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I do think people hide a lot of things about themselves and hide feelings.
Many people hide loneliness, emotional upset, longing, desires, needs, weaknesses.
Agreed. We do this for a variety of reasons. Nobody wants to be completely naked in front of the world. We all have insecurities, fears, worries, fetishes, quirks, etc.
Lying at work is often a prerequisite. At a restaurant customer asks "What's good?" Waitress: "Oh, everything!" Blatant lie. She could make the effort to pick out just a couple winners.
When I was put in this position, I would hesitate and say said item is "very popular". Only the clever customers caught on. I steered people away from the worst items, but it was a delicate balancing act. But I was thanked over and over for my honesty. Or a customer's favorite question: "is it fresh"?
No, in reality, "it" almost never is. "Where's it from?" Me: "The Sysco truck". Said with a laugh. And this was an upscale resort. Sigh. Goes with the job: the challenge is to tip-toe around the subject with still a modicum of truth.
No matter how relatively honest a person is, they are still a liar. The words "lie" and "truth" can mean various things. It is completely impossible to be entirely truthful all the time. We do not even know what our own subconscious minds are thinking, and we lie to ourselves all the time, so how could we possibly not lie to others?
Life, and the mind, are much more complicated than people usually imagine. It isn't simply honest vs liar.
I would say an honest person is someone who at least makes an effort to not intentionally deceive people. EXCEPT, of course, when the truth would hurt them and serve no purpose. And that is VERY OFTEN.
Brando is not a psychologist, obviously, and has only observational evidence from mostly Hollywood
in show business and southern California. I would expect them to lie a lot.Yes.
He doesn't know this. It is a very old idea that we all play roles in our lives: employee, friend, sister, wife, husband, etc. But that does not imply we are liars. We are exaggerrating, using BS and being insincere, true. Politicians are excellent examples of this, at least in U.S. But it is not the same as creating a whole character as actors do.
To some extent, it is not only most people, but everyone (excluding only those who aren't cognitively capable of self-awareness). Everyone with self-awareness has some kind of filter. And 'having a filter' implies 'not always being completely honest'. The last thing any of us wants is to out ourselves as vulnerable in front of people who may take advantage of those vulnerabilities. That's why people are lauded even for speaking out about being victims of abuse that occurred decades earlier--because they're admitting vulnerability, to themselves first and foremost and then also to the world at large. Why does it take so long for allegations to surface, in so many instances? Why aren't accusations made instantaneously? Because reality is too difficult to deal with.
Great point about self-awareness. Yes, as soon as we become aware of ourselves as being distinct and separate entities (with our own minds and thoughts and beliefs, etc), we realize that we can influence other people's perceptions of us by adjusting ourselves in various ways. This realization is a milestone in childhood development. And we carry on and hone this ability to influence throughout our lives. We use it to impress others, to gain favor, to conceal unpleasantries, to gain advantage, to find sexual partners, and to maintain harmony. I don't believe that this is necessarily a bad thing, per se, but it does often require the liberal use of deceptive ability, which generally has a negative connotation, but perhaps is not always bad. Is deception in and of itself automatically bad? Does context matter? Does motivation matter?
Brando is not a psychologist, obviously, and has only observational evidence from mostly Hollywood
in show business and southern California. I would expect them to lie a lot.Yes.
He doesn't know this. It is a very old idea that we all play roles in our lives: employee, friend, sister, wife, husband, etc. But that does not imply we are liars. We are exaggerrating, using BS and being insincere, true. Politicians are excellent examples of this, at least in U.S. But it is not the same as creating a whole character as actors do.
I think Brando was simply making an observation about human social behavior, one that obviously had been made countless times by others throughout history. Shakespeare said the same thing: how we are all actors on stage playing a variety of social roles throughout our lives. The sociologist Erving Goffman likened our social interactions to actors performing on stage in a play — he called it Dramaturgy; he stated that we have a backstage area (private areas where we prepare and rehearse) and front stage area where we actually perform and deliver our performances.
The question as it pertains to this thread topic is whether or not our various social performances and roles that we play qualify as being deceptive or fraudulent (phony) in some way, at least situationally?
I can't lie even if I wanted to. The few times I have attempted to tell a lie in my life I failed miserably. Even omitting the truth is most often difficult. I always say they gave me a broken filter at birth.
There is only one time I can recall a substantial statement that you might consider a lie and that is when I told my high school boyfriend "I love you too" but I don't know if I would even consider that a lie because I thought I did. As a young teenager I did not know that I was wrong.
This explains a lot about me being unemployed for 6 years and getting taken advantage of. The only reason I probably did as well as I did is because I'm a reserved introvert. If it wasn't for that who knows how much worse off I would be.
I guess I get it to an extent but the world should value honesty more. It would be a much better place if more people told the truth. Most of the time the truth is most likely bad because people aren't very open minded. If more people were open minded then the truth wouldn't be so damaging.
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Originally Posted by Spuggy
I never say "just fine" if I am not feeling it, i just say "hanging in there, thanks". While lies are for the benefit of others and not hurting them, but even then there is a way around those, but I don't go along with the theory we are all liars. Some people are adept at avoiding white lies by looking for the positive and focusing on that.
