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Cannot Tell a Lie
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I can't lie.
Well, that isn't true. So I guess I can, but not like I could. Don't get me wrong, as I have never been one to practice lying, but the fact is that we all do it, and we must do it at times. Well, I must, because I like to create surprises for people and give them unexpected presents. Or, because (perhaps surprisingly for some here) I am a bit of a jokester, and like to mess around with people - and this requires telling "non-truths" at times, or keeping a straight face at least.
And I can no longer do it.
It might be strange to think about it, but unintentional honesty is a sign of low intelligence and there have been tests with children that illustrate it. The hypothesis is that a child that can't lie about something they have done is a person who is unable to predict the consequences of their actions, including the reactions of others, like potential punishment. Honesty is seen as such a virtue, and honestly it is, but without intention, it isn't truly being honest, it is just not having the creative power to make up a lie.
Creativity is a lie in some respects, as it is being able to generate something mentally that isn't yet reality and to make connections that do not yet exist. This doesn't mean that creative people are liars and cheaters, but liars and cheaters tend to be creative people. There is an overlap of the Venn diagram.
And even though we don't want to be lied to and cheated upon, we love to be lied to and cheated upon - it is just that it is circumstantial. When we watch a movie, we want to believe that the actor is capable of the role being played, the superhero or the villain, the doctor or the spy. We want that the makeup fools us into believing, and the CGI seamlessly blends into the environment so that we are immersed in the story, a lie, and we can consume uninterrupted. The better and more seamless this gets, the less creative we have to be as an audience, because we don't have to "suspend our disbelief" in order to be fooled, we can just be fools.
I find this interesting.
Because even as an audience now, we are less creative because the content is fuller, richer, with less gaps we have to close. In the past we would read a novel and have to close the many gaps for understanding ourselves, creating all the characters and the scenes in our imagination. Now it is all brought to us in vivid, high-definition detail and designed to give us as many pieces as possible, so we don't have to do anything, think anything, understand anything - the puzzle is already complete enough to know what the picture is, so we don't have to close any more gaps.
And then on the internet, no one knows you are a dog, which means that people are prone to lying about who they are, what they do, what they know, how they look and can effectively be anyone they want to be. But it is a lie that doesn't hold up in reality. This creates a gap between the individual and their false persona, which makes it difficult for a person to rationalise without lying and believing the lies they tell themselves. They are in conflict, because they are unable to suspend their disbelief about themselves.
Lying is a tool, and while most associate it as a negative, it is actually the process required for story telling, where the truth of detail gets twisted in order to convey the truth of the message. Whether that be through the folklore of indigenous tribes, or the instructions for putting together Ikea furniture. The tool of lying can be used nefariously also of course, like the way governments position themselves, or a conspiracy plants evidence to trick the audience into diverting their attention and opinion.
We are gullible.
Over the last decade or so, I have noticed an increase in gullibility of the younger generations, where they are less capable of evaluating truth from fiction. I have also noted that they are less capable of reading facial expressions to predict meaning. This I attribute to the time spent in digital environments where things are spelled out to them and facial expressions are zoomed in and obvious. They seem less capable of reading the nuances of body language, and less capable of telling creative stories of their own. What they tend to talk about, is what they have consumed, with their "personal" opinions not coming through their direct experience and thought, but rather from what they have consumed from whatever media they use.
Repeaters, not creators.
Not all of course, because there are always some people who are outliers, but we should be careful to understand that the average is what drives demand. We can now cherry-pick globally for the outliers and because we can do it at scale, it seems like there are a lot of creative people, but we need to get into the average and as that declines, the bar to being an outlier lowers also. When the average person gets less creative or less intelligent, the most creative and intelligent are reduced also, and the outliers don't have to be as far from the mean. This makes us less capable as a species.
And as said, the average creates the majority of the demand, which includes products, services, and politics. If the average person is more gullible and unable to tell fact from fiction, lie from truth, they are going to be more prone to believing the lies they are told and demanding accordingly. Couple this with an increased sensitivity to feelings and a belief that "me" is the most valuable thing in the world, and it sets up the conditions for demand to be very skewed toward antisocial behaviours that favour disconnection.
We are being lied to daily in numerous ways and we keep buying into the lie because it is more convenient to pretend it is the truth, than to face the reality of actual truth. We want to feel that we are okay, because actually being okay takes too much work on our part. We choose to believe the picture we are sold, so we don't have to examine all the pieces of the puzzle and face that the image of reality is vastly different from our belief of the lie. Active ignorance.
We all lie.
That is the truth.
Taraz
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