Lies

The Contagion of Deception

Lies are a thorny subject. On one hand we have innocent forms of deception: white lies, sweet little lies, and we can even lie to ourselves. But don’t let these quaint catch-phrases fool you; when it comes to intentional deception, the implications are staggering. There are layers of meaning, ethical questions, and gradations to consider.

Lies can define our character. Someone can be a pathological liar. Studies show we lie more often than we think. Yet we see many everyday lies as harmless. Some clearly are. Humoring someone who is unsure of whether to wear an outfit or start an artistic endeavor is innocent. It comes down to a question of intent and results.

Yet, on the world stage and in our personal lives, big lies can create similar problems because lies are often a vehicle of power.

Deception is a tool of power.

Lies are load-bearing.

Lies and deception are tools of control.

Propaganda is a form of political deception. It serves as the intellectual bedrock of a political system that usurps and hoards power. Demagogues amass power by confusing others with distortions and half-truths.

Some lies are obvious and thus spoken to demonstrate power.

Images of Mussolini and Hitler come to mind. A leader so brazen, so willing to lie, pushes key buttons in people waiting for that strongman to come along and lead us back to glory. We’ve seen these stories play out in predictably catastrophic ways.

Such characters lie, not just to peacock, but to rationalize harm. The January 6th attack was predicated on an obvious lie—that President Biden stole the 2020 election. He very obviously did not.

Remember Trump’s earlier lie—that President Obama was a Muslim and not born in the US. Or further back, that the Exonerated Five were guilty until proven innocent. Powerful lies that damage real people’s lives.

Lies serve as scaffolding for movements and usurpations of power.

“They’re eating the dogs!”

“They’re not sending their best!”

Insidious lies that fester and divide.

The election lie was used to justify harm. Not just physical violence and property damage, but political violence—the kind that very easily could have ended our grand experiment in self-government on that day.

Propaganda about Jews in the decades leading up to WW2 led to genocide--a grisly example of what scapegoating can do. Now new lies attempt to minimize the 6 million deaths that came as a result of the original lies.

Lies, in this regard, are functional--part of a plan and a process.

On a personal level, lies can be hard to catch and harder to understand. Some have innocent intentions and create little blowback. Humoring a lover or a friend. But deceptive people’s lies indicate something. Some need. Something to hide. A wound to protect. An intent to manipulate.

They can also serve to obfuscate and mislead. To hide an affair, a checkered past, or cruel intentions. They can serve to misdirect--to make a lover or a friend blame themselves when acting in good faith. They can cause a person to doubt their ability to make sense of their experiences. We call this gaslighting. These lies are powerful and amount to psychological abuse.

Your confusion gives the liar power, cover, space, advantage. It protects them from consequences: vulnerability, accountability, introspection, the need to grow.

In politics, lies can prepare the populace for domination.

In relationships, they can bring confusion that sets the stage for: abuse, neglect, affairs and loss of self. Lies can make someone feel used, broken, at fault, not enough, too much, too needy.

The lies replace reality.

On a national level, social cohesion craters, creating seismic impacts. Division, violence, tribalism, and loss of liberty to totalitarian regimes.

The individual, inhabiting both settings, feels lost, unable to trust his/her senses--leading to further isolation. This compounds the sense of estrangement which further potentiates the nefarious activities of the political powers who thrive on division and offer a person safe harbor in their cult of personality. Isolated people are more vulnerable to individual perpetrators as well.

I wonder if similar characters are behind the lies in both spheres. We love diagnosing everyone, but, you don’t have to have a personality disorder to have manipulative tricks up your sleeve. Many who deceive have modeled these behaviors from parents, siblings, friends, movies or books. Some abuse can hamper neurological development, creating empathy gaps. Some people simply lack empathy. This can free a person to do as they please.

Those of us with more capacity to feel and care are at an obvious disadvantage. Lies can have a coarsening effect, even on those with a strong moral code. Exhausted, we may come to believe, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’. We could choose to get our just desserts by easing our ethical standards, crossing our lines in the sand. Monkey see, monkey do.

I call this the contagion of deception. It’s like a tractor beam, and it is how civilizations fall. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire and was ruled by cruel men.

People abandon ethics and each other when truth no longer matters.

When shared reality crumbles.

And yet, that’s just one problem. People don’t merely sink to new depths of depravity. Cynicism doesn’t merely create more cynicism.

The contagion of deception is, more directly, the forced transference of shame, of confusion, of blame, onto the victim.

The unwitting recipient must now manage the other’s accrued psychic debt, the pain, the unprocessed shame, in the form of an imposed nervous system dysregulation. Such lies serve as a vehicle to dump trauma onto the unsuspecting, who must then deal with these staggering after-effects. They may feel cursed to bear this burden while trying not to follow suit--to resist unleashing this radioactivity onto another, as was done unto them.

Civilization is choosing not to replicate the wound in another.

Not to unburden oneself at someone else’s expense.

Choosing to hold oneself accountable, even when others have not.

Because truth and shared reality are the hallmarks of community.