Lying is important in allistic conversation. But lying confuses me. People often lie to be polite. But it isn't polite to lie to me.
This isn't a moral or an ethical issue. I already have significant communication impediments, and lying adds another barrier to understanding. It destabilizes interactions by introducing unpredictability. I can't guess whether or not someone is likely to lie, and I can't begin an interaction if I don't know how it's going to proceed. If someone lies once, maybe they will always lie. Or maybe they never will again. Or maybe whether they might lie depends on a system of factors so complex that I can't hope to understand it. Lying to me, even to be polite, will always cause a misunderstanding. I cannot be led along a path of lies to the truth. I will always lose my way. That is: I will make the wrong inference. Knowing this, when confronted with implications I refuse to infer. And if my interlocutor cannot elaborate honestly, the conversation simply stops. So this isn't about lying being ethically right or wrong. This is about lying being an ineffective way to communicate with me.
For this reason I find myself withdrawing even more. Polite liars are by and large just as incapable of saying the plain truth as I am of seeing through their obfuscation. And, this is key, in most cases the truth doesn't matter. Often, the best outcome of correctly interpreting someone's convoluted intimations is the revelation of something mundane. So it's a lot of work for nothing, at least from my point of view. Why not then withdraw? I don't want to waste anymore anxious energy trying to solve riddles for meaningless rewards. I would rather be inside myself where it's safe. At least solitude is honest.
This isn't a moral or an ethical issue. I already have significant communication impediments, and lying adds another barrier to understanding. It destabilizes interactions by introducing unpredictability. I can't guess whether or not someone is likely to lie, and I can't begin an interaction if I don't know how it's going to proceed. If someone lies once, maybe they will always lie. Or maybe they never will again. Or maybe whether they might lie depends on a system of factors so complex that I can't hope to understand it. Lying to me, even to be polite, will always cause a misunderstanding. I cannot be led along a path of lies to the truth. I will always lose my way. That is: I will make the wrong inference. Knowing this, when confronted with implications I refuse to infer. And if my interlocutor cannot elaborate honestly, the conversation simply stops. So this isn't about lying being ethically right or wrong. This is about lying being an ineffective way to communicate with me.
For this reason I find myself withdrawing even more. Polite liars are by and large just as incapable of saying the plain truth as I am of seeing through their obfuscation. And, this is key, in most cases the truth doesn't matter. Often, the best outcome of correctly interpreting someone's convoluted intimations is the revelation of something mundane. So it's a lot of work for nothing, at least from my point of view. Why not then withdraw? I don't want to waste anymore anxious energy trying to solve riddles for meaningless rewards. I would rather be inside myself where it's safe. At least solitude is honest.
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