Why do People Lie?

Why do people lie?

Somebody recently asked me this questiob in a most heartfelt way and the first response that that came to my mind was because it works. I think for alot of people lying really work.

And what is lying?

Funndamentally, the easy answer of course is lying is not telling the truth. But i think even deeper than that, i think what lying is people creating an alternative reality and expressing it as if ot were truth. So basically, making up their own reality and in a lot of cases trying to get other people to believe this reality and often trying to get their own selves to believe this reality.

A part of what i think is a strange phenomenon with our species, the human species, is that we do have the ability often to define our own reality and that reality can be very contrary to reality in the world. The reality we often called truth isn't often really truth and i think it's very normal.

So why do people lie?

Because it work, because it makes them more comfortable, it allows them to avoid pain, it alloss them to avoid getting troubles sometimes. A lot of people do all sort of things that go against other people, and when they lie when they say they didn't do it by changing the story of reality, they can often get away with their bad behavior. So, people lie to cover their bad behavior.

But what about covering good behavior?

I think this is a real key that opens a whole different door ibto the question of why do people lie. Well, the door that I'm in an open is from the perspective of the little child in the very disturbed, emotionally troubled, violating family.

What happens in this family is the parents creates the society or reality for the child. They create what is considered truth for the child and what about when the child's innate love of truth and reality are powerful than the parents lies. This is such a common phenomenon where the child is actually more honest, more truth than his parents. What happens then?

The parents try to push down the child's truth/reality and sometimes in order for the child to keep truth alive within himself. The child has to lie that he's actually not living in connection with his reality otherwise the parents are gonna kill him.

For me being real and being honest in many ways was something that was not allowed and so what i did is i kept it private and when pushed, i had to fake it about how real i was on the inside.

Also, a lot of children have to lie about how sick their parents are. They have to lie about the horrible things that are going on in their family in order to protect their family. They don't want people to know how horrible their parents are. Terrible things can happen to the child if peiple find out what's really going on.

The child is powerless. So by nature of being less powerful, sometimes, the child has to lie often to themselves about how horrible their parents are because it's so painful to see the truth. It's much easier way for them to dissociate everything.

As they grow older and older, this lying becomes a part of them. And in many cases for children as they become adults, it becomes a functional survival tactic in the world because the things that they're lying about are things that most children are lying about. If they speak out the truth, they can experience societal rejection so in a way lying is part of being normal.

Now, some people find this extremes, some people go even further and i think often, it's people who come from the most screwed-up family system because they have toie in a really extreme way and until they've been able to actually take a cold hard look at the families they came from.

Until they can't move forward and accept the truth, lying becomes comfortable.