Today in the locker room we discussed the quote from Immanuel Kant:
“By a lie a man throws away and as it were annihilates his dignity as a man”
After some thoughts on the continued relevance of the statement, there were several thoughts submitted for consideration:
- Lying is bad and should be avoided. But there are exceptions to this, for example responses to a wife’s query about whether you like her new hair cut or not. This ended in a conversation on drawing lines.
- Lying is ok, as long as you’re not caught. The Spartan Argument, this suggests the narrative must be within reason, and this line of reasoning opened up a whole side conversation on the nature of propaganda, advertising and political spin
- Does it really matter? On the one hand, with technology, a lie can be widely distributed so the potential impact can be quite serious, but on the other hand most people are so bombarded by information each day, this would just form part of the background noice. The other observation was that in a world of “likes” there will alway be a constituency that likes anything you say, so that offers positive re-enforcement (as long as one ignores the dislikes … which is likely consistent with the attitude)
That’s where it was left.
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