Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 February 2006 13:00:03
I remembered what a hopeless liar I am.
Of course, when I actually want to tell a lie that's really frustrating, but it serves to remind me that I probably shouldn't be trying to lie in the first place. So most of the time I'm quite glad of being so bad at it. (I'd like to think that the people around me also value the fact that I can't lie because it should mean that they can trust what I say utterly. Unfortunately it doesn't work out like that because my cluelessness and misunderstanding ensure that nothing I say is particularly trustworthy.)
But lately I've been asked a few questions which, because of my preference for honesty, have got me into trouble. One memorable occasion where I told the truth got me into a situation that I felt I had to lie to get out of. What's the morality on that - refusing to tell one lie made me have to tell a different one? If lying is wrong, then which lie should I not have told?
It reminds me of Walter Scott's book Waverley. The guy Waverley is faced with a series of choices to make, and each time he appears to make the honourable and decent one. Yet all these decisions have the effect of making him leave the King's army in which he had been serving, and switch allegiances to the rebels who were trying to overthrow that same King. In short those honourable decisions made him become a traitor. Several rights seem to add up to one big wrong (at least from the point of view of the law of the land at the time; I don't want to get into a discussion of the morality of the Jacobite rebellions). Curious.