--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: <snip> > It's always been my experience -- especially on Internet chat > groups -- that those who most often claim that others are > lying or attempting to deceive others are the ones who seem > to have the highest degree of self-deception going for them. > They accuse others of lying to them because they're constantly > lying to themselves, and thus assume that everyone else is > constantly lying, too.
Just out of curiosity... (1) How can you tell whether others lie to themselves? Is this a special ability only you possess, or might others be able to discern whether you lie to yourself? (2) Do you ever wonder about whether you lie to yourself? Or is it only other people's presumed self-deception that you're concerned with? (3) Could it be that you decide whether other people are lying to themselves on the basis of whether they accuse you of lying? (4) Is it possible to lie to oneself about whether one is lying to oneself? (5) Could it be that you are lying to yourself as to whether you lie to others? Interesting comment from the review of Trivers's book in Publishers Weekly: "Even though our senses show us the truth of the world around us, our conscious minds often distort it: we project onto others traits that in fact characterize us; we repress painful memories, rationalize immoral behavior, and act repeatedly to boost self-opinion. [Sound like anyone we know on FFL?] "But the costs of self-deception include the misapprehension of reality, especially social reality, and the possibility of making ourselves immune to the needs of others and ourselves."
