Most people insist that the correct answer to this question is always “No.” In fact, many believe that it’s not a question at all: The woman is simply saying, “Tell me I look good.” If she’s your wife or girlfriend, she might even be saying, “Tell me you love me.” If you sincerely believe that this is the situation you are in—that the text is a distractor and the subtext conveys the entire message—then so be it. Responding honestly to the subtext would not be lying.
But this is an edge case for a reason: It crystallizes what is tempting about white lies. Why not simply reassure someone with a tiny lie and send her out into the world feeling more confident? Unless one commits to telling the truth in situations like this, however, one finds that the edges creep inward, and exceptions to the principle of honesty begin to multiply. Very soon, you may find yourself behaving as most people do quite effortlessly: shading the truth, or even lying outright, without thinking about it. The price is too high.
A friend of mine recently asked me whether I thought he was overweight. In fact, he probably was just asking for reassurance: It was the beginning of summer, and we were sitting with our wives by the side of his pool. However, I’m more comfortable relying on the words that actually come out of a person’s mouth, rather than on my powers of telepathy, to know what he is asking. So I answered my friend’s question very directly:
“No one would ever call you ‘fat,’ but I think you could probably lose twenty-five pounds.” That was two months ago, and he is now fifteen pounds lighter. Neither of us knew that he was ready to go on a diet until I declined the opportunity to lie about how he looked in a bathing suit.
Back to our friend in the dress: What is the truth? Perhaps she does look fat in that dress, but it’s the fault of the dress. Telling her the truth will allow her to find a more flattering outfit.
But let’s imagine the truth is harder to tell: Your friend looks fat in that dress, or any dress, because she is fat. Let’s say she is also thirty-five years old and single, and you happen to know that her greatest desire at this moment in life is to get married and start a family. You believe that many men might be disinclined to date her at her current weight. And, marriage aside, you are confident that she would be happier and healthier, and would feel better about herself, if she got in shape.
A white lie is simply a denial of these realities. It is a refusal to offer honest guidance in a storm. Even on so touchy a subject, lying seems a clear failure of friendship. By reassuring your friend about her appearance, you are not helping her to do what you think she should do to get what she wants out of life.
There are many circumstances in life in which false encouragement can be very costly to another person. Imagine that you have a friend who has spent years striving unsuccessfully to build a career as an actor. Many fine actors struggle in this way, of course, but in your friend’s case the reason seems self-evident: He is a terrible actor. In fact, you happen to know that his other friends—and even his parents—share this opinion but cannot bring themselves to express it. What do you say the next time he complains about his stalled career? Do you encourage him to “just keep at it”? False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
This is not to say that we are always correct in our judgments of other people. And honesty demands that we communicate any uncertainty we may feel about the relevance of our own opinions. But if we are convinced that a friend has taken a wrong turn in life, it is no sign of friendship to simply smile and wave him onward.
If the truth itself is painful to tell, there are often background truths that are not—and these can be communicated as well, deepening the friendship. In the two examples above, the more basic truth is that you love your friends and want them to be happy, and both of them could make changes in their lives that might lead to greater fulfillment. In lying to them, you are not only declining to help them—you are denying them useful information and setting them up for future disappointment. Yet the temptation to lie in these circumstances can be overwhelming.
When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives—about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world. This is an extraordinary stance to adopt toward other human beings, and it requires justification. Unless someone is suicidal or otherwise on the brink, deciding how much he can know about himself seems the quintessence of arrogance. What attitude could be more disrespectful of those we care about?
While preparing to write this book, I asked friends and readers for examples of lies that had affected them. Some of their stories appear below. I have changed all names to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.
Many people shared stories of family members who deceived one another about medical diagnoses. Here is one:
My mother was diagnosed with MS when she was in her late 30s. Her doctor thought it was best to lie and tell her that she didn’t have MS. He told my father the truth. My father decided to keep the truth to himself because he didn’t want to upset my mother or any of their 3 children.
Meanwhile, my mother went to the library, read up on her symptoms, and diagnosed herself with MS. She decided not to tell my father or their children because she didn’t want to upset anyone.
One year later, when she went to the doctor for her annual checkup, the doctor told her she had MS. She confessed that she knew but hadn’t told anyone. My dad confessed that he knew but hadn’t told anyone. So they each spent a year with a secret and without each other’s support.
My brother found out accidentally about a year later, when my mother had breast cancer surgery. The surgeon walked into the room and essentially said, “This won’t affect the MS.” My brother said, “What MS?” I think it was a couple more years before anyone told me or my sister about Mom’s MS….Rather than feeling grateful and protected, I felt sadness that we hadn’t come together as a family to face her illness and support each other.
