Self-Deception
Being deceived, and deceiving ourselves, work hand-in-hand.
Strangely, sometimes self-deception works. Look at some of the so-called “judges” in courts, that aren’t qualified to judge a dog pageant. Somehow, they, often through DEI and other entitlements, slithered their way through law school, and got themselves ensconced in a plum job, all the while without the sense God gave a gnat. But deceiving themselves won the day.
Resisting Truth
We want constants in our lives – invariants. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also makes us comfortable. This can make us turn a blind eye to things in ourselves or our environment that we should but don’t want to change, or won’t change. Often, we don’t even realize certain problems require change. Which means, we have to lie to ourselves.
We generally can’t distinguish lies from truth because our whole lives are structured for lies. That is the ultimate (successful) goal of the societal brainwashing we endure, designed to keep us in a child-like state of belief and existence.
Everything rotten is easier to swallow when everything we’re fed is a lie. However, in order to exist, we must constantly adapt. The only ones that don’t want people to adapt are those who profit from ignorance.
It’s nice to have a reliable, comfortable, reassuring consistency in life, but, we take it too far, and think we don’t have to adapt at all, don’t have to learn anything new, can rely on the same perception of reality we had in our teens, or whenever we were able to establish for ourselves a state of comfortable delusion.
One trick we play on ourselves is warping our internal world, or perceptual model, out of correlation with reality, the external world, by insisting that our perception, that internal world, be tailored to our liking.
Here’s a question for the ages. How many people even realize that our perceptual model – yes, everyone’s – is out of synch with the real world? (Note that if the model were 100%, we’d never be confused, baffled or wrong. Phrased in that way, it’s easier to understand that our perceptions are flawed.)
The Great Hero
The late comedian, George Carlin insulted his audience, referring to them as dummies, yet that same audience showers endless praise on the guy. One specific, the clearest example, was his observation, “Think about how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” That got a big laugh. So, everyone tickled by that, must consider themselves well above average, quite an anomaly.
That’s self-deception.
Carlin was an interesting case. He obviously was an insider, part of the “big club” of privileged that he seemed to rant against. He also seemed to get so mad about injustice and to have real empathy for the unwashed masses. Well, as George Burns said, “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Chess Problem
We can’t hide things from ourselves. As a not-so-obvious example, we can’t play chess against ourselves: It always ends in stalemate.
So how it is that we can seem to lie to ourselves all the time? One example of this is when we tell ourselves, “This time will be different” (a fallacy identified in this article).
Since we can’t truly lie to ourselves, one of the consequences of trying to do so is that we seek justification for our self-deception, and people have endless, dangerous justifications for everything under the sun.
Clinging to False Knowledge
We are driven to retain false knowledge as part of our brainwashing. In fact our innate sense that conceding a particular point or accepting another point of view might cause us to have to change our beliefs and behavior, causing us discomfort, makes us “change the subject,” or make a run for it, or, of course, attack the messenger.
This is part of the ongoing processing we might call the workings of the mind, what some might refer to as “subconscious.” Anticipation is a necessary part of consciousness, but we aren’t generally aware of it or its consequences, though we’ve all observed it. Obstinacy, resistance to new ideas, unwillingness to change our minds or accept new ideas – we’ve seen it in others and we’re guilty of it ourselves.
Power Figures
Here is one mechanism whereby we’re locked into believing and internalizing lies, nonsense and other BS: a someone, hearing something new, tests it for validity, not by research and recourse to logic, but by deferring to the opinion of those who are their authority figures or “power figures,” the ones who mold their decisions and opinions.
This fallacious method is called, “appeal to authority.” It isn’t just used in arguments, some people frame their lives around it, using authority figures to dictate their realities.
Group-Think
The power figures are often political or religious leaders, heads of large companies or “titled” individuals, like doctors or scientists.
Their believers have made a choice, to “go with the flow,” “follow the leader,” and so on. Truth is no obstacle.
