Hypocrisy and Honesty

Human beings are complex animals, with a hypocritical and cunning side; few people are entirely truthful. Many years ago I read a book titled Lying: What You Don't Know About It, by an American expert on lies named Charles Ford. I have forgotten most of its details, but its central argument I still remember. The author set out to prove that no one in this world does not lie, no one is without hypocrisy, and people lie to varying degrees for all sorts of purposes. Around the same time I read Rousseau's Confessions, which laid bare the shameful side of his inner world. These two thinkers faced the question of human hypocrisy with candor. Their works left a deep impression on me.

In Lying: What You Don't Know About It, Charles argued in detail the ways and motives of various people's lies. For a while I pored over this book until it fell to pieces. The reason I was so interested in it then was that I was extremely distressed at being an insufficiently honest person. When I came upon the book by chance in a bookstore, I bought it, hoping to gain a deeper understanding of human hypocrisy.

According to psychologists, hypocrisy is a necessary means by which the self protects itself, an instinctive human need. On the other hand, honesty is another instinctive human need. Lincoln once said that no person lies at all times and before all people. The person who lives too falsely is, first and foremost, the one who cannot bear it himself, because he must carry a heavy psychological burden.

I have felt this keenly myself. During my adolescence I was practically a compulsive liar, spinning lie upon lie; to cover one lie I had to prop it up with another and another. The result was that I could not live at ease among the people I had once lived with. For a time I wished I could vanish from the face of the earth and go live in a completely unfamiliar place, or become a monk. I did not do so only because I feared it would break my mother's heart.

Later my older male cousin and my own elder brother helped me. They saw that I was lying constantly, and sensed there must be a reason behind it—a pressure I could not bear. To correct my habit of lying, my brother demanded that I overcompensate: before every sentence I spoke, I had to think carefully whether it was true or false, and if it was false, I could not say it.

At home, my father did not supervise me strictly; the one who truly kept a tight rein on me was my brother, three years my senior. An elder brother is like a father; my brother and I were very close. With his help and strict supervision, I thus bade farewell to lies step by step, until finally I could no longer dissemble at all and swung to the opposite extreme. To this day my father is always uneasy about me because of this; he feels my emotional maturity is that of a child under ten—that when I go out and deal with people I am too guileless and cannot protect myself.

Father is surely overanxious. I am doing very well now. Every time I run into difficulty, there are always many people around who help me at all costs. The reason is simple: in their lives they have not met many friends as sincere as I, who will not lightly tell a falsehood, and they cherish this friendship with me.

From my own life I have come to understand that hypocrisy and honesty, those seemingly contradictory rivals, are in fact twin brothers. When a person is tormented by hypocrisy, he is not far from honesty; when a person is tormented by being too honest, he may choose hypocrisy to relieve his pressure for a while.

But in the end, when a person reaches a certain age and has gathered rich life experience, he is still willing to choose to live honestly—because living honestly is the simplest and most effortless way of life.

I personally can forgive almost any lie, because I myself was once tormented by lies. I know that no one truly wants to lie. The reason some people lie is that they cannot overcome the weakness in their own hearts, or are trapped in a bad habit of lying trained up by life and cannot escape it.