Promises and Lies

[lydy]

As I said to a friend recently, "I'm not that big a fan of promises." Some of that is clearly personal history. My mother promised my father the standard "Till death do us part" thing, and years and years of abuse didn't make her feel that she could be free of that promise. Of course, there were other things going into that decision. (Or more precisely, those decisions. The decision to stay was one that she made over and over and over again for 25 years.) The economic realities of a divorced woman in the Sixties certainly had a lot to do with it. But while it wasn't the only factor, it was certainly a very strong one.

Promises are contracts that we make with the future. We make them because nothing is quite so frightening or unknowable as the future. It looms at us every second of every day, and is utterly untouchable and unknowable. And so we make promises, to ourselves and to our loved ones, as a way of creating a future, as a way of taming the unknowable, a way of creating security where there is none. The problem, of course, is that we are making commitments for people we don't know and have never met: our future selves. We cannot know who we will become. Which, of course, is part of the point of making those promises, especially the marital promises. We don't know what's coming, but we want to be able to rely on each other. We want a cushion against the cruel reality of time. And so we promise. And we mean it.

Sometimes, the promise really is the way forward. Sometimes, keeping faith with our past selves and our present loved ones is the way we find strength and courage to build the future. But sometimes the present is so far beyond anything we could have imagined, sometimes the people we become is so far beyond anything we could have anticipated, that keeping that promise is like making love to a corpse. Sometimes trying to keep faith with your past means breaking faith with your future.

There is no easy way to know when this has happened. We change gradually. Our past, even if we have very good memories, becomes shrouded by our present. But sometimes, it becomes clear that keeping promises is no longer a way forward. It is no longer a hedge against the uncertainty of the future, but rather the building blocks of a present misery. And I believe that there is no shame in understanding this, and choosing another course. Let the dead, as they say, bury their own dead. If promises, instead of ensuring the future, destroy it, then it's time to choose a new future.

Breaking promises is not cheap; it always has a cost. At very least, you are breaking faith with your past self. It is not something to be done lightly. But everything has a cost, including keeping the promise. And doing a cost-benefit analysis is not a bad thing. I know people who feel that it is always immoral to break a promise. Nothing I say here will change their opinion; they see promises as concrete things, like baseballs or roses. I don't think they are. They are a way of thinking about the past and the future, they are neither fictional nor fully real. They are a way to resolve issues. When they stop resolving problems and start becoming a problem, it is time to find a new problem-solving technique.

My feeling about lies is very similar, I suppose. Again, I know people that think that lying is always wrong. I certainly don't think so. I will casually lie to people I don't know well about things that are inconsequential. Some stories "tell" better if told in the first person, even if they didn't happen to you. Some truths are incredibly complex, and a technical lie is as close to the truth as you can get without getting into serious personal detail that is none of your interlocutor's business. But just as breaking promises can cost, so can telling lies.

My problem with lying is not a moral one, but a practical one. Lying deforms the datasphere. We, all of us, collect and collate information on people around us, as well as ourselves. We can't help it. Understanding people, predicting their behavior, interacting with them, pretty much requires that we collect and understand data about them. The more superficial our interactions, the less detail we need, the less data we bother to collect, and the less we care about how it all fits together. However, as Teresa Nielsen Hayden has said, "Story is a force of nature." We cannot help but take all the information we get about a person and try to fit it into a coherent narrative. We both want and need to understand people.

When you lie, you deform that data set. Now, the occasional lie is likely to go undetected, if it's not about something important. And depending on exactly what it's about, it may be completely inconsequential. But the thing is, the way we understand people is actually quite complex and subtle. So if we observe someone who claims to truly love animals, but their behavior doesn't seem to quite bear that out, we note that. Not necessarily as a lie, but as an anomaly. If someone tells you stories about the year they spent in between high school and college, we don't particularly note them as important. But if the number of things a person says they did in that time frame starts to add up to an impossible number of things, a set of circumstances that don't really fit within a twelve-month time frame, we tend to notice. We don't always notice on a conscious level. But as we try to understand the story of someone's life, and if there are too many false notes, we do notice that. Sometimes, of course, we are wrong. Some people have completely true but utterly improbable lives. Some people are very good liars and the stories all have an internal consistency and there's nothing out of place or out of character. But those are outliers.

