With Deceit Comes Blowback

You are receiving this post/email because you are a patron/subscriber to Of Two Minds / Charles Hugh Smith. This is Musings Report 2024-42.

Every day, we're flooded with implicit reminders that we inhabit a mechanical universe explained by physics, chemistry and money. In previous eras, the analogy was a clock: all the parts are guided by physical laws. Today the analog is a computer: inputs generate outputs, everything obeys the coding of genetics, software, legal statutes, etc.

In this universe, technology is unleashed and it runs where it will run, and if our lives are torn asunder, so be it, you can't stop Progress. Our only choice is Darwinian: either chase the golden ring or lose the race.

In this universe, deceit is nothing more than a tool that we use to improve our competitive position or milk an advantage.  There are no moral considerations, no sense that the truth has any more value or power than deceit.  If the truth offers some advantage in the moment, by all means use it. But if deceit is more advantageous, then by all means use deceit. It's the gain that counts, not the means of getting it.

In this so-called post-truth world, everything is open to interpretation. If I insist "this is my truth," you must accept that it has equal footing with the actual truth of the situation. This is certainly convenient, as it strips truth of its power: there is no "truth," that's mere illusion; everything is an interpretation that serves my interests.

In this world, sins of omission are not sins, for there is no sin, there is only the struggle to maximize private gain by whatever means are available. So exploiting the power to change the pricing of a product behind the curtain isn't deceitful; it's merely good business practice because it maximizes private gain.

Selling a shoddy product by exploiting trust in a brand is not deceit, it's merely good business practice.

Exploiting tax loopholes by fudging accounting is not deceit, it's merely good business practice.

Denying the exploitation of the powerless is not deceit, it's merely good business practice.

When caught, obfuscate, claim confusion or error of judgement--in other words, lie--or issue an insincere, meaningless apology that is nothing more than a gussied-up excuse: the dog ate my homework, so we defrauded customers of $100 million. OK, let's move on.

It's worth browsing the Corporate Settlements/Fines database compiled by Jon Morse: over 2,600 corporate admissions of wrong-doing, many of such scale that the settlement/fine exceeds $500 million. 

Since nobody went to prison, this is all just "the cost of doing business."

In a culture steeped in deceit, anyone who passes up an opportunity to take advantage of someone else isn't viewed favorably; they're a chump for sacrificing a ripe opportunity for worthless moral pride.

But this claim we live in a mechanistic, post-truth, morality-free world is false. We're not parts in a complex Antikythera Mechanism, we are human beings with hard-wired sensibilities of truth, trust, fairness, deceit, wrongdoing, guilt, justice and consequences. These hard-wired sensibilities are key to our primary advantage, our ability to work in groups and share knowledge. 

In other words, ours is an intrinsically moral universe, and so deceit eventually delivers profound consequences, consequences that will convulsively overturn regimes and social orders. There appears to be no consequence to deceit / denial, hiding or omitting the truth, clinging to lies, but the blowback is built in and cannot be suppressed forever.

We're told that there is no truth, there are only private definitions of truth, but this is sophistry, a convenient ruse to cloak our greed and wrongdoing.  

In my new book, I focus on Anti-Progress, the Nemesis to Progress's Hubris. The cultural embrace of a morality-free mechanistic world in which deceit and truth are nothing more than value-free tools is Hubris, and the Nemesis of blowback is building beneath the surface of techno-euphoria and greed--two sides of one coin.  

Truth has a power that moves us, even as we deny it.