So, the other day, I came upon an epiphanic passage about human beings and their propensity to tell lies. The nugget jumped out at me in what is arguably the most compelling non-fiction read of 2026, London Falling, Patrick Radden Keefe’s account of the mysterious, tragic death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler in London.
As investigative journalist/author Keefe investigates the troubling death of the young man, he is faced with a raft of untruths that veil the incident. To that end, he remarks, “…the truth is, everybody lies. We all do it, in ways large and small, more often than we might care to admit. Scholars known as ‘deception scientists’ have studied the psychology of lying and concluded that as a human behaviour, it is incredibly common. Most studies on the subject have found that the average person lies at least once or twice a day. But this may be an underestimate, because the methodology of these studies usually depend on self-reporting by subjects, and when people answer questions about how often they lie, they might well be lying.”
Truth to tell, we really don’t stop to consider just how many lies emerge from our mouths on a daily basis. Society has, over the years, given a pastel whitewash to much of falsehood, terming them ‘white lies’, classifying them in a manner that could be seen as justification alongside non-judgemental references to the Post-truth Age.
We are told that some of these white lies are uttered with a supposedly noble intention: to keep the peace or to avoid hurting someone. Others are spoken in a bid to avoid judgement, blame or physical punishment. Yet others are basically bragging based on a plinth of stretched truth, in an effort to sound cool. The inference being, we need to cut slack for both the lie and the liar.
The two sections beyond the pale are compulsive liars, those con artists who just can’t help themselves, those who live for that dopamine hit they get, every time they tell a lie and seemingly get away with them; and those who cynically tweak the truth for political ends.
The supreme irony is that we are taught from our childhood to never lie, we are given moral lessons on how wicked it is to lie, we observe the opprobrium with which lies are generally received. Yet, all too soon we realise that it is sometimes easier to fib than to acknowledge or live with the uncomfortable truth.
Not many people know about the effect that constant lying has on the brain. The effort of dealing in untruths by someone who doesn’t feel too comfortable telling lies puts a load on the prefrontal cortex, which first has to construct the lie, then build a fence around it, and after that, keep a consistency chart so as to stick to the basis of that lie. Another part of the brain literally winces every time the guilt attached to telling whoppers checks in.
Lies shatter relationships, fray the fabric of trust, create cognitive dissonance, lose you much respect. So, am I going to advise you to stop telling lies? No. But I am going to share one universal truth with you: no one is really fooled by the lies you tell. You just think they are. Mull over that.
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