So why do so many people on our planet put on a “plastic” existence? Why do so many reject the notion that they may just be “human?” Throughout history this has created the delusions of superiority and amongst religions it is the greatest asset for gaining a following, and for many centuries it was the grounds for many a “slaughter.” YET, all taken in stride, for it was for the sake of their “GOD” or “GODS,” and merely walked off into the sunset, even within the history pages as “guiltless.” Like I said, this will be but a simple, short, article as I got to thinking along the lines of what Yeshua (Jesus) stated many times. That most are nothing more than hypocrites. Hypocrites living a life of a deluded sense of holiness and mightier than though attitudes. And this facade just doesn’t exist amongst the religious but the many who lie to themselves, who will never accept the realities of who they are on the planet for they are too blind to see.

One thing I learned in my studies of Psychology long ago. We, and I include myself, NEVER look upon ourselves when we judge those of the world, and when we don’t we rise on a pedestal to see far too many beneath us when to be honest none of us is above another when it come to life. We are all the same and we bleed the same color, and yes we all eventually “die.” Seems hypocritical when you look upon the many who think they are cheating death by the plastic faces they put on and the plastic attitudes of being without flaw. But then, they are too blind to see, none of us are blind to what we see in front of us, though they “are” to all they reveal.

Hypocrite. What does it mean to you. If you are like most, it has nothing to do with you, for like I said, few can or will ever admit that they are but a mere human. That is one reason there are so many clubs to drink in, so many drugs for people to use with those they consider their friends, and yes, why there are so many “religions.” I could list all the avenues of facades people get involved with, weight, atletics, varying belief systems and the like, but it all boils down to one fact. Not many of us like to be “excluded” from the world and it’s peoples and very few of us endeavor to attack to obvious. Why? It is hard to take rejection from others, so rather than lead, the majority “follow.” In the end it is where life becomes nothing but a plastic existence full of nothing more than a bucket full of ways of hypocrisy. The fuller it gets, the more the facade of being “perfect,” when obviously none of us ARE…….. It is when I accepted being imperfect, that I found life was worth living, and it is also then that I found the strenght to resist having to be a hypocrite and a FAKE. It is just sad, that it is not the ways of many amongst us……….

Macabre- gruesome or horrifying. (The pronunciation of this word, along with the one above, is macabre). Such a pleasant word, right? Notice how close it is to the Macarana. O.O

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Honesty is not always good. Deception is not always bad. But people are taught repeatedly very early on in life that lying is bad and such practice is heavily frowned upon by society. This view is thoroughly enforced in school, at home, and in the work place. Yet ironically, everybody still employ the practice of lying, while telling everybody else not to lie. Why? The answer is: Because unlike common perception, lying is not the problem; it is actually the solution when truth-telling is the problem, at least from the liar’s perspective.

            For the purpose of this paper, deception is defined as an act that propagates beliefs that are not true, or not completely true. Imagine the following scenario between two friends who are also roommates: Billy and Joe. Billy asks Joe if he wants to come over to his house for the weekend to celebrate his birthday. Joe does not want to go because he does not want to be around Billy’s family. In this case, Joe has five options:

1.      1. Tell the truth – that he does not want to go because he dislike Billy’s family.

2   2. Suck it up and says he wants to spend the weekend with Billy and his family.

3.      3. Says he does not want to, but make up a different reason.

4.      4. Says he wants to, but make up an excuse for why he cannot go.

5.      5. Ignore the question and does not give a response.

In this case, the first option is the only truthful option, but it is also arguably the worst option in terms of anticipated outcome. If Joe pick this option, he will hurt Billy’s feelings and put a hamper on their friendship. He is much better off picking one of the remaining four options, all of which involve at least some form of deception.  

            This scenario is very common in everyday interaction. Under evolutionary terms, it can be categorized as a case of mutualism, where both parties benefit from the deception. This is a very universal practice of lying because it conforms to the idea of common courtesy and other social norms. In an ideal world, everyone would have positive opinions about everybody else, then honesty would always be the best policy. It is easy to tell your friend the truth if the truth is: you like their family. Unfortunately, in our world, people harbor both positive and negative opinions about others. If the opinion is a negative one, such as not liking your friend’s family, then truth-telling becomes a problem. To solve this problem, you can either a) change your opinion, or b) lie about your opinion. Both are plausible solutions, but one is more feasible than the other. Option A would have required a lot of effort on Joe’s part that may or may not produce the desired outcome; while option B offer a quick and easy route to appease both parties.

