On Being Lied To: Finding Truth Within
- January 3rd, 2010Americans Played for Suckers
Frank Rich’s column, Tiger Woods, Person of the Year in the New York Times is a brilliant dissection of how Americans have been scammed by con artists of every stripe from Bernie Madoff to Ken Lay to real estate agents who brokered bad mortgages. He draws dots between apparently unconnected social events and ends with President Obama’s current political plight. Many Americans are disenchanted with him because they have been hyped and spun one too many times.
A Con Artist is Nothing Without an Easy Mark
How is it that we have been taken in so easily and so often? We need to look more deeply at ourselves, and ask why we have been conned so many times. There is some connection here, I think, between our ability to be truthful with ourselves and our ability to create a more peaceful nation and world.
When someone lies to you, whether it’s your cheating spouse or some flimflam huckster selling gew-gaws, we know deep down in our guts that we are being lied to. It may be a voice in your head that says, “He/she is lying to me,” or it may be more subtle, a feeling of unease somewhere in your body, but something inside is telling you, “Something is wrong here.”
Silencing the Voice of Truth Within
This is our inner truth-meter in action. It’s trying to tell us to listen, to take action. The problem comes when we ignore the promptings of this inner truth teller. We suppress the message of our inner self because we have some fantasy, need, or old belief that we have been taught about how we ought to behave, which conflicts with the promptings of the truth teller. And so we betray ourselves, give in and buy the house with the big mortgage we can’t afford or that get-rich quick scheme the investment salesman is touting.
Most of us have been raised to be patriotic Americans. If the President says we are going to war because our security is threatened, by gosh, we will follow him, even if the evidence he presents is more than a little dubious, even spurious, and our insides are screaming.
The Demands of Listening to One’s Inner Truth
There is a cost to honoring the voice of truth inside you. It requires you to be vulnerable. It may demand that you take risks you don’t want to take. It may force you to come to terms with relationships that are uncomfortable. It might mean you have to do some difficult growing up. But life on the other side of growth is always superior to the dishonesty that came before.
Americans are now paying a terrible financial price for the lack of internal self-awareness that preceded this recession. Many families in this country have also paid an unbearable price in the loss of loved ones in the thankless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all because we did not look long enough and hard enough within, or acted too late once we realized what was happening. I have written previously in this blog about my own failure in this regard.
The United States is still a young country, an adolescent as countries go, and has never suffered an invasive war as so many European countries have. We have never been conquered, never been vanquished, humiliated or humbled. We could take this time to turn within and learn the habit of self-reflection and how to take responsibility for our actions. In short, we could learn to grow ourselves up. If not, life may force these lessons upon us.
Growing Up and the Possibility for Peace
What does all this have to do with peace? Simply this: people who are in touch with their depths make better choices about their lives, as individuals and as citizens,because they know what really matters. It’s called wisdom I think.
Questions of Inquiry:
1. If you’ve read Frank Rich’s column, what do you think of his analysis of Americans being scammed and bamboozled?
2. What will it take deepen their authenticity and become more actively involved in the politics of their country and the world?
Other blogs I’ve written on similar themes:
February 25th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Some fairly random yet, I think, pertinent to the entire issue of lies.
Lying has become oh so easy to do. More today than yesterday, because it has become necessary for the mere survival of many: Example, an employee who has a history of tardiness, arrives late. He tells his Supervisor an “innocent” lie, “the traffic was very heavy” which satisfied the Supervisor, the two of them relax, nor harm done. But what about the actual reason? The employee is married, stops by his mistress for a morning “quickie”, he’s an alcoholic who can’t get out of bed and then has to stop and get a half pint of Vodka to make it through the day. The simple lie is no longer simple, now it has affected many people, and if a pattern develops, many things can happen, none of them good and some downright ugly. A good, solid employee is ultimately lost, even he begins to believe his own lies. And the affair, the continued drinking may easily lead to divorce, even death. We are taught to lie. Bill Clinton, George W were Masters at it. I believe that we, as a society actually “set it up” for others, especially in power, like our friend Bernie who promised the moon and delivered glimpses into what surely must be hell Power, ah, Power and Politicians. Yes! We want change, we know our planet’s resources and our culture’s most precious resource, our children, are being slaughtered by the lies concoted for the rich and powerful. The methods used by the Bush Administration to convince us of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” ready to annhiliate the entire United Staes were near criminal in their delivery. The bottom line he was going to do what he wanted whether we said so or not. Vote! for change. I, you, we study, listen intently to the campaigns, the promises made, and we do go to the polls and we do vote, because that is how change has to come about in our form of government. Then over and over, those that we put in power, that we believed, do not deliver. They lied. Even I know nothing gets done in Washington unless Exxon/Mobil approves it. Politicians are to be used by the real power, big business. No, not big business. Huge, global intricately created huge businesses. I personally believe Obama meant what he said, that he wasn’t glaring/staring at the Camera and swear to God Almighty that he DID NOT have sexual relations with that girl. Hard News. War is forgotten. The Government is frozen. CNN, followed by every major news organization in this country (and others) treat it like the worst possible, reprehensible act EVER. We are treated to 3 or 4 days of the “Hard” News Cameras pointed directly at the White House. Meanwhile, the United States becomes (once again) the laughingstock of most every developed country in the world. Did he, or didn’t he? Who in the hell cares? Its a private family problem, lets deal with the real issues. But no, we spend millions on this silly story, and we actually IMPEACHED the man. Because our society is made up of lies. Never mind his adminstration was at the helm of the most prosperous period in our History, that they actually were able to erase the National Deficit, a feat thought to be impossible. But the Truth, The real Truth was he was expected to lie, that’s what he does, that is what we do.
Growing up we guess at what “Normal” is according to Claudia Black. She’s right. Our lives are formed by our parents. We come to believe we are “normal”, and so we learn to lie, we see it constantly, we see how it works, so we do it. For us “Baby Boomers” there was no room allowed to question authority, none. Police, Educators were included. Doctors were put on this Pedastal as the epitome of integrity, of honesty. They knew it all, we were told. And we should never, ever question their diagnosis. Prists and Clergymen? Why, they represented God, who most of us came to love or fear, but never understand. Then we find out that its all a bunch of lies. Priests molesting teenage and younger children. In my own family. It was OK, because after all, it was a Priest.
I remember the “Nuclear attack” drills in High School. Was I the only one who thought, who knew that this was ridiculous? As a young teenager in the California desert near the above ground Nuclear testing, the consistent shattering of windows by Chuck Yeager and his friends, somehow I knew then the lies were out of control. So I did what every future activist did; late at night, in the clear skies of the High Desert, I could pick up KOMO out of Oklahoma City. There I found some peace. Songs by Woody Guthrie, Jack Elliot, a kid named Dylan. Blues, Jazz, then the King. Point was this; For the first time, I felt I wasn’t being lied to and could find comfort in music.
Millions of dead bodies piled up and around, buried, burned, thrown to sea because of Lies. Human Kind’s Belief systems led to war hundreds, even thousands of years ago and they still are. I don’t have the answer; Only that the system is broken. Human Kind is based in Power and absolute power absolutely corrupts.