Never Knowing Ourselves

J.P. MORGAN, a Wall Street financier who at the turn of the twentieth century was America's wealthiest and thus most powerful man, and who almost singlehandedly bailed out the American economy during the financial crash of 1907, said that there are two reasons why we do what we do: the good reason, and the real reason. J.W. Goethe, the undisputed prince of European literature, and estimated by many reverse psychologists to have been the smartest human who ever lived, said that if he knew himself, as Socrates admonished, he would probably run away. Goethe also said that we resist the truth only because we fear we would perish if we accepted it. But he didn't leave it at that. He further said that we are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves. Generally, successful people understand human nature, human nature being predicated largely upon self deception. Our self deception is the means by which we conceal from ourselves the true extent of our own morally questionable, "real" motives, and enable ourselves to deceive others while believing that we are in fact doing something more noble. Natural selection tends to reward competitive, selfish behavior. In order to constrain its destructive effects, we cooperate, and we invent socially acceptable behavior, hence, civilization. But, we're still competitive, each person seeking survival advantages. Individually and collectively, we push the envelope, cheating as much as we can to gain a survival advantage. Everyone tells lies, behaves hypocritically, and pretends, both to ourselves and to others, to be "better" than we actually are. An excellent description of how all this works is contained in the excellent study "The elephant In the Brain", by Simler and Hanson, who, by their own admission, coauthored the book as much for the purpose of enhancing their self esteem as to elucidate the topic. Two very honest dudes indeed; but only up to a certain point.