Lying doesn't carry the same stigma anymore.

[SeattleUte]

Opra says that she doesn't care that James Frey's purported memoir "Million Little Pieces" turns out to be fictional (after she singlehandedly raised him from obscurity and made him a millionaire). She says it's still a good, inspirational story.

Today on NPR I heard that here in Washington the Republican party has admitted it sent fictional post cards falsely notifying people living in areas represented by democrat legislators that sex offenders lived nearby to make people angry about their democrat representative being "soft" on crime. The Republicans are not repentant, saying thay had to do this as a last resort, and it is working--the democrats are toughening up on crime.

It used to be that lying was just considered bad, and the stuff of bad karma, regardless of the purported end. Oh well. I have a feeling this fixation on truth being a laudable end in and of itself was just a passing late twentieth century American fad.

[ute4ever]

In scriptural times, making an oath was worth its weight in gold. For example, think of Zoram fearing Nephi was going to kill him, until Nephi made an oath otherwise. Even in my grandparents' day, they talk about how shocking it was when someone was found to be dishonest.

Nowadays, I agree with your implication that guile runs rampant in our society. In my own law studies, I have come to the conclusion that perjury is disciplined less frequently because civil court justices basically expect both sides to show up and tell lies.

[Robin]

r.f.

[UtahDan]

I work for was recently telling me about how they are having trouble with their nine year old daughter because she has a very black and white notion of the truth. In other words, she ALWAYS tells the truth and it leads to any number of situations where people get their feelings hurt or this girl goes overboard to make sure that such that what everyone else says is perfectly accurate. Obviously this all has negative social consequences.

Anyway, he is someone who I think is extremely ethical as well as intelligent so I was interested to here how he handled it. He explained to his daughter that everyone lies to some degree and that it is not in fact wrong to lie, rather, one should not lie to a degree that is socially unacceptable and proceeded to give some undeniable examples.

At first I was taken aback by the sort of relativist philosophy behind his comments, but the more I think about it the more I think he is right at least to the degree that truth is a flexible notion and we are clearly not always expected to tell it, nor is it always morally right to tell the truth.

I would make distinction between lies about a present fact as opposed to lies about present intentions (promises) because the former is much more in the eye of the beholder.