Let’s engage in a thought problem:
You’re playing poker. But this isn’t just any poker game… it’s the most important poker game you’ll ever play. Besides playing for money, you’re also playing for your future. If you win, you get the girl you’ve been courting… or the promotion you deserve… or the happiness you’ve been searching for. But if you lose… you get none of it.
You’re an excellent poker player. You’ve read Poker for Dummies…twice, you’ve watched every episode of the World Series of Poker, and you’ve been regularly taking Ginkgo Biloba supplements to enhance your poker memory! … And you’ve been studying your opponents. There are nine at the table, and they each have a weakness that you know how to exploit.
But as you play… you realize that something is wrong. Five of the nine are getting better cards than the other four, including you, every time. At first, you attribute this phenomenon to “shit luck”, but quickly you realize that these guys are cheating! They’ve got cards up their sleeves, mirrors on the wall that enable them to see your hand, and other tricks designed to ensure their successes.
You want to leave the table, but you can’t. You aren’t permitted to leave. You want to make them stop cheating, but you can’t. There aren’t referees in this game. You’re stuck in the game… and your future depends on the outcome!
The others three players who hadn’t been cheating are already gone! They didn’t get the girl… or the promotion… or the happiness they’d been searching for. And now you’re holding three aces and two queens, and knowing that even this great hand can’t compete with whatever your opponents have up their sleeves. You’re faced with a dilemma:
You can take the “high road”, lose the hand and the game, and walk away from the girl you’ve been courting… the promotion you deserved… or the happiness you’ve been searching for. Or you can recognize that the rules have changed, your life is at stake, and failing to cheat… would only be cheating yourself!
What do you do?
****
Many of us prefer to think of ourselves and our lives as straightforward. Sure, there are gamers who lie, cheat, or manipulate their way through life — but we aren’t like them. We play by the rules… and, we think, karma will eventually reward us for it.
These are nice thoughts… but unless we’re living in holes somewhere in Alaska, they simply aren’t true. We all lie, cheat, and manipulate – to varying degrees and with varying levels of comfort – because it helps us live amicably, because everyone else is doing it, and because it can make the world a better place!
Here’s what I mean:
· When we begin dating someone, we engage in a seduction process that requires the same kind of duplicity our opponents showed at the poker table. If our house is typically in disarray, we clean it up. If we tend not to wear deodorant, we wear it anyway. And if we hate Justin Timberlake… we endure his music… if only to see where the relationship might lead. Without such gaming (and instead quickly revealing our hard-to-live-with quarks and disgusting habits), seduction wouldn’t be fun and attraction would be harder to achieve.
· When we interview for a job – whether it’s counterwork at McDonald’s or a VP position at Microsoft – we take the twos and threes out of our hands and replace them with the aces up our sleeves. We may prefer to wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt to work, but during the interview we wear a suit. We may have been fired from our previous job for slacking… but we speak only of our glowing record there. We do this because, simply, we have no other choice. We know that every other applicant is doing the same thing, and we know that speaking candidly about ourselves would have us out on the streets and starving.
· When a diplomat tries to broker peace with group that doesn’t want it… she must choose her words wisely. Peace may be her country’s preference, but that doesn’t mean her country has ruled out military contingencies if the diplomatic process fails. But she likely won’t achieve peace by discussing those contingencies. So instead, she tells a story of collaboration and repair that is more likely to sway (manipulate) her counterparts to settle for peace. Forthrightness and honesty, she knows, are oftentimes the least diplomatic, least successful paths.
· When we comfort the friend who just separated from her husband of five years, we empathize with her… and agree that he was a fucking asshole, that he didn’t deserve her, and that there are better men in this world. We may know that none of this is true… that she was the emotionally abusive one, that she probably didn’t deserve such a great guy, and that, frankly, she likely wouldn’t find someone better… but we don’t tell her that. It wouldn’t help her to get over the pain of loss and, eventually, move on.
****
Our lives are filled with situations just like that poker game – situations in which we are forced to choose between playing it straight and losing out on what life has to offer …or lying, cheating, and manipulating because, simply, it’s better option for everyone involved.
