Treachery as a personality trait is a tendency to consciously deceive someone else's trust, to flagrant violation of accepted obligations, oaths, promises from low, often selfish motives.
Perfidy literally means "to break the faith." The following actions are usually assessed as treachery: deliberate violation of allegiance to a promise, agreement or tacitly implied obligations that follow from a relationship of solidarity, friendship, love; slander, a false denunciation of another person, dictated by envy, hatred and the desire to take advantage of the misfortune of another; perjury, taking an oath with the intention of breaking it in the future; deliberately misleading another person with the aim of using his false belief against him for selfish purposes.
Treachery is the sister of deceit. Two sisters, acting in a spike, represent the same formidable force as a pair of Dobermans trained on people. Here is a historical example described by N. I. Kostomarov, when the union of sisters gives such fateful fruits for the country: “On November 23, 1741, Tsarina Elizabeth went to the Winter Palace to visit the ruler. There was a kurtag. In the evening, the guests sat down at the card table, the princess also began to play cards. Suddenly, the ruler Anna Leopoldovna called Elizaveta Petrovna from the card table, invited her to another room, said that she had received a letter from Breslavl: she was warned that the princess and her life physician Lestok were plotting to make a coup. Tsesarevna Elizaveta, at these words, shows a look of amazement, assures that nothing of the kind occurred to her, that she would never break her oath of allegiance given to the young emperor. She burst into tears and threw herself into the arms of the ruler. Anna Leopoldovna, out of her good nature, burst into tears herself and parted from the princess with mutual assurances of love and devotion.
In the Winter Palace, Prince Anton-Ulrich renewed his warnings to his wife for the last time and asked her to order reinforced guards to be placed in the palace and near the palace, and patrols to be sent around the city and, in a word, to take measures about Elizabeth's dangerous plans. “There is no danger,” Anna Leopoldovna answered. - Elizabeth is innocent of anything, they slander her in vain, just to quarrel with me. I spoke to her yesterday, she swore to me that she was not plotting anything, and when she assured me of this, she even cried. I see clearly that she is not guilty of anything against us." And on the night of November 24-25, Tsesarevna Elizaveta, leading the conspiracy, overthrew the ruler Anna and her son, the infant emperor John Antonovich, and became Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.
Through the use of perfidy, life teaches people an eloquent lesson, weaning them from idealization, excessive romanticism, frivolity and helping bitter insight after a carefree flutter in society. Tempered by treachery, a person becomes more reasonable, cautious and reasonable. If he learned the lesson of life the first time, then he will never recklessly fall into the net of treachery. When a person attaches excessive importance to something, the balancing forces of the universe are disturbed. Trying to return it to an equilibrium, calm and stable state, they resort to the help of treachery. When the student is ready, the teacher comes, and it is difficult to find a better teacher than treachery.
Here is an illustrative lesson from Yaroslav Hasek's novel The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, how treachery frees a person from idealizations: “You came to receive money on a bill, if I'm not mistaken? asked the feldkurat of his guest. - Yes, and I hope ... Feldkurat sighed: A person often finds himself in a position where he can only hope. Oh, how beautifully the word “hope” sounds from that shamrock that elevates a person above the chaos of life: faith, hope, love. How wonderful it is to have your ideal, to be an innocent, pure creature who lends money against bills, and how wonderful to hope to get it back in time. Hoping that I will pay you one thousand two hundred crowns when I don't even have a hundred in my pocket. - In that case, you ... - stuttered the guest. “Yes, in that case, I am,” answered the feldkurat.
One of the most powerful attributes of treachery, which just breaks people's faith in decency and honesty, is perjury. This is not a simple violation of a promise to marry or an obligation to repay a debt in a timely manner, here much more powerful strings of the soul are affected, here a person encroaches on fate, ignores conscience and God.
The last Russian Emperor Nicholas was an perjurer. This fact is described in the book by A. Gorbovsky and Yu. Semenov "Closed Pages of History". Father (Alexander III) did not trust Nicholas, considering him worthless and incapable of reigning. Therefore, he decided to pass the throne to his youngest son. But when Alexander III was dying, Michael had not yet reached the age of majority and could not accept the crown. Before his death, the emperor took an oath from Nicholas that he would renounce the throne as soon as Michael turned 21 years old. “You yourself know that you will not save Russia,” the dying man said prophetically. “Keep it until Michael comes of age. The first to take the oath to the new king were members of the imperial family. The emperor's widow flatly refused to do so. She cried and repeated: “Understand, I know him more than you, he is my son and is closer to me than anyone. Russia will perish under his rule!” The empress dowager never swore allegiance to her son. To hide this, she was declared sick.
A weak-willed, worthless little man, Nikolai did not keep his oath given to his dying father. In the tragic moments of his reign, he repeatedly exclaimed in despair that his perjury was to blame, but he never thought of voluntarily transferring the crown in favor of Michael. When he finally abdicated, the train, as they say, left, it was already too late.
Petr Kovalev 2013
It is probably safe to say that not a single person on our planet has ever met a lie in his life. Lies for profit, lies for salvation, the desire to avoid punishment by transferring it to others - all this is somehow familiar to a huge number of people. Both we ourselves and others use lies for their own purposes. However, there are individuals who, not only cannot live without lies, but also believe in it themselves. Such people are called pathological liars or liars.
Who are pathological liars?
Understanding who a pathological liar is is quite simple. Perhaps you have watched or read works about the so-called Baron Munchausen. This character was a lot of fiction - he flew on the core to the enemies and back, threw objects to the moon and got them out of there, climbing the stalks of peas. One of the most important characteristics of Munchausen was that he hated lies, and, therefore, considered all his stories to be pure truth. It is this important feature that is always inherent in pathological liars - they believe in what they say, most often offended or offended by the interlocutor if he tries to convict them of a lie. Therefore, you can often find a different name for this term, namely, the Munchausen complex. However, this mental state is not limited to these names. You may come across such terms as, for example, fantastic pseudology and mythomania, denoting the same pathological lie. The human condition that accompanies mythomania began to be actively discussed with the publication more than a hundred years ago of the works of the French psychiatrist Ernest Dupre, who introduced this term.
A person who is in a state of mythomania has a special type of personality or a special mental state that encourages him to do just that. This condition does not appear out of nowhere in a person, but is rooted in some deep psychological problems or traumas. Most often, this behavior is associated with low self-esteem or childhood experiences. However, even the realization that this does not happen just like that does not alleviate the condition of people who are next to a person prone to lies.
How to spot a pathological liar?
