Quote:
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Originally Posted by El Kaz
"Your mother is dying. She has a terminal illness, and has only a week or two left. During one of your last visit, she asks you how is your little family doing, how is it with the wife, and the kids, etc. She always has seen you as a model family, and took great pride in her son's accomplishment of forming such a nice family. Now the truth is, you and your wife are thinking about divorce. Do you tell her, or lie and pretend everything is well?"
Now in this case, telling the truth accomplishes nothing, except maybe standing up to your values in any situations, and causes unnecessary pain.
So yeah, I tend to agree that, in this case, lying would probably be the right thing to do.
The problem is, what prevents this to apply in less extreme situations as well? Where is the limit where it becomes unacceptable? Is it only the possibility that the truth might be found eventually that makes "kind lies" bad? Does an hypotethical "kind lie" which has 0% chance of ever being disproved become good, and morale?
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For me, communication is more important than telling the truth. Because in the course of communication, a brutal truth has the opportunity to reveal itself gently, and a warming truth can be poetic. And in the depth and breadth of just sitting down to talk to someone for a while, you'll often get a more rewarding experience than you would if you were dead-set on honesty. People lie small and large to protect themselves as well as to hurt other people, and you shouldn't deny yourself some space things for you'd rather not talk about with a given person at a given time. Confessional talk can lift weight off your shoulders, but to enforce it as a policy can be just as draining as keeping a guilty secret or two.