People find it easy to lie because people are self-centered. It also doesn't help that our leaders will lie, lie, and lie some more, then when caught, deny it, until denial is no longer an option, then they justify it. Political leaders of all stripes, clergy, you name it.
Why do people find it so easy to lie?
- Thread starter G-MAN
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Although I surely ran it to an extreme here, G-Man, the point I essentially made was that you have to make honesty pay. Not just conduct. You can't make honesty a penalty ..otherwise ..you'll be naive to expect it to always be the realistic and natural result.
In your case, honesty, quite literally, didn't pay. In your case it's a matter that $2 isn't worth your sacrifice in personal standards of integrity. There are certain situations where honesty and candor can cost you big time.
How about:
"How much would you like to pay a month for this car?"
When something goes wrong - "What did you do different?" (no matter what it was - related or not - that's it).
.etc..etc.
Now in my personal example...although I was totally honest and candid ..I was not "discrete". For some reason ..some get offended (or act that way anyway) when you shatter naive expectations that they haven't thought through very well for practical worth. It could be just as likely that the person expecting ..or demanding honesty ..would not deliver it themselves in the same situation.
You're right, I think, people do have a floating needle when it comes to certain things.
My nature is to be honest. I don't always follow rules. A very dangerous combination, especially if you're indiscrete, wouldn't you say?? (assign a Wm F. Buckley Jr. Hmmm?)
There's another method of lying, where you use words that have one meaning to yourself, and another meaning to the general public. To yourself, you are telling the truth, but the general public reads a different meaning, which is a lie. This way, you can appear perfectly honest, since inwardly, you are being truthful.
Yeah - maybe she should have said the coupon is not really required, you know those marketing people, they are always lying, but really it's just our form of advertising
And lazy - and really aren't they the same thing???
And lazy - and really aren't they the same thing???
I'm quite sure that's what she was doing. But I'd already told her I didn't have a CVS card. So, by saying "We don't have to see it, you can just tell me you have one," she was giving ME the opportunity to lie, to do a complete 180 from what I'd just told her, in order to save $2.
Some people would have found it very easy to have winked and said "Okay, I have a CVS card." I couldn't.
"lying has just become another extension of laziness"
Precisely. It is like stating "I want it now without expending effort".
I once new a guy who was a pathological liar who literally drove himself crazy trying to keep his lies strait. Checked himself into the looney bin he did. Sad really, even though he brought it on himself.
Precisely. It is like stating "I want it now without expending effort".
I once new a guy who was a pathological liar who literally drove himself crazy trying to keep his lies strait. Checked himself into the looney bin he did. Sad really, even though he brought it on himself.
everybody lies thats why it's so easy... if someone tells you they don't lie - they just did.
I bought a pack of straws for my son which cost, maybe, $1.00 at the local store. When I got home, I realized that what I had was actually a "3" pack with two more stuck to the one I bought. I returned the extra two the next day. The store could have eaten those two dollars but it was the principle of the thing.
Some people will do just about anything to save a dollar and some people will do just about anything to help others save a buck or two. My hat's off to the honest folk left in the world.
Some people will do just about anything to save a dollar and some people will do just about anything to help others save a buck or two. My hat's off to the honest folk left in the world.
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If I tell you I always lie, am I lying or telling the truth?
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If I tell you I always lie, am I lying or telling the truth?
lying, of course.
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Are you sure?
I've always found there's alot less to remember when you tell the truth.
I resolve this quite easily. Little white lies, like telling your Mother-in-Law that the meal was great, even if it was skanky, or protecting your job and ability to provide for your family versus owning up to an internet post that doesn't amounts to a hill of beans but middle management types want to vilify the action since they believe they need to have the fearing power of the almighty are, to say the least, trivial.
But to lie or cheat another person just so that you may gain financially, career wise, politically, (you get the picture), is evil, pure and simple. There are so many legal, matter of fact ways to get ahead in this world that to screw your fellow man to achieve your success only highlights your shortcomings as a human being.
How many lives did people like Andrew Fastow ruin? He gets 10 years at a Federal Country Club. He'll live better there for those 10 years than many of the thousands of people's who retirement savings he wiped out by his nefarious ways to satisfy his greed.
Not lying about $3 for a Flu Shot...good for you. Now let's demand that we hold accountable the real dirt bags of this world.
Quote from Alan Deutschman Rearch by psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, who interviewed and gave personality tests to 39 high-level British executives and compared their profiles with those of criminals and psychiatric patients. The executives were even more likely to be superficially charming, egocentric, insincere, and manipulative, and just as likely to be grandiose, exploitative, and lacking in empathy. Board and Fritzon concluded that the businesspeople they studied might be called "successful psychopaths." In contrast, the criminals -- the "unsuccessful psychopaths" -- were more impulsive and physically aggressive.
The article is here http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html
I know that type well.
I act the way I do here partially because of at least two of them......well I mean my demented web behavior was formed and jaded my two of those evil rascals. Each one sacked me, the last one because I, frankly, knew too much. The only grinning face I see in my nightmares is the last guy and wake up sweating and irritated when he reaches out to shake my hand.....he at least got nailed by the IRS with a $39,000,000 US fine.
I act the way I do here partially because of at least two of them......well I mean my demented web behavior was formed and jaded my two of those evil rascals. Each one sacked me, the last one because I, frankly, knew too much. The only grinning face I see in my nightmares is the last guy and wake up sweating and irritated when he reaches out to shake my hand.....he at least got nailed by the IRS with a $39,000,000 US fine.
In summary it seems that we (all ?) lie when it suits us, whether it's intended to benefit ourselves or only perceived to benefit others. In 'Shogun' Clavell wrote that every man had something like 'six faces and three hearts', which seems like it might be the case.
I'll guess it's the same with some other vices.
I'll guess it's the same with some other vices.
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