True Lies: It REALLY Was Me

It really isn't all that bad to speak the untruth. It is only comfortable; I just want to avoid getting in trouble.

I have a theory about untruth, and it has nothing to do with the movie “Just Go With It,” scheduled for February 11, 2011. My theory is untested; it is a speculation, really. I speculate that untruth is a defensive response to events construed as potential crises. Summarily, I will define the terms untruth as the deliberate alteration of information to avoid sincerity and honesty, and crises as any perceived or actual unfavorable consequence of sincerity and honesty.

In my life, I have been untruthful purposely for entertainment and sometimes for a means for escaping imagined or real trouble. Often, untruth has landed me in more trouble than if I were sincere and honest. However, on several occasions I have gladly evaded crises and found myself entertained by the experience. It is only unfortunate that the relief of closure seems forever elusive in episodes of untruth.

Untruth begins quite easily by altering a seemingly unimportant fact in a bigger picture problem. Say, for example, in a situation where a theft has occurred and you were a witness in the crime. You are sure you saw the injustice occur but you decide to report as having glanced in the direction of the crime scene only briefly and managed to catch the color of the criminal’s jacket as (s)he darted around the end of the street. You reason that investigators will leave you alone, may never appear before a judge to give testimony, or worse, be targeted by the criminal or his/her associates. The half-truth is very convenient; you put down your statement and the cursory preliminary investigation casts your testimony to the very bottom of their priority lists. But, the enterprising lawyer representing the plaintiff will not relent until all evidence has been brought forward and dissected with utmost keenness. You are approached to confirm your statement and unconsciously you say you witnessed the whole thing. Obviously, you are excited to exercise justice and service, but you don’t realize your verbal inconsistency.

Inconsistency is an existential human problem. Or, I should say consistency is. We are hardwired to conform with order. We love to organize and make sense of things that our chaotic universe throw at us. Although we are handicapped in our understanding of our world, we imagine it as beautifully and masterfully designed to move in harmonious continuation. The fact of this matter is controversial; however, it is apparent that chaos is the human antithesis. As such, we choose to maintain a semblance of order in our lives. Our minds will naturally want to continue harmoniously with our environment, and the unconscious thought can be understood as the most uninhibited, honest and sincere response to events.

Back to our example, the enterprising lawyer catches red flags in the differences in your statements. Only one of your statements can be accepted as truth. Now, you have a choice to right your initial wrongs. But you think again about the bother it all will become. It already is quite bothersome, anyways, you conclude. Therefore, you decide that you may have not actually seen anything. Only you thought you saw, but it was probably your eyes playing games on you. You know, like vertigo. It couldn’t have been true. Besides, you wear glasses and they might have been misty. New information, endless lies. Ultimately, you are caught in your own web of untruths, unable to delineate fact from fiction, and a different personality is created. The new person is consistent with the half-truths and outright untruths. (S)he is in complete harmony with the nascent world of untruths.

So, I submit to all now that untruth is useful for our sanity. If we must coexist peaceably with our world we need compatibility with it. But we also must protect ourselves from perceived risks. It is our animal right, an instinct. If an untruth is convenient to us, by all means we shall live with it. If a truth will rob us of our comforts, why embrace it? We must lie, then, to continue living without discomfort.

To better clarify this argument, I implore you to look at an example of a disgruntled employee. The employee insists on keeping her job for income’s sake, but she can’t stand her boss. The boss is an obnoxious jerk, and that is not an invented fact for everybody knows it. The employee struggles to go to work, and manages each day to suppress the welling dissatisfaction she gets from her job. She hopes to get a new job with a new and better boss elsewhere, but in the meantime, she must put up with her insufferable boss. The resultant friction grinds her patience until one day she crashes. Tears cannot relieve her dried and tired spirit. Even if the employee gets a new job with better conditions, she is broken and inefficient. Inevitably, her new boss will demand more from her than she can deliver, and the employee, with a history of abuse, readily misconstrues her new predicament as a conspiracy targeted at her. She begins to self-pity and lament her fate. She may even think she is doomed to an unlucky life. In time, the employee crumbles in depressive episodes and mental disturbance.

If we trace the problem pathologically, we find a continuous thread of inconsistencies that are combating the employee’s mind. The mind wants a peaceful coexistence with the status quo, and if chaos is offered instead, the mind cannot submissively go on. The mind must rebel, and it will. In response, the mind may seek an alternate reality, a better environment for itself. However, subjected to continual chaos at work, there cannot be a safe haven for the mind to seek refuge. The only option it has left is to shut down in a last ditch strategy at revolt. And with it, all symptoms of crazy.

Lest I inundate you with innuendo, let me end this entry by pointing out the take home lesson from it: we need consistency to keep us mentally healthy. If truths cannot deliver us from the chaos, we are but to turn to untruths. We will avoid crises by all means possible.

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