This might not seem much, but follow the eternal regress of “Well, if you are indeed lying, then you are telling the truth. But if you are telling the truth, you are lying. But if you are lying, you are telling the truth…” etc, and the lie will inflate into the limitlessness! 🙂
Unless of course you discover that the source of this lie is simple logic. Considering the incredible numbers of people devoted to simple logic as true believers, Id say this is a pretty big lie too. Probably bigger than religion, since religions are too diverse to be considered as single lies. (It is very hard to be logical in a personal way.)
You might object that simple logic, with its glitches, is not a lie one ‘tells’. I would defend myself with a really big lie, but why go to excessive lengths when the tactic of “lets agree to disagree” is yet untried.
That we have choice
or that we don’t have any choice
(one of those)
or maybe believing that beauty exists without our being there to experience it.
and maybe also – telling myself i am a pretty decent human being who wouldn’t do horrible things (torture for example) to other people – when I am sure i would given the right circumstances.
a bit random. oops.
harry
There is an afterlife.
In my line of work i often feel that anything we try to say is a lie; or rather that language does not adequately reflect the truth within.
I, who is the chief advisor to the Sultan who governs those lands in the furthest East, beyond all seas, all lakes, at the source of mountain, who will become king among all those people between here and his kingdom, who has never made a wrong decision, never hesitated, never thought to breathe with bad timing, or been forced to change my mind, who can hardly contain his intellect, I, who stand before you as the first man capable of unaided flight, who represents the first bird in manform, I, the ground, the sun, the heat, the squeak of cogs on the Titanic before that great ship even left port in 1972, I say that, in my humble to opinions, more humble even than that time I called myself ordinary (even as I flew to the rescue of those people on that one spaceship), more self-ignorant than all the mirrors in the land of Ugaan, where mirrors are on the 13 faces of every coin, I say that you, my good friend, my mother’s drug dealer, you who stole even the ashes of Noah’s 1st ark, which burned in that freak accident with the oil and the beaver, you should not (though I recognise that this imperative stems only from my pet brick, who is dictating to me) have told (read: whispered, confided in, informed, said to, or communicated through Morse code) David, our mutual clone, that he, the fruit of our mythic loins, looked or seems to look, or seemed to be looking, or seemed to be trying to have looked, or looked to have been seeming to try to have been looking attractively ugly or otherwise in those cloaking nanotrousers that I made with my invisible 5th arm.
Now that’s a big lie. But the magic of recursion is that there is no biggest lie.
6 replies on “The biggest lie?”
“Right now, I am lying.”
This might not seem much, but follow the eternal regress of “Well, if you are indeed lying, then you are telling the truth. But if you are telling the truth, you are lying. But if you are lying, you are telling the truth…” etc, and the lie will inflate into the limitlessness! 🙂
Unless of course you discover that the source of this lie is simple logic. Considering the incredible numbers of people devoted to simple logic as true believers, Id say this is a pretty big lie too. Probably bigger than religion, since religions are too diverse to be considered as single lies. (It is very hard to be logical in a personal way.)
You might object that simple logic, with its glitches, is not a lie one ‘tells’. I would defend myself with a really big lie, but why go to excessive lengths when the tactic of “lets agree to disagree” is yet untried.
That we have choice
or that we don’t have any choice
(one of those)
or maybe believing that beauty exists without our being there to experience it.
and maybe also – telling myself i am a pretty decent human being who wouldn’t do horrible things (torture for example) to other people – when I am sure i would given the right circumstances.
a bit random. oops.
harry
There is an afterlife.
In my line of work i often feel that anything we try to say is a lie; or rather that language does not adequately reflect the truth within.
I, who is the chief advisor to the Sultan who governs those lands in the furthest East, beyond all seas, all lakes, at the source of mountain, who will become king among all those people between here and his kingdom, who has never made a wrong decision, never hesitated, never thought to breathe with bad timing, or been forced to change my mind, who can hardly contain his intellect, I, who stand before you as the first man capable of unaided flight, who represents the first bird in manform, I, the ground, the sun, the heat, the squeak of cogs on the Titanic before that great ship even left port in 1972, I say that, in my humble to opinions, more humble even than that time I called myself ordinary (even as I flew to the rescue of those people on that one spaceship), more self-ignorant than all the mirrors in the land of Ugaan, where mirrors are on the 13 faces of every coin, I say that you, my good friend, my mother’s drug dealer, you who stole even the ashes of Noah’s 1st ark, which burned in that freak accident with the oil and the beaver, you should not (though I recognise that this imperative stems only from my pet brick, who is dictating to me) have told (read: whispered, confided in, informed, said to, or communicated through Morse code) David, our mutual clone, that he, the fruit of our mythic loins, looked or seems to look, or seemed to be looking, or seemed to be trying to have looked, or looked to have been seeming to try to have been looking attractively ugly or otherwise in those cloaking nanotrousers that I made with my invisible 5th arm.
Now that’s a big lie. But the magic of recursion is that there is no biggest lie.
bravo!