#154: The Big Lie, Self-Delusion Spiral & Not Through Me
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Lies & Integrity
I. The Big Lie
The Big Lie is a sinister propaganda technique designed to distort facts and manipulate populations on a grand scale. Here’s how it works:
The idea is feeding the audience a lie so terrible, so overwhelming — and with such a maximum degree of certainty — that it is almost impossible to believe that one can lie about such a thing.
The trick here is that a properly arranged and well-devised big lie causes a deep emotional trauma in the listener or viewer. Later the trauma determines his or her beliefs that withstand all arguments of logic and reason.
—Vladimir Yakovlev, Combat Propaganda
👉 On a related note, I wrote a whole article on Propaganda Techniques: How to Manipulate the Masses.
II. Self-Delusion Spiral
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is most famous for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. His ideas hit hard, like this one I’ve dubbed the Self-Delusion Spiral:
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
III. Not Through Me
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a novelist and Soviet dissident famous for his moral resolve in the face of injustice. Here’s how he suggested withstanding an influx of lies:
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
―Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com