I have noticed that I have been saying "okay" more often to people at work but it's almost like my mind compensates and I end up feeling fine when they ask me. So if I feel not fine at the time of them asking me I will often change the subject or just say hi back or if I have to I tell the least burdening truth like "I'm tired".
As far as trying to adopt personas I can't do that either. I wish I could..it's very difficult being me as people often don't understand things about me and even ridicule me about it. I'm sure it also helps me fail in following my dreams so it really saddens me that I can't. About the closest I can do involves a sort of secret of mine but even that isn't me faking myself it's more playing up a less revealing side of myself so in a way I'm actually being kinda open.
As far as trying to adopt personas I can't do that either. I wish I could..it's very difficult being me as people often don't understand things about me and even ridicule me about it. I'm sure it also helps me fail in following my dreams so it really saddens me that I can't. About the closest I can do involves a sort of secret of mine but even that isn't me faking myself it's more playing up a less revealing side of myself so in a way I'm actually being kinda open.
Being involved in the society means playing some kind of role, if we know it or not. I wouldn't use the word "lie," because it has a connotation of sinfulness. Playing a role means not being yourself, but who the heck knows what a "self" is anyway? It's not like we have a real inner self that we hide behind a social mask. The social mask is, more or less, who we really are.
If we are conscious of all this, we might ask ourself "Well, who am I going to be today?" But if you aren't conscious of it, you are still doing it anyway.
Even when you decide what clothes to wear, or if you should wear make or not, or dye your hair or not, or get tattoos. All those decisions help other people understand what role you are playing.
But then you can say "I don't think about what I wear, I just put on whatever is in the closet so I won't be naked." I don't know. That itself could be a decision to not care.
Yes of course we all have an inner nature. We are born more or less introverted, more or less angry, etc. But everything else is built on top of that, as a complex set of social roles.
Yes, everyone lies. Even something more subtle like answering "Oh, just fine!" when someone asks you how you are, and you just found out your husband is talking to an 18-year-old on a porn hub, meanwhile you found a lump in your breast that morning, technically is a lie.
We lie because we think we have "reasons" - "good job!" to a kid who's failing miserably, "no problem" to a boss asking us to stay late on New Year's Eve, "you look great" to a friend who looks pretty bad, "oh, my phone must have been off" to your MIL...or serious stuff...like people who cheat, steal...there are all sorts of lies, but they're still all lies and we believe we have a reason.
OFTEN that reason is a social reason. We are all forced to live in close quarters and as such, a degree of "lying" is essential in order to keep the peace. There are other reasons too. We may lie because we're afraid someone won't love us...or hire us. We may lie to try to bolster ourselves, hence we exaggerate (still a lie) our capabilities. We may lie to get out of having to do something hard or just annoying.
And of course there are some people who go all the way the other way, toward literal sociopathy where they simply don't understand or care that they're hurting someone else.
But in between there are the rest of us who lie all day long without even realizing it. "You're welcome to stay for coffee," "no problem, you can have my seat," "I'm feeling under the weather...can't make it," "I'd love to help you but I'm REALLY busy right now," "I'm doing dandy!'...etc. etc. etc.
This. We all make excuses, omit information, conceal our true thoughts, gloss over things out of politeness, promise to follow through on things we don't follow through on, tell people we didnt get their message when we did, etc., and these are all instances of not being honest and forthright and authentic.
That said, there are many perfectly good, highly adaptive and functional reasons people do all those things, and more.
I recently watched an old clip of the late actor Marlon Brando being interviewed on the Dick Cavett talk show in the 1970s, and in this particular clip he and Cavett were discussing acting ability.
Cavett was marveling at Brando's acting ability and stated that he (Cavett) could never do what Brando did (acting) so effectively on camera. Brando disagreed and stated that what he (Brando) did on screen was no different from what the average person does on a day-to-day basis to navigate the social world. Brando stated that we all lie and deceive daily as a means of social survival and that we couldn't survive a day without our ability to lie and deceive. According to Brando, we lie by saying things we don't truly mean, or by hiding things we truly do mean, or by adopting personas and mannerisms that are false. Brando further stated that we do this almost reflexively and are engaged in this constant self-editing process whereby we adjust our actions, our words, and our mannerisms in response to social stimuli in order to achieve the best possible result, often times in direct contrast to our inner thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
I was startled by Brando's frankness and openness regarding human social behavior. And it got me thinking about my own life. I realized that I do on a daily basis much of what Brando described, mainly for social convention/polite reasons, but often times for egotistical or self-serving needs (i.e, wanting to impress, wanting to make a good impression, etc.). I have always considered myself an honest person overall and one with a strong moral compass, but maybe I'm not as honest as I used to think, because I do often times wear a false face.
Do you believe that we are, in fact, liars who have to lie on a regular basis as a means of social survival? Could we survive without the ability to lie and deceive, at least on occasion?
The Bible says "Thou shalt not bear false witness." There is no religious injunction to tell someone who, being very ill, that they "look great." Or if someone asks how they're dressed to tell them "your clothes don't match."
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