Little white lies

This website wasn’t accessible earlier today, so I went to the customer help page on my host’s website.

When I typed in my problem, it came back with an automated message saying the company was aware of the problem and its “entire staff” was working on fixing it.

Really, I thought? From the CEO to the cleaner, they were all focused on getting this blog up and running. It must have worked, because here I am again.

A few months ago, I received an email from my bank telling me that they were closing my branch office and moving my account to another branch further away from where I live. Why were they doing this? “To serve you better,” the missive said.

Of course, I thought, it is entirely in my own interests that I now have to travel further — including crossing a busy highway — to get to my bank branch. If there were another reason — say, for example, that the current building was scheduled to be demolished (which seems to be happening now) — surely they would have told me.

These are just two examples of the simple lies we hear or read every day. From big corporations and governments to individuals, we are hooked on lying.

From “that looks great on you” to “no taxpayer will be worse off” or “this won’t hurt a bit” our lives are full of lies.

And the reasons vary from not being bothered to find out the truth to believing that a “white” lie doesn’t hurt anybody.

In fact, the average person lies 20 times a day, each and every day. (I just made that statistic up. It could be true, but it’s probably a lie. I’m no better than anybody else.)

The real truth is that nobody tells the truth. Not all the time. And when we don’t know when somebody else is lying, and we don’t care when we do, then we really do have a problem.