“Lying is a universal talent. Everyone I’ve ever known can do it rather well. Most little kids start practicing the skill as soon as they master language.”“So you figure there must be some evolutionary explanation, is that it?”“I think so, yes,” she said, calmly serious and certain. “When you look at it objectively it seems obvious that the ability to lie is part of everyone’s kit of survival tools, a side effect of possessing language skills. There are a lot of situations in which the ability to lie is extremely useful. There are times when you might have to lie to protect yourself or someone else, for example.”“Okay, I get that kind of lying,” he said.“You might lie to an enemy in order to win a battle or a war. Or you might have to lie just to defend your personal privacy. People lie all the time to diffuse a tense social situation or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or to calm someone who is frightened.”“True.”
“The way I see it, if people couldn’t lie, they probably wouldn’t be able to live together in groups, at least not for very long or with any degree of sociability. And there you have the bottom line.”“What bottom line?”She spread her hands. “If humans could not lie, civilization as we know it would cease to exist.”
Excerpt From
White Lies
Jayne Ann Krentz
farkleberry 