Why Lie?

DeletedUser

People lie for different reason depending on their development stage. I'm sure you can ask a pediatrician why children lie... there are at least three stages of said lying. The teen stage, they lie so that they have a sense of personal freedom. Very young children lie, because to them they aren't lying when they say Mr. Fluffy did it. Children at that age are 'whole.' Ok... that's psychology... *sigh* Still lying... some of it is harmless... others is very harmful... my first lie was harmful... and I hate myself for it.
 

DeletedUser563

Ok good topic Hellstromm . Let me play along for a while . Its like that film of Ricky ..the invention of lying. I would say go and study the alternative and you would see that lieing a bit is acceptable.

So if you want to ask why people lie. Please write down here "the truth you are most embarrassed of" i.e. the night you had a few to many...the one time.... The bible says one shouldn't judge others. So instead of asking why other people lie you must look to your inner self and say "why do i lie" and then try to fix that instead.
 

DeletedUser

Sumdumass said:
IT will sound scary, but I'm going to have to side with Rice Farmer on this.

I know a guy who never wears his seatbelt while driving and if he gets pulled over, he exists the vehicle as soon as it stops to avoid the cop from actually witnessing it.
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On a sidenote - instead of getting out of the car why not use the time to put his seat-belt on? Or go the whole hog and tell the police that he wasn't driving? If the evidence of their eyes isn't good enough to tell he wasn't wearing a seat-belt why should it be good enough to say he was the driver?:p
 

DeletedUser

Can you imagine a world without lying? Relations between people would be a lot worse. Instead of "Hello, have a good morning" saying "Have a shave dumb&#$". Of course this is just the harmless part of lying.
Babies often fake a cry, kids outright manipulate they'r parents and teenagers are masters of lying to their parents. These lies are for attention mostly, out of stubbornness, wanting to get something etc. These lies are harmless but come to think of it, con artists lie for about the same reasons.
It goes even further as politics and diplomacy are pretty much based on lying. That makes puts it right there on the foundation of our civilisation.
Even Koko the gorilla told lies. Lying is compulsive.

So what are the reasons of lying? Well I believe there are as many reasons as there are lies.
 
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DeletedUser30834

Eli Makepeace said:
On a sidenote - instead of getting out of the car why not use the time to put his seat-belt on? Or go the whole hog and tell the police that he wasn't driving? If the evidence of their eyes isn't good enough to tell he wasn't wearing a seat-belt why should it be good enough to say he was the driver?:p
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I do not know exactly why. I can guess that that seat belt is uncomfortable for him or it is a protest to the removal of freedom, but it is just a guess.

As far as claiming he wasn't driving, well, someone would have to either admit to driving for him or he would have a hard time explaining to why he got out of the driver seat of the vehicle. I doubt he could make that claim remotely successfully where as a seat belt is a 2 inch strip obscured by the head rest and window panels..
 

DeletedUser21125

Ahh..the good old internet... where the men are men, the women are men, and the teens are men who work for the FBI and want to arrest you for having child porn..LOL
 

DeletedUser

turda said:
Can you imagine a world without lying?.....Lying is compulsive.

So what are the reasons of lying? Well I believe there are as many reasons as there are lies.
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I posit that man is inherently bad and thus lying is just one of the many bad things man does. Since they're all connected as a manifestation of man's nature, a world without lying would necessitate a world without any other bad thing or for man to be inherently good.

Think about it: kids don't get taught to steal from the cookie jar, per se, but they have to be taught to follow rules and exhibit good behavior.
 

DeletedUser30834

bad is such a subjective word. If you were to say self interested, you might be close. lying isn't always bad either. Stories about the boogerman kept kids from wondering off at night where there was other real dangers. Telling your ugly kid she is pretty raises her self esteem and allows her to be more successful in life. All that is lies with good outcomes intended.

And yes, kids are taught to take from the cookie jar. They need to understand the rules and such so they can put what they learned into a context. I know you used the word steal, but do they really know it is not theirs to take therefore making their action inherently bad?
 

DeletedUser

Sumdumass said:
bad is such a subjective word. If you were to say self interested, you might be close. lying isn't always bad either. Stories about the boogerman kept kids from wondering off at night where there was other real dangers. Telling your ugly kid she is pretty raises her self esteem and allows her to be more successful in life. All that is lies with good outcomes intended.

