In a situation in which you were required to take an oath/affirmation to tell the truth, can you imagine a situation in which you would lie?
I would like to think that I would try pretty hard not to, and would try instead to not answer. But I can’t say that it is beyond my imagination to imagine a situation in which, if I thought the repercussions of telling the truth were excessive, and the risks associated with lying were minimal, yeah, I might lie. If it was my word against someone else’s, I didn’t think what I did was really bad, but if I admitted it I would experience outsized repercussions, and if I successfully lied, it would just go away. Like I said, if at all possible, I hope I would, instead, just remain silent, and hope the other evidence was insufficient.
IMO saying, “I don’t recall” is a lie if, in fact, you do recall. I am not talking about “lies of omission” - not volunteering something you know the other person wants to know.
My personal opinion is that people lie a lot more often than they would admit - mostly what they consider “white lies,” but I’m also confident that a large percentage of people will blatantly lie when it is to their advantage. You always hear about the risk of being penalized for perjury, and papers may describe a penalty for providing false information, but my understanding is that such penalties are rarely levied. Whatever someone’s personal level of truthfulness, absent real penalties for lying, I’m not sure how much difference an oath/affirmation would make for most people.
I don’t lie. I decided years ago that lying had gotten me into trouble a few too many times, so I decided to not lie again. There are times I refuse to answer a question. An acquaintance asks if the outfit she’s wearing looks good on her? If the answer is hell no, I won’t say yes, but I might say, “why are you putting me in such an uncomfortable position?”
Of course I’m not under oath, but if you are going to decide to not lie I think you have to consider any questions as being asked under oath. I’ve testified a couple of times under oath and I never lied. I’ve considered a question for a longish time, but my eventual answer was the truth.
I’m like you. I consider myself a pretty honest person. In fact, I tend to get in trouble by thinking if someone asks me a question, they want my honest response.
I know some people who prefer to make up white lies for things like not accepting an invitation. Whereas I’m fine with just saying, “Thanks for the invite, but I won’t be there.” Or I’ll say things like, “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
But I guess for whatever reason I was thinking about the meaning and impact of an oath/affirmation. Why does saying, “I swear/affirm” make one more honest that they are otherwise?
(Full disclosure, in my job, I’m confident that people lie to me under oath quite frequently. So maybe I have a skewed perception.)
Absolutely if it prevents injustice. If, say, I am dragged to court and ask “Did you drop your friend Jane Doe off at an abortion clinic on October 19th” at my friend Jane Doe’s trial for having an abortion. I would absolutely 100% say “I do not recall”, and consider it a moral imperative to do so (in fact the only moral
qualm I’d have is whether I should actually come up with a more involved alibi for Jane Doe, rather than just saying “I don’t recall”)
Of course. The very definition of “under oath” means the State or some other actor is using a threat to compel me to do something. That is an adversarial process. I will judge the pros and cons and utilize my personal morality. I will protect myself and the people I love. I wouldn’t lie to gain or to hurt somebody, but I never sold my soul to the State.
When I started working as a public defender (many moons ago) I was surprised how often police officers told the truth when they absolutely could have lied, and no one could prove otherwise. (some exceptions apply, of course) There were many instances when they said something helpful to the defense simply because it was true. I gathered from talking to them over the years their attitude was basically 1) the defendant will likely be convicted anyway, and 2) if I tell the truth and the jury doesn’t convict, that’s the way it works, nothing personal. They probably learned what many of us have over time, telling the truth is much easier and safer in the long run.
We will torture you if you are not Not a problem, want me to trample a cross, defecate on a bible [both done historically by the population of what is now Palestine/Jordan/Lebanon during the Crusades] hand me the item and lead me to a bathroom [or turn your back while I drop trou]
You will marry this Boko Haram fighter. OK, no problem. [a couple months later, better not let me cook because you will die nastily, I know a lot of interesting chemical combinations I can make. Better not get comfortable sleeping around me, I know how to kill someone, and I have no problem being executed for killing my “husband”.
Invade my country and expect me to smile and nod? Better hope you don’t decide to steal my booze because I will let myself die for lack of my medication so I can dope my bottles of booze on my home bar with benzos, opioids, colchicine, cardiac medications … and colchicine causes cascading organ failure and is highly painful. Promise to behave? BWAHAHAHAHAHA no. Only long enough to make you feel complacent that I am behaving.
Clarification, please. When you say you were “surprised how often,” does that mean they USUALLY told the truth in such situations, or that you expected them to lie ALL THE TIME, and were surprised that they were honest in some % of instances? Or something else.
I didn’t expect them to lie all the time, but I did figure they would lie more when it was easy and impossible to disprove. Instead, they’d say things like “He had good balance during the sobriety testing” or “I didn’t see [whatever] that the other cop saw.” This was all before bodycams and video phones.
I can imagine a small number of hypothetical situations where I would consider the consequences of telling the truth to be much worse for me, or others, than telling a lie, yes.
If I’m required to go under oath and then required to testify, I’m not going to feel any more constrained by the special promise to tell the truth than I would otherwise feel about not lying to people. In general, it’s beneath my dignity to lie to people; I don’t like to do it and feel like I shouldn’t have to.
I also think, however, that I’m intrinsically entitled at any time to say “go fuck yourself” or whatever equivalent I deem situationally appropriate. I’ll keep any damn secrets I choose to keep.
If you haul me up involuntarily, under a cloud of threat and intimidation, administer an oath, and then start asking questions — and saying “take your question and shove it up your ass” would get me into deep trouble — then I won’t predict what I’ll do, but lying isn’t off the table as a possibility.
