Living in a community where people consistently tell the truth is much better than living amongst liars. Living amongst liars is horrific.

Can you imagine if nobody around you ever kept their word? You could never feel trust with anyone, and every interaction you had would need a contract. You would probably only talk with people who were like you, because you might believe they were marginally more likely not to screw you. The world would be tribal.

In the abstract truth and trust are a shared resource, and the tragedy of the commons generally seems to apply. It’s very easy for one person in the community to tell a small lie that advantages them. And once one person gets away with lying, it’s easy for everyone to start cheating on their commitment to the truth.

Our kids, however, don’t understand this. It takes time to see how behaviors form norms and norms form culture. The choice of truth or lies are a butterfly effect that takes time to unravel.

But if I don’t teach our sons to tell the truth and model it from a young age, they’ll have terrible habits once they understand truth and trust enough to actively choose it. If I don’t teach them truth now, it’ll be harder then to teach themselves later. Much harder.

These ideas about trust are abstract and complex. We aren’t born applying economics concepts to truth and lies. These are things we learn from lived experiences, and come to get a feel for over the course of decades.

But for our sons, that’s too late.

This creates a tension. I have to hold them to the standard of telling the truth now, even though I can’t fully explain why. I have to, therefore, create a norm in our household that we tell the truth, which means I must always tell the truth.

This act, however, purifies three times. It helps our sons learn to be better men, it helps me practice being a better man, and it is a gift to our community which now has three fewer liars.

This whole enterprise rests on the assumption, however, that I want to be a good man. And that our sons do too.

It would be tremendously transformative if we all taught our kids to tell the truth. When we don’t, it leads to tragedy instead.