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If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. – Mark Twain
I sometimes wonder how much of my basic honesty is due to my bad memory. If I lie, I have to remember the lie. I never was good at rote memorization. The older I get, the more I am subject to CRS (Can't Remember, ah . . . stuff). Which means if I do lie, I have to keep track of it. That means I have to record it, which in turn leads to a paper trail. Which proves at minimum embarrassing and at maximum dangerous if uncovered. (Somehow, it always is.)
Painful experience has taught me life is easier if I stick to the truth. So I do. What few lies I indulge in are inevitably lies of omission - remaining silent about something - rather than commission - overt mistruths. If I tell someone something is so, it generally is.
I treat misremembering as a different category. You know, when your memory banks glitch and you recall that car accident you were in as taking place in a different year from when it really happened. Or you conflate events - possibly combining them. A friend had something memorable happen at a place you visited and somehow over time that something memorable occurred to you rather than him. Or the record fish you caught grows an inch every year you tell the story.
That type of stuff happens to everyone. That's why when I am writing something - whether a technical report or a history book - I check everything, seeking independent verification of each fact. As the old-time newspaper editors used to tell their reporters "If your mother tells you she loves you, get verification." If I cannot get at least two independent sources, preferably contemporaneous, it did not happen. Three and four sources are better, and physical evidence rather than eyewitness accounts are better still.
Twain is right. Life is simpler if you stick to the truth.
Discussion (12)
CHARTER MEMBER
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I can't attribute the quote but I remember reading (maybe in a Heinlein novel?) that there are three ways to lie. Tell a complete lie, tell a lie by leaving out part of the truth, or tell the truth so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.
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I believe this is why police want to interview witnesses as soon as possible after an event. The more time between event and interview allows the brain to fill in any blanks with what one has seen or heard in the intervening time, or what would make sense according to your own memory banks. The brain always wants to fill in the blanks. It is not lying, but also not always the truth.
CONTRIBUTOR
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I think he also said the third way (tell the truth so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying) is the most convincing way to lie.
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I have observed over the course of my lifetime that my memory only works well when recalling truth or logical process results. My recall of mere facts relating to events where I was present is very poor unless some truth, with an essence of deeper meaning, is involved. So, if I lie, I'm acting very foolishly.
I had to look up the word 'essence' used above and I was favored with this example for meaning:
The intrinsic or indispensable quality or qualities that serve to characterize or identify something:
"The essence of democracy is the freedom to choose."
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Beyond personal relations the importance of truth telling is critical
Many decades ago, I read a book that pointed out that just about everything we know outside of personal experience is because someone told us about it. From simple facts such as there is a state called Mississippi and an African continent to more complex information like the unemployment rate is 3% or crime is down or up or whatever we only know it because someone told us so. Call it shared knowledge. When people lie about such things they are seriously corrupting that shared deposit of knowledge. When we have to make decisions based on that corrupted information we lucky to get it right and more likely to get it wrong sometimes fatally so. In business for example the result is bankruptcy.
I suspect one reason the Soviet Union collapsed is lying so permeated the system no one could know what was really going on. I think China does better because the truth to lie ratio is higher. While the U.S. is getting worse, we still see the bureau of labor statistics revise their employment figures down and the FBI quietly revises there crime statistics up. The importance of true figures is still recognized. Unfortunately when it comes to politics our leading figures are the worst offenders and yet tolerated or even admired.
I've tried to think of cases where lying is ok and the main one that comes to mind is certain cases where morale is a critical factor in success and failure is fatal. Cases where if you think your going to lose then you will. War is the big one. If a commanding officer says to his troops, We are surrounded, out numbered and no help is on the way the battle is certainly lost and they are dead or captured. If he gives them some hope however slim the actual chances they may hang on and actually survive or even prevail. It happens.
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