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...
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...
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 9:20 PM
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