From: Subject: A Fighting Word That's Lost Its Punch
Lying is a way of life in the news and with politicians and elites. Churchill once said, "in war every truth has to have an escort of lies", a hoary Imperial British tradition for centuries. “There is an interesting, up-to-date reason to credit the ancient notion that ethics are a matter of character. Psychologists at Harvard's "Moral Cognition Lab" have been doing MRI brain scans of research subjects given opportunities to lie. What did they find? That "individuals who behaved dishonestly exhibited increased activity in control-related regions of prefrontal cortex." In other words, the untruthful regularly fire up the part of the brain that calculates (one is reminded of the maxim that concludes "liars sure do figure"). By contrast, the honest subjects in the experiment never had to put their brains in gear to arrive at a decision to tell the truth. The researchers suggest this is evidence that the honest enjoy a "grace" that spares them the tussle with temptation. Another way of interpreting the data is to say that those whose characters are honest are those who have made such a habit of honesty that it is second nature to them—a high-tech proof of Aristotle's assertion that "excellence of character results from habit." The Harvard study fits with findings published in 2005 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showing that chronic liars had built up a surplus of white matter, the connective brain tissue that facilitates agile, complex thinking. It seems that we don't need to build moral muscles so much as avoid bulking up our brains in exercising the capacity for weaselly calculations. It would be nice if we were all a little more honest, and refreshing if the coarse catcalls of "liar" were less frequent. In the meantime, can we look into getting some of those MRI machines up on Capitol Hill?” * <http://online.wsj.com/public/search?article-doc-type=%7BDe+Gustibus%7D&HEADER_TEXT=de+gustibus> OPINION: DE GUSTIBUS * SEPTEMBER 4, 2009, 10:45 A.M. ET A Fighting Word That's Lost Its Punch By <http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=ERIC+FELTEN&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND> ERIC FELTEN Teddy Roosevelt was not one to suffer untruths patiently. The old bully blusterer would upbraid newspapers he thought had misrepresented him, and did so colorfully. Unhappy once with how the Evening-Post quoted him, T.R. denounced the paper for printing "a characteristic and peculiarly infamous falsehood." The article was "an unpardonable piece of moral obliquity." It proved, Teddy said, that the Evening-Post was a "charter member" of the "Ananias Club," a fanciful fraternity named in honor of the Biblical fibber struck dead trying to pull a fast one on the Holy Ghost. Why all the rococo and roundabout language? A century ago, even those in the rough-and-tumble politics of a rough-and-tumble age strove to avoid using what Roosevelt called the "short and ugly word"—liar. No more. Every political contest, every policy dispute these days, seems to dissolve into blunt accusations of lying. The most common epithet heard in the rumbustious town hall meetings of the past month—hurled from both sides—has been "liar." Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio was "peppered with shouts of 'liar'" this week in Cincinnati, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A protester in Spokane, Wash., bragged to NPR about her sign, which read "Liar, Liar, Republicans on Fire." An outfit called Americans United for Change is buying ads targeted to Sarah Palin's Facebook supporters, demanding that she stop "lying." The Sierra Club's new campaign against the clean-coal industry is built around the slogan "Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire." The rap on Barack Obama's predecessor was always that "Bush Lied, People Died." And the new senator from Minnesota is a comedian who entered the political fray a few years ago with a book titled "Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)." The short and ugly word is meant to wound, but it has dulled from overuse. In the early days of the Republic "certain slurs were off limits, tame as they are by modern standards," Joanne Freeman writes in her history "Affairs of Honor." Words like "rascal," "scoundrel," "coward"—and, yes, "liar"—"were fighting words, and anyone who hurled them at an opponent was risking his life." Well into the 20th century, liar was still considered an intolerable insult. Take the 1920 court case Knocks v. Metal Package Corp., in which the New York Supreme Court ruled that a worker, blinded in one eye from a beating at the hands of his shop foreman, had no grounds to sue his employer for damages: "In our case the claimant called his foreman a 'liar,'" the court noted, "and thereby drew down upon himself precisely that which he should have expected." We may or may not be bigger liars than our ancestors. The "liar loans," so notable a part of the recent financial unpleasantness, were hardly the first instance of dishonesty in real estate (indeed, old Ananias's downfall flowed from a land deal). But we have become more glib about the whole business of falsehood. Truth-telling was once such a central virtue that we imagined a George Washington who could tell no lies, a conceit that may have been fantastical, but was also aspirational. Now we are all far too sophisticated for such fairy tales. Everyone lies, and so what's the big deal in being called a liar? One might as well be called a human. Yes, it's true enough that everyone lies, especially when we include that merciful social lubricant—courteous untruth—without which civilization could not long survive. Next month sees the release of a comedy called "The Invention of Lying," which imagines a world of compulsive and complete truth-telling, a dystopia in which no woman is safe to ask the question "Does this dress make me look fat?" But when it comes to telling tales that count, not everyone is a "liar." The term used to mean not just that one had told a lie in some particular instance, but that one was in the habit of telling lies. To call someone a liar was not to quibble about the truth of any particular statement, but to make a judgment about his character. There is an interesting, up-to-date reason to credit the ancient notion that ethics are a matter of character. Psychologists at Harvard's "Moral Cognition Lab" have been doing MRI brain scans of research subjects given opportunities to lie. What did they find? That "individuals who behaved dishonestly exhibited increased activity in control-related regions of prefrontal cortex." In other words, the untruthful regularly fire up the part of the brain that calculates (one is reminded of the maxim that concludes "liars sure do figure"). By contrast, the honest subjects in the experiment never had to put their brains in gear to arrive at a decision to tell the truth. The researchers suggest this is evidence that the honest enjoy a "grace" that spares them the tussle with temptation. Another way of interpreting the data is to say that those whose characters are honest are those who have made such a habit of honesty that it is second nature to them—a high-tech proof of Aristotle's assertion that "excellence of character results from habit." The Harvard study fits with findings published in 2005 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showing that chronic liars had built up a surplus of white matter, the connective brain tissue that facilitates agile, complex thinking. It seems that we don't need to build moral muscles so much as avoid bulking up our brains in exercising the capacity for weaselly calculations. It would be nice if we were all a little more honest, and refreshing if the coarse catcalls of "liar" were less frequent. In the meantime, can we look into getting some of those MRI machines up on Capitol Hill? —Write to <http://us.mc842.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]> [email protected]. Hasni Essa Islam for Pluralism --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "total_truth_sciences" group. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/total_truth_sciences -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
