In Defense of Lying

Every year, my company has its grand meet-up, and everyone must give a 4-minute “flash talk” on any subject.

This year I spoke on my wish that more people would lie more frequently. Lies are nearly always more entertaining than the truth, they are often less awkward than the truth, and lying creatively probably staves off Alzheimer’s for the liar. If you don’t often lie, give it a try!

Here are the slides from my talk:

9 Comments

  1. Sumes says:
    October 8, 2013 at 5:53 pm

    Great stuff, lady!

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    1. Elizabeth says:
      October 8, 2013 at 5:59 pm

      Touché.

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    2. katwalk65 says:
      October 19, 2013 at 6:21 pm

      Indeed!

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      Reply
  2. Ben Dwyer says:
    October 9, 2013 at 2:30 am

    You are in good company. George Orwell said that Charles Dickens had a

    habit of telling small lies in order to emphasize what he regards as a big truth.

    He talks about this contradiction extensively in his essay The Prevention of Literature:

    the imaginative writer is unfree when he has to falsify his subjective feelings, which from his point of view are facts. He may distort and caricature reality in order to make his meaning clearer, but he cannot misrepresent the scenery of his own mind; he cannot say with any conviction that he likes what he dislikes, or believes what he disbelieves. If he is forced to do so, the only result is that his creative faculties will dry up.

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    1. katwalk65 says:
      October 19, 2013 at 6:26 pm

      Distortion making something clearer is epiphany for the day. Thanks George and Charles (2 writers we must admire, however daunting in their effect on our judgement of writing); cannot misrepresent the scenery of one’s own mind is the tipping off point for today, love that notion, not as off-hand as our quotation font italicized would indicate; cannot believe what is a disabelief if more, for me anyway, cannot disbelieve a belief I have hard-won-proven by real-life experiences that can be cited in the footnotes. All other conjecture, theory and/or projected argumentation is up for grabs.

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  3. T E Stazyk says:
    October 9, 2013 at 3:01 am

    Good one (seriously)

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  4. katwalk65 says:
    October 19, 2013 at 6:27 pm

    Reblogged this on We have no Secrets and commented:
    I love the notions put forth here and the minds it attracts.

    Like

    Reply
  5. Ian Nuttall says:
    November 12, 2013 at 6:51 am

    I’d planned out a really awesome comment for this, but JUST as I was about to hit Post Comment, I felt the entire world shudder and vibrate uncontrollably.

    My glass of water shattered, caused a short circuiting of my laptop (which is strange because I’d covered in gold with the money I got for selling secrets to the Russians) and within the space of 3 seconds, my entire house was on fire!

    I don’t know what I would have done if my friend Marty the Martian hadn’t come down in a UFO shaped like an owls claw and put the fire our with this viscous green foam that smelt like rotting plums.

    Anyway, the jist of my comment was that lying is good.

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  6. Pingback: How to Yelp Like a Human with Empathy | Hope H. Ewing

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