I've noticed lately that I have begun to condone, even tacitly encourage, little white lies. Take my barber. I was in getting a haircut recently, and we got to talking about New Year's Eve, and what I was planning to do, and the like. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that we have some close friends who are gourmet cooks, and that one of my most memorable New Year's Eves was spent at their home having a truly wonderful seven-course feast. Now, I like my barber, and he gives me a good haircut, but we've never discussed gourmet cooking before, and I know that we've never discussed my friends' meals. So I was somewhat surprised to hear him say, after I described this feast, "Yeah, that's right, you were mentioning that to me last time you were here".

This is where the condoning-white-lies part comes in. I'm sure that in the thirty-odd years that he has been barbering, he's learned that customers give better tips if you make them feel like yours is a personal relationship. And so his comment was intended to establish that personal connection, even if it wasn't true. But rather than call him on it, I simply nodded, and said, "yes, that's right." In other words, I lied to him. There was no point in embarrassing the man, certainly, and there was no harm in condoning his white-lie. But by doing so, I tacitly encouraged him to continue to fabricate elements of a conversation that we never had.

Conversations like this happen all the time -- when was the last time that someone said to you "Do you know so-and-so" and you lied and said "I have heard of so-and-so, but I've never met him/her" (or its variant, "The name is familiar, but I can't place it")? The response validates that knowing so-and-so is interesting, even if it isn't; and it gives the speaker permission to continue with a story about so-and-so, rather than creating that awkward pause while the speaker down-shifts into a new topic.

At the same time, these white lies got me to wondering: Assuming my barber was just making conversation (that is, assuming he didn't think he was actually remembering a conversation with me that didn't happen), then he knew that I was lying to him when I said "yes, that's right". Which makes the whole thing pointless, since both of know that we're both lying just for the sake of making conversation.

Not being an anthropologist, I have no good explanation for why we do this. I'm sure there's some hard-wired need in each of us to connect with our fellow travelers, and these little-white-lies are a safe and non-threatening way to establish the minimum necessary connection for society to function, without revealing our vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, I found the whole exchange just a little odd.