Category: Psychology

From: Strike the Root

Consider these events:

1. A president who started two aggressive wars, who bears responsibility for the loss of thousands of American lives along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives, leaves office as a free man without a felony record or any negative repercussions.

2. Meanwhile, the same populace that has intimate experience with lying politicians appears utterly smitten with a smooth-talking new president promising change and demanding sacrifice.

3. The Congress, which had an approval rate of 14% and which just passed a $700 billion bailout over the objections of a majority of Americans, had a re-election rate exceeding 95%.

4. Untold millions of Americans voice support of military troops as these very people are needlessly killed, injured, and separated from their families and productive work at home.

5. A general populace believed that buying unproductive assets, like housing, could make them wealthy, forever, without any coherent explanation why.

6. Researchers who pursue alternative explanations for AIDS and cancer get their funding cut and have the results of their research squelched, while others who try to improve life by providing healthful foods find themselves under attack.

Overt criminality by leaders and passive, unclear thinking by the proles have become the norm. The two go together, creating a symbiotic ecosystem of tyranny. Fraud, theft, and murder have become widespread, just as the scale of lies told and believed have reached new heights. Irresponsibility has become socialized while people in the honest pursuit of good get thwarted.

Those of us who want little more than peace and freedom don’t run the world. Pursuing freedom contradicts controlling others, so we can reason that people who pursue power have some motivations separate from our own.

I have not fully comprehended the implications of this until recently. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I had assumed that the people who wield power feel similarly about moral issues as I do—I just couldn’t see why they commit and justify unethical behavior. I already knew that states operate according to a code that the rest of us don’t follow in our own lives. Nevertheless, I assumed that a man who acts without regard to moral laws must feel guilty about it. Then, one day, I stumbled onto this idea: Suppose he doesn’t.

With only small ambitions, he probably behaves like a common criminal, a predator. He lies to gain advantage, uses force to get his way, and steals without conscience. Not feeling guilty about unethical behavior motivates him to instigate further criminal acts.

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From:geocities.com/changes1611, Why Do We Lie?

There are probably as many alleged “reasons” as there are people. But in the simplest of terms, they all fall into one or more of three groups: fear, greed and hate.

1. Fear (of being rejected, and fear of losing something [greed]):

“One other point to make, in identifying who may be an individual who lies, is a simple characterization of the perpetrator. Kashy and DePaulo, in a 1996 study, attempted to diagram the “liar”. It was found that those who tended to lie more were individuals who were more concerned with self-presentation and were more sociable. …

2. Fear of conflict:

“Behavioral scientist Wendy Gamble, associate professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Family and Consumer Sciences, has studied lying among school children, finding that children show a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of lying as a communication and relationship tool. “Children are very savvy in using deceit to preserve and maintain relationships. They learn that this behavior helps avoid conflict.” …

4. Fear (of being unpopular):

What makes charismatic liars so effective is that they believe their own lies.
“They are not acting,” says Ford. “People with a strong sense of personal identity have difficulty being good actors. Good actors can pretend. They can change their identity.”
The truly charismatic liars are more believable because they actually feel they are telling the truth.

As well, we are more inclined to believe what physically attractive, famous and powerful people tell us, whether it’s true or not, he explains. Ford places this behaviour in the “transference” category. “When we think people have a certain authority over us or that they are better than us, they remind us of our parents so we accept anything they say without question,” he says.

And lying, as an acceptable, even admirable, social skill, is gaining popularity, explains Ford.
Politicians who walk away unscathed from their lies and continue to be adored by their public reinforce the message it’s okay to lie under certain circumstances. Who can forget the words of the world’s most charming prevaricator, former U.S. president Bill Clinton: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Ford is convinced there are a number of forces conspiring to turn us into liars. He blames the media, particularly television, for spreading the word that lying is not only useful but fun….

5. Fear (Self-protection, Fear of Truth):

“Each of us in our way selectively chooses what we wish to say,” says psychologist Charles Ford, author of Lies! Lies!! Lies!!!, “or we choose not to provide the whole truth.”

“Lying to protect yourself is the most common sort of lie, psychologists agree. Another common lie is self-deception. You convince yourself that red traffic light was still yellow to protect yourself from feeling like a lawbreaker. …

6. “Social lies, or white lies, are so common most people wouldn’t even call them lies. The intent is not to deceive, but to respect the other person’s sensitivity.”

This is a lie we tell ourselves for any one or all of various reasons.

One reason is that often we are afraid to tell the truth because we fear losing something. We don’t know how to be both absolutely truthful and how to demonstrate love at the same time. We fear that if we tell the absolute truth we shall hurt or end the social relationship. This lying is not out of love or sensitivity, but out of selfishness. We do this with family, close friends, employers and coworkers, or in any relationship where we feel we have something to lose by telling the truth.

Another reason is that we don’t really care but we still wish to avoid an unpleasant or dangerous situation. … We claim sensitivity, but the fact is that we are too insensitive and contemptible of others to be able to tell the truth.

In some cases, we may know from previous experience that the person really doesn’t want the truth. They are practicing self-deception and do not want to be disturbed in their fantasy. For us to lie to them makes us an enabler of their self-deception in the same way that we can enable alcoholics or drug abusers. The fact that others choose to lie to themselves does not require that we participate in their lying. We make a choice to participate or not, depending upon our own fears or insensitivity. We choose to participate in their lying because we fear losing something or because we don’t really care enough to hold up the truth. Again it comes down to fear or insensitivity. Insensitivity is a lack of love, or in other words, hate.

“Open rebuke is better than secret love.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Pro. 27:5-6).

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From: Helium, Why People Lie

…it boils down to fear, and often results in that very thing they feared, NOT gaining acceptance, friends, and ending up lonely.

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Related:

All of My Lying Posts at ToBeFree

All of My Lying Posts at OneCanHappen, including the remedy and final result