This week sees a less-than-fond farewell from the political scene of one of the most accomplished - or at least one of the most prolific - liars in our political history. Boris Johnson bluffed his way into Downing Street and the public, gullible fools that we are, paid the price.
Why did Johnson lie so much? Obviously, because it was to his advantage. Children learn very early in life that they have a magical power that will get them off the hook if they have done something naughty. Lie about it! If no one finds out, it’s a win-win.
Lying is very common, and not only in politics. This is only partly because it is an effective strategy for maximising advantage and reducing punishment for misdemeanours. It is also because it no longer bears the stigma it once did. For a politician to lie would once have been a resigning offence. No longer. The public assumes politicians will lie to them, and price it into their vote.
However, at root, lying is still frowned upon. Nobody likes to be called a liar - even if (especially if ) it’s true. Being caught out at lying carries social stigma and even shame, so long as, like Johnson, you are not shameless. And most of us, thank god, aren’t.
The lip service - and perhaps it is only lip service - we pay to the truth still remains even though we are told we live in a post-truth society. Deep fakes on the Internet, misinformation or information gluts, the complexity of establishing even basic facts - all of these have weakened our commitment to the truth.
‘The truth’. When I was at university in the 1980’s, even at that time I would be mocked for my commitment to what I was embarrassed to name as the Truth. It was considered to be naive to believe in such a thing in the rarefied atmosphere of the London School of Economics. Everyone ‘knew’ that truth was relative, a construction of language, power and history. ( this is in fact an argument that goes back to Socrates and his debates with the Sophists.)
Like Socrates, I didn’t agree with that interpretation - and still don’t. My argument as a student was pretty simplistic - ‘well it’s not a relative truth that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade and that the second world war happened’. That was enough to perplex my not always genius contemporaries, even though the truth that was being referred to was not regarding facts, but the choice and interpretation of facts. That’s a stiffer order. Neitszche’s much-quoted ‘there are no facts only interpretations’ did an enormous amount of damage to the collective idea of truth, even though the statement is self-evidently silly ( for the same simplistic reason I countered my student buddies with).
My understanding is that there are choices and interpretations that lean towards the truth and others that lean away from it. I write novels because I believe in something called the Truth - even though I don’t claim to know it. My novels are ways of expressing that felt truth. If I didn’t have faith in that, then I wouldn’t see the point of writing in the first place.
‘Faith’ is probably the operative word here. You can only know truth if you have faith in it, I believe. ‘Give me faith, that I might believe’ as some Christian sage mused at some point in history ( or it might be from a hymn). This doesn’t sound rational and probably isn’t, but I long ago stopped believing that the application of reason produced Truth. You can only orientate yourself positively towards the truth and see what follows. Of course, this can only ultimately be ‘your’ truth, since we are all limited in perception and understanding. But you can hold your personal truth authentically - or you can just make something up that makes you feel comfortable, which is not the same thing at all.
To return to Mr Johnson and the efficacy of telling porkies. There is no doubt that as those imaginative children referred to earlier discover, it can get you off the hook in all sorts of situations. Clearly, the optimal situation is to act completely self-interestedly, lie about it and thus escape the consequences. This is not an option for me, as I cannot possibly keep track of the details enough to lie to anyone, as I have a terrible memory and although I am a good storyteller, telling lies makes me almost physically sick. This is a kind of burden since if anyone does catch me out in a lie, I feel tremendous shame ( yes, I do lie sometimes, if up against a wall, or if trying to save someone’s feelings, but it always makes me feel very uncomfortable).
I don’t know how common my feeling of discomfort about lies is. Clearly Mr Johnson doesn’t experience it, and it seems most politicians don’t either. But to me,lying is a slippery slope. If you lie enough, you end up being unable to distinguish between truth and lies and that is very dangerous. And if you end up lying to yourself habitually - although most of us do so from time to time - then you are really in danger of losing touch with reality. A lot of therapy, I suspect, is to do with untangling the self-deceptions we have wittingly or unwittingly engaged in.
We know lying is effective. We also know lying is bad, although we can’t always say why. We know lying is bad, because however we might intellectualise, the truth isn’t relative. The truth is the truth is the truth, even though we can’t say what it is. We can ignore the truth enough in order to become numb to it, but I believe that is the death of the soul. Lying to others can work in the short term - or even the long term - but lying to yourself leaves you with nothing to believe in. If you can make everything up, then how can you be rooted in any sort of reality? Who are you? This is why lying is ultimately poison.
If I have any faith in anything at all it isn’t in love, or peace, or charity - but the truth. The truth, to me, is sacred, that is, beyond debate. It is my apriori belief, the platform I make my stand on. I can’t say what it is - but I intuitively know it exists and am always trying to work towards it. This is more than I can say, I’m sure, for Mr Johnson - and far too many others like him.
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Lying is lying is lying.
Johnson is many, many, many times way past busting the old rule that lie three times and you are out.
There are standards, in life not just in public life, I think that we are only at the beginning of reaping the whirlwind of the slippery slope of knowing full well that politicians tend to be economical with the truth.
Johnson & Co lied, lie now, and will continue to lie ad infinitum unless checked... starting with batting the daft media coined phrase "Boris Johnson's lying is priced in" not just out of play but beyond the pale. Lying, of the insidious, culturally corruptive, recidivistic Boris Johnson sort need calling out at each and every utterance.
Disgrace yourself with lies to the British people and you too could be offered a 7 figure sum to write a column for the Daily Mail.