A Culture of Liars - By Rick

“There’s no such person as Santa Claus”. My best friend Gordie Lepine dropped that bombshell on me when I was about 5 years old. Gordie was a year older than I was and had just found out the truth about Saint Nick from his older brother. We weren’t happy about this revelation. One part of me slapped my 5 year old forehead muttering “I knew it! We don’t even have a chimney he could come down.” How could I have been so gullible. Another part of me felt betrayed. “Why was I lied to?” I was taught it was wrong to lie and would get in deep trouble if caught lying. Something didn’t add up. The solid foundation of my innocent childhood suddenly felt a bit shaky. And I remember not being convinced later when Mum confessed that indeed Santa Claus was only made up and was just told as a story to children. Even then that explanation didn’t ring true. I knew the difference between something told to me as a story, like “Hansel and Gretel” and something told to me like it was true. I mean we didn’t put cookies and milk out for Hansel and Gretel to eat as they tried to find their way back home! Very quickly the Easter Bunny bit the dust and later, as my baby teeth began to fall out, I never did buy into the Tooth Fairy scam. “Fool me twice, shame on me” was not something I had to be taught a third time.

Looking back I can see there are a number of lessons we could make from this vignette. One might be that this was a child’s first lesson in learning not to believe something just because some authority (Mum and Dad) says it’s true. Always check things out for yourself, question everything, see if it compares to other facts that you know. The Truth is Out There! Another lesson might be that a lie is not a lie if it’s told for a good reason, if there is some greater good out there that justifies the lie. There may be other lessons, but I’m afraid that it is the second lesson that most of us were left with. A lie + a good reason for telling the lie = the truth. And as we grew up, more and more we were told other lies and when we questioned the lie we always received some sort of “Yes, but….” reply and what followed the “but” was the beginning of the lie.

We learned to lie this way in the process. How many of us repeated the Santa Claus story to our children? How many of us justified it later as just being a harmless part of childhood? And how many of us later made personal phone calls at work, never paying for the phone call, never making up the lost time and for the most part never thinking of it, never considering it to be theft? I know that I did and while it’s just a small lie, even saying that is part of the coverup, the justification.

If lying to children about mythical beings or swiping pens at work was the extent of our lies one could argue that it was all a harmless part of life and not worth carrying on about. If that were the case, I might agree yet even then I would question why it is ever acceptable to lie to each other. But as I progressed through life, I found the lies to be more sinister. I remember quite clearly my history lessons about World War II and the atrocities committed by tyrants like Adolph Hitler. The waging of war, the persecution of the Jews, the Holocaust were not lies. He was indeed an evil man. But I was also told in the same lessons that we were the good guys, that we united to fight this evil and that our heroes such as Churchill and Roosevelt led us to victory. It was only later that I learned that our heroes fire-bombed the cities of our enemies, cities that had no known military function and that we murdered innocent civilians. And when I did learn of this, it was always put off with a “Yes, but…” Perhaps the truth about war is simply that there are no heroes, only villains and the sooner we start telling the truth about wars, the sooner we can put an end to them once and for all. But instead we repeat the villainy of the past. Today young Australians murder women and children of Afghanistan and it’s reported as some variation of “collateral damage”.

My greatest fear is that this lying to each other is systemic. I am not a religious person, yet I believe that the commandments “Thou Shalt not Kill” and “Thou Shalt not Steal” are holy. These commandments have been part of our Western culture forever and yet we kill and steal. Why?

Because we have a good reason for doing so and that is like some sort of fine print that went along with the commandments as a disclaimer. If it’s ok to lie about killing and stealing anything else is child’s play.

I think that it’s easy for us to look at my example of the pen “borrowed” from our workplace and see that as a little white lie that we tell ourselves. But consider the question of human rights. We like to think that Australians are a free people. We believe it to be true. Yet It is compulsory as a parent to send your child to school. Failure to obey is a punishable offence. Do any of us see the “compulsory” aspect of education being a lie told about our nature as a free people? How is it that a free people can ever be compelled to do something? Is not compulsion the opposite of freedom? And as you read these words, do you find yourself saying “My goodness, that’s true.” or is what comes up some sort of automatic “Yes, but do you want to see the poor denied their right to educate there children? Do you want to throw us back into the days of chimney sweeps and children working in the mines? And what of the people who too foolish to send their children to school? Should we punish the child for the ignorance of the parent?” And so on. Of course we have good reasons for overruling a parents’ right to educate their child or not. And yet here in Australia we have begun telling the truth about the Stolen Generation. Weren’t the reasons of the legislators and voters of those times pretty much the same as ours today about education? Didn’t they have the welfare of the Aboriginal children in mind when they took them from their parents and put them into foster homes? Don’t we have the welfare of Australian children in mind when we take them from their parents and put them into schools? If we can begin to tell the truth about the Stolen Children, why can’t we do this about everything else?


I could go on with examples of the lies forever. Everywhere that I find some social concern I can pretty much guarantee that if we keep digging in to it, we will come to a lie. And with the lie is the underlying truth, the “Yes” that goes with the “but”.

So where does that leave us? For starters, I invite you to examine again what you have just read. I would guess that this is not the first time you have heard this said. What I am doing personally is to stop lying about lying. The starting point for me was to simply say “Yes.” and leave off the “but…”. Stop the justification, stop the explanation, stop the rationalization, stop the deliberation, stop the contemplation, stop the examination. I just leave the lie there in the open to be examined. Join me in doing that. Look at this issue from the same side of the table. Somewhere over on the other side is a new world to be created but it’s too hard to see yet. To see it more clearly, shining our light on the lies about lying is a good start.