behaving contrary to what we teach. We tell our children not to lie, but we lie all of the time: because we are embarrassed to tell the truth, because we perceive our needs to be greater than the person we are lying to, or simply because it’s more convenient. And we often do so in front of them, or even to them. We lie to our children about Santa and the Tooth Fairy, and then tell them it was just for fun when they realize they have been deceived. Sometimes we even have them lie for us: “answer the phone and tell them I’m not home”. Actions, as we all know, speak louder than words. Then as our children grow older and begin to question this hypocrisy, we tell them that it’s not okay to lie unless it saves someone from feeling hurt. Then they can tell a little “white lie” to keep everyone happy. But who is this saving? Them, or us? The truth is we want to be manipulated. We want to be told we look thin when we’re not, we want to be told that it isn’t our fault that we keep ending up in bad in relationships, and we want to be told that we’re not failures. How many times have you heard someone say “I don’t want to know”? In a country where ignorance is bliss and intelligence can lead to insanity, irony has become a staple of human existence. But when we become sick from gorging ourselves on the lies we feed each other in the name of good manors, when we become so exhausted from fishing for false compliments that we can’t even recognize a genuine one when it comes our way, we escape: to drugs, to sex, to rock and roll, and to the cinema. The cinema is the ultimate escape where we can be manipulated into identifying with the size 0 megastar projected for our repressed carnal desires on a larger-than-life screen. Art manipulates emotions, and film is the ultimate propaganda for the ego. We go to the cinema to be tricked into laughing, and crying, so that we can have the cathartic release needed, like monthly sex in a failing marriage, to go back to living in self-denial. Appropriately, the actors of the cinema are the ultimate liars. And like them we play different parts for different people. To a friend we may be confident while to a lover we may play vulnerable. We are constantly revealing and concealing parts of ourselves, lying about whole areas of our lives that counter the persona we are wearing at the time. That is why Liar White is a chameleon. Like art, the person and the films are in a state of constant evolution, and like the eyes of the beholder, they reveal themselves differently to all who behold them. We are all liars, anyone who claims to never lie is in denial. And if they really don’t, then they are repressing their natural human nature. One of the reasons we hate is because we see qualities in people that we dislike in ourselves, and because we are in denial we project the aversion of those qualities in ourselves onto someone else. If we can admit that we embody all aspects of human nature, including the “undesirable” ones and fully embracing these qualities in ourselves, then we will no longer resent those who expose them in us and we can more fully explore the "desirable qualities". In other words, order to truly be able to love, we have to come to terms with why it is that we hate. The realization that we are all liars will lead us to a truth that can only be revealed through exposing the hypocrisy of our actions that often run contrary to our words, and by standing up and saying: “I am a liar”. |
