You are a liar. Yes, you. What? You don't believe it. Let me help you.
Let us take a deep dive into our minds. Try to recall the times you have lied in your recent past. If you can remember something (which you will be), then please try to grade the graveness of your lie on a scale of 1 to 10. I hope you are done with it. If you didn't or couldn't then here you go. Researchers had conducted this experiment in the May of 1973, at Harvard University and they had found out that, most of the people rated graveness of their recent lie around 4 to 6 on the scale of 10. Further studies proved that people tend to shy away from their gravest lies. They tend to lock those down beneath their thrones of self-esteem, greed and sometimes necessities.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Lying is a learned behavior. We learn to lie as we grow up. It isn't passed on to us as heredity. In fact, we are so good at learning to lie that this National Geographic article says, "to lie is human."
(some other animals also possess this ability to some extent)
We observe the world (big bad one) around us and learn to lie in the same way we learn to read. Although lying in the first place isn't passed on to us, but there's something extremely innate within us without which there would have been no professional liars around us. I am talking about our ability to communicate and the way we do it. To understand the anatomy of lies, we need to understand how and why we communicate.
Going back to the time when we were more like apes, less selfish and less intelligent. Can you tell why would an ape want to talk to some other ape (in their language of course)? The reason is the same as why other animals communicate among themselves even today. Yes, all animals and insects possess the ability to communicate. They do so to warn each other of potential danger, to tell the location of food, to express anger and mark their territories, to compete for supremacy, to entice one another and more. They have different signals and sounds for each and everything they need to communicate as a simple living creature running in the race of survival. Hmm, not so different from humans I guess. But wait, human ancestors evolved a bit different as compared to other living beings. We learned to fabricate stories.
Many scientists believe because of some genetic mutation our cognitive skills evolved in a slightly advanced manner. Owing to this, we learned how to attach stories along with our usual communication.
According to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, we learned to say things like, "Lion is the spirit animal of our tribe" instead of, "Be aware of lions. They are dangerous."
We started to weave these stories to explain why not everyone should be eating a particular fruit because it's for the spirits and at most, only alpha males can have them.
Just imagine if there are two people. The first one gives you only the necessary information about studies and college survival when the second person seems to have read detail manuscripts about the history of every topper in the class and how did they become one, plus some other stuff. Who would have the larger friend circle? I believe the second one. Comment below if you disagree. History tells us, similar fabrications helped our ancestors in the formation of tribes. A bunch of people majorly having their thought processes aligned had high chances of forming a tribe together.
In the context of our ancestors, the people who worshipped (or feared) the same spirits tried to stick together. Not only about the spirits but apparently, we are the only species on this planet, which is capable of fabricating detailed fictions about entities we haven't observed at all in any way possible. So this is how communication and fiction (well-crafted lies) became one of the key factors behind our development as as gregarious species.
Witchcraft of Dolores Jane Umbridge
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
We have now established the reasons behind our habit of fabricating stories and how human communication had started to evolve. Coming back to our lies, researchers have observed that we lie primarily for three reasons:
to improve our chances of getting more of or not losing something
to escape a situation especially a mistake and
to inflate or maintain our image in front of others.
Voldemort's Game of Greed
-to improve our chances of getting more of or not losing something.
Google defines being greedy as having or showing an intense and selfish desire for wealth or power. I say, let's not even consider the intensity of this thing. Humans often lie because of silly minuscule wants they have. In fact, if we notice a child lying for the first time, we are likely to find some kind of greed (childish want) as the reason behind that lie. There might be some other reasons but it won't be very surprising to me if children learn the art of human greed before mastering the human way of lie and life.
People who desperately want a promotion in office, who want to save a relationship, who don't want to be kicked out of a sports team, or who just want to stick together with a group of friends (apparent) often lie to meet their needs and wants.
I do not want to declare these people culprits. They do what humans are always expected to do. The real problem begins when such actions by these people lay thorns in the way of others. What happens to them? They face exactly complementary situations i.e. when one person tries to lie (on the resume or something) his/her way to a better position in the office, many times, some other person falls on a lower hand and finds himself/herself on a path bifurcating towards lying (not taking any chances) and not lying (taking the chances). If this example seems a bit difficult to digest then one can replace it with an example where someone tries to cheat in an exam (lying to oneself, as elders used to say) and another student who also didn't know the answer sits there thinking if he/she should do the same.
Defense against Dark Arts
- to escape a situation especially a mistake.
Enough of greed, now let's check a defense mechanism we have. What does a kid do when you catch him/her doing something they aren't supposed to do. When they are very young, obviously they make cute faces and get away with whatever they were doing, but as they grow up and start to understand the gravity of such situations (though not much), they start to lie. Like all the defenses we have in our body and mind, lying also works as a natural defense against emotional or physical harm. I am not at all trying to justify a kid lying to its parents but I am stating it's such a common act of self-defense that we start practicing it from such a tender age without even being explicitly taught to do so.
What will happen if a student is caught cheating in an exam? Is he/she going to straightaway accept and apologize? or, he/she will try to dodge the situation or lie if the situation demands? I believe you have your obvious answer here.
Gryffindor gets 500 points as bonus
- to inflate or maintain our image in front of others.
I would start this one with a question which intrigued me for a good part of a day i.e. What do we expect a heart surgeon will (or, should) reply when we ask him/her, why did he/she choose to pursue this profession? To answer this, I can only safely state that no one will expect money or fame as a reason in reply. What's the general reply then? Maybe, "To help others!"
I don't think every skilled heart surgeon, or a simple doctor, or an engineer or lawyer chooses their respective profession just for the sake of altruism and pristine passion. Passion needs some kind of greed to fuel the fire for an extended period of time. But what do we do? Do we bluntly say or expect someone to say, "Yes, I became or want to become an IAS officer for the fame"? No, we don't. We expect them to lie, most of the times, even in the interviews. These statements might present me as a person with a distorted way of observing the world, but hey! At least I am not lying right now.
We lie immaculately to save our image from being tarnished more often than we notice. In my opinion, the first step of being gregarious beings is to learn to lie and fabricate fictions. Lies to paint better images of ourselves and fictions to strengthen our bonds.
Starting from 'Dear Sir/Madam' as a salutation in a letter to wooing a love interest, we lie with various intensities and at various frequencies. We lie according to our brain's will and sometimes against it.
Here I come to the conclusion of this deconstruction with a revelation and a quote for you. Just to demonstrate the alacrity of lies we humans weave in a matter of seconds, one last time. I would like to take your attention back to the first paragraph of this post. I had mentioned an experiment conducted at Harvard. That entire paragraph was a lie. I had just fused in some details which one expects to read about an experiment and voila!
Being a liar is sometimes better for you, than being a culprit but you being a culprit is always better for others, than you being a liar. - MrRobo24
Thanks for reading this.
Constructive criticism is welcomed at sumanarpit.24@gmail.com
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