consciousness
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Why people fall for bullshit, according to a scientist
“The difference between bullshit and lying is that bullshit is constructed without any concern for the truth. It’s designed to impress rather than inform. And then lying, of course, is very concerned with the truth — but subverting it.”
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In our culture, external validation is valued over internal satisfaction.
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Joe Rogan Experience #2217 – Brian Cox
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The Moon Cannot Be Stolen
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow, ” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
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Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.
—Carl Gustav Jung
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“I don’t really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. For example, if people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me.”
— Prince
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Childhood Trauma: How We Learn to Lie, Hide, and Be Inauthentic
By being treated in these damaging ways, the child learns that being yourself is dangerous, that in order to survive and be at least marginally accepted by your caregivers, you have to hide who you really are: your thoughts, observations, feelings, and preferences.
Other times the child decides to lie to get their needs met, needs that otherwise would be completely ignored. For example, if the caregivers are emotionally distant, the child might lie or pretend that somethings going on just to receive some attention.
And, of course, if the child is routinely attacked or rejected for being authentic, they learn to hide and pretend. In many cases, to the degree where they gradually lose connection to their authentic self and have no idea anymore who they really are.
This is tragic. However, its important to realize that, as adults, we don’t have to be afraid of abandonment anymore. We don’t need our caregivers to survive. We can endure and deal with all these feelings of betrayal, hurt, distrust, shame, loneliness, anger, and many others.
As adults we can slowly untangle all of these problems and slowly rediscover who we really are. We also can start working on trusting others who actually are trustworthy. We can become authentic again.
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What Happens In The Brain When We Dislike Somebody – Headspace
“In order to understand what happens in your body when you dislike someone, you can start by trying to understand fear. As Robert Sapolsky writes in “Why Your Brain Hates Other People,” when we see someone who even looks different from us, “there is preferential activation of the amygdala,” which means the brain region associated with fear and aggression flares up. This visceral, emotional reaction can spark a long-term pattern of dislike when it’s validated by action: if you perceive that someone has hurt you, your fear of them becomes rational. Our negative feelings toward someone get stronger as bad experiences with them pile up, and these negative thoughts trigger the fight-or-flight response in our bodies.”
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The age of envy: how to be happy when everyone else’s life looks perfect
“But with the advent of social media, says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies the impact of Facebook on our wellbeing, ‘envy is being taken to an extreme’. We are constantly bombarded by ‘Photoshopped lives’, he says, ‘and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.’”
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How self-deception allows people to lie
We lie to ourselves to protect our self-images, which allows us to act immorally while maintaining a clear conscience. According to the very latest research, self-deception may have even evolved to help us to persuade others; if we start believing our own lies, it’s much easier to get other people to believe them, too.
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It’s only wrong when YOU do it! The psychology of hypocrisy | Dean Burnett
“Humans are prone to the principle of least effort, often known as the ‘path of least resistance,’ which means they’ll go for whatever option requires the least work. Hypocrisy allows you to appear principled without having to be so, which is much easier than adhering to strict principles.”
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Learning to Be Silent
The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of silence.
On the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: “Fix those lamps.”
The second pupils was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to say a word,” he remarked.
“You two are stupid. Why did you talk?” asked the third.
“I am the only one who has not talked,” concluded the fourth pupil.
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How self-deception allows people to lie
We lie to ourselves to protect our self-images, which allows us to act immorally while maintaining a clear conscience. According to the very latest research, self-deception may have even evolved to help us to persuade others; if we start believing our own lies, it’s much easier to get other people to believe them, too.