When The Truth Is Inconvenient

We all had those moments as kids when we were in trouble and those who had authority over us told us to just tell the truth. We wouldn’t get in trouble. Just tell the truth. And yet, we struggled because we didn’t know what would happen if we did tell the truth. But we suspected it wouldn’t end well for us. We didn’t trust. Mainly because our history, even at a young age, showed us that our full story was never taken into account. I see this quite often with my three grandsons. All is well in the basement until there is a very loud argument going on. Sometimes tears. Sometimes physical attacks. And once someone intervenes, nothing can calm them down. Because no matter what happened, no matter who may have started it, the perspective is always that retaliation is justified. If we take the time to drill down to the stories of all the injured parties, we then hear the cries of outrage as stories are contradicted and everyone is accused of lying. And time does show that often, a key element is omitted if that fact does make us look bad. It changes the story. Eventually parents, and Mormor’s, just separate them, tell them to stop being mean to each other and to go outside if they are going to fight.

But what is truth actually?

Here is the thing. Kids learn that telling the truth is often inconvenient. So rather than lie, they omit. And once we learn that, we set ourselves on a course in life where truth is ambiguous and we stop trusting those around us. Have you noticed the people who are most bothered by a particular trait are actually those most comfortable with doing it themselves. I remember when my kids were young they had a lemonade stand with a friend. When they were called to come in for supper, they asked a neighbour boy to watch their stand. Now the friend was a bit anxious. They weren’t sure that they could trust the neighbour boy. My kids didn’t understand the distrust. Mainly because it never occurred to them that the neighbour would rip them off. They were fairly honest kids so they assumed others were as well. In the end, all was well and my kids learned a lesson about trust. In fact they were a little more concerned about the friend who was anxious. Everyone made money and the kids learned a valuable lesson in economics. You have to pay your suppliers. This Mama is all about the lessons.

I was recently struck by another car in a construction area. There was very much a “he said she said” difference in the stories as to what happened. In the end, he was found 100% at fault. Why? Because there was a witness who stepped forward. The reality is there are three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the real one. After the accident my grandson wondered why the other driver was so abusive towards me. I explained that often when people know they are wrong they will go overboard while they proclaim their innocence. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude when she says “The lady doth protest too much, me thinks.” The saying really does show our inclination to be wary of someone who is too loud or over the top in their proclamation of innocence. It is natural to gloss over our own mistakes when pleading our cases. Look at politicians. They don’t campaign on all the great things they will do and have done. They pounce on everything their opponents do wrong.

Take the current situation with Canada and the United States. The President is ruthless in his social posts as he rants and raves about Canada. Since the Canadian Government walked away from the trade talks last month, various people within the U.S. governing agencies have been quite childish in their comments regarding Canada. A few days ago, the US President posted a rant on average every nine minutes over a period of four hours. While there ae some Canadians whose responses are somewhat derisive, for the most part the Canadian federal government, and most importantly the Prime Minister, have been silent. Mark Carney stated the Governments case when they withdrew from the bargaining table. The ensuing silence basically means nothing has changed. Taunts, threats and scorn from people in powerful positions south of the border only serve to show the world who they truly are. Bullies. I can’t say that what the Canadian government is doing is correct or even if it will turn out well. What I can say at least they are doing it with some class. That in itself leads me to believe they are more truthful. And on the global political stage, it appears, right or wrong, that the ones who are silent are more likely to be believed or supported.

Lying is such an incredible hard artform to master. My eldest daughter was quite honest when she was young. As a teen when she was in trouble, her efforts at lying to cover her ass, were laughable. All I had to do was keep asking questions until she dug a hole so deep she finally had to admit her lying. It angered her. Once, she actually yelled “You know I am lying. Why can’t you just stop grilling me.” Well of course I had to get her into such a state that she realized she was screwing herself over. Duh! She was so easy to catch. But good practice for the next child who was a master at deception. Even when I knew she was lying, I couldn’t trap her. And to be fair, she really didn’t very often. Like she told me one day, she never rebelled because there was nothing to rebel against. The thing was, daughter number two remembered her story. Kept it close to the truth. Didn’t panic and throw out random comments. The next kid was pretty honest. I can tell now when he makes up a story. But I appreciate it is usually to make another person look good. Or to show his Dad in a better light. He choses to give the dead guy some slack and focus on the good points. Even if there is a bit of embellishing in the story. The eldest had a habit of sharing stories she heard as her own. Lots of people do that. But then you have to remember where you heard the story. Doesn’t look good to tell the story to the original story teller.

I knew girl a years ago who married a man who was good at that. We called him an er person. Everything you did or said he did biggER or bettER. Get it? They wanted to put together a curling team but the husband, lets call him dufus, had never curled. So we went as a group to take a beginner curling class. Two of us had curled but took the class for practice since it had been a few years. One class the instructor was explaining about burning a rock. That’s when a player touches a rock while in motion. It was also a lesson on the gentlemanly aspect of self policing. He told a story of a young man in a very important game who accidentally touched a rock before the hog ling. No one saw but he immediately took ownership and removed the rock from play. Months later, during a game, I overheard Dufus, the husband telling the same story, but with himself as the star player. He did this often. It is hard to be in a couple friendship with someone like that. Years later another couple in the girl friend group got divorced. My friend left her husband and of course she took custody of the group. One day he told my friend that the best thing that came out of their divorce was he never had to see Dufus again. What a lucky guy. Hard to believe, Dufuses marriage ended as well. I don’t know how she stayed as long as she did.

