The Father of the Lie

by sabastious 38 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  sabastious

  Why do we lie dude? Fear, we lie because we are afraid of the truth, we are prisoners of lies because the truth is soemthing that we don't want to hear.

  Take one step back. Why do we become fearful? Fear originates within the emotional brain which is designed, ultimately, to save the whole. So why do we get fearful of something like public speaking? Public speaking does not threaten our life at all, but some of the most intense fear comes from people who are speaking to the public. That fear comes from an insecurity within the emotional brain. Why does the emotional brain feel insecure? Because it feels ill equipped for whatever reason, which is information that is obtained from the logical processors of the brain. There is a synergy that takes place between the logical processors and the emotional processors of our brains. This synergy can be operative or inoperative.

  Laurence Gonzales wrote a book called Deep Survival. In the book he uses a horse racing analogy to describe how the emotional brain and logical brain work together. The horse is the emotional brain and the jocky is the logical brain. The right brain, like the horse, is much stronger than and capable killing the left brain, or the jocky. The jocky must control the horse and once this is attained they become a powerful force to win the face.

  Fear can be a functional or dysfunctional act of the brain. The logical brain has the capability of performing a simple task like telling something already known to a large group instead of a small group, but the misplaced fear from the emotional brain will mud up the process.

  The same goes with lying. If we are fearful enough to lie frivolously then we don't have the proper synergy between the our right and left brains.

  -Sab
• 

  PSacramento

  Interesting view.

  Of course some people are just not smart enough to be fearful...

  I don't think it is as simple as a lack of synergy in the brain, like any other supercomputer the brain makes multiple calculations for every situation, add to that the emotional and instinctive issue present and what you get is a very complex set of variables that lead to a person deciding to lie ot tell the truth.

  Sure we can bring it down to the "lowest common denominator" and say that fear is caused by X, but there is always more to it than just that.

  Lies are used to coverup things we KNOW to be wrong.

  We did a mistake and we have to decided to admit it or lie about it, so our brain starts going through the computations of all the pros and cons that go with either option, it weights then base don what we are WILLING to deal with in long term and short term realities and then, coupled with instrinct and emotion, we decide.
• 

  sabastious

  PSac, my main point is that lying is not something that bodes well for survival. It's a fatal flaw. Lying is counterintuitive to the big human picture and I have a dreadful fealing that we, as a collective, must stop lying or simply fall into oblivion. That means us too no matter how "good" we live our lives to be.

  Also, I have always been a believer in Gene Roddenberry's vision in regards to technology. The second he saw a computer he had hope for mankind, which is a very logical position. Once we get a shnazzy renewable energy source things will change for the better and maybe then can we make attempts of solving the blight of misinformation. Many large groups have their livelihoods vested in misinformation, unfortunately.

  -Sab
• 

  PSacramento

  I agree that lying doesn't bode well, it falls into the "ends justifies the means" category that never really works out for Us.

  My point is that it can and does function as a survival tool and an effective one ( even if only short term) and because of that, it will probably be passed on generation to generation.
• 

  sabastious

  My point is that it can and does function as a survival tool and an effective one ( even if only short term) and because of that, it will probably be passed on generation to generation.

  It fallacious to believe that a short term solution can solve a long term problem. That's why lies have to be accompanied with more lies, because they don't solve anything beyond the lie's scope. Right now lies are more powerful than truths (if that makes any sense). A lie is like viruses of the same group that host on cells. They just continue consuming cells until they are destroyed by an external force (immune system).

  -Sab
• 

  PSacramento

  It fallacious to believe that a short term solution can solve a long term problem. That's why lies have to be accompanied with more lies, because they don't solve anything beyond the lie's scope. Right now lies are more powerful than truths (if that makes any sense). A lie is like viruses of the same group that host on cells. They just continue consuming cells until they are destroyed by an external force (immune system).

  Tommy sees a nice girl and over hears her say to her friends how she loves firemen.

  Tommy intoduces himself, they get talking and she asks what does he do and he says fireman, *yada, yada, yada* Tommy gets laid because of the lie ( maybe not 100% because of it, but it helped).

  Billy grabs a girls ass, she thinks it was him but not sure so she tells her BF, he goes up and confronts Billy, Billy lies, says it wasn;t him, his buddies lie to cover him, Billy's lies save him an ass beating.

  That eventually these lies wil get them BOTH in trouble doens't change the fact that they worked.

  Now, short tem lies do NOT solve long term problems but not all of our genetic traits exist to solve long term problems, many of them are there for short term solutions ( like getting laid and propagating our genes).
• 

  sabastious

  Now, short tem lies do NOT solve long term problems but not all of our genetic traits exist to solve long term problems, many of them are there for short term solutions ( like getting laid and propagating our genes).

  That makes sense, but humans have long term problems.