In order to deal with the problem of chronic lying, you need to know what distinguishes this tendency to lie from ordinary lies. Solving this problem is important, as a pathological liar can cause serious harm to your mental health. The closer this pathological liar is to you, the more difficult your experience will be. Serious damage can be done to you by close relatives, friends, colleagues and soulmates suffering from this disease.
And yet, how to recognize a pathological liar? First, you should listen carefully to his stories. It often happens that after a while a person may again begin to tell a story you already know. If you don't feel like waiting, you can just ask. At the same time, it is necessary to remember not only the essence of the story, but also less significant details. In the retelling of a liar, it is not difficult for an attentive listener to notice a significant number of inconsistencies and inconsistencies with what he told before. Such changes usually concern only small details and can change as many times as the number of times the liar repeats his story. This is especially striking, as it contrasts with the story itself, which usually, despite a bit of fantasy, at first glance may seem very convincing and plausible.
At the same time, the pathological lie of a person is sometimes found even in the most insignificant things, while he does not receive any benefit at all because of the lie. Also, such people are absolutely not shy about lying about serious things, such as someone's illness or death. Agree, it would be unpleasant for you to listen to false stories that some kind of misfortune happened to your friend, to worry about this.
An important distinguishing feature of the pathological liar is also that he either considers his excessive lies to be normal, or does not recognize them at all. If you try to accuse him of lying, he will begin to dodge, come up with excuses and avoid confirmation in every possible way. Documents will be stolen or burned, and the witnesses of these events will magically be far away and “out of reach”. Most likely, they will even accuse you of distrust and try to shift the blame on you.
Reasons for this behavior
Pathological lies in itself are not considered any mental illness, most often manifested in a complex so-called personality disorder. Usually such a person does not understand at all that lying harms not only others, but also himself. The longer a person lies, the more he becomes entangled in the "web" of his own lies. Each time it will be more and more difficult for him to distinguish reality from fantasy, as he realizes himself as part of the fantastic reality he himself created. Perhaps initially a person does this consciously, afraid to meet the real world face to face or not wanting to accept himself as he is. However, in this case, the liar usually stops developing and improving himself, because he already has a much sweeter replacement. There is a growing difference between the real and the fictional image of himself, which only increases the reluctance of the liar to see himself as real.
It is believed that mythomania has its causes in childhood. Many children have a tendency to fantasize, and this is absolutely normal until mythomania grows out of a simple fantasy. The child may do this in order to get attention. However, this does not mean that excessive lying occurs only in children with a lack of attention. The desire to receive more and more interest in their person may also arise among those who received it in excess and developed inflated self-esteem. In general, it can be said that mythomania is closely related to various disorders of self-esteem. In adulthood, fears associated with the real world are often connected to this, an unwillingness to change one's life when it does not suit you, but simply hide behind lies like behind a screen. Such people usually suffer from an extensive list of various complexes, but at the same time they are not ready to deal with them on their own.
What to do if your friend is a pathological liar?
If you find that your friend has most of the signs of a pathological lie, do not rush to conclusions. Spotting pathological lies can be tricky, and you risk being wrong if you don't have enough evidence to draw any conclusions.
Immediately accusing a person, and even more so insulting him, is the worst decision, because after that he will sink even deeper into his “shell”. Therefore, you need to act with extreme caution.
However, you should not put up with the fact that a liar ruins your life. There are several tips that can help you coexist with a pathological liar. Most importantly, you need to stop taking the words of a liar for the truth. It is necessary, when listening to a person, to try to weed out the "wheat from the chaff", perceiving from him only that information that you yourself are able to verify. If his words on any issue are very important to you, check this information very carefully, and if it turned out to be false, do not read lectures and moralizing liar. You will waste your energy, having the risk of worsening your relationship with the liar. In the event that you decide to calmly discuss the problem and indicate to the liar that you are concerned about the current situation and want to help him, but he refuses to acknowledge the problem, do not try to develop this topic further. Most likely, your acquaintance will never dare to admit to himself that he has a tendency to deceive, and, therefore, will never change. If this does not suit you, if you do not want to be with such a person all your life, you will have to cut off all contacts and stop communicating. In case the liar does not recognize the problem, and such communication oppresses you, this is the only way out.
Of course, there are times when a person gradually realizes that he is lying and wants to get rid of it. How to help a person who lies to himself? Treatment of such problems should be carried out with a psychotherapist. Although there are no exact guarantees that pathological deceit will completely disappear, mythomania is treated only in this way, because no pills for lying have yet been invented.
Personality is a person taken in the system of his psychological characteristics that are socially determined, manifested in social connections and relations by nature, are stable, determine the moral actions of a person that are of significant importance for himself and those around him. Almost every day, every person can be exposed to lies or deceit. Whether it's a lie as hiding the truth to hide the "dark" deeds of other people, or a "lie to the rescue." All this surrounds us, and it would seem that people should strive to warn themselves against this, or at least reduce the number of deceptions in their direction.
Relevance. The psychology of understanding and recognizing lies has been developed in the West for many years. A significant part of the research in foreign psychology was devoted to identifying specific behavioral signs of a lying person, as well as studying the lie detector (P. Ekman, W. Friesen, A. Mehrabian, etc.). And for Russian science, the field of research on lies is relatively new and little studied. In domestic psychology, the most famous works on the psychology of lies Yu.M. Zhukova, V.V. Znakova, S.I. Simonenko. Recently, there has been an increase in interest in the problem of lies in Russian psychology. The importance of this problem is obvious: various manifestations of lies, deceit, untruth (manipulation, fraud) are constantly found in situations of interpersonal communication, in social and intergroup relations. This can lead to an increase in tendencies of mutual distrust in the environment, in society. If a few years ago, the analysis of the causes of deceit in children and adults was mainly occupied by teachers and lawyers, today this problem is of interest to representatives of various specialties - sociologists, philosophers, marketing specialists, image makers.
Chapter 1. Lies as a psychological phenomenon
1.1. Lie
According to Viktor Znakov, the intentional transfer of information that does not correspond to reality is usually called a lie. The definition of Blessed Augustine is most common in European culture: a lie is what is said with the desire to tell a lie. With the help of verbal and non-verbal means of communication, a liar misleads his interlocutor about the true state of affairs in the area under discussion. In a communication situation, a lie is an expression of the intention of one of the interlocutors to distort the truth. The essence of a lie always boils down to the fact that a person believes or thinks one thing, and in communication expresses another.
Paul Ekman, in his book The Psychology of Lies, defines lying as the act by which one person deceives another, doing so intentionally, without prior knowledge of their goals, and without a clear request from the victim not to reveal the truth.