My mother never told her mother about the MS, which meant that none of us could tell friends and family, for fear that her mother would find out. She didn’t want to hurt her mother. I think she deprived herself of the opportunity to have a closer relationship with her mother.
Such tales of medical deception were once extraordinarily common. In fact, I know of at least one instance within my own family: My maternal grandmother died of cancer when my mother was sixteen. She had been suffering from metastatic melanoma for nearly a year, but her doctor had told her that she had arthritis. Her husband, my grandfather, knew her actual diagnosis but decided to maintain this deception as well.
After my grandmother’s condition deteriorated, and she was finally hospitalized, she confided to a nurse that she knew that she was dying. However, she imagined that she had been keeping this a secret from the rest of her family, her husband included. Needless to say, my mother and her younger brother were kept entirely in the dark. In their experience, their mother checked into the hospital for “arthritis” and never returned.
Think of all the opportunities for deepening love, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding that are forsaken by white lies of this kind. When we pretend not to know the truth, we must also pretend not to be motivated by it. This can force us to make choices that we would not otherwise make. Did my grandfather really have nothing to say to his wife in light of the fact that she would soon die? Did she really have nothing to say to her two children to help prepare them for their lives without her? These silences are lacerating. Wisdom remains unshared, promises unmade, and apologies unoffered. The opportunity to say something useful to the people we love soon disappears, never to return.
Who would choose to leave this world in such terrible isolation? Perhaps there are those who would. But why should anyone make this choice for another person?
Trust
Jessica recently overheard her friend Lucy telling a white lie: Lucy had a social obligation s
he wanted to get free of, and Jessica heard her leave a voicemail message for another friend, explaining why their meeting would have to be rescheduled. Lucy’s excuse was entirely fictitious—something involving her child’s getting sick—but she lied so effortlessly and persuasively that Jessica was left wondering if she had ever been duped by Lucy in the past. Now, whenever Lucy cancels a plan, Jessica suspects she might not be telling the truth.
These tiny erosions of trust are especially insidious because they are almost never remedied. Lucy has no reason to think that Jessica has a grievance with her—because she doesn’t. She simply does not trust her as much as she used to, having heard her lie without compunction to another friend. Of course, if the problem (or the relationship) were deeper, perhaps Jessica would say something—but, as it happens, she feels there is no point in admonishing Lucy about her ethics. The net result is that a single voicemail message, left for a third party, has subtly undermined a friendship.
We have already seen that children can be dangerous to keep around if one wants to lie with impunity. Another example, in case there is any doubt: My friend Daniel recently learned from his wife that another couple would be coming to stay in their home for a week. Daniel resisted. A week seemed like an eternity—especially given that he was not at all fond of the husband. This precipitated a brief argument between Daniel and his wife in the presence of their young daughter.
In the end, Daniel gave in, and the couple was soon standing on his doorstep with an impressive amount of luggage. Upon entering the home, the unwelcome husband expressed his gratitude for being allowed to stay in Daniel’s guest room.
“Don’t be silly, it’s great to see you,” Daniel said, his daughter standing at his side. “We love having you here.”
“But, Dad, you said you didn’t want them to stay with us.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did! Remember?”
“No, no…that was another situation.” Daniel found that he could no longer maintain eye contact with his guests and thought of nothing better than to lead his daughter away by the hand, saying, “Where is your coloring book?” He spent the rest of the week struggling to swim free of the resulting riptide of awkwardness.
There is comedy here, of course—but only for others. And what do our children learn about us in moments like these? Is this really the example we want to set for them? Failures of personal integrity, once revealed, are rarely forgotten. We can apologize, of course. And we can resolve to be more forthright in the future. But we cannot erase the bad impression we have left in the minds of other people.
A wasteland of embarrassment and social upheaval can be neatly avoided by following a single precept in life: Do not lie.
Faint Praise
There have been moments in my life when I was devoted to a project that was simply doomed, in which I had months—in one case, years—invested, and where honest feedback could have spared me an immense amount of wasted effort. At other times, I received frank criticism just when I needed it and was able to change course quickly, knowing that I had avoided a lot of painful and unnecessary work. The difference between these two fates is hard to exaggerate. Yes, it can be unpleasant to be told that we have wasted time, or that we are not performing as well as we imagined, but if the criticism is valid, it is precisely what we most need to hear to find our way in the world.
And yet we are often tempted to encourage others with insincere praise. In this we treat them like children—while failing to help them prepare for encounters with those who will judge them like adults. I’m not saying that we need to go out of our way to criticize others. But when asked for our opinion, we do our friends no favors by pretending not to notice flaws in their work, especially when those who are not their friends are bound to notice these same flaws. Saving our friends disappointment and embarrassment is a great kindness. And if we have a history of being honest, our praise and encouragement will actually mean something.
