As our society evolves, we begin to create more and more new words and layer more and more new meanings onto existing words. These words came out of our need to explain our environment. Now that many of those words are not just intellectually and visually but also emotionally established, we have reached a stage where we can use mere words to define what we want out of our environment.
For example, since our society has created a system whereby words have become part of law, administration and entertainment, careers have spawned in these fields. This is possible due to our ability to process logic with words, and our method for getting logic is by asking questions, Socratic style. Hence if an idea makes sense we accept it, if not we reject it. And since fact is an important part of logic, our values, beliefs and biases will change as and when we get new information.
However, because of the way many of us are brought up –be quiet and listen- the questioner part of our nature is stunted. We have been trained since a young age to accept information given to us as it is, without question. Many would recall how we were told to memorize information or how overworked teachers would tell us ‘because it is so’ whenever we ask ‘why’. This creates an interesting situation whereby our ‘question’ nature is less developed than our ‘assimilation’ nature. And it is this weakness that makes us easy targets for manipulation and scams.
Since our questioning nature is stunted, we begin to develop and to rely on a different skill whereby we accept or reject information based on a ‘does it make sense’ system. Because of this, many lies or scams follow a line of undeniable logic, yet each one is, well, pretty ridiculous if questioned through properly.
As a storyteller, I must admit, my purpose is to manipulate your emotions, and this is only possible if I can persuade you that an idea is not far-fetched. All good stories must be rooted in some form of fact else the reader will reject it outright as foolish. For example, ‘On the Surface’ is based on an idea that Earth will become hotter if it is bumped a little closer to the Sun. Anyone can accept this idea because we all know that if we move closer to something hot, we will feel the burn. But this story is called fiction because it is built on one fact alone – distance from the Sun. It can’t be real because life is made up of a thousand conditions, each of which is intertwined. It is because of our common sense system that this story is plausible. Even insanity has its own logic, and if I follow that logic, I can write a crazy story that is plausible.
Moving along from fiction, we come to real life. We tell people things about ourselves and they tell us things about themselves all the time. A little lie usually slips out, the most infamous one being ‘How are you?’ ‘I am doing great’. Then again we are conditioned not to appear unsuccessful in social settings. This is the time when we talk about the wonderful house (we hate), kids going to college (we can’t afford) and the supportive spouse (who nags us endlessly). It works because we already have a façade of happiness and success in place.
However, there are people who lie deliberately to get our support. I am not just talking about people who want our money or authority but also about those who want our validation. We have all come across drama queens/ kings who love playing the ‘woe-is-me’ game. Then there are some politicians running for office who will twist facts to rile us up, and sales people who can persuade us that the blender they are selling is our key to happiness. They don’t just want our time and money; they want us on their side. The reason being, once we have committed our character and reputation to their ideals, we will naturally want to defend them because any weakness they have will also be attributed to us. That is just the way life works.
Is there no hope? If you can read this article, then most probably you have access to the internet. That means that you can find answers to any question you can imagine. All you need is a Search Engine like Google or Yahoo, type in the topic of interest and click ‘search’. You will get a list of hundreds if not thousands. Will you still get sucked into something you don’t want? Yes you will. However, you will have more control. You can close the page anytime you want, you can ignore the emails and mark them as spam and you can even search for alternative information on the same topic. That power is in your hand now, and how you wield it, is up to you.
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