This morning my son informed me that Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead. At 46, he has "left the building". After watching "Capote" I couldn't help but wonder how a person can switch off his "deceptive/pretend" life and step back in to "reality". How do they do it these actors and actresses? How does one wear a new identity and persona for weeks and months on end and then somehow snap back into the "real" self?
Us humans, I believe are configured to make sense of the world in a particular fashion. We need to configure the world in such a way that we can reason and agree about the aspects of reality that are relevant to our purposes. However, our most basic perceptions of the world are often profoundly constrained by our own "ways of seeing". Humans are "story telling creatures", we understand what "reality" is, who we are, and how we should live by placing ourselves within the larger and smaller narratives that we tell and hear, and what for us is real and significant.
This can be hard enough when one is just dealing with one identity/self, but actors/actresses go through many. Are the best actors/actresses those who can so "deceive" their own identities that they actually lose them for the time that they pretend to be someone else?
(I have read of cops working under-cover for long periods of time who have found themselves with "fractured" self-identities after having to settle back into "normality" again.)
If the scientists are right, then its crucial for our narrative illusions/deceptions to work that we are basically unconscious of them, but if we no longer are conscious of our deceptions, will we not experience our deceptions/illusions as "reality"?
Is lying the same as deceiving? I may lie about my age/status, but by doing so I am deceiving myself.
To make a false statement with the intention to deceive, is the definition of deception says the OED.(Oxford English Dictionary)
To lie = to make a believed-false statement to another person with the intention that that other person believe that statement to be true is the most common definition.
So why do we lie? To save face, to avoid confrontation, to be nice, to shift blame, to get ones own way, to "enhance", and so on. "The fish I caught was THIS big"..."No, your butt does not look big in those pants"....."I didn't do it"....."It's not you, it's me"......
Perhaps one can view a "lie" as the "short con" while deception is the "long con"?
Deception may involve an elaborate web of lies, intentionally done in order to "hide" a truth. The Watergate incident and subsequent lies to cover it up for example; the long con.
"Who ate the last piece of chocolate? ....Not me, I didn't do it". The short con to get out of being reprimanded.
"And then there is "self-deception".
Wikipedia: "Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalising away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception."
Which brings me back to my quandaries about what "acting" does to a person.
I guess we all behave slightly different depending on who we are with; our parents, friends, co-workers, lover, and so on.. perhaps we "act" in the way that we present ourselves differently to different people, but for most of us our core ethical and moral values probably stay the same.
But what if we never eat or drink to excess in public, but when we are alone we indulge and this with dire consequences? What if we treat our co-workers and friends with respect and good humour, but when we are behind closed doors in our homes we disrespect and belittle our families?
We may then experience cognitive dissonance; "the feeling of psychological discomfort produced by the combined presence of two thoughts that do not follow from one another."
(I know smoking is bad, but I don't know how to quit, or I need to lower my cholesterol levels, but who wants to eat like a rabbit?)
People with a higher need for consistency and certainty in their lives usually feel the effects of cognitive dissonance more than those who have a lesser need for such consistency.
If my moral code says it is wrong to bully yet I say nothing when my friend is being bullied, if I carry on an affair behind my spouses back, if I say "yes" although my morals say "no", then most of us will experience a level of psychological discomfort. What about "white lies"?
Are they not lies we tell for the benefit of others? A benign falsehood to spare someone else's feelings?
But, if we tell a lie, white or otherwise, are we not somehow deciding for the "other" what they can or can not handle? "I know you are sensitive about your receding hairline, so when you ask me if it looks like your hair is receding, I will say no." Perhaps the use of the "white lie" is a "societal tool" of sorts to help us all get along a little easier? "Oh, it's okay, I wasn't asleep, I don't mind if you bring an extra person, Sure I'm happy for your promotion, What a lovely drawing, darling, et cetera."
A problem(of many) I find with defining "the truth" is that it is so ambiguous. Psychological research has identified over a hundred ways one can "bend" the truth. For example Hindsight bias; "I knew it all along", Confirmation bias; finding what we are looking for, Availability bias; overstating the significance of events. Anais Nin: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
Smoking is bad for our health, there is enough substantial evidence for us to conclude that it is a truth. So when you ask your loved one to stop smoking(drinking, gambling, drugging, etc.) your "truth" is that you are thinking of his/her well being, which is why you are confounded by the response: "Yeah, but not every one who smokes dies from it", which may be your loved ones truth.