It is natural for people to want to omit any kind of information about themselves that makes them look bad. When I worked I found the biggest problem with people was the fear of looking stupid. So often employees don’t like to ask questions, or admit to not understanding something, because they are afraid of looking stupid. Yet, the longer they hide the fact that they don’t understand, the longer they may do things incorrectly. I once did a project for a very large Oil company. Basically the numbers for one particular pipeline were messed up month by month. I did some digging and it was all related to spreadsheet cells with calculating equations being overwritten. Keep in mind these spreadsheets were massive. Over time the originals were so compromised because no one ever went and fixed the equations. The back up I presented, along with correcting entries, when printed out was a stack of paper over an inch thick. The errors went back over two years and in the end the pipeline inventory value was overstated by close to 25 million dollars. Now that of course does hit the bottom line which looks bad. In the end the project was shelved and I was let go. Somehow the project results were sent up the food chain. As a result the manager of the department was demoted and transferred and the supervisor was fired. Here is the thing. That bad choice followed them. FYI, both were born again Christians. No point just sayin’.

Mark Twain popularized the quote “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics.” Who knows who said it first. I am a numbers math geek. The first stats class had me in love. Who knew average wasn’t just average? I aced the class not because I studied hard but because I was fascinated with something I had never really thought about. I have twin brothers who always liked to quote stats to prove their positions in any argument. That was when you shake your head, concede and live to fight another day. Their sources were opaque at best, and source credibility is the most important part of any disagreement. People on both sides of an opinion use stats to prove their positions. Some use them to enhance their argument whereas others use this quote to throw shade on their opponents arguments. After all, the popular belief is that statistics are often used to mislead. The fact is, raw data is inevitably true. How it is gathered and how it is used are the variables. Again, here we have an area where information can be used to promote or disprove ideas based on inclusion of deletion of information. Lying by omission. Basically it comes down to context. Besides, most people have no idea how statistics are created. A recent Abacus survey regarding the Alberta referendum Surveyed 1000 adults online. To quote a CBC article…

“Results are weighted by region, age and gender to census data. A probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points, 19 times out of 20. For subsets, the margin of error is larger.”

So what does this mean? Well, they surveyed 1000 people. But in order to make it amore accurate representation of the population they compared the people to census regions. So they didn’t have too many of one sex or age or other demographic. Margin of error means in this particular survey, 24% would vote to start the separation process but the true results could be 20.9% to 27.1%. 19 out of 20 just means they are 95% sure of the results. As for subset, if less people were polled the error rate increases because the sample size is smaller. The only way to get a true or increasingly accurate representation is to have a survey sample size of 100%. I believe that is what is available in a vote. The fact that we can never get 100% turnout means only the most passionate decide. So yes stats can lie but probably not as much as the people who quote made up stats.

You know, I love to read mysteries. I have such an admiration for someone like Stephen King. His mind and imagination astound me. I loved a quote of his. He said. “Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough. The magic exists.” I can only guess at his meaning but for anyone who reads his stuff we understand the magic. All fiction writers are liars of a sort. They weave together imagination and real life to create a story that takes us to another place. Agatha Christie brought me to a middle east far removed from today. Harini Nagrenda transported me back to 1920’s Bangalore India. Good authors can not just create characters with incredible depth, they can teach us about places and times we know nothing about. These are the good lies. The ideas that we make up. The magic comes from how we are drawn into the web they create.

In the end, in this modern world, it is often hard to know who or what to trust. Truth is actually a sliding scale concept just as we are a diverse and unique people. It is relative truth which is based on so many variables that it is impossible to find two individuals who agree 100% on anything. We bring our pasts and experiences into the fray and apply ideas and behaviours to what we believe to be true. And this is where trouble lies for us as we navigate this life. Absolute truth is never changing. It is what is always true no matter what the situation. There are no feelings or opinions or biases in absolute truth. These truths form the foundation of much of our world. Science. Math. Logic. For example a triangle has three sides. Always. But for most of us truth is what supports us and our beliefs. It becomes most inconvenient when we know in our hearts we are wrong. Because it is hard to be wrong. It is hard to admit we may have made an error. We are afraid of not just repercussions, we are afraid that our word is now less trusted. More importantly we are afraid to acknowledge that something we believe with all of our heart and soul, may be on the wrong side of history. Better to dig in our heels.

I am a relatively intelligent individual and I am quite adept at seeing when someone lies to me. Some people are just too easy because they are so bad at it. It doesn’t really bother me when others lies. No skin off my nose. What gets me is that they think I will believe them. In my mind that tells me that they think I am not that bright. The worst thing in my life is if someone insinuates I am stupid. And if you are a liar, that’s what I hear. Not the lie. You think I am too dumb to see through it. I am not the morality police. You do you as my daughter likes to say. I have learned that I just need to let people be. Just, be somewhere else.