[Newspoetry] Laughing at Liars: scorning evil's pretentiousnesses

[DL Emerick]

There'd be less lying if we applied a weaker reasonable test to the question of whether someone intended to mislead, deceive, defraud others.  Right now, the standard is that a liar is someone who is motivated quite demonstrably to tell a lie, in itself.  Most liars, though, are not interested in telling a lie -- they are motivated by getting around some obstacle, such as your (potential) objection to their actions, your opposition to their intended deeds.

Lying isn't so much a function of the veracity of words, because it concerns the consequences of those words.  To a liar, it matters that they have some flimsy argument that they could put together, saying, well, see, on this evidence, that statement is not demonstrably so false that it is a lie.

In short, liars have corrupted the informed standards by which lies the very lies they tell are to be judged.

A lie is -- nonetheless -- a matter of intent --- but it was never a matter of primary intent.  Well, that is, the exception here is for the pathological persons, who live on a fictional and fantastic island where all the natives are congenitally either liars or truth-tellers, and there is no grey being in between.

The intent of a lie is to gain for the liar what he might not gain otherwise -- credence, in some cases, fame,glory, power, wealth, sex, or any of the myriad other things after which man comes to lust.   Me?  I lust after immortality, and think that truth, sincerity, honesty are virtues that shall win that for me.  If not, why surely the many kinds of laughter that I would inspire are their own reward!

(on starting a re-reading of CS Lewis's ScrewTape Letters last night...)