            Of course, there are certainly cases in which only the liar receive advantage from the lie. Let’s imagine Billy and Joe in a different scenario. In this case, they are not yet close friends, but classmates who have only been recently acquainted with each other. They ran into one another at the library right after a pop quiz. To make conversation, Billy starts by asking Joe how he did on the quiz. However, Joe actually received a very low score because he have not gone through the reading for that week. In this case, it makes no difference to Billy what the answer is because he only asked it for the purpose of starting conversation, not to actually find out Joe’s score. But to Joe, the truthful answer is a problem because it would be embarrassing to admit his failure. In order to save face, Joe lie and said that he did pretty good and move the conversation to a different topic.

            This is a case of commensalism, where one party benefits while the other is neither harmed nor helped by the deception. To Billy, the information Joe reveals about his quiz performance has little effect on him, if at all. To Joe, telling the truth would put him at risk of being judged as either stupid or lazy, both of which is damaging to his confidence and self-image. To rectify the problem, Joe choose to lie about his performance – which would protect him from negative judgment by Billy and allow their conversation to move forward. Once again, we see deception used as a solution when revealing the truth is problematic.

            Deception not only serve as a solution to our interpersonal conflicts on an individual level, but it is also institutionalized to protect and promote society’s common welfare, interests, and goals. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the general public has access only to limited information from the U.S. government. Government agencies hold the right to secrecy if the information meets the criteria for exemption from public release. This can be classified as concealment of the truth. Since some information is very sensitive, revealing them would put national security at risk. As a result, the government must employ deceptive strategies in some cases to protect such information from falling into the wrong hands.

It can argued that government secrecy sometimes do more harm than good. However, that is no longer a question of whether lying is bad or not. Rather, it is a question of whether our government is abusing their right to secrecy or not. For the discussion of deception as a sensible alternative to truth, we must acknowledge that there are cases where truth concealment by government is absolutely necessary – such as projected troop movements in wartime. The institutionalization of deception demonstrates that it is an effective solution rather than a moral violation that society makes it out to be.

            A more obvious case of deception being institutionalized is the employment of government spies and undercover police. Unlike secrecy, these cases goes beyond truth concealment to being an outright lie. Undercover police explicitly lie about wanting to hire a prostitute or buy drugs to catch people involving in such crimes red-handed. Police go undercover because they need access to information of criminal activities that they otherwise could not obtain. So they deceive potential suspects in order to expose the truth. This is, comically, a great paradox to society’s ethical view of lying: truth by deception.

            Espionage is an even more extreme case of deception. The government would go above and beyond to equip secret agents with completely new identities in order to infiltrate targeted organizations. Government spies cheat, conceal, exaggerate, mislead, and lie in order to achieve their mission – which can range anywhere from information gathering to assassination. Truly, spying is the epitome of deception – and it is approved by the government. If such practice is so well incorporated and embraced by government, then it must be because deception serve as a useful mean to achieving national welfare. Therefore it should be acknowledged as an answer, rather than a problem.

            In institutionalized cases, deception is often times a necessity rather than an alternative. For example, experimenters in many psychological studies have to deceive the participants as a condition of the studies. When participants sign up for a study about the “bystander effect”, they are never told that they are being tested on their reaction to an alarming situation. Rather, experimenters have to mislead participants into thinking that they are there for an unrelated task such as filling out a survey. If the participant had known that they are being tested on their likelihood at actively responding to an emergency, then that knowledge would heavily skew the data and produce invalid results.

            But if deception is such a helpful technique at every level of social interaction, then why is there a universal taboo against it? The answer is: Because people often fails to distinguish the difference between the mis-use of deception and the deception itself. Deception is a social strategy, much like persuasion and heuristics, that can be used either negatively or positively. Persuasion can lead to group consensus and reduce intra-group conflict; but it can also lead to massive brainwashing of the general population, like demagogy. Heuristics can be used as cognitive shortcuts to help people process information more quickly; but could also lead to stereotyping and prejudice. Deception is the same way. It can serve as a useful tool for maintaining and enhancing interpersonal relationships; or a malicious tool for personal gains at the expense of others. However, the key difference here is the usage of the deception, not the concept of deception itself.

            Let’s go back to the case of Billy and Joe. Supposed that Billy knows that Joe hates his family and probably would not agree to the invitation. He also knows that Joe is very considerate and would never bring up the fact that he does not like Billy’s family; he would make up a different reason instead. Once Joe rejected the invitation, Billy suggests that his family would come to their place instead so that they can all celebrate Billy’s birthday. This is Billy’s original plan; because he does not want to have to drive all the way home, he prefer to have his family come to his place instead. If he asks Joe this right away, Joe would have refused using another reason. But if Joe already rejected Billy once, he will be less likely to reject Billy again on the same matter. Here, Billy has deliberately mislead Joe into thinking that he will be going home for his birthday. When, in fact, Billy wanted his family to come to their apartment to celebrate it and he was devising a strategy to get Joe to agree to it.

