The inner machinations of man are both complex and simple, elegant and crude, evolved and primitive. We are at the most banal levels, instinctive creatures, what with our guttural instincts and our “fight or flight” sympathetic systems. However, given that we do have our big, beautiful cerebrum, we possess abilities that allow us to go beyond the limits of instinct and into realms of “form creation”.
What do I mean by “form creation”? To create “form” one merely needs to line up their cognitive tendencies with an idea they are interested in. For example, if you want a job in a top notch law firm, the creation of form means that you will adopt that attorney culture in order to succeed. Out of a concept: “I want to work at _____ Law Firm”, you create a physical, mental, and social form by which you interact with the world. The fact of the matter is, you may not actually want to work in that environment, but the office provides something that you need like a particular client or type of law. That’s where our neocortex or “deceiving brain” comes in. We can override one’s instinctual dislike and tendency to avoid that discomfort. Our brain’s possess the rare quality that allows us to compartmentalize our emotions, preferences, or what have you, all in the name of some desire. Its rather elegant really… Try to get a dog to do something it doesn’t like or want and it will more than likely rebel. Notoriously dumb species are virtually impossible to train, therefore it is almost impossible for them to lie.
Lying is an evolutionary masterpiece, creating “false form” for someone to exist in for a particular desire. The ability to lie is nothing short of a marvel, a true testament to higher brain function.
But in a world where lies exist alongside the “truth”, who is actually able to discern between the two? What is a lie? What is a truth? Of course with one dimensional “events” the lines are rather stark, however, let’s take something incorporeal like ‘love’ and try to extract truth from it. We all blather on about what true love is, swear we’ve been in love, but who is truly to say what love is? I for instance am obsessed with love and the idea that there is one woman out there for me. It keeps me up at night. It forces me to work, to dress, and to talk the way I do. However, given that our minds are prone and quite frankly susceptible to self generated lies, who’s to say that I can’t trick myself into love?
Which I have in the past. Bryce Brown has never been in love, although my most recent tryst brought me to the nexus… I literally felt the tendrils of passion tugging my heartstrings. Irrespective, I still was not actually in love. I had told young women before that I was, that I adored them, didn’t want to live without them, but upon their climactic exit from my life, I all but forgot the so called feelings I once harbored for them. I through my ignorance had lied to myself, not knowing that I was lying in the worst place.
Keeping in line with love and using my “never been in love” as an example, one can see how lies can percolate and become extant entities in our lives. For as advanced as the human mind may be, most of us cannot discern when we are telling an untruth let alone someone else, especially someone we don’t know is lying. The women I thought I was falling in love with when I was 18-21 believed me and I believed myself. The lie was not malicious nor was it manipulative, but I genuinely was infatuated with their personage. That infatuation in tandem with inexperience and standard ignorance caused me to falsify reality. A reality that was in fact doomed.
Let’s zoom out a bit. In America, where our government lies to us nonstop, most people are completely oblivious that what the see, feel, and touch isn’t real. They think their government cares (because it partially does), they think their employers do (because they partially do), and they think everyone else like them cares (you should already know what I’m going to say). This world is not 100% amoral like some would lead you to believe, but its the synchronized mistruth adjacent to the truth that makes the whole world a sham. Since NO one on this earth (outside of the shadowmaster dictators and even they aren’t impervious to each other’s deception) can really ascertain fact from fiction in terms of sociopolitics, it begs the question of what it means to be alive.
This evolutionary wonder, the lie, has created a balance — albeit a precarious one — between the “all good” and the “all evil”. The result is then, of course, a hybridized world in which good and evil are merely shadows and the actual bodies casting the shadows are barely aware of the position. Many human beings have been unwittingly used in scams, Ponzi schemes, and genocide. They acted very “evilly” but would have sworn to Heaven they were acting in good.
Deceit is actually unnatural. But in a universe where balance must prevail, it was a necessary vehicle. Whether you believe in Lucifer & Jehovah, an imperfect Demiurgus, or any of the other ancient explanations of the first lie, they all point to balance. Well humans ARE balance. If a Satanic archetype is all evil and a YHWH archetype is all good, then the human represents the neutral battle field. We are the personification of balance. Those who achieve it understand inherently the difference between deceit and uprightness.
Deception is unnatural, uprightness is natural. Why? Because trees, fish, rocks, air, vacuum space, and hydrogen ions don’t lie. They serve their purpose with preprogrammed rightness. However, the cunning, conniving, and scheming MIND has proliferated all across this globe.
So what do you stand for? The truth? Or unknowing lies? How do you intend on outwitting the brain’s secret traps? How do you plan on living genuinely?
By the way, impersonating someone else, not following your passions, or living in another’s shadow is LYING. Its lying to yourself to accept mediocrity. Living an average life is nothing short of a lie. In a realm where we were challenged to live abundantly and to full fruition, anything short of that is deception.
Life fulfilled.
Bryce
bryce's labyrinth 