On the Virtue of Lying

There is this popular Polish criminal comedy titled Vabank. And there is a scene where one naive guy comes to a bank administered by a group of swindlers. They advise him to open up a bank account under a fake name in order to avoid paying taxes. The man, greedy and gullible as he is, gets lured into a trap. Later on he can’t get his money back. The whole movie is about deception, con-artists fighting each other and using dirty tricks often as a revenge.

Some deceivers are natural born predators and their lies are ominous. Just recently, something that looked like a genuine bank has turned out to be a financial pyramid. Thousands of people have lost money, often all their life savings. The pair of swindlers preyed not only on people’s gullibility but also their greed, promising them high profits from investing their money into gold. It turned out that the profits people saw on paper were non-existent; fata morgana. The swindlers were finally exposed and caught but they managed to transfer some of the money abroad, to some exotic countries, and squander the rest. The victims received only a small portion of “invested” money back. The rest was irrevocably lost.

Now this is what could be called sinister shenanigans. Something truly diabolical. Something different from posting some stupid shit on WordPress blog and calling it a test or inviting some jackasses to coffee and doughnuts party and not turning up.

Is deception a Satanic virtue as some “sinister” types say? I guess it’s so human. Everyone is a liar. We all lie, sometimes even unconsciously, to others and to ourselves. Sometimes lying is accompanied by good intentions. Your friend asks you: “How do I look like in my new dress?” You know she looks terrible but you don’t want to hurt her so you lie and tell her she looks great. If some “sinister” propagandist keeps bashing Anton LaVey saying he was against lying, then what bullshit is that? That person ignores everything that was written by LaVey about the Lesser Magic, which is nothing else than manipulation. What does it mean “responsibility to the responsible?” Does it mean that willful deception should be rejected because it’s immoral?

Every idiot can lie but when does deception become an art? Like an illusionist enchanting the unaware audience with its “magic” tricks, lying is an art until it becomes exposed. Deception is a diabolical art as long as nobody knows or suspects they are being deceived. If the audience sees through the illusionist’s tricks, then he’s a poor magician indeed. That means that if you are going to lie, then do that properly. So that nobody knows that or even suspects that you are lying.

But what happens if you are caught lying? When does responsibility come into the picture? If you are caught lying once, twice or three times, then you lose credibility. That means that everything you say and do becomes red-flagged. Once the reputation of a deceiver sticks to you and people become aware of your lies, then they will no longer believe you even if you tell the truth for a change. Like playing cards, you can cheat as long as others at the table don’t know you are cheating. Because if they know, then the game is over.

Once I went to one of the local shops which I regularly frequent and was so lost in my thoughts, or tired perhaps, that I forgot to take the change. Then the shop-keeper shouted after me: Hey Miss you forgot your money! Damn, I was grateful to her. But why did she do that? She cold have kept the money. Is this because she liked me? Because she was kind and honest by nature? Perhaps. But perhaps, she simply wanted me to keep coming to her shop. She wanted people to think she is honest, that she is kind. She was building customer trust and loyalty so that people will chose her shop and not competition.

There is a proverb: A lie has short legs. It can be no problem for a skillful swindler to build some financial pyramid, dupe as many people as possible in relatively short time and then take the money and flee abroad and hide far away before the people realize they have been duped and the cops catch him. But if your aim is to set up a business or whatever venture that is going to last for decades, then credibility is something very important.

That eventually brings us to those “mischievous” and super-evil, and super duper “misleading” and “deceitful” and “sly” ONA WordPressers who post crap after crap on their blogs and call it “the Satanic Art of Deception.” But for fuck’s sake, how can that be an art if even an average idiot knows it’s deception? Who the hell are they fooling if everyone already knows they are being fooled? What is the worth of the bullshit if everyone knows it’s fucking bullshit? Are they masters of Satanic deception? No, fuck, no. They are simply bullshitters who failed their own sinister bullshit test.

The next thing those amateur manipulators say is: “I don’t give a damn about having the respect of strangers.” That’s too bad because respect is often accompanied with awe. People will more easily bend to your Will if they respect you. Unless you can put a gun to their heads, then it’s always better to have their respect than not even be taken seriously by them. If one has an aim to influence people in one way or another, then it’s hard, if not impossible, to do it once you have a reputation of a bullshitter and all your ideas get red-flagged. They will be simply rejected, simple as that.