Looking for Truths about Untruths

British journalist Jeremy Campbell set out to write a history of truth and quickly discovered that deception was much more compelling. It’s an observation that may go further in explaining humanity’s most ubiquitous vice than any psychoanalytic deconstruction or pulpit-pounding homily. “Historically, truth was held in less and less esteem,” says the author of the newly released “The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood” (W.W. Norton). “It started with a capital T, and wound up in quotation marks.”

Oxford historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, on the other hand, defended the value and existence of truth in “Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed” (Thomas Dunne Books, 1997). Even so, his personal creed is: Believe nothing. “It’s a strenuous way to live,” he says, “and impractical, but it is a matter of personal inclination.”

If that is how the professionals feel, pity then the amateurs. The human effort to define truth begins the moment a toddler understands the difference between yes and no, and assessment of truth’s value permeates daily life. The way in which a party invitation is declined, the submission of a tax return, the testimony on a witness stand all reflect an individual’s relationship to truth and deceit.

While the saints among us are able to confine themselves to analyzing only their own actions, many more of us use the words, deeds and misdeeds of public figures to figure out what is acceptable and what is not. How people react to a liar is often far more interesting than the lie itself.

It would be difficult to imagine a time when the public wasn’t reacting to one deception or another, but this has been a particularly prevarication-plagued year. A list of just those lies publicly acknowledged is a long one indeed. Highlights include Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who regularly lied to students about being a Vietnam vet and peace protester; author and right-wing pundit David Brock, who recently confessed to lying about, and then lying about lying about, Anita Hill before and after the Clarence Thomas hearings; British author Jeffery Archer, who was found to have asked others to lie about his whereabouts for a defamation suit against a newspaper; and Gary Condit, who initially wasn’t forthcoming about his relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy.

And despite all its purported world weariness and cherished sense of irony, the public does not seem to consider lying business as usual. Back and forth we go, in the media and at the sushi bar, about what constitutes a lie (Does omission really count? Exaggeration?), what makes it morally wrong (Intent? The presence of a clear victim?) and how, or if, the liar should be punished. Some of this conversation is driven by an ethical schadenfreude--like schoolchildren, we still delight when someone else gets caught fibbing to Sister, and, of course, there’s always simple salaciousness.

But much of it is a communal way of figuring out what we value and why, what we expect of ourselves and each other. This is not an insignificant conversation, no matter who figures in the current version. The social contract, especially in a democracy, says Campbell, is based on a certain amount of veracity among citizens.

Yet one of the major points of Campbell’s book is that lying is a natural instinct. Calling on the expertise of everyone from Darwin to Derrida, Campbell argues that humans are not that far removed from fireflies; we consistently send out false signals in an effort to survive. It’s just the definition of survival that differs--fireflies are attempting to avoid being eaten; we are trying to make our lives better in some way. We pad our resume, lie about our marital status, misrepresent a business dealing in the hopes of making a score.

There is a long tradition of defining mendacity as simply another human trait, to be accepted along with the other unsavory but indispensable emotional and bodily functions. The sophists and the relativists generally dismissed the very concept of truth, arguing that there is nothing, really, but experience and interpretation. Campbell doesn’t buy that, but he does believe that lying has a time-honored if not biologically proven place in the panoply of human behavior.

While difficult to refute, it does not explain why we, with all our lying tendencies, are often so credulous and then inevitably surprised when a liar is exposed. For years, no one thought to check out Ellis’ story, and Brock’s book apparently was taken at face value despite vehement denials from many of the parties involved.

Despite a widespread acceptance that everyone lies, telling a lie remains a benchmark of character. It is often considered the final word on a person’s ability to be a friend/nanny/spouse/president. Similarly, the fact that a person lied about a misdeed is often considered more damning than the deed itself. The problem with the belief that “people lie” is that it isn’t specific enough to be practical. Which people? When? Our reactions of outrage are often sparked by vanity as much as anything. Just as they want to believe they have good taste and a sense of humor, most people believe they are good judges of character. The revealed lie is evidence that many are not.

“We live in an age when the worst thing is to be gullible or conned,” says Campbell, during a phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C. “We’re shocked when we’re taken in--that I who am so sophisticated did not see the truth. Because we think dishonesty should be immediately apparent.”

There is not a person alive who has not been lied to, who did not believe a falsehood, and our conversations reflect that. After news broke of Condit’s relationship with Levy, tales of similar seductions were offered as a form of analysis. The coverage after his interview with Connie Chung focused almost exclusively on public opinion of adultery, rather than questions of obstruction of justice or, at the very least, failure to aid a police investigation. Part of this is inherent human drama, but part of it is that while few Americans have been involved in a missing person’s investigation, many know well the fallout from an ill-advised love affair.

