It is the Golden Age of liars and lying, my friend!
cnw
Ibtissam Al-Bassam
20-Feb-07
LYING is an art and a skill that few master to perfection, and many indulge in
and escape detection. It is harmless when practiced by persons with no wide
authority and no deep influence. It has devastating consequences when used by
persons with great political power or wide social influence. Many great writers,
well-respected leaders and renowned philosophers have interesting views on the
subject of lies and lying.
In Aristotle's opinion, when liars speak the truth they are not believed.
According to Mark Twain, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the
truth is putting on its shoes. Franklin Roosevelt said, Repetition does not
transform a lie into truth. Lenin believed that, a lie told often enough becomes
truth.
Lies come in different sizes and different colours. Harmless lies are small in
size, white in color. Harmful lies are big and black. For example, exaggerating
the price of a dress, a suit or a piece of furniture is a small white lie; so is
the subtraction of a few years from one's age. In fact, the latter is part of a
legacy that one generation passes to another. It could make a man or a woman a
laughing stock, but it neither causes death nor inflicts misery on innocent
creatures. Until recently, man's natural attachment to his perishing youth was
the sole reason for his tendency to keep his age a well-guarded secret. Today
people have better reasons to hide their age, such as holding on to a job,
preserving one's dignity or shielding oneself from discrimination.
Ironically, the older one gets and the more experiences and wisdom one acquires,
the more one's value depreciates and the more one's chances of finding a job
recedes.
In the developing world, civil servants are forced to pack their experience and
expertise and quit work as soon as they turn 60 or 65. When employees carry that
awesome figure on their back, their place of work treats them like expired
canned food, ready to be dumped in the trash bin.
Yes, harmless lies are white and small. The same cannot be said of lies that
promote instability, fear, corruption, injustice and exploitation, or that
result in the destruction of cities, the desecration of holy places, the death
of innocent people, the demolition of homes, the imprisonment and torture of
innocent people, the colonisation or invasion of sovereign states, the illegal
annexation of lands or the creation of messy, difficult situations, where lives
are threatened and freedom and human rights vanish into thin air.
Examples of big black lies are easy to find. War officers tell big, black lies.
They promise the families of dead soldiers that the brave, loved ones, who lose
their lives serving their country will never be forgotten. Yet, we know from
experience that history only remembers the famous and the powerful, who do not
set foot in a battlefield, take credit for victory in wars they do not fight and
when their time is up, die of natural causes.
Honest press and honest media a rarity in our day and time ask tough questions
and receive credible answers. Cameramen lie when they focus on one aspect of a
picture and intentionally overlook, exaggerate or conceal another to distort
reality. Dishonest journalists and correspondents fill their reports with big,
black lies in order to deceive the gullible, to brainwash the innocent or to
hide ugly facts from the curious eyes of a frustrated, unhappy public.
War strategists tell huge, black lies when they claim that the destruction of a
country, the assassination of freedom fighters and the detention of innocent
suspects enhances world security.
Unfortunately lies of all colors and all sizes have not only polluted the global
climate, caused havoc and resulted in great loss of lives. They have also
destroyed trust and confidence and weakened peoples ability to distinguish
between truth and falsehood. People are getting accustomed to taking what they
hear, what they see, what they read and what they are told with a ton of salt.
They are more inclined than ever to mistrust the media and the press and to
paint most politicians with the color black .
Alas! Ours is the golden age of lies and liars, my friend.Arab News