I have a friend who is a very successful writer. Early in his career, he wrote a script that I thought was terrible, and I told him so. That was not easy to do, because he had spent the better part of a year working on it—but it happened to be the truth. Now, when I tell him that I love something he has written, he knows that I love it. He also knows that I respect his talent enough to tell him when I don’t. I am sure there are people in his life he can’t say that about. Why would I want to be one of them?
Secrets
A commitment to honesty does not necessarily require that we disclose facts about ourselves that we would prefer to keep private. If someone asks how much money you have in your bank account, you are under no ethical obligation to tell him. The truth could well be, “I’d rather not say.”
So there is no conflict, in principle, between honesty and the keeping of secrets. However, it is worth noting that many secrets—especially those we are asked to keep for others—can put us in a position where we will be forced to choose between lying and revealing privileged information. To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden. At a minimum, one must remember what one is not supposed to talk about. This can be difficult and lead to clumsy attempts at deception. Unless your work requires that you keep secrets—which doctors, lawyers, psychologists, and other professional confidants do routinely—it seems worth avoiding.
Stephanie and Gina had been friends for more than a decade when Stephanie began to hear rumors that Gina’s husband, Derek, was having an affair. Although Stephanie did not feel close enough to Gina to raise the matter directly, a little snooping revealed that almost everyone in her circle knew about Derek’s infidelity—except, it seemed, Gina herself.
Derek had not been discreet. He was in the film business, and his mistress was an aspiring actress. Once, while traveling with Gina and the kids on vacation, he had booked this woman a room in the same hotel. He later hired her as a production assistant, and she now accompanied him on business trips and even attended events where Gina was present.
As Gina’s friend, Stephanie wanted to do whatever she could to help her. But what was the right thing to do? She was a second-tier friend, and the person who had told her of Derek’s affair had sworn her to secrecy. She also knew women who were closer to Gina than she was—why hadn’t one of them said something?
Stephanie saw Gina a few more times—they had been having lunch regularly for years—but found that she could no longer enjoy her company. Gina would speak about the completion of her new home, or about plans for an upcoming trip, and Stephanie felt that by remaining silent she was participating in her friend’s ultimate undoing. Simply having a normal conversation became an ordeal of acting as if nothing were the matter. Whether Gina knew about her husband’s behavior and was keeping it a secret, was self-deceived, or was merely a victim of his cunning and the collusion of others, Stephanie’s pretense began to feel indistinguishable from lying. As if by magic, the two friends quickly grew apart and have not spoken for years.
I was close enough to this situation to find it sickening. I am related to Stephanie and had met Gina and Derek on several occasions. Although I had no independent relationship with them, I knew a few people who had direct knowledge of Derek’s philandering and were quietly severing relationships with him—all while keeping Gina in the dark (or allowing her to keep herself there). It was simply uncanny to see someone living under a mountain of lies and gossip, surrounded by friends but without a friend in the world who would tell her the truth. And this was Derek’s final victory: People who could no longer abide him because of his unconscionable treatment of his wife nevertheless helped maintain his lies.
Lies in Extremis
Kant believed that lying was unethical in all cases—even in an attempt to stop the murder of an innocent person. Like many of Kant’s philosophical views, his position on lying was not so much argued for as presumed, like a religious precept. Though it has the obvious virtue of clarity—Never tell a lie—in practice, this rule can produce behavior that only a p
sychopath might endorse.
A total prohibition against lying is also ethically incoherent in anyone but a true pacifist. If you think that it can ever be appropriate to injure or kill a person in self-defense, or in defense of another, it makes no sense to rule out lying in the same circumstances.[9]
I cannot see any reason to take Kant seriously on this point. However, this does not mean that lying is easily justified. Even as a means to ward off violence, lying often closes the door to acts of honest communication that may be more effective.
In those circumstances where we deem it obviously necessary to lie, we have generally determined that the person to be deceived is both dangerous and unreachable by any recourse to the truth. In other words, we have judged the prospects of establishing a real relationship with this person to be nonexistent. For most of us, such circumstances arise very rarely in life, if ever. And even when they seem to, it is often possible to worry that lying was the easy (and less than truly ethical) way out.
Let us take an extreme case as a template for others in the genre: A known murderer is looking for a boy whom you are now sheltering in your home. The murderer is standing at your door and wants to know whether you have seen his intended victim. The temptation to lie is perfectly understandable—but merely lying might produce other outcomes you do not intend. If you say that you saw the boy climb your fence and continue down the block, the murderer may leave, only to kill someone else’s child. You might, even in this unhappy case, believe that lying was necessary and that you did all you could to protect innocent life. But that doesn’t mean someone more courageous or capable than you couldn’t have produced a better result with the truth.