            In this scenario, Billy has made deliberate use of deception to manipulate Joe’s response, in a way that satisfies Billy’s wish at the expense of Joe’s discomfort. Is Billy’s intention justified in this case? No. However, deception is defined as an action, not an intention. Billy’s deceptive action is that he lead Joe to thinking his birthday will be celebrated at home, the immediate result of such action is simply: Joe thinks Billy is celebrating his birthday at his house and refuse to come with him. This is just like Joe leading Billy to think that he cannot go because of some reason other than he dislikes Billy’s family, the immediate result is: Billy thinks Joe cannot make it and will not be mad at him for not coming. However, Billy done Joe wrong by abusing the knowledge of Joe’s anticipated behavior, and using it to corner Joe into relenting to having Billy’s family over. 

            In this scenario, deception is still a useful technique: a solution to a truthful alternative when truth-telling is problematic for achieving the desired result. The unjustifiable aspect of this behavior is not the action, but the intention of results achieved by such action. If skeptics insist on classifying deception as unethical because of its misuse; then by that logic, honesty should also be classified as unethical. There is no doubt that truthful facts could also be used in a harmful manner.

            Imagine Billy and Joe again in the earlier stage of their friendship, where Billy was making conversation with Joe by asking about his quiz performance. Suppose that Joe told Billy the truth: that he did very poorly on the pop quiz. Billy, in response, begin to talk about his perfect score on the quiz and criticizes the professor for giving out such an easy quiz in the first place. He kept on chatting about how he finished the quiz in thirty seconds even though they were given five minutes. Billy also voiced his opinions about how he thinks students who did poorly on it must be either lazy or stupid. All of the things Billy say are truthful statements: his performance on the quiz, his opinion of the quiz, and his opinion of those who did poorly on the quiz. But what is the consequences of such statements? Billy is hurting Joe’s confidence and self-esteem; and Billy knows it because it was his intention to do so. This behavior is a common practice known as “rubbing it in”.

            Common sense would rule that Billy’s act of expressing his opinions and performance is not a moral violation. However, his deliberate mis-use of such information in order to boost his own ego and self-image at the expense of Joe’s is unjustified. This is similar to the deceptive case discussed in our birthday celebration scenario: it is not the action, but the intention that is inexcusable. If honesty, used negatively, can harm others just like the negative use of deception, then why should deception be the only strategy that is stigmatized? The answer is: it should not be. Deception and honesty are two sides of a coin that complement each other, both negatively and positively. Therefore deception should be viewed as a useful social tool, rather than a moral violation. The reason why deception is still a universal taboo is because when being misused, it is much easier to confront the deceptive facts than the truthful ones.

            For this demonstration, let’s use the controversy of an alternate Iraq war as a hypothetical example. Supposed the general population is unhappy with U.S. occupation in Iraq and that it has produced much more harm than benefits. The President, on the other hand, is very happy because he succeeded in invading Iraq, a country he always hated because of their popular Muslim religion. The reason Congress, a representation of the people, approved troop mobilization is because the president lied and said that Iraq is planning a nuclear attack on America. The only way to prevent this from happening is to invade Iraq and destroy their military bases. Thus, in the name of self-defense, Congress approved military deployment to Iraq. Now if the President’s lie is exposed, then the general population can easily admit to the Iraqi war being a big mistake, and blame that catastrophe on the President and his deceit. This response will easily portray deception as a wrongful violation of public trust, thus supporting the association that deception is unethical and negative.

 But what if the President did not lie? Instead of lying about Iraq launching a nuclear attack on America, the President used the truth. He informed the public that federal agencies have reasons to believe that Iraq may be producing weapons of mass destruction – and that is it. This information, though truthful, invoke insecurity and fear-mongering among the general public. The end result is still the same, Congress is persuaded into approving the war; and the war brought more negative consequences than positive ones. Now, it is much more difficult for U.S. citizens to acknowledge the mistake. To do so, they must admit that they were manipulated by fear and insecurity. Because it is so difficult to confront the wrongful decision about the war, less people will do it. The rest of the population will find ways to rationalize such decisions in order to reduce their cognitive dissonance, a psychological mechanism:

a.      Clause 1: I am an intelligent, thoughtful citizen.

b.      Clause 2: I supported U.S. troop deployment to invade Iraq.

c.       Clause 3: The war turns out to be a disaster and a big mistake.

These three clauses contradict with each other, which give rise to cognitive dissonance. The problem can only be resolved one of the following ways:

a.      Admittance: I am not an intelligent, thoughtful citizen.

b.      Behavioral change: I did not support the war.

c.       Attitude change: The war was not a mistake.

