Lying

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I hate lying, but it seems to be necessary social lubricant.

What are everyone’s opinions of lying.

I think I have a black and white idea of lying as absolutely wrong.

In my experience, it depends on how much harm lying or not lying causes. Lying about taking that last cookie from the jar or how late you went to bed is a fine lie. Lying to someone about something important is pretty bad.

A lot of Aspies seem to think that all lies are extremely bad. I'm not one of those Aspies. Yes, there are some lies I hate, like those sorts of people who are compulsive liars and make up these stories that don't make sense and you can tell they're fantasising about everything, then when they do tell the truth you're not sure whether to believe them or not. I find those types of people very frustrating and difficult to be with.

But, like the post above mine says, little white lies like lying about eating the last cookie from the jar, isn't really that harmful and is just one of those common things we've all probably told, even the Aspies that are so against lying.

Sometimes at work at the end of my shift, my supervisor sometimes asks me if I have done a certain thing, and if the certain thing is small enough to go unnoticed if it wasn't done today, and I had forgotten to do it, I just say "yes". Just to avoid the risk of him sending me back to where I was working to do the small thing, when I'm all ready to go home. So sometimes white lies can be necessary.

Thanks. I was getting in trouble for being too honest.

I think I have a more dualistic understanding.

Lying is not good but I do my fair share of it.....it's related to my substance abuse issue. I have to lie to my family that I'm not getting high but I am........it sucks

It depends on the lie. If it's to keep people calm and from panicking and causing more injuries and deaths, lie away.

If it's to keep a child from being scared and to keep them calm, lie away.

I am sure everyone can agree on lying about extreme things like if you do drugs when you are dating or in a relationship is bad. Anyone would be very upset about that if they were lied to about it.

Lying in my mind is very serious and can destroy trust with people no matter how you toss the dice. Whether you tell a white lie or whether you destroy someone's reputation by spreading rumors to destroy someone's reputation does not matter.

I prefer being truthful, even when it hurts, and even when it hurts me.

That way, I have gained a reputation for being truthful.

And if I ever do need to tell a lie, no one will ever suspect...

What you are talking about seems to stem from a society that's taught to tell white lies because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings. You are right, people who are too honest get punished more but that's because the truth hurts and is always offensive.

I can do it much more effectively at work if I'm not doing anything else important.

But, if I'm trying to do something useful, as in something too hard for normal people to do, and get interrupted, I'll often say obvious and truthful things that rub people the wrong way.

I suppose I'm lucky in that I get to choose between the two.

I'm black and white too, ultimately I see lying as wrong. However, as I've grown up, I've found that my definition of lying has moved into more a grey area.

For example, after much deliberation, I decided to lie to my children about santa claus. Not outright, when my eldest asked me straight up "does santa exist?", I told him the truth. In fact I spent ages thinking about what to tell him, then explaining the spirit of christmas and everyone's truth is different and that the magic exists in a much more complex way, he of course got bored and wondered off...

Another example is social niceties, I pretend to enjoy social events and smile and say good morning to people, which is all a lie. I also decided to lie to people to make them feel better, saying things like "yes, that's a great achievement" or "what a cool haircut". But then I would see people saying the same things, but meaning it, even when I did not.

I still believe harmful lies, or lies for selfish reasons are wrong, but after a few hiccups in the truth or lie area, what I realized is that most of the time, there is no universal truth. There is only opinions. So I'm not lying when I say "what a cool haircut" because other people genuinely think that to be true. I'm simply not choosing to share my precise opinion because it is hurtful. So rather than see things like this as telling a lie, I consider the motivation behind it instead.