Perhaps it's a deliberately simplistic expession cooked up exclusively in Spagetti Westerns.
However, dare I tempt fate to say, there are three kinds of people in the world,
Honest folk, liars and bloody liars.
Don't get me wrong, it's not as black and white as it sounds. But you might find that this classification is quite accurate.
Not everything a liar says is a lie any more than everything an honest person says is the truth, and the impact of either's lie is neither here nor there, since one doesn't always know the impact of their deception - and a lack of propensity to lie doesn't presuppose a person isn't a high functioning psychopath. The real difference isn't in how often they lie but WHY.
Here is one of three scenarios I'll use to illustrate this.
Earlier this morning, I stopped by a hardware store to buy an adapter for the American pin my laptop charger uses. I specifically wanted that very portable adapter that takes only one 3-pin. The lady selling told me she didn't have it and proceeded to look around for an alternative. She then handed me one of those unnecessarily large adapters that take just a 2-pin and 3-pin (and the two never together). And this adapter was GHS8. Seeing that I needed a portable adapter, I was loathe to shell out that kind of money for something so ungainly. I made sure she understood what I was looking for. She gave the impression of looking around some more then handed me the turkey she had initially offered. I handed her a 10 and while waiting for her to make change, I angled around to put the ugly thing in my bag, and lo and behold, there hanging on the wall was exactly the adapter I was looking for, right at the entrance - And there were dozens of them.
No way a small time trader will forget such a large stock. But see, the woman wasn't trying to be helpful. She was trying to make a profit.
That is a bloody liar.
Some weeks back, while walking through Madina, I decided to satisfy a craving for coconut juice from one of those guys selling them off the back of 'trucks'. As per my taste, I asked the guy for a sweet one, which doesn't means anything unless you clarify that you want one which isn't 'akp3 na tor' (Copra, basically. The hard, old ones sold as accompaniment to corn). I told him this of course. You have to, or the sellers unload their oldest coconuts on you.
The guy, as standard copra-test, knocked on the side of the nut in his hand before cutting it for me.
Immediately after he did, I noticed the tell-tale vapor rising off the top. Copra! I gave him a knowing smile and drank what he handed me, paid him and calmly told him he was a bloody liar. He grinned foolishly and said nothing.
My business partner, who was with me at the time, asked what that was all about, to which I answered. He proposed that perhaps the guy simply made a mistake to which I said,
"I used to go farming with my dad, and part of that involved climbing and plucking coconuts from trees, and it took me, then a newbie, under a day to tell the difference between an old coconut (with the husk dried and with the juice competing for air within the shell) and a perfectly ripe coconut, still full of water and with a husk heavy with moisture.
Anyone who cuts and sells coconuts all day for a living and claims not to know the difference is a liar.
But let's bring this home. You ever sit in a taxi, tell the driver exactly where you want to go, have him agree to a price, get there, and tell you "This one dieer, you should consider him"?
Translation: having provided the service, he is ambushing you with a renegotiation -- upwards.
This is a liar.
Or less subjective, ever sat in a taxi after telling the cabbie exactly where you want to go, have him agree, set a price, then halfway there, he tells you he has NO idea where you destination is located (precisely because he's come fresh from Kumasi and has no idea where anywhere in Accea is)
This is a bloody liar.
How do I classify them? Telling the difference between a liar and a bloody liar is subjective. Telling the difference between an honest folk and any kind of liar though, like I said, is less about how many lies one tells but more why they lie, their propensity to do so, and hence how easily they will lie for even the most trivial of benefits. I think it has something to do with weak personality, lack of moral backbone, or to use an old-fashioned but fitting term, lack of moral fibre. Basically, a failire to convince oneself of the inherent advantage of the simplest of truths when a flat out lie will almost always suffice. They don't need to lie more. They just need to lie more readily.
Why is this important, you ask? honest folk, liars, bloody liars?
Because contrary to the misanthropist creed, we live, work and survive on the existence of others. Won't you like to look into the eyes of someone you fall asleep next to, trust with your secrets or count on professionally, and know right off the bat whether that person would try to sell you the air you're already breathing if they can get away with it?
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