91% of all Americans confessed that they regularly lied.
79% had given out false phone numbers or invented new identities when meeting strangers on airplanes.
20% said they couldn’t get through even one day without going along with a previously manufactured lie.
Now here’s what I found most intriguing about the study: People no longer seem to care about lying.
We accept it. It doesn’t bother us. We don’t get upset anymore when someone exaggerates, falsifies, fabricates, or misrepresents the truth. We live in a day when we’ve been bombarded with erased tapes, tampered evidence, illicit cover-ups, padded resumes, and exaggerated ads, to the point that we’ve pretty much given up on truth being a viable enterprise.
The study found that in the past, people thought lying was wrong. Now, almost half of all Americans say it isn’t.
[James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000), 121-122.]