MUCH ADO ABOUT LIARS

By Nav Raj Pokharel

Human is a non-stop communicating machine. While communicating, he manipulates a lot of things to win favor of his community, circle and situation. Communicative skill is the first basis for anyone to judge the kind of person s/he is or would be. But this very communicating skill when used differently, can also delude people for immediate or gradual purposes.

We meet and come across different kind of people in the course of socialization, consultation, routine works and discharging regular and special duties of our profession in everyday life. We tacitly judge the person either based on our propensity or based on his manipulating skill. Most of the time we realize very late that the impressions some body was able to instill in our intellect and heart were astoundingly wrong.

This also gives us a sense of idiocy and embarrassment for our initial mistake. In fact, people are easily impressed with the people who can exaggerate or manipulate information for effect. No one but they know where they have distorted or reshaped the basic facts. Although the skill is creative aspect of human being, he is virtually a liar. A lot of people are easily intrigued and enticed with the liars. It is their stock of information, manipulating and interpreting skills that seduce the listeners to believe in what they say is right, though for the moment. But you can stand above their conjecture if you empirically understand their basic manipulating skills and reasons behind it. A track record will be but additional help. Let us not take lying as anything offensive against anyone. It is rather an integral weakness of mortal character. We cannot disintegrate with them so easily. It will be very difficult to find a human being who has not told at least a partial untruth in his life. That why, perhaps, one philologist goes as far as theorizing that language must have been invented for the sole purpose of deception. This also suggests that we all are liars, with different degree. There must be one thousand and one reasons for humans to lie. Few fundamental among them are to increase the sense of importance, to gain an end that would otherwise be denied them, out of long standing habit, or some times because they do not know the difference between the fact and fancy. These are but only few common reasons for falsification. Therefore, it becomes extremely difficult for the common honest people to be certain what is true and what is false.

Different people depending on their educational background, socio economic situation and experiences, employ different strategy for lying, besides many other motives that impel them to distort the truth. However, if you have some basic information about the liar’s general personality, you can help yourself stay above their maneuvers. For their practice of different degree of lying, lets honor them with different qualifiers. He is called a notorious liar who has a propensity for avoiding facts every time you talk to him. He does not talk straight. You and your friends know it. But you can not help him anymore because he has already build a solid and unsavory reputation that only a stranger is likely to be misled – and then ,not for long time. Another kind is consummate liar who lies with great skill. Rarely does any one lie as convincingly and as artistically as he does. The lying skill of the person has reached to the zenith of perfection. His mastery of lying is so artistic and foolproof that his lying is usually crowned with success. Such a liar has no trouble seducing an unwary listener into believing that he is telling the gospel truth. Generally, some leaders and educated ones come under this category. He is called incorrigible liar who is impervious to outside effect to correct his habit of telling lies. He is helpless to correction although, sometimes, he is caught in his own fabrications. But there is not any reform in him. He goes on lying despite the punishment, embarrassment or unhappiness the distortion of truth brings to him. We must have many of such personalities in our companies of friends and foes. He is inveterate liar who lies because of his deep-rooted habit. Telling untruth is as frequent and customary activities to him as lighting up a cigarette after launch, to a smoker. Telling untruth is part of his habit, it is reflexive. He is called congenital liar who has persistent history of lying. He cannot feel satisfied unless he adds something of his own for effect in his exaggerations. He does not mean bad but he is helpless to tell the bare truth. It seems that he learnt lying in his mother womb. I have sympathy for the chronic liar. He never stops lying. Most of the people lie at occasion and often for special reason in hand. But he lies continuously over and over again, many a time contradicting his previous statements with the recent ones. Here comes the honored one. He is a glib. Glib liar is he who posses a lively imagination and ready tongue. Such liar can distort facts as smoothly and effortlessly as we can say our names. Ironically enough, it is his very smoothness that that makes him a suspect. His answers are too quick to be true. Even if people cannot catch his lies at the spot, people have learnt from the experiences not to suspend their critical faculty while listening him speak. They admire his dexterous wit but they listen with skeptical ear.
Lying is always bad but the vicious is the liar who calculatedly, predeterminedly, coldly, advisedly tell a lie to injure other people either in short or long term consequences. People gasp when at time his lying gets uncovered. Such a liar is called egregious liar. Liars are everywhere, in politics, academic, government machinery and bureaucracy, private and government offices, big and small trades, everywhere in family and folks. Some lies are compliments, soothing to the ears, some vile. If we all are liars with different degree, let us avoid the lies to hurt people, if you are not an inveterate liar.

( published in www.telegraphnepal.com)
2008-09-19 14:34:42