Ziyad Marar’s heavily documented study Deception, is the most recent in Acumen’s The Art of Living series edited by Mark Vernon. For lovers of truth it is a disturbing read, positing as it does that we all lie regularly, to others and to ourselves, in order to survive. Marar starts with a statement from psychologist Jerome Bruner that “Man…is infinitely capable of belief,” and sees this as the basis for our vulnerability to deception. Adopting Bruner’s “Homo Credens” label, Marar spells out mankind’s propensity to accept illusion — perceptive, cognitive and narrative — as a way of life.

Marar points to our “age of propaganda” and the ease with which people accept the distortions offered up by the evening news. “We can delude ourselves with great ease, especially when the temptation to console ourselves is high.” The heightened anxiety levels which have become the norm make those delusions all the more palatable.

However, even more disheartening is Marar’s contention that self-deceit is an evolutionary outcome, and therefore inevitable. Only when emotions such as anger are involuntary are they credible, Marar believes, and credibility is necessary for survival in social settings: “If I am to give you credit, I need to find you credible, while avoiding the risk of seeming credulous in giving credence to your discreditable account.” He suggests the capacity to detect deception is an acquired skill as well, one that is often derailed by those involuntary emotions. Love is blind for a reason; it enables the lover to dismiss the faults of the loved and enter into the relationships necessary for continuation of the species.

In five dense, citation-filled chapters, Marar raises the specter of doubt over any honest human interaction and offers few resolutions. He seems uneasy with the possibility of duality in life, particularly in personal characteristics: “We want to be normal and original, righteous and transgressive…honest and kind.” Marar continually circles back to the questionable necessity of deception, all while noting the price we pay for such duplicity which “leave(s) us clinging to a reassuring past but ill equipped to deal with the unpredictable future, estranged from our desires and so less able to meet them or manage them.” He ends with the disheartening notion that “There are loyal lies and honest betrayals…We can see how the unavoidable fact of our deceptive natures can be used to inform a more subtle, complex but potentially more robust self-image.”

© 2009 Cynthia L. Pauwels

Cynthia L. Pauwels holds a BA in Humanities with a World Classics certification from Antioch University McGregor in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts degree in creative writing at AUM and preparing to begin her thesis in January 2010. Pauwels is a freelance writer with numerous short fiction, non-fiction and technical writing credits.