In Praise of Dishonesty

I’m not painfully honest. I’m serenely dishonest. I have to be – there’s a lot riding on it.
Imagine what might happen if I told you the truth. Before I examine that ludicrous proposition – do you even know what the truth is? And before I examine that ludicrous proposition – do you even know what a lie is? An untruth; a mendacity; a porky; a fib; a load of cobblers. Or shades thereof? Obfuscation; dissembling; weasel words; deception; disinformation.
You see? Dishonesty comes in many guises. Dishonesty has evolved in a way Darwin would have understood. If you’re an advanced thinker, like me, you’ll understand that language is cognitive – a survival tool. Shielding others from harmful facts, for example, has become an obligation that may only be discharged by the most noble and wise amongst us. We’re willing, even content, to assume the burden of disapproval and rejection in order to ensure that you – yes, I mean you – are able to lay your head on the pillow at night and pull the wool over your own eyes. Suspecting everything but knowing nothing. Confident that your ignorance, your very unknowingness, will provide the fuel to light not just otherwise meaningless lives but entire industries. Every train-home discussion, every pub argument, every social media thread, every public service meeting has a symbiotic relationship with the radio, with the television, with the press, with the government, with the public relations spinners, with the marketing Buddhas, with the advertising creatives, with the Internet. And therefore with Bloggers like me. Can you trust me? Trust what I say? What I’m saying now? Is it true?
Which brings me back to where I started. What is the truth? Is it what you see, what you hear, what you smell –  when you walk into a room? What about the others that walked in with you? They’ll all have a different agenda. They will all be liars. Maybe just mistaken. But that’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? And what if each one of them believes that their experience was the truth? And that your experience – and all the others – was untrue. A lie. What then?
Don’t worry. I can answer that.
The aggregate of all those untruthful, mistaken ideas, opinions, points of view far outweighs the one objective truth that can, by definition, exist only in the abstract. But there is a mutual dependency which is an immutable law of nature. We need the myriad lies in order to identify that singular truth. Entire economies, whole nations, established belief systems – our continued existence as a species – is dependant upon our ability, individually and severally, to lie at every opportunity. To strive to raise the levels of dishonesty in every facet of our lives. Not only lying to others but to ourselves. Even to our pets. The more successful we become at that, the more we will cherish that elusive, single truth. Not just the idea of the truth but the reality of the idea of the truth.