Experiments with the Truth

What would happen if you didn’t tell a single lie for an entire year? 

Think about that seriously for a minute. While it’s easy to envision not being a liar in the deliberately manipulative or evil sense, what about the little white lies you tell those you love and care about? What about the lies you tell yourself and don’t even know it? 

If we are honest with ourselves—you see what I did there right?—to not lie for a year would be near impossible and rather frightening. How many of our relationships would survive a week of true radical candor? Well, Martha Beck, a prominent sociologist, thought leader, and best-selling author, who many consider the best life coach in the world today, did just that and it completely changed her life. 

I discovered Beck in a most unusual and unexpected way. As I was going through one of the many, many newsletters I read as part of my weekly research process, a click-bait-y headline for an episode of the Tim Ferris Show grabbed my attention. 

I couldn’t resist the temptation to click the link, of course, and then proceeded to devour the entire multi-hour episode. As soon as it was over, I bought Beck’s book The Way of Integrity, an excellent read. I guess not all clickbait is created equal. Sometimes, very rarely, what you find on the other end is actually worthwhile rather than the usual medley of fake news, useless distractions, and scams. This was one of those moments for me.

Why did the “zero lies for a year” so capture my attention? Look, it’s not like I consider myself some big liar or anything like that! But I do think telling the truth is another of those things in life that is way harder than it sounds, for to tell the truth, you have to know the truth. Is that something we really think we have a good handle on? I don’t think so.

In The Way of Integrity, Beck describes the 3 types of lies:

1. Black lies: when you deliberately lie for your own benefit

2. White lies: when you lie for social reasons

3. Gray lies: when your white lie crosses the line

It’s pretty easy to understand the first two categories. Straight-up lying is never ok when it is deliberately manipulative but if you are trying to protect someone’s feelings or avoid unnecessary conflict, that’s a different story. It’s gray lies that are the tricky ones.

Beck offers an interesting way to test whether you might be in gray lie territory. The trick is to ask yourself two questions: whether someone could blackmail you by threatening to tell the truth you are hiding and whether you are following the Golden Rule to treat others as you would like to be treated. Obviously, if you could be blackmailed or are not following the Golden Rule, then you know your lie is gray and not white and should be avoided. 

Anyway, I decided to run my own little experiment in truth. My idea was, of course, to avoid lying, but also to just pay close attention to what I’m saying and not saying and why. My goal was to get a sense for just how much white lying I’m prone to do and see if there’s any gray mixed in there as well. While it’s only been a few weeks, what I have noticed right away is that, while I’m not at all prone to lying outright, I do have a tendency to engage in social interactions in ways that are not entirely truthful.  I’ll slightly embellish a story or tell a white lie in an attempt to make someone feel better or not hurt their feelings. I’ll conceal what I’m truly feeling or thinking behind my generally agreeable personality. And for the sake of peace and avoiding awkwardness, I’ll do this even if someone says something I completely disagree with. 

The question I’m asking myself now is: is this all ok? 

I don’t really know. Part of me is really attracted to the idea of radical candor. I get that it’s kind of a crazy proposition but maybe the world would be a better place if we all just told the truth all the time. Are the white lies we are all telling really serving our individual and collective long-term best interests? I just don’t know. As awkward of a world as this would be, we cannot dismiss the potential, at least, that things could be better. 

That being said, I think it probably is ok to white lie, at least a little bit. There are some unique circumstances where radical candor can work—i.e. in close relationships with a lot of healthy emotional trust—but it probably doesn’t make sense applied in general in life. You have to have a really solid, sophisticated relationship, where everyone is fully consciously on the same page, to pull that off effectively. However, because of the ever-present risk of white lies turning gray, I do think we should be mindful of how much we’re doing this. 

Let’s zoom out and ask a different question. When, if ever, is lying outright actually a good idea? You see, I don’t think it is so clear that “never” is the answer. There are plenty of circumstances in life where we are completely ok with lying. What if you are trying to win a war? What if a lie could save someone’s life? How about a trick play in sports? 

I know I just made things a lot more complicated but stay with me here.  

The arts reveal an important truth about lying. Consider, Odysseus, one of the most famous heroes in all of Western literature. Well, he’s an absolutely prolific liar. There’s the whole Trojan Horse thing—a massive, massive lie—but that’s just one of many, many incidents of deceit in the story. Odysseus is basically lying all the time. He lies so much he even tries to lie to the Goddess Athena herself at one point and gets called out for it. In fact, Odysseus lies so much that some literary theorists argue that the whole elaborate story he tells about his adventures with the Cyclops, the Sirens, the lotus-eaters, and Scylla and Charybdis, is just one massive lie designed to convince the Phaecians he’s so special that they should give him a ship to go home. 

What are we supposed to learn from a character like this? Is it that lying is the way to success? It kind of seems that way. Odysseus is one of the few Greek heroes who makes it home alive after all. But Homer is too subtle to offer a blunt, morally dubious message like this. No, Homer has to be offering us something more profound here, right? 

Let’s consult another example. If you haven’t watched the Shogun series on Hulu, you must! It’s an incredibly moving story and masterfully done. Lord Toranaga, like Odysseus, is a character that has a very complicated relationship with the truth. The whole story is about how he uses deceit, trickery, delay, and strategic thinking to create confusion, defy the odds, and outmaneuver his powerful enemies. 

Whatever you may think of lying, you cannot help but admire the way Toranaga uses blurred lines to achieve his objectives. Unlike Odysseus, who’s prone to lying outright, he plays with the truth by keeping his cards close to his vest, so much so, that no one around him, even those closest to him, knows what he really thinks or intends to do. This creates an incredible degree of uncertainty and he uses this to get his followers to execute all kinds of strategically elaborate plans that would be impossible if everyone knew the truth.  

Just why do we love stories and characters like these? Because they reveal something important about the human condition:

As much as we may value the truth, as much as we want to believe in basic human decency, we must keep up a constant guard against deceit, trickery, and lies. If there is something magical about the truth, it is because it is so rare. Human beings, especially when stressed, afraid, or seeking money or power, will say and do just about anything! 

What of Beck and her experiment with the truth? If the lesson of these stories is not that we should become liars ourselves but rather that we should remain vigilantly attune to the possibility of deceit, how should we think about lying in daily life? Well, what Beck discovered is that it’s the lies that we tell ourselves that are the most dangerous.  They are what prevent us from doing what we really need to do and becoming who we really need to become.

Often, when we are lost or struggling in life, it’s because we have been lying too much. What Beck has discovered is that all lying is dangerous, even white lies, because the more you do it, the greater the confusion you introduce into your own sense of self. Lying damages, somehow, the pathways to self-understanding and increases the likelihood that you will start lying to yourself.

As an antidote, Beck developed a fascinating approach to life coaching—what she calls “Wayfinding.” The premise of Wayfinding is that something rather magical can happen to people when they start experimenting with radical truth-telling. However painful and awkward, there is something in the process that brings clarity and self-understanding and if done right and for long enough, helps people to see all the lies they have been telling themselves. The truth really can set you free it seems!

PS. Consider the massive deceit behind our obesity epidemic

Housekeeping

 A big Thank You to all of you who made it to the end! I just wanted to let you all know that we are taking a break next week on account of the 4^th of July Holiday here in the US. The next time you will hear from me is Tuesday July 9^th , when we release our next Nick Halaris Show podcast episode.

Whether you are American or not, I hope you all have a great 4^th of July! It’s a celebration of liberty, after all, a value way too big and important to belong to any one nation.

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