The innovation of lying

[Aassem]

Humans generally don't like lying, but we do lie sometimes to protect ourselves or protect others from any pain that the truth might cause. We also might lie just to win something or impress someone, which in some cases is called cheating. Some people in some situations might lie just to hurt others, which can be called deceiving. Those are mainly the reasons why someone might lie.

Of course lying like any other deed couldn't be all positive and beneficial or all negative and harmful. But lying mostly is more harmful than beneficial, that's why most people consider lying a sin. So basically lying is only right when it's more beneficial than harmful, otherwise it's wrong.

One of the things that everyone struggles with is a decision when you have to choose between ending the negativity for now or ending it forever. The for now choice is almost always the much easier one, that's why we tend to choose it. And this is exactly why most people choose to lie instead of telling the truth, which ultimately leads to much more harm than benefit. So how can we distinguish?

Distinguishing actually isn't our problem, because we have a mind that observes very well and gives us the intuition subconsciously, but we tend to ignore it and follow our instinct to lie, because it's easier and doesn't require much thinking and willpower (humanity).

So we conclude that lying itself isn't actually wrong, but the consequence of it is what decides whether it's wrong or right.

*Note: I will illustrate the difference between intuition and instinct in the following post.