This article is all about finding out the logic behind "speaking truth" rule. What is wrong if everybody start telling lies. We have practically seen that telling lies in many of the cases really helps :)
Since childhood, we are always told that we should always tell truth. We often stop following this advice is a different story (and this behavior must also be covered in this article). May be because one of the primary reasons of deviating from this rule is that nobody explains to us what exactly truth is. Note that we are not going to talk about the "ultimate universal truth" here and I would confine myself to explaining the day-today meaning of truth. Also, we need to understand that there is a subtle difference between "true/false" and "right/wrong". The later is more of a action oriented behavioral pattern. In other words former leads to the later one in most of the cases.
So, how do we define "truth"? In my opinion a statement is true if it reiterates the commonly perceived and well accepted notion of reality.* Too confusing isn't it? Ok, I shall take an example. Let's see somebody comes to you and says "it is raining" when you know that you can see that "in reality" it is not. Then you straight forwardly declare that the statement was false.
Now when I have defined truth in my own terms, lets proceed further and discuss the actual topic. What would happen in a world where nobody ever tells truth? Would there be any difference? Certainly yes. First, going by my definition of truth, it would not be possible to explain the reality. Secondly, it would not at all be possible to have a meaningful conversation with anybody. Imagine a person coming to you and saying "it is raining, come under my umbrella" when it is not raining and he does not have an umbrella at all :). In general terms, we would call all the people of this imaginary world "crazy".
The conclusion is, we are surviving because most of us speak truth for may be say more than 90% of the time and not because we tell a lie in <10 br="" cases.="" of="" the="">
Also, I would say that recreation of reality is possible only with truth. I would talk about one of my experiences for explaining what exactly I mean by "recreation of reality". Once I was standing in a railway reservation queue and the counter was still not opened. Just before the counter opening time, many of the people started breaking the queue and within few seconds, there were an entirely different set of people standing at position 1,2,3 etc. The previous number 1-10 people was very disappointed and annoyed. But suddenly one of the gentlemen in the queue came up with a brilliant idea. He asked all the people in the queue to tell their original positions in the queue. Obviously there were many people who started telling lies. But surprisingly most of them were correct in telling their actual position in the queue. Again that smart gentleman started asking everybody who were the people standing before and after them. There were many people who recognized the persons before and after them correctly. In this case telling a lie was very difficult because two people had to agree with the answer. Based on their answers and mutual agreements, that person was able to recreate the actual queue almost perfectly. Of course there were people placed wrongly but the number of such people was very less. Hence, we see that recreation of the original queue was possible only because many people did tell the truth and did not lie. Imagine a scenario where 90% of the people in the queue were lying. In that case it would not have been possible to recreate the original queue and do justice to honest people.
I have come to a conclusion that may be 90% of the times telling the truth only helps us. Imagine, you are having severe pain and you tell a lie about it to your doctor!! Imagine, if you tell everybody that you are not human!! Imagine, you always lie to your boss whatever the case is!! Imagine, you always write your neighbor's wife's name in place of your wife's name ;)!! Imagine, you always write incorrect PAN number in your tax returns form. Huh! I can't imagine what would happen if all of us have to really live in this kind of world.
Now, we should also discuss why do we tell a lie? In most of the cases, we tell a lie in case of conflict of interests and we do not want to be at the losing end. So, we try to recreate a false reality for our personal benefits and short term gains. The idea is to convince everybody that this falsely created reality is the real one. But, all the people who tell a lie know that a lie can survive only between plenty of truth. Because for a person who tells lies most of the time, his/her credibility itself becomes questionable. Also, for the person who is at the receiving end of this lie would certainly have his own idea about reality and he would always question the credibility of the falsely created reality. So, telling a lie is a very tricky affair because the chances of getting caught are very high. This is one of the reasons not all of us always lie. Also, telling a lie also creates a lot emotional trauma inside a person. Most of us feel guilty after telling a lie and a sense of wrong doing prevails. For many of us, it is very difficult to get out of this feeling. This is one of the primary reasons why many of us vow not to tell a lie in future (but they always fail :)). Now imagine the credibility of a person who has never been found telling a lie! He gets respected by the society and always has a high morale. In many of the cases, they are very fearless. So, it is very easy to conclude that telling a lie is very tricky and achieving personal gains out of it has its own bad side effects.
Also, we should always keep in mind that we can be at the receiving end if somebody else is telling a lie. All in all, in long term if we calculate the difference between the gain because of a person telling a lie and he losing because of somebody else telling a lie could be minimal.
At the end, I ask the ultimate question: At a broader level, do we have any other go rather than speaking the truth?
