Deception and Self-Deception

Update:  I did not mention that the test of your own courage and the Mean Girl exclusionary nature of your group is to go against its tenets in just one area.  Be down-the-line AOC woke Democrat except expressing some mild sympathy and understanding of the pro-life perspective, or gun rights or something - provided you do not immediately undo it entirely by saying, "But of course I...and of course I..." and the like. There are conservative equivalents but they usually don't have this problem.  They have the opposite problem of being entirely too willing to take an unpopular stand.  Grumbling, irritable bastards who will stay home rather than vote for someone who doesn't meet their standard. 

 But test yourself and your friends that way.  See if you start being disinvited, quietly.

Even single exceptions can be disqualifiers because you are demonstrating that you are willing to look objectively at the Spirit of the Age.  Tom Friedman will go against the tide - and then spend the next six months backtracking with obsequious gesture to get back in good graces. So let's see what you're made of. Make a full-throated defense of strict border control, or (to borrow from other posts) the profound important of marital commitment and vows. Just one thing. I dare ya. No, really I should warn you.  Quillette is loaded with writers who were respectably in one camp until a single incident cast them into the abyss. Then you can begin to fathom the depth of the effect this culture has had on you. Before that you are just dismissing these ideas as something you never heard of and is ridiculous.

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"Nothing can deceive unless it bears a plausible resemblance to reality." C S Lewis  An Experiment in Criticism Chapter 6 "The Meaning of Fantasy." Note that this is in one of his secular works, not a Christian one.

Not deceiving oneself is one of the strongest themes in CS Lewis. He regarded his own conversion as resulting from clearing away an accumulation of false beliefs and convenient excuses. This may be why I took to him so readily early in my Christianity, as I was deeply aware of my self-deception and how that spilled over into deceiving others - indeed, all others. These are different from hypocrisy - though we increase our likelihood of being hypocrites before others - these are lies which we tell ourselves, and believe them. I have long been told that if we tell ourselves a lie long enough we will come to believe it, but I am unsure about this. I think self-deception is almost instantaneous, with significantly less awareness that we kid ourselves. She left me because I didn't make enough money for her extravagant lifestyle, rather than She left me because I beat her. We don't have to tell ourselves that a thousand times, though that may strengthen it, because we embrace it so readily straight out of the gate. 

On the other hand, the Scriptures do make reference to a conscience being "seared" because the will ignores it so often that scar tissue is formed.

I tend to the belief that the Unforgivable Sin, the sin "against the Holy Spirit" means something like this, a sin that cannot be confessed and forgiven because we have talked ourselves into believing it is no sin at all. They deserved it. If I don't take it, someone else will. It's only real adultery if, if, if... 

This is the meaning of Polonius's "To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."  To modern ears we immediately think of an Oprah-like encouragement to "be your true self," because that is a more ambiguous morality by which we can excuse self-indulgence, cooperativeness, and a host of other sins. (It can also be a very good thing. Just not always.) But Shakespeare's meaning is that we should not deceive ourselves.

When we are quite certain what the genuine article is, we also see quickly the inadequacy of the imitations. But mostly, we live in the world of imitations, thinking them real and looking down on those who are not as wise as us.