Just as my dad often told me when I was young, "A lie doesn’t really get one out of trouble—it creates more problems that you might not see until it backfires." Your post hit home because I see this everywhere now. People lie about age for work, or on social media to sell a fake life. But like you said about relationships or even unwanted gifts—speak the truth and you’re not believed; stay silent and you’re complicit. We end up in that awful middle where no one wins, just like flattering an old lady in clothes that don’t fit. Her head swells with lies, and everyone plays along. Who’s fooling whom?
And the hypocrisy you mentioned—being told to save electricity so someone else can charge an electric car, all while calling it “green”—it’s just another layer of the same dishonesty. We’re dressed in the emperor’s new clothes, praising what isn’t there.
It’s exhausting. From little white lies to systemic doublespeak, it feels like we’re building a world on distrust. And you’re right:
(Even if the lie is quick, the truth is slow, a lie is still a lie. The truth is not being sought, simply because people do not want to know the truth. This is also a reason why the same mistakes are made over and over again and history repeats itself: humans learn nothing.)
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to want the truth at all.