“This exceptional book asks and answers a diverse series of questions. Keyes’s book deserves a wide readership.”
Among the most fascinating things in Ralph Keyes’s The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (St. Martin’s, $24.95) is his look at the ways in which morality and leadership converge. Keyes relates the results of studies by Caroline Keating of Colgate University showing that “an ability to lie was the single best predictor of male dominance. This led her to conclude that, among men at least, the same traits that make a good liar also make a good leader.” This exceptional book asks and answers a diverse series of questions. Do we have a biological predisposition to lie? (Probably.) Do we lie more than our ancestors did? (Maybe.) Do we have a higher tolerance for dishonesty than our ancestors? (Yes.) Can animals lie? (Koko the gorilla certainly did.) Have therapists, politicians, lawyers, postmodernists, Hollywood hustlers, journalists and others played a role in creating a culture of lying? (An extensive one.) Is there any hope for truthfulness? (Yes.) Keyes also provides a brief history of philosophical and theological positions on lying, as well as anthropological data on the practice. He argues convincingly that groups have always found lies to outsiders acceptable but lies to in-group members contemptible. The more impersonal a society becomes, the greater the opportunities for lying, and the fewer the consequences for the individual liar. (This is particularly sobering in today’s Internet-crazed and highly mobile America.) That Keyes can do all this without unleashing a jeremiad or throwing his hands up in despair is extraordinary. Can one make a case for honesty? Keyes does so persuasively, largely because of his willingness to study every good argument — not just the ones that he might support. He tells us that we “could accept every post-modern point about the elusiveness of truth (and even add some), yet still conclude that the attempt to be truthful is not only noble but essential for human well-being.” What about the quotidian lies we tell to lubricate social interaction? We all say, “I’m fine” when we’re not, or tell sick patients, “You look great.” Aren’t these easily justified? Keyes notes that they may do more to make the teller’s life easier than the recipient’s, adding that “any lie — no matter how small — is a vote of no confidence in the person to whom it’s told.” Perhaps his most convincing argument about why we should tell the truth is that, for social creatures, “telling the truth is a way of affirming human ties. . . . Just as lying degrades human connections, truthfulness invigorates them.” Keyes’s book deserves a wide readership. Daniel McMahon