Half Truths

By definition they are deceptive statements that include some element of truth. Or where the statement might be partly or every totally true but only part of the whole truth; or even skillful double meaning as an intent to deceive, evade, blame or misrepresent the truth. Of course, for me I condense all of that down into marketing and be done with it. 

   The purpose and or consequence of a half-truth is to make something that is really only a belief appear to be knowledge, a truthful statement to represent the whole truth, or possibly lead to a false conclusion. According to the justified true belief theory of knowledge, in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe in the relevant true proposition, but one must also have a good reason for doing so. A half- truth deceives the recipient by presenting something believable; then uses those aspects of the statement that can be shown to be true as good reason to believe the statement is true in its entirety, or that the statement represents the whole truth. A person deceived by a half-truth considers the proposition to be knowledge and acts accordingly.    Why all of that? I mentioned just the other day,( unabashed self promoting moment here: go read my December 7th blog post Just below the Noise Level) the adventure of turning in our COMCAST control box. Darn if they didn’t call today and try to seduce us back. I could only hear half the conversation, but suffice to say for every refusal Montse made, the rep on the other end had a counter offer to suggest. Yes, it was annoying for Montse, and yes, I’m glad I wasn’t the one on the phone. But really. If they had negotiated with us earlier they’d still have us as a customer, but they didn’t so we departed company. I mean where is it good business practice to offer packages to get new customers under contract, but then insult the current customers with no upgrades or cost cutting packages? Weren’t we new customers once? I’m told all kinds of fairytales…half truths…and it reminds me of the real experts at squelching that kind of noise. It was the Catholic Church.

 
   Growing up, as a kid we learn quickly that half-truths are one of our best friends at avoiding punishment. Since lying was an outright sentence to a spanking and/or lost of roaming privileges, half-truths just might get you squeaked through that narrow forgivable excuse of childish irresponsibility rather than outright demon spawned from hell. By the time I became seven I was pretty accomplished at half truths, but talent having its limits, I had two older sisters who were pros at it long before I was out of diapers. So I mimicked…a lot. Yet, unbeknownst to us our parents had a secret weapon that killed all the buzz of outmaneuvering grownups might grant. It was the concept of the sin of omission. And it came packaged with the whole notion of Mortal sin; the kind you can’t wash off. 

   Seems the sin of omission was this very thing we kids relied on to get past the technicalities imbued in the whole rules concept in the first place. If we weren’t told we could not do something then by default, it was the responsibility of the so-named authority, (parent, school, church, any-adult) to clearly define where our boundaries were. If those conditions weren’t made, then theoretically the ‘child’ couldn’t be at fault. By extrapolation, the child-obedient-robot couldn’t be held to consequences earned by disobedience; aka rule breaking. Right? Not so fast buddy, the omission clause. That was where we little-adults-with-no-liberty were expected to reason our way to righteous behavior...aka…obey the rules. And if we could be shown that we had indeed known the intent of a rule, (answer truthfully to all questions let’s say) then the sin of omission caught us in the lie-of-not-telling-the-whole-truth. 
Rats! 

   Worse that getting caught in a half-truth/sin of omission, ( a blow to any kid’s pride at being exposed for trying to outwit Tyrant-grown-ups) the church chimed in to tell us we’d burn in hell FOR ETERNITY NO LESS, for not telling the whole true (and nothing but so help me you-know-who). And this to creatures whose whole experience with time added up to less than double digit number of years on the planet; so like, eternity was really beyond our comprehension…but it sounded like a long time, longer than the misery of no recess after lunch for minor infractions of school protocol. 
   It wasn’t fun growing up with the Sin-of-omission, it seemed the Catholic Church’s spin on it was more like double jeopardy to me. Later on I learned that even the United States Constitution by God said we couldn’t be held to that standard. Freedom at last…I just KNEW I’d find SOMETHING useful to do with my education. Oh, I still got punished, because well, I continued to tell half-truths, but now, oh baby, I was a martyr…and that, my friend is pure Gold to a Catholic kid. 

 Which brings me to the real humor of growing up with expert guidance in what the tensile strength is in a half-truth: 
A Sunday school teacher asked her class, 

   "Does anyone here know what we mean by sins of omission?"

One of the girls replied

   "Aren't those the sins that we should have committed, but didn't?" 

 Protestant kids didn’t have a clue….not a solitary clue.