Most people have a story which makes a reasonable amount of sense, within the limits of memory, and we tend to automatically make allowances for the types of errors that the flesh is heir to. However, if someone's story doesn't add up, people tend to feel distrust. Each lie we tell has an unknown effect on the datasphere which is other people's understanding of who we are. Over time, we reveal both in what we say and what we do very complex models of who we are. Each lie has the potential to highlight a conflict. As I've said, telling the truth isn't a guarantee that this conflict will not arise. People's lives are complex, and we always see them through the lens of our own experience. So it's completely possible to misunderstand what someone has said about themselves, or to put various pieces together wrong. But at the point that we feel, either consciously or unconsciously, that someone's story doesn't quite add up, we start distrusting not just the stories but the person. We are less likely reach out to them, either to accept or offer help. Less likely to engage emotionally. It can become insurmountable. We all know someone who has told us so many lies we just don't believe anything they say anymore. This is as much because we can't seem to fit it into a matrix that makes sense as the genuine sense of betrayal.

I don't believe that lying is evil, or a sin. But I do think it does damage to our ability to communicate, often in complex ways we cannot predict. And I think it interferes with our ability to create authentic relationships with each other. I also think that sometimes it is absolutely necessary. So, I try to lie seldom, and only about things which are either utterly trivial, or completely vital. People lie. Mostly people tell the truth. All of this is complicated. But keeping the datasphere as clean as possible seems like the best way to create the bridge between me and you.

Promises and lies are both tools. They are powerful, complex, and dangerous tools that we should try to understand and use within the contexts of our real lives rather than our idealized lives. The fact that we can never truly touch reality, that we must always deal with an approximation of reality, makes all this even more difficult. But, you know, no one ever said being human was a cake walk.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like most small children, I asked my mother whether it was ever okay to tell a lie, at one point when I was 6 or so. And she told me about the Danish families who hid the little Jewish children who had been smuggled out of Germany and Austria, until the Danish fishermen could hide them in the holds of their fishing boats and take them to Sweden. And one of those children had grown up to marry into our Swedish family, and if no one had lied--my mother explained when I was sick--Liesel would have died a horrible death before she was ever a teenager, and we wouldn't have her or her children. So sometimes, my mother informed me gravely, it was not only okay to lie, it was our moral duty.

I am always suspicious of people who can't come up with reasons to lie or break promises, with that sort of history of the species lying around thick on the ground.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Yup.

As an interesting counter-point, when I was a teenager I read a Holocaust book, might have been _The Hiding Place_ by Corrie Ten Boom, maybe not. At any rate, her family was hiding a Jewish family. The door to the secret room was under the table. The SS arrives, and demand to know if they are hiding a Jewish family. All the family lies except for the smallest child, who says, "Yes, they're under the table." Since there was obviously no one under the table, the SS decide that they are being made game of by a small child, and leave. Or something. The moral of the story was that it is always wrong to lie, and that God will find a way. As an adolescent, I found this story profoundly disturbing and appalling, but was not in an environment where I could say so. It seemed to me that if ever there was a time to lie, that was it. And that it was awfully nice of God to manage a miracle like that, but that it was downright immoral to depend on it.

Oddly, I recently ran across a mention of _The Hiding Place_ by someone else, and they relate a very similar incident, but the person reporting it said that everyone lied. So, maybe I'm thinking of a different book, or maybe my memory is oddly variant. Possibly, there was a sermon about how they shouldn't have lied and how it could have all turned out, in which case, talk about spectacularly missing the point. Been 45 years, easy, so honestly, don't know anymore.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And that it was awfully nice of God to manage a miracle like that, but that it was downright immoral to depend on it.

