I’m a liar — and you are, too; most of all, we lie to ourselves

By David McElroy · February 9, 2022

Tonight I’m gonna break away
Just you wait and see
I’ll never be imprisoned by
A faded memory
— Rusty Young (for Poco), “Crazy Love”

I almost always believe my own lies. I’ve lived inside this mind for long enough to know better. But I still fall for my own clever tricks.

I try not to lie to other people. I was raised to be a good liar, so I certainly know how, but I know it’s wrong. It know it hurts others. I even know it hurts me in the long run. Every now and then, I trap myself into a situation when it’s easier to lie — but I struggle to stay truthful with others. I usually win that moral battle.

I have no scruples about lying to myself, though. The conscience that speaks so loudly when I’m tempted to mislead others completely disappears when it comes to myself. And even though I’m usually insightful enough to suspect when others are lying, I’m a gullible child when it comes to my own lies.

There’s a war that goes on inside me. Different parts of me want different things. Each part of me is certain that he knows what’s best for me. It works that way for you, too, even though you’re convinced there’s one united “you” in there.

And when one part of me wants what it wants — in defiance of everything which the rational parts of me know is best — that part of me lies.

I lie to myself about my feelings. I lie about my future. I lie about money. I lie about what I’m going to eat. But most of all, I lie to myself about love.

I’m not an idiot, although I can appear that way when I’m in the grips of self-deception. It’s not that I don’t know what I should do. Or what I shouldn’t do. I know these things. The reasonable and rational parts of me knows.

But there’s a self-destructive part of me which doesn’t care what my reasonable parts know. All that selfish part knows that is it must have what it wants. It’s like a gremlin inside with a mind of its own — who’s convinced that the rest of me will eventually be thankful for its trickery. That believes the rest of me with be grateful that it led the entire “me” into the same old mistakes once again.

If you think I’m crazy — multiple personalities or something — please realize that you are just as divided inside your own mind. It’s not just me. We’re all this way.

We love to believe there’s one unitary “me” inside each one of us — with the rational mind setting direction and giving orders — but each of us is a collection of competing interests, fears, wants and needs on the inside. Different parts of the brain and heart want different things — and there’s less coordination between those warring factions than we assume.

The belief that the unitary “me” is in control gives us an illusion of stability, right up until the moment we find ourselves wanting things or doing things or saying things which that rational executive function never agreed to.

Humans are irrational at best and fundamentally insane at worst, but it’s often a comfort to each of us to believe he or she is different from the rest.

I understand the science behind why this happens, but that doesn’t help. I can comfort myself with the knowledge that you do it, too. But the truth is that I have to live with my own lies most of all. I can accuse you of bad motives or outright dishonest behavior, because I see you as one whole person, not as your individual parts. When you don’t keep your word — or when you claim one thing and then do another — I can write you off as a bad person.

I can’t do that with myself. I have to live with my own lies — and I have to find reasonable ways to justify why I do the things I do and say the things I say. I somehow have to make it all make sense in my head. I have to come up with one compelling narrative — a story in which I’m the hero. The good guy.

And so I lie to myself to save my sanity.

I tell myself I’m not going to eat any more ice cream. I tell myself that I’m going to ignore my distaste for my job and become prosperous again anyway. I tell myself that I’m going to stop wasting so much time — that I’m going to be more productive about the creative work which scares me.

Most of all, though, I lie to myself about love. I tell myself that I know what I’m doing this time. I tell myself that I’m not going to love anymore when the love isn’t going to be returned. I tell myself that I’m not going to fall for anyone who’s dysfunctional. I tell myself that I’m going to break free of cherished love which ought to be completely dead and gone by now.

I tell myself — and I really mean it — that I’m going to find somebody sane and reasonable and feasible for me to fall in love with. Someone who will choose me. Someone who will love me completely, too. Honest. I really mean it this time.

But I know I’m lying. I’m still stuck inside a disorienting house of mirrors — where smiling liars tell me soothing lies — and all the faces are my own.

Note: If you have any interest in reading some of the science behind why there are competing interests inside us — and why we’re powerless to do anything about it — I can recommend “Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind.” The first half of the book is phenomenal, but the second half was less interesting to me. I read it about 10 years ago and it helped me understand why the different parts of me can’t agree on everything.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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