  Take murder for example. Murder, like a lie, at one point in the human timeline was useful and an acceptable form of survival. Now we have Law which acts as an immune system against murder, why? Because, as we enlightened (generational brain evolution), we chose to put in place systems of government to protect against injustice. Lies are also covered in our system of Law albeit much more loosly than murder.

  The blight of misinformation scourges the land, PSac! Official polls and questioneers around the world would indicate that there are countless firm conclusions to life and existence. There is only one truth because there canonly be one truth. Countless people are dead wrong no matter what the truth ends up being and that is because of the lies being believed. To create a lie is to abandon one's own function. That's why the story of Genesis is so important to me, it describes how that process works and with that description comes the solution: don't lie.

  -Sab
• 

  sabastious

  I include myself in the "dead wrong" category, btw. LoneWolf put it well in his post here. Without each other a single human can only progress so far. We need other minds, with differing vantage points on life, to comb through what we have put together in order to continue. Yet, as a unified species we could stretch on forever.

  -Sab
• 

  PSacramento

  Human have a tendency to ignore long term problems, this we know and see as facts everyday and Genesis is a perfect example of that.

  Short term problem = want to be like God

  Solution: "eat the fruit"

  Long term problem from that will be ALL that goes with being like God.

  Solution: Ignore long temr issues and focus on short term intrestes.

  Sound familar?
• 

  ziddina

  Hmm....

  I don't usually comment on Sabastious' threads, as they've always appeared to be very bible-based to me, and once I figured out that the bible had very human origins, it basically lost its appeal....

  However, I do want to make a few points...

  [And I'm posting while 'hopped-up' on Halloween candy and Halloween music, so please bear with me....]

  First, Sabastious posted,

  "The non believers focus on our insignificances and the believers await their paradise, whatever flavor that might be, after a tearing down rather than a building up, of course. ..."

  "non-believers"???? "believers"????

  Non-believers and believers of WHAT???? Hinduism? Buddhism? Taoism? Shintoism? Wicca? Confucianism? Rosicrucians? Gnostics? Greek Pan-Theists?? Norse Pan-Theists?? Modern Neo-Pagans???

  So, I would hazard a guess that this little conversation about "believers" and "non-believers" is instantly limited to bible-believers....

  Which brings up the NEXT set of qualifiers...

  Are we talking about those who believe primarily in the Old Testament - meaning those of the Jewish faith? Or are we talking about the Greco-Romanized variation of Jewish mythology, the Christians? Or are we even talking about those who believed in the Pentateuch, but have built their own mythology upon the first five books of the bible - like the Muslims???

  And on to the next item...

  Then Sabastious said,

  "I live now and have lived in a world mainly consisting of perfectionists who cannot live in a world where they are imperfect. ..."

  So, can I assume that this entire thread is strictly about Jehovah's Witnesses and ex-Jehovah's Witnesses - who still believe in the bible as the "word of god"????

  Which makes one of Sabastious' next main comments, far too all-inclusive...

  "We don't like lying it's not in us to lie, it's not in us to accept lies from others. What is in us is the will to survive of which we use Free Will to choose how to attain survival. ..."

  Ah, Sabastious, I hate to break your bubble, but lying appears to have been an integral part of humanity's evolving mentality from VERY early in human history...

  All you'd have to do, is research some of the most ancient forms of worship. After all, the bible's only around 3,500 years old; there are religions and forms of worship that are far, FAR older...

  But unfortunately, ALL of them also involve forms of self-delusion - LYING - to oneself...

  Just look at the concepts of animism. Followers of that concept had to LIE to themselves that the "north wind" [for example...] was a grouchy old man who'd kill you soon as look at you... Or that the ocean was a woman who loved you one minute, and was furious at you, the next...

  Moving on to goddess worship... Followers of THAT concept had to LIE to themselves that the earth was their loving 'mother' - even though it often produced deadly phenomena - and that the other creatures were 'born' from "mother earth", but when one of those creatures died - or killed a human - that 'mother earth' took them back into her womb and 're-birthed' them into another person/animal/life...

  I could list many more examples, but I don't want to make a pages-long post.

  As to whether lying aids in survival; think about stone-age, prehistoric tribal groups, shivering in the darkness of an Ice-Age winter...

  Believing the LIE that the 'earth-mother' loved them so much that she wouldn't "let" them die, often gave them the determination to survive another winter...

  Sometimes lies act like an opiate; they can soften the harsh edges of life and allow one to move forward.

  Of course, other lies can kill... Some lies are told with a deliberateness, to hobble and enslave others. Some lies are told while being half-believed, which makes it easier to convince OTHERS of the validity of the lie...

  The trick is, distinguishing the different varieties of lies...

  I'm not advocating the BELIEF of LIES - I hate them as much as the next person. But there are some lies we tell ourselves daily that get us through the day - I'm going to stick to my diet today; I look much younger than I am; I'm still appealing to the opposite sex; I can still perform as athletically as I did when I was 18, and so on...

  Zid