Guest Commentary: WHY DO PEOPLE LIE?

 

Everybody lies. It may only be “white” lies, but everyone tells lies or “omits the truth” sometimes. We start lying at around age 4 to 5 when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can (be) manipulated in a child’s environment. Eventually children begin to use lying to get out of trouble or get something they want. White lies, those concocted to protect someone’s feelings, are not a big deal at all. The person, however, who seems to feel compelled to lie about both the small and large stuff has a problem. We often call these folks pathological liars (which is a description, not a diagnosis). They lie to protect themselves, look good, gain financially or socially and avoid punishment. Quite often the person who has been deceived knows that this type of liar has to a certain extent deluded him or herself and is therefore to be somewhat pitied.  A much more troubling group is those who lie a lot - and knowingly - for personal gain. These people may have a diagnosis called antisocial personality disorder, also known as being a sociopath, and often get into scrapes with the law. Lying often gets worse with the passage of time. When you get away with a lie it often impels you to continue your deceptions. Also, liars often find themselves perpetrating more untruths to cover themselves. We hold different people to different standards when it comes to telling the truth. We expect, for example, less honesty from politicians than from scientists. We have a vision of purity about those who are doing research, while we imagine that politicians will at least shade the truth about themselves in order to get elected. Why do we dislike liars, especially sociopaths, so much? It’s a matter of trust. When a person lies, they have broken a bond - an unspoken agreement to treat others as we would like to be treated. Serious deception often makes it impossible for us to trust another person again. Because the issue of trust is on the line, coming clean about the lie as soon as possible is the best way to mend fences. If the truth only comes out once it is forced, repair of trust is far less likely. As a parent, the most important message you can send your children about lying is that you always - always - want them to come clean with you. No matter how big a whopper they have told, remind them that you would always rather hear the truth, no matter how bad it is, than be deceived. Tell them there is really nothing more sacred in your relationship than your trust of each other. Of course, all this presupposes that we have discovered an untruth - some people are so expert at deception that it often takes a long time to find out that we have been lied to.  How, then, can we best detect whether we are being misled? There is no foolproof way, but there are often clues you can see in behavior that should make you suspicious: 

• Avoidance of eye contact.  Usually someone makes eye contact at least half the time they are talking to you. If you notice them avoiding eye contact or looking down during a specific part of a conversation, they may well be lying. 
• Change of voice.  A variation in pitch of voice or rate of speech can be a sign of lying.  So can lots of umms and ahhs. 
• Body language.  Turning your body away, covering your face or mouth, a lot of fidgeting of hands or legs can indicate deception. 
• Contradicting yourself.  Making statements that just don’t hold together should make you suspicious. If you lie all the time, even about unimportant things, you are likely to have a problem that will eventually — if it hasn’t already — cause you real relationship, financial or legal troubles.  Figuring out what is driving you to lie in the first place will help heal this self-destructive behavior.  This may mean going into treatment with a therapist to discover why you feel the need to deceive.  –By Gail Saltz, Contributor, TODAY (lifted from msnbc.com) 

-oOo- 

x x x A dangerous form of lying involves deliberate deception intended to gather support for a particular organisation or group, to obtain information about the opposition or to manipulate the outcome of a situation. This includes the manipulation of information or data interpretation so as to sway the target population, or defamation of the opposing party with falsified evidence or claims.

In military operations, fabrication of information is a tactic employed regularly to throw the enemy off course or to force the enemy’s hand. Soldiers on duty at an outpost may be required to lie about their numbers when reporting so as to misinform eavesdropping enemies. Military tactics sometimes call for the planting of false information for enemies to retrieve and misinterpret - ‘leaked’ information about their next target, for instance. And some of these strategies are used ruthlessly in espionage, especially when moles are planted within hostile organisations, pretending to be allies under faked identities while siphoning information from the members. 

Why People Lie - a Summary

We have already covered different types of lies and on what occasions people tell them. But here is the question - what makes people lie? 

