Monday, January 13, 2014

How Do You Know They Are Telling The Truth?


“The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.”

- Terry Pratchett

The growing process of a human being comes with destruction of common and not so common illusions and lies. When you are a little child you are ignorant enough to believe in things like Santa Claus and superheroes like Spider-man. As you grow older you understand that similar creatures and phenomenons can exist only in the human imagination. When your brain has collected enough evidence and experience it becomes harder and harder to be fooled. This is when other illusions related to more serious things than your Christmas presents start to develop. In most cases the main construction element of an illusion or a pipe dream is the basic lie. Why do we believe in Santa Claus? Because our family told us he exists. Question is: where does it stop?

To tell the truth, most people don't tell the the truth. They feed you with exactly what they want you to know as part of a natural protective mechanism. If somebody has found a better job he/she may hide it from fear that you are going to want something from him/her. The same mechanism is observed even in simpler things like hiding the fact they you are on a diet due to possible mockery coming from others. We hide, hide and hide. Why? The reason for the appearance of similar defense strategy can be explained in one word – evolution.

The general idea behind evolution is that the stronger are meant to survive while weaker fall behind. Being honest and open with others has been proven to be a dangerous behavior since people are not always quite nice to each other. There is a lot of back stabbing, manipulation, jealousy and hate between the animals we classify as homo sapiens, therefor hiding secrets has become an acceptable and essential technique for survival. Who wants to be honest in a dishonest world?

Even though the above may be obvious to many we fall for fake things presented to us as the real deal. Whether it's a lying friend, politician or a salesman it's advisable to always watch your back and try to see through the constant Photoshop effects we encounter on a daily basis. Everyone of us has very few people around him/her that actually truly care about us unconditionally and without having anything to gain in return. We are pretty much in competition with the rest of the world and despite that there are human laws the only true rule that is always constant and never changes despite of government and institutions is what we are and aren't able to do in particular situation. That's the thing that dictates human actions - what you can get away with and what you can't.

The shiny advertisement of poor quality products, the fake interviews of celebrities, the lies of your boss, the hypocrisy of the government and the prearranged TV reality shows will continue to function as normal. It's a money making machine that will be around forever for good or for bad. Can you ever know if “the man” is telling the truth? You can't and usually if something is too good to be true it's not that good in reality. Because of concepts like this, being a liar has become the norm and honest people are considered sociopaths or just stupid and ignorant lost souls meant to become the dinner of the “stronger” beast.

True story.