“..“[Lying] is both a failure of understanding – and an unwillingness to be understood.”
“Ordinary language is an accretion of lies,” Susan Sontag wrote in her diary in 1980.
“The language of literature must be, therefore, the language of transgression – a rupture of individual systems – a shattering of psychic oppression.”
Unlike in literature, however, lies in life create rather than shatter “psychic oppression” —
- especially in a culture where the deadly fear of being wrong drives an exponential tragedy of cover-up lies after even the most benign of errors -
- a culture that then takes noxiously gruesome pleasure in devouring its fallen stars with far too little intelligent reflection.
In Lying (free on Amazon until Sunday, August 5th) neuroscientist Sam Harris explores the nature and conditions of lying — defined, in most basic terms, as “to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication” —
- as a complex psychosocial phenomenon – rather than a simplistic categorial imperative…”
(cont..)
go to source/story>>>
