Drawing the line with lies

“It’s not you. It’s me.”
“Yes, I am over 18.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
“Wolf!”

Lies sicken and fascinate. People are repulsed when they hear about celebrity scandals and unfaithful senators on television. But change the channel and those same people will gleefully follow the smoke-and-mirrors of fictional characters with a religious devotion. “House” has never had better ratings. George Clooney’s Danny Ocean is up to a baker ’s dozen. And nothing has made math look sexier than an MIT student cheating in a Vegas casino.

What is it about lying that makes us condemn it so readily yet commit it so willingly? Every culture discourages deceit, but every day, when turning in copied assignments or commenting on the curvaceous qualities of a dress, students and adults alike lie without batting an eye.

Because in the end, white lying isn’t wrong; being a responsible liar is as much a part of growing up as is body odor. But with the power afforded to us by innocent lies and half-truths, we need to
know where to draw the line, and more often than not we misjudge the true ramifications of our actions.

The main reason we lie is simple: personal gain. We lie because it allows us to do less and get more. Most day-to-day lying isn’t part of an organized conspiracy; these are the hastily stitched excuses used to wiggle out of a homework assignment or the puffed-up stories used to impress the ladies.

“We don’t really think about [how we justify a lie] because it’s right on the spot,” sophomore Samir Kishore said. “For me, I have to make the lie really quick, and I don’t have time to think about whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong.”

And most of the time, these lies have hardly any consequences; after all, pretending that you were at the library (when instead you were at your boyfriend’s house) isn’t a crime on par with murder or robbery.

“It’s okay to lie when it doesn’t hurt anyone close to you, whether it be your friends or your family,” junior Tasha Mistry said.

Nevertheless, these are the lies children learn not to tell, and in many ways the childhood fables are right. Lying for personal gain is wrong.

But most students and adults continue to lie anyway; when it comes to making the gritty, daily decisions, practicality trumps morality. Call it a maturity to understand consequence, or call it general adolescent cynicism, but many teenagers justify their lies with “the greater good.”

“I think it’s a protection thing,” junior Jordan Campitelli said. “You don’t want to get in trouble or let them down, so you just lie to them so you won’t disappoint them.”

As the saying goes, “Only fools and children tell the truth.” Small children need to live in a morally black and white world because they lack the maturity to know when to lie. By the time high school rolls around, however, that black and white has been smudged to moral grays by pressures from all around.

“Most of the times, lies are basically unacceptable, but sometimes things come up,” senior Hayley Stevens said. “I know I’ve definitely lied to my parents because it just comes up. … People lie everyday for little reasons. I’ve never met anyone who’s completely open 24/7.”

But just because we can lie, it doesn’t mean we should; we too quickly jump to the easiest option, and our hasty lies more
often than not come back to bite us in the future.

When sophomore Marissa Mirbach’s dad caught her red- handed in a lie about whose car she has been in, she learned this lesson firsthand.

“I got in trouble for that, which may not have been that bad if I didn’t lie,” Marissa said. “You can always get caught in a lie, so it’s less complicated to just tell the truth.”

So while it’s true that the ends can justify the means, the problem is we never know how something will end. We forget the giant needle of uncertainty always dangling, ready to pop our bubble of lies.

Lying is wrong, then, not only because it violates trust. It’s wrong because it’s arrogant; it’s arrogant to presume that we know everything that’s going on and that we can predict with certainty how our lies will affect other people.

Thus the “appropriate” lie— if there is such a thing—is in the intersection of childhood innocence and adolescent cynicism. A good liar should be smart enough to recognize the “greater good,” and a good liar should be humble enough to defer to morality and the truth when he or she doesn’t know enough.