Open Writing

In these days, when modern media sooner or later reports just about everything, and apparently is willing to use whatever means are considered necessary to do so, everything is under scrutiny. All the more surprising then that high profile people are prepared to recklessly jeopardize their future, and that of those who depend on them for security and support.

At the core of this phenomenon is a willingness to lie and obfuscate. Perhaps its naïve to think that humans were ever really honest, but it certainly seems as though veracity has gone the way of so many other values. When it comes to examples of barefaced lying on the world’s stage, America takes the biscuit. Richard Nixon’s Watergate era, “I am not a crook,” and Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman,” will forever echo in the halls of duplicity.

I don’t claim to be without blame myself – during my first marriage, I lived the double life of an unfaithful husband for several years, and look back on it with regret as an act of extreme immaturity. My wife of the past 25 years is impeccably honest, though not obsessive about it. Like me, she allows that a judicious, little white lie is a useful tool in smoothing life’s wrinkles.

But in matters of import, she believes, and has convinced me, that telling the truth and letting the chips fall is best in the long run. Any hurt it may cause, in the end will heal faster than a protracted lie. My own extramarital experience is proof of that.

In the global arena we are confronted by massive untruths everyday, some of them so consequential it’s frightening. George W. Bush’s vehement claim, with General Colin Powell’s shame-faced collusion at the United Nations, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, resulted in thousands of deaths and untold suffering, and has done little to bring democracy to a nation that didn’t want it anyway.

Iran’s repeated claim that they are not working towards building nuclear weapons may yet prove to be the truth. But, if so, it’s hard to understand why they are being so secretive about they are doing in their nuclear facilities.

As a purely anecdotal observation, it seems to me that the difference between truth and falsehood varies along ethnic lines. An American’s concept of veracity is different from say an Iraqi’s. American friends who have done business in Japan and the UK, become irate at what they consider is, at best, obfuscation, in their dealings with those nationals.

As an ex-pat Englishman and naturalized American, I understand both sides of that argument. What Americans perceive as untruthful, is an ingrained reluctance towards to being offensive. Meanwhile, the British and Japanese perceive Americans to be too outspoken and “In your face.”

During my early years in America, I was offended and startled by it too, but I acclimatized and eventually came to prefer the up-front style of business interaction here. What I had grown accustomed to before I came, was that you never say “no” in face-to-face negotiations. You head off the confrontation by “perhaps,” or “we’ll look into it” knowing full well that in the letter confirming the meeting you were actually going to say “no.”

Without wishing to stereotype, my observation is that the truth is most difficult to pin down in the Middle and Near East and in parts of Africa. I don’t believe the lying is always malicious in those regions, but it is endemic, and hard to come to terms with. An Iranian friend told me that any item for purchase in an Iranian store has three prices – the one on the goods, a lower one that the son of the owner is permitted to disclose, and a third that only the owner can offer.

When statements to the media are made in Nigeria, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine and Afghanistan, among other countries, you know almost instinctively that they are not the truth. Wait a while, and the actions that follow the words are generally in total contradiction. For this reason, peace in those regions will remain elusive, just supposing it’s likely at all.

Corruption goes hand in hand with the willingness to lie, and in that regard is no stranger to American politics and business, but it isn’t yet the way of life that it is in the Near East and Asia.

So what if we were to decide that truthfulness was important after all? How could we bring that about? Who would be our role models? Not the clerics for sure, and not the politicians, and sadly, not the press. Those long time guardians of the truth have slid down the slippery path like the other important institutions.

Oh! And what about statistics? Well, anyone who has worked with statistics, as I have, will tell you that they can be manipulated to say anything you want them to.

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