To stay in the group, people will intrinsically shut up about illogic, contradictions, and other fallacies, and obey the unwritten rules. Nothing new there, but clearly a conditioned behavior. And this conditioning is reinforced as correct, when it’s observed that the “yes-men,” “brown-nosers,” and so on, are the ones to thrive (even as they bring the organization down around themselves).
Self-Indulgence and Ego
Along with self-deception, our capacity for entertainment is endless. We’d much rather support entertaining falsehoods than boring truths.
Compounding this, rather than considering new viewpoints, or admitting that we don’t know everything, it is hard for us to learn, or, rather, to commit to being taught, at least when it is not by an “authorized authority.” Falling back on group-think makes for an easy out to this dilemma.
Test Yourself
Self-deception tells us “we can afford it,” when its just that we “really want it.” When assessing a purchase, who adds up everything, that is, all the costs, and related costs? Say you’re looking to buy a car, that would include taxes and options, insurance, license and registration, maintenance, gasoline. Cleaning and storage and parking fees and accessories and that stuff to make the raindrops bead on your windshield. It’s not just the “retail price” to consider when you consider large expenditures.
Have you considered how you’ll be promoted, at work, if you’re not “connected” in some way? It was drummed into our heads as youth, that we’d get a job and inevitably, “move up in the ranks,” eventually up to CEO and Chairman of the Board! Well, we all found out the hard way that isn’t true, except for the very limited few whose cronies can provide a boost.
Have you considered why you or anyone would ever want to “run for political office?” Why wouldn’t you consider that someone at least, must be doing it merely for personal gain, not the stated purpose of “serving.” What if everyone is? How could you tell?
Gorging
Admiring all the junk food wrappers on the sidewalk the other day, there appeared a discarded envelope for a snack called “Cookies and Cream.” No cream in that crap, and in fact, it’s not even real food. It is inedible, except for the intercession of our either weirdly undiscerning, or weirdly resilient, digestive tract. No one seems to understand that or care, except a vanishing few. Used to be food had real ingredients — butter, milk, eggs, cream, nuts... but they seem to have found cheap and decay-proof “substitutes” for everything under the sun. We’re deceived whenever we eat most anything that has been processed. What level of self-deception does it take to continue to gorge on this crap and think it’s doing something helpful for us?
Then there are the plastic surgery/mutilation addicts. Someone on YouTube was baffled at these hags who mutilate themselves to simulate beauty. Aside from the fact that a lot of these morphin’ ladies are actually laddies who have to remodel regularly, he had a great observation, that smiles in these poor creatures don’t reach the eyes. One must wonder if there’s something else involved with the “alien” looks. Also, the “startle eyebrows” are a tell-tale. Someone did mention that you don’t notice the good surgeries, but even then, there must be tells after a while, when the renovations get excessive.
Then they lie about it. Erin Moriarty from the TV show, The Boys changed appearance drastically, then said it was due to weight loss, but that doesn’t explain a narrowed nose, lips puffed, eyebrows altered, hair ironed with a steamroller... Sadly, a lot of young women, some naturally very attractive, are tricked into unnecessary surgeries, or pushed into it by jealous “friends,” family, agents and advisors, or, of course, surgeons.
We need to add a comment about jackasses. When Erin released the photo of her new look, many commenters rolled in with backlash against those who criticized the changes. The sniping, whining morons need to bugger off with their mock empathy. It’s more than legit to gripe about someone’s bad plastic surgery, it being almost forced on people by predatory doctors (and these same butchers are inexplicably being allowed to mutilate young children under the guise of “sex changes” and are somehow not in jail). Her alterations were something she can only have done to influence people’s opinions in the first place, so how can she not expect feedback, which may be good or bad?
To Summarize
How do we resolve having our own nature turned against us?
We are mostly unwitting participants in a struggle against people who have strategies and tactics that are as far above us as, say, a chess program is above us in calculation, or as an automotive engine is superior mechanically.
These manipulators play us like donkeys, so it’s worthwhile to ponder over instances where we fell victim to self-deception, and consider ways to vanquish it.
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