Today, after being lied to, I realized who the real victim of lies is. You might think that it is the person who is lied to. The person who gets hurt, or damaged, or harmed in some way.
However, while they are certainly a victim, I think they aren’t the main victim.
So that seems to leave the liar themselves. After all, what is a lie, but a fear on behalf of the person who is lying to face up to the reality of their life. And someone who lives their life surrounded by fear is really entrapped in their own little world of non-existence. To some extent, you could argue that they don’t even exist (from their own perspective) since they can’t live in their own reality.
But I don’t think that is really the victim, either.
Rather, the real victim is society, and those yet unborn, who enter into a world where they don’t realize the impact of their lies, on themselves and others, but lie out of rote, because those that set the example, themselves didn’t know any better.