Wit & Attitude Quote by Peter Nivio Zarlenga

A businessman defining a lie as metaphysical sabotage is a power move: it drags dishonesty out of the petty realm of excuses and into the existential. Zarlenga’s line doesn’t treat lying as “getting the facts wrong” or even “misleading someone.” It frames the liar as someone attempting to overwrite reality itself, declaring the real unreal and, with a lawyerly rhythm, “deny[ing] the existence of what exists.” That doubling matters. The second sentence isn’t clarification so much as escalation, turning a common moral failure into an act of erasure.

The intent feels less philosophical than operational. In business, the most dangerous lie isn’t the embellished résumé; it’s the spreadsheet that makes losses disappear, the memo that insists the market didn’t shift, the executive narrative that treats harm as “not our problem.” This definition attacks the comforting fiction that deception is just spin. Spin still depends on reality; Zarlenga is targeting the moment an institution tries to nullify reality because acknowledging it would force accountability.

Subtextually, it’s also a defense of consensus reality: if you can’t agree that something exists, you can’t negotiate, audit, regulate, or even plan. The phrasing carries an absolutist, almost theological certainty, which is telling coming from a corporate context where “truth” often gets treated as flexible branding. He’s drawing a hard line: some statements aren’t mere opinions; they’re attempts to disappear facts. In an era of denial-as-strategy (financial, political, ecological), the quote reads like a warning label on modern power.