“The collective mind is as vulnerable to self-deceit as the individual mind. The particular zones of shadow for a given collective are the product of a simple calculus of the mental patterns and ideas shared by its members: The areas of experience blanked out in the most individuals minds will be the darkest zones for the group as a whole.
Cultures and nations offer the best examples of this principle writ large. The cynical characterization of mass education as the “transmission of social delusion” is accurate to the degree that what is taught is skewed by blind spots, the particular expressions the cultural “we” represses in order to ease anxiety.
These blind spots are out of the line of sight of people in the culture, but stand out as quirks to those from cultures who do not share them…
… The truth is replaced by silence, and the silence is a lie…
… Ideas lead to acts…
… The sociologist Georg Simmel, for example, observed the importance of the outsider, or stranger, to the group. The stranger’s position, said Simmel, is defined by the fact he has not belonged to the group from the start, and brings a point of view to it that is foreign. He is both inside and outside. Therein lies his particular value: his strangeness brings a particular objectivity about the group itself…
… My thesis has been that we are piloted in part by an ingenious capacity to deceive ourselves, whereby we sink into obliviousness rather than face threatening facts. This tendency towards self-deception and mutual pretense pervades the structure of our social and psychological life. Its very pervasiveness suggests that self-deception may have proven its utility in evolution. A modicum of delusion may, somehow, benefit the species in the long run, although its cost to the individual can be great…
… “I’m very careful what I tell people,” Bill Bush said to a reporter. “They should be prepared to suffer, and know that it could be disastrous to their family and friends. I tell them plain and simple that it’s very dangerous to tell the truth.””
Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Daniel Goleman
