In Banaji and Greenwald’s book “Blindspot”, they discuss the different types of lies individuals can tell, organizing them into “shades of truth”. This in itself was interesting to me because lies and truth are often viewed as opposites. However, the authors use this play on words to discuss certain lies as manipulations of the truth. In other words, lies are distortions of the truth.
For me, I found the section “Colorless Lies” to be intriguing. The section discussed a quote by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, addressing the things individuals experience that they are not willing to admit to themselves, let alone to others. These things that people keep to themselves are considered “colorless lies” because they are not acknowledged by the individual himself or others, by extension; they are invisible. I thought this was an interesting inclusion because it isn’t necessarily distorting the truth, but it is omitting some truth from being known; that, in itself, is an untruth. The authors go on to express how these untruths affect the teller as much as the listener, which is what makes them unique from other types of “lies”.
It is interesting to see how colorless lies work in an interaction. You know that what you say has an impact in a conversation but what you don’t say also has an impact to the conversation.
I also found the “Shades of Truth” section to be interesting. The authors touch upon how it is instinctual for us to lie sometimes, like when we tell white lies. I wonder if this is a process of evolution too, and if not why it is so natural for us to do.