Most of us choose to be gamers: to participate in the seduction process, to wear a suit to the job interview, to comfort our friends, or to pursue diplomacy… but as we do it, we tell ourselves that it isn’t lying, cheating, or manipulating…. rather it’s “putting our best foot forward,” “being compassionate,” or “being diplomatic”.
And when the stakes are really high, like in the poker game, and we’re forced to examine ourselves for what we really are – liars, cheaters, and manipulators – we don’t need to grit our teeth and think something like, “Oh gosh… what does this say about my character?” We already know the answer!
Instead, we can smile, roll down our sleeves, slip a few aces into our hands, and do whatever else it takes to get the girl we’ve been courting… the promotion we deserve… the peace we’d all prefer… or the happiness we’ve been searching for.
the title of your blog, Meditations on Meaning, has caught me. That’s we do the least, unfortunately.
Your words depict the truth. Your post reminded to me a story about good guy who never lied and whose truth killed his parents. Wow. That’s worth indeed of digging deeper.
What’s the truth?
My own blog is dedicated to that. I too listen to a whispering of my art colors and see myself in a mirror of thoughts
I while ago I accepted that everything is a scam, in one way or another. Honesty, just isn’t the best policy if you want to succeed.
This site is becoming one of my favorite reads.
Dear John, it’s hard to argue that “Honesty, isn’t the best policy if you want to succeed” but the honesty is the obligatory in case we want to have a spiritual peace.
Yes - I used to see the transformation take place as I stepped out my door. I magically aquired a persona of niceness, after labouring over make-up and clothes etc to extend to the world, hoping they’d think I was something I wasn’t sure I was … what?! … I even remember waking up before my ex-husband/boyfriends and putting on a full face of make-up and a slather of toothpaste around my mouth for a early morning smooch.
Ahhh John Wesley - you speak the truth about the scam .. were you saying that honestly or dishonestly?
OOOohh, talking of karma, Dan … the karma comes in when we finally quit wearing make-up .. and the world keeps asking ‘are you ill?, you look so terrible.’
If you have to lie, cheat and manipulate to get something, is it really worth it? Won’t you be found out eventually and lose that very thing that you cheated for?
Eventually, the love interest will find out you’re a pig and the employer will find out you’re a fraud and then you’ll lose everything.
I still believe being honest and straightforward is the way to find better jobs, better partners, and have a better life.
Everything’s about relativism. I am honest on job interviews and it has served me well. If you suck you may need to lie, but you could just make sure you were good enough not to have to.
And I wouldn’t say nice things to a friend just to comfort them if they were the one being abusive. In fact I would have probably told him or her that they were wrong far earlier.
However, of course, there are situations where you do well being manipulative. The diplomat-scenario for example, and a ton of other situations. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it in all situations as you seem to suggest.
And if we take your reasoning to the extreme. Is it okay if I come to your home, kill you, take all your stuff and walk away. We’ve got no connection (before this post) so I’d be pretty hard to find, wouldn’t I? And it would further my goals of happiness and money, so why shouldn’t I?
You paint with a broad brush. Your writing is pursausive, however I do not buy into what you are saying. I do not believe you will be served well in the long run by lying, cheating, and manipulating people to get what you want. Yes, you may get the immediate result that you want, however, there is no doubt in my mind that this will all catch up with you in one way or another. What you are proposing is that we all use bad energy to get what we want, that bad energy will drain you and you may end up with all the toys, however in the end you will be living in a personal hell which you built.
I am sure if you dig deep, past your ego, you would have a hard time buying what you wrote.
A simple quote for everyone, which you’ve all heard at least once in your lives…
“Your lies will always catch you out”
Pretenders don’t get far, if you’re not something you pretend to be, one way or another that will be revealed.
Best to lift away what dignity you have, than try and scrape the remains off the floor.
Interesting post. I think you will find Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma interesting.
Your assumption is false. Life is not a “zero-sum” game. It’s your choice to deal with people who are actively competing against you. This is sloppy thinking persuasively written.
My mother was about the most honest person I ever knew.
She wouldn’t have enjoyed anything achieved by lying, cheating or manipulating, she detested people who cheated their way through life and she often felt incredibly hurt by those people during her lifetime.
