Part A: The Truth.
I was going to
write an article on what the truth is, but then I remembered a certain Bible
story which goes something like this:
A couple of
millennia ago, God did something not many right-thinking dads would do. He
instructed his own son to depart the ritzy comforts of heaven, notwithstanding
the fact that the poor dude had done absolutely nothing wrong, and live on
earth for thirty-three years.
And that was not
all. As if the prospect living among human beings were not disturbing enough,
the unfortunate fellow was also directed to hold no permanent residence, provide
free medical services on demand, and occasionally feed thousands of hangers-on
while broke.
Oh. And he was
also expected to do all this while telling a race which has spent eternity
thinking they are God’s chosen ones that his dad really didn’t like them that
much; that basically, they were pretty much pissing him off big time.
Everybody of
course knows how the last part turned out. Three years into explaining to the
multitudes that they were pissing his dad off and that pissing his dad off
wasn’t a great idea, he found himself
nailed to a rickety pole with thorns in his hair and a twelve-inch
dagger plunged into his side.
The lessons that
can gathered from this story are million-fold, but one in particular stands out
for me: Very few people know or like being told what the truth is, and trying
to explain it to them can get you killed.
So mindful of
this and desirous to spend as many days on earth as the economy, Al Shabaab and
Kenya’s roads will let me, I decided I will not write about the truth.
Instead, I
decided I will tell people what a lie is.
Part B: The Lies
Plainly speaking,
a lie is the opposite of the truth. It is an inaccuracy maliciously expressed
with the express intention of derailing, disproving or otherwise
disenfranchising a previously accepted logical, sound and empirically proven
fact; for example by using so many unnecessary words in a definition that the
reader becomes blinded to the fact that you are not making any sense.
There are three
broad categories of lies, and these are:-
1. White
Lies
Imagine yourself
at five years old. You are perched precariously on a wobbly stool, your tiny
hand stretched in the general direction of the kitchen cabinet where your
mother keeps the sugar dish under permanent lock and key but somehow forgot to
do so today.
Just as your
grubby paw coils around this equivalent of the Arthurian legend Holy Grail, the
kitchen door swings open and your mother walks in, looking like someone who has
just spent the last hour eating unripe lemons. “What are you doing?” She roars,
and it is not a rhetorical question.
The next
approximately five words to come out of your mouth= White Lie.
2. Blatant
lies
You have just
arrived from the United States of America, where you and your brother Leo have
lived for the past decade or so, and are met at the airport by the customary
throng of relatives. However, something seems odd…all the relatives have got
tears in their eyes. Tears of sadness.
“What happened to
Leo?” One relative asks.
“He was a famous
man over there.” You answer. “He was a long-term member of a very prominent
American government institution, and he even briefly held its chair. His death
came as a great shock.”
This gives
comfort to your kin, who turn away ignorant of the fact that indeed, Leo had
been famous: A famous criminal. They are unaware that the prominent American
institution he boasted membership of was actually a federal prison, and that his
death did literally come as a shock-on the electric chair.
3. Statistics.
According to
recent data released by the Statistics Association of Kenya, exactly 100% of
statistics cited by people writing articles about lies are actually made up on
the spot. Evidence of this phenomenon is usually clearer when such articles
quote authorities on statistics that don’t even exist.
