Denial

Although I have only thought of the contents of this post right now, this post is a milestone post because (a) It is the cumulation of what I have written in several posts in the past (most of which are still untyped, unfortunately) and (b) these thoughts are breakthrough-level insights.

In my inquiries regarding motivation (which have been the cause of much anxiety in the past week), I have gained many insights and had some exciting discoveries, of spiritual, mystical, and psychological nature. Now I have finally reached the single answer to what motivates us all. Of course, in my post Pride I had pretty much figured it out, but an answer is useless if you do not understand it, as I do now. See, although it is true that everything we do is motivated by pride, I failed to consider “Why?” The reason why can naturally be answered in one word, which (as you have no doubt guessed) is Denial. Yes I have to bold it, for emphasis :P

In other words, we live life in denial, running away from the truth, and using pride as an excuse. I can think of examples of this all over the place- the Crusades, the gross amount of deception in many relationships, politics, religion, and the paradox of trust. What is the paradox of trust, you ask? Well actually I coined the term, but it goes like this:

(1) Trust has the innate requirement of honesty, with complete trust requiring total honesty.

(2) Trust also requires that someone/something is dependable, as trust is the essence of dependence.

(3) Nothing in this world is dependable, because, in and of itself, nothing is perfect.

(4) Therefore, trust requires assuming the impossible- in other words, any level of trusting something/someone requires believing in lies (to compensate for imperfection) or if possible, completely ignore the imperfections, to the point that they do not (perceptively) exist.

(5) Inversely, gaining someone’s trust requires deceiving when needed to compensate for one’s perceived imperfections, and/or manipulating others into completely ignoring one’s imperfections.

Thus, the only way to solve the paradox of trust is to compensate one’s imperfection with lies, and not get caught (if one gets caught lying, that would destroy the trust achieved). But this only half-solves it, as all those between which the trust is built are still lying, and being lied to. Even if awareness of the lies are limited to each individual, they are still lies, and so true trust does not exist. Even if God is perfect, we still cannot truly trust him, as trust is mutual, and God cannot trust us, knowing we are imperfect.

Getting back to the point: What is it then, that we are in denial of, that we are running away from? Well, as illustrated in “the paradox of trust” (as I hereby coin it), we are running away from the truth.

The truth hurts. While searching for views on truth, I found a blog post here. At the beginning of the post, thoughtsonquotes summarized what I’m about the clarify in this post, with the following words:

Most people don’t want to know the truth. Instead, they want validation for existing beliefs or positions. They do this for several reasons: ego, denial, ignorance and insecurity.

My take is that “ego”, “ignorance”, and “insecurity” all fall under “denial”, of course. In my post Love, although lacking in many areas, was correct in underlying premise:

Humans have certain beliefs that, although intrinsically illogical, our mind relies on to some extent for survival, such as:

(a) “We are more important than [at least a few] other people” (b) “We will live forever”                 (c) “We have a defining purpose for our existence” (d) “[at least some] people need us”

The fulfill these impossibilities, we force ourselves into denial, believing lies in order to maintain our “sanity”, and/or happiness. Thus, the best way to be happy is to give ourselves dreams that cannot be fulfilled, and spend our lives trying to achieve them.

To immortalize ourselves, we become “good people” (believing in the lies of religion) or invest in the community (utilizing the “paradox of trust) or prepare our children for a better future (which relies on the fallacy that the future is a reflection of the past, or that we can know anything with certainty. (as you might have realized by that last assertion, I am a total skeptic. Well, I guess I have been for a while, but just never seriously considered it. This is one of my Living Contradictions.

Well, the rest is adequately explained in the Love post.

So why is it that the truth hurts? What agony could be so great that we have an innate compulsion to run away from it, live in this denial, lest the truth overtake us, and we be overwhelmed by it? If it exists and has a nature similar to that which I am discovering it to be, the soul knows the answer, and in all probability, the pain we feel when awareness of the truth peaks- it may well reflect the agony that the soul is experiencing. But while I do not know the answers, one thing that I am certain of (although no more “certain” than everyone else is “certain” of their lies :P ) :

In order for the truth to exist there must be lies- I feel that the fact that we are in denial is out of necessity, to maintain balance. That is, without truth, nothing would exist, because truth is the essence of lies. This brings up another important question: What is lies? No, not what common sense, or the dictionary tells us. I never was one to follow “common sense” anyway. But rather, “Why?” do lies exist (even outside the necessity by which to distinguish truth), what purpose do they serve, ultimately. Of course, this is a question well beyond the nature of deception, however.

This goes beyond the word, even the concept, and is probably a question that will go unanswered, because it relies on the unreliable premise that things are as we perceive them, which I don’t believe in to begin with. Perhaps things are how we see them. That’s how my brother sees things, being a materialist. Perhaps I am an idealist not because I have intuitively concluded so, but simply because I am in denial, that I don’t want to accept the way things are. This isn’t unlikely, because I, being human, have the innate desire for change, and to perpetually view the world differently, making the present and the future one, and the past irrelevant.