View From the Top > Esteemed Reader

When anyone assents to what is false, be assured that he does not willfully assent to it as false— for, as Plato affirms, the soul is unwillingly deprived of truth—but what is false appears to him to be true. —Epictetus, Discourses

Esteeemed Reader of Our Magazine:
There is an epidemic sweeping the country. It is the disease of suggestibility. We swallow the lies that are fed to us—lies to justify criminal, imperialistic wars; lies to conceal a fierce, unprecedented attack on the environment; lies to remove our rights as citizens of a democracy, a democracy effectively made null by the 2000 presidential “selection” with continued undermining on many fronts.

The terror evoked in Americans by the September 11 attacks made us hungry for recourse in the face of our helplessness. This need was seized upon by an opportunistic (and probably complicit) administration to further a private agenda of world domination and conquest for profit. The titles “Operation Enduring Freedom” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” are fine examples of Orwellian doublespeak. These noble-sounding names in fact represent vast, unjustifiable atrocities in which tens of thousands of innocent Afghani and Iraqi people, as well as US and other nations’ soldiers, are being maimed and killed—atrocities perpetrated by persons in and behind our government for personal gain.

Meanwhile the energy that might have fueled collective inquiry and self-reflection after 9/11 was channeled into this show of vengeful retaliation. We were denied the opportunity to see that our fat, arrogant American society creates conditions elsewhere that make others suffer and therefore hate us. And we were denied the opportunity to understand that given the same desperate circumstances we ourselves might be driven to the same desperate acts.

We accept the doublespeak, the meaningless rhetoric of the spinmasters churning thick webs of deceit, because not to is uncomfortable. We want to trust that our leaders are not criminals, that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that we are on the side of the good. We are loath to recognize the contradictions because they hurt. And in the conventional hierarchy of needs, comfort is more important than truth.

Fundamentally, it is the inability to face the truth about ourselves that makes us suggestible. We want to believe we are constant and faithful when, in truth, each of us is a bundle of contradictions. We say one thing and do another. We break our word every day. We preach peace and attack those who don’t. We espouse equality but cave in at the smallest infatuation or disgruntlement. We gloss over weaknesses in ourselves because we believe that facing them would be too painful to bear.

Our tactics for furthering our own ignorance include a variety of excuses, justifications, backtracking, deceit—anything to prevent the hard look at our inner inconsistency. We use blame and its consonant, criticism, outrage and the whole panoply of negative emotions to project responsibility for our failings and feelings of discontent onto others. We lie to make the facts more palatable. The result—life becomes a quixotic dream in which we battle to project a fallacious image of ourselves and wage private wars to keep the false picture in place.

I get angry at the curb for making me trip. I blame my partner for the discord in our relationship. I fault the boss for firing me. There are innumerable examples of my propensity for avoiding the truth. Forever excusing and justifying my contradictions I am left in a prison of my own devising.

Ironically, the lying we do to avoid facing ourselves produces more pain than taking the bold step into real experience. Even briefly seeing and acknowledging a weakness is precisely what makes change possible. If I see I am clumsy, I can work to be aware of my body and become graceful. If I see I am selfish and self-involved, I can extend concern to my partner and become considerate. If I see I’m not conscientious in my work, I can make efforts to become someone that others depend on.

For this honest seeing to be an effective agent of change we must avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of guilt/shame on the one side and excuses/justification/lies on the other. Only then can we move quickly through the pain of self-acceptance and actually have a shot at changing.

Facing the liar, criminal, terrorist, or megalomaniac in ourselves, we can understand these characters in others. By seeing ourselves truly we can truly see the reality of the injustice and crime that pervades the world without flinching. In seeing and understanding we have the chance to act on what we see—or not—in the way that is appropriate.

To heal is to become whole. And the world desperately needs healing, but without individually and collectively seeing ourselves as we are we remain a fractured composite. Fortunately these parts of us can be ever-more fused into a singularity. The process requires that we individually and collectively step into the discomfort of real honesty. In wholeness we become the peace we want to see in the world.

—Jason Stern