Just tell me the truth!

I assume that most children have heard from a parent, most likely a mother, “Just tell me the truth.  I don’t care what you did. I just want the truth. I am going to be angrier if you lie.”  Every child knows that it is best to lie or at least give a lie your best effort!  If your parent/mother was anything like mine she “pretended” that all she really wanted was the truth – that it was ‘safe’ to tell the truth. Perhaps that is true with some parents. Perhaps some children only lie because they want to please their parents or teachers. Perhaps Eric Barker is right when he cites findings from NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, which says that children (at least young ones) lie to try to please you or make you happy. So the first strategy to getting the truth out of them is to tell them you'll be really happy if they tell you the truth: Perhaps that is accurate for some although I have yet to meet a child who believed that.  Certainly I did not believe my mother when she said all she was concerned with was the truth. If one finally confessed one would get punished both for lying and for the deed about which one lied.   In other words my mother lied to try to get me and my siblings to tell the truth.  I did not lie to try to please my mother. I lied to try to keep from getting into trouble. The fact that I was not very good at lying did not deter me from giving it my best effort.

I was thinking about this Tuesday evening when listening to an interview with Ronnie Green, the journalist who wrote, Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-up in the Wake of Katrina (published by Beacon Press).

Green says, “By now, most New Orleanians know the broad strokes of what happened the Sunday after Hurricane Katrina when those police officers – who wrongly believed officers had been shot at the bridge – killed two innocent people, wounded four innocent people, and immediately went into cover-up mode.”  Mr. Green details the long process for getting at the truth of what happened and helping to ensure that the police officers and others involved in the cover up were not only help accountable but punished.

My first question when listening to the interview with Mr. Green was  “Why would they tell the truth? They knew that they would be punished.”  Now, to Mr. Green’s credit, he does detail the enormous pressure under which the police were functioning following the devastating loss caused by Katrina as well as the slow government response and the resultant criminal activity.   At the time of the shooting, the police and other respondents were exhausted and subject to reacting instead of acting.   That is not to say that it was okay to shoot these innocent people. It is to say that it is understandable, at least to me, that they over reacted.   One could, of course, question why they were carrying the heavy firepower that they were – “two AK-47s, an M4 assault rifle, a .40 caliber Glock 22 semiautomatic pistol, and a Mossberg shotgun.” The question for another inquiry or debate is,   “ Why do we insist on using such powerful and deadly weapons in an age in which we know how to disarm people without, in most instances, killing them (I am thinking of the fact that a few people will die from the use of a stuntgun but my understanding is that the instances of death are very low)?”

The question I want to raise in this blog is why we should be surprised that we humans, including police officers and children, lie.  As a child I lied because I was hoping to avoid a severe beating for the original behavior plus a severe beating for the lying.   When my mother asked me, “Why do you lie?” if I had responded with the truth which was “Because you are a mean bully. Because it is not safe to tell you the truth.” she would have then punished me for my “smart mouth,”  Perhaps there are kids who lie just because they want their parent(s) to be happy, but I suspect that many other kids (and adults) lie because it is not safe to tell the truth.  Sure, it may be honorable to tell the truth no matter what the possible consequences, but in most cultures one does not get rewarded for being willing to be accountable. One gets punished.   Unless one is a member of a community, which has, a tradition of not punishing  (such as a 12-step program or the Tlingit Indian community) it is not enough to be accountable.  One needs to be punished. The belief is that one deserves to be punished and that punishment will normally reduce or eliminate the undesirable behavior.   Well, perhaps in some cases that is true. I do know of some people who changed their thinking and behavior because of or in spite of punishment.  I also “know” that I have always known and felt bad as soon I committed an undesirable or forbidden behavior.  On the other hand, if I had behaved in a way which was consistent with my values but inconsistent with the values of a parent, boss, or the larger community, I might resolve to find a way to be more effective in not getting discovered or in the case of getting arrested for such behavior such as anti-war demonstrations, resolve to be connected with an organized support system which would help when I did get arrested.

Certainly there are those whose internalized values are such that they will continue to find ways to try to get away with violating the rights of others.  These individuals have been conditioned by a sub-culture, which has a different set of values.  There are also those whose behavior will be determined by a mental illness or an acute addictive disorder. Those are not the groups of people whose behavior I am intending to address in this blog.

No, I am more concerned in this blog with the behavior of such individuals as the police officers in New Orleans or more recently in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, or other places.  The questions, which I think we need to be asking, are:

 “How can we make it safe for you to tell the truth?”  Or “How can we learn to focus on accountability and finding a way to change future behavior?”

“How can we move from a punishment-oriented model to a model which helps good people change their future behavior?”  Naturally if one is going to use a new paradigm with police officers it has to also be used with everyone else. We cannot use a punishment model on one group of people and not another.  The approach has to be uniformed.

I have previously written about the difference between the parenting approach of my parents and that of my Uncle Harold (Uncle Happy) and Aunt Pleasie with whom I spent a lot of time as a child. When I did something, which was not safe or good for the whole family, Aunt Pleasie and Uncle Harold   always responded with:

1.    “Do you understand now why we did not want you to play with the loaded rifle or touch the hot pie plate or...”
2.   Let’s fix the window in the door or clean up the mess or bake a new pie or…

Their method was very effective. I never did the same behavior twice (at least this is my memory and I am sticking with it).

They made it safe to tell the truth. There was no reason to lie.  I still felt bad, but I was not frightened of being punished for the next three life journeys!!!  My parents, particularly my mother who was the primary childcare person, responded with anger and a resolve to punish.