I’m writing this blog on April 1, 2023—April Fools’ Day. Could I find a better day to write about lies? You’ll note in today’s title this is Part Two. I wrote Part One in September 2019, almost three years ago. Since then, there have been a trillion lies written, printed, posted, tweeted, and stuffed into the minds of the easily deceived. Part One began by questioning whether any ethical imperatives condoned lying at scale. As I re-read Part One, I can remember how cautious I was in 2019. Then, I said the ethicality of writing lies depended on what kind of lie was being told. Real lies or political lies. We condemn real lies and those that tell them, but we forgive when they are political lies because that’s just politics—a walking, talking, strutting lie.
“When the Washington Post unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” on February 17, 2017, people in the news business made fun of it. “Sounds like the next Batman movie,” the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said. But it was already clear, less than a month into the Trump Administration, that destroying the credibility of the mainstream press was a White House priority, and that this would include an unabashed, and almost gleeful, policy of lying and denying. The Post kept track of the lies. The paper calculated that by the end of his term the President had lied 30,573 times.”[1]
Do Democrats lie at scale? The Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact is run by the Tampa Bay Times. Its reporters and editors sort politicians’ claims into one of six categories: true, mostly true, half true, mostly false, false, and pants-on-fire lies. A majority of Democratic claims were rated true; a majority of Republican claims were rated false.[2]
But the larger question should be, why do voters accept political lies? “Republicans and Democrats See Their Own Party’s Falsehoods as More Acceptable” was the headline in 2022. “Politicians’ policy falsehoods are seen as justifiable based on their signal of partisan trustworthiness. Society recognizes that many politicians lie. In five new studies, researchers examined how conservative and liberal Americans responded to media reports of politicians’ falsehoods. Even accounting for partisan biases in how much people dismissed the reports as fake news and assumed the lies were unintentional, the studies consistently identified partisan evaluations in how much these falsehoods were considered justifiable. The researchers’ work—which also touches on issues of trustworthiness and morality more generally—has implications for understanding the current hyperpolarized U.S. political climate.”[3]
It’s not just politicians that lie at will. The rest of us might not lie as often, or as boldly, but the fact is most of us lie. “Lying and deception are common human behaviors. Until relatively recently, there has been little actual research into just how often people lie. A 2004 Reader’s Digest poll found that as many as 96% of people admit to lying at least sometimes. Researchers also found that about half of all lies were told by just 5% of all the subjects. The study suggests that while prevalence rates may vary, there likely exists a small group of very prolific liars. The average person hears between 10 and 200 lies per day. Strangers lie to each other three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting, on average. College students lie to their mothers in one-fifth of all interactions.”[4]
A 2021 study was slightly more hopeful—at least in that more people might tell the truth most of the time. “People are more honest in day-to-day life than previously thought — except for ‘a few prolific liars,’ according to the results of a new study. . . Past research has found that people lie, on average, about once or twice per day. However, researchers have learned that the average number of lies per day reported in the literature does not reflect the behavior of most people. The distribution of lying is highly skewed: Most people report telling few or no lies on a given day.”[5]
A 2022 study is although hopeful revealing. It says that most people are not liars. Previous research found the average rate of lying to be around 1-2 lies per day. Recent research has found that the distribution of lying is highly skewed. Only 5.7 percent of the participants in a recent study were prolific liars.”[6]
This blog is not about lying—it’s about the ethics of writing lies. The difference is profound because a single lie told by Joe to Mary is of little consequence. In context, that lie is not a lie told, repeated, and believed at large. It’s just one lie between two people. Conversely, written lies often find their way into the meta sphere. Once written, it can find its way to an ideological space for consideration or discussion, emanating from, or related to the subject, artifact, or point instance being investigated, recognized, or valued as having attendant properties, scalable towards simple or versatile understanding.[7]
Once spewed into that heretofore unknown space it can become a self-evident phenomenon. So, it’s no longer just a lie. It’s no longer just a political lie—we live in an era of little if any political truth. Writing a lie is per se unethical, if it can pollute, condemn, maim, and debase that rare elementary reality known as truth.
The most important ethical imperative in writing is not absolute truth or baseless lies. It’s understanding and writing in a way that the power of truth is on top—never ignored—and always extant in every context. We all were taught to never lie. Few of us live that way. “But researchers say there is a lot we get wrong about deception, truth-telling, and trust—and that, if mastered, lying the right way can actually help build connections, trust, and businesses. . . You’re more likely to be lied to (and told to lie) than you even realize, too—think of scenarios like your mom reminding you to tell your grandmother you enjoyed her meal, or you giving feedback to a co-worker that doesn’t capture the whole truth. The art of deception is more nuanced than you might think. Here are five situations in which a lie might be best: (1) If you have someone’s best interests at heart. (2) If there’s no time to change. (3) If you’re giving constructive criticism. (4) Right before a special occasion. (5) If you’re not close with the person.”[8]
Immanuel Kant said lying was always morally wrong. “He argued that all persons are born with an ‘intrinsic worth’ that he called human dignity. This dignity derives from the fact that humans are uniquely rational agents, capable of freely making their own decisions, setting their own goals, and guiding their conduct by reason. To be human, said Kant, is to have the rational power of free choice; to be ethical, he continued, is to respect that power in oneself and others.”[9]
I’m not a philosopher. I’m a fan of Immanuel Kant. But his world looked nothing like the divisive tangle we have today. However, when we write we are bound by an ethical imperative Kant assumed existed in his day. Our writing should respect the rational power of free choice.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/politifact-lies-republicans-vs-democrats/314794/
[3] Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Who Sees Which Political Falsehoods as More Acceptable and Why: A New Look at In-Group Loyalty and Trustworthiness.” Galak, J (Carnegie Mellon University), and Critcher, CR (University of California, Berkeley). Copyright 2022 the American Psychological Association.
[4] https://raywilliams.ca/lying-become-widespread-acceptable/
[5] https://www.uab.edu/news/research/item/12398-new-research-shows-most-people-are-honest-except-for-a-few
[6] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/questions-character/202211/are-most-people-liars
[7] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Metasphere
[8] https://time.com/5406989/when-better-to-lie-than-tell-truth/
[9] https://www.scu.edu/mcae/publications/iie/v6n1/lying.html
I am an author and a part-time lawyer with a focus on ethics and professional discipline. I teach creative writing and ethics to law students at Arizona State University. Read my bio.
If you have an important story you want told, you can commission me to write it for you. Learn how.
I am an author and a part-time lawyer with a focus on ethics and professional discipline. I teach creative writing and ethics to law students at Arizona State University. 
My latest novel is Emergence, the sequel to Let’s Disappear. 
If you have an important story you want told, you can commission me to write it for you. 