Truthiness: Lying Strategically
I was going to hold off on publishing this until later this week, but recent events made it feel somewhat relevant.
I can’t stop thinking about this article in the financial times. It’s a fascinating example of how we develop myths that help instill pride in our collective groups, and it made me think of the parallels to a number of other areas I think about a lot. Yuval Harari covers a lot of this ground in the Cognitive Revolution section of his book Sapiens.
My synopsis of the article: Italy derives a lot of national identity from myths about Italian food, and Alberto Grandi, an academic that has unearthed the actual source of many traditional Italian foods, has become persona non grata in some areas of Italy because of his discoveries. The first actual pizza shop? Not Italian, likely from New York in 1911. Most Italians hadn’t even heard of pizza until the ‘50s. Traditional parmesan cheese? The recipe they use in Parma is more recent, from the ‘60s, the closest you can find to the traditional recipe comes from Wisconsin. Tiramisu didn’t appear in a cookbook until the ‘80s. Carbonara was an American dish born in Italy during World War II. The author talks to Italian elders to confirm that many of the foods that underpin much of Italy’s pride in the history of their food was not food that they ate growing up. It’s a great read, and if it’s still paywalled, well worth the $1 trial to read.
Giogia Meloni and her governing coalition used these symbols of these Italian traditions in the lead up to the most recent Italian elections to help assert her conservative coalition’s commitment to tradition. It certainly makes me wonder how many of our own ideologies and identities, political or otherwise, are built on false traditions.
When I think about why the Italians built these myths (well, lies) about their beloved dishes, it makes me think about how we all lie about ourselves and our motivations all the time, we also lie to each other. Every answer to “what is your story” is a lie, we downplay or omit details that are of no interest to the audience, and play up the interesting bits. Complete truths are often unsatisfying, or complicated, and are best replaced by a good story. Stretching the truth can help bring together people that otherwise might not work so well together. Sometimes these lies are rallying cries, sometimes they are aspirational, sometimes, when we start believing the lies too much, something like We Work happens. Sometimes blatant lies send us into war, and even after the lies are proven false, some say, even to this day, that the war (and thus the lie that got us into it) was justified. We raise our kids and teach them that it’s immoral to lie, but that’s also a lie. We lie to kids all the time to surprise them, and scare them, and teach them lessons, and when we simply don’t have the right answer in our own brains and need to come up with something that will placate their curiosity. Sure, as kids get older parents tend to tell them that there’s such a thing as white lies, but that’s also a lie by omission. Lies take on many colors, and that’s what makes it so hard to find the line between white lies and whatever the other kinds are called, because there isn’t one, there’s a vast spectrum. My point here isn’t to berate you for being a liar (you are) it’s just to be honest about the fact that you and I, both, are liars. That’s no lie. Perhaps, though, we need to operate under some moral imperative that governs just how we lie.
Company leadership teams are some of the biggest liars out there. One of the first things companies do is set out to explain what they do and what their mission is. Those mission statements are lofty, and while I don’t doubt that companies believe in their mission statements, all too often the realities of the business world force companies to compromise their mission and their values. Take one of my favorite punching bags, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg laid out a new mission statement for Facebook in 2021, “Our full mission statement is: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” It sounds great, but Facebook has been a major force of division, hardly a hallmark of community building. In fact, according to the WSJ Facebook knew in 2018 that its algorithms actually “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness”. Most social media platforms, and many other tech platforms, have a mission statement that alludes to bringing people together, but they all have business incentives (advertisers that want people to advertise to) that push them to build algorithms that drive eyeballs to their websites, and those eyeballs love to hate. The business model demands that they divide. In perhaps a too easy example of a company failing its mission statement, here’s what I was able to find on FTX: “FTX's mission is twofold - to build the best derivatives exchange and to help move this space toward becoming institutional.” Missed the mark by just a bit there.
How many times have you heard a business leader say something like “our people are a top priority” months before a series of layoffs? It’s probably more accurate for most company leaders to say “some of our people are a top priority, and the shareholders trump them all” but it’s easier, simpler, and more effective to lie.
In most of my blog posts so far, I’ve had a personal or professional takeaway based on a cursory analysis of the topic I was diving into. I don’t have any answers here, only questions.
If we take as a given that most of our institutions are built on noble lies, when do those lies go too far? When does a lie stop being noble? How do we know when we’re starting to believe too much of our own bullshit (aka the powerful tech VC conundrum)?
More importantly, in the past day: what makes people stop lying? Is it when the lie becomes too obviously false, or is it just fatigue? Because when the truth is too ugly, sometimes lying is the only path forward, even if it’s a very obvious lie.