• Greed - for power, for advantage, for money, for admiration
• Fear - we are sometimes driven to lie by fear - usually of what will happen if we tell the truth
• Acceptance - no man is an island. We find ourselves doing whatever it takes to be accepted, to be liked and appreciated
• Habit - compulsive liars lie compulsively because they are used to it 

The Hazards of Lying

When everything depends on just one tiny lie, we forget that in order to correct one lie, seven others have to be told.
- Shevat Yehudah 

It is all too well if someone manages to get away with a little lie or deception. But what’s in it for him if he gets caught? Or - if the lie is an especially big one - what will it do to others? 

The immediate answer is:  people would lose faith in him.  He has betrayed their trust - how will he ever regain it? This is especially bad if he belongs to a large organisation or movement of some sort, because that little act will now have insinuated to the people that the person is untrustworthy, ergo his organisation is not to be trusted either - who knows how many deceitful people are in it? It may even cost the person his career, his reputation, his future. Damage like this is irrevocable.

And what of those that have been deceived? Jolly good for those who see through the lie. However, countless others will fall for it, hook, line and sinker. This is not necessarily because they are unable to think for themselves, but because they may feel that there should not be a need to question the person’s integrity, especially if he is a person of power. Status can sway the people. And in some cases, when the liar is exposed, it is not he who the people are angry with - it is the person who exposed him. 

In extreme situations, lies can also create turmoil, political upheaval, even war as people of one country are turned against the people of another because wildly inaccurate information has been propagated and their feelings have been stirred.

The most tragic hazard of lying, however, is that too often a person who repeatedly tells a certain lie will end up believing it himself. It may start out as an attempt to impress or to get sympathy, but as the lying goes on, the person himself may lose track of reality, until at the end he can no longer differentiate between reality and the fiction he has created.  –Excerpts of the article were taken from bbc.co.uk 

Gloria.  Mike A.  Ermita.  Bunye.  Gaite.  Atienza.  Razon.  Abalos.  Neri.  Now we know where they’re coming from. 

GUEST COMMENTARY: SOCIETY WITHOUT PURPOSE by Renato Constantino

As a people we have been deprived for centuries of responsibility for our destiny.  Under the Spaniards, this deprivation was open.  They ruled, we obeyed.  Under the Americans, while we were ostensibly being prepared for self-government, for self-reliance, we were actually being maneuvered by means of political and economic pressures to defer to American decisions at the same time that we were being conditioned by our American education to prefer American ways.  The result is a people habituated to abdicating control over basic areas of their national life, unaccustomed to coming to grips with reality, prone to escape into fantasies; and a leadership which voluntarily chooses Western solutions for Philippine problems — partly because it is intellectually conditioned to believe in such solutions and partly for personal expediency, since politicians tacitly recognize the danger of displeasing foreign friends. 

Thus, we have existed since 1946 as a semi-ward, content with a semi-independent status, our leaders busying themselves with stop-gap measures that change nothing, our people retreating more and more into individualistic pursuits.  We have become a people that delights in fantasy.  Objective reality stares us in the face but we either ignore it or gloss over it.  The result is a way of life that is divorced from reality. 

Reality, however, is now asserting itself and this is the reason why so many of us are confused.  This is the reason why so many events in our contemporary life have become inexplicable to most of us.  The unwholesome tendencies which we regarded merely as aberations of our normal life, not as danger signals pointing to a coming general economic and moral breakdown, are now engulfing our society, making us more confused and desperate. 

We managed to get by before; we felt that we would always get by, we thought that there was nothing seriously wrong with our society.  Some of us continue to deceive ourselves into believing that present social and economic difficulties are symptomatic of progress and of a stage of development which inevitably will bring us to the threshold of happiness and prosperity.  The purveyors of optimistic forecasts and statistics steadfastly adhere to conclusions supported by an array of figures, graphs, and tables that we are a growing economy, that we are a nation on the move.  Yet the actual conditions in the countryside present a picture of unmitigated poverty, a picture virtually unchanged through several centuries. 

