lying

It is said that you can tell a man by the company he keeps.  I’ve had the fortune to work with the most FLAGRANT, TWO-FACED, FALSE-HEARTED, FAST-TALKING, FORK-TONGUED LIARS that ever prevaricated their way through life.

I’d never thought about it until I read this article—THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES! Subtitled: Your susceptibility to scams may be linked to your beliefs about honesty. The author’s premise—People who are honest believe other people are honest too.  If you’ve spent your life trusting the people you work with and live with, you will probably trust the LIAR too.

Before I tell you my premise, you need to know what makes me an expert on Liars. First, it was three years as an undergrad and 2 years as a graduate studying literature. Literature is the gateway drug to lying. What else is literature other than making up a story about someone who never lived and making it sound true, (pure fiction)… or taking someone who did live and making up more stories about him (historical fiction or mythology). To make matters worse I taught for ten years in community colleges. I taught young, impressionable minds how to interpret and write fiction…yes, I am responsible for hooking a whole generation of young people on the pleasure of lying.

Then, I got into the harder drugs--10 years in Advertising—i competed against radio stations who conflated their listenership to the entire county when maybe 13 people were listening to their programs at any given time. I sold direct mail publications which were verified by postal receipts. So, I never fully lost my grounding to vestiges of the truth. 

Then, I leased my soul to the Lord of Lies, Insurance. One of my jobs as a life agent was following up churners. The managers assigned me that task because they told me I looked so painfully honest there was no way I could ever succeed at selling insurance. A churner is an agent who plans on staying in the business 2-3 years, long enough to get commissions but get out before their lies are revealed. I’ll never forget, I was in my mid-forties and met with a man in his late 50’s who’d been told he wouldn’t have to pay any more premiums after three years and that the policy would continue to grow so that at age 65 the cash value would be worth ½ million $$.  Well, end of the third year, his bills kept coming, he stops paying just as the agent had told him to. The insurance company keeps sending out the bills, and the policyholder keeps not paying, so the company finally sends out its cancellation letter.

Client calls the company to complain, the agent long gone.  It’s me Tom Terrific invited to the bilked client’s home. I explained the truth of the matter to him—that he really has to keep paying until he is 65, the cash value at best would be 1/10 the promised amount. I could feel his anger microwaving across the table where we were seated.  I began to wonder if I was safe in his dining room. He looked me right in the eye, in a way he had probably never looked the scammer, and said, “You must think I’m the stupidest man who ever lived.”  He was a tradesman, house builder, measured twice cut once, everything on the level and squared.  No margins of error….TRUTH, A STRAIGHT LINE. Language was for telling the truth---a straight line too.  Until he met the scammer….{I manipulate the silly putty I am holding}  When the scammer used language everything was what he wanted it to be—a stretch of truth, a twist of facts, the shredding of a promise. I asked the man a rhetorical question, “How could you have known?” I consoled him with the fact that the insurance company would restore what he had before and repay any lost premiums and values. You know the phrase—“true story”—when someone uses the expression you know he’s telling you a whopper! 

So, here’s my premise, actually a conclusion.  Dishonest people have the uncanny skill of finding the honest. They spin a yarn. You ask, “Isn’t that too good to be true?” They tell you that it’s too good for others, but not too good for you, just right for you.  And you deserve it. The scammer looks just like the honest people you’ve always known.  Scammers expect to be believed because they’ve convinced themselves of their own lie. 

But don’t throw stones. The article goes on to cite studies that state each of us, in ordinary conversations, lies twice a day.  Have you used up your two already? That’s over 700 a year.  Hard part for honest people is remembering what lies they’ve told and to whom.  The Liar remembers both. I know most of your lies are little white ones, not whoppers. Right?

And, come on, if you have to think about talking all the time as if it were an act of MORALITY, you’d never talk at all. But it did pass down to most of us Christians and Jews that it was a big deal…#8 on your TOP Ten Hit Parade---"Thou shalt not bear false witness v. your neighbor.” Lying is essential to cheating—taking what isn’t yours. Whether it be affection, money, someone’s consent, someone’s vote….yep, it’s a big deal because it goes directly to #7 on the Hit Parade—"thou shalt not steal.” 

Can you remember when you were promised something and it didn’t come true? I don’t have time to tell you mine…maybe yours could be a pretty good speech.   But we all know the disappointment of it. How empty we felt when we found out the promised words were a lie--as if someone took something that was so much a part of you that it could only be given not stolen . 

I know, you’re thinking “I never told a whopper.” Maybe a fib so as not to hurt someone’s feelings, an inconsequential untruth so you don’t have to explain why you can’t go out with them because something better has come up….or a lie because the other person is too young to understand or simply didn’t have the need to know.

You know what else is a lie….withholding information from others….i have seen people use withholding information for leverage over others….i know something about the situation that you don’t…I’ll get the answer first….not having that information will make you look diminished to others….language is about exchange of knowledge…its purpose is to share….withholding information is about being selfish….it’s against the very ethics of language…oh, the ethics of language. That would be a good topic for another speech. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you from my expertise as a companion of Liars, the way to tell if someone’s lying….it’s something I learned in negotiation classes I took where the assumption was the other person was always lying or not disclosing all the facts…..The way to verify, get to the truth….ask the same question three times….each time with a little different wording so the other person doesn’t hear it as the same question…make sure it’s not a question that can be answered with a Yes or No

Whether talking politics, religion, finances, relationships.

1. What makes you think that? 

2. How will that work for me/us? 

3. Why do you feel that option is the best for me/us?  The answer to that final question will let you hear the ring of truth or the hollow clap of deception. 

Toastmasters, you can’t tell a Liar by the length of his nose or by the depth of his eyes, the timber of his voice.  You can tell from his impatience…. Sometimes the ring of truth is delayed…it hangs in the ether until the next day. Then, BONGGGGG! The liar can’t wait for you to hear that ring. Let the listener beware.