In everyday life, people often use the words "lie", "untruth", "deceit" as synonyms, however, these concepts, from the point of view of some domestic psychologists, have different content.
According to Yu.I. cold, False - this is a conscious distortion of the truth known to the subject: it "is a conscious product of speech activity, a subject that aims to mislead" the interlocutor. A lie is an integral part of human existence, it manifests itself in a variety of situations, in connection with which this phenomenon is interpreted in a rather diverse way. A lie in a mentally healthy, normally developed person, as a rule, is determined by real motives and is aimed at achieving specific goals. Therefore, complete sincerity becomes practically impossible and, in such a case, can, apparently, be considered as a mental pathology. Due to the fact that, of course, there are no truthful people, the difference between a liar and a truthful person is very conditional and necessarily requires a specific situational clarification.
Unlike lies, deception- this is a half-truth, provoking a person who understands it to erroneous conclusions from reliable facts; while reporting some genuine facts, the deceiver deliberately withholds other information that is important for understanding. Deception is at the heart of what is commonly called stratagem, which has been practiced since antiquity.
Deception, like a lie, occurs when someone's interests and moral standards collide, and where it is difficult or impossible for a person resorting to deception to achieve the desired result in another way. The main thing that unites deceit with lies is the conscious desire of the deceiver to distort the truth.
Not true- this is a statement based on the sincere delusion of the speaker or on his incomplete knowledge of what he is talking about. Lies, like deception, are based on incomplete information, but, unlike deception, the speaker does not hide known information and does not pursue other goals than transmitting a message containing incomplete (or distorted) information.
Thus, some psychologists distinguish lies, deceit and untruth as separate categories with different functions. Others (for example, Paul Ekman) do not distinguish between lies, paying more attention not to the definition, but to its functions. In general, it can be stated that lies, deceit and untruth are socio-psychological components of human life in society. Therefore, any attempts to "exclude" them from our lives are utopian, psychologically incorrect and, therefore, unpromising.
1.2. Types of lies
Vagin and Ekman distinguish two main types of lies in their books:
1. Silence (hiding the truth);
2. Distortion (message of false information).
There are also varieties of lies, such as: telling the truth in the form of deception and special lies. Consider these forms of lying:
Silence or concealment of real information. According to I. Vagin, “most people do not take this type of lie for, directly, a lie. A person does not give out distorted information, but he does not speak real information either. However, it would be worth looking at this kind of deception. For example, when the doctor does not inform the patient that he is terminally ill. Quite often, only part of the information is covered, and what is not needed remains behind the scenes. This default method is commonly referred to as "partial illumination or selective presentation of material."
Distortion of real information, says I. Vagin, is what we used to call a lie. When, instead of real information, we are presented with deceit, passing it off as the truth, and thereby misleading us. We encounter such lies every day, and it is this lie that is the most dangerous and most unjustified.
Telling the truth as a lie. A person tells the truth in such a way that the interlocutor gets the impression that he is lying, and true information is not accepted. Paul Ekman gives this example:
The wife is talking to her lover on the phone and suddenly the husband enters. The wife hangs up and blushes.
Who were you talking to?
The wife puts on a sweet smile on her face and says
With a lover, who else?
Everyone laughed, and the truth remained hidden. The husband did not have a shadow of suspicion, although the wife, in fact, spoke with her lover.
I. Vagin also highlights a special lie. Very often a person who lies does not consider himself a liar because he himself believes in what he says, and therefore the signs of a lie are absolutely not expressed here. He does it subconsciously, not realizing why and why. Usually almost everyone lies in this way, but this lie does not affect anything - it is not serious. It aims to impress others. This can be an exaggeration of real facts, a presentation of a real story that happened to other people for one's own, etc. Very often, such a liar can be betrayed by the fact that, after a while, he will forget about what was said and begin to contradict himself.
1.3 Personal determinants of propensity to lie
A person’s ability to deceive is purely individual and ranges from pathological truthfulness (“he absolutely cannot lie!”) to equally pathological deceit (“one cannot believe a single word of him!”). They depend on upbringing and life experience, the influence of parents, school, immediate environment and casual acquaintances. However, there are general trends associated with age, gender and psychological attitudes.
Lies are subject to almost all sectors of society, regardless of social status and status. Lies are common in politics, economics, art, sometimes even in science, in intergroup and interpersonal relationships. There are very few people who rarely lie. Unlike other human qualities that arise and are formed in a person through appropriate upbringing and training, people can master deceit completely on their own.
A child at the beginning of the formation of consciousness and personality does not know how to lie. The psychology of a child simply does not perceive lies. Therefore, with the right upbringing of a child, one can easily make an exceptionally truthful person out of him. A liar usually suffers from a lack of attention or love from his parents, he has difficulty communicating with peers, he has low self-esteem. Often a lying child is very angry. He begins to lie to vent his hostility, not out of fear of punishment.
A person’s ability to deceive is purely individual and ranges from pathological truthfulness (“he absolutely cannot lie!”) To equally pathological deceit (“one cannot believe a single word of him!”). They depend on upbringing and life experience, the influence of parents, school, immediate environment and casual acquaintances. However, there are also general trends related to age, gender and psychological attitudes.
Lies are subject to almost all sectors of society, regardless of social status and status. Lies are common in politics, economics, art, sometimes even in science, in intergroup and interpersonal relationships. There are very few people who rarely lie.
Unlike other human qualities that arise and are formed in a person through appropriate upbringing and training, people can master deceit completely independently.
A child at the beginning of the formation of consciousness and personality does not know how to lie. The psychology of a child simply does not perceive lies. Therefore, with the right upbringing of a child, one can easily make an exceptionally truthful person out of him. A liar usually suffers from a lack of attention or love from his parents, he has difficulty communicating with peers, he has low self-esteem. Often a lying child is very angry. He begins to lie to vent his hostility, not out of fear of punishment.
Appearing in early childhood, a vicious personality trait at first does not manifest itself without special need, but gradually the individual gets used to using it in emergency cases. A tendency to lie can appear in adolescence and is associated with the peculiarities of the psyche of a teenager - a heightened desire for independence, complex dreams, a critical attitude towards loved ones. But simultaneously with deceit, cynicism, suspicion, disrespect for people, etc. are brought up in the child. From such children spiritually devastated, prudent, unhappy people often grow up. There is a deformation of the whole personality, resulting in antisocial behavior.
