Aww yeah i forgot you kinda don't have that lol.
Does it ever get really cold there nae?

Hey SIL! Yes i know i said i'll go to bed but i can't help myself sometimes xDD

Definitely not winter cold, but yes, it does get cold from time to time. Especially up high in the mountainous regions. :3 <3<3

Ry: lol, I don't know if it did. I could always sleep even worse. xD

Roach: Not that I mind. xD

I shall be inclined to think that it did then, since that would make me feel better. >3>;;
Haha, joke! xDD;; <3<3

Nah, feel free to do so. xD I like my friends being happy. :)

But friends lying to themselves will only be hurtful in the end now, right? xDDD;;

Not if it's a white lie. :)

But a white lie can build up to deeper lies? =O

So can the truth if it's hurtful.

But even if the truth may hurt, lies are still nothing but methods to prevent one from getting to the truth.
So lies will eventually lead to the truth anyway, and lies can indeed make the truth more hurtful than the truth itself. >;]

Yes, but if the truth is hurtful, it may also bring someone, whether the one telling or the one receiving the truth, to build lies around it, not necessarily to others, but to themselves, lies which can be much deeper than the lies coming forth from white lies.

But whether these deeper and more hurtful lies come from white lies or from someone else's urge to protect another from an uglier truth, they are all still lies in the end. It won't matter where they came from and how deep these lies go, because once the truth comes out anyway it won't make much of a difference on what kind of lies they were.

...

This is a very interesting conversation, and admittedly not the way I thought I would spend my Friday night. xDD;; <3<3
*clings to Sil*
<3

Not necessarily. If you can understand where a lie came from and with what reason it was told, it is often less hurtful. That is why both lies coming from white lies and lies told to protect are less hurtful than lies told to manipulate or scare someone, to hurt someone or to blackmail them. Even if a lie coming from a white lie or an urge to protect is deeper than a lie with only nefarious purposes, the latter often hurts more.

You have a point. There are indeed "degrees" (for lack of a better term) of lies. But resorting to lies in the first place to either hide the truth and prevent it from coming into light or to push back the truth for some other time is a questionable action. Lies can only prolong the truth for so long, and it can lead to deeper consequences.

True, but some lies are in fact better than telling the truth. If someone you know is upset, worried and distraught, and after a while she asks if you feel well, while you don't but know that if you say so, she will be feeling even worse, telling you're fine is probably a better choice than saying, in honesty, that you feel like shit.

Your example proves that lying only prolongs the inevitable though. If you indeed are feeling like shit, it won't be long till that someone who is upset will find out. He or she may or may not be feeling better by the time they find out about your feeling like shit, but nonetheless it's going to affect them, and most probably in a negative manner. You can't hide your feeling like shit for long anyway; lying can only go for so long before the person lying starts to crack.

Not necessarily. If you are a good actor, no one will ever need to find out. I know. I have claimed for seven long years that I was fine while I wasn't, and while there were people that I did tell, my facade never cracked to the others, until I myself decided to drop the mask.

The lie needs to be believable and close to the truth, but not too believable and too close to the truth, or you may start to believe it yourself.

Your facade may never have cracked to others, but you can't be wholly sure that those others never suspected a thing. From personal experience, it's not wise to underestimate people's gut feelings. They may never have expressed it to you directly to your face, but that doesn't mean they didn't sense anything. Just because it was never confronted, it doesn't mean they didn't dwell on it, possibly think about it, and possibly got affected by it. Maybe you didn't realize it (all wrapped up in the belief that they knew and suspected nothing), but what if their actions dictated some thought-out carefulness (for lack of a better term) because they felt something off about the so-called truth, which actually was a lie?

This is all hypothetical, of course.
But if you ask me, a possible part of lying to yourself is you telling yourself that no one suspects anything. And when you start to believe the lie you're telling, you're also gonna tell yourself that no one knows.
When indeed, you can never know if they actually really know. It would be presumptuous to think otherwise.

