It's interesting to note here, the reflections of a guy I know (see, I'm not lying about him being my friend or something, but I do know him and have talked to him many times) who is a pretty well known lyricist for a famous rock band, but beyond that - and pretty much unknown - he has a real calling for translating the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke from the original German into English. And he says something interesting about German, that's worth noting here. Asked why he thought that the great (classic) German works did not sell well anymore, and why people don't seem to pay attention to German Culture the way they once had (and it was damn near worshiped). His reply is/was: There were so many lies told in German in the Twentieth Century that it will take hundreds and hundreds of years before anyone believes that language again. Sad really.
So lying does have profound downstream consequences, for people, for countries, for languages, for entire cultures. But lets remember another pretty profound notion from the Twentieth Century that truth (in in perception as the viewer sees it) is not universal, but relative. And, along the lines of saying things which the speaking person knows is not the whole truth, intentionally - well perceptions change over time. Many of the notions we had as kids seem pretty dumb now, or - at the very least - not really well thought out. So it could be one of those things where the song used to go like that, now it goes like this.
