The following is an essay my son wrote about lying. It was something I asked him to think on due to an increase in lying about silly little things. In true B format, this was his response.
Lying is when someone purposefully, or knowingly, gives someone else information that is wrong. This can be a major issue when one is to be trusted, as a person doesn't know when they will give correct answers or not. Lying has been an issue ever since creatures have communicated with one another, to lie and get the upper hand against the other. It arose most likely then from the survival instinct, proving to be a useful tool against those who had not yet discovered it. Some used trust to make bonds with others, to form communities because they found safety in numbers. And still some lacked the mental capacity for concepts such as lying and as such never developed that tool, and could have fallen victim to those who had. Then at some point man came along, and improved upon lying, made it into a science, before there even was sciences. Man used deception in strategies to hunt its prey. Like the suspected strategy of velociraptors, where one would come up and take the prey’s attention make it think it was far enough to escape if needed. But then as they had its attention, a few others were coming around behind it and on it’s sides to kill it. Such is the way deception was used for hunting, but once man had advanced far enough that it could overcome its feeble bodies and overpower its prey, they moved deception to each other. Man became the deceiver and the deceived, with many things such as religion, magic, politics, optical illusions, guerrilla warfare, and more. When there was no beast who could challenge men, they turned on each other. Devising ever more complex weapons to defeat their enemy. And taking ever more offence to any insult, anything to give them a reason to challenge the so called enemy.
Lying is when someone purposefully, or knowingly, gives someone else information that is wrong. This can be a major issue when one is to be trusted, as a person doesn't know when they will give correct answers or not. Lying has been an issue ever since creatures have communicated with one another, to lie and get the upper hand against the other. It arose most likely then from the survival instinct, proving to be a useful tool against those who had not yet discovered it. Some used trust to make bonds with others, to form communities because they found safety in numbers. And still some lacked the mental capacity for concepts such as lying and as such never developed that tool, and could have fallen victim to those who had. Then at some point man came along, and improved upon lying, made it into a science, before there even was sciences. Man used deception in strategies to hunt its prey. Like the suspected strategy of velociraptors, where one would come up and take the prey’s attention make it think it was far enough to escape if needed. But then as they had its attention, a few others were coming around behind it and on it’s sides to kill it. Such is the way deception was used for hunting, but once man had advanced far enough that it could overcome its feeble bodies and overpower its prey, they moved deception to each other. Man became the deceiver and the deceived, with many things such as religion, magic, politics, optical illusions, guerrilla warfare, and more. When there was no beast who could challenge men, they turned on each other. Devising ever more complex weapons to defeat their enemy. And taking ever more offence to any insult, anything to give them a reason to challenge the so called enemy.
From the previously stated situation one unifying religion arises to take its followers and lead everyone from the violence to, more or less, peace. Christianity at some point in that turmoil had arisen and taken a small hold, however, they were widely persecuted. Amongst the most despised religions of its era, but some how it had managed to gain favor enough with Rome to earn the Edict of Milan. This edict claimed that Christianity was no longer to be punished, but welcomed as the official religion of Rome, the superpower of its time, had just given Christianity some legitimacy. Through the years Christianity would grow, and flourish, with some compromises. One of which being Christmas, originally the Pagan winter solstice, a very spiritual time for what was the majority of the people then. Christmas was adopted as their holy savior Christ’s day of birth, to get more pagans to join their church. Christianity after the fall of Rome had some influence in Britain, but not much. The invaders after the roman decline were not so peaceful, and wanted nothing tied to roman culture left behind. So they burned pillaged and slaughtered anyone the Romans had left, including many christian monasteries. But as time went on, the christian people had a plan. They were to change everything from the baseline up. They started by rewriting the heroes of the people they were being persecuted looked up to. One of these many heroes was Beowulf in the famous poem, Beowulf. They fundamentally changed the story as they inscribed it since no one besides the monks were literate at that point, the story was strictly vocal. But the monks changed that and made sure to get their agenda done with it too. As the monks wrote the poem of Beowulf they changed the story in subtle ways to push their ideology of peace and compassion over the current one of war and violence. Changing where the poem would have said gods, to god. introducing the story of cain and abel to the story. And in even more subtle ways by shifting the characters attitudes towards each other and making thin similarities between the characters of Beowulf and the characters in Christianity’s holy book. Then once the changes started taking hold they started setting up churches and converting more and more people. Christians had many values to teach the people in that culture, but one of the main ones was about honesty. If people could not trust one another to tell the truth then they could not coexist. They could not trade, or even make laws, because those laws were open to the peoples decisions, and if they were deceitful then the laws could not do their job to regulate properly and without bias. Then the culture unravels based on grudges that accumulate because the people cannot trust the laws to take care of their disputes. After many centuries of British culture developing and evolving slowly, a few set sail for India, trying to find a safer way. However these travelers did not reach India, they came to America.
American culture is based on the British culture we came from, however since then it have had influences from just about every other culture that one can imagine. The base in British culture means that at its roots america was a christian nation. The values of the american society throughout history have changed little. The main values for the most part were wealth, honesty, opportunity, and intellect. Though many politics have been excluded from many of them. Many politics have had a lot of bad reputation over the years for having not-so-honest streaks. Some have outright lied to the public. As such there is an air of distrust between the public and politics. They just seem to be out for themselves, many feel. President Clinton claiming he did not have sexual relations with one of his interns, Monica Lewinsky. Previous governor Eliot Spitzer of New York had an affair with a prostitute which he denied. Chris Christie previous governor of New Jersey lied(most likely) about knowing 2 lanes of traffic being shut down to spite someone who had posed against him in his gubernatorial race. So there is quite a lot of mistrust, which leads to disinterest, with politics in the United States. And leads to low polling rates, such as the average polling rate of new yorkers is around 45% of those who are registered. So of the 20 or so million in new york, roughly 50% are eligible to vote after restrictions and such. After that about 45% of those end up voting. After that the winning candidate gets around 60% usually. So with those statistics the winning candidate usually only gets 13.5% of the New York population. This is mainly from disinterest with the politicians themselves. America viewed them as in it for themselves, laundering money, lying, and hiding behind smoke screens to get away with anything. This is what was the fear in ancient time with deceit, that anyone with a quick wit could lie their way out of paying for their actions, and it is still happening today.
Lying is a serious problem in any culture, for all its people. The people need to rely on each other for support, for trade, for many things needed throughout the day and if they can’t then problems can come up like depression from isolation and many other mental disorders have been studied in other high intelligence animals, such as the african gray, to come from lack of interactions. Other implications could be endangering of people based on incorrect information, or other complications.
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