“Would you prefer a lie or the truth?” – V for Vendetta
Never let Jack into your house. When he leaves the deli drawer will be empty, you’ll have to burn your seat cushions, and your cat will be pregnant.
I believe in Truth. Objective, verifiable Truth.
Gravity works. 100% of the time. When I toss my keys on the table they never fall off the side and shoot up toward the ceiling, unless it’s after 3AM in Australia, and only then if Australia’s had a lot to drink. When the Earth rotates so I can no longer see the Sun, the next morning the Earth will have rotated so I can again see the Sun, provided we killed all the groundhogs. See, simple true things.
There really is Truth. Are some things not certainties? Sure. There are things that are governed more by probability, and at the quantum level there may be events that exceed our understanding, but none of those things say that Truth doesn’t exist.
Somewhere a campaign against Truth started. The big proponents of it during the last century were a group of (mainly) French philosophers who had day jobs as postmen that smoked a lot of cigarettes while wearing berets and scowling and thus became known as the Postmodernists. But digging back further in time, the French got this idea from that German, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche went hopelessly slobbering Daffy Duck® insane by the time he was 44, so, of course he was a great role model for the French philosophers. “Truth doesn’t exist? Can you tell us more? What does purple taste like?”
Rumors were that the mustache remained sane.
The concept that “there is no Truth” is infectious and has become the herpes of philosophy. Mankind only dabbled with it once, but we just can’t get rid of it. Anti-Truth has successfully taken over a pretty big chunk of our education system. An example:
I saw a tweet on Twitter® on Saturday night from a college professor. She noted that she couldn’t get a classroom to admit that rape was wrong. From the students: “Other cultures may have different views. You can’t always say that what we [the enlightened students] consider rape is really rape in another culture.” Rape wasn’t a Truth.
When the professor made the statement that the United States didn’t have a “Rape Culture”, however, the class exploded. How could the teacher make such a statement? Thoughts so muddled can only come from those that reject Truth. Thankfully, all of those kids majoring in Pre-Barista (Miles, see, I told you I would steal it) can argue Truth while they make Pumpkin-Spice non-fat decaf lattes for doctors’ wives.
But that brings us to Lies. I think I’ve established that Truth exists, so that must mean that there are Lies.
What kinds of Lies are there?
I came up with eight kinds of Lies. I’ll be the first to admit that there is subjectivity in my categories, and that I might have missed some, but I’ll assert that 99% of the lies you will ever encounter will fall into one of these categories:
- Direct Lies – these are the Lies of a five year old, or a Congressman. But I repeat myself. These are simple: “I didn’t steal the cookie.” “I didn’t touch the intern.”
- Lies You Tell Yourself – The mirror is an amazing device that allows me to completely miss how I really look. I saw a picture of myself the other day, taken from fifty feet away. “Oh, crap, that’s me! Where did my hair go? Oh, yeah, my ears. At least I can braid those luscious locks.” My mirror doesn’t lie, it just reflects photons. TLEBME – The Lie Exists Behind My Eyes. This lie makes me think of Bobby Burns and the end of his poem, To a Louse: “O, wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us.” Burns could not spell, and was Scottish. But I again repeat myself. But Burns was awesome in understanding that, when viewed from outside, we’re neither as noble as we think we are or as interesting. Except for me.
- Lies of Omission – Leaving out a word or two makes all the difference. Heck, sometimes just inflecting the wrong word is a lie. “No, dear, those pants don’t make your butt look big.” Another way to inflect that sentence is, “If you grow into your butt you will be eight feet tall.” See how a small change just in word inflection changes the whole meaning of the sentence? Regardless, omitting important details can turn a statement into a lie.
- Lies of Word Choice – Love or hate Trump, you have to admit he is the single most entertaining politician of the last 100 years. But whenever Trump says anything, the Press™ (looking at you, New York Times® and Washington Post™) has to editorialize even the most mundane news story: “President Trump today made the unfounded claim that water is wet.” Want proof? A Google® search of “Trump unfounded” led to 2.3 million hits. Google© search of “Obama unfounded” led to 1.1 million hits. But, if you look at the first page, it’s all “Trump’s unfounded statements about Obama” type stories. Exclude Trump from the search results? 400,000 hits, and EVERY SINGLE result on the front page is a defense of “unfounded” attacks against Obama. Any time you see the word “Unfounded” know that you are being lied to. It’s the “I love you” of political journalism.
- Lies of Vagueness – this is putting together a statement that can be filtered by the user to mean whatever they think it means. “I believe children are good,” might be a statement that reflects a belief that children are wonderful and full of hope and possibility. It also might mean that they’re tasty when cooked to medium with ketchup. I am coming to believe that Jordan Peterson is perhaps pretty good at this method of mendacity, even though I have reviewed him positively in the past. I’m now of the belief that I reviewed what I thought he said, rather than what he really meant, which nobody may really know. These are tougher to sift through – and require study. Beware of the vague.
- Lies of Exaggeration – it’s been a decade since Al Gore predicted an ice-free (summer months) Arctic in 5-7 years. Yeah, about that, the Danish Meteorological Institute says no ice trend at all in the last 12. You tried, Al.
- Lies of Timing – ever wonder why you’re hearing a story at a particular time and place? Perhaps manipulation is to blame?
- Lies of Confusion – Marxists are the worst/best at this. They toss together salads of multi-syllable words that they’ve self-defined to the point of nonsense. An example from the Web: “Here is where the Marxist claim for the explanatory superiority of a class analysis comes into the mix, and the distinction between oppression and exploitation becomes crucially important.” Words. Meaning? They’re trying to cloud it – they use unusual words defined in mysterious ways to divorce you from Truth. Listen long enough? Pretty soon you become convinced that Venezuela is the true Socialist Worker’s Paradise and you’re being oppressed by your boss because he won’t let you FaceBook® all day on your phone because you have to make nonfat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes for doctors’ wives. That wouldn’t happen in Venezuela!
But I’ll toss one other thought out there: If you believe that a lie exists, which no rational person would argue against, then you must agree that truth exists.
And if there’s truth? There’s Truth.
Oh, and there go my keys floating by . . . Australia must be drinking again.