Supporters of the biologization direction defend the idea of the initial predestination of morality. According to their position, qualities such as truthfulness and deceit can be innate. And if the influence of the environment is recognized, then as a factor slowing down or accelerating the development of qualities that are given to a child from birth: a lie as creativity and fantasizing, a lie as the ability to simultaneously fantasize and distort the truth, a lie as a distortion of truth for selfish purposes. On the contrary, there is another point of view that a lie is not only a psychophysiological phenomenon, but also a psychosocial one. The moral development of the child is the process of his adaptation to the requirements of the social environment, which results in the formation of deceitful behavior.
In order to successfully lie, in addition to experience, some psychological “predisposition” to it is needed.
Natural liars are aware of their abilities, as are those who know him well. They have been lying since childhood, swindling their parents, teachers and friends whenever they feel like it. They have no fear of being exposed at all. On the contrary, they are confident in their ability to deceive. Such liars are arrogant and lack the fear of exposure - these are signs of a psychopathic personality. They experience the "delight of swindle". Born liars lack shortsightedness; they are able to learn from their own experience. They know how to deceive extremely cleverly and quite consciously use their talent. But, unlike psychopathic personalities, born liars are able to learn from their own experience, may experience pangs of conscience for their deceit, and do not have pathological egocentrism. Psychopathic personalities lie often, selflessly and with pleasure and do not feel remorse or shame. Revealing does not rid them of this vice. Lies, insincerity, deception, hypocrisy, gossip and quiet gloating accompany their contact with others throughout their lives.
The most famous deceivers were individualists, striving to succeed at all costs; such people, as a rule, are not suitable for teamwork, they prefer to work alone. They are often convinced of the superiority of their own opinion. Such people are sometimes, due to their eccentricity and isolation, mistaken for representatives of Bohemia. However, their art is of a completely different kind (these are such great practitioners of deception as Churchill, Hitler, etc.). Such "great practitioners" must have two very different abilities: the ability to plan a deception strategy and the ability to deceive an opponent in face-to-face meetings. It is also known that skillful liars themselves are bad at recognizing when they are lying to them.
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4.1. General characteristics. Tendency to self-deception
Our critical time, the growing concern for the fate of earthly civilization urgently require courageous self-knowledge, a realistic understanding of man - his true properties and needs, the possibilities of his self-development. One of the main obstacles on this path is a person's tendency to self-deception.
In the exact sense of the word, self-deception is a special kind of deception and, therefore, must be characterized by the general features of the latter. But in what sense is it possible to deceive oneself? After all, deception is disinformation, a false message. Being deceived, the subject takes for true, true, genuine, fair (and vice versa) what is not.
The structure of deception is quite complex. It is important to distinguish between action and result in it (deception can only act as an action that does not achieve its goal: it is not perceived by those to whom it is addressed, it is met with skepticism or exposed, etc.). As already shown in Chapter 1, elementary analysis reveals here not two, but three types of subjects: on the one hand, the one who deceives (“the deceiver”), and on the other hand, the one who is deceived (“the deceived”), and that who is deceived ("deceived"). Quite often the last two subjects do not coincide. Not only an individual, but also various collective subjects (including institutional ones) can, as already noted, simultaneously act as a “deceiver”, “deceived” and “deceived”, combine these qualities in a wide variety of ways.
The peculiarity of self-deception obviously lies in the fact that here the deceiver, the deceived and the deceived are combined in one person and on the same plane. This applies both to an individual and to a social institution, to a group, people, humanity.
The concept of self-deception is usually applied to cases that are productive. However, one cannot ignore such a reality as the intention to self-deceive: sometimes a person would like to close his eyes so as not to see things that are extremely difficult for him, he would like to deceive himself, but it does not work out. He retains a kind of duality of consciousness, the desire to believe in what is desired does not turn into true faith, it is critically comprehended. Actual self-deception as a result is "transparent" for the subject, is not realized in the actual plan, is protected by faith. In the future, of course, the fact of self-deception can be established by the subject (who has discovered his delusion), but this means overcoming self-deception. He was, but now he is gone. Instead, however, another self-deception remains or arises.
Each of us is constantly subject to one form or another of self-deception, as discussed below. Just as the deception of one subject by another always acts as a communicative phenomenon, there is an attribute of social communication, self-deception is an attribute of autocommunication. This can be traced throughout the history of Western European culture.
The phenomenon of self-deception is clearly recorded already in the dialogues of Plato, although it appears here mainly in the epistemological aspect - as a delusion in the assessment of one's own knowledge. The peculiarity of this delusion is that it is caused not so much by external circumstances as by the limitations of the mind, the natural inclinations of a person. In the dialogue "Cratylus" Socrates says that he himself marvels at his wisdom and at the same time does not trust her. “Apparently, I myself still need to figure out what I actually say. For the hardest thing is to be deceived by yourself. After all, then the deceiver follows you relentlessly and is always there, isn’t it terrible? .
Thus, in order to avoid deception, one must be on the alert, check oneself, be distrustful not only of others, but also of oneself. But here new questions arise: “what am I myself?”, “how independent am I in my decisions and assessments?”, “do I bear full responsibility for them?”. After all, if I am not independent in my choice, then it is difficult to admit real self-deception. There are moments of paradox in Socrates' reasoning, for he is convinced that his decisions are influenced by some kind of superpersonal force - his "daimonion", whose voice he infinitely trusts. This voice announces the "signs of the geniuses" who are "either the gods or the children of the gods".
Of course, the daimonion never lies, besides performing not an instructive, but only a protective function, it warns against bad deeds. His voice is able to expose self-deception. But he does not always come to the rescue. I must somehow discern my own inner voice, which is capable of misleading me, and may be true, from the voice of the daimonion proclaiming the indisputable truth. But how to separate these two voices in oneself with all certainty so that they do not mix. Only by doing this can one place the responsibility for the deceit on oneself.
Daimonion is quite logically interpreted by Socrates as the divine in the human soul, as the voice of conscience, as something that distracts from everything low, petty, ghostly. However, the divine in the soul, unfortunately, too often cannot cope with the base and vulgar, retreating before them. It does not have a decisive force in the human soul, and to that extent cannot be held responsible for the choice it makes. The divine in the human soul has the dignity of unquestioning truth, but not of power and will, therefore it is not able in many cases to prevent even primitive self-deception.
As Xenophon testifies in his Memoirs, Socrates did not shy away from turning to oracles in order to find out the will of the gods, since to fulfill this will means doing good. But, following their will, a person loses freedom. He acquires it when he acts according to his own will, but then he is in danger of deception and self-deception. As a result, Socrates believes that a person is only partially free, much does not depend on him, is imposed on him from the outside. However, the recognition of at least partial freedom is quite enough to justify the possibility of self-deception.
