Landli(n)es

One of the signs of being “of a certain age” is still having a landline telephone. I have kept mine mostly by inertia.  I just don’t think about it enough to take the trouble to cancel service even though 80% of my significant voice calls (and all of my texts) are on my cell. 80% of the calls that come into my landline on the other hand are from scammers. They call every day. Not all of them are scammers in the legal sense. Many of the callers urging me to extend the warranty on my car or to change my energy supplier or whatever, are acting within the law, however unwelcome (and often deceptive) the offers might be. Few of these callers successfully deliver a first word anymore. I hang up immediately upon hearing the telltale pause-and-click that so often precedes the pitch. Some callers, however, are in fact attempting scams by legal definitions as well as by subjective ones. My favorite was a fellow pretending to be from the Sheriff’s office who claimed that I missed jury duty but that he was willing to accept payment of the fine over the phone. When the day comes (as it will soon) that I at long last disconnect my landline it will be in order to eliminate these calls. Meantime, they provide fodder for thoughts about deception in general.
 

Not all criminals are liars – more than average that is. (According to a study published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology in the early 2000s, 60 percent of people lie at least once within the first ten minutes of a casual conversation, typically a small fib told for reasons of tact or minor social posturing; "2.92 inaccurate things" in that time frame was the average.) The greatest crimes against humanity have been committed by honest true believers in some –ism or other; these folks often are quite open about their willingness to sacrifice you for their notion of the long-term greater good. For instance, Pol Pot and his followers, at whose hands some 2,000,000 Cambodians died, were honest about their ends and means. Nor is all deception harmful. Some is just foolish but harmless braggadocio. Much of it is well-meaning social tact. Blurting out whatever is honestly on one’s mind can be needlessly cruel – and, on the job, a quick route to HR. Anyone who denies this is engaging in (self-)deception on a grand scale. Some deceivers are even socially honored for what they do; the job of diplomats is commonly described as “lying for one’s country.”
 
The type of deception that concerns us is fraud. Fraud is a particular kind of lie: tricking someone into surrendering money or other valuables under false pretenses. In essence it is a fake contract. The distinction between fraud and other lies is not a difficult one to make – it requires a victim most obviously. Like many clear lines, nonetheless, it can be crossed in a single step. There is a not altogether small minority of folks who enjoy nothing more than crossing it.
 
Con and flim-flam artists are often presented in popular entertainment as charming rogues, as in The Lady Eve or Catch Me If You Can. (Years ago, I also wrote a short story with such a character: The Great Gaffe.) Anyone who has had the misfortune of dealing with the real thing has a different opinion.
 
Even animals lie. Blue jays may mimic the cries of hawks to literally clear the field. Chimps have been known to voice false alarms in order to get food the fleeing chimps leave behind. But full awareness makes human deceit special. Much of it is socially adaptive. By age 5 nearly all children have worked out that their parents are lying when they say “Don’t lie.” They really mean don’t lie about certain things in certain ways. Michael Lewis writes in “The Origins of Lying and Deception in Everyday Life” in American Scientist that by age 3 most children already have learned to lie “to protect the feelings of others,” as when thanking grandma for a sweater when really hoping for a toy. Children also grasp very early that lying can be a way to avoid punishment though they are often bad at it – e.g. “I didn’t eat the cookie.” Disturbingly – but, truth be told, unsurprisingly – he reports that kids between 5 and 10 who are good liars generally score higher on tests “that assessed moral judgment, theory of mind, and executive functioning, which included the challenge of inhibiting certain responses. In all these assessments, children who had lied scored better than those who had told the truth—a result that strongly suggests the ability to lie is positively related to cognitive competencies!”
 
Once again, there are different kinds of lies. The big four are lying to protect others, lying to protect (or aggrandize) oneself, self-deception, and lying to hurt others. The first three can be helpful, harmful, or harmless depending on the circumstances. The fourth is always a problem – at least for the targets of the deception. The fourth can be for fun or profit (or both), and this type of deception is usually the intent of those who cold-call my number and yours.
 
Lies that are discovered undermine trust whether on a personal or social level. It is advisable to be forgiving of minor or harmless lies however. Being human, you just might tell one yourself someday. It is also advisable, though, to be on guard for actual fraud. All too many people out there mean us no good.
 

The Cramps – People Ain't No Good