“I think the problem is not that Americans are too credulous,” says Fernandez-Armesto, “but that they’re too hung up on the literal truth. They don’t understand that lying can be a moral choice, or that truth can be very misleading.”

In the case of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, he says, the public debate focused on the wrong issue--Clinton’s famous finger-wag--rather than whether he was illegally attempting to deny his sexual harassment accuser, Paula Jones, her day in court.

“In some countries you are not allowed to sue the head of state,” says Fernandez-Armesto during a phone interview from his home in London. “In America, you are, which is great. In Clinton’s case, there was a very serious principle involved--whether or not he had used his political muscle to derail a court case. But all the focus seemed to be on whether he lied about his sexual conduct. Which is trivial.”

In the Condit case, he says, there is a similar conflict. “I don’t know all the details, but the important issue seems to me to be whether or not he had anything to do with her disappearance,” Fernandez-Armesto says. As for Condit’s reluctance to discuss the affair, “well, usually it is good to lie about things like that; it is the chivalric thing. In principle, the fact that she was missing doesn’t change that.”

The level of American commitment to truth, he believes, is proved more by actions than by discourse. “The index of how serious you take [a lie] is do you make decisions based on its exposure; do you lobby Congress or vote someone out of office. The index of how much interest you take is what you demand from the media. In France, there is a great interest in sex, but they do not punish peccadilloes.” Those found guilty of crimes, he adds, are rarely convicted of perjury as well, no matter how many lies they told in their defense.

Fernandez-Armesto, a member of the modern history department at Oxford University, wrote “Truth” in part as a rebuttal of those who denied the existence of it. Despite their different styles and mandates, his work and Campbell’s share a few themes, among them that truth can be misleading, that a literal truth can be used to distract from a larger one, and that lying can often be a moral choice. To protect the Jew in the attic, or a colleague’s reputation.

Literal truth can be malicious, Campbell says, and honor can simply refer to an aristocratic code that arose in a more primitive time, adds Fernandez-Armesto, evoking a social system bent on subjugating certain groups. “You have to be very careful evoking honor,” he says. “It is about adherence to a group of rules that are not always just.”

America has a long and complicated relationship with lying. George Washington and his cherry tree made literal honesty preeminent but the expansion of the nation was based on a series of lies to the native Americans. For more than two centuries, Americans have taken pride in their idealism and their pragmatism, using truth as a bellwether for which characteristic was in ascendancy at any given time. The straight-shooter or the canny businessman? The activist or the politician? Each comes with a separate philosophy, a separate relationship to truth.

These philosophies often expand the cultural consciousness, but, says Campbell, they can also be used, as religion can be used, to justify bad behavior: a liberal politician, for example, who commits nefarious acts and excuses them because he believes he is, in general, working toward the greater good. President Lyndon Johnson, he says, justified many back-room dealings with the belief that he was on the side of the little guy.

These types of rationalizations are certainly not confined to the United States, but here there is often an odd contradiction between what is expected and what is accepted. “[Historian] Adam Wolf said that Americans tend to stick by the old virtues,” says Campbell, “but that they had great tolerance for those who broke them.”

This is, after all, a nation of rule-breakers, a haven for those who could not, or would not, live elsewhere. The modern social revolutions have further expanded the nature of tolerance. “I’m OK, you’re OK,” leaves little room for those who would censure their peers. “Judgmental” has become the ultimate pejorative and “discrimination” is now so legally loaded it has lost nearly all its original meaning--the ability to make or perceive distinctions, and the value of this ability. “Perhaps when the sexual revolution took place, other moral restraints went as well,” Campbell says.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald said that in America there are no second acts,” he adds. “I think that’s completely wrong. I think in America it’s all second acts; it’s all about reinvention. I think that’s why we don’t judge, because it’s never the final act. We just wait for the comeback.”

Yet, says Fernandez-Armesto, the American press is far stricter about truth than in other countries, notably Great Britain. “I would certainly be more comfortable relying on a statement in [an American paper] than in any paper here,” he says. “Of course, it may simply be that in America, you’re more afraid of being sued.”

In the absence of religion or rigorous philosophy, an individual is left to construct his or her own code of honor. Fernandez-Armesto, who is a devout Catholic, advocates skepticism and selflessness. “When in doubt, I believe in the suppression of self-interest. I think ‘honor’ is a good word if it means respect for values that transcend self-interest, which so often clouds the truth.”

And despite the rather kind way Campbell handles the subject of his book, he believes that society needs to come down harder on liars of every stripe.

“We need to make people realize that lying is not a trivial offense,” he says, “because it encourages the idea that truth doesn’t matter and it does.”