Lying — and its consequences

When I was a junior or senior in college, I wrote a paper on the American reaction to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and in discussing one of the Luce magazines I said something like “they published things they must have known were not true,” to which my professor remarked in a side note, “what a shocker!”

I always have been very naïve. Despite what I saw around me, my own internal reading of reality was always realer to me than reality itself, and so I didn’t see what I was seeing. (As I told my daughter recently, I’m an intuitive, and intuitives aren’t necessarily known for having common sense.)

But the point was, and is, that something within me couldn’t and still can’t accept that we should be surrounded by newspapers, magazines, radio and television shows, internet sites, etc. that lie to us.

It’s bad enough that we are lied to, but it’s worse that we either don’t believe that we are being lied to (like the very young man I used to be) or we accept as normal a condition that could only be described as systematic pollution of our mental world.

It may be common, but it isn’t normal! And it isn’t sustainable, either.

Lying to ourselves on a continual basis, and continually being lied to, is not the definition of a sane community or a sane individual. How can a community make sane decisions on the basis of false information? How can an individual or a family make sane assessments of our place in space and time on the basis of false assessments?

It can’t be done. And that is just one more reason why our culture is falling down around us: It is based on too many falsehoods, and has too little chance to correct any of them. In the absence of accurate information, there is no chance for sensible public opinion. In that absence of such widely shared opinion, there is no way to create pressure on politicians, business leaders, professionals, academics, etc. In other words, systematic lying prevents timely course-corrections.

Where it will wind up, God knows. Unless and until more people cultivate their internal direct connection with guidance, I see no hope for survival of anything, including much that would be worth saving. 

Too dramatic? Ask yourself where is the world of 1913, or 1938? The physical world continued to exist, but socially, intellectually, spiritually, those worlds ended. I do not mean to go into the question of what we have lost and gained by subsequent developments; I merely point out that worlds end. And that’s what’s happening around us, and not because of increases in the price of gasoline, and not because of the current disastrous maladministration. We are dying of the accumulation of consequences that stem from perpetually being lied to, perpetually lying.

You shall know the lie, and live by it, and the lie shall make you slaves to delusion, and it will bring death and destruction.

 

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