Masses in Self-Hypnosis
Truth does not have to assert itself. It does not have to regularly proclaim itself and argue for its validity. It is lie that needs endless repetition and incessant confirmations. That’s why the liars are the most vocal and active ones. They simply must feed the lie lest it crumbles. But even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it does not become truth. It only covers the truth with a veil of distraction and makes a person confused.
Such confused individual is then like a toy monkey on a rubber string — you pull its tail and the monkey jumps. They will predictably repeat the same arguments and continue with the same motivated reasoning every time you present them with facts or demolish their incoherent arguments. After all, one can neither construct a coherent argument for a lie nor defend a lie before unassailable facts. Moreover, such people will be seriously offended when you even mention the possibility of them being subject to confirmation bias. They will immediately cry foul, call it rudeness, lack of respect, persecution even.
Yes, the creative ones will make up twisted arguments on the fly, change topic, gaslight, troll, or use similar diversion tactics, but they are not liars or confused per se. Such folks are by definition bullshitters who primarily don’t care about truth or lie. Their aim is just to sow chaos and doubt, a strategy employed in an effort to undermine the perception of truth for the time being by flooding the awareness with literal nonsense. The end result is, however, the same: a veil of distraction that obfuscates the truth.
It’s worth noting that exactly as the end results are the same, the motivations for lying and bullshitting align equally: it’s insecurity, in essence, fear. And while a liar, especially the unconscious one, may even act in good faith (certainly at least from their perspective or in terms of their intentions), a bullshitter is just a spiteful and bitter psychological midget, an abused individual who simply has to cut off their capacity to even consider consequences of their actions because otherwise they would need to face again the acts of abuse that caused their mental disfigurement and recognize them as such.
And so, people strive to be someone. They want to be rich, important, respected, adored, or at least feared. They want to earn or usurp their place under the Sun. All in order to keep the insecurity and fear at arm’s length. A fool’s errand, I must say, because with such striving, instead of accepting the fear, one merely rejects it and tries to deny it. And that is by definition a lie which in turn requires constant reaffirmation and/or bullshitting.
The lie, however, does not have to manifest as an outright ideology. For example, a person who considers themselves a musician feels a tension that they ought to write another song lest they stop being musician. In a similar fashion, a writer strives for another book, an artist for another picture, an academic for another paper. Sure, the motivations may be more basal (or complex), like, “I need to produce in order to get paid,” and so on, but the bottom line is the same — validation of one’s social identity.
Thus, we have tons of junk created from deluded motivations as well as people who’s alpha and omega is whom they fuck, know, or rule over.
One may rightfully ask, where does it all come from? Well, for starters, we are all familiar (whether as interlocutors or targets) with the famous question, “Who’d you like to be when you grow up?” Because we were taught so by people who were also taught that way, we, too, encourage the next generation to strive to be someone. As if the children in question were not perfect self-complete human beings already.
Yet, to extricate themselves from their responsibility, people like to blame media. But if there was no demand, there would be no supply. Media outlets, in the past mostly the big corporate ones but nowadays also all those alternative businesses of information peddling (some of which already rival the legacy ones in their sheer corporate size and outreach, but also the ones that are basically just self-publishing one-man enterprises), only fulfill the role of serving a regular dose of desired affirmation. Exactly as do churches and similar institutions. All of which are just institutionalized extensions of the aforementioned child conditioning.
The end result is then a person who eventually reaches a state when they can uphold their prison all by themselves. Where I’m from, we have a joke about a little hedgehog who broke his shovel one day, and, since he didn’t have a spare one but the winter was nearing and he needed to finish his autumn preparations, he decided to visit his friend, the mole, and borrow a shovel from him:
As the hedgehog was walking to mole’s house he started to worry, “I wonder, if the mole will borrow me the shovel. After all, he is always grumpy and not exactly known for his hospitality. He may send me away empty handed. I can already see how he refuses me to help. I bet his selfishness gets the better out of him. But what would it cost him to lend me a single shovel? He’s got many but I’m sure that prick will leave me dry.” Immersed in his thoughts the hedgehog arrived at mole’s house and knocked. As the door opened, he furiously blurted out, “You know what mole? You can fuck your shovel!” and, turning on his heel, he walked away.
Yes, a properly socially integrated individual does not need any ads or sermons anymore. Their hypnosis is complete. They can be confused and successfully lying to themselves without any further input and reinforcement. They can even invent some more of their own, and pride themselves on being a free thinker. With all implications and such. Yet, how much energy it costs, and how convoluted it is! All the while still leaving a weird aftertaste of things being unfinished, somehow not perfect, not satisfying.
Truth, on the other hand, is pleasing, effortless, self-contained, and brings fulfillment. One must be a confused fool to reject it.
Quite obviously.