THE PURSUIT OF IDLENESS 

It is true that more and more Filipinos are enjoying the boons of American gadgetry, that we have many movie houses, more television sets, more transistor radios, more nightclubs and restaurants.  We can even boast of concreting more roads and the construction of more bridges.  But what of the steadily increasing tribe of unemployed and under-employed?  What of the exploding population of peasants for whom the future holds nothing but the same desperate search for food and security that occupies them today?  And what of the many of our young whose talents have been wasted because of lack of opportunity, because of deficient education, because of malnutrition and ill health? 

The glowing prose of status quo apologists notwithstanding, we are a society without a central, common purpose, whose members are obsessed with the pursuit of idleness.  Today, a small sector of our population is endeavoring to “pass the time” through the enjoyment of available entertainment media, while the greater part of the masses are idle because of lack of opportunity to work and the lack of cultural avenues to apply their talents fruitfully.  And while we have been existing in unthinking passivity, our social system has led inexorably to the emergence of the affluent few as a twin phenomenon of poverty for the majority.  The rising affluence of the privileged stratum has only assured the continued degradation of the masses.  And it is certain that the masses will continue getting poorer while a relatively diminishing minority of privileged individuals will enjoy the advantages of immense wealth.  The plutocratic content of our social system will become more exposed and the anti-popular nature of our government will be unmasked for an increasing number of our citizens.  We shall be a country with two distinct societies — the masses who will struggle more and more fiercely for change and the beneficiaries of the system who will fight back with violence and repression to preserve the status quo. 

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES 

The picture is indeed bleak, and the promises of the politicians, which in the past constituted the slim ray of hope, are now regarded with utter cynicism.  The electoral system which has hitherto been considered as our safety valve is now not even good entertainment; it is for many just a business proposition in which the vote is a commodity and neither buyer nor seller has faith in each other.  The lack of basic issues between the two contending parties has emphasized the bankruptcy of our political system.  That is why unrest is resurgent, that is why it is becoming increasingly clear to our people that the answer does not lie in electing different men to office nor in electing first one, then the other of our traditional political parties.  After the initial post-election euphoria, our people realize that there is still no change in their status.  Cynicism and indifference are rampant.  But these are only the initial reactions.  As objective conditions make life more unbearable, cynicism will turn into widespread dissent, and indifference will give way to an active search for real alternative approaches to our problems.  (featured in the Graphic, January 17, 1968)                                  

DISSENT FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A NATIONALIST HISTORIAN

Below are excerpts taken from Renato Constantino’s book, Dissent and Counter-Consciousness, which he wrote and published more than three decades ago. You might be asking why I painstakingly took the time to encode at most eight paragraphs of his work (I couldn’t find an online copy). You might also be wondering if his views are still relevant considering the passage of time and of the possibility that the conditions then obtaining may no longer exist at present. Nevertheless, allow me to share his insights on what he calls the state of “dissent” in Philippine society. Quite expectedly, nothing has changed despite the lapse of 35 years since he introduced said ideas. The nation is still engulfed in massive poverty while our institutions, most notably Congress and the Executive Department, are still infested by crocodiles disguised as politicians.

EEEEE

On the other hand, dissent has metamorphosed into various forms, just as the holders of power have mutated from one ruthless dictator to an allegedly fake and immoral one. Some even confuse dissent with apathy, contempt and cynicism. It is therefore high time we examine our own criticisms if we are to have a better understanding of the problems facing our country.

Read the following article and try to assess whether or not your version of dissent fits one of his descriptions:

PERIPHERAL DISSENT

We proudly claim that ours is a democratic society, that we enjoy the fruits of freedom and civil liberties. From the way our politicians attack each other, from the manner in which some writers express themselves, we might be led to conclude that our society is so free our freedom borders on license. Our leaders boast of this supposed freedom, pointing to current expressions of dissent as positive proof of the health and vitality of our democracy. Let us use their own yardstick. Let us examine the nature and scope of present dissent.

