For what I know about how our culture. It has a set of what's true and what's not along with a set of what's good and what's not. We apply this concept in our everyday life. It forges our thoughts and opinions. It's our base of judgement. It's the moral.
For some reasons, these sets are rarely questionned. I can't tell you why, I truly don't know.
I'll use, a true story as an example . It's about a girl who met a guy online. She chatted with the good-looking man and agreed to meet him for a date. When she met him, she found out he was bald. A complete turn-off. She didn't knew before because he was wearing a baseball cap on each pictures she saw prior to the encounter. So she excuses herself to the washroom, called a friend to ask for her to call her back in a few minutes asking for immediate help so she could dodge the rest of the date. The official reason given to the man in question was she needs to leave because her friend really needs a babysitter and couldn't find anyone else.
What does this story tell us? First. She lied to the man about the babysitting thing. Second. She was true to herself, she don't like bald man. But these are only what's on the surface. Beneth it, the real reason for her to behave like this is the level of truth.
Let me explain. Imagine we live in a world of absolute truthness. She would have met him, see that he's bald. Tell him she don't like it and leave. The man wouldn't be hurt in any way because he would say. It's true that I'm bald and it's true that she don't like it so no sweat.
Unfortunatly, we're not living in this world. In our world, in our culture, she needs to lie. She's forced to. We are all forced to. Why? Tadam! Yeah you figured where I was going. The anwser is the level of truth.
Alright. What's the level of truth? It's the degree of truthness we agreed to share in our culture. In the example, she lied because the man would be hurt if he'd know the truth. So it's better, not only for her, but also for him that she lied.
See, lying isn't that bad after all. But in our culture, to lie is considered bad. It is part of the set of bad things we never questionned.
But that's not all. The level of truth is more than that. It's about seeing these cultural sets of true/false good/bad things in a different way. Pushing your own level of truth to higher levels helps.
If you understood the moral of the story above. When you'll find out someone has been lying to you. You'll be able take it without feeling bad, which is great. Because your own level of truth is extended beyond the accepted one. You understand that lying isn't always a bad thing. It is sometimes very handy and clever to use it in our world of lies.
