to lie or not to...

Have you ever heard of white lies? I bet you have. But first, what is to lie anyway? P eople have different theories about the subject, but I think that it's basically to protect ourselves from ourselves. And this concept applies to both, big and 'white' lies.
Think about it: why do with have the necessity of hiding the truth in the first place? Maybe because we don't want to hurt the feelings of the other person. So we mentally say, for exmple: 'I think that my friend is wearing a horrible pink dress, but I love her, and I don't want to make her feel bad, so if she asks me, I'll just say a white lie.'
Now, what would happen if this person was honest and told her friend what she really thinks of the horrible pink dress? Obviously, the mentioned friend would feel sad, or angry, or insulted. To make it short, we do know that this is an expected reaction, so before anything happens, we imagine the situation, and we mentally judge it. And the veredict is that telling a white lie we are protecting our dear friend, and just like I said, we are also protecting us... What a tricky dilemma, hu?
Don't worry, though, 'cause I'm not gonna say that 'we shouldn't lie' just for two simple reasons:
- everybody knows that lying is bad.
- everybody lies!
I'm just writing this down 'cause I want to understand how selfish we are: in the end, it's not that we care that much of the ones that surround us, it's the fact that we don't want to be looked at like damn jerks (even when we do).
As I said it, it's quite a tricky thing. Right?