We’ve all been taught that it’s OK to be dishonest, preferable even, by our parents and school teachers to make us easy to manage; by our bosses to achieve their targets; by our friends to feel in control; by sales people to take our money; even by our partners to avoid rejection.

“Human society is a ‘network of lies and deceptions’ that would collapse under the weight of too much honesty.” Robert C. Solomon, former professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, mirrored this sentiment in Lying and Deception in Everyday Life. “Deception is sometimes not a vice but a social virtue,” he writes, “and systematic d