Now you only decide :)
* Reality is always space time and observer dependent. It also depends on how verifiable the statement is :)
Note - In this article, I have not covered the scenario when a large collection of people start telling the same lie. Does this falsely created reality actually becomes reality in this case? ;)
Since childhood, we are always told that we should always tell truth. We often stop following this advice is a different story (and this behavior must also be covered in this article). May be because one of the primary reasons of deviating from this rule is that nobody explains to us what exactly truth is. Note that we are not going to talk about the "ultimate universal truth" here and I would confine myself to explaining the day-today meaning of truth. Also, we need to understand that there is a subtle difference between "true/false" and "right/wrong". The later is more of a action oriented behavioral pattern. In other words former leads to the later one in most of the cases.
So, how do we define "truth"? In my opinion a statement is true if it reiterates the commonly perceived and well accepted notion of reality.* Too confusing isn't it? Ok, I shall take an example. Let's see somebody comes to you and says "it is raining" when you know that you can see that "in reality" it is not. Then you straight forwardly declare that the statement was false.
Now when I have defined truth in my own terms, lets proceed further and discuss the actual topic. What would happen in a world where nobody ever tells truth? Would there be any difference? Certainly yes. First, going by my definition of truth, it would not be possible to explain the reality. Secondly, it would not at all be possible to have a meaningful conversation with anybody. Imagine a person coming to you and saying "it is raining, come under my umbrella" when it is not raining and he does not have an umbrella at all :). In general terms, we would call all the people of this imaginary world "crazy".
The conclusion is, we are surviving because most of us speak truth for may be say more than 90% of the time and not because we tell a lie in <10 br="" cases.="" of="" the="">
Also, I would say that recreation of reality is possible only with truth. I would talk about one of my experiences for explaining what exactly I mean by "recreation of reality". Once I was standing in a railway reservation queue and the counter was still not opened. Just before the counter opening time, many of the people started breaking the queue and within few seconds, there were an entirely different set of people standing at position 1,2,3 etc. The previous number 1-10 people was very disappointed and annoyed. But suddenly one of the gentlemen in the queue came up with a brilliant idea. He asked all the people in the queue to tell their original positions in the queue. Obviously there were many people who started telling lies. But surprisingly most of them were correct in telling their actual position in the queue. Again that smart gentleman started asking everybody who were the people standing before and after them. There were many people who recognized the persons before and after them correctly. In this case telling a lie was very difficult because two people had to agree with the answer. Based on their answers and mutual agreements, that person was able to recreate the actual queue almost perfectly. Of course there were people placed wrongly but the number of such people was very less. Hence, we see that recreation of the original queue was possible only because many people did tell the truth and did not lie. Imagine a scenario where 90% of the people in the queue were lying. In that case it would not have been possible to recreate the original queue and do justice to honest people.
I have come to a conclusion that may be 90% of the times telling the truth only helps us. Imagine, you are having severe pain and you tell a lie about it to your doctor!! Imagine, if you tell everybody that you are not human!! Imagine, you always lie to your boss whatever the case is!! Imagine, you always write your neighbor's wife's name in place of your wife's name ;)!! Imagine, you always write incorrect PAN number in your tax returns form. Huh! I can't imagine what would happen if all of us have to really live in this kind of world.
Now, we should also discuss why do we tell a lie? In most of the cases, we tell a lie in case of conflict of interests and we do not want to be at the losing end. So, we try to recreate a false reality for our personal benefits and short term gains. The idea is to convince everybody that this falsely created reality is the real one. But, all the people who tell a lie know that a lie can survive only between plenty of truth. Because for a person who tells lies most of the time, his/her credibility itself becomes questionable. Also, for the person who is at the receiving end of this lie would certainly have his own idea about reality and he would always question the credibility of the falsely created reality. So, telling a lie is a very tricky affair because the chances of getting caught are very high. This is one of the reasons not all of us always lie. Also, telling a lie also creates a lot emotional trauma inside a person. Most of us feel guilty after telling a lie and a sense of wrong doing prevails. For many of us, it is very difficult to get out of this feeling. This is one of the primary reasons why many of us vow not to tell a lie in future (but they always fail :)). Now imagine the credibility of a person who has never been found telling a lie! He gets respected by the society and always has a high morale. In many of the cases, they are very fearless. So, it is very easy to conclude that telling a lie is very tricky and achieving personal gains out of it has its own bad side effects.
Also, we should always keep in mind that we can be at the receiving end if somebody else is telling a lie. All in all, in long term if we calculate the difference between the gain because of a person telling a lie and he losing because of somebody else telling a lie could be minimal.
At the end, I ask the ultimate question: At a broader level, do we have any other go rather than speaking the truth?
Now you only decide :)
* Reality is always space time and observer dependent. It also depends on how verifiable the statement is :)
Note - In this article, I have not covered the scenario when a large collection of people start telling the same lie. Does this falsely created reality actually becomes reality in this case? ;)
