Every Lie Takes a Life
pictured above: Truman from The Truman Show becoming more paranoid
Introduction
Every lie takes a life. Having said that, I sometimes lie even though I try my best not to. Lies and death both reshape our world in significant ways. These clearly have their differences, but they have more similarities than we generally consider. I clearly may not mean "taking a life" in the traditional sense, but I believe that the difference between lying and killing rests in the severity. This essay presents my thoughts on the subject, not a set of rules to follow. A lie restricts one’s ability to act freely by obscuring the paths of choice available in life. In the example of Truman Burbank from The Truman Show, the accumulation of lies robs him of a meaningful life, much like death permanently erases our potential. When having told a lie, I have made a decision for the receiver: I don't want to know the version of that person which exists knowing the truth. I kill that version, and I will never know that person. Instead, I selfishly decided that I'd rather know someone else. I think I should try my best not to lie to myself and also try even harder to avoid lying to others.
Lying Undermines Agency
When was the last time you lied to someone? When was the last time you were told a lie? These events changed the world. On a personal level, maybe the lie changed your world in a major way. Truths also change the world, but only the truth could exist without my conscience effort. Anyone can tell the same truth as me, but my lies create a brand new reality. Upon learning the truth, it feels that everything changes. Rather, the lie uprooted my world, the moment it occurred it limited my ability to act freely.
Agency and the freedom to act allow us to be who we are. These two principles rule so much about our psychology and society. Agency relates to our capacity to make independent choices, to affect our surroundings, or to shape our futures. Examples of exploiting this include misinformation, economic pressure, or surveillance. These examples manipulate or coerce us, they undermine our autonomy and distort our decision-making. When acting in the world, living under the context of a lie limits our agency. It limits the choices we can make. When lying, I decide to take away behaviors or choices that will arise given the truth.
Lying and therefore limiting the receiver’s agency becomes a crime in certain contexts such as in fraud, perjury, or false advertising. False advertising aims to change the course of my choices by manipulating my world view. Perjury aims to limit the actions that the court system can take in a similar way. These actions constitute crimes due to the harm they can cause. Obviously not all lies should be crimes, but all lies fundamentally do the same thing. They limit agency by distorting reality.
Complete agency but lacking freedom to act defines prison. Zero agency but complete freedom to act could be something like a vegetative state. Imagine me unconscious in this way, no one physically stops me from moving freely (actually encouraged), yet I lack the capacity to make that choice. In many parts of the world, the complete lack of measured brain activity could allow someone to further end my life.
I currently live some where in the middle of a vegetative state and having full agency. We are surrounded by manipulation or misinformation on a daily basis. A more extreme hypothetical that I like is portrayed by the movie: “The Truman Show”. Truman Burbank, the main character, has complete freedom to act in the world and yet lives in a complete fabrication of reality. He can move freely anywhere he chooses, but his family, wife, job, and entire town consists solely of actors. Virtually all that he knows are lies.
pictured: a frame of Truman Burbank from The Truman Show
Watching the movie, I clearly understand the nature of the situation as wrong. However, whether the character exists as less “alive” does not jump out as obviously. The directors of the show keep Truman separated from really living. Most of what he knows isn’t reality. He has access to some truth, even if small. For example, he knows that the physical objects around him are real. When he drives a car, the car actually moves and he physically operates it. His interactions with people still form real connections even if facts are kept from him. To place him even further down on the spectrum of agency, by taking these physical truths away, would place him in a dream state.
Death as a Spectrum
The descriptions of living less or being less alive represent misnomers. Instead of living a half life, external forces continuously remove Truman from reality. At any second, those forces could reveal the world. Those coordinating the lies could admit the truth at any moment. Each morning that Truman work up, potential versions of him exist ahead. One version has learned the truth and can now move on with agency. Another version again lives a day (or moment) apart from reality. An alignment to the concept of the self as an illusion strengthens the picture of “killing” alternative versions.
Imagine how a teleportation device in fiction such as Star Trek would work. After stepping into the transporter, it must remove my atoms from one place and reorganize them back together at another. At the moment I become disassembled, I would be dead. Essentially, the machine would assemble a clone of me some where else with all of my memories. Would you still use such a transporter knowing that you are killed and destroyed so that a clone of you can exist somewhere else? In reality, existence means this exact scenario happening at an undetected scale constantly, forever.
The feeling of a self/feeling like “you” is simply a consequence of never perceiving how many “you”s exist from one second to the next. Although nearly indistinguishable, a new version of you appears every moment at a different time and space. Your brain and memories do the job of making it feel continuous. Telling someone a lie takes the versions of their “self” with agency and makes sure those don’t exist.
Dementia or Alzheimer’s have a similar affect of killing. In the later stages of the disease, the affected individual may have lost so much about them, that the one I knew may be completely gone. As dementia rapidly breaks pieces off, lying chips away and severs parts off a person that never come back. The culmination of protecting these pieces and the survival of selves with agency give you the potential to live a full life. In another sense, it is maximizing time spent in reality and with the freedom to act in it. Lying minimizes these pieces and therefore shortens life. One of the reasons it hurts so much to have been lied to is having realized that a piece of my life was robbed from me.
At any moment where a lie manipulates my reality, the truth may resuscitate me in the next. However, the words dying or death traditionally get reserved for specific moments. Clinical death usually occurs when my pulse stops. This actually matters very little though. If someone I love continues to act and behave as a healthy person but all the mean while they have no pulse, I wouldn’t care. That person’s ability to act with agency freely in the world matters to me. Even modern medicine challenges this notion as a man lived 100 days with an artificial heart lacking a pulse. Clinical death simply signifies the moment we more or less know that their agency/freedom drop to zero and both have zero potential to increase. Given this new definition, being lied to and dying represent very similar outcomes.
Conclusion
At this point, I’ve argued that lying exists antithetical to life. To lie is to limit, and in a metaphysical sense end life. If I assume this perspective, does this mean I should never lie? Does this apply to trivial lies such as “dinner will be ready in 5 minutes,” or a follow up to the question, “I just bought this shirt, do you like it?”. While I take a critical and as of today unconventional stance on lying, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to these questions. I would say that a lie is always harmful, even in seemingly insignificant cases. However, I think that’s different than saying the lie was “right” or “wrong”. I also believe that a single action can be both good/right and bad/harmful at the same time. Intervening in someone’s personal choices in the context of addiction may violate that persons autonomy or personal freedom, yet it may protect their life. My point is that when telling a lie, you must consider the devastating and destructive nature at its core.