Truth World
Imagine a world where "lying" is inconceivable...
“You want me to do what?”
Scene: 1 year ago. I was working as a research assistant in Tennessee, and my job was to screen potential study participants over the phone.
Our client wanted candidates who fit a certain profile: No students, no felons, and no recent history of participating in legal studies.
“But,” my boss told me during training, “there are ways around this for the sake of filling our quotas. If someone says they’re a student or felon or whatever, just tell them not to mention it during the study.”
I nodded obediently, and went to work.
Occasionally, somebody would disclose that they were in school, or that they’d been caught with drugs one time, so I’d tell them not to bring it up during the study, and they’d say, “Okay!”
Nobody had a problem with this…
…until one day, a woman reacted with such disgust, I could practically see her grimace on the other end of the phone.
“You want me to lie?!” she said. “Absolutely not!” And then she hung up.
I snickered to myself, feeling superior. Who would turn down the opportunity to make $400 in a few hours, over something so trivial? Ha! Her loss, I thought.
But now, I wish I could find that lady and thank her. She planted a seed in my mind that day.
Now I, too, am disgusted by this world’s love of lies.
Bait and Switch
I think of the time when, last summer, I drove 30 minutes to interview for a job paying $17/hour. It was a huge downgrade from the salary I’d enjoyed for 7 years (before the editorial sector was decimated by A.I.), but Asheville seemed to have little else to offer, and I felt like a first-time job-seeker all over again, so I went in with an open mind.
Turns out, employment practices had changed a lot in those 7 years.
While I was blissfully ignorant in my corporate comfort zone, others were out in the trenches of modern “job hunting,” which is riddled with deceptive job descriptions, dwindling (if not non-existent) benefits, and employers who ghost you after the interview. I didn’t know this nonsense had become normal.
So I was innocent as a lamb when I sat down with the store owner and he revealed that, actually, the role paid only $12 per hour, “but once you factor in the tips, it usually comes out to $17.” And he said it with a straight face!
I felt so disrespected that I’d blatantly been “lured” to this interview with a lie.
But instead of telling him off, I played along, completed the interview, was offered a job, accepted it…
…and then called the next day to say I’d changed my mind and would not be working for them.
At the time, I thought I was being civil. Polite. Professional, even.
But maybe my politeness was a type of lie, too.
Because the Truth would’ve looked more like dramatically standing up from my seat, telling him off in front of all his customers, then flipping a table or two on my way out.
Speaking of Truth-in-Work,
“professionalism” itself is a masquerade.
As I continue my job hunt, I look at all the “professional Professionals” on LinkedIn who’ve apparently devoted their lives to becoming The Most Hirable Person Ever, and boy are they committed to the bit. 😬
Even out side of the office, they are perpetually walking on eggshells.
For example, they can’t pop-off on social media, lest some hypothetical future employer find their unsanctioned opinion piece!
Nor can they post sexy photos of themselves, or have a personality, or basically be Authentic in any way that might “threaten” their job.
To be “professional,” you must dress a certain way, regardless of whether those fashion choices are a Truth-full reflection of Who You Are and How You Feel.
To be “professional,” you must translate all your True thoughts into a special work-appropriate language called “Office-Speak.”
Basically, to be “professional,” you must be lying-by-omission all the time, both on the clock and off.
And we all agreed to this for what?
Money???
That excuse might have been justifiable a few decades ago, when you could actually buy a house on minimum wage.
But now: what money?!
With inflation the way it is, what’s our new excuse?
If everyone stopped lying right now, The World as We Know It would fall apart.
Entire businesses would collapse under the weight of their own deceptive marketing. So would entire industries that sell lies, like make-up, “medicine” and “food.”
Money itself, which only holds illusory value, would vaporize into thin air.
Bye-bye, global economy. What then, would take its place?
All worldly political systems, led by actors who only masquerade as politicians, would poof!, vanish.
Who then, would rule us? Ourselves?
Are we ready for that?
The entire entertainment machine, in which lying convincingly (read: “acting”) is rewarded, would fall away, making space for utopian entertainment, like the kind my dream-lover and I have fantasized about:
Secret societies would cease to exist. So would many technologies — like A.I., which is often used to emulate humanity and counterfeit reality.
What would friendships look like, in a world with no lies?
What about romantic relationships? You’d never have to worry about being lied to or cheated on, that’s for sure!
We would probably speak telepathically:
What would agriculture look like? Arts? Culture? Religion?
Would we even sleep, if dreaming means being rendered unconscious by a colorful falsehood?
Maybe we’d be awake all the time instead,
like we were before,
when there were Two Suns…
Here Comes the Sun
I think of my friend Apolline, whose name means “devotee of Apollo,” the god of the Sun.
Recently, she confided in me.
“I remember the world I came from,” she reminisced, heartbroken. “I ate fruits, I didn’t have to kill to live. I slept on crystal, and it sang to me. My lover and I, we had sex without our genitals. The world was full of light. How did I get here, to this world of sadness and cruelty? I don’t understand this world’s ways. I want to go home, but where is it?”
“I remember, too,” I said. “I do. I remember having sex in utopia. I remember the fruits and the crystals and innocence.”
As C.S. Lewis so beautifully said in Mere Christianity,
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
I don’t know exactly what A World With No Lies looks like,
but I know that if I can imagine it, it must be real,
and it sounds like where God must live,
so it’s gotta be Heaven,
and why wait until after death, to experience Heaven, when Jesus said Heaven is here-and-now?
So I have been testing my ability to tell The Truth more richly, more deeply, and more spontaneously, in every opportunity I get.
Even when I’m scared.
Especially when I’m scared.
God bless the consequences.
Climbing the Stairway to Heaven-on-Earth Starts With a Single Step
Scene: Today. I’m back with that research company. They rehired me after they learned I was displaced by Hurricane Helene.
Since returning here to Tennessee, to the family home I tried to run away from, and even to the same job I was doing before moving to Asheville, I’ve been haunted by this eery feeling that I’m getting a second chance at “Tennessee” before I leave it again.
A second chance to get along with my formerly-estranged mother.
A second chance to make music, make friends, or just make meaning of this place.
And perhaps I’m getting a second chance to be more honest in my research job.
So back to the scene: Today, I was doing my usual recruitment thing, and got to the part of the screener where I asked if she’d done a legal study recently.
She said yes.
So I asked if she would be comfortable not-bringing-that-up.
Of the hundreds of research participants I’ve recruited over the years, she is only the 2nd one to resist, telling me, “I don’t want to have to lie…”
But instead of dismissing her like I did to the first woman, I say, “I completely understand.”
And it’s True.
I do.
I inform her that I won’t be able to take her for this study.
Then I clock out early,
go sit in my car,
think about what a job-that-never-lies would even look like,
and ask myself:
Where Do We Go From Here?
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Where do we go from here?
I’d be lying if I told you I knew… 😇