In a long-ago interview, the philosopher and ethicist Sissela Bok, author of “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,” told Bill Moyers that it’s so easy to lie that “sometimes people just slip into it, they don’t even stop to think.” She explained, “Lying, of course, is a way of gaining power over other people through manipulating them in various ways, and this is something that children learn. They also learn to keep secrets. And then I believe we almost have to unlearn that. If we are to mature, we have to unlearn any enjoyment of that power.”