In the lying-President condition, citizens have another option of adding a fourth clause: I did it because he lied to me. In the truthful-President condition, citizens have to pick among the three options outlined above. Clearly, Clause 2 cannot be changed, because it already happened. Many are unwilling to submit to Clause 1, because that is harmful to their sense of self. The majority would opt with changing Clause 3, their attitude about the outcome. Thus, even though the outcomes of the two conditions are the same, the honesty-condition receive less disapproval because of people’s reduced ability to confront the negative consequences.          Due to differences in cognitive dissonance reduction methods, honesty continues to be justified, even when misused, much more often than deception. Through selective confirmation bias, deception is presented as an unethical violation of social interactions. But in reality, deception truly serves as an alternative solution when the truth is problematic or uncomfortable. While it is true that deceptive strategies can be abused to bring forth wrongful consequences; it is also true that truthful information can be abused, as with many other strategies for social interaction. Therefore, the mis-use of deception cannot serve as a basis to denounce deception’s usefulness. Rather, the concept of deception as a social solution needs to be acknowledged and clearly distinguished from the abuse of deception as an inexcusable behavior.

Heart swollen as eyes are shut with tears

No resilience is the defeated’s only fear

Struggle to feet with such strength of self

Rejection is the greatest reinvention of what’s left

Of the broken veins of a brokenhearted fool

Wove a new person of your own wool

Allow this new facade and assurance

To be the greatest nuance

Of the loveless, momentarily.

Seek not what you look for

Search to see what is not visible

Step over your shield of comfort

Surely be accepted by the many tangible

Yet self-slaying souls of superficiality

Conformation as the factor of all who is not

Retort the shunning of true personality

For what seems to be all in a knot

Of the superfluous society of stiff souls

Of those who share strange expectations

Of those not yet known for their own.

Pierce my thoughts of profoundness

With a new fondness

Which allows the praise of self

Do not litter your head

For you must have it to be lead

By you, to a greater understanding

Of what is epidemically misunderstood

The declarations of the eyes which do not see

Are the ones who will eventually want to be

Fill their vision with dread of self-enslavement

To the superfluous society of stiff souls.

Love with thy own understanding

For you are not forgotten

Unless you forget yourself

In this vast and superfluous society of stiff souls

That lurk in the consanguinity of our mold

Break it only with your own strike

Stand back up and fight

For as long as you remember

You will never be forgotten

In this superfluous society of stiff souls.

Most people have these kind of issues. Which originated from their families. Some families measure the importance of their members based on what they have achieved and not on what they have become. Material things weighs more than reaching the stage of being a GOOD Person. As it is always an issue of what good have you given the family in its material sense-MONEY.

To be honest to have members of the family who have a good nature is worth more than a chest of gold. As this kind of wealth is a priceless legacy which the whole family could be proud of.

It projects the innate greatness of the whole clan and it makes the blood line flowing with  pride and honour for generations to come.

All of the pretentious behaviour manifest when one becomes a  pleaser. You are unique and you must go out and discover yourself responsibly. There would be twist and turns but eventually you would find your way and become a “learned”.

Start doing things in your own responsible way and prove to your family that you can be effective and productive without seeking approval from them. You are able to make your dream happen.

Strong will, determination, confidence, skills and your faith will pull everything through for you. There is no point in wasting time.

Make a plan, do your research, prepare the feasibility study, implement the plan with options for contingency.

Once  you learn how to survive on your own and live independently away from the intervention of your family, you could say that, it is a start of a HAPPY life.

You no longer need to project a strong facade to earn everybody’s respect. As you would have that once you gather your act together and do things responsibly with a touch of professionalism- that would be your magic formula towards a blissful start. Everybody would be mesmerized and amazed with your awesome transformation.

Why don’t you try it?

The goal of life is a rotten  child? Therein lies the fun of life. Make something else grow up and you’re happy! Whoever programed our minds is a fool. Rotten, Dirty, lying fool.The idiocy from the average person spewing sex tales. Talking 9-5 about sex. Bragging when they’re next having sex. Its like acid burned into my ears. And its “You’ll never realize, you haven’t had it, you don’t even have a girlfriend” Well ‘Love is a case of anthrax, and thats something i don’t want to catch’. See how empty you feel going one day without thinking or talking about sex. See how wrong it makes you feel to be one out of 6 billion that isn’t currently thinking what can be stuck in its crotch or what it can stick it in. See how freedom kills your mind. And pressure is the bullet. How words are spit and NEVER listened to. Lessons NEVER learned. IGNORED and defiled like a common street thug. How thoughts are scrawled on pieces of paper to be burned! So go on, with your sex, talk about it all day. Wax my ears shut. I can’t hear it one more second.