Everybody lies

Wittgenstein’s words and ideas keep coming back. He was unapologetic in his review of the basic facts of human life. His attitude is contagious, so I keep revisiting all the fundamental assumptions I never thought I would ever challenge.

So far, I was not forced to change my views on the opposite or very different. Instead, my existing world view got more refined justification. Which is good, right?

Problem is that we know now that each of us is able to twist and turn and maintain contradictory opinions on any topic (thus even lying to ourselves) – all for the sake of re-confirming and justifying, again and again, the views we hold. And then, on top of it, as Wittgenstein has put it (Culture and Value): “Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.“

Is there anything we would not do in order to feel good about ourselves?

It amazes me that such profound self-centric liers are able to hear each other at all or (that is even more surprising!) cooperate and produce something useful for everybody.

Who is the adult in the room? Who helps us to navigate through this mess of contradictions? God? Mother Nature? An architect who has built all this simulation? If yes, then who is this architect – God or Mother Nature?

We come to this world and assume it to be a stable one, with clear binary classification. Every statement is either truth or lie. Every act is either good or bad. That was how we were raised and that’s how we raise our kids. One needs this stability in order to form a stable personality. The alternative is a psychologically broken and largely dysfunctional individual. So, we provide the kids with a bubble of an illusion to give them a chance to harden before being exposed to the blows of reality.

Then the teenager rebellious phase, then young adult (bitter) experience, and, finally, the product of this metamorphosis – the human being as a responsible member of human society. 

Then one reads Wittgenstein or something similar and discovered the lies at the foundation of their world view. Then what?

Apparently, we are able to correct our world view. We are able to accept the inconvenient truth. The fact that everybody lies does not prevent us from gyring closer to the correct – more productive and positive overall – view eventually. 

The rate of change accelerates, and we are forced to perform this fit more often than our parents had to. Humanity managed to successfully do it for thousands of years and there is a good reason to believe we will manage to stay on track in the nearest future, too.