The light bulb theory and the lies that bind

By Mugambi Nandi
Twitter@MugambiNandi

There is a lot of lying going on in this country and, we presume, elsewhere. (And no, we do not mean the in flagrante delicto kind, although we suspect that is also going on in full throttle.)

It is no news that lying is as old as mankind, but of late it has taken comical dimensions. People are telling untruths, half-truths and general approximations of the truth, known in parliamentary language as “inexactitudes”, at every turn.

All this lying might have to do with the fact that we were inducted into lying quite early in life. Our parents, bound by either religious or cultural ethos and mores, told us that children are purchased from the hospital.

Of course we now know that they are not. They lied to us. To prove it, we have gone on to make our own, with no help at all from our parents.

We digress. There exists a myth that people who speak fast do not want you to get exactly what they are saying, because most of it is lies. Auctioneers and insurance agents are often cited for this practice.

We are at this moment resisting the temptation to add preachers to the shortlist. We think it is unfair on the insurance agents, who are merely doing their best to squeeze all the benefits of their products (while carefully omitting the exclusions) in the one minute that you are likely to allow them.

We call it a myth because someone high up in the Police Service has proven that you do not need to be eloquent to spin a tale. A seasoned politician has also recently confirmed that one can speak slowly and deliberately, with a straight face like that of Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal, while telling an incredibly thrilling tale about assassin billboards.

Lies abound even in religious circles, where one would least expect them. We have not quite established, and never will, whether tales of seventy-two virgins as a reward for killing innocent people are true. We suspect they are not.

We have been lied to about the imminent ending of the world. We have been lied to about “planting a seed” which, to be fair to all concerned, does bring in a healthy bounty to the pastor but none to the flock that does all the sowing.

We lie about our age. We lie about our wealth. In social media, we lie about the good life we are living. Couples lie about the state of their marriages, bereft of love and romance but held together by the pressure to conform to societal expectations. We have been lied to by customer care representatives that we will be called back. We are lied to about the contents of the various canned foods and drinks, which we buy from the supermarkets.

We are lied to about the origin of those expensive things with exotic labels, for which we part with our life’s savings. The opposition lies to us that they would be different if they became government. Government lies to us that the opposition is lying to us. Political party manifestos are filled with lies. And so the lying goes….

With all the lying going around, it did not surprise us when someone conjured up the brilliant light bulb theory to explain the recent big bang incident at JKIA.

Of course we have not forgotten that the said person did tweet that his men were not at Westgate to feed the attackers with pastries, which turned out to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help him, God) as indeed it was his men who were feeding on the pastry.

As Mark Twain said, truth is the most valuable thing we have; let us economise it.