In order for the social order to continue as it is, tons of lies are needed. However, the transition from a liar society to an honest society will not be easy for institutions as well as for anyone who is fond of peace and order.
Ralph Keyes, in his book “Post-Truth Age: Lying and Deception in Today’s World”, worries about the fact that the honesty, which is assumed to be a social value adopted by the general in many societies, especially in the USA, does not remain, and examines the post-reality period in full detail.
It shows that they have internalized lying to such an extent that they can no longer distinguish what people are lying, by conveying the findings of various psychological research about lies and giving examples from real-life figures. A playwright named Steve Tesich first uses the word in a magazine article before being chosen as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries from “super-truth” 2016, which has been thoroughly conceptualized with Keyes’ book (Flood 2016; Keyes, 2019, p. 22).
In his work, Keyes examines how the surreal era emerged and why deceit has become so widespread in today’s societies. According to him, there can be different reasons for lying, having fun, enjoying being fooled, adventurous, and providing control. For reasons like this, people keep lying in their private life and public space, and they feel very little guilt about it, because they always have a justified explanation for their lies.
With this book, Keyes identifies and problematizes the normalization of lies in the surreal era. He observes the tendency to lie in private relationships, psychiatry, legal field, politics, academia, media, baby boomer belt and technology. In the last chapters of the book, he warns once again that the kind of liar that encompasses all areas of life will lead to a skeptical society that nobody trusts, and why it should be honest.
As Keyes underlined in his book, is a respectable effort in the postmodern environment where the truth itself is questioned, that everyone can have their own truth and thus the reality is relativized. Keyes, Sennett and of course there are people like ižek. Nevertheless, as a minor criticism to Keyes’ book, it can be said that although the author has dealt with the supply of the lie in detail, he did not consider the request for lies sufficiently.
For example, a sociologist would also wonder about the need for society to lie about the extent of corporate lie production such as media, politics, academia – for example, the Frankfurt School also wondered why people needed authority. In his work, Keyes rejects the assumption that people cannot lift the truth, and accuses the people and institutions who put forward that. Nobody really wants to be fooled. However, there may be situations where avoiding honesty, like those who lie, also meets the expectations of others, and the lie relieves those who are lying.
The surreal age that Keyes skillfully determined is also an age of conformism and indifference. People sense that others are lying to them on many issues, and they don’t care much because they already know it and have low expectations of honesty. Honesty is fired from nine villages. You can do simple experiments in close quarters such as family, friendship, workplace.
Being aware of this situation, Keyes says in his book: “Openheartedness becomes more and more dangerous over time. It can even be suggested that the more we care about someone, the more we lie. ”(Keyes, 2019, p. 144). We can show fictional examples to this. For example, Franzen’s (2018) Purity novel says in a critical interpretation of real information leaks, such as Leila Assange, a female journalist named Leila, that being adult is to filter herself and not to falter others as they are. I wonder if Keyes would join.
As another example, in Ishiguro’s (2015) fairy tale novel, The Embedded Giant, he could not overcome the gentle love of his gentle, unconscious love against his wife at the unexpected end of the novel. loses his right to cross a river to reach his wife and sons. However, we will not doubt that Axl may not like his wife, who has shown so much love throughout the narrative. Maybe Axl couldn’t even tell this truth to himself. Despite this result, Axl’s dishonest love does not lose its value in our opinion, it even gains a more touching meaning. Though it is not sincere, it is a love that has been cared for and trembled over the years. Would Keyes sincerely forgive Axl in the face of such a lie of love?
As a final example, in Östlund’s (2014) film “Force Majoire”, the focus is on the exposure of lies in a contemporary marriage relationship. In the film, Ebba and Tomas go on a ski vacation in the French Alps with their children. Here, as a compelling reason, an artificial avalanche gets out of control and comes at full speed towards family members and other customers having breakfast on a daily sun terrace. Tomas fell into his own troubles, leaving his wife Ebba and their young children on the terrace. This unexpected event damages the spouse’s relationship of trust and misses all holiday pleasures. Throughout the episode of the movie, we watch a non-verbal duel between spouses and children.
In this Northern narrative, Ebba, a mature, responsible woman, turned out to be unrequitedly believed to have a belief in love and responsibility to her and her children. Happy family scenes in an expensive ski holiday turn into a big lie in the photo shoot at the beginning of the movie. It will be very painful and difficult for the family to face this lie. To reconstruct the happy family lie at the end of the movie, Ebba, a clever woman, constructs a new hero male, spouse and father lie, plays the role and her husband so that shaken family arrangements can be provided. What makes Östlund’s movie worthwhile is that it shows us the falsehood of patriarchy.
As can be understood from all these fictional examples, a ton of lies is needed for the social order to continue as it is. This should be the reason for Keyes’ opposition to falsehood altogether; To create an honest society, it is first necessary to expose the false society. However, the transition from a liar society to an honest society will not be easy for institutions as well as for anyone who is fond of comfort, peace and order.
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