Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: Unmasking the lie for what it truly is
Our society’s color-coded lenses distinguish one type of fabrication from the other. And I’m not talking here of honest mistakes, but brazen, unadulterated, and conscious lies.
For example, black lies trump white lies so far as severity and magnitude are concerned. White lies pass off as a chocolate-box utterance too dainty and quaint to be anything but serious.
Black lies, on the other hand, set off alarm bells almost immediately, more so if they put human lives at dire risk of being either threatened or snuffed. And it takes quite a bit of effort and digging to know the difference.
But there’s the darker sort of lie in these dark days that ought to disturb us even more: the outright denial of events aptly called atrocities. Any act of denial in this regard disowns any responsibility for the crimes, a refusal to accept the consequences of one’s decisions and actions.
Worse, such denials openly reject any chance of the crimes from ever happening despite evidence to the contrary. It seeks to erase all records as a formidable testimony of the facts, leaving history and witness in the dustbin of amnesia.
The more people believe the lie, the more society is caught in a web of delusions. A delusional society is no different from a victim of dementia: one suffering not only from general loss of memory but the inability to think reasonably, accurately, correctly.
Besides, the tangled web the powers-that-be weave for us as regards their narrative of reality oftentimes leave us gasping for air.
Not only does the truth become totally inaccessible at this juncture, we cheat ourselves out of the benefits of knowing the facts. For one, being able to decide what to do should things go south. To know beforehand the actions we must take to preserve lives or property, to be aware if we are being bamboozled or not.
How and why some people choose to be blind is totally inexplicable. Bliss, if such is even possible in a delusional society, can only come from knowing the truth, no matter how inconvenient, painful, and cumbersome it oftentimes is.
If you think that’s dark, wait till you peer into the very core of why lies are important to the powerful. Lies are tools for control. They are gizmos for manipulation. A lie, and such as secrets held in silence, are the cruelest crimes one can inflict on an unsuspecting public.
It assumes that you are not deserving of the freedom and the right to think for yourself, that you are not worth the truth, as Nietzsche said, hence the compensation of lies.
Worse, that powerful people favored with titles, power, and resources hold that right in your stead. That they and only they can wield the right to think and decide for everyone else.
Lies are scrumptious because it panders to humanity’s laziness, our indolence to take responsibility for our actions or the lack of it. Manipulation requires that we be idle in the face of truth and the discomfort the truth inflicts.
In exchange for the aches and pains of truth, lies offer myths. The two go hand-in-hand. For each and every denial of the real world, an alternative experience is created to coax our need to be sweet-talked into another version of reality.
This is where the liar builds monuments for himself as testaments to his greatness, the same lifeless monuments that assure everyone their peace of mind.
He wheedles his way into the crevices of make-believe and lures us into its endless caverns. All that cajoling is for one purpose: to trap you in a make-believe world where your freedom to think for yourself is crushed, and you’re brainwashed into believing the fiction shaped solely by a liar’s ego.
U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy, during a commencement address at Yale University in June 11 1962, explained it rather beautifully: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
For as long as you believe the lie, you’re blind to all their plans to rob the country blind.
The lie becomes believable all because the liar is the first to fall for his own fabrications. No single lie is born without the liar falling head first into his fibs. The liar is the lie’s first victim.
Thus, he speaks with conviction, with almost angelic assurance and certainty. And in a world where there’s no lack of failed assurances, certainties promised with seraphic confidence can have a seductive effect on the hearer.
But that is also why there’s the saying that if it’s too good to be true, then we have all the more reason to doubt it. The only thing certain about life is its uncertainty, hence any promise, assurance or guarantee of certainty, no matter the political power he wields, is certainly a barefaced lie.
Human dignity’s most potent attribute is the freedom, right, and ability to think for itself as regards its well-being. To chart his own course in life while he participates in the trajectory of a larger community.
By this definition, a lie becomes a slander to the safety, welfare, and security of the individual and the body politic. Such denials, by all standards, are a betrayal of all things we hold dear — justice, truth, knowledge.
The denial is an act so akin to treason that any sudden realization should push the individual or community to seek immediate redress from the lie’s often fatal consequences.
I would even hazard to say that each and every lie, in particular, each and every denial of atrocities committed in the past and the present, like the denial of Marcoses’ abuses or Duterte’s bloodlust, is a national security threat.
It forces, under duress, the individual and the nation at large in a position where they are robbed of the ability to respond effectively to present and future dangers facing them.
That everything within their power to hold and wield is nowhere within arm’s reach, left solely in the Machiavellian hands of frauds, impostors, swindlers, and hypocrites.
If left unchecked, a repetition of tyranny is imminent.
No government built on lies has ever endured — big or small makes little difference. This is why tyrannies eventually fail. It is built on brittle grounds, weak myths, and cowardly leadership. The dishonor of deceit infects it at every turn.
And since the lie demands constant reassurance and explanation that it is the truth, it is well-nigh certain that they will one day fail in its attempt to secure a place in the psyche of a nation.
The resulting insult to intelligence puts them in the crosshairs of the few courageous souls who’d brave the line of fire if only to expose them for the frauds that they are. It’s just a matter of time before the whole edifice crumbles.
