie and have them not worry.
    
    
            It's still a bad thing to do.
    
    
           Peter

    	My favorite anecdote on this topic comes from my college days...
    
    	I had a Psychology professor named Oakly Ray who used to keep
    his 9:00 a.m. Intro to Psych courses interesting by telling wild
    stories.  His favorite ones were about his wife, who , he claimed,
    was seven feet tall and used to beat him.
    
    	After a (non-class) lecture one evening, Dr. Ray took questions
    from the audience and one person asked him if his wife was really
    seven feet tall...  Dr. Ray's reply (as near as I can remember)
    was:
    
    	"Would I lie to you? Actually, I have to explain something -
    I never lie about anything important, and yes, my wife is seven
    feet tall!"
    
    	I have chosen to follow Oakly Ray's example, and I never lie
    about anything important...
    
    					--Doug

    One thing conversations about telling the truth rarely mention are 
    that there are possible honest responses to the kind of probing
    question to which most people feel tempted to respond with "white lies":

    	I'm sorry, it's none of your business
    	
    	I'd rather not tell you.

    	<Silence>
    
    These responses allow the responder to stay honest and still not
    say something.  But they make the power struggle explicit, and so
    are uncomfortable.
    
    					-John Bishop
    
    Then again, there's always "If you really want an answer, I'll make
    one up!"

    Miss Manners says that you are under no obligation to tell the truth to
    someone who asks an improper question. If someone ever calls you on it,
    you can answer, "I didn't think you could *possibly* have been serious
    asking a question like that!"
    
    	Jon 

    I've heard that there's some form of industrial psychology/management
    technique, based on absolute truth-telling, (called "Jahai pictures" or
    something) and that this absolute truth-telling becomes very
    manipulative and powerful.
    
    Anybody heard of this..?   Does this mean there are occasions where (to
    be nice to people rather than brutally manipulative) you have to be
    seen to use "white lies"?   Or seem to...?! 
    

      "Always tell the truth. It will amaze your friends and 
       confound your enemies"
                             -Mark Twain

                                                         Mike

It would be so nice and simple to say that one should never lie.

Usually, it feels better to tell the truth.  Confess and clense your
soul.  Be forgiven.  We were all taught the lesson of George Washington
and the cherry tree.

Sometimes confessing the truth can hurt the person to whom you are
confessing, such as in the case of an extramarital affair. In whose
interest is it, then, to tell the truth?

Are you doing "the right thing" in telling the "truth"?  Will knowing the
truth benefit the other person?  Or are you merely assuaging your guilt at
the cost of giving hurt to someone else? 

Of such nubby questions is the stuff of human relations.  Few are the
principles upon which we can blindly stand.


Dan

    Perhaps I'm being naive, but my opinion is that it is
    best never to do anything that you feel compelled to
    lie about.  For example, extramarital affairs:  if you
    have to lie, then you must be doing something dishonest,
    so why do it?
    
    Based on my own experience, most deceptions are discovered.
    Then one must deal not only with the original deception, but
    also with deceit.  If I am lied to once, I find it difficult
    to ever trust (ie believe) that individual again. That is
    often more difficult to deal with than the original "problem".
    
    
    "Oh what a tangled web we weave,
    
                 when first we practice to decieve."
    
    

    ref:  .9
    
    Thank you....that's my opinion, too,  but couldn't find the right
    way to say it.   My mother used to say, "If you don't want it on
    the front page of the local newspaper, don't do it."
    
    Toodles,
    	-Dotti...  

The last two replies seem to be about "doing" rather than "telling"
about what you did.  May I suggest we slide over to 146 for more on
"doing".

Dan

    Life is not black and white.  We'd like to be.  We deveop whole
    codes of behavior around it.  But the truth is, humans make mistakes.
    They don't act in black and white.  And if you look close enough
    there's a massive grey scale of every variation in between the black
    and white.  Some never bother to look that closely.  So you can
    tell the truth in the black and white belief that it's *always*
    right.  But I can think of dozens of greys that you can suffer
    through.  A few:
    
    		Do you tell a man he's dying if he asks, after his
    		wife has extracted a promise from you that you won't?
    		Do you tell a lie or break a promise?
    
    		Do you tell a child the hard facts of life and death,
    		when they ask, deleting nothing, because to omit 
    		knowledge is to tell a white lie?
    
