No one lies to help others

Some people claim to lie in order to help another person feel better, but this is misguided. You can’t lie without harming yourself, whoever you are lying to, and everyone else. When you lie, you make the world a worse place than it would otherwise be. A lie that makes someone feel better does so only temporarily, and only by postponing or denying the truth. Postponing consequences only compounds the intensity of those consequences when they finally come. Any apparent short-term good offered by a lie will absolutely be overtaken by the long-term evil that always accompanies it. A truly empathetic person would never choose to boost a person’s present feelings at the cost of their future situation. A person truly concerned with the benefit of another person would necessarily have to calculate that benefit in the scope of the long-term. The net harm of any lie is always greater than any net benefit. False empathy, false charity, flattery, and all other forms of lies that seem to be for the benefit of another are actually just for the benefit of the person telling them.

Lies in the name of false empathy go far beyond saying false things to make others feel good in the moment. They entail any thought, feeling, or action that purports to be for the benefit of another while actually being for the benefit of self. One way to detect false empathy is to pay attention to how effectively the thought, feeling, or act actually addresses what is needed or wanted. For example, everyone knows someone who loves giving gifts, yet who can’t seem to buy anything desired by or useful to the recipient, and won’t stop even when asked to. In such a case, it is abundantly obvious to everyone except the gift-giver that their giving is actually about how it makes them feel, rather than actually serving the person receiving the gift. The selfish gift-giver is just one specific example of a more general peddler of false empathy: the love-bomber.

Love-bombers are those who go above and beyond any normal limits of praise, service, or giving, but only do so in order to indebt you to reciprocate when and how they insist. To see a love-bomber’s true character, analyze how they treat those who can’t or won’t do anything for them. This is how they will inevitably treat you when you fail to meet their unattainable requirements for on-demand reciprocation. A truly selfless person will always act with the motive of benefiting others, even when dealing with those who can’t benefit them and even with their enemies.¹