We can all agree that deceiving others, particularly those close to us, is morally wrong – yet almost to the last, we have all done it at one time or another.
We can also agree that ‘white lies’, deceptions of no consequence that are employed to spare the feelings of another or to harmlessly avoiding a tiresome explanation, should not be awarded the same gravity or disapproval as a more colorful one. If most of us have indulged in the first type of lie, we’ve indulged far more in the second.
Sam Harris thinks this should stop.
The philosopher/neuroscientist tells of a seminar he attended at Stanford, “The Ethical Analyst”, presented by Dr. Ronald Howard. The seminar focused on finding an answer to a single, straightforward question: Is it wrong to lie?
In Harris’s account, all of the participating students generally conformed to the mindset presented above: of course lying is wrong, but sometimes it’s okay, if there’s no real harm done. They couldn’t get this past Howard, however; no matter what examples they produced, he managed to demonstrate that the truth was the better path.
“The course accomplished as close to a firmware upgrade of my brain as I have ever experienced,” Harris said. “I came away convinced that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly damages personal relationships and public trust.”
The substance of Harris’s defense of uncompromising honesty takes a philosophical form, but its application is pragmatic: abandoning deceit altogether, he argues, improves the quality of human interaction, the functioning of human social systems, while strengthening our own moral character. It inculcates greater respect for self and others; it urges us to improve our ethical choices in other domains. There is every motivation to take up the practice, and no perceivable downside.
It is Harris’s exposition of the downsides of lying, however, that is most compelling. He starts with an anecdote from a friend who had given another a gift, lying about where it came from, only to be corrected on the spot, innocently, by her young son. The moment was awkward and embarrassing, the friend said, and Harris’s take-home point was simple: now the woman who had received the gift knew that her friend was someone who would lie when it suited her.
“Few of us are murderers or thieves,” Harris continues, “but we have all been liars. And many of us will be unable to get safely into our beds tonight without having told several lies over the course of the day. What does this say about us and about the life we are making with one another?”
Deceit has been, of course, deeply studied by psychologists. The reader will not be surprised that one such study indicates that 10 percent of communication in couples includes deceit, or that almost 40 percent of exchanges between college students contain lies. The reality to which we are all acclimated stands in sharp contrast to how it has shaped our feelings about being told the truth: when someone goes out of their way to be honest with us when it would have been easy not to, or when the truth being told makes them vulnerable, we feel we are being given their trust – and that is a good feeling. It is disheartening, isn’t it, that this circumstance is more exception than rule?
Moreover, when we realize we have such a person in our lives, that person’s value spikes high, Harris points out: not only are we confident in our trust of them, we know they will not say one thing to our face and another behind our back; praise from them will be genuine, rather than mere flattery.
“Honesty is a gift we can give to others,” says Harris. “It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the consequences, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves.”
This brings to mind a scene from The West Wing, wherein future White House staffer Toby Ziegler is berated for not instructing Jed Bartlet, then a presidential candidate, to obfuscate the truth about a controversial vote he’d cast as a congressman. Ziegler’s defense was per Harris: he advised Bartlet to tell the truth about his vote, “if for no other reason than that it’s the easiest thing to remember.”
Another effect of the truth commitment, according to Harris, is that it “holds a mirror up to one’s life – because a commitment to telling the truth requires that one pay attention to what the truth is in every moment. What sort of person are you? How judgmental, self-interested, or petty have you become?”
Conversely, the white-lie lives that most of us live often result in inauthentic relationships: we lie to dodge commitments, to avoid conflict, and fail in our trust of our friends and family. This leads to atrophy in those relationships, which presumably exist to be exactly the kind of safe zones where we should feel free to be honest and open.
Lies are also the go-to mechanism in addiction. When one commits to absolute truth, Harris points out, “our lives can only unravel so far without others’ noticing.”
Committing to the truth also exercises our relationship muscles in other ways. When someone’s feelings are at stake, the white lie is the easy out – but while we’ve spared their feelings, we’ve also done the relationship an injustice, and missed an opportunity.
I have a friend who recently expressed that he sometimes treads lightly in his marriage, being careful how he responds to his wife when she asks his opinion about what she’s wearing (this is, of course, a classic mine field for husbands). I gave him my go-to response for that kind of question - “I don’t think it does you justice!” - an answer that is honest, inoffensive, and which creates an opportunity for the wife to reconsider. This kind of response is a win-win – trust-building, kind and effective. (I’d love to claim credit for that one, but it’s not original; an old acquaintance gave it to me, just as I gave it to my friend.)
The point is, committing to the truth urges us to offer this kind of response – not just honest, but positive and encouraging.
For myself, I’m sold at this point: I’m taking Harris’s challenge to heart, and plan to keep a journal to record my successes and failures, as well as the impact of this new practice. And it’s my plan to report back at regular intervals.
Who’s with me?
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