And yes, kids are taught to take from the cookie jar. They need to understand the rules and such so they can put what they learned into a context. I know you used the word steal, but do they really know it is not theirs to take therefore making their action inherently bad?
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I don't think any parent ever lied to their kid saying "you are pretty". For a parent (a loving parent that is, which is what you described as well, a non-loving parent would not lie for the sake of the kid) that child is filled with beauty inside and out, no matter the social standards for beauty. Love makes the child beautiful in the parents' eyes and it would not be a lie to tell them so. That example is the worse I've seen so far. And I do not consider withholding information from a child as a lie. That child will discover at the right time the cruelty of the world, or he would not be able to have a normal childhood and continue to be a CHILD. That does not mean one lies, one does not tell the whole truth or embellishes the truth in order for the child to understand things easier.
 

DeletedUser28032

The reasons for lying are multiple and various with both positive and negative reasoning behind them.
Telling the girl that she's pretty would be a negative as Duduie said as it is possibly more cruel than outright saying that she looks like a truck as it will just set her up for a bigger fall, though in that sort of situation your more likely to go down the ommission of facts route rather than lying.

I posit that man is inherently bad and thus lying is just one of the many bad things man does
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Is mankind inherenatly evil? no personally i believe not though that is more of a Nature Vs Nurture argument.

It takes a fair amount of intelligence to lie effectively, because if you make the lie too complex you end up getting caught out because you've either forgotten something or it just got too unbelievable. Just keep it short and simple...that or you can always blame the cat
 

DeletedUser30834

ok, so telling them they are pretty when a shaved dog's rear end walking backward is more pleasing to look at is a classic misdirection to other beauty.. The point wasn't what would happen 20 years down the road perse but why people do it and their intent. Could a parent actually tell their kid they are ugly to their face and expect the kid to take it the same as telling them to eat their veggies? I often find myself telling people their kid is cute when the reality is they are homely and annoying. I have no special love for the kid or their parents and generally don't know either enough to see any special insight into their character or manners or whatever. But I do it because saying the opposite just doesn't need to be done.

But lets take this another way. The kid is getting picked on, how many times does a parent tell them it is because those other kids are jealous of them. How about when parents say it is because the kid is smarter then them and they don't know how to handle it? There are all sorts of lies parents tell kids to make them feel better and cope with unfair situations in life. The point remains the same. Not all lieing is "bad". Let the kids deal with it when they are emotionally stronger and more capable of dealing with it. Even with telling the kid they are pretty, eventually over time, they are going to start dismissing it as the blindness of a parent and deal with their horrid looks on their own.
 

DeletedUser

It's better to teach kids to be confidant in themselves than to just lie to them.
 

DeletedUser563

So telling kids that they are not ugly is considered a lie. Please do yourself a favor and look through a readers digest of say the 60's. I am not gonna say anything but the differences in models used then and now lets one think a lot. The biggest successful lie purported and distilled in our minds is the concept of good looks. Continuing with this and classifying your children as ugly or beautiful is just not that clever. Its not about lie and truth. Its about instilling false ideas into your child head. Even if he is ugly he will never get a wife if say he is not confident and also because of the distilled perceptions he will probably look for a little princess rather than looking for personality and a appropriate match for him. As successfully shown in that masterpiece Shallow Hal. Also if you study good looking males they often will date not so good looking girls because of their much broader pool they can choose on personality.

As to schools do not think about them as places of education think of them as juvenile prisons that releases your child at 1. I bet if you compared the psychological effects of going to school to prisons and prisons gangs you will get many similarities. So invest rather in clearasil and mixed martial arts training than piano lessons :)

Ps I am and was a master pincer and finger twisting torturer so didn't really have any fights at school.
 
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DeletedUser28032

Even if he is ugly he will never get a wife if say he is not confident and also because of the distilled perceptions he will probably look for a little princess rather than looking for personality and a appropriate match for him
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It works the other way as well, you end up with drop dead gorgeous girls dating gorilla's because nobody else will ask them out, because all the other guys think she is so far out of their league that they don't bother.
 

DeletedUser

I think there is a difference of lying and sparing someone's feelings especially if its a child. You don't have to lie but you also don't have to say every thing that pops into you head either. At far as what Hellstromm brought up in the topic, ppl lie on forums because many ppl are insecure and even immature. Some pll may even use forums to role play as some one they're not.

Whether to take this to be morally wrong or if it is just using the forum as a means of entertainment is really up to each person. I personally would not be comfortable making up a false pretense to fool others and I consider it to be unnecessary. I prefer to rely solely on reason and logic and I do not like giving out details about myself.

PS: I'm not really Willypete anymore than he is Hellstromm. These are mere pseudonyms we use to interact in this medium. If you consider that, we could be accused of lying also, but it is generally understood those are not real names. So you could say too that peoples identities online are also generally understood to be questionable and should not be taken as true. On the other hand if you are making up a false certification you really should be well versed enough to back that up, or you just look stupid, dishonest, and you lose all credibility.
 
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