Ayep. Even if you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not your trained poodle. And me, I know from trained poodles.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Somehow, that has echoes of "George RR Martin is not your bitch" to me. Yeah, whatever God is or isn't, he is not our bitch.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

downright immoral to depend on it.

Oh, so very yes to that.

[dlandon.livejournal.com]

I remember reading this story when I was in high school, and still fully entrenched in the uber-Christian worldview. Even then my instictive reaction was a deep revulsion and the instant thought - I would have lied. In weighing God's priorities - a lie versus a death - I have a feeling he wouldn't mind.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Oh, you remember it the same way? Oh, yay! I was starting to wonder what was going on when I found someone referring to the book who said that everybody lied. I had _such_ a vivid memory of the small child telling the truth.

The god I grew up with would not have had those priorities, which is why I gave up on him.

[dlandon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do, and ironically enough I'd just donated the book about a week before you posted this - so I could have checked. There was another instance in the book when Corrie Ten Boom's sister was stopped with a blonde, Jewish woman with perfectly forged papers and when they asked if she was Jewish she said, "yes" so the Gestapo took her. But that was okay in CTB's world because the woman was freed a few days later. CTB held up her sister as this example of perfect faith, and how flawed she felt for not living up to this standard (her sister died in the camps), but I certainly interpreted that refusal to lie differently.

And the God I grew up with is definitely not the God I believe in now.

[naomikritzer]

My recollection of that bit is that it was not Corrie's immediate family; they were all totally on-board with lying to the Gestapo. It was a different Resistance family. And it turned out OK, but Corrie was really shaken and thought "you know, REALLY, it is okay to lie when LIVES ARE AT STAKE" although it's possible that her sister Betsy was all, "noooooo, God will always provide MIRACLES as long as your heart is pure!"

(It's been a few years since I've read it, though.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I, too, am wary of promises. But I am more comfortable, it seems, with uncertainty, including the uncertainty of the future, than are many people. I particularly have never wanted to bind people to me with promises. If the person does not want to be with me, or to do something with me, I don't want them to be there or to do it.

Lying, now, I have very mixed feelings about. For myself, I'm with you: "I try to lie seldom, and only about things which are either utterly trivial, or completely vital." I think that I subdivide what the world calls "lies" into more categories. Telling a lie in response to a question the person has no right to know the answer to, when one cannot simply remain silent, feels to me more like "not revealing the truth" than "lying." And I agree with mrissa's mother that lying to prevent a greater harm, especially a harm that would be perpetrated by the people one is lying to, is a moral duty.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Well said, Lydy! "Promises are contracts that we make with the future." That's lovely.

Like you, I try as hard as I can to avoid any promise that goes beyond, "I'll try to be there by 7," or something. I get so infuriated (I mean, beyond what's reasonable for the circumstances) when someone breaks a promise, that I've just gotten into the habit of avoiding promises in general.

As for lying, well, turn it around and talk about truth for a moment. Truth is a process; as the world changes, it changes. Sometimes we are unaware of contradictions in our own lives until we hear an unexpected lie emerge from our mouths; this ought to cause us to consider it carefully. If I find myself lying, I know something is wrong, somewhere, because, as you said, it confuses the data, and why would I want to do that? To me, truth is important. It is a goal I try to achieve. Sometimes I fail. And, of course, some lies are more appalling than other lies (in general, lies that other people tell are naturally more appalling then I lies I tell. Ahem).

