Is truth still relevant?

Last week I went to a philosopher's cafe where the discussion is about whether we should still teach our children to tell the truth.

The doubt arises from our more "relaxed" attitude today to sticking to only the truth in dealing with others.

There are the social graces of white washing in order to not hurt other people's feelings, always telling the hostess what a great time you had at their party regardless of your actual experience.

Or take the more serious example of an army officer having to tell a soldier's mother that her son died in action.  Should the officer tell the mother that her son was heroic and did not die in pain regardless of the truth?  What is the point of increasing the mother's sorrow with facts that have already happened and cannot be changed?

Then there is the famous example of the murderer at the door demanding to know whether you are hiding the target of his anger when you are. 

Perhaps we should act more to minimize harm, maximize good, even at the sacrifice of truthfulness.

So do we teach our children to not always tell the truth?

That is an impossible position as without truth, none of the above examples can work.  Untruths can only be useful if we are truthful almost all the time.

In a society where lying is so widespread, skepticism grows and makes communication meaningless. Even these examples with good intentions will be useless if lying is prevalent.

So untruths are exceptions that only work if the rule is adhere to most, or almost all the time. 

For children feeling their way through social life, they must learn the rule first and have a moral framework before dipping into the complex world or exceptions and moral considerations in the overall scheme of things.

But what of the beaming hostess that was so encouraged by your positive comments that you get invited over and over again to her boring parties?

Would it be better off for the dead soldier's mother to be so outraged by the truth that she started to take antiwar protest actions and prevented future wars and save other mother's children?

What if the murderer at the door has a just cause to get to the person you are sheltering?

Untruths are Band-Aid solutions that raise issues in the long term.

Some may say that in the long term we are all dead while others may lament the inadequacies of one short term solution to the next. 

We are wandering randomly if going only from one short term solution to the next without any long term goals or direction.

But then, there is no long term if the short term actions cripple us or kill us.  There is no long term if we do not survive the short term.

Balancing this is not easily taught to children.  Best start with the simple rules and framework and let the inevitable complications pile on.