Deceit

Defining Deceit

Deceit is deception.  It is the opposite of truth.  Deceit and truth are mirror concepts which apply to living organisms, and generally not to inanimate objects or non-life activity, To fully understand deceit, we must also understand truth. 

In searching for truth, we seek the true representation of reality as applied to understanding and modeling life form structure and activity, including those of humans.  In understanding deceit, we seek to unmask the deception that hides that true representation of reality.

The Extent of Deceit

All life forms appear to practice deceit in one form or another – as protection from predators; to catch prey off guard; to intimidate rivals for sex, food, or territory; and for status in the group hierarchy.  As such, deceit is a natural activity for life forms. 

Forms of Deceit

Deceit can take many forms, such as camouflage (being relatively indistinguishable from the background), puffery (appearing bigger than it is), feigning aggression (appearing to be powerful), feigning death (appearing to be dead), displaying dominating or aggressive body posturing, and making dominating or aggressive sounds,

Passive deceit often appears to occur without seeming effort by the life form.  Examples of such deceit are insects that have the appearance of a twig or leaf, fish that look like stones, animals with coloring schemes that blend with vegetation or terrain background, animals with strips or spots that interrupt its outline or profile so that it is harder to see, non-venomous animal species which mimic the coloring schemes of venomous ones, and so on – the list is almost endless. 

On a higher level than passive schemes are animals which can dynamically change their color schemes as they pass over changing vegetation or terrain. Examples are chameleons, octopus, cuttlefish, and squid.  Octopus can also change their shape to some degree.  Unless they are in motion, these animals can be very difficult to detect to their predators.

Deceit in Human Society

In human societies, deceit is extended in communications in the written and spoken word, often greatly amplified and targeting emotional response, with colorful displays, and sounds cached in rhythm and rhyme, Political, social, and intellectual deceits abound, with overt and covert claims of expertise, education, investigation, and even claims of divine connections or intervention.  It is human deceit that we concern ourselves with most.  It is so widespread and prevalent in our cultures that the following saying bears great relevance to us:

“Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.”

- old adage, source unknown

Imposters

In humans, “dressing the role appropriately,” and “acting as if the role were true,” often results in acceptance of an imposter without any challenge or question. From time-to-time a person without any medical training is uncovered who has played the role of a doctor so well, they have even performed surgery on hapless patients. 

Understanding Deceit as a Natural Phenomenon

As humans, all of us are both deceiver and deceived, and very often – self-deceivers, meaning we can even manage to deceive ourselves.  In order to gain an understanding of this very natural, and frequent, phenomena called deceit, we must become aware of it when it occurs and observe it.  And, we must understand why deceit is so widely practiced among humans – in fact, more so than any other animal. 

We must realize and admit – to ourselves, if no one else – that we are in competition with all the humans around us for the scarce things and conditions we want.  While we employ a great deal of logical thought, we are basically emotional creatures, and we more often employ logical thought to obtain what we want emotionally. Much of what passes for logical justification in the general public, and even among the well-educated, is nothing more than rationalization – a litany of pseudo-logical words which we use to justify our actions to others, and often to ourselves. 

Social Deficits

There is a maturing process that every child should go through in which his or her individual wants gradually become subjugated to the needs of the greater social group.  The wants and needs of the infant are all dominant, and the mother and father should put all personal wants aside in favor of the infant.  But as the child grows through to toddler and preschooler, the norms, mores, moralities, ethics and laws of the greater society must begin to be instilled in the child – and  the child imbued with the emotional desire to belong to the greater society, If it is to be successfully integrated into that greater society, the child must gradually take on the responsibilities of the adult, becoming eventually a contributing member of the greater society. 

Unfortunately, there is not one universal sense of a greater society.  Instead, there are many, varied cultures and groups – some seeking advantage or domination over others, some content to be in isolation from other cultures, and some in seeming or actual chaos and internal conflict. And, there are many individuals who survive to adulthood without much emotional attachment to their own social group (much less any outside group) – because their parents were estranged from the group, because they parents were largely absent, because of mood-altering drugs, because there was a deficit of emotional attachments in their formative years, because of one or more serious traumas in their life which embittered them, or for a myriad of reasons interrupting their social and emotional growth and attachment. 

Learning Deception

For whatever reasons exist, both naturally and enhanced by our culture (or lack thereof), individual humans, and groups or associations of humans, actively engage in deception, consciously, subconsciously, overtly, and covertly.  As individuals, we learn very young that being honest and forthright has unwanted consequences for us.  Our own parents and guardians punish us for being truthful – so we learn to hide the truth from them.  As the old adage goes:

Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott  (1771-1832) - Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.(1808)

But we get better with practice!  As we grow older, and our parents deny us permission to read this book, or watch that movie, or attend that party, we begin simply to ignore them and hide our participation from them.

It is the proclivity for deception and deceit among life forms, and in particular among humans, that make our search for the truth so difficult.  However, no matter how difficult, Transcendent Reality holds that the search for truth is a noble and necessary action if we are to build accurate and useful models that yield useful predictions, and to make decisions that serve the collective greater social good – as measured by our collective survival, continuance-in-kind, and prosperity.

For more discussion on the relation between truth and deceit, see Truth.