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Whom can you trust when it seems everybody tells lies?

I recently attended a meeting in downtown Denver, a place where it is always difficult to find a parking spot. So, when I saw a sign saying “Park here for $8,” I entered the lot. Once inside, the attendant told me that the discounted rate only applied to Sundays and holidays were no other events took place in the area.

Obviously, the sign was intentionally deceptive, that is, written with the intention of deceiving people like me, who believe we are so “intelligent” (please, note the quotation marks) we will never fall for such a deception. However, even parking lot signs deceive us.

If we can’t event trust parking lot signs, because they are deceitful, whom we can then trust? Who is telling the truth?

I can’t accept that we are continuously being deceived and manipulated, that everything we hear or see is a mix of half truths and half lies, and that nobody (or just very few people) are honest enough to tell the truth. But it seems that’s the case.

Why, for example, the owner of the parking lot in Denver didn’t put a sign saying “$12 per day,” or whatever the price was, instead of promising a rate he knows it is not real? His marketing director is celebrating the effectiveness of the deception.

In this particular case, the cost of the bad experience of trusting a deceitful parking lot sign was just a few dollars. But in other cases, trusting untrustworthy people cost me not only money, but time and efforts, and even relationships with other persons.

I sincerely believe that it is difficult, if not totally impossible, to accept the “truth” presented by those who present themselves as experts, or those who speak from a position of privilege or authority.

I’m not talking here about a metaphysical, transcendental, absolute, or religious truth, but about a practical and concrete truth, the truth created when the words of a person correspond with his or her actions and when his or her message does not include any intention of manipulation or deception.

In my opinion, the practical and simple truth no longer exists. It has been replaced by press releases, prepared statements, marketing campaigns, statistics, slogans, generalizations, and prejudice. And it seems nobody cares about the contradictions between what somebody says and what that same person does.

Just a few days ago I attended a religious meeting where I listened to a certain preaching telling his audience that we should love one another and we should love above all our enemies. Just a few minutes later, the same preacher expressed disrespectful remarks again a major religious group and asked hungry people not to come to his home asking for food because he will chase them with a gun.

I was horrified to see how the audience clapped with the same enthusiasm both the call to love and the call to hate. Whom, then, we can trust, when it seems everybody tells lies and we don’t even realize it?

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