Could someone live their life without ever telling a lie?
Answers
Answer:
No. Lying is an integral part of human language and thinking in languages.
In fact, one of the major hurdles for artificial intelligences will be to learn to lie to themselves in order to ‘understand’ being more human-like. Perhaps being ‘alive’ itself is a lie… “Life is but a dream.”
There is the version of reality we insist is correct for ourselves and assume must be the same for all others - we call this many things, but “the Truth or the Facts” is common, these have a certainty to them for an individual person’s mind.
There is ALSO the version of reality we believe is correct for ourselves and maybe mostly we assume must be believed by a majority of others around us (or we would get challenged a lot on those beliefs) - “our Truth” or “our Faith” or “our Belief”
There is a version of the world that ONLY you really know… these events, items, statements all occurred with you alone… no witnesses. No one can actually know whether or not you tell the truth about these things. You can use ‘the Facts’ or ‘our Belief’ to persuade others you may be telling the truth… but there will never be certainty in another concerning this version of existence… only you.
We use language, human language, not mathematics, to communicate with one another. It is an imperfect perfect manner to exchange data because every perspective is individual to each person’s mind, history, knowledge, experience, observation, belief and faith in themselves. Thus, language, and by extension, human thinking MUST BE flawed to account for the uncertainties between minds.
Lying solved the problem and bridges the gaps of uncertainty to approximate understanding between two different human minds.
A child who has just eaten a cookie, with chocolate on their face will tell the parent they did not eat the cookie because the child can no longer see the cookie → therefore the adult cannot. The child recalls getting in trouble last time a cookie was involved but cannot know whether or not the parent remembers like the child and so ‘omits’ this. The child may also not interpret past and present the same a the adult. “Did you eat a cookie?” could be understood from the child’s point of view as, “Are you eating a cookie right now?”
“No.” The child is answering. No, I am not eating a cookie right now. No, there is no cookie I am holding right now. No, my parent will be mad with me if there is a cookie, which there is not, so, No.
The child is lying? Right? Maybe, sort of…
The architecture of human languages is intentional vague because the technique of lying helps each of us understand and contemplate our existence better and smoother… that child will learn to lie to themselves to preserve self-esteem, attempt to go farther, faster and do better than they ever have before.
“I can do it!” Is a belief before the ability has been proven… it is a lie strictly, the child cannot do it because it has never been done by the child.
How many times have you heard a child or adult vow, “I have never done this thing I am about to try before!” (Which may be a Fact) but our minds, hearts and souls want to believe, they yearn to hear… “I can do it!”
As we age out of early childhood we enter the 6–11 range of concrete thinking or black and white analysis… something is or is not, a truth or a lie, and those are clearly distinct in the concrete mind.
Then we learn to think outside of the concrete constraints of it’s true or it’s false… and we see, “That could be true for him, but not her… so it is a lie and a truth.” Strictly speaking (notice even our idiomatic expressions hedge to the ‘lie’ via language… as in Strictly ‘speaking’
Humans speak less while teenagers because they are learning by listening and observing, truth here, lie here, both here, sometimes, always but… and by our early 20’s we ‘get’ the world in its greys.
Integrity and Honor are always about doing what is right, not what is true.
Acting right, being right, living right, conducting yourself right even when no one else witnesses you, treating others as if they also are striving towards doing the right-est things in their own lives.
I hope that helped you think it through,
~Chris
Hey!!
Here is your answer -
Honestly, it would be impossible for me and arguably anyone who is leading a good and cheerful life. The thing I’ve learned in life is that sometimes truth should be kept to yourself, as it does more bad than good.
People lie for the simplest of things, sometimes to make someone happy, sometimes as an excuse, sometimes they even lie to themselves and eventually they forget what was actually true and what was not.
I can give you plenty of examples how we lie in our day to day life
You visit your relative’s place and you want to leave early, say - you were getting bored there. But instead of saying the truth you make excuses like, ‘ I need to go meet a friend’ or something like that instead of the real reason.
Though it did no harm to both of the parties but the thing is that we’re so used to lying that it just comes out naturally or involuntarily.
Now, just for a moment lets just assume that somehow you do make up your mind to never lie through sheer will power or for simplicity lets just say you are permanently hypnotized to always speak the truth, then my friend prepare yourself for a life like hell on earth.
Considering a person starts this at my age, he or she will have a hardtime at work with the co-workers, since now you won’t fake a laugh and would try to stay away from gossips so that you won’t spill your mouth full of honest opinion about each one of them. Also, you would never want to give an honest advice/opinion about someone’s physical appearance or what you think about them, cause trust me on this if you say something other than what the other person expects to be heard from you, then it will be remembered as bad note.
People freely speak the truth when it is harmless, inspiring or doesn’t concern anybody. And definitely at that visit at your doctor’s when you have a serious disease or injury.
Just for the record: I am in no way suggesting that one should lie, its more like one can’t always say the truth no matter how hard he tries, he would eventually lie sooner or later, for the smallest of things that he himself won’t remember.