Much criticism today is peripheral, concerned with details. Falling under this category are the complaints of civic-minded citizens regarding junkets, misuse of official cars, the rudeness and laziness of government employees, poor garbage collection… bad roads, poor law enforcement, and rich criminals. Such matters though important are not central. For the evils pointed out are only random manifestations of a basic disease in the body politic. They are results, not causes.

FRAGMENTED DISSENT

Another characteristic of dissent in our society is its fragmented nature. Many critics are writing valid criticisms of important aspects of government and society, but because these are only personal reactions to specific problems and are not based on a well thought out philosophy or ideology, they cannot give our people a systematic, over-all view of what is wrong with our society.

This makes dissent ineffective since it cannot give direction to popular dissatisfaction. There are truths in their criticisms, but our critics do not pursue their analysis into the roots of the social evils that they decry. For example, they have been exposing corruption for years. Since we have witnessed the same corruption in each succeeding administration, corruption must be springing from the social system, not just from bad officials or bad parties. It is therefore time to analyze the system itself in order to understand the cause of corruption.

Another consequence of fragmented dissent is its often contradictory nature. For example, some critics deplore widespread poverty and blame government for rising unemployment, but they will fight tooth and nail against any proposal which would undermine economic privilege in a colonial economy, which is precisely what is keeping so many Filipinos poor.

DISHONEST DISSENT

But the most obtrusive and the lowest quality of dissent comes from what we consider the cornerstone of our democracy — the existence of a political opposition. If dissent from other souces is peripheral, trivial, fragmentary, contradictory, at least much of it is honest. Political dissent, especially of the pre-election variety, is largely personal, self-serving, and dishonest. It is mainly motivated by a desire for position and power so that the new possessor of power my do exactly what he knew he would do — which is exactly what he criticized the other fellow for doing. No wonder each new election is the mirror image of the previous one, the new outsiders castigating the present power holders for their old sins — graft and corruption, rising prices, worsening peace and order, one-man rule. And does the relative importance of each problem dictate what shall be stressed? No, the “issues” brought before the people are what the politicians think the people will understand, surely an insult to their intelligence. The “stands” politicians take are those calculated to earn them the most votes, surely an indictment of their intellectual integrity. Pre-election dissent is dissent at its lowest level — mere posturing, gimmickry, and sloganeering — dishonesty propagated and cynically received.

SELF-CENSORSHIP

Dissent is often weakened, revised, or stifled altogether by self-censorship. The dissenter may see more than he reveals. He may understand the true nature of our problems and may already have glimpsed the nature of the solutions. But fear of consequences were he to write down each unthinkable thought deters him. His fear may only be the opportunist’s fear of losing certain lucrative connections, or it may be the fear of being stigmatised, persecuted openly or insidiously, blacklisted as a radical. Both the opportunist and the weakling are confirmed in their betrayal of their own minds and of their duty to dissent, by public apathy and indifference.

We live in a climate of intellectual frivolity. We have developed many forms of escape which entertain us and at the same time prevent us from thinking of really serious matters. Many of us are afraid to think. The rest of us never learned how. We live in an intellectual desert whose oases are few and far between.

WEATHERING THE POLITICAL STORM: WILL IT LAST?

Due to lack of material time to write my own commentary, I’m posting the following article from Bobby Tuazon of BULATLAT which somehow reflects the same sentiment as I have regarding Gloria’s seeming success against her critics. Could God be really on her side? I hope not. Or could it be that she has utilized every means possible to stay in power? Probably so.

HERE IS THE ARTICLE:

“The top newsmaker for 2005 was, hands down, the “Hello, Garci” tapes that linked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to electoral fraud in the May 2004 elections. The controversy plunged the country into a political crisis threatening to force Macapagal-Arroyo out of the presidency. And even if Macapagal-Arroyo may have weathered temporarily the impeachment charges, her presidency hangs under a cloud of doubt. The economic crisis that aggravated the year’s political turmoil has persisted with its effects influencing recent public surveys on the President: a -30 percent performance rating, one of the lowest in 20 years.

