Investment Opportunity!

The truth is, I am a liar.  I have been all my (long, long) life.  Here’s a harder pill to swallow; so are you.

Think about what you are seeing in the news presently.  In the last three days, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has changed his story about his awareness of the facts in the Ray Rice story (Baltimore Ravens running back accused of battering his wife) every time a fresh news tidbit is released by TMZ.

It seems each week we are regaled with yet another tale of lost e-mail archives belonging to IRS operatives close to Lois Lerner.  But we are assured that the system crashes and hard drive destruction do not implicate any of the players.  The events, it seems, were all in line with standard data protection procedures.

Three CIA contract security officers (all ex-spec ops veterans) are making the media rounds promoting a book they co-wrote in which their central point is they were prevented by order from responding to the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi during the September 11, 2012 attack during which four Americans were killed, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.  In form of a denial, officials of the State Department and CIA parsed words over the meaning of “stand down”.

Just yesterday, President Obama delivered a prime-time televised address in which he presented his plan to arm the Syrian Rebels as part of the effort to “degrade” ISIS.  In an August 8 interview, the rebels were described by the President as not capable of using and protecting such assets effectively.

This is not intended to be a political rant.  I just use these recent events to illustrate the propensity of humans to use falsehoods.  Everybody lies.  The question is why.  Where do we learn this shameful social behavior?

I posit that we do not learn to lie, but rather we must be taught to tell the truth.  Self-preservation is the strongest driver of the human psyche.  Lying is innate.  The instinct to avoid conflict runs deep.  And one way to avoid conflict is to rearrange facts to mirror the information people want hear:  “If I can just get them to believe me, I can get out of here with a minimum amount of damage.”  We don’t even work to make the lies believable.  As long as it delays punitive action (yes, we are an instant gratification culture) we are satisfied.

“But Dale,” you ask, “How can you say this is instinctive rather than learned?”  Because as soon as we can talk, we start telling lies: Ask any toddler with cookie crumbs on that innocent little face, “Did you get a cookie out of the cookie jar?”  Their instant answer, bolstered by the dramatic, thoughtful head shake is, “No.”

So there you have it, immutable proof that we are born liars.  And how, you wonder, is this going to make you rich?  I am offering you an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing.  An invention so right for our times that it will become an instant best seller, Halon Pants.  These pants would be lined with thin pockets filled with halon 1301.  The material of which the pockets are made would melt well below the ignition temperature of the fabric of the trousers.  The release of the halon gas prevents fire by chemically mixing with all three of the elements necessary for ignition, oxygen, heat and fuel. Voila!  Fire proof pantaloons.

Our engineers were interviewing women about the unique challenges related to the design of fire-safe skirts and dresses when they assured us such work was unnecessary as women never lie.