Despite the inconsistency of the concept of Socrates, it sets the right direction for the analysis of the problem of self-deception. The key question here is free will. All those who deny free will must also deny self-deception as a specific phenomenon. The latter turns out to be a common deception for them. Let's dwell on this in more detail.
The denial of free will (freedom of choice) appears in various forms that cannot be considered here. What they have in common is a rigid deterministic attitude, drawn from a naturalistic, primarily physicalist worldview. From this point of view, determinism in the mental sphere does not differ from the determinism of biological and physical processes. All changes in the mental sphere are caused by the action of biological, chemical, physical factors. Therefore, it is meaningless to talk about the self-determination of mental processes, about some special mental activity, and even more so about free will.
The logical positivist Pratt compares free will to the phenomenon of rail convergence. Each person sees how the rails that go into the distance merge. Similarly, we think we have free will. But this is the same illusion as the convergence of rails, because in the physical world, to which our psyche is subject, everything has its own reason, we are simply not able to display and take into account these reasons, we do not know about them, which is why it seems to us that we, of our own free will and decision, make a choice and act this way and not otherwise. Phenomena attributable to self-deception are considered to be caused by certain external causes and, accordingly, are qualified as ordinary delusions.
However, a logically convincing construction does not yet serve as a guarantee of a real comprehension of reality. In the physicalist and in general naturalistic conceptions of the psyche, which exclude self-deception, there is, of course, a rational moment. Self-deception and externally produced deception are closely connected, support each other and pass one into the other. Social deception (on the part of the ruling party, politicians, government agencies, etc.) is impossible without self-deception that reinforces it. In addition, any concrete phenomenon of self-deception is determined in one way or another. External influences, including random ones, also play a role here. We can also talk about probabilistic determination on the part of evolutionary genetic factors, the features of the psychophysiological organization of a given individual, caused by the external conditions of his development, etc. But in essence it is a phenomenon of psychic self-determination, including the level of the unconscious.
Here it will be appropriate to note that the founder of psychoanalysis himself is among those who denied free will. In his opinion, this is nothing more than a subjective feeling, because the "determination" of mental phenomena occurs without gaps. Meanwhile, Freud's concept plays an essential role in understanding many manifestations of self-deception. Freud admits a contradiction, denying free will, but recognizing the responsibility of the individual for his actions.
Similar contradictions appear in many authors discussing this topic, which is associated with a fuzzy interpretation of the concepts of free will and determinism. For Freud, they seem to be mutually exclusive. But one cannot agree with this, because in a number of respects they are either logically compatible or complementary. If we also take into account that free will can be interpreted through the concept of self-determination and that it is only partial (retains its quality only in some cases, some actions), then it is easy to admit the category of determinism to describe the behavior of a person responsible for his actions. The same is true of the attitude of determinism and self-deception.
Let us consider in more detail the content of the phenomenon of self-deception, relying on philosophical literature. Over the past thirty years, a significant number of works of a logical and epistemological nature have been devoted to the analysis of this phenomenon. In them, the phenomena of self-deception are described and studied in terms of knowledge and faith, the main attention is paid to the consideration of the paradoxes that arise with this approach. After all, if I deceive myself, then I must hide something from myself or give myself false information, accepting it as true.
This means that I must know that the given information is false and at the same time be convinced that it is true. And insofar as self-deception is defined as such a state when the subject simultaneously believes in R and in non-R. At the same time, it is emphasized that we are talking about faith, and not about knowledge, because one can know, think that R, but don't believe it. Faith, understood in a broad sense, is a special mental modality, the main mechanism for sanctioning perceived information, what is supposed to be real (or unreal).
Some authors, however, generally deny the phenomenon of self-deception as a real phenomenon of a person's mental life. They draw this conclusion on the basis that one cannot firmly believe and not believe in the same thing at the same time. Most of the participants in the discussion, which over the past decades has flared up and died down several times, recognizing the reality of self-deception, have tried to overcome this paradox along the paths of logical-epistemological analysis. However, in our opinion, this goal can hardly be considered achieved, despite the ingenuity of the participants in the discussion, who sought to avoid purely psychological explanations, i.e. appeals to such very vague, in their words, ideas as unconscious knowledge, half-belief, multiple self, etc.
Apparently, it must be admitted that the problem of self-deception cannot be solved by a purely logical analysis. This is due to the fact that the subject of a logical judgment exists in a rigidly defined system of truth values and has little in common with the real subject of self-deception. A logical act does not allow contradiction in a judgment when it is asserted that a given subject at the same time and in the same sense and respect knows and does not know that R. If he only knows, or only does not know, then this is not a deception at all, or at least not a self-deception, but an ordinary delusion caused by appropriate reasons. Approximately in this way those authors who prefer to remain within the framework of the logical-epistemological approach strive to overcome the paradox.
However, most of the participants in discussions about self-deception do not observe logical-epistemological chastity and somehow go into the sphere of psychological, ethical and other descriptions and assessments. For example, Kent Bach calls self-deception "the schizoid act of directly and consciously creating in oneself a belief in what I do not believe", or, conversely, "not believing in what I believe". As a way of self-deception, he prioritizes rationalization, emphasizing the high intellectual activity of the subject in the process of describing the motives of his own behavior. In the course of such self-description, the subject does not reject facts that are contrary to his interests, but constructs hypotheses that are compatible with his desires. And it should be added: they are compatible with a certain set of ethical and other norms, the observance of which is one of the essential conditions for maintaining the subject of his personal and social significance.
Some authors rightly note the insufficiency of purely scientistic approaches to the problem of self-deception, and emphasize the advantages of fiction. This is typical, for example, for E. Palmer. He refers to André Gide's Diaries, which brilliantly depicts the phenomenon of self-deception, shows the inadequacy of describing this phenomenon in terms of honesty and dishonesty. He comes to the conclusion that the source of self-deception must be assumed not in the contradictions of judgments and assessments, but in a special contradictory state of the soul, which is most concretely and fully expressed by means of art.
Indeed, psychic reality is contradictory in almost any of its dimensions. The human Self is multidimensional, not amenable to linear ordering of the meanings and intentions that form it. This is the most suitable subject for the language of poetry:
My soul plays hide and seek with me
And lies, drawing everything is not as it is;
I gladly accept falsehood and flattery,
Although I have studied her habits for a long time,
And I keep aloof, keeping my sweet deceit,
The one who brings me bad news;
I know myself– my misfortunes cannot be counted,
But it's better to think it's okay .
