"People are stupid. They can be made to believe any lie because either they want to believe it's true or because they are afraid it's true."- Terry Goodkind in 'Wizard's First Rule' (1994) It's the first rule and it's the first rule because it's the most important. Goodkind's epic-fantasy Sword of Truth series, formulated upon the bedrock of a set of 12 Wizard Rules act as a mere, contextual smokescreen for various philosophical principles the author is wishing to broadcast about the reader's day-to-day life. Whilst the philosophical approach of later books in his series is more questionable, the first book with the first rule stands truest of them all, now 20 years since it was written. People are ill-equipped to see the heart of a lie, simply because we perceive a lie spoken with the same tools we use to perceive a truth- that is to say, our senses and our logic. It why our minds race into panic when we come home from work and our 11-year old son hasn't reported back from school as he usually does; chances are, he's at the park with a friend. Tell your racing heart and quivering lip that. In this scenario, the older brother, wanting to prank his mum, decides to tell her that he hasn't heard from the younger brother since yesterday. This is a lie. The younger brother rang him 30-minutes ago. The mum doesn't once stop to think the older brother is lying because she's too afraid he's telling the truth. The same could be said of the opposite: if the brother had said he had rang when he hadn't. The mum would believe him out of relief. This is, thus, the first component of creating a perfect lie; instigating emotional value within the target. This one is the one most often found in your films and television shows: the villain believes the lying detective because he wants to believe him so badly- the incentive of power or money so great- that he placebos himself. No emotional value in a lie leaves the target far more likely to appraise it with scrutiny; far more likely to find their own flaws.
Betting on being a brilliant brother to Bodhi since 2008 (-1 Asian Handicap). Find me @LiamJJohnson on Twitter where you might find some wonderful pearls of wisdom in a stout cocktail of profanity, football discussion and general musings. Or you might not. Depends how red my eyes are.
