Sinners Deserve Rights Too
From the first day of school to the day we finally retire from our careers, we are brainwashed with the notion that lying, in a sense, is a bad thing. It has been drilled into our impressionable brains that if we lie, for whatever reason, that that lie will come back to us in the form of karma, and you “will be punished for your sins”.
When I was 8 years old, I took religion classes at school. Even though I was in this class multiple times a year, I only vividly remember one of my first classes. It was a hot November afternoon. There were twenty 7 to 8 year olds sitting on the floor, sweating profusely might I add, in a circle. Our teacher, who was a nun, asked for someone to give her a piece of paper. “This is your heart, a blank piece of paper, a clean slate. This is what your heart looks like when you are born. But imagine you do something bad. Imagine you were disrespectful to your parents, or you pushed someone off the swing, or you LIED. Well with each passing sin, just like this piece of paper, your heart starts crumbling and crumbling up, until it becomes a small, crumpled up piece of rubbish.”
“Ms, at what age do we start sinning!?”
“At 7 Stefano”.
Now we don’t have time to unpack ALL OF THAT, but let’s look at her main argument: lying will cause your heart to shrivel up and die. Well that’s what I interpreted from it. But the point of this blog post isn’t to talk about my past Catholic trauma, it’s about the morality of lying.
Lying, by definition, is “a statement we use to get ourselves into or out of a situation.” I lied. That’s the definition I just came up with. It is “an intentionally false statement”. We lie and are lied to constantly throughout our lifetimes, about 10 to 200 times a day, says Gad Saad from the article “How often do people lie in their daily lives?”.
So why is it such a taboo subject? Why is telling the truth the morally correct thing to do? It’s because that’s what we’ve been taught to blindly believe. We’ve been molded and programmed from birth to default to the belief that lying is bad, but we’re lied to by our parents, the ones who gave us this undying guilt, time and time again. Why are their lies excused and their motivations pure, yet when we lie it’s wrong and immoral, even if the intentions were the same? We like to believe that we lie for the right reasons, but do we actually?
Humans are genetically engineered to do what is best for themselves, and THAT is the true reason we lie; to benefit ourselves selfishly in one way or another. And if all of us lie to benefit ourselves, not to hurt anybody else, is it therefore still immoral? Is the “sinful” act of lying really against God’s will if He made us selfish and self-centered individuals? We rationalize our reasons for lying to make it morally acceptable for us, but when someone else does it, they’re the spawn of satan? My religion teacher didn’t know exactly when we started sinning (and I doubt any child could ever sin), but she blurted out a lie without even thinking twice, right after her explanation nevertheless. Imagine a child stole a cookie from their mother’s cookie jar and lied about it. Did the toddler have ill intentions? Did they deliberately set out to hurt their mothers by stealing a cookie? Of course not. Kids are little angels from heaven (even though they don’t act like it most of the time). They innocently took a cookie because they wanted a cookie, not due to any malevolent and selfish desires. It wasn’t a consciously moral or immoral decision. That is why I believe the act of lying is amoral. Lying has nothing to do with morality, it’s about personal ‘utility maximization” or benefit. Moral of the story: always remember to lie to kids!
I’m kidding of course, but lying shouldn’t be a moral rule, instead it should be seen as a tactic used to benefit individual human beings, to help us achieve a desired goal or purpose. Yes, lying to someone could hurt someone, but a “white lie” could also benefit them. Imagine I were to lie to someone and tell them, “you look fat in that dress.” Even if it were the opposite, my response wouldn’t be rooted in malice, but instead perhaps in jealousy. Those are my honest feelings towards her. It isn’t her fault and it’s not exactly that I want to be mean to her, it’s just unintentional feelings that I have inside that I sometimes need to release and they take the form of a lie. I believe it will benefit me and make me feel better if I lie to her. As mentioned before, lying should be considered amoral. Lying isn’t about doing what you define as right or wrong, it’s about what you deem will help you in the short or medium run.
Lastly, I’m sorry to my 2nd-grade religion teacher for all the trouble I gave her in class. I’m sorry I called you ugly. But weren’t you the one who told me not to lie?
