“A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it
with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it.”
– Arnold Isenberg
Lying works. Until the liar realizes that the Faustian jugaad has embarked him, against his will, on a worldmaking career.
When you speak the truth, you take responsibility only for the fact, not its sustenance, as the world is your alibi supporting the truth. You move on.
When you lie, you are stuck.
Lying may be boring, but worldmaking is breathtaking. To lie is to commit to creating a parallel world in which your lie is true. Hence one lie begets another, and soon the scaffold multiplies exponentially beyond any liar’s architectural expertise. No matter the structure’s scale achieved, it remains a perpetual work in progress.
Worldmaking in novels and films is laudable. But making a world to replace the world is laughable. Liars morph into J. R. R. Tolkien on steroids, a la Lord of the Ring of Lies. Give it enough time, and all lies collapse, burying the liar under the weight of his incomplete fabrications. Goebbels’s dictum that a lie repeated often appears as truth has an expiry date. While Goebbel may not have said that (itself a lie oft repeated), he did say liars “keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Stick to the truth; it is easier.
Note: Habib Jalib protested dictatorship with his poem Dastoor. The above stanza can be downloaded from Academia. (Sources: Arnold Isenberg’s definition of lying: Deontology and the Ethics of Lying, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 24:4. June 1964, p. 466. Joseph Goebbel’s quotation: “Sie bleiben also bei ihren Schwindeleien, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, sich damit lächerlich zu machen.”12 Jan. 1941. Die Zeit ohne Beispiel. Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP. pp. 364–369).
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