You're lying to me, aren't you?
Posted by tom | Aug 10, 2009How do you define lying, deception, and truthtelling in your own mind, as you interact with others, as you train youth/children? The NY Times hosted Errol Morris's provocative series Seven Lies About Lying, based upon an interview with Ricky Jay. According to Morris, "Jay is an actor, bibliophile, historian of magic, arguably the greatest living sleight-of-hand artist, and a master of the art of deception."
Seven Lies About Lying (Part 1)
Seven Lies About Lying (Part 2)
As various elements of Joseph's story are regularly told in our house, I have found the piece of particular interest. Here's the conclusion of Seven Lies About Lying (Part 2) and one of the paintings referenced, be sure to go back to Seven Lies About Lying (Part 2) for the other painting along with his critique of popular definitions/understandings of lying.
We navigate through a farrago of lies, deceptions and self-deceptions. But they do not prevent us from seeking the truth, from looking outside our mental prisons and trying to uncover the true nature of the world that surrounds us.
“Joseph Being Sold by His Brothers” (from the Casa Bartholdy fresco cycle), an 1817 painting by Johann Friedrich Overbeck, depicts the underlying reality of what “actually” happened to Joseph. The sons tell their father, “This have we found: see now whether it is your son’s coat or not.” But they didn’t find the coat, and Joseph wasn’t eaten by wild animals. He was sold into slavery, as seen in the Overbeck. A cropped image from Wikipedia provides only a detail from the complete mural. The full mural shows more of the story of deception: in the foreground, the well into which Joseph was thrown and, on the extreme left, the goat that was sacrificed [18]. The Bible story contains a curious admixture of lies, deceptions, self-deceptions and false inferences. As such it provides a good object lesson for real life. The two paintings – the Velazquez (1630) and the Overbeck (1817) – are tidy bookends to any story about lying. They portray the lie and the underlying reality that the lie is designed to hide.
Of course, there are terribly injurious lies — lies with intent to do harm, to hurt and to betray. But once again truth and falsehood have little to do with it. William Blake wrote in “Auguries of Innocence”:
A truth that’s told with bad intent,
Beats all the lies you can invent.
