12:30pm June 30, 2014

Lying is a survival skill and it’s not always bad.

I know we’re taught that lying is bad, and that autistic people especially can develop a very black and white view towards lying.

But if there’s one thing that poverty has taught me, it’s that lying is not always a bad thing.

If I have to lie so that someone gets a meal, I will lie so that someone gets a meal.

If I have to lie because I saw a friend saving up money they’re not supposed to have, in order to get out of a system that punishes you for saving up money to try and get off the system, then I will lie.

In general, if I see someone doing something “against the rules” of the various horrible poverty systems in this country (or any other country), I’m going to look the other way and pretend I never saw it. Including denying it if asked directly.

If I have to pay someone under the table, I will.

And that is because I give a fuck about people, and because I don’t give a fuck about the systems that purport to help us but actually create all these rules to punish us for being human beings. And in many cases the rules are written in such a way that they’re nearly impossible to follow, which may be deliberate – so that if someone becomes too much of a problem, they can say “they’re breaking the rules” and cut their benefits.

At any rate…

I really don’t like self-righteous bullshit about how lying is always a bad thing. And I like it even less the poorer I get, and the more poor people I know, because honesty is often something that has to go by the wayside in survival situations. In general, oppressed people have to lie to our oppressors a lot, and that’s not a bad skill to have, and there should be no shame in it. In fact, it should be celebrated as a vital survival skill at times. Not gratuitous lying, but certainly clever survival lying.