The Shadows of Totalization, Part XXXII

The injection of a desperate mental randomness into the simple perceptuum which responds to this,





May not lead to success in lying to myself…I may only succeed in confusing myself.

However, it does introduce an element of interest….I’m no longer trapped in signal-response-signification. Maybe there is an element of creativity now...Something which leads away.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XXXI

In my attempt to lie to myself, in order to disrupt any decipherable code of signifier to signified from developing (which would allow myself to straighten out my lie, would keep my lie from being a lie to myself) I seek a way of randomizing whatever signifier I would assign to these pictures.

I could say: this dot is (x,y,z,c,q,pe, gfy,fluty,a,12%....). Even better: this (xcmeyc,byem,123, @#c,c,d,…) is (x,y,z,c,q,pe, gfy,fluty,a,12%....)


I would do the same with this,



I won’t be bothered if I should happen to say the same for both, e.g. say about the upper, this (xy) is (#$) and about the lower, this (xy) is (#$).

The only hazard I care about now is keeping my process random, to keep it from congealing. Even if it should congeal in a much broader, wider, bizarre or complex coding, this would result in a failure to lie to myself.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XXX

I can also say,

This dot is bleu:



This dot is rouge:



It turns out I am not lying to myself-- I am inventing a new terminology or learning or practicing a few words from some other language. It could be by happenstance the language is French.

Even if my use of this new terminology becomes so skilled no conscious effort is required, and even if I no longer remember the older terminology, I am not sure I have succeeded in lying to myself about these dots, these sensations.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XXIX

I am going to lie to myself.

This is a blue dot:




This is a red dot:




In order to tell myself this lie, I will have to remember I am calling blue dots red and red dots blue. I will need to remain true to my intention to lie.

I’m not curious about the slight paradox of this. I suppose after enough practice, I will have the habit of calling blue dots red and vice versa…The memorization will no longer require intention.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XXVIII

I don’t want to lie to myself—what would be the point? And how could I ever make the lie stick? In other words, how would I deceive myself into believing as true what I myself knew to be deceitful?

It can’t be a matter of intention or volition, because to intend to deceive oneself would be to underline the deception, making the deception stand out even more clearly to oneself as deception. Therefore, lying to oneself can’t be a matter of intentional forgetfulness, either. Therefore, I don’t agree with Marvin Hamlisch, “Memories, may be beautiful and yet, what’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.”

How would I simply choose to forget? I’m sure there are painful memories I have forgotten, but there are also many I have not—if I had a choice in the matter, a few of these which are not forgotten I would now choose to expunge. But I can’t expunge them by acting on myself to get them expunged—I believe this is counter-productive in that the voluntary act of trying to forget a memory reinforces the memory.

It’s almost impossible to imagine there is such a thing as lying to oneself, even for the most evil…My opinion is the evil ones, those of malevolent will, in order to effectively be evil, would need to train themselves just as conscientiously as anyone else to not lie to themselves, and if not capable of this, that’d be a limitation of their willful evil.

Above, I asked the question: what would the point be of lying to oneself? The point of lying to someone else is to manipulate them, to get them to do something they wouldn't do if they were in possession of the truth. Would this motivation ever exist within oneself--would one ever wish to so manipulate oneself ? For either a good or evil self, such a way of proceeding could not be purposeful...