But to take the case of a certain abusive individual who recently accused me of lying, well, in that case, I might have gotten confused, but I don't believe I lied. However, if there was a lie I could tell the abuser that might help the victim, I wouldn't even hesitate. Who would? "Because lying she knew was a sin," as Mr. Lehrer points out.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

One of the things I failed to say was that experienced reality is actually a communal construct. Our realities are created by our experiences, the stories we tell about those experiences, and the stories we are told by others about their experiences. When we tell these stories, these truths and lies and half truths and approximations, we are creating an understanding of our lives and our position in our own lives. This is also true for promises. The commitments we make, the ones we keep, and the ones we break, the ones that people keep to us, or break to us, are part of the underpinnings of our understanding of the universe. Which is why it seems to important to me to treat these things carefully and honestly.

An obvious example: a child who grows up in a home where commitments to them are rarely kept, where they are often told things which are untrue, develops a very different understanding of the world and their place in it than a child who grows up in a home where the truth is generally told and commitments are usually followed through on. The breaking of promises and the profligate use of lies tend to go together, as well.

We need other people. We need to rely on them, we need to understand them, and we need them to understand us. One of the most basic needs is to be seen and heard, to be known to another person. And how we use the truth, what kinds of promises we make, and how we follow through on them help describe ourselves to other people. And in return, people mirror their understanding of us, and we learn much of our sense of self from that mirroring. And that's why polluting the datasphere can be so repugnant to me. It interferes with our ability to understand ourselves, as well as understanding our world at large. And yet, as you point out, both truth and lies have a serious subjective quality to them. We are always refining our understanding.

As for lying to accomplish a worthy goal, I so totally don't have problem with it. You don't tell the Nazis where the Jews are hiding. You don't reveal information to an abuser which allows them to continue to abuse. Sometimes, we deliberately warp the datasphere to accomplish something. That's fine.

In the end, I don't think that truth or lies exist as Platonic ideals. I think that they are tools of life. But I think that they interact far more complexly with our relationships than we tend to give them credit for. And that's what I've been trying to draw out and highlight.

[redbird]

This is tricky; the only thing that coalesces right now is my feeling that if someone makes a promise, and changes enough that they feel they need to break that, they have an obligation to tell whoever they made the promise to and/or knows about and would be affected by it. Sometimes that extra level of obligation is almost irrelevant: in the case of someone who stays in a bad relationship because they promised "until death do us part," they can't leave without people knowing they have done so. But the person who promises a significant financial or practical contribution—college funds, a place to stay next summer, or the like—and then decides they can't or won't do that ought to tell the other person as soon as they know. It's not going to be fun either way, but that doesn't justify holding off until the last minute in the hope that the teenager decides not to go to college, or make them find out from your will that the money isn't there.

Hm. I guess I feel as though a promise includes an obligation of future communication on that subject, even when that obligation wouldn't otherwise exist.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree. I am a big fan of clear communication. At the point that you decide not to honor a promise, your communication becomes muddied if people are making plans and reacting to you based on the assumption that you are going to honor that promise.

I am not opposed to promises, not at all. And as I said, breaking promises is expensive. With both promises and truth/lies, we are creating ways for people to understand us, trust us, deal with us, depend on us. When we vary from their expectations, we throw uncertainty into the system. Too much uncertainty destabilizes the system, makes it impossible for people to trust us. Since we all need people and since we exist in complex nets of understanding and obligation, severing strands of that net is always chancy. The fact that it is sometimes necessary doesn't change the fact that it is risky. But I also believe in minimizing harm, and sometimes the ties that bind are dangerous in and of themselves.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

This is thought-provoking. I like the notion of promises as a contract with the future, or attempts to exert some control over the future. Of course such control is limited by our capacity to keep our promises as well as by our willingness.

In the case of marriage vows, those seem to me like a mutually dependent contract; if one party broaches the contract, (say by failing to love and honor the other, or by infidelity if that's part of the promise) the contract is broken and the other party shouldn't be bound by it either.

At the same time, I find lies and broken promises problematic if only for my own sake. I'm my own first contact with the world; my words are a reflection of reality as I know it and key to who I am. I want to be able to rely on what I say. My faith in myself is built on knowing I can count on what comes out of my own mouth.

