The Pathological Liar

A lie is a means of deception and a defense mechanism. There is a moral consequence to telling lies and some social repercussions. Because of the implications of lies one is pushed to do it to save face while the other is prevented from committing one, also to save face. A lie is supposed to be not of the truth, not necessarily the opposite of truth.

To keep something from being known is not telling a lie, but merely keeping something in secret. One can't force someone to tell something openly when there are concerns in divulging such information or knowledge. Telling of falsity or fabricating information are direct lies. While we have the liberty to express our ideas, we also extend the same liberty to telling lies.

Deliberate lies can become habitual lies. For a liar whose habit is speaking of falsehood, lies become their realities where they find comfort and convenience than facing the truth and speaking of truth. People of pretense are liars. Hypocrites are liars to their social nature. Liars are treacherous people and they have little regard for others than their selves whom they are never able to understand anymore.

Lying is a learned behavior that is observed in social interactions. To have sense of security and belongingness, some people resort to please others with lies. Like schmoozers who will try to please someone else in stature and with high influence to others, they can lick your ass to tell you what you want to hear and agree on everything you say. They will weave stories to tell you but never live those stories for you to really see.

Lying results from anxieties, and it goes with an immediate feeling of false certainty that it might work out. Those who suffered from alienation and exclusion tend to develop the habit of lying to appease and please others. Those who had experienced strong social rejections create a world of lies to make others believe some obscured realities. They are afraid to lose face, to be left out, to be casted out, to accept their situation and to let others accept their truths.

Lying works out on several tries, but when the other party begins to sense the inconsistencies in the weaved stories, a gap in the relationship will soon break. The farther the gap becomes, the clearer the lie is seen. Lying is also purposive, it is intentional, but it works one-way, like a win-lose situation. The liar tries to win others but in the end when the lie is brought to light, the liar loses.

Extreme lying has association to neuroticism and to some fixations. One who may be so obsessed of beauty, lies in vanity and bodifications. One who has been so obsessed of material things feels deprivation in the meager things he has, so he lies through acquisition of others'things by borrowing or stealing. One who can not acknowledge his own weakness cheats. The many social deviances or behavioral aggressions have links to lying.

There are non-verbal cues to lying, but it takes an expert in kinesics and semiotics to understand the relationship between the words and the actions' meanings. They also vary culturally. Consistency is a prime suspect to determine lies, but one should be very careful to see the erratic pattern in the stories told in various episodes of the social interaction. It probably takes the mastery of understanding social interactions and their implications to the content and context of communication to immediately detect lying.

What is immediate to common sense is that a liar is in a pathetic situation. A pathological liar who lives a world of lies is sick, socially and psychologically. Is there an over the counter drug to cure the said illness? I guess, if lies are not of the thruth, and truth is light, bringing the lie into the truth puts the liar in the light. Light heals and it does not burden. Everything that is in the light rejoices in the truth. The truth may hurt, but it never kills unlike that of the lie.