She used to joke that if she was ever to be reborn she wanted to be an unscrupulous person, because things were so much easier in life for them.
She died ten years ago, aged 55.
I hope her wish was never granted.
Hi! I think cheating and manipulating is not honest! But i’m new to poker! Plz check out my article about poker on my blog
I think there are lies that are acceptable and/or expected and the others are not.
Wearing make-up is lying, but it is expected; so is wearing nicer or specially designed clothes that would make u look better or hide your ‘disadvantaged’ body parts.
You are lying when telling your friend that their gift is exactly what u want while the truth is that you have already been given 2 of those and are worrying what to do with it. But you have to lie, as this expected and acceptable; you simply CAN’T tell the truth.
In a job interview, when asked if u like the products the company produces, you show the best enthusiasm, while you actually have tried them and find them no difference from other brands. This lie is simply expected. And the truth might be, the highest salary you could be getting, the most desirable work location or the best work life balance.
You are lying again, if you tell a suicidal friend who is about to jump from the balcony that their boss is going to reinstate their position. This is simply HIGHLY expected and acceptable(???).
You will see the border of being acceptable is a bit blurry now. How about this, just imagine in the job interview, you try the most popular flavour of the soft drink of the company, and you frown then say, ‘wow, this is the best soft drink I have ever tried.’ Is this acceptable and expected? No.
Now, I think you know what I am going to imply. Yes, the truth is relative, so is the lie. If you lie and the audience has no way to find out and/or it is beneficial to both parties(even though the listener finds out and turns a blind eye), then it is expected and acceptable; then socially, neither party would think this is lying(even though IT IS).
So whether you lie or not, it is between you and the audience, and how you lie. There is no use to argue if lying is good or not. What really matters is wether it works or not. You got to lie to survive while sometimes you got to be utmost honest.
Quite a sad world when you have to question weather to tell the truth or not.
As much as it may seem that a lie may be protecting you or someone else, in my experience, in the end, it usually turns out to cause more problems and confusion. If you don’t hit the nail directly head on, where do you think the head of the hammer will hit?
When you lie to solve a problem (diplomat example), you’re really just shoving it under the rug. Eventually, other problems will arise because you really haven’t solved the first problem that still exists, but is dormant (under the rug). Eventually, you’ll have wars and things that wouldn’t have happened will happen if you were honest and just went to war in the first place.
When you lie to solve something, you haven’t solved anything. You just diverted the attention. You’re confusing anyone and anything involved into thinking that the problem is somewhere else. Someone may spend an entire lifetime looking for this problem when it was right under their nose.
Regards,
John
Good point John.
The makeup example …
You’re only lying to yourself. You were born the way you were born, and if you don’t like it, you lie to yourself by covering it up with makeup.
Is that good? Of course not. You’re not accepting yourself for who you are.
The gift example …
If you just tell the truth, next year, the person may think to do some more research before they buy your gift, and get you something you like better, or something you don’t have. In the end, you’re both more happy in the long run.
Any other examples when it’s good to lie? Please???
Dave.
When Lying, Cheating, and Manipulating is Okay,
It is ok until you are caught, and after it is not that funny. Remember if you are allow to lie don’t be mad when you are lied to. There are three side, yours, mine and the true.
Each lie only lives until the truth comes up.
let me tell you this example: You are in the hospital and the doctor tells you to go home there’s nothing wrong with you. You step out to the street, you felt dizzy and fall to the ground and taken back to the same doctor where he tells you you have a tumor that he knew , but did not tell you. What do you think when you confront the doctor. I can see you asking the doctor why did he lie.
White lies some times are as bad as full fledged lies.
Lies hurt and after don’t be skeptical if nobody believes in you.
I know it is months but the lies the ceo`s of many companies they did tell about the economy. Know every body is wonder if it is safe to invest on their companies.
Congratulations, lies can lead to riches, but the higher you go the further you fall.
Don`t say that does not affect you and you don’t care, wrong, the domino affect will catch up with you sooner or later.
Each mind is a wonder but nobody likes to be lied to.
Dona