Liar, Liar, pants on fire

Do you remember the film Liar, Liar? It starred Jim Carrey as a man whose son's birthday wish was that his dad would stop lying.

It's an interesting concept isn't it lying? I mean we all do it. To other people ("no I didn't notice that the bin was full otherwise I would have emptied it!"), to ourselves ("I'm not drunk, I've barely had anything to drink"), to the stranger on the street ("no I'm sorry I don't have any change") In fact lying is a part of life.  When does a lie become more sinister though? When do we cross the line?

Recently I've been in receipt of a couple of lies, and to be clear I'm not talking about the regular student lies ("my alarm didn't go off", "TFL is a nightmare", "of course I've learnt my lines"), but much more considered lies.  Now as I wrote in an earlier blog I believe that the concept of truth is complicated. We can all have our own interpretation of an event. We can all believe that we're saying our truth - so then what constitutes a lie?

I think that a wilful misrepresentation of someone would constitute a lie. Blaming others for your own shortcomings; but then here's the rub - how do you defend yourself against a lie? It invariably comes down to your word against somebody else's? Who's to say which person is telling the truth? How do you protect your reputation without sounding pathetic?

When I first opened the college I got into lots of internet forum discussions about my plans for this new concept in drama training, and even though I was sure that I knew what I was talking about - I got randomly called a liar.  Just a few months ago, a similar thing happened, and it didn't matter how many facts I presented to substantiate my 'case' (in this instance I was saying how Drama UK would be folding any day, and I was attempting to reassure someone that I had never attempted to apply for membership. However this other person was adamant that I must have applied....not only that but also that I therefore must have taken an anti-Drama UK stance because we had been unsuccessful in our (non existent) application) the person that I was discussing it with was 100% sure that they were right??

We're currently in the middle of the mother of all 'he said, she said' lies at the moment with the ongoing saga of the IICSA. The infamous inquiry which was supposed to be the government finally truly investigating all the allegations of institutional child sex abuse in the UK. Well at this moment in time it's reading like a workshop for a new Ray Cooney farce. I mean they can't even find someone to chair the damn thing effectively. Evidence is being dismissed or in many cases lost, before things can be investigated. Then worse of all, slowly one by one, the support groups are leaving the inquiry - and they're leaving because they just know - that once again their word is not going to be heard. They are going to be called out as liars.

I've seen a National organisation be embroiled in a scandal, and I've seen how effectively they managed to sweep it under the carpet.  Accusations weren't even investigated. Evidence was lost.  The media wouldn't touch it, and injunctions were being issued left, right and centre. The establishment (whoever 'they' might be) looked after their own.  What they definitely didn't do, was to look after the interest of the 'child(ren)'.

This isn't lying though is it? This is denial? Or is it something much more sinister that's rippling under the fabric of our society? Is this a reality - but one that nobody wants to face?

What society needs is a big old BS detector.  Someone needs to go onto Dragon's Den with a contraption that's more compact than a regular metal detector, but is as accurate as one of the really expensive ones. The polygraph can be beaten (. . . I mean someone should really tell those people on the Jeremy Kyle show about some tricks/drugs that could help them to beat that little 'ole machine) - so a BS detector is the answer.

With that in mind, we could all stick with the rubbish everyday lies. The ones that we shouldn't say - but we do ("sorry I was late, the bus didn't turn up" aka "I just wanted to finish watching a really good programme" or "just checking that you got my email, it's just that my server's been playing up" aka "I emailed you days ago, why the hell aren't you answering me?"), but when it came to the important things like protecting a person's reputation . . . or the other side of that coin exposing the case of the paedophile rings that are being given a tacet permission to continue in our society. . . . the ability to truly trash a person's reputation. . . we simply turn on the BS detector, project the findings on a huge display, and all move on with our lives, with lessons learnt, and the appropriate punishment given.
Simples

The Whole Truth...and nothing but the Truth

The truth seems like such a simple concept doesn’t it? It’s what actually, physically happened surely? Simple. Yet for every event, ever occasion we will all have our own truth of what’s actually happened. We can all witness the same event, but by seeing it from slightly different angles, with slightly different agendas, we can create a truth that isn’t actually truthful at all.

truth

noun

1. the quality or state of being true.