    Now come on, life isn't black and white.  It's not that easy.  You
    have to develop a code of behavior to deal with the grey.  And if
    that involves the so-called "white lies" then so be it.
    
    Some people just don't deserve the full wrath of your honesty...
    
    Mary-Michael

    Re .21:
    
    Wife asks me to promise:  I could have said "I'm sorry, I don't
    feel I can promise that".  Or I can so promise.  But then, when
    asked "Doc, am I going to die?", I say "I can't tell you that.
    I made a promise not to."
    
    Child wants to know about X. I answer what they ask, or say
    "I don't want to go into detail here", or "more later".
    
    Result?---No problem.  Omission is not a lie.  Refusal to answer
    is not a lie.  You have a non-problem here.
    
    				-John Bishop

    I never advocated "brutal honesty".  One can be gently
    honest.  And I was speaking more of my personal behavior.
    That should be honest above all.
    
    re: your examples
    
            I would not make a promise I couldn't keep.
    
            I can, and have, explained my concept of life
            and death to my 7 year old.  In very positive
            compassionate terms.
    
       

    Ok, maybe the examples were a bit much.  But the point I'm trying
    to make here is simply that life is not a black vs. white proposition.
    There are too many grey areas where neither answer is the correct.
    Hurting people arbitrarily just because you have a thing about telling
    the truth isn't being honest - it's being blind to the feelings
    of the rest of humanity.  Some people don't want to hear the truth.
    Others wouldn't know the difference.  The same formula doesn't work
    for everybody and therefore you can't deal with all people the same
    way.  Besides, what are your motives for being "totally" honest.
    If the movtive is to hurt another with your "truths", and you disguise
    that behind you're moral code, you're lying to yourself, and are
    therefore no better than the rest of us "white liars."  There are
    times when people need to hear the truth about themselves whether
    it hurts or not, if they are destroying themselves or other around
    them by their actions or other emotional reasons (love is one of
    those as well).  However, when the only difference  between the
    truth and a "white lie" is another's feelings and the amount of
    pain you cause, being humane is far more important than being 
    honest.  Remember, people who gossip and ridicule believe they're
    always being "honest" too...
    
    Just an opinion.  Fire away
    
    Mary-Michael

    I'm not going to believe that a "white" lie is necessary until you
    can give me a good example.
    
    I already believe that some people claim to love truth so that thay
    can hurt others with unpleasant statements.
    
    			-John Bishop

    Many of the situations that have been mentioned or alluded to involve
    truth that seem to me to be unknowable.  Thus, I would need to feel
    pretty bold before I could assert that something was truth or lie.
    If is remove concrete reality from the scene, and wonder only about
    expressions of my beliefs and feelings, then I have the same problem.
    I reserve the right to change my beliefs and feelings, and often
    they are changing because I am expressing them.  That makes it pretty
    hard to for me to say I (or You) are truthing or lying.

Is it _ever_ the "right thing" to intenionally lie and really not want to
be found out?  I don't know if it's a white lie or a black one, but here's
my example, admittedly extreme.  Who can say they would never have to face
such a situation: 

I'm a resident of Germany during the reign of Hitler.  A Gestapo asks me if
my neighbor is Jewish.  I know he is.  Do I lie? 

You bet your sweet a** I do.

    Re .18:
    
    A good example!  But in that situation, "I don't want to tell you"
    is not going to be allowed.  In general the previous discussion
    has not covered the cases where compulsion (the threat of harm)
    is being used.  I believe that you don't own the truth to someone
    who is going to harm you if you refuse to answer.

    				-John Bishop

    Another example of "little white lies".  You being a secretary,
    your boss tells you to do something that is considered to be a white
    lie.  Should you be completely honest and tell him that is against
    your moral ethics or should you jeopardize your job by not complying
    to his wishes?
    

    	I was once asked to give a "kiss-off" interview (my phrase,
    not my manager's) to a person at a job fair.  The person asked what
    I thought his chances were and I answered "I don't make the whole
    decision - It will be discussed between all the people who interviewed
    you."
    	Afterwards, I went to my manager and asked her not to put me
    in that position again.  I felt uncomfortable about having to
    prevaricate and did not wish to feel compelled to do so.
    	For the record, this was not DEC.
    
    					--Doug