whatsoever things are true
The Worst of Lies
Writer and professor Aritha van Herk, ’76 BA ’78 MA, on the lies we tell ourselves
F
ive years ago, the publication of The Secret caused a buzz in the self-help realm. The book proposed that positive thinking can result in enhanced wealth, satisfaction and physical well-being. Embracing love, money and fitness with sufficient fervor will result in reciprocal outcomes; a variation on the Field of Dreams “if you build it” formula. Apparently, if you imagine yourself beautiful, you will be comely; if you imagine yourself rich, you will wear silk stockings. Personal motivation and responsibility aside, philosophical debates about the secrets of positive thinking have focussed on confirmation bias (when people focus on information that corroborates what their preconceptions are), and illusory correlation (when people believe two unrelated events are linked). Interestingly, The Secret does not once use the word “self-deception.” Lies we tell ourselves are a key element to survival, but also to self-sabotage, another aspect of human fallibility. Despite the nostrum that “the worst lies are those we tell ourselves,” we have become practiced at lying to ourselves, determined to outface our own doubts. A few years ago, one of my students asked me to refrain from marking papers in red ink because it was “bad for self-esteem.” I marveled at this astonishing request. Would the errors seem less ubiquitous or less serious if
I marked in blue or green? What about pink? Was self-esteem key to being able to write good essays? I knew that my assiduous identification of errors would not change: I believe in letting students know exactly what is wrong with their writing and how it can be improved. I still mark in red ink. Mea culpa, but tant pis. In his brilliantly evocative essay, “I Wanted to Write a Manifesto,” the Alberta writer, Robert Kroetsch, recounts a fantastic example of selfdeception. When he was a child, some hired men were digging a well on his farm. He wandered by to check their progress and they asked him to get them a pail of water from a different well. The young Robert did as they asked, but for some inexplicable reason, he chose to urinate (just slightly, not enough to discolour the liquid) in the pail. He went back to where the men digging for water were dying of thirst, gave them the pail and announced, truthfully, “I peed in the water.” “You did not,” the hired men declared. The narrator writes, “The two men took the pail and drank the water, and I marveled that men are so impervious to truth. They carry with them the paradigms of their claims to the world, and no mere words will deter them from believing.” There is the crux of self-deception: no mere words will deter us from what we believe. Most of the lies we tell ourselves begin with “I,” the narcissistic marker.
Perhaps the greatest lie lived now is the everywhere-demonstrated and practiced belief of individuals that they are the centre of the universe. Of course, each one of us want to believe ourselves the protagonist of the narrative we find ourselves in, not a minor character like Eliot’s Prufrock who “swells a progress, starts a scene or two.” The adamant egocentrism of this age, manifested by disregard for and discourtesy to others, is a deplorable symptom of the 21st century. Healthy narcissism, while it argues for balance, is an oxymoron that we may regret investing in. Lies, damned lies. Lies, beautiful lies. They are all part of this deliciously complex world that so intrigues and challenges the thoughtful. And so, let me confess. My biggest lie is that I do not lie. In truth, I am a practiced and persuasive liar. As a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction, as a worker with the most deceptive and slippery of tools, words, I make my living spinning meaning, weaving tales, and telling lies. The beautiful lie (bella bugia) is key to art, and life as art is all that we can live. For it always ends with death, that most inexplicable but inevitable truth. Aritha van Herk practices her lies in Calgary. Robert Kroetsch’s “I Wanted to Write a Manifesto” can be found in A Likely Story: The Writing Life. For more on Robert Kroetsch see page 7. newtrail autumn 2011
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