The electoral issue capped a series of flashpoints and setbacks for the President that began in early 2005. These included the fiscal crisis that further exposed the depths of corruption and mispriorities leaving government’s financial foundation in shambles. Then there was the series of oil price hikes, the imposition of the onerous Mining Act as well as the E-Vat. Despite rosy reports, Macapagal-Arroyo couldn’t hide the fact that it was under her presidency that the country suffered the lowest-ever unemployment rate in 50 years.

The presidency began to reveal further cracks with the jueteng (illegal numbers game) scandal that linked Macapagal-Arroyo and her family. This in turn forced the President’s husband and son to leave the country in a bid to stem off the heat that fueled early calls for her resignation. Their departure brought no peace to the President, however, as by late June the controversial “Hello, Garci” tapes that recorded discreet but damaging conversations between Macapagal-Arroyo with a senior poll official and other figures came out.

The tapes confirmed early allegations of electoral fraud that surfaced in the aftermath of the May 2004 presidential race. The controversy polarized the country’s major political players, with anti-Gloria opposition forces gravitating toward a coalition with both militant and moderate forces in a move to force the President to resign or be ousted. At least nine Cabinet officials also resigned in protest. The prospects of a third people’s uprising against a sitting president loomed large as political protests calling for her removal gained momentum nationwide and abroad.

The almost daily protests complemented moves in the House to impeach the President based not only on electoral fraud but other constitutional violations and widespread human rights abuses as well. Highlighting the political protests and legislative moves was the holding in August of the unprecedented International People’s Tribunal in Quezon City that found Macapagal-Arroyo guilty of gross violations of human rights, among others.

Quite unexpectedly, the President was able to ride through this political storm courtesy of the intercession of former President Fidel V. Ramos in late July as well as through reported secret trade-offs and briberies leading to the junking of the impeachment proceedings in September. The self-serving Ramos formula called for Macapagal-Arroyo staying in office until 2006 within which the 1987 Constitution would be amended to make way for a parliamentary government. The impeachment charges with proofs and testimonies would later be taken up by the Citizens’ Congress for Truth and Accountability that convened in November with no less than former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona as one of the leading convenors. The crisis ripened the condition under which the people would be initiated to the struggle for exploring options in place of a political system proven not only for its systemic corruption and for its inability to govern but also for serving as the institution that supports foreign domination, neo-colonialism and an oppressive class system.

Some of the political lessons ensuing from the crisis have included: a) the widespread dissatisfaction in the presidency and Congress itself; b) the growing perception that the political system itself is in crisis with more and more people keeping their options open for immediate reform; c) it also introduced the concept of a caretaker government or a transition council that would initiate much-needed political, social and economic reforms.

Taking over the reins of government following Macapagal-Arroyo’s removal from office, the ad hoc council’s immediate tasks include major electoral reform, a genuine constitutional change and the holding of new elections where the democratic vote would be protected. The council is supposed to brighten the prospects for the representation of all progressive, patriotic and democratic forces in a new government.

Today, the call for political reform has gained greater urgency in the light of Macapagal-Arroyo’s iron-fist policy which she has unleashed in order to remain in power. The policy has included continued politically-motivated killings and similar repressive measures like the anti-terrorism bill, the so-called calibrated preemptive response and gag orders that are meant to stop further street protests as well as investigations on the presidency in Congress.

The call for immediate political reform through a transition council and the state’s repressive measures will take the center stage in 2006 with the President expected to tighten her hold to power that in turn will likely generate more coup plots and other extra-constitutional actions. Ramos has threatened to withdraw his support for Macapagal-Arroyo unless the latter agrees to shorten her presidency and to the holding of elections in 2007.

Meanwhile, there have been no signs of ease in the fiscal crisis and the hype about “economic growth” in the last quarter of this year has failed to conceal the undercurrents of an irreversible economic downturn. In due time, the impact of E-Vat and threats of yet another energy consumption crisis and other concerns will be felt in the first quarter of the coming year. In short, what’s in store for the country will likely be more of the same that surfaced in 2005 and all these will make 2006 a most crucial year not only for Macapagal-Arroyo but for the rest of the Filipino people as well.”