“Tell a lie often enough, loud enough, and long enough, and people will believe you.”
- Adolf Hitler

Considering the atrocity he initiated, the man was evidently a master of fraud.  The Holocaust was testament that Hitler knew what he was talking about. The unfortunate problem with pathological lying is that after a while, it is not only everyone else who will believe the liar. The liar himself begins to believe his own stories. About a year ago, I was given an interesting book entitled “House of Cards” by William Cohen, which I finally started reading only recently (sorry Pip!). It is a blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to the fall of the great Bear, which set off a chain of events that eventually ushered in yet another great bear. I know, I know, bad play on words…  Anyway, while I haven’t finished the book, it was fascinating to read how those so-called top financial experts managed to spin a web so seductive that they themselves were enticed into entanglement by the threads of lies that shone with promise then.

So what makes a lie? I don’t think lies are merely the falsities we say. They can also be the truths that we omit or hide. If you think about it, we live in a world full of lies. Our political systems thrive on lies. Politicians pretend to care for their people by visiting disaster sites, but do only enough to avoid the wrath of future voters. Many of our human relationships are based on half-truths. I will not voluntarily tell most people about the things I said and did when I lost my cool, because I want to uphold a certain image. Sometimes, people lie to themselves. I suspect that people who get indignant when they are criticised behave as such because they have managed to convince themselves that they are better than what they truly are. You may be familiar with what I am saying. Some people refer to it as the ego.

As more lies are being spun around us, we become dull to the voice of truth. Just last weekend, I happened to watch one of those filler programmes on television showing how the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia” was made. I had watched the movie before, and I knew that computer-generated imagery (CGI)was involved in the creation of mythical creatures but apart from that, I admit that I had never really given it much thought. I was dismayed when I found out that even the wolves in the movie were created from CGI. I had always thought they were real! I realised that I had bought into a lie because I had been sucked (or suckered) into the make-believe world created entirely on machines running matrixes of 1’s and 0’s.

What I find scary is that I suspect many of us want to be lied to because it makes us feel better in a world that we already know is flawed. Like junkies chasing that elusive high, we need more stimulants, brighter colours, faster action, sleeker moves and greater excitement to mask the dullness, lifelessness and despair that lies beneath the surface. When most people ask “How are you?”, they expect to hear “I’m fine!”, punctuated with a bright smile. We want to make believe that our politicians actually care about us more than they do about our votes. We are easily appeased when a tragedy strikes, and company honchos issue statements beginning with “we deeply regret…” because we want to believe that companies actually care. We need to make believe that we are a better person/worker/son/daughter/friend/lover than most people around us. When we seek affirmation, we are essentially saying, “Don’t tell me truth that is painful to hear. Make me feel better. Lie to me.”

Now that you’ve read this, doesn’t it make you wish that I didn’t sound so negative today?

What a wonderful world we live in.

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