By Charles H. Green, Contributing Editor, and Andrea Howe
Note from RainToday.com: As part two of a two-part series, this article outlines the roots of the subtle lies that infiltrate our day-to-day conversations and explains how to overcome them and tell the truth.
Lying Is Rooted In Fear
Simply put, we act in ways that are not ultimately in our own self-interest because we act out of fear. Specifically, we underestimate the long-term benefits of honesty and overestimate the significance of short-term fear.
Not only do we have the rational fear of consequences, but we also have the echoing, reverberating fear in our brains when we allow ourselves to have nothing better to do than cogitate on how bad things might be. In its milder forms, this is simply neurosis. In more virulent forms, it approaches low-grade terror.
This tendency is pretty common. Freud even argued in Civilization and Its Discontents that it was the predictable price of living in a complex, interdependent society.
More prosaically, this fear lies at the heart of most television situation comedies. Think nearly all I Love Lucy episodes; think most Seinfeld episodes (and all of those involving the character George). The characters just can't quite deal with the truth--so they tell a little fib, let a little misperception go by uncorrected, and hopefully figure the odds of getting caught are pretty low.
Of course they're not, and Lucy/George/everyman get caught up in an ever-expanding hilarious web of lies that ends in the dramatic exposure. Comedy is tragedy writ small and it is funny because we all recognize the truth in it.
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