Lying: an experiment

The good part about being young is that you haven't had enough experience with reality to realize that, in the end, reality will win. The game is rigged. The deck is stacked. Because entropy. Because immutable laws of physics. Because everyone agrees, and agreements become more solid as time goes on.

When I was younger, a lot younger, I honestly believed (I am not kidding about this) that I could do anything that did not violate physical law and many things that might, like telepathy and telekinesis. I actually (and I am not kidding about this, either) believed that I could be President of the United States and that it made sense that I might be. After all, I was smart. And smart people can figure out how to do anything. And god knows the United States needed a President who was smart. And still does. So, of course!

I also thought I could be a millionaire. (This was back in those days having a million dollars was kind of a big deal. Really. I'm not kidding, it once was.) When I discovered girls (which was early) and found out about sex (which was a bit later, but still relatively early), I thought I could become the World's Greatest Lover. Because I'd read a book on sex that was hidden in my parents' closet. And because I was smart, and smart people can figure out how to do anything.

I didn’t realize that reality says that becoming the World’s Greatest Lover, like becoming the World's Greatest Anything, requires things other than being smart. And sometimes smart doesn’t help. To be really good at anything takes lots and lots of practice--and I suppose I would have been willing to practice being a lover if I could have gotten over my fear of talking to women (or girls, as they were then called.) Because unless I could talk to one, I could not ask one out on a date, and without at least one date, it would be premature to ask one to have sex with me. I now realize these would be requirements.

It would be difficult for a guy who is 5' 1" to become the World's Greatest Basketball Center or a guy who weighed 98 lbs dripping wet would have trouble becoming the World's Greatest Defensive Tackle. You needed certain physical attributes to be the best. And based on informal surveys done out of the corners of my eyes in high school gym showers--I just might not have had a big enough—attribute.

Yes, it's true that basketball players Mugsy Bogues (5' 3"), Earl Boykins (5'5"), or Hall-of-Famer Calvin Murphy (5'9", a giant among small men) made it to the NBA. So World's Greatest Lover-wise, I might play in the big leagues. But the fact is that none of those guys made the list of the 50 greatest NBA players. The shortest guy on the list , Nate "Tiny" Archibald, was 6'1." Tall among short people, I suppose, but still short among the tall.

And, have we gone down a rathole here? Yes, indeed, we have. The point is this: before I accepted reality, I could be anything, and do anything. And then, later, maybe I couldn't be or do anything, maybe I couldn't be at the top, but I could get mighty fricken good.

It was a compromise, sure. But being Mugsy Bogues wasn't bad if you wanted to be the World's Greatest Basketball player; being a United States Senator wasn't bad if you didn't make President. As a guitar player, maybe I couldn't play to sold-out stadia, but I could be really good. All it would take would be years of practice. I could start now. Or maybe in a year or two. After all, I had years.

Now, today, reality tells me that although once upon a time I had years, now I don't have quite so many. Maybe, and here's where things get sad, maybe I don't have enough years to be better than mediocre at something new that I aspired to. Right now, my mind, the one that used to say "you can do anything," now says "time is running out." Those early beliefs were not real. When I told myself that I could do anything, I was saying something that was untrue. By the strict definition of lying, I was lying. But it was effective. Full of sometimes unjustified confidence, I went off and did things that I might not have been able to do had I respected reality more.
Later, I learned different. But was that a good thing to learn?

I know that time is running out, but do I do myself a service by telling that to myself? I think not.

I can't control what I really believe, but I can control what I say that I believe, and that distinction is important. My mind is not an entity, it's a society, and that means that I can do some social engineering if it serves my purposes.

In the society of America, there are large groups of people who believe things that are utterly and completely batshit. They believe it because they've heard it over and over and over again. And because they're stupid and uncritical and believe what they hear if they hear it enough times from a "credible source." And because they're stupid and uncritical, they have no idea how to differentiate a credible source from one that's not other than this: the one who talks the most is the most credible.

When my mind says, "time is running out," that's just what's being broadcast by the party in power--which happens to be me. And since it's me, I can do something about it. Time may be running out, but that doesn't have to be the message.

All I need to do is what successful organizations like Fox News have done and get rid of my foolish attachment to truth and accuracy. And logic. If it serves my noble end, logic can go too.

I'm not ragging just on Fox News, however much fun that might be. The same is true of MSNBC, and even PBS, BBC, and the New York Times. They're all in the business of communicating more-or-less accurate representations of reality to people who are more-or-less intelligent. This brings me to my Society of Mind. The Society of Mind is populated by agents, and most of them are--and indeed must be--even dumber than the average person. Some of them have critical facilities, but most are reducible to medium-sized bundles of neurons. The smartest might have half a brain. Most have less.

Whatever I decide to broadcast, the uncritical masses of mental agents will accept it as true. All I have to do is broadcast them over and over. Yes, it's not real. But reality is not my friend, and I don't have to serve it if it does not serve my purposes.

I mean, really. What good is a "time is running out" message? Why not say: "I have all the time that I need," even if I don't and even if I don't believe it? Why not tell the agents in my mind that "we" can do anything if "we'' put my mind to it? Why don't I say: "Reality isn't all that real."

The agent I call "me" has more smarts than most, but it hasn't yet taken complete control of the rest of the mind and, thus, the body because it's constrained itself unnecessarily. It's not been willing to do what power seekers everywhere have done: lie. Tell the lies that give it power.

There's an ethical dilemma here, of course. But I think that ethics, like reality, is highly overrated. It seems to me that power trumps ethics every time. So here's an experiment in creative lying. I will believe the things that I believe, but I will broadcast, maybe only for internal consumption, the things that serve my purposes.

We'll see how that works out. In the meantime, I've got plenty of time.