In this excerpt from a sonnet by the outstanding Spanish poet Juan Boscan, one of the typical manifestations of self-deception is clearly expressed, located in an extremely wide range - from completely repressed and completely unreflexed to conscious to one degree or another, representing not so much an act of self-deception that has taken place, but a tendency to him, the desire to get away from the bitter truth, from the cruel reality that takes away the last hopes. This entire range, at least in its main links, is present in the spiritual life of every person.
Let us cite the statement of La Rochefoucauld, who subtly noticed many nuances of self-deception, shamefully hidden by a person, but nevertheless inevitable in everyday life. "People are inconsolable when they are deceived by enemies or betrayed by friends, but they often feel pleasure when they deceive or betray themselves." “It is just as easy to deceive oneself and not notice it, as it is difficult to deceive another and not be exposed.” “We should not be offended by people who have hidden the truth from us: we ourselves constantly hide it from ourselves.”
The revealing pathos of La Rochefoucauld leaves, however, a feeling of some superficiality. Yes, indeed, a person is not as committed to truth and truth as he proclaims, especially in self-assessments. But why is even the semblance of such commitment so important to him? Why, while secretly cheating on the truth, does he publicly pretend to be faithful to it? Why is the semblance of such commitment, the observance of the decorum of honesty, so important to him? This need forms a deeper level of self-deception inherent in the social nature of man.
Here is another aphorism of La Rochefoucauld: “Every person, whoever he may be, tries to put on such a look and put on such a mask that he will be accepted for who he wants to appear; therefore, it can be said that society consists of only masks. And hence the soil that feeds deceit in relation to oneself: “We are so accustomed to pretending to others that in the end we begin to pretend to ourselves.” But often pretense is a skillful imitation of morally impeccable thoughts and intentions, adherence to higher values, disguise of the base and primitive. It is hard not to see that adherence to truth and higher values, even in its ephemeral, demonstrative form, is the most important condition for any social communication.
It should be noted, however, that the "revealing" tendency of La Rochefoucauld is characteristic of the ethical-psychological approach to the phenomena of self-deception. This tendency is especially pronounced in Nietzsche, who is obsessed with the passion to tear off all the masks from this weak, two-faced, deceitful human being, who has exhausted himself in attempts to acquire "superhuman" values. Self-deception is the payment for the inescapable striving for perfection. Condemnation, sarcasm, bitter mockery - no condescension to human weakness and mortality. "Oh, you eccentric actors and self-deceivers," "cunning defenders of their prejudices," who replace authenticity with "a magnificent manner of self-acting," and who "manage to cloud their own memory."
Under the scourge of Nietzsche, hateful hypocrisy writhing, writhing, it would seem, in agony, but in spite of everything, again and again proves its incredible vitality, immortality. The poetic genius of Nietzsche is nourished by a masochistic ruthlessness bordering on the need for self-destruction. He deduces the deceitfulness of a person with himself from his fundamental property - “the will to ignorance, to obscure and untrue knowledge”, which is no less strong than the will to power. “Among what simplifications and perversions does man live! You just have to put in eyes capable of contemplating such a miracle, and you will not cease to be surprised! . However, in Nietzsche one can come across assumptions that deception lies in the very essence of things, that the very world in which we live is erroneous. From such a premise, of course, it is not difficult to deduce the "will to deceive."
The position of total self-condemnation deprives of hope, gives rise to ethical and epistemological nihilism. We now have it in vogue, despite the fact that it is hostile to creative activity. This is - a way of strengthening inferiority complexes, justifying weak will and irresponsibility.
Much more constructively, the problem of self-deception is posed and discussed by Sartre. He develops the thoughts about the fear of freedom and truth expressed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, focuses on the phenomenon of escape from reality. Self-deception appears in Sartre as "bad faith", which is due to "impure reflection". Man is doomed to be free, his being in its very essence is free being. At every moment of his existence, he chooses himself and is responsible for his choice, because in all cases he has some awareness of his own motivation. The fact of escaping from freedom, and therefore from reality, consists in shifting the responsibility for choice onto others or onto so-called objective circumstances. This is usually associated with the phenomenon of self-deception.
In Sartre's words, consciousness "contains in itself the continual risk of bad faith." Even the desire to be completely sincere with oneself often turns out to be a form of self-deception. Nevertheless, this inferiority of the spirit can be recognized and overcome with the help of "pure reflection".
Of course, it is difficult to express Sartre's approach to the problem of self-deception in a few words. But its essence is determined by the general ontological assumption about the fundamental properties of a person. Although Sartre tries to eliminate the concept of human nature as some basis for his existential constructions, including those related to self-deception, it is impossible to do without it (as can be seen, for example, in the postulate of human freedom). Even if this concept appears under a different name, it fixes some essential invariants of the biological and mental organization of human individuals, which determine the necessity or high probability of certain inclinations, needs, and a certain mode of action. And if it is asserted that a person is generally prone to self-deception, then it is natural to derive this property from the peculiarities of his nature.
The propensity to self-deceive obviously means the propensity to hide the truth about oneself. This manifests itself in the unwillingness to know the truth, in the unconscious avoidance of certain knowledge about oneself, in their repression, and often in the active maintenance of illusory self-images and all sorts of "profitable" beliefs: because when beliefs are beneficial, they are especially convincing. This kind of inclination is characteristic to one degree or another of all people, it corresponds to a certain generic interest. Russian philosopher S.N. Trubetskoy even speaks of "instinctive self-deception", in which there is truth, for instinct "pursues great and common generic goals and deceives individuality."
In the tendency to self-deception, one can see the manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, which is characteristic of a living being endowed with consciousness and, therefore, an understanding of its mortality, its insignificance before the absolute. Self-deception is a way of maintaining vital forces, protecting vital integrity from destructive acts of self-consciousness.
In contrast to "instinctive" self-deception, the development of culture created numerous social mechanisms designed to reconcile with reality, to reassure, to strengthen hope. But in order to successfully treat, you must have patients.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to believe that the entire Christian culture is permeated with a sense of the insignificance of man, the inferiority of his nature. Let us recall Augustine, who preached that human nature is permeated with false duality and that he can avoid it only by turning to God. The insignificance of man is the leitmotif of Protestantism. According to Luther, human nature is evil and vicious. Man is left with only self-abasement, said Calvin. “For nothing motivates us to put all our trust and trust in the Lord more than disbelief in ourselves and anxiety arising from the realization of our insignificance.” We are well aware that at times in history "our trust and hope" was placed in the "Fuhrer" or "Great Leader of all Nations".
