This is http://www.essayz.com/a9411122.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %LEVELS KINDS DECEPTION DISHONESTY ADDICTION EVIL+941112 %COLLUSION PRETENSE SECRECY SILENCE QUIET 941112 There are many different levels and kinds of deception. Not all deception entails outright conscious lies which are obviously lies to the originator and suspected as untrue by others. Such lies are only the most obvious and overt as to kinds of lies; and the least useful. Deception is not useful when it is overt and obvious. To be useful deception must be covert and hidden. There are various degrees and ways in which individuals, organizations, communities, states, nations, and professions succeed in engaging in deception through the use of covert forms of deception which are hidden from the consciousness of those who are involved in the deception. We will do well and become well when we become more aware of such degrees and ways of success in deception. It is rarely useful to try to achieve success by telling overt lies about what people with normal seeing, hearing, taste, smell and touch can apprehend through their primary sense organs. To say that a certain tree in a specified public location has growing on it blue apples and to issue a press release to that effect---will not lead to any deceptive success. It is deception about less obvious realities which is more likely to be dishonestly successful. When facts pertain to abstractions, non-public records, meetings which few people are present at, and complex reflexive relationships---then deception about such facts is far easier and more likely to be dishonestly successful. Deception about private relationships is more likely to be dishonestly successful, than deception about public events and activities. Deception about objective realities is much less likely to be dishonestly successful, than deception about reflexive realities and relationships. When the realities which are the focus of dishonest efforts are reflexive--- it is hard for people who are involved in them to come to general agreement about what is true and what is false. This makes it easier to engage in deception about the difference between what is true and what is false. Thus it is easier to be successfully deceptive about personal relationships, than about relationships between objects. Some scientists behave as if they can avoid deception by working only with objects. Their exclusivity is highly reflexive due to its motivation, but it is hidden. Their pattern of self deception is just an illustration of the fact that self deception is easier in regards to reflexive relationships among people, than in regards to objective relationships among objects. Objectivity is not the key to the avoidance of bias. Compulsively objective people are biased and ignore much which is essential to being involved in healthy reflexive relationships. Their reflexive relationships thus are often addictive, manipulative, coercive and violent; because they treat people as objects to be manipulated coercively. It is easier to be dishonestly successful in pretending to be ignorant (pretending not to know a truth), than it is to be overtly dishonest. It is easier to be dishonestly successful in ignoring a truth, than in overtly trying to get others to accept a lie as truth. It is easier to keep quiet in the presence of a powerful person who is pretentious---than it is to overtly say what is not true in the presence of powerful people. It is easier to be open and honest in a community which does not worship the technological manipulation of objects (and people?), than in a community which does worship technologies designed for the manipulation of objects (and people?) The technologies of manipulative deception are much more likely to be highly developed and respected in a community which worships the technological manipulations of objects---than in one which does not. It is difficult not to fall into the traps of addictions and other collusive games of mutual self deception---when we are living within a community which expects people to make themselves appear to be acceptable (by whatever technological manipulations they can devise, honest or dishonest). Seeing people be subtly rejected, alienated, estranged or otherwise excommunicated for failing to conform to expectations---is enough to generate a high level of dishonest motivations, and to generate sophisticated technologies of deception---by which to achieve appearances of acceptability. We cannot perceive and understand the dynamics of the development and propagation of collusions, addictions and codependent support of them---if we remain ignorant of and/or pretend that we are ignorant of the above truths. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================