   "he had to accept the truth of her accusation"

   
   

   • that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

     noun: the truth

     "tell me the truth"

     
     
   • a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

     plural noun: truths

     "the emergence of scientific truths"

     
     

So this is what google has just told me as the definition of truth. It’s the latter definition that is really the most confusing one though…we ‘accept it to be true’. Why is that? Why do we just ‘accept’ at all? Isn’t our job as intelligent beings to actually question the truth to go out and discover a collective truth?

Now I’m not trying to get all philosophical here - in simple terms I’ve read a few things online recently which I personally don’t believe to be true…they have not been my experience of the truth.  I’m not calling the writers liars, as I believe that they own every word that they’ve written, however they’ve been so one sided - where is the other truth, and shouldn’t all truths be told for readers to make informed decisions?

Infamously most of us ‘get this’ with the Daily Mail don’t we? They write ‘a truth’ that thousands of reads believe, then the Guardian gives another truth which sheds more light on the Mail article.

For example:

People have been appalled that ‘so called’ refugees have been coming over to this country ‘with their mobiles’ so we’ll negate the fact that their homes were bombed, and they fled with whatever they could carry, fearing for their lives, we’ll forget entirely the fact that they were leaving a developed country, they weren’t your ‘mud hut’ refugees that you understand a bit more, we’ll brush over the perilous journey that they had undertaken to get ‘this far’…and we’ll focus on their mobiles shall we? ‘These people’ are ‘us’. I’m sorry but to everyone that knows me, they know that if I had to flee my home, after ensuring that my family were safe, the first thing that I’d take would be my mobile, my communication to other friends and relatives, an opportunity on a contemporary smartphone to find out what was really happening in my country. Surely a mobile makes the most sense? Oh yes…and ‘these people’? They are doctors, and lawyers and students and shop workers..and….they are ‘us’.

Two truths….in that very paragraph above…you chose which ‘truth’ suits your agenda….your deep seated belief will actually decide for you, without you actually realising.

‘THEY’RE NOT CHILDREN…THEY’RE ADULTS’ they cried….next day ‘NOBODY SAID THAT THEY’D BE TODDLERS’ (I’m paraphrasing both headlines) tomorrow it will be the ‘TODDLERS ARE BEING TRAINED TO KILL headline again. All are true…yet all have the bias of the author or the publication attached to them.

How do ‘these people’ fight back? Do they have a platform to write ‘their truth’? If they don’t we’re left with very one sided discussions aren’t we, with the rest of us basing deep rooted decisions based on one person’s interpretation of that word ‘truth’.

Over the years in this profession, indeed in my life (says old granny Thomas) I’ve had various run ins with people saying that the college couldn’t work, I didn’t know what I was doing, calling me a liar (which is a fascinating one to try and disprove because of all the above)…and back in the day I used to get really worked up about it. I would be adamant that ‘my truth’ be heard…as I didn’t want the last word to be my ‘untruth’. Social media took off and I began to realise that you couldn’t police it all. FB and Twitter allows anybody to write anything about you - and you can’t really stop it. You’ve given up the will to live by the time their ‘authorities’ look into it. Our own personal FB pages gives us the freedom to vent….and if we don’t like what the other people say…we delete their words….and eventually we delete them.  I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions - life is just too short to be arguing all the time.

So maybe it’s good for us all at times to stay curious about that word truth, as it’s actually not an absolute. It’s a transient word based on one person’s experience, and one person’s agenda…and might…just might, not bear witness to a collective truth.  

My head goes above the parapet so often I just as well buy a stool (I’m too short to actually just stand), so I am bound to come under fire again at some point…so I would say, the next time you hear a ‘truth’ about me…ask me about it….as we should all have the opportunity to collect THE ’truth’