Charlie Marlow, the narrator of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, says “You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie…There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies.” I’m a big fan of Charlie Marlow.
We don’t take lying very seriously here at Sandy Spring Friends School. We say we do. We’re not alone; pretty much any and every educational institution says they take lying seriously. I’ve always thought it odd that so many places – schools – will give a person any number of chances to reform when that person gets caught in a lie, and then another one, and then another one, but will expel immediately and without question a student caught with drugs on campus. Drugs can ruin a person’s life, there’s no question about that; but a lie can ruin the life of the community. In fact, lies make the continued existence of any community untenable.
A lie undermines the very foundation on which any relationship is based. It undermines language itself. See Jonathan Swift and the Houyhnhnms here – logical creatures that they are, they don’t even have a word for lie and can’t understand the concept. Why would anyone do that which contradicts the basic purpose of communication, Gulliver’s Master Houyhnhnm asks?
We know, and Swift implies too: because people are selfish. Which is another reason I am always so amazed at our apparent tolerance of lying here. We claim to be, certainly most at SSFS claim to be, selfless people. Most are probably aware enough of our own shortcomings that we don’t claim to be nothing but selfless, “other directed” people. But that’s the language in which we so often speak, the goal we so often set for what we do. So why do we so often tolerate such selfishness, so much “me first” behavior when doing so runs counter to what we profess AND brings into doubt the continuation of community?
I suspect one of the reasons we are so tolerant of lying is that lies are all around us these days. “We are greeting you with this recorded message to improve service” we are told whenever we call a company or organization. “We are making the container smaller (though we hope you don’t notice) in order to provide what customers told us they want,” says the orange juice/yogurt/ice cream/you name it company. One of the things I find so despicable about Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck is that I don’t believe they really believe all they are saying. And when someone says “Take up your arms!” was intended to mean take up your arms to vote, that person lies too.
I swore to myself, when I began this blog, that I would never get into politics. So back to Conrad… Is it really that big a deal, I know many students would ask, to say about the homework assignment “it’s in my locker; I’ll get it to you after lunch,” when the plan is to do the assignment at lunch? Is it that awful a thing to say “the paper was on my computer and somehow got lost in the power outage last night. Can I turn it in Monday?”? And I’m not even going to get into the lie of omission, parents; perhaps you don’t think you are lying when you call up to “excuse” your kid from class for the day when what she’s doing is finishing the research paper that’s due, or writing those college essays. But you are. Check your ethics textbook.
Perhaps I am being idealistic (that’s me – Mister Starry Eyes; that’s what they call me at home) but I think it would be a much cooler thing, would send a much greater message to the world if instead of signs that said “smoke free campus,” or “drug free campus,” Sandy Spring Friends School had the reputation for being a Lie Free Campus. If lying is like dying, as Marlow says (and it is), then the truth is like living. And that, if you know your George Fox quotes and your Quaker history, is the Truth.
