“Love makes the world go round.” That’s a lie.
Lies reflect the truths society can’t handle, like Climate Change.
Why are lies more respected than truth in modern society? Because, if you thought about how often we hear lies, and acted on it, you would spend the day slapping every person who spoke to you.
If that were the case you would have to acknowledge the people who are running your government might be lying to you to keep themselves paid and in as many corporate dollars as the law would allow.
Really. Most of your entertainment would go out the window and the fabric of your social interactions would careen to a halt under the weight of spoken truths. Doubt me?
Don’t. I brought some evidence.
- You wouldn’t watch television, because everything you see there is a lie, designed to sell you something (product A is better than Product B) nothing more than a complete fabrication since the advertising is paid for by Product A. Product B says the exact same thing in THEIR advertising.
- Or it’s a lie to convince you of something you need to believe in order to set up the ability to sell you something. “Oily flatulence can be cured using Fartbegone™ (zereonaex, patents pending). May cause blindness, heart palpitations, sleepwalking into oncoming traffic, and memory loss.”
- You wouldn’t ever listen to a politician (they are all but lying with every breath they take and every dollar they get from companies paying them to disregard laws, deregulate industries and otherwise fuck over every poor person who can’t afford a lobbyist on their behalf);
- And every rich person who spoke to you would be doing nothing BUT lying . But with honesty comes clarity: No, I don’t like you; why do I have to speak to you; please go somewhere and die, so I can get back to my Pinot, thank you, very much.
Lying is the grease of an otherwise impolitely fucked society. Otherwise we’d resort to murder to balance the scales. We lie to keep the peace.
The rich lie and say: You’ll have your day, one day.
The poor lie and say: I’ll be rich one day.
Both know the other is lying, but its the only truth they both can share.
We live in culture of lies, both large and small.
We would like it to be different.
But we refuse to make the effort.
Because we would be… uncomfortable.
Nobody likes to be uncomfortable unless it has a time limit.
Unending discomfort? Not so much.
Lies make the world go round. Don’t believe me? Let’s check with a few sectors of society:
US Senate refuses to accept humanity’s role in global climate change, again
Senators accept global warming is not a hoax but fail to recognise human activity is to blame, nearly 27 years after scientists laid out man’s role. Everyone knows this is a lie. Humanity is so totally to blame for the state of our planetary condition. Strip mines, pollution, billions of cars, plastic choking the oceans to death, pesticides killing the bees, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
But no one holds these bastards accountable for their lack of scientific acumen or concern for the social welfare (even though that’st supposed to be their job). Let’s go on, shall we?
Economics?
- Someone has to be poor, so others can be rich.
- Malthus was right. There simply isn’t enough to go round.
- We can’t change the world.
- Why should we pay teachers more? They don’t do anything for the economy.
- Unions steal money out of your pocket. The Right to Work is the Way to go.
- Renewable energy is too expensive to ever be used around the world as a viable source of power.
Society?
- We can’t make them citizens, it would disrupt the economy.
- Healthcare for all is unsustainable
- It’s impossible to hold them accountable for war or theft against the citizenry.
- There’s no war on women. We just think men understand how to make laws for women, better than women do.
- There no need for critical thinking skills in the American populace. Ignorance is Bliss.
- Slavery was a voluntary program of immigration in the 1500s for Blacks.
Parenting?
- Stop doing that it will make you go blind.
- You won’t be doing that under my roof.
- I don’t have a problem, I can quit whenever I want to.
- That’s Daddy secretary and your new mommy.
- There’s nothing wrong with Florida being White wouldn’t fix.
- No, you don’t look fat in that dress.
- Grandma is sick, she doesn’t remember you right now. She’ll get better soon.
Technology?
- Technology is going to solve all our ills. We just have to wait.
- Climate change has nothing to do with how Mankind lives on the Earth or consumes the Earth’s natural resources.
- People like replacing their phones every six months.
- Cable never costs more than it should. You get all the cable speed you pay for.
- If technology was going to solve a problem, the problem it needs to resolve is immortality for the rich, not birth control for the poor. Whose going to do all the work? I don’t plan to be immortal scrubbing toilets…
Religion?
- It’s a godless religion built on murder and mayhem. Not Christianity, you idiot, them Muslims.
- God has an effect on our lives.
- The Bible was written by God, himself.
- We should be able to use God to oppress whoever we feel like. The Bible says so.
- Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face and is the Anti-Christ. (Okay, this one might not be a lie.)
Devaluation of all that is good in society is the way to go:
If you look at our world closely, you will see: people who care for others, teachers, mothers, parents, caretakers, nurses, are all at the bottom of the social and economic ladder.
We claim if it’s valuable it rises to the top, but the truth is the thing never spoken in public. Hedge fund managers do nothing to benefit society as a whole. Neither do sporting events. But we pay them as if we couldn’t live without them.
The more money you have, the less likely it was you helped anyone along the way to your wealth. Your prosperity is paved on the bones of the millions you impoverish over the course of your financial fuckery.
No one wants to hear the truth. It might make them accountable for something. Something bad.
Here is the bottom line: As far as we know, we are alone in the Universe. We are terribly mortal and die before we learn to truly live. We live in fear of each other. Fear of the Other. It’s ingrained in our very genes. But we need each other to survive.
My prescription is simple: Keep lying. Lie. Consume. Know your place. Repeat as needed until your screaming conscience subsides. Understand when you decide to go rogue and start telling the truth, there will be hell to pay…
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair
See Also:
- Cognitive dissonance
- Doublethink
- Stockholm syndrome
- Gaslighting
- Mind control
- (Logical) Fallacy
- Metacognition
Thaddeus Howze is a popular and recently awarded Top Writer, 2016 recipient on the Q&A site Quora.com. He is also a moderator and contributor to theScience Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange with over fourteen hundred articles in a four year period.
His speculative fiction has appeared online at Medium, Scifiideas.com, and theAu Courant Press Journal. He has appeared in twelve different anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. A list of his published work appears on his website, Hub City Blues.