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we confabulate when confronted with awkward knowledge; "I know smoking can give me cancer, but smoking helps me cope with stress."
We choose what information we want to include when we determine the "truth".
Apparently Philip Seymour Hoffman had been "clean" for 23 years before he had this relapse that claimed his life. What happened? Why now? Being an admirer of his, I feel very sad that he is no longer able to dazzle us with his great artistry, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if there is not perhaps an aspect of "fragmentising" of the psyche involved with being an actor/actress?
Although actors only pretend to be the characters they play, what about the rest of us? Do we not also to a certain extent put on "faces", dress up, suck in our stomachs, have face-lifts, nips-and-tucks, bring out the good china, hide the empty bottles, and so on?
Most of us would probably like to think that we have self-control, but desire, ....is not easily tamed no matter what we tell ourselves. "With will power we can acquire knowledge, but not wisdom, we can go to bed but not will sleep, we can eat when we want to, but we can't will hunger, we can will self-assertion but not courage, reading but not understanding, religion but not faith".
We may will to be without any form of deception, question is, can we?
If we don't see things as they are, but as we are, then it occurs to me that perhaps it is not so much about whether we are involved with deception/lying or not, rather,... how aware we are of our own entanglement with it.
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
If my moral code says it is wrong to bully yet I say nothing when my friend is being bullied, if I carry on an affair behind my spouses back, if I say "yes" although my morals say "no", then most of us will experience a level of psychological discomfort. What about "white lies"?
Are they not lies we tell for the benefit of others? A benign falsehood to spare someone else's feelings?
But, if we tell a lie, white or otherwise, are we not somehow deciding for the "other" what they can or can not handle? "I know you are sensitive about your receding hairline, so when you ask me if it looks like your hair is receding, I will say no." Perhaps the use of the "white lie" is a "societal tool" of sorts to help us all get along a little easier? "Oh, it's okay, I wasn't asleep, I don't mind if you bring an extra person, Sure I'm happy for your promotion, What a lovely drawing, darling, et cetera."
A problem(of many) I find with defining "the truth" is that it is so ambiguous. Psychological research has identified over a hundred ways one can "bend" the truth. For example Hindsight bias; "I knew it all along", Confirmation bias; finding what we are looking for, Availability bias; overstating the significance of events. Anais Nin: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
Smoking is bad for our health, there is enough substantial evidence for us to conclude that it is a truth. So when you ask your loved one to stop smoking(drinking, gambling, drugging, etc.) your "truth" is that you are thinking of his/her well being, which is why you are confounded by the response: "Yeah, but not every one who smokes dies from it", which may be your loved ones truth.
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we confabulate when confronted with awkward knowledge; "I know smoking can give me cancer, but smoking helps me cope with stress."
We choose what information we want to include when we determine the "truth".
Apparently Philip Seymour Hoffman had been "clean" for 23 years before he had this relapse that claimed his life. What happened? Why now? Being an admirer of his, I feel very sad that he is no longer able to dazzle us with his great artistry, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if there is not perhaps an aspect of "fragmentising" of the psyche involved with being an actor/actress?
Although actors only pretend to be the characters they play, what about the rest of us? Do we not also to a certain extent put on "faces", dress up, suck in our stomachs, have face-lifts, nips-and-tucks, bring out the good china, hide the empty bottles, and so on?
Most of us would probably like to think that we have self-control, but desire, ....is not easily tamed no matter what we tell ourselves. "With will power we can acquire knowledge, but not wisdom, we can go to bed but not will sleep, we can eat when we want to, but we can't will hunger, we can will self-assertion but not courage, reading but not understanding, religion but not faith".
We may will to be without any form of deception, question is, can we?
If we don't see things as they are, but as we are, then it occurs to me that perhaps it is not so much about whether we are involved with deception/lying or not, rather,... how aware we are of our own entanglement with it.
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
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