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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi Scott,

Your view on dishonesty is abundantly clear and I subscribe to that 100%. However, a random, unimportant event got me thinking about specifically, lying by omission. By that, I mean that you have knowledge about something, but you hide it from the person that the knowledge will affect.

Examples are:
1. Your mother is diagnosed with a terminal disease and has 2 months to live (according to the doctors, as inaccurate as they may be.) Your father tells you and asks you not to tell your mother. Do you tell her?
2. You see your friend's wife leave a sleazy motel, holding hands with another man and kissing him passionately when they reach her car. Do you tell your friend?
3. At a restaurant with exquisite steak knives, you see your friend's date steal one and put it in her bag. Do you confront her or tell your friend?

Kind regards
Alida Spies

Hi, Alida Spies,

In each of these cases, whether or not I would assertively announce the relevant facts would depend on the specific details, which include perhaps potentially infinite possible different details that may sway me one way or the other.

However, it would be very rare for me to consider silence to be lying.

I almost always look at it as there being three options:

(1) I explicitly announce that particular fact.

(2) I lie (i.e. I say something I know is untrue in order to non-playfully trick others.)

(3) I do neither of the following (i.e. I stay silent, at least in regard to that one particular fact).

For almost everything we all choose #3 because it's impossible not to.

You can only say so much. There's infinite truths you could announce (or lie about) in any given second, and at most you can only say one at a time. You could do nothing but speak truths non-stop without resting your entire life and you'd still have chosen #3 (silence) in regard to more than 99.9999% of potential truths you could have said but didn't, just because time doesn't allow you to say everything true that could be said.

So when it comes to any one fact that you could explicitly announce out loud, the question for yourself is always simple this: Is this fact of the countless facts I know going to be one of the very, very few for which I make a special exception and announce outloud.

I generally don't really believe in lies by omission, unless there are very extenuating circumstances. Even then, usually those "extenuating circumstances" are a actual flat-out lie (e.g. the person explicitly claiming they aren't leaving out any key details to a story or go out of their to twist and misrepresent other details to keep the secret). I think a better label for that would be something like a lie-associated omission. The omission is not a lie itself but is connected to a different lie or broken promise or other act of intentional dishonesty.

Either way, there's a vast difference between (1) the matter of what I would tell or not tell versus (2) what I would consider lying versus not not lying.

In other words, there are many situations in which I would not consider it a lie to omit the truth but I would personally still announce that truth.

You seem to notice that in your own three examples because you don't ask me in the three questions/examples above whether I think it would be lie or not to not tell. You don't even ask that. You just ask if I would tell.

I generally don't believe in lies by omission, but I do believe it can be extremely unkind, extremely cowardly, and extremely unassertive to omit a truth in certain situations.

You can honestly keep a secret without being dishonest but still in a way that is childish, unkind, cruel, cowardly, unassertive, and emotionally toxic.

Even if it's not dishonest, secrecy and unassertiveness can still be a toxic thing that I would neither do nor recommend in certain situations.

My point is that you can create a false dichotomy for yourself by falsely imagining that you must see it as either being a lie to say nothing OR to say it. But those are not the only two options, not even close. There is a vast spectrum between those two extremes where it would be honest and fine to either say it or say it, and there's also a vast spectrum where (to speak roughly) you would be a mean or cowardly jerk to not say anything but you wouldn't be dishonest; you'd just be a cowardly or selfish jerk in other ways.

Thus, most likely, in most of those situation, I would not see it as being dishonest to say nothing, but I still would probably say something, not in the name honesty but for other reasons.

In addition to honesty, I do also greatly value and practice assertiveness, bravery, kindness, and confidence.

I say forget the question of whether it is a "lie by omission". Just assume like I do that those don't really exist in and of themselves. Instead, when you encounter that situation where you would otherwise think of something allegedly being a possible so-called 'lie by omission', focus on other questions like: Would it be assertive or unassertive which is toxic? Would it be brave or cowardly? Would it be kind or unkind? Would it be selfish or unselfish?

Focusing on whether or not it is a lie could be a sneaky way to trick yourself into forgetting how little matters whether or not it is lie, by tricking yourself into not focusing on whether it is assertive, kind, brave, and unselfish versus unassertive, cowardly, unkind, and/or selfish.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes

[Kaidynn frazier]

I think it is deceitful and hurtful. I stopped talking to a friend because of this attitude. You are cunning and can’t be trusted.