The Art of Lying...

I agonized over naming this article 'The Fine Art of Telling Untruths' because it was so much 'sexier' and intellectual sounding, but I stuck with this one because a point needed to be made.

That an untruth is a completely different thing to a lie.

An untruth is innocent, usually accidental, an unintentional telling of a falsehood, while a lie is deliberate, calculated and designed to mislead. When Peter denied knowing Christ three times in the Biblical account of his last days, on each and every occasion he was deliberately stating facts that he knew contradicted reality as he knew it to be. In other words, he was telling a lie.

In much the same way, when the former Acting Chairman of the Airports Authority added accomplishments and qualifications to his resume that he knew he never accomplished or achieved, he too was deliberately telling a lie. Had he said he got his degree in 'Cockery' over 'Cookery' it could have been excused as an error, an unintentional accident, but having never even driven through the University gates as a student of that institution while naming it as an Alma Mater, he deigned to create a fake reality, or put another way, he told a lie.

When the President of the Media Association of Trinidad & Tobago said she was standing in the midst of the most flagrant attack against freedom of the press in this country was she telling an untruth? Because not forty eight hours later the same person had cause to say that the entire affair was a massive miscommunication, making either her first statement on the subject or that one a lie. For the sake of clarity we should deconstruct the terminology so as to prevent further misunderstanding. A miscommunication is the server at the fried chicken restaurant giving you a breast and wing when you deliberately ordered a leg and thigh as is evident and printed on the bill, a massive miscommunication is your believing that your boss sent you to KFC to collect his dry cleaning on a Wednesday, when you have been picking up his dry cleaning on Thursdays for years. The still unnamed person who put out MATT's first two releases calling on civil society to be alarmed at what was taking place in the Guardian's newsroom could be excused for telling an untruth if they were receiving their information second hand and misunderstood a promotion of an Editor in Chief to be a firing, but had he or she been in the newsroom and had seen the unfolding of events first hand, telling the now alarmed society that it was in fact all one big family misunderstanding would have been a lie.

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition could direct us here. When he stood up in the House of Representatives to deliver his 'email-gate' novella, did he know then that there was a distinct possibility that the information he was sharing could never be substantiated and could in fact be a hoax? Because if he did then he advanced a lie. If, as some believe, his whistleblower copied the alleged evidence off a screen and was the one responsible for corrupting the evidence, wasn't the Opposition Leader, as chief prosecutor in his matter bound to ascertain if there was any truth to this at all? And during his presentation when he mentioned that the matter was sent to His Excellency the President of the Republic who in turn weeks later turned it over to the Integrity Commission, by omitting to include his private meeting at the Chairman of the Commission's home over the same matter prior, what did he do? Was that a lie?

It seems that there are many people well versed if not skilled in this art in our society, and all one has to do is follow the circus now playing out in Chaguanas West to see some fine examples of this. Now we gather at the platforms popcorn in hand waiting for a 'mark to buss' regardless of it is true or not. Politics has replaced entertainment it seems, and as no critical thinking is required, we have evolved (devolved?) into a society where allegations are evidence and rumor and judgement one and the same. Even our media seems to have been swept along in the craze, and instead of pausing to investigate the latest salacious gossip the idea seems to be – 'you say it, I printing it, that settles it.'

Someone said to me we are a nation at war with itself, and that is about the most apt description of our condition as I have heard. Now we live from willful lie to exaggerated lie and seem to have no intention of questioning why. Friedrich Nietzsche said “The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”

If I were to advise the leaders of the day I would quote American writer Dorothy Allison who seemed to be speaking directly to our condition - “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”