Damn Essay

AM earworm (You’ve Got To) Hide Your Love Away - Lennon & McCartney

It wasn’t really my intention to get up this early. Given, the cats were doing the usual 6:14 am, exploratory, breakfast bid for attention. I can usually growl, turn over, cover my head and get another hour though. But the brain engine started revving. The volume on the earworm went up. And I had to pee.
Upon returning to bed people were long and loudly laughing outside my window and I thought to myself “who laughs like that at 6:15 in the morning? They must be trippin’ or something.” Then I wanted to get up, to spy on the laughers, to see if they were tweaked. I hope not cuz they were pushing a baby carriage begging the question “where in the world are you taking your baby at 6:16 in the morning anyway?” Maybe to church.

Now I’m up. The cats are fed and Little ghee has performed the obligatory breakfast dance. My own stomach starts growling warningly and the roommate clogged the sink so dishes wait in a pile for his return from work to fix his screwup.

And that brings us to the subject that is on my mind of late. Lying. Why do people so casually do it? I, myself, cannot escape culpability on this. I admit I am a fan of the sin of omission if it’s going to prevent a big problem. BUT (and it’s a biggish but) that is usually a deliberate, planned maneuver to avoid hurting someone's feelings or putting them on the defensive. After spending many years purging myself of the lying factor (apparently there’s a gene for it in my family or something), I became what some friends and coworkers called “ the queen of no tact”. It is a fact that rabid, ruthless, truth telling is most unwelcome in our society. It is however interesting to note that several of the people who shamed me most often and most enthusiastically about my brutal truthing were in the final analysis found to be avid and compulsive liars themselves. I adopted a “shut my mouth” policy. Not overtly lying, but very frequently not telling my whole truths either.

I used to attribute much of it to astrology. There is an actual link in my view. A lot of water in your chart just seems to make truth a fluid substance. Try living with a lot of un-evolved Pisces if you don’t believe that. Try a quintuple Pisces if you want a most blatant example.

Now we add the idea that it is frequently attributable to “authoritarian” parents. If draconian punishments were administered the children lie instead of taking personal responsibility. This is something I’m going to be watching for in my lying studies in future. I think there is potentially a good deal of validity to this theorem.
For an example, I offer my observation of 2 brothers I know who lie in the same ways (casually, frequently and often easily detected and/or disproved) about the same kinds of things ( usually attempting to make themselves look better, cooler, smarter than they are and avoiding taking personal responsibility for their fuckups whether minute or large). Since I know their parents and have had the opportunity to hear many stories about their childhoods I feel that there certainly could be a correlation. The father is a bit of a raging ass.

Another factor I believe I detect a link with, is substance abuse. The most apparently upright citizen will easily lie if this issue is present. That one becomes a chicken and egg conundrum though. Did the self esteem problem that needs to be bolstered by lying occur before or after the substance issue?

And here’s one I really hate. I have been outright instructed to and expected to lie, by various bosses. This idea that lying is being built into business models really, really, bugs me. Force me to lie and eventually I’ll find a way to quit.

If I catch someone in one or two minor lies I can possibly, probably, mostly, overlook it . The circumstances, how comfortable or glib they seem to feel about it is a real tell. I try to accept people for the face that they want me to see. But I watch and frankly I’m judgmental. If the public face varies too much from the real face I stop trusting altogether.

Those are generally white and grey lies. My true horror is the black lie. Buddhism says this is pretending to have spiritual accomplishments you don’t. This can screw up peoples karma for millennia. Probably just not a good idea. I have seen many painful examples of this. My friend who committed suicide after the Rajneesh scandal destroyed what he believed in. Another who now hates Buddhism after following a false guru destroyed his family. Those are just a couple examples, I’ve seen a lot more. Obsessed as I am with cults and false prophets this is a big issue for me. The idea of one person throwing a huge monkey wrench into another’s spiritual growth for fun, profit and power is very alien and abhorrent.

I also think that lying for fun, profit and power about things like WMD’s or Jews, the Rom, and homosexuals being a problem or whether your industry is destroying the environment and your workers lives and health, which results in the death of anywhere from one to millions of human beings is pretty much the black lie as well. If I believed in Satan I would think it was downright Satanic. As it is I have to try to accept that those are just extreme examples of complete ignorance of the nature of reality and that the people committing such atrocities actually, truly, believe that this will somehow bring them happiness. It’s a hard pill to swallow but it is one of the only ways to try to retain compassion for them in their stupid, ignorant, destructive, negative, foolish, shortsighted, wickedness.

Which brings me to my question. By accepting all the little lies are we totally laying the foundation for the really big ones?