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

[enslin at prairienet.org]

Hi Don

On these subjects there are also Herbert Brün's ideas:

Believers make liars.

Truth as the time during which the intent and content of a person's
statement can not and will not be in conflict or contradictions with the
intent and content of any oher statement this person would make in
response to any situation, question, or statement presented.

and

"If, while a person tells what he honestly thinks a lie, his telling turns
true behind his back, he still is honestly telling a lie and erroneously
telling the truth."
--hb, my words and where i want them

... and other variations of these.

Don, do you have a blog? It would be nice to be able to read your writings
in a pleasing format and archived together.

--Mark


> 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...)
>
>
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