The Feathers of a Lie

Author’s Note:

This fable is my answer, and I want to explain why I chose this form. Instead of answering this question with a list of facts and arguments that aren’t even mine, I will answer it with a story I created. By the end, I hope you will see why the story was the only honest way to say it.

The rainforest of Aviana had a very tense atmosphere on the day of the election results.

Four parrots had been running for president. There was Philipino, who was a scarlet feathered bird who was very confident and tilted his head into the sky and screamed “KAKATOOAH!” when anyone disagreed with him.

There was Seace, a grey and silver bird who was very kind and understood emotions and body language better than most others.

There was Croes, with gold-tipped feathers who promised everyone a forest treasure if they voted for him, even though Croes had not verified if it existed. Most of his policies and statements were in illustrations no one could understand.

And then there was Gremro with a red streak on his beak. He spoke rarely, most would think he was shy, but that was far from the case, he was taking the time to calculate, every one of his words were calculated precisely, his emotion, his body language, and his wing movements.

When the votes were counted, Philipino had won. The rainforest celebrated with a bonfire.

The next morning, a messenger arrived to send a message to Philipino in his new work area.

“I am very sad to inform you sir, your uncle has perished.”

Philipino had a face mixed with shock, anger, and guilt.

In the next forty-eight hours, he resigned from his presidential position and removed all his campaigns.

Gremro watched from a distant branch, very still. He had just seen the president of the forest dismantled in forty-eight hours by the truth. The bad news had reached inside Philipino and completely rearranged him.

Gremro tilted his head. This is what he thought: “I do not need the truth itself. I only need its shape.”

The race began again.

He visited Seace first, he wore an expression mixed with grief, sorrow, and something that looked like he was trying his best to be strong.

“I am very sorry to inform you,” He said, holding Seace’s shoulder with his wing.

“Your brother had perished in an accident.”

Seace’s jaw stretched like she was going to scream, but no sound came out.

Three days later, Seace withdrew from the presidential race, she said there was a family emergency. She arrived to her mom’s house and was confused to see her brother alive sitting on the breakfast table stuffing waffles into his mouth like he always did. She froze, then she sat down with her brother. Gremro had used the thing most important to Seace, her family, to take her out of the election. She had an expression of shock as her mom placed a stack of waffles in front of her.

Croes was Gremro’s next target, he left not because of death, but because of rumors spreading about his nonexistent treasure. He could not disprove the rumors because he was the one who invented the “treasure”. He decided to resign to look for the treasure, his resignation statement was, somehow, still illustrated.

One by one, each candidate resigned until the forest was left with a president that the majority had not chosen. Gremro had succeeded by covering the truth with lies till there was no truth in sight.

Here is where the question this essay must answer becomes something I cannot step around.

Immanuel Kant believed that lying is wrong because if everyone lied, the truth dissolves, because no one can be trusted. After Gremro won, the citizens didn’t know what to trust anymore^(Kant).

Kant had an opponent to his statement though, Aristotle argued that virtue is about finding the right response for each situation^(Aristotle). A person of good character knows what, when, and how to say something, this is what Seace was good at. When she had to deliver difficult news, she did not hide or blurt it out. She would wait until she understood what the listener was feeling, then offer the truth with some good news beside it. When Seace would speak to somebody about the brutal truth, instead of leaving feeling ambushed, they would leave feeling seen and loved, where people receive hard truths far more readily when delivered by someone who clearly means them no harm^(Grant). The truth simply arrives with care.

Gremro understood this mechanism and used it in an evil way. He told each bird a lie that sounded like the truth that broke Philipino. The truth connects people to reality while lies shift them further away from it.

Gremro had learned his method from watching how the truth can affect someone. He concluded the power was in the pain of a lie instead of the truth. But, he was wrong. The power was in the connection between the feeling and the fact.

Sissela Bok observed that lies tend to need cover ups, each lie needs more lies to cover up the original lie^(Bok). Gremro’s web grew exactly this way. By the end, birds were unable to fully trust what they were told.

Should people always tell the truth, even if it might hurt someone’s feelings? The honest answer is yes. Is the question trying to say that truth and kindness are opposites? Seace’s existence in this story is a direct argument against that. The real choice would be whether you care enough about the person in front of you to tell it in a way they can actually use.

Gremro winning the presidency came at the cost of the people because now he ruled a forest that couldn’t trust anything anymore. The citizens of Aviana did not want lies where the truth should be. But they did want someone to tell them the truth in a non brutal way like Seace would. That is what they had in Seace, and what they lost. It wouldn’t take anyone long to figure out what the citizens had lost.

Footnotes:

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. c. 350 BCE.

Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Pantheon Books, 1978.

Grant, Adam. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Viking, 2021.

Kant, Immanuel. “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy.” Practical Philosophy, translated by Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press, 1996.