I may be (and often am) mistaken, but I know that what I say is said in good faith, if limited by my knowledge and perspective.

Clearly, there are times and circumstances in which lying is necessary for good reasons. Still, if lying to each other disrupts the common datasphere, a habit of lying must disrupt the individual's map of the experiential world in a way I'm convinced affects his or her mental stability.

So, in the case of a certain individual who has been calling others names, it's probably truthful to say, 'I know you are, but what am I?'

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on all points. I do think, however, it is possible to maintain the letter of a marital contract and for it still to go completely south. It doesn't even require abuse. And if the two people now are no longer in love and make each other's lives a misery, it seems better to me to break the promise without first demanding that the contract have been breached.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

A lot would depend on the particular vows people have taken. Some marriage ceremonies include the promise to love, honor and whatever. In these cases, no longer loving each other would break the contract. (Silly, I know to promise in the first place to feel a certain way when we have so little control over our future feelings).

Regardless of the letter of the agreement, I agree that people can change and relationships can change in such ways that the spirit of a marriage is no longer viable. So, it's good we can release the parties from promises doing no one any good.

Having a formal proceeding for divorces can be helpful when it comes to dealing with associated issues like the welfare of children and disposition of commonly-held property.

The adversarial nature of the courts can be counter-productive, though. We (Midwest Fiction Writers) had a speaker recently who works in mediation and made a very good case for how well court ordered mediation generally works in resolving these issues without having couples go all adversarial on each other.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I am a big fan of divorce. I think a lot of people's lives can be improved by a well-placed divorce or two. That was certainly the case for my mother, and it was certainly useful for me.

In my mom's case, what with kids and property and all, the divorce courts were very necessary. That's a lot to disentangle. When I got divorced, we owned nothing, had no property, and I was kind of resentful about having to go through the courts just so that I wouldn't be liable for his debts.

I haven't carefully studied the effect of the court system on divorces. I am unsurprised that mediation is often useful. I do certainly know of couples who did the moral equivalent, even though technically it was a traditional court and lawyer driven affair. But when things go truly pear-shaped, when there is no trust left between the parties, and significant issues to resolve, attorneys can be damn useful. I have heard of situations where attorneys exacerbated a situation and caused the soon-to-be-ex-couple to be more adversarial than necessary, but those stories are all of the urban legend variety. Haven't seen it with my own eyes. Which doesn't make it not true, just not something I have experience with.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I have no problem believing that some divorces call for hard-nosed lawyers. There are a lot of lawyers in my family, though none who specialize in divorce. I'm just glad that many people can be reasonable enough to resolve their issues through mediation.

My own parents were amicable enough when they got divorced. It was a case of their having grown apart. I was in college by then, and my youngest sibling in grade school and my mother earning a decent living on her own, so it wasn't a hardship on the kids. It was weird, emotionally, knowing that the two sources of my own DNA couldn't get along indefinitely.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I think the question that one asks oneself is "What kind of a relationship do we have?"

My relationship with any government is such that I'm comfortable and justified in lying to them under many circumstances. We have mutual distrust, and no one would claim otherwise. Relationships with individuals can reach that level of mistrust, too, of course.

Does the person that we're talking about display trustworthy and respectable behavior on their end? If a person runs into obstacles keeping their word, is there an adult discussion about alternatives and ways that the relationship can work so that everyone feels a reasonable amount of safety and trust, or is there an argument about "BUT YOU PROMISED!"?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Yep, I lie to the government with gay abandon. Fuck them, anyway.

However, even people that I dislike intensely and am in conflict with I tend to tell the truth to. Mostly, it just keeps it simpler. It allows me to be clear about the things that make me angry, and it allows me to keep track of what is going on in a way that I find much more difficult if I lie to them. For certain types of self-protection, or protection of others, of course I will lie. Nor do I feel that I "owe" them the truth. But it's just much easier for me to fight clean and clear if I'm not also trying to keep track of the lies, you know? And in the end, it also is the best way I know to keep open the possibility of de-escalation. Even if that's not likely, you never know when today's enemy becomes tomorrow's neutral party. It's much easier to back off when there isn't a fence of lies tying you to a particular position.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agreed.

