Almost certainly it was the liberal English writer Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911) and not, as popularly thought, Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli, who first said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Recently, in a joint session of the US Congress on healthcare reform, Representative Joe Wilson startled the assembly by calling out “You lie, Sir!” in response to one of President Obama’s statements. Just a few days ago, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was caught on video silently mouthing the words, “not true!” during the President’s State of the Union address to Congress.
The US President may be taking the heat, but the two major political parties in America are both struggling with high mountains of falsehood on both sides. This issue is not going away anytime soon. The more lies the politicians tell, the more people believe them. This places limitations on the ability of each to work with political opponents for the good of all.
The issue of veracity has rarely been so important. From Tony Blair’s lack of regret during the British government’s Iraq war inquiry, to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s palpably false intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s imagined weapons of mass destruction, damned lies and statistics abound in the public arena. And the “terminological inexactitude” (Churchill) just keeps on coming.
Lest it be thought that lying is only a Western sport, just ask the guides in Tiananmen Square Beijing to pause in their description of the Gate of Heavenly Peace and talk about the uprising in the Square in April of 1989. According to the Red Cross, the revolt resulted in the deaths of as many protestors as there were innocent victims in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001. The guides will tell a completely different tale, a bland one of government-sanctioned propaganda.
Wherever you live: Burma, Tibet, Ukraine (you name it), big lies abound. We put up with political lies, business lies, legal lies (the old legal adage “Hard cases make good law” was refuted by Churchill in 1945), and media lies—but please don’t let me get started on them!
In the rundown of the falsehood-based Iraq war, and in the rapid escalation of Mr. Obama’s “just war” in Afghanistan, which is consuming so many lives and causing so much hardship, another thought comes to mind as the coffins come home to grieving relatives and friends. It is of an older, equally senseless conflict, and an older lie, which cannot be forgotten.
Wilfred Owen, the great poet of the “war to end all wars” (a pious lie), took what was then a popular quotation from an ode by the Roman poet Horace, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Translated, the Latin reads: “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” In his poem Owen called this “the old lie.” Owen himself proved the truth of that comment, dying in action at the Battle of the Sambre-Oise canal in France on November 4th, 1918, one week before the war ended. The news of his death reached his home town as the local church bells were noisily celebrating the peace.
WODEN SAYS: Lies are like smoking.
In my interview of the soul of Eleanor Roosevelt for Talking with Leaders of the Past, we talked about alcoholism. She commented that “there are people who need to experience addiction, so they [may] go through all the associated problems, learn their lessons, then renew their strength, so they can move on.”
There is truth in that remark. I found it out when I was a young divinity. Before I became an avatar of Anglo-Saxon ideas about a Supreme Being, I wanted to copy my goddess mother who smoked. She did not smoke much, just enough to have an unopened packet of cigarettes on a side table in the best room for a month or so. Finally, I gave in to my craving to be cool and took one. Next thing I knew, a metaphysical committee of enquiry had been set up and young Woden (me) was in the celestial witness stand.
Mother Goddess: Did you take a cigarette?
Teenage Divinity: No.
Mother Goddess: How do you account for there being one short in the box?
Teenage Divinity: (sweating) Perhaps the manufacturers made a mistake.
Mother Goddess: (refrains from giggling) Then I will write to them and complain.
(Exit Mother Goddess, who in disgust immediately gives up smoking—for eternity.)
No more was ever said. I was so ashamed of myself that I learned a great lesson about telling lies. However, to claim that I then totally gave up lying would be—a lie! Giving up smoking also took a long time.
So, what should we do with all the lies, damned lies, and statistics poured at us every day?
We must stop telling lies to ourselves. When that’s done we can stop telling lies to other people. Meanwhile, we shouldn’t base our opinions and our life on the lies and half-truths told in society, but trust our intuition to give us all the truth we need to live by. And, maybe, we should think twice about training to be a statistician!
Yes, lying is like smoking. It really is hard to give up. I know, I’ve been there and done that.
Great website!