It would seem that the majority of people prefer to be lied to. Why is that?
Most all of us read. As a matter of fact, one source that I looked at said 73% of people read books regularly. It seems that a majority prefer to read fiction vs. nonfiction. In other words, we prefer to be lied to rather than told the truth? Maybe. Greater entertainment value?
Is it because we want to believe what we are being told, whether verbally or in print? It would appear that way. In reality, we have absolutely no reason to believe anything told or written by any person and yet we still do. I have always marveled at listening to people discuss a movie or a fiction book they have read and are relating it as though it really happened – that it was the truth.
Have you ever known or read about (snicker) famous fakers, con men, hoaxers, forgers? The world is full of them. Some are “professional” – whatever exactly that means. We are all fakers, con artists, hoaxers, and forgers of some kind. Be honest. We lie. We believe that under most conditions, the means to an end can be justified even if it is mired in dishonesty.
One of the world’s greater “professional” hoaxers might have been a man by the name of Clifford Irving. Irving was notably an author and investigative journalist known best for his supposed “autobiography” of Howard Hughes – as told by Howard Hughes. It could never be proven or disproven that he even knew Hughes say nothing about writing his autobiography from interviews with the man.
But people lined up to buy his work. Many believed it. Many wanted to believe it. He lied. Or did he? How do we know? Does it matter?
Irving became friends with a Hungarian man named “Elmyr.” Elmyr was one of the worlds great art forgers…we think because we have been told. But it is impossible to prove anything he allegedly did or didn’t do.
The preservation of this fakery is done by the faker himself. Irving and Elmyr both were once asked if they would “come clean” about their forgeries. They said they would and sat down to discuss the “truth” about the events, only to discover at some point that the interviews were fake and full of lies – just more hoaxes. Regardless of the number of times either Irving or Elmyr was asked to come clean, they said they would but it would end in what could only be seen as continued lies and hoaxes.
If we spend the majority of our time when we read, reading fiction books, does this muddy our ability to determine truth from fiction? Do we even care? We want to believe…in something. Are there better things to be found in fiction reading than in reality?
How important is it that the faker, hoaxer, liar, fraud convinces you they are telling the truth? There are millions of dollars to be made from this, even in areas typically accepted by people as legitimate platforms of media, i.e. books, newspapers, television, social media, movies, music, etc. Because of this simple fact, it only makes sense that the perpetrators of hoaxes, lies, fake news, fraud ought to be trained professionals – actors? Why not? The things we do for money.
Actors are nothing more than trained professional liars. They are failures if they are not. Their job as an actor is to convince you they are real and what they do and say can be taken as authentic. If this is so convincing on the movie screen, why isn’t this same act carried out on television “news” programs, or anywhere else, say in Congress, the White House, IRS, FBI, NSA, CIA, etc.? There is always a lot at stake – often times more than we can imagine.
Remember the H.G. Wells movie “War of the Worlds?” What made the movie successful is that people believed and wanted to believe it was really happening. It took an awful lot to convince these people it was a hoax. Millions were made and within the event, it was discovered what power existed in this format of lying to convince people of things for sinister reasons.
If you will recall the formation to the Wellington House, a group of professionals (some liars/writers of fiction) whose purpose was to create propaganda (lies) in order to manipulate public opinion in support of World War I. This, in more fine-tuned fashion, continues today.
Nobody wants to be made a fool of and because of that, it becomes that much more difficult to convince people they are being lied to, conned, misled, etc. That’s what makes lying so wonderful to those seeking the advantage in dishonest ways.
We know that newspapers, magazines, television, movies, social media, etc. all contain lies. What we don’t know is how much and just what are the lies and what are truths. How do we determine? Can we? Maybe it is best to stop using these resources for information. But we won’t. It’s an addiction.
When we are told that someone or some media source was caught lying, how do we know that the supposed lie was, in fact, a lie? How do we know that the accusers aren’t lying? We don’t. How do we know that this isn’t just a conspiracy plotted between the accused liar and the accuser? We don’t. However, if one lie is what we want to hear, we readily accept that as truth. We must believe in one side or the other, one actor over the other, one author over the other…right?
If we can wrap our fingers around the notion that what is at stake is of such a high value, monetarily and politically, or even protect clandestine operations and the sinister things they do, then can we begin to understand that these same operators will go to whatever lengths necessary to accomplish what is “life or death” to them?
Why then, do we or should we believe what we are being fed? There is no reason to. Are any of the things we are seeing on television real? If not, which ones are acted out, lies, i.e. “fake?”
We are supposed to believe that a woman from 30-some years ago in a Supreme Court nominee’s past attacked her…or something. What is at stake here? You would think the end of the world is the outcome the way people are acting and reacting. Therefore, at what lengths will people go to stop this nomination or at what lengths will they go to confirm this nomination? Would they go so far as to bring in trained actors, make them up and give them a script? Why not? We love the entertainment of lies. We feed off lies. We want very much to believe those lies.
Still not convinced? For those probably least convinced, they may be the consumers of fiction books and movies. Look at what computers can do on the movie screen. Look at what makeup is capable of these days. The technology exists that if someone wanted to make another person up to look like Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Ford, or anybody they so choose, they could. We would not know the difference.
After all, what is at stake? How important is it for certain things to take place? How important is it to the government, to Big Corporations, to banks, to the Vatican to get what they want?
Do we still have the capability of decerning fact from fiction? Do we just adore our fiction so much, i.e. being lied to, that in our programmed confusion we can’t and don’t want to know reality? We have all been taught that “you are what you eat.” If your life is drowning in fiction, then your life is drowning in fiction.
The lives or Clifford Irving and Elmyr, along with others, was made into a movie – “F is for Faker,” hosted and narrated by Orson Welles. I’ll leave you with what he said at the end of the movie: “I did promise that for one hour, I’d tell you only the truth. That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over. For the past seventeen minutes, I’ve been lying my head off.”
Now what?
