Why Do We Lie Wrong

My furrow-browed brother asked me if I had been on his computer, and scrawny six year old me stared back. My mind raced, but the only thing that fell out of my mouth was silence. After all, I had been raised right. Lying was wrong. At the same time, I couldn’t admit to doing wrong. Ergo, silence. I thought I had discovered pure brilliance. If I never admitted to doing wrong, I couldn’t get in trouble. Six year old me had stumbled onto a large part of the human condition quite by accident. Show two people a recording of the same football game, and depending on which side they like more, they will see wildly different things. Extend that to life, and lying becomes inventible, for if we see different things, we have no objectivity to base …show more content…
What it does do, is illuminate why I think truth is not a useless concept. Every time we open our mouths, lies fall out. Truth is a yardstick that we can never measure up to as long as we are human. Nonetheless, we can follow the mathematician’s example. Lies are not created equally, and truth and lie are not binary. The Earth is flat and the Earth is round are both lies, but they are far from the same. Despite the impossibility of ever quite reaching the truth, we can get close enough. Civilization and progress are built on the backs of statements that are more true than …show more content…
Science is not perfect, and it never will be. Still, no matter how impossible reaching a specific goal may be, does not mean the pursuit of that goal is useless. With the knowledge we gain about the world via science, from experimentation and double blind studies and all the myriad weapons we have developed to fight off the clouds of ignorance, I can do my small part to improve the world. From our imperfect knowledge of electricity and pumps, I can design a wind-powered pump for a poor village, so that poor mothers no longer have to spend four hours a day walking to get fresh water. That knowledge is not “true” per se, but it is true enough to make