Indeed, the vast majority of people are weak both ethically and volitionally. This is expressed in a lack of knowledge, courage, steadfastness, fidelity, fortitude, etc. Few people stand the test of power, wealth, honors, and on the other hand, pain, grief, poverty, humiliation of dignity. Weakness is the inability to realize higher motives, the reduction of values and goals. However, at the same time, a compensatory mechanism operates that supports the self-esteem of the individual, self-confidence and a fairly high level of active energy. The action of this mechanism causes the most common manifestations of self-deception.
The propensity to self-deception means a tendency to inauthentic auto-communication, which is able to support psychological defense system, habitual forms of self-identification. We see this especially often in extreme conditions, in extreme tension, ambivalence, at the peak of frustration, and so on. Fragmentation of the personality - “composition” of the Self from seemingly incompatible sense-forming parts (inclinations, assessments), mutually exclusive intentions also makes inauthentic auto-communication, apparently, the only possible means of preserving personality identity (even if it is weak, balancing on the verge of pathology). Consideration of the phenomenon of self-deception from the point of view of psychopathic processes, the development of various psychopathological conditions is a special topic that requires special research.
Thus, self-deception performs a variety of functions - from the mental regulation of individual substructures of the personality and the maintenance of energy tone in solving current problems to global self-regulation and the preservation of personal identity.
Each of these categories expresses at the same time a meaning fundamental to human consciousness and a corresponding class of values. It is they who form the categorical grid of objects of self-deception, equivalent, of course, to their antipode, to that which qualifies as true, authentic, correct, and just.
Ordinary deceit produced by another subject, pursuing, for example, selfish goals, is possible only when the deceived person retains faith in the truth, veracity, and correctness of the information communicated to him. Only in this case, false information is “assimilated” and is able to acquire an effective status, i.e. cause the corresponding act, deed. The categories of truth and authenticity in their most abstract form function in consciousness as a sanctioning mechanism that separates the real from the unreal. To the same extent, self-deception gives the desired the status of real, real, and the undesirable, dangerous, harmful - the status of unreal or too unlikely; sometimes he achieves his goal, blurring the line between the real and the unreal, creating a kind of saving uncertainty.
Many forms and methods of self-deception are clearly recorded by psychoanalysis. Pursuing the goal of justifying motives and actions, self-deception appears in the form of a skillful rationalization. Often the rationalization is so plausible and convincing that it is taken at face value not only by the subject of self-deception, but also by other subjects. Rationalization as a form of self-deception demonstrates high standards of creative ingenuity, a deep understanding of the finest nuances. the psychology of justification. It is a pity that researchers of creativity are extremely inattentive to this area, they would find incomparable examples here.
The need for self-deception produces plausible explanatory and justifying constructions. Such products of rationalization are the following types of justification: 1) justification that motives or actions are entirely consistent with moral standards, that actions were performed in the name of truth, justice, humanism, in the interests of other people, people, humanity; 2) the justification that the action was not committed by the will of the subject, that he was fulfilling the will of God, the state, his official duty, military order, had no choice, did not understand the meaning of the action at all, was an instrument of another; often in this case, reference is made to factors that paralyze consciousness and will: illness, extreme fatigue, intoxication, affect, mysterious forces (as a rule, malicious and uncontrollable by a person).
Finally, a special kind of justification (3) is associated with the imposition of blame on another subject, actions, intentions, whose words allegedly led to some unseemly result, to the fact that he was harmed (by me or with my knowledge), so that he himself is to blame for everyone: this also includes those cases when the subject, causing harm to another due to negligence, indifference, as a result of an affective outburst or selfish motives, proves that he acted in the interests of the latter (for example, cruel punishments characteristic of Stalin's times for the smallest offenses were justified by the tasks education and re-education of hostile elements, of which - in their own interests! - it is necessary to make the builders of a communist society).
A typical mechanism of self-deception, well studied in the framework of psychoanalysis, is projection. Thanks to the projection, an image of the enemy or the culprit of our failures is formed. Relations with them serve the purposes of psychological protection and self-regulation. From here - the necessity of the enemy for, as K. Jung subtly noted, the very existence of an enemy is a great relief to our conscience. The worse things are in a society, the more urgently it needs enemies and the more objects it finds for negative projections. This convincingly demonstrates our historical experience - perhaps no one else had such an abundance of external and internal enemies as we have. And it must be admitted that faith in the reality of these enemies was widespread, self-deception was constantly supported by official deception. As we can see, projection as a mechanism of self-deception works properly both at the level of the individual and at the levels of group and mass subjects. The same is true to say about such a well-studied mechanism of self-deception as crowding out.
According to the fair remark of Z.M. Kakabadze, "deceiving themselves, people need each other's support, they do not tolerate loneliness in this field either." Self-deceptions typical of this time are of a collective nature, which contributes to the mutual induction and strengthening of the corresponding illusions and myths in the public consciousness.
Since the core of individual consciousness is a certain content of social consciousness, assimilated in the process of socialization and under the constant influence of social institutions, each person is obviously in captivity of some dominant creeds, ideals, traditions, norms, ideological clichés. Through their prism, he looks at the surrounding phenomena and evaluates them. A person who is subordinate to the community, who has assimilated its values, according to Nietzsche, "certainly becomes a liar."
Let this be said too strongly, but the power over the minds of individuals of social ideas remains an indisputable fact. The latter, being assimilated, claim to express some kind of transpersonal objective content, the truth of which is certified by a great authority (“God”, “history”, “people”, “state”, etc.). People willingly become adherents of "teachings", social myths, because the latter provide the individual with the meanings of existence that he so much needs, root him in being. In fact, it often turns out that these are quasi-meanings, but as long as a person feels a sense of belonging to the great, sublime, eternal, as long as “bad faith” is in effect, this does not matter.
This kind of self-deception feeds on the fundamental human need to find the meaning of existence. Not enough attention is paid to this circumstance. As V. Frankl convincingly showed, a person cannot endure an existential vacuum, "the struggle for the meaning of life" is the main driving force (and not the pursuit of pleasure).
Depending on the level of his intellectual and spiritual development, a person chooses, assimilates “ready-made” meanings, becomes an adherent of “teachings” promising a “great”, “beautiful future”, “the triumph of goodness and justice”, etc. The tragic experience of mass self-deception as a result of adherence to Marxism-Leninism is an invaluable contribution to world culture. This is yet to be deeply understood by the new generation.
