Lying

I'm listening to Moonlight in Odessa on the radio. It's a novel about a Ukranian woman who worked for a 'dating' agency serving up Eastern European women to rich men. It's a sign of the times that this includes not only Americans but wealthy Russians. As I write, she's just discovered that the American teacher she's just impulsively - though unpassionately - married is, in fact, a school janitor. He's already showing signs of bullying and jealous behaviour. And she's holding a torch for a gangster back home. Oh, I wonder how it will turn out...

Anyway, Tristan (the yankee janitor) has clearly told a series of pretty big lies to get what he wants. But stupid lies, of course. And he's obviously not going to keep the liee (I know that's not a word in English, but we don't seem to have a word for the addressee of a lie, and we should) now that the falsehoods are out.

What can we learn from this? Firstly, don't tell bleeding obvious lies. Secondly, a persistent smell of bleach about a person must be a sign of something, even if it's OCD rather than a concocted career. Thirdly... er, that's it.

Lies are so much a part of everyday life and everyone's experience that although it's disappointing - and sometimes devastating - to be lied to, it's seldom a surprise. Although we can only function socially by generally trusting people to do and be as they say, we know that this is often not the case, and have to continally have back up plans for when people are lying. This is something we must learn quite early. Psychologists tell us that children learn to lie around the age of four. Perhaps for a while they think that they've made a great discovery, and only they have this special power. But they must learn quite soon that lying is not only possible, but easy, and available to all. And while it might not be possible to permanently adopt the strategy attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Jeremy Paxman of thinking while interviewing politicians, "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?", we should always maintain a degree of scepticism. Perhaps we have to take a lot on trust - but everything we do should be treated as only provisionally true, and open to revision. Especially things that lecturers say.

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