Beautiful Lies
“So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed.”
-Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
Without them, we are nothing, we have no identity. Lies are the foundation of our world. Take them away, and every brick, every stone of the gleaming, high-rise human society comes crashing back down to Earth, and we become nothing.
But why? What are the origins of a species built off of everything from white lies to government conspiracies? The better question is, why did people ever come to accept this existence, one where the truth is undervalued and we live in constant denial and deceit?
Po Bronson helps trace these origins in “Learning to Lie,” which delves into the roots of our civilization: children. They start lying early on after watching their parents do the same thing on a regular basis, and it’s second nature to them. We’ve all seen it, the child lying about breaking a vase or fighting with their sibling, but we don’t think much of it, because they’re children. That’s what they do, and we have become alarmingly comfortable with it. Probably because we do exactly the same thing.
We all lie through our teeth, topped off with a smile, because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. The atmosphere of dishonesty was created before we can even remember, so somewhere along the way, we became comfortable with it. We are aware of the facade, yet the reason we don’t revolt is because we learn how to lie to ourselves, which leads to our uncanny ability to accept the lies of others. If someone tells us a beautiful lie, if we want to believe in them, if we need to believe in them, we do.
And so it begins…
We are all essentially living a lie, and students are living the greatest lie of all. The information that is fed to us on a daily basis becomes truth in our mind, because that is the only way we can bring comfort to ourselves. Why do we spend hours studying? Why do we take all advanced classes and countless APs? Why do we force ourselves to constantly go without sleep, pushing our boundaries to the point of tears and depression?
They told us that was the only way we could ever make something of ourselves.
Our parents, the administration, the media all have us convinced that this is the only path to success, that we need to prepare for college 24/7, or else (which high school ultimately fails to do, anyway). They loom over us, drilling fear disguised as motivation into our heads. We start to believe if we slack off, if we make one misstep, we’re done, and we’re worthless from that point forward.
We are the dead.
The most heartbreaking part is that I think we all know something is wrong. We have this intuition that what we’re doing isn’t real, and when it’s three in the morning and we can’t possibly cram another random fact into our head, we have to wonder if this is really what the human condition is meant to be.
What is a 4.0? It’s a random number that they keep locked away in their files, the files that have been keeping track of our every action for twelve years, the files that they use to keep us in line and keep us quiet. Yet despite knowing this, we don’t do anything about it because we can’t. If we rebel in some way, we could end up with a target on our back, one that will keep us out of college and out of a job. The world will swallow us, and everyone will forget we ever existed.
It’s when we’re sleep deprived that we begin to question the system and frighten ourselves, so we eventually pass out for a few hours and hope that the next day, we can comfortably believe in the system again. We need to believe that we aren’t wasting our lives, that we aren’t abusing our youth for nothing.
The thing is, we want and need to believe because we need to know we have a chance. The methods of the system are long and painful, but they will make us be something someday, they will make us stand out in a world filled with people, in a world where we feel lost. We feel insignificant, but they promise us that if we behave, we won’t be that way forever.
So we swallow their lies and accept them as true, which is one of the most tragic acts of doublethink that there is. The system is flawed, it was broken from the start, but we need to follow it. If we follow their rules, if we do what they say, we will have a bright future. One day, we will be happy. We sacrifice our happiness now so that we can have it later on, focusing on being perfect in order to believe it was all worth the fight. We want to be important one day, and they tell us this is the only way.
The lie that if we do everything they tell us, success is inevitable, is truly beautiful. It instills a sense of false hope and pride in the advanced students. The pain is beautiful, the tears are beautiful, the numbers and letters and red ink are all beautiful lies. The question isn’t if they will actually turn out to be painful truths, but when. It’s only a matter of time, as the sun rises and sets and the seasons cycle around and the calendars on the wall are exchanged. But not yet. Not today.
So we fall asleep with visions of the Ivy League dancing in our heads, and get out of bed another day to renew our faith in the system…
