Self-deception

 

The novel Where the Truth Lies from British author Anna Bailey demonstrates how a community or individual can use religion as a weapon to control or belittle others. The book is set in small rural Colorado town, where a father regularly abuses his three children, insisting that God made him the way he is and God “understands why I’ve done the things I’ve done.” Of course, that argument does not apply to others who may choose to live differently, whether that might be homosexuality or immigration. 

For the fundamentalist father, his way is God’s way, the only way, and a cycle of cruelty, humiliation, guilt, anger and shame ensues. Expectations of rote forgiveness mock Christian principles. Teenagers observing and subjected to such abuse lash out against the unreasonable controls and expectations with self-abuse – shutting down with self-loathing, substance abuse, sexual debasement. Hurting one’s own body “feels like power, the way a mad king might slaughter his people, just to prove he can.” Resorting to extreme behavior is perhaps a last-ditch effort for finding someone who might care. If that savior does not emerge, then a life with so much anger and control is not worth living anyway. 

Children trapped in such situations, expected to honor insane parents, cannot help but question whether God even exists. In this book, young Jude protests that "God wouldn’t –" and his brother Noah responds: “This has nothing to do with God, you idiot. God doesn’t do anything, He just whispers in people’s ears that they’re worth jack shit, and they pray and pray hoping He’ll stop, but He doesn’t, and in the end they just go crazy. That’s all God does, He makes people go crazy, so get that into your head and grow up!”

Most adults in the small town express sympathy but then shrug and look the other way. The worst of it is when family members turn on one another, pointing out transgressions, some true and others false, finding scapegoats for the tyrant to attack. The goal is to deflect attention away from their own wrongdoings or create horrific chaos so that others outside the family might intercede. 

The book's title, Where the Truth Lies, reflects the multiple meanings of the verb “to lie” as detailed by Merriam-Wesbster: to engage in falsehoods, to sleep or remain motionless, to remain inactive or in hiding, to bed with, to have an effect, to remain still, to belong or to be neglected. Of course, there is but one meaning for truth - what happened to Abigail Blake and why.

Bailey’s novel supports the notion that an outsider can sort through carefully crafted myths, history and expectations and reveal our true natures. 

Self-deception, the embracing of false beliefs despite evidence to the contrary, leads to horrific behaviors and crimes. Self-deception is both morally wrong and morally dangerous, individually and collectively. Those who engage in self-deception, evading evidence to avoid knowledge and truth about real problems swirling in their midst, cannot be trusted on any topic. 

Collective self-deception is especially dangerous, and yet the growing trend, fueled by the internet and social media, “has received scant direct philosophical attention as compared with its individual counterpart,” notes the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The self-deceived turn to groups who reinforce their beliefs and most frightening: “Compared to its solitary counterpart, self-deception within a collective is both easier to foster and more difficult to escape, being abetted by the self-deceptive efforts of others within the group.” 

Stories and myths

 

Story

the series of events in a book, film or play

Myth  

story from ancient times, especially one that was told to explain natural events or to describe the early history of a people

 

Firuzeh’s family flees the threats of Afghanistan, traveling to Australia by way of Pakistan, Indonesia and Nauru in On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu. Hope quickly turns to despair as the young woman observes the refugees around her resort to lies and bullying, prostitution and suicide. Firuzeh does not know how to respond when pressed about why the family left, and a doomed friend retorts, “We need reasons like we need water or air…. I’ll find you your reason.”

Experienced refugees warn that Australia is cruel, lonely, hard. After a lengthy process of confirming citizenship, the government offers families $2000 and plane tickets to return to Kabul. Only refugees who persist through the delays and indignities make it to Australia, and a prostitute reminds Firuzeh that those who still treat others with kindness, even after repeated pain and humiliation, are wealthy. Others, including the Australians who fear and resent the refugees, are poor. 

Beauty and creativity can be found even in hardship. Early on, the family tells favorite stories to entertain and inspire one another. Only a few stories reach the status of myth. “There’s something about beginnings and endings,” explains Firuzeh’s imaginary friend. “That polishes them so smooth you nearly see your face in them. Then you open your hands and let them go, and the current pulls you onward and way. Behind you, those stones sink down to the mud, where no one will ever find them again.”

Individual tales of hardship go quickly forgotten for Australia's policies nad public opinion. Firuzeh’s family receives a TPV – a temporary protection visa – without understanding the consequences of a three-year stay.  A few Australian teachers understand that such visas are “inherently destabilizing” for children absorbing a new language and culture.  Others resist examining the deeper consequences:

‘I don’t think our government would do anything evil. Besides, isn’t Afghanistan safer these days? With the Americans there, and everything?’

Mr. Early said, ‘I haven’t heard much in the news lately.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

The refugees endure long waits to enter Australia and start a new home life. E. Lily Yu details the meager rations and crowded conditions of refugee camps, with guards freely dispensing sleeping pills and other psychiatric medications to ease boredom and maintain order among detainees. “Sleeping is an easier way to wait,” notes one character. “All of us had something to wait for, and that kept us going…. Now the minutes of our lives are wasted. Time scrapes our nerves.”

Never-ending hardships replace the hopeful storytelling. “What a story, your family’s,” observes Firuzeh’s imaginary friend. “Over and over, without an end.” Firuzeh admits she does not like how her family’s story is going and Nasima suggests “You can change it…. If you want. If you’re brave. If you remember how.”

Family cohesion crumbles as the couple and two children lose respect for one another. Upon learning about their temporary status, the mother urges the father to take action while Firuzeh insists their father is a hero who will think of something. The argument intensifies, the father blaming his wife for working and neglecting the children while she criticizes him for weakness and men's habit of blaming problems on wives. The wife repeats her mother’s assessment that hers husband is a frightened boy, not a man, and the Firuzeh’s father strikes her mother.

Firuzeh, who always admired her father, lashes out, telling him she hates him and wishes him dead. The man weeps, wondering how his more assertive wife and children will ever survive in dangerous Afghanistan.  

Of course, such tragic scenes unfold daily in the camps and neighborhoods where refugees try to start anew, so common that most fail to notice their own role in the dangers of routine cruelties and entrenched inequality. 

The anger and recognition of temporary status changes the world for Firuzeh and her brother who runs away. Searching for him, she boards a train full of happy students, “holding bookbags as shields, laughing and shoving each other. Firuzeh hated them wit ha black and overwhelming passion. Not one of them had to worry about deportation, or a missing brother, or a broken mother…. ”  

The father takes desperate action, giving his family a reprieve, and Firuzeh contemplates how the stories of Australia differ from those of Afghanistan and wonders if they are still useful. The imaginary friend reminds that “Stories go where people go…. In dreams, in fresh tellings, in memories.”

Taking control of one’s story, sensing how others respond and making adjustments that suit the author and her audience, can make all the difference in surviving the life we're handed. And we won't recognize that the making of a myth is underway, and our own role, until long after the fateful conclusion.