If nothing else, keeping everything as honest as possible means nobody needs to worry about keeping their story straight.

Here's an example of what I'm meaning about a relationship reaching the level where honesty isn't going to work.

Betty says "Veronica, I will arrive to your home at 4:00PM every Wednesday to take you grocery shopping." Veronica agrees to be ready to go by 4:00PM on the planned days.

After a few weeks, it turns out that it just isn't feasible. Traffic is worse than expected and Betty just can't get there on time.

They can discuss it like adults and come up with a solution that works for both of them. "Let's meet at 4:30 instead!" "How about noon on Saturdays?" "How about you meet me halfway?" "Let's see if Archie can do this instead!" are all reasonable points to discuss but "BUT, YOU PROMISED!" is not. In fact, if the discussion includes "BUT, YOU PROMISED!" then it's clear that Veronica's feelings are to be treated as more important than Betty's in this relationship, and it's time for Betty to walk away from toxic bullshit and cut her losses.

"I know that I said I would do a thing, but I don't think it will work out," is a thing that people who rely on each other are free to say.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Exactly right. It's about understanding the _function_ of the promise, rather than getting hung up on the Platonic ideal of the promise.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

I was raised by a habitual liar. As a result I am often fanatically, unreasonably devoted to accuracy. It makes me a bad story teller. On the other hand I I recognize that I am an intuitive thinker and the details often don't stick in my head. I am then sorely tempted to make something up to fill in the gap and occasionally my mind does that any way. Or I tell a truth to someone who is then hurt by it. A lie would have been nicer.

That said, I often lie socially. "I'm fine" for instance when really I am about to burst into tears but don't want to just there. People do lie all the time. I strive to be comfortable with myself.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that why promises are so magic to some people? It's never made sense to me, since I was a child. It was very clear very early that promises were nothing vaguely like inviolable in the world in general (no particular problems at home that I remember, but in general). So promises lost most of their magic, and hence aren't workable for me as magic charms against the future. (I pretty strongly try to avoid breaking my own; I also avoid making them.) I just learned to live with uncertainty.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

1) Truth is both objective and subjective. Observed truth is great when you can get it; but, alas, we cannot escape reality curbing that the human brain does so effectively. "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

2) There is a piece to promises regarding a social contract. Any contract becomes void when the parties on one or the other do not keep up their end of the deal. In the case of an abusive spouse that spouse is not keeping up their end of the deal which is to "Love and honor" their spouse.

3) Thoughts on "until death do us part". One dies not have to die to experience "death", one only has to not "live" their own life. Another form of death is being treated as "an object or thing" rather than a person.

[dlandon.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting discussion to me, especially in light of what's been going on in my life. I definitely use casual lies - often a lie by implication - due to the fact that I have no desire to get into my complicated family dynamics with strangers. If I mention that I'm going to Seattle, frex, and someone says "Oh, to see your family?" I'll often reply with something like, "Well, you know, I miss the rain!" and deflect. Because the reaction if I tell the truth regarding my family dynamic is never positive and often the person will be very uncomfortable around me in the future. But I don't consider that a lie that will deform the data set, merely a lie of convenience, and perhaps because I don't use these types of lies with people with whom I want to create an authentic relationship I don't view them as problematic. I agree with you that, overall it's dangerous to deform the datasphere with lies but I do think there are times when they are necessary.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I use lies in the same way. When I'm working with patients and they talk about their family and expect me to talk about mine, I don't try to explain my extremely fraught relationship with them or anything like that. I just natter on as if I had a normal, happy family. Within the sphere of our relationship, it is sufficient. The types of judgments that they're going to make about me based on this information will not strongly affect the superficial and professional relationship that we have.