In Defence of the Humble Lie

Many may distinctly remember from their childhood a scene, where they realized that their mother (and/or) father will eventually die. Many may have asked their parents if they would die. I remember asking my mother that question and she told me the truth. Seeing me cry my eyes out and suffered my first broken heart she confessed that she was playing a prank on me and that parents don’t die. I never been hastier to believe anything and I deliberately refused myself to ever ask or think that question again. But when my sister became around the same age as me, she also had the same query. And my curious and analyzing eyes scanned every feature of my mother’s face. Without missing a beat she said parents don’t ever die. And my sister resumed her play content with the answer.

I needed to become a big brother to understand why lies are important. That lie may have protected me from losing my childhood more than necessary and incurring any more trauma than we all get our fair share of. Our minds lie to us all the time, just like my mother did. If it hadn’t we would never be amused by magic or so entranced by movies or stories. An argument can be made that it protects us from certain truths by lying to us about our real problems masking them as perhaps temper tantrums or emotional outbursts. Or even going to the length of altering or completely deleting a traumatic experience, repression, I think it’s called. At least until we are ready to face the truth.

Consider the (social) world an engine. Although the metaphor is ill constructed, imagine that all inconveniences (like the existential question that weather what anything we do has a meaning or a lasting impact) is all that hinders its perfect function. Lies work as lubrication that helps this engine function longer and smoother at least for the time being, in these corrosive conditions. I will show the audacity to raise an argument that without lies humanity will not be in the place it is today. One often makes the mistake of thinking that without lies the world would have been a utopia. (Un) fortunately such a beautiful notion will never come to pass because of a simple logic: lies exist and all that exists serves a purpose. While on the subject of such concepts one must understand that purpose, itself is a relative term. Many who considers themselves to be truthful and virtuous often take time out of there life to badmouth lies. But without lies the world would have been a computer that has not been coded yet. No stories or poems or paintings would have been born. Nor many of the sciences that function on a healthy/ unhealthy amount of assumptions.

Hope; a word/concept that had sustained humanity and many other beings on this planet. Hope of a lioness to find food for her cubs. Or hope of an undergrad to find a job and deal with all those student debts.  Everything and everyone works on the assumption that things will be better with the passing of time. It has no concrete proof of what it is professing, yet nobody is blasphemous enough to call it a lie. Even though it has many characteristics of a lie. I do realize that this is a very nihilistic way of looking at things but bear with me for a second and think. We hope tomorrow exists and all things that is connected to it, but what proof do we have of the said statement. All we have is a high probability of this possibility based on the “fact” that we have had many days of yesterdays.

Love or any other social connection for that matter; what is love exactly. Some define it a circus of neurochemicals playing their practiced part in/on the brain while some add that it is evolutionary and a social necessity to sustain the world we have built. But can anybody really define it without a shadow of a doubt.

My point is not that, all things are lies and the world is worthless. My point is that lies are not necessarily a bad thing nor truth a good thing. Often times than not, truth is not what the world needs at the moment. When the world needs more, only lie can deliver. Without the “lies” of hope, love, trust, desperation, anger and other things the world wouldn’t have been like this. It is wrong to define truth as right and lie as wrong when truth, lie, right, wrong are all relative to begin with.

It is what it is. But I cannot in good conscious ask you to believe and be content with that. Because if the early man had believed that and accepted it, he would have resigned to his fate as a frozen man-cicle or a casualty of the floods, droughts, or any other obstacles Mother Nature threw at him without trying out something new like rubbing two rocks together.  But I am also faced with a dilemma that I don’t have another philosophy than “it is what it is” unless I can include whatever that happens or can happen under this umbrella. My point now is that we cannot fully fit inside a sentence or equation or explanation why things are the way they are. If we could, I don’t think I want to know that because ignorance is a bliss. There is a comfort in chaos. There is catharsis in this forever going search for an answer. This cannot be obtained if we ever found it and it certainly cannot be obtained if we don’t search for it but that would be a sadder world. Bliss is not the destination but, the journey. And more often than not the destinations disappoint. And on occasion so does the beginnings.

Lies pave the way for this journey or what we consider or perceive as lies does. Truth can be what the perception or facts, wants us to believe, while lies on the other hand have the decency to take our opinions and wants into consideration, much more openly.

I do realize the audacity, immaturity and ignorance in my words but somebody had to say it and I wanted to say it and that’s the truth.