Then again, that's cause I believe that humans, while not the smartest out there, aren't total dumbasses. xDD;;
All from personal experience, btw. =)

What I base my assumptions that no one suspected a thing on is the general shock I received when I dropped my mask. yes, there may have been one or two individuals that knew, but out of a few hundred, that is not exactly much, is it?

You have a good point, although you still have to wonder what they think deep down, or what they don't tell you to your face. :x
Again, from personal experience. >3>;;

And with thirteen years of people talking about me and my friends behind my back, twelve years of being bullied and taunted, I have learned to read more of a person than just the words they speak and the emotions they so obviously display on their face. I have long ago learned how to know what rumors are going on about me behind my back, simply because so long I have needed to constantly be aware of where certain people were, what they were planning and if I was at any risk.

You may be able to do it, but in the general scope of things (which was what our original topic was about), your case of lying benefitting you does not mean that lying for the sake of "good" (I use the term rather loosely) is overall acceptable.

I can't say much about your situation because I know little to nothing, and I won't presume to know or pressure you to tell me. But I still stand by my belief that lying only inevitably prolongs a painful truth, and it will only add to the pain of the truth. The person who told the lie may not be affected, and maybe even the person the truth was being hidden from won't be affected. But when you're covering up lie after lie to hide something that will inevitably come to light, I doubt it will only be these two people who will be affected when it all comes together.

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Whoops, internet lagging. Sorry for the double post. =__=;;

And that is where the line lies, the decision that is made. With what intentions do you lie, who does it involve, who would it involve if it comes out, will anyone else than you yourself be hurt when it comes out? In other words, even if the reason for doing so is not nefarious, if the lie does not work the way it should, what will be the collateral damage? Why are you lying? It's easy to claim it is for the greater good, but is it, or are you just too afraid to face the truth?

In many occasions, the lie should not go through, but there are those rare situations when a lie is preferable above the truth... situations where it is done with a good purpose and where the collateral damage and the amount of people hurt should it come out, or come out too early, is lower than the damage if you tell the truth at that certain moment.

Those situations, however, are rare.

You are right, those situations are indeed rare. Although, those lies are admittedly hard to justify. Maybe it's because lying to someone denies them their right to know the truth. And sometimes, even if it's a beneficial lie, it's not in the liar's place or power to lie. Who gives him/her the right to lie in the first place?

And also, in one aspect, what you just said supports my idea that lying does prolong the inevitable truth. ^^;;

But anyhow, I guess we're coming down to the conclusion that lies can go both ways? =O
While that's a "bad" way of ending a debate, with us needing to go case-by-case to prove our points just proves that the question whether lies are good or bad does not have a definitive answer.

The human mind is not capable of judging neutrally that which hits close to home. Therefore, everything that happens to them or to people they know is almost immediately classified as good or bad, and while they may, logically, realize both sides of the coin, they often only 'feel' one of them. Only those decisions, judgments and actions that are both good and bad for them are felt from both sides, and even then a human shall often qualify it as one of the two first and the other only second. Emotions often take over from the mind, for that is the way we are. Therefore, one is likely to classify something as good if neither they nor those they care about it hurt by it, and are often unable to see how it hurts or may hurt others, especially if they barely know them. The human mind is not split from their emotions, but they tend to switch having the upper hand despite of that, and both influence each other. A human is likely to make their own judgment and laws and rules, for everyone justifies their deeds. Even rules and laws approved of my most of the people are broken, and those that break them often believe they were in the right. Even a killer may believe they did the right thing. A rapist may believe their needs go above the feelings of others and thieves may think they have more rights to having something than their previous owner.
Nothing is solely good or bad, for it is only our own judgment that classifies them as such.

For example, a human would consider it a bad thing if we as a race became extinct, but that does not mean that it is not true that it is likely better for the earth in the long run.

No matter how much we try to think with but our minds, eventually our opinions and emotions cloud our judgment, for we are part of it and not above it. We are not omniscient nor are we omnipotent. We can only see from our vision, with our knowledge, and as such a human is unable to "know" something to be good or bad. Even rules and laws are made up of majority - the majority that thinks something should or should not be, and laws and rules made by a minority are in the end going to be ignored.