Everybody lies

Doesn't Everybody Lie? Why do we tell lies? Lying is one of those human foibles that seems more serious when someone else is doing it.

Why do we believe them? Whether we withhold the truth or tell a half-truth, we don't always tell the whole truth. Personal gullibility and vulnerability are frightening. We can't believe we are capable of being lulled into believing something that isn't true or that we trusted an untrustworthy person. We don't want to have to admit that we can be manipulated. Confronting our potential for exaggeration and/or evil is embarrassing and painful. Truth reveals our own secrets -- the lies we've told, the things we've done and people we have hurt. It takes brutal honesty and courage to stare at our own dark side, let alone to confess it. The truth that frees also hurts. Denial looks like less work. We like the person and want to believe what is being said.

Can we become more discerning about whom? How much to trust without being overly suspicious? Healing mental and spiritual wounds does not happen overnight. Rebuilding trust is hard work. The liar must take responsibility and realize that trust must be earned.

Lies can undermine credibility, disintegrate relationships and erode trust. It strip us of innocence. We wonder if the person who has lied to us ever told us the truth. Truth in greek is aletheia meaning "not hidden." To lie is to hide the truth.

Nada Surf agrees that everybody lies when she wrote her piece "Everybody lies...everybody lies... everybody all the time. I lie to go to sleep when all is wrong or right. Most of it's not there. Everything and everywhere I lie about you and me too but it's allright. Everybody lies make the wrong right."

Mark Twain once said "Everybody lies, every day every hour, awake, asleep, in his dream, in his joy and in his mourning." We live in a world of deception. In a world of deception, where people twist words to their advantage, we seldom question veracity or check sources. Lies influence history and persuade people. Some people are masters at telling us what we want to hear and what they want us to believe.

The phrase has been heard many times from the famous Dr. Gregory House. It has been a trademark of House which he describes as a creative process. A mantra which fans started calling house-ism's philosophy. Lying is gaining acceptance as a philosophy of life and it becomes a growing hole in our moral ozone.

HOUSE is an award winning tv series which captured the hearts of many people. In fact, the American Film Institute honored the show as one of the TV Programs of the Year and received the Peabody Award for Best of Electronic Media in 2005. It also received an Emmy Award for creator and executive producer David Shore (Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series), two Golden Globe Awards for Hugh Laurie (Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series) and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Laurie (Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series).

The series has transformed such programs to a more pleasing and entertaining medical drama. by solving mysteries where the antagonist is a medical blight and the protagonist is a mocking and insolent, controversial doctor who breaks most of the protocols, trusts no one and prefers to sit down in his office and solve the challenging diagnostic rather than meet his patients and listen to their lies. For House, not every story rings true. Not everyone reads the same rule book or is guided by your ethical, moral and spiritual principles. You watch people's footsteps -- where they are heading and not just what they are saying. Notice the message beneath the words. Learn the typical responses people give when confronted with their lies. This is how he works.

However, not all lies are the same. They come in many forms, ranging from intentional falsehoods that are mean-spirited to innocent fibs that many people feel cause little harm. Lies can include :

White lies - harmless
Darker lies - When a liar gets away with it, the better he gets at lying. He learns to sidestep his responsibility. The issue is evaded and the harmless lie grows into another more malignant lie. In time, lying becomes a lifestyle.
Pathological lies - Habitual, compulsive liars relish the idea of hooking others into "the game." Self-absorbed with winning at all costs, they are addicted to their own deceit. Charming and convincing, these liars use their ability to be likeable as the key to our trusting them. Confusing "liking" with "trusting," we overlook the fact that they are conniving, with no remorse for their behavior or empathy for our hurt.

Its stint as a tv series, the episode “Three Stories” gained a Humanitas Prize in 2006. And in 2007, the series was nominated twice for the episode “House vs. God" episode and an Emmy in the Outstanding Drama Series category.

Most of the episodes have in one way or another proven House's mantra that everbody lies. Livermore Laboratory research chemist Cliff Coon said that "the heart of lying is that we want to be like God, who spoke into being the universe. So we speak into existence the world we want to see. We lie because we honestly believe it is the best thing we can do on our own behalf at the moment." We lie to preserve a sense of self. We make ourselves look better than we really are because we want to be liked. We exaggerate our circumstances to pump up our egos or to conceal shame, fear and disappointment. It may be too embarrassing or painful to confront the truth about others or ourselves. We lie to avoid getting caught. We lie to gain financially.

For the past three seasons, House has propelled a team of young experts : Dr. Allison Cameron is an immunologist, the empathetic staff; Dr. Robert Chase is an intensivist, the creative one, and; Dr. Eric Foreman is a neurologist, the academically best performer. The team has helped House unravel diagnostic mysteries with his maverick methods and daring decisions. In addition to the team, Dr. James Wilson, an oncology specialist, is House's best friend and confidant who tolerates his cynicism. Another interesting characte is Dr. Lisa Cuddy who is the Dean of Medicine and hospital administrator. Dr. Cuddy accounts for and assumes most of House's trouble as a result of his untolerable and unconventional behaviorwhich she admits that his brilliance is worth the trouble.

As Season Four opens, House has lost his original diagnostic team which gave him an opportunity to make recruiting of specialists as interesting and as unconventional as possible. He has made the recruitment process like a contest in which 40 applicants compete in vacating the spot by playing along with House's interest.