Vasily Grossman speaks of the "hypnotic power of great ideas" and the "ideological idiots" generated by this power. Driven into the head from the cradle, these ideas form the basic structures of consciousness, defining the features of the worldview and priority vectors of activity, suppressing the immediate, spontaneous manifestations of a sense of justice, empathy, intuitive assessments of integrity, authenticity, sanity, suppressing the voice of conscience. The phenomenon of the "theoretical man" is brilliantly described by Dostoevsky, who not only exposed the background of justification through "ideological" and the games of self-deception associated with it, but also anticipated the horrors of revolutionary fanaticism. We know of earlier examples of reflections on similar themes. “With what ease and self-satisfaction a person does evil when he believes that he is doing a good deed!” (Pascal).
The study of self-deception involves a painstaking analysis of complex relationships and interpenetrations of personal and public, individual and public, a careful consideration of the contradictory process of self-awareness, which involves "detachment" from the environment, the creative self-assertion of the individual in adverse social conditions.
The testimony of the famous pianist Andrei Gavrilov, who reflects on the task of developing one’s own individuality, is interesting: “But the paradox lies in the fact that, having realized your “I”, you instantly feel around a huge pile of lies, to which everyone obeys - someone consciously, someone unconsciously, some just because of passivity. Moreover, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is true and what is not true, to understand what is yours and what has been absorbed as a result of propaganda processing.
This uncertainty, the shifting environment of half-truths, the constant influence of the media, the usual ideological clichés, everyday creeds, conventional wisdom are the breeding ground for self-deception. In addition, self-deceptive structures in consciousness are fed by “positive” facts, which are partly a product of the interpretation given by the same structure (the range of such an interpretation is huge, up to the possibility of representing “dark” as “light”, and vice versa), and partly are real events. positive quality, which is always rich in life.
But the most important are those public communication systems, which includes masses of people. These systems take shape historically, acquire high stability and, in fact, represent an existing social reality that sets individuals their social roles, and, consequently, the forms and norms of behavior, the “rules of the game”. Being involved in these "games", a person in many respects loses the boundary between the conventional and the authentic.
Role convention becomes his way of existence. Is it not for this reason that the proportion of actors and acting, the art of stage representation and all kinds of games is so great in our civilization. Pervasive acting there is a certain inalienable reality of public and private life. A talented actor, he knows how to portray someone else for us, to present himself as a great, kind, suffering, loving, or a terrible scoundrel, a deceiver, a hypocrite. The master of imitation, transformation, who makes us believe in the cinema or on the stage that he is who he now portrays (the incomparable Hamlet, the real Lenin!) - this is one of the most significant, revered, adored, influential figures in society. And this confirms acting as a social need, the high value of the art of imitation. It hardly needs proof that this is fertile ground for self-deception (for both individual and collective subjects). Of course, the analysis of the social sources of self-deception requires a special study, we have noted only some points that are important for understanding the attributive nature of self-deception, its deep foundations in human communications.
This exposure of self-deception marks spiritual upliftment of the individual, overcoming intellectual limitations, narrow worldview. This is a normal process of self-knowledge and self-development of the individual, in connection with which it is appropriate to quote the words of the famous physicist Max Born: “Now I look at my former belief in the superiority of science over other forms of human thinking as self-deception.”
At the same time, it must be admitted that the exposure of self-deception does not always lead to an elevation of the spiritual and intellectual level of the individual. The collapse of an “elevating deception” or “comforting”, “encouraging”, “inspiring” deception can cause a destructive personal crisis, sharply weakening the possibilities of self-regulation, strengthening pessimistic attitudes, moral relativism, cynicism, and a drop in creativity. Such fractures are fraught with the loss of the meaning of life, moral devastation, suicide. Exposure of self-deception can lead to shock.
K. Jung also noted that the removal of all projections can undermine the mechanisms of psychological defense, psychoregulation, disrupt typical forms of human relationships, and destroy "that bridge of illusions through which love and hate can easily rush." It acts as a means of self-regulation in extreme situations. saving ambivalence- the mother of half-truths about oneself, of what can be equally named and semi-self-deception, "oscillating consciousness", wavering between faith and unbelief.
And yet, despite the benefits of self-deception, the individual is fundamentally oriented toward truth in general and the truth about himself—orientated even at the cost of self-deception. This paradox is still not well understood. It marks the fundamental existential meaning for a person of truth, authenticity as a decisive factor in spiritual self-organization, as an ideal of communication with oneself and with others.
Therefore, the identification of self-deception can serve as a therapeutic factor, which is demonstrated to us by psychoanalysis, in which therapeutic procedures take the form of self-knowledge, involve the clarification and overcoming of individual myths, liberation from the captivity of false creeds, skillful rationalizations.
But psychoanalytic methods are only a part of hermeneutics of self-deception as the art of comprehending true meanings, encoded in the symbolic wilds of subjective reality, hidden under a multi-tiered camouflage of social roles, neurotic postures and situational game transformations.
A systematic analysis of the hermeneutics of self-deception, characteristic of Western culture, is still waiting for its researcher.
The connection between self-deception and human cognitive ability is unconditional. The pursuit of truth cannot compete with the pursuit of success. Only to a small extent is self-affirmation achieved through a persistent search for truth, which often hinders progress towards the goal (of course, we are not talking about the knowledge that is necessary at this stage of solving a practical problem).
Apparently, self-deception is one of the manifestations of that fundamental asymmetry, which is found in the structure of our cognitive activity. This asymmetry lies in the fact that all the main cognitive efforts are directed to the external world; the most significant values that generate human activity, the goals of activity, also rely there.
Against this background, self-knowledge looks extremely reduced and miserable; accordingly, the energy directed to self-transformation, self-improvement is negligible. It is not difficult to see, however, the essential dependence of the knowledge of the external world on a person's knowledge of himself (including his true needs and capabilities).
Weak self-knowledge, in many respects inadequate, densely saturated with self-deception, causes deformation of cognitive and practical processes, causes the inauthenticity of the goals of activity, the growth of absurdity, environmental contradictions that call into question the very existence of human civilization.
Recent decades have sharply deepened this asymmetry. The growth of technical and intellectual-computer power is combined with an increase in the spiritual and spiritual weakness of a person who is prone to more and more subtle forms of self-deception.
The future of mankind largely depends on whether it will be possible to overcome the asymmetry between the knowledge (and transformation) of the external world and self-knowledge (and self-transformation), to find new life meanings and new compensatory means that can compete with the corresponding means of self-deception.
Perhaps, overcoming the main forms of self-deception, still characteristic of humanity as a whole, will mark a new type of his identity and social self-organization, limitation of consumer desires, creation of new life-affirming meanings and values, able to increase the degree of humanity of our civilization, and thus its resilience.
This is the most important aspect of the problem of self-deception, which requires not only philosophical, but also serious psychological, psychiatric and broad cultural understanding.
