Lies! All lies!
You must have recognized a moment in your life when you were positioned within easy reach of a compulsive lie. Not a lie for gain. Not a lie for defense. A lie for the sake of lying. A lie for the thrill. A thrill proportional to the size of the lie.
I’ve never actually done it. But I often recognize moments when it would be enticing to deny truth, to turn against reality, and fashion a temporary illusion for the naive or uninformed.
A lie is easy. A lie is physically a very easy thing to accomplish. Air goes in, air comes out, and essentially that’s it. Physically speaking, a lie practically doesn’t even exist–just a little vibrating air in a whole soup of the same.
Think about it this way: what would it take to measure a lie? I don’t mean a lie detector. Sure, humans give all these little biophysical signals when they fib. But a lie detector doesn’t measure the lie, it measures the scared and sweating liar. What would it take to measure the lie? Can you make a box to do that? A gauge?
A lie is an abstract creature. A state of crafty symbolism. A lie is a combination of two things: a signal which carries information and an intent which crafts that signal in such a way that it is known to be false by the sender. For a lie to have any recognizable existence at all, a very great many things have to be already in place. Entire systems of thought. “I didn’t take a cookie” only gets the chance to be a lie in a world where there are cookies and people who take them. And while the concept of taking is arguably not so terribly complex, I propose that the concept of a cookie is. Entailing, as it does, such knowledge as why a cookie is a cookie and why a lamp or a fox or a funeral is not. So the creation of a system in which a lie might exist is remarkably involved. But given that system, the lie itself is simple, and in and of itself, painless. No lightning strikes you dead upon committing a lie. That’s not the sort of cause and effect relationship that’s set up in this world.
In a system sophisticated enough to contain lamps and funerals and cookies and people who steal them, the integrity of information counts for a lot. Lies may not cause the skies to turn to fire, or the mountains to crumble, but they can set off an avalanch that buries you just the same. In a complex system, where information and the relationships of the world are what makes it tick, a lie is like a silent stick of dynamite in a deep bank of snow; it may do nothing…or it may set off the avalanch that buries towns. Compulsive liars are the pyromaniacs of this communicating species of ours. They walk around with white paper gunpowder poppers, throwing handfuls of snap-popping falsehoods at snowbanks. For the thrill.
It’s compulsive. But why? The compulsion must lie somewhere in the ease with which the universe may be shifted. Have you ever looked out from a cliff that had no railing? The bait that entices you to step over is the same bait that causes the compulsive lie. Have you ever sat across from a casual acquaintence and wondered what would happen if you leaned over and gave them a big kiss on the mouth? The extreme proximity of the object and the simplicity with which the action could be carried out create a mysterious contrast with the opposite extremity of the consequences. I mean, you’ve never actually jumped over the edge. It’d be easy, but it’d also kill you. So, near as I can figure it, compulsive liars go for lots of little jumps.