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Originally Posted by abaya
I agree with you... and I think your examples are very salient. However, how does one "rank" these lies? Do we use moral reasons, health reasons, or just plain selfishness reasons? I think all of the above are breaches of integrity, personally, and would feel pretty shitty lying about any of them. Others may not feel the same way. What should be our standard? Should there be a universal expectation, or is it all relative?
Actually, how do you all define "integrity?" That's kind of what this thread is about, I think. I tend to think of integrity as having the backbone to be responsible and own up (or not lie in the first place), no matter how much your interior, crafty self is screaming at you to STAY HIDDEN. To overcome selfish and potentially harmful desires for the sake of your own good and/or others'. But that's my take. Others?
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I don't think that there is a standard by which we can define integrity, nor is there a standard by which we can rank one lie as worse than another. That said, I don't think lying about Santa Claus is as bad as bilking some social security recipient out of his/her monthly check.
Generally, I think that it is more interesting to try to understand the motives behind lying than to rank one lie as worse than another. I think that the motives for different types of lies differ. So, to understand why we lie, we need to examine categories of lies separately. For example, I think that men and women, children and adults, may lie about different things. Because the contents of their lies may reliably differ, their motives (why they lie) may differ as well.
I guess I'm thinking of lying less in terms of how do we stop lying personally and more in terms of where does lying originate.