Why swear an oath, just tell the truth to start with
IWAS reading a story on the internet recently, which made reference to former US president Bill Clinton’s reported fling with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 and remembered the different international reactions to the news when it came out. The Americans pretended to be scandalised, the British were mildly disgusted and the French shrugged and failed to see the problem.
So? It was what people did, they said. To me, this was a rather typical indication of each country’s attitude to life.
One of my American friends was indignant, and when I suggested that a sexual adventure didn’t seem to have anything to do with Clinton’s ability to run the country, he snorted and said: “The point is that he LIED about it under oath!”
I wondered vaguely whether my friend would have been satisfied if his president had just said: “Yeah, sure, I’m having an affair with her, now let’s get on with ruling the country.”
The business of being required to swear an oath has always struck me as rather strange.
You are told to raise your right hand and declare: “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God,” and from that moment it becomes a crime to lie.
Presumably it’s just fine to lie to your heart’s content until you’ve said those magic words. Then the “truth app” kicks in and you suddenly have to stop telling porkies.
I think you would have to be brave person to tell a whole lot of lies and then suddenly say: “No ,actually, that was not the truth, but I am under oath now, so I have to change my story.”
It seems we accept different levels of truth, which I find slightly odd. Surely there it truth and falsehood? Can something be slightly true?
In our daily speech we often invoke levels of truth by saying things like: “No, really, I swear, I actually saw it with my own eyes!”
I think we have to accept that people lie. We tend to use expressions such as “fake news” and being “economical with the truth”, but it’s just lying and it makes no difference whether you’ve sworn an oath or not.
An advertiser can tell you his product will cure broken hearts, and a politician can claim he never accepted any money from crooks. In this age of instant communication, we all have to be very careful what we believe. A lie can circle the globe in less than a second.
Last Laugh
Trying to compile an accurate record of all the people employed by the company, the human resources manager sent a message to all departmental heads saying: “Please supply me with a list of all the employees in your department, broken down by sex.”
He received a reply from one of them saying: “Several of the people in this department have been broken down by alcohol, but as far as I am aware, so far none have been broken down by sex.”