Honesty
Honest Abe was known for his kindness, compassion, funny stories, and never telling a lie.
The question of honesty, truthfulness, and what is a lie is an age-old question. Scholarly papers have been published of 10s of thousands of words. There was an article titled “the 25 ways we lie” which I have not been able to find since so I started to develop my own list. It is astounding when you are honest, we all lie. It is a fact of our human communication. A relative of mine once told me he had just gotten to a place where he didn’t lie anymore. A couple of years later when I was purchasing a car from him, he aske me that he should put down as the sales price on the title. I didn’t fault him for that. He believed what he had said and yes delusion is a form of lying.
Here is my List of methods and manners by which we lie to one another.
1) Exaggeration
2) Obfuscation
3) Omission
4) Deception
5) Deflection
6) Concealment
7) Falsification
8) Delusion
9) Facades
10) Statistical lie
11) Sleight of hand
12) False statement
13) Instrumental lies (or Deliberate lie)
14) Denial
15) Compulsive lie
16) Minimalization
17) Plagiarism
18) Broken promises
19) Lies by mistake
20) Perspective
21) Restructuring lie
22) Historical lie
23) Treachery
24) Partial truth – Half truths
25) Cheating – taking undue credit
26) Stealing – assumption of ownership
27) Plausible deniability
28) Equivocation
29) Ambiguity
30) Semantical (prototype theory)
31) By excuse -- Excuse upon failure to produce
Excuse root lie -- Explanation acct of facts
32) Flattery
33) Scapegoating
34) Forgetting, Forgetfulness, selective memory
35) Bluff
36) Group Think, Consensus
37) Evasion – Dancing around the truth
38) Sarcasm
39) Gaslighting
40) Bedside Manor (prosocial Lie)
41) Taken out of Context (parsed statements)
42) Gossip
I’ve tried to eliminate conceptual duplication. I believe most of these will stand as unique but there may be some overlap. Some might be a sub-category of another. I would love to have any feedback on this as it is one of my perpetual ponderings. Contact us at conservativecitizensalliance@gmail.com