Submitted 11 hours ago by gatitaQwQ@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I understand sometimes people lie to avoid hurting someone, but a lot of the time it seems unnecessary. When something really important happens and honesty matters, people still choose to lie instead of just telling the truth.
Because it can give you an advantage.
yeah i don’t get what’s so hard to comprehend for OP. people lie because they think it will lead to more desirable outcomes for them, that’s it
especially when it’s an immediate outcome vs a long term outcome.
even if long term it bites them in the ass, short term is more pressing for most people most of the time.
Or because they’re lazy, or scared, or…
If you’re lazy and lie to get out of doing something or if you’re scared and lie to get out of the scary situation … that’s an advantage!
Story time:
I once messed with the sim lock thing and accidentally lock it ( mean y’all know the sim pin lock and pul lock thing?), and my mom didnt notice it yet, and I felt scared, but at the same time was thinking “maybe if I just come clean and apologize, everything would be fine!”, you know, how tv portrays western parents.
Oh well big mistake, I forgot I was Asian. So I told my mom and she instantly transformed into a tiger and devoured me (figuratively) yelled at me and said a bunch of thing like 無鬼用 (useless) 搞破壞 (troublemaker?) and the 食嘢唔做嘢做嘢打爛嘢 (all you do is eat and contribute nothing and when you do try to do something you break everything). Oh keep in mind I was like no older than 11 at the time. 😭
I actually cried like a baby. So yeah, I thinkg that’s pretty much the turning point where I learned a thing about the adult world.
I should’ve just never mentioned a thing and just blamed it on “technical issues” when she eventually tries to make a call.
A very childish reaction from her
This would not have been a big deal with western parents. Could even have been a bonding moment with a good dad to figure out how to fix it.
You’re lucky to have experienced a positive subset of Western parents.
I said to a psychologist one time “it seems to me people tacitly accept other peoples lies because it validates their own”, although that doesnt explain why people lie in the first place. The psych agreed.
Back in the day, I had an aquaintance with a guy who was a thief. One day I asked him why and he declared “because Im smarter than they are!”. He was refering to the store clerks. It wasnt even about sticking to the man, it was a simple real-time mania of ego, outwit the clerks. High narcissism. He ended up in the business of custom theivery but I dont think that worked out very well.
Outwitting is such a wicked motivation. I had that with drinking and I was fucking good at it. I made it a challenge to consume as much alcohol as I can without people noticing and they really didn’t notice. I was drunk at AA meetings more often than not. I took driving lessons drunk, was drunk in university and at jobs, around friends and family - people never noticed, even when I had a 3.5 promille blood alcohol level. Guess you can guess that all of this didn’t end well and I had to stop drinking eventually. Still, only people I told know how bad it had actually been. I hadn’t been sober in years.
There’s lots of reasons. Avoiding conflict, avoiding accountability, fear of retribution, self-delusion, acts of retribution or sociopathically WANTING to hurt people, apathy, social acceptance, the fact that people don’t care what the truth is as long as they don’t have to do anything they’re happy. Greed, gluttony, lust, indifference, envy, pride, wrath… trying to pin down precise motivations is complicated.
I’d go as far as to claim that lying is virtually always unnecessary. People are quick to come up with examples where they think it’s the right thing to do, yet when you ask these people when they themselves would rather hear lies than the truth I usually get nothing.
Lying to “not hurt someone” implies that you consider yourself a better judge of this person’s ability to manage their emotions. That’s not how you treat an adult, especially one you pretend to respect and care about.
However, not lying isn’t synonymous with radical honesty either. No need to tell everything that’s on your mind - just don’t say something you know to not be true. If grandma’s cooking isn’t to your liking you probably don’t need to insult her for it if she asks. I’m sure you can come up with something more diplomatic.
In my perhaps unorthodox view it is a projected fear-based-tauma potentially from past lives, that seeps into the present when we are not aware of the returning fear, that can speak on behalf of us or have temporary access to our vehicle. We have more than one body in which illness can attach more subtly if allowed.
We all start life here afflicted, one way or another. It is consistent focus on conscientiousness that bestows conscious awareness of the bundle of afflictions in their complexity that allows a stoic harmony, in body and soul to be as we are now and forever more no matter what.
TL; DR
Attacks of fear can have a person abandon themselves, which feeds the fear to be intelligent enough to see a next opportunity another time.
So I have had this obsession with truth my whole life. Ultimately big truth but down to truth in general. I feel truth and falsehood are antithecal in more than just the obvious way. Its kinda like kastanzas line from seinfeld about it not being a lie if you believe it. You see it with trump. In order to lie you have to in some ways believe it yourself. The more you lie. The better you lie. The more you have to convince yourself its really true in some way. I personally believe this in all things. If you kill, regardless of reason, you are going to be a killer. Maybe not as much of a killer as someone who premediates on a complete innocent but repetition is going to pile on. Same with stealing and such. Im digressing here a bit but essentially for some people lying becomes so much a part of who they are that they do it for the smallest of reasons some of which only makes sense in their head. Its kinda funny because honest people (like ones obssessed with truth) will get a lotta flak for not just telling a white lie.
Honestly, most of the time the people who are lying beleive there is a slim chance they can safely navigate the situation with minimal harm to themselves and/or others even without divulging the truth. Which is actually accurate a lot of the time, in theory at least.
That said, most people do not actually have the intelligence to finesse a situation effectively when in the constraints of their lies. Most lies are sloppy or imperfect and most liers are not intelligent enough to handle the strategic part of lying.
In some cases, some might have a hard time accepting the truth, so they manufacture a lie because they want to believe the lie.
See: dictators, other abusive figures
I miss her, but not her lies.
Human psychology.
So many great answers, and they are all different yet accurate!
Another contradiction I’ve found (and is reflected in a lot of the answers) is that everyone SAYS that they want people to tell them the truth, but when we actually do tell them the truth, they turn into a tiger and devour us, or a similar negative reaction. We request the truth, but at the same time, we psychologically train everyone around us to lie to us.
the problem is we want other people to tell us the lies we tell ourselves.
Because I didn’t want to work today on (U.S.) Veteran’s Day.
Ah, November Flu. Common among those who have sick days that don’t roll over or get paid out.
It’s more humorous since I was out on illness disability from May 4 - Nov 2.
some people are really creative~ and are born story tellers. gotta make use of that skill~
Lieing is easy. Telling the truth is hard. People in general suck.
Some people lie because its fun
because it’s easier
Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Very often it’s conflict avoidance
Like if your parent / teacher / boss goes ballistic because you fucked up, you’re not likely to tell them you fucked up again. If this pattern starts when you’re younger especially it tends to ripple out through the rest of your life
This can be frustrating because it appears irrational. Then again, so is life
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 2 hours ago
That’s me. I absolutely fear being judged and getting involved in any conflict thanks to my childhood, and this sometimes - especially if i have to answer quickly and don’t have time to reflect - makes me lie before i really even think about it. Lying at home about pretty much everything was the only way i able to have a semi-normal life in my teenage years, and it becomes a second nature if you have to do it on the regular.
Nowadays i try to take my time, to give myself the breathing room and space i need to feel safe enough to be honest. Wouldn’t work without years of therapy.
ctrlzee@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Totally agree with the conflict-avoidance answer. A small reframing: making mistakes is perfectly normal. A lie is usually an attempt to skip owning one.
What makes you a mature person is:
A lie turns one mistake into two, and the second one is harder to undo.