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Title: Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind
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Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
List Price: $14.95
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| Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin I Cannot Tell a Lie...Ok, I Can! An Interesting Read | I think what drew me in and made me want to pick up this book and take it home when I as browsing at my local library was this quote from the inside jacket cover:
"The ever-present possibility of deceit is a crucial dimension of every human relationship, even the most central: our relationship with our very selves."
That little sentence really drew me in and piqued my curiosity! This is my first book dedicated to lying and deception, I have read a few articles in the past on the subject and that's what sparked my interest in reading more in this area. I have to admit that I wasn't at all sure what to expect when I checked this out of the library, but having read it, I'm certainly glad that I did. I think the title gives a pretty good idea of what the book is all about...the evolutionary roots of lying, deception (to ourselves and others) and how it all ties into the unconscious mind. The author is a psychoanalyst, so naturally it's skewed in that direction as well as dealing with a lot of information based on evolutionary psychology theories. Why We Lie offers us a glimpse at what's behind lying (the mechanisms) wherein lying and deceit are not presented as dirty things relegated to "bad" people and social deviants...rather, what the author presents is a look at what is at the root of lies and deceit...at how lying to ourselves and others (often unconsciously) benefits "us," as individuals and in societies.
Being a psychoanalyst, Livingstone Smith deals succinctly with Freud and the "taint" that often touches anything dealing with the unconscious in psychological study and research, plucking out what he feels are the true gems of Freud's theories and ideas and leaving the rest. He takes these gems and marries them to evolutionary psychology theories of understanding how the mind works. Additionally the author takes the time (at the start of the book) to discuss where deceit and lying have developed in other species; notably certain species of spiders (namely Portia spiders, a species of jumping spiders...a fascinating species even without the relationship the author sets up here), Mirror Orchids, and of course the Chacma baboons (which is the example that he leads off with at the very beginning of the book). I thoroughly enjoyed his explanation of deception as an evolutionary adaptation (which is related to the development of language in humans). Another quote from the inside flap serves to illustrate yet another point of interest that I got a real kick out of while reading Why We Lie:
"Smith shows us that by examining the stories we tell, the falsehoods we weave, and the unconscious signals we send out, we can learn much about ourselves and how our minds work."
As a result of reading this, I am probably never going to look at casual conversations the same way again as the Livingstone Smith takes great pains throughout the text to illustrate that even idle chatter gives away our true thoughts and feelings on the circumstances and events that occur in our daily lives...this part of the book, where he draws on examples of the casual chatter of his students before class and people at cocktail parties and how they often give away one's true feelings about the people and events around us, was truly fascinating. I will point out that the author consistently reminds readers that much of what is written in his book cannot be scientifically proven (yet, at any rate), it certainly gives much food for thought.
Overall, I found this to be entertaining, fun and informative. It will certainly be interesting to see what may come in the future of psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology study/research that might support and expound on Livingstone Smith's ideas. I give it 4 starts overall, the book is interesting and I like that the author is upfront about the limits of the research currently available in this area as well as the benefits and foibles of those who came before him in his field. I'd recommend it, but with the admonition to take what is written here with a grain of salt...a lot of what the author has to say, while interesting is unsubstantiated and even more of it is common sense, but he puts it together in a way that is accessible and interesting to "normal" readers. You'll walk away with some great conversation or discussion ideas and maybe even a bit of insight into yourself.
| | Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin Scientific Approach | | This book described exactly what its title claims. It methodically analyzes how we tend to operate on two levels with a clear and direct writing style. There is a whole unconscious level of communication that is more honest but less admitted in most of our interactions. Smith explains how this has supported our survival over time. Personally, I'm more interested in becoming more conscious of those processes, but the book only peripherally addresses increasing our awareness. | | Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin How to Make Friends and Influence People | Now here's a familiar scenario: when I was growing up, my parents, teachers and other such authority figures every now and then found it fit to scold me for lying -- and made it sound like a character flaw, a fearful sin. Of course, they were absolutely right and managed to pass on a very valuable lesson: if you want to survive in this world, you've got to cheat in a way that makes you sound/appear totally honest!
And here is a book that can teach you everything you need to know about the origins, mechanisms and usefulness of lying to ourselves and each other. Far from being a morally dubious trait in some "bad" people, it turns out that this is one of our most vital survival strategies.
Smith makes some very important contributions to the understanding of our minds from an evolutionary point of view. He convincingly portrays social life as a highly competitive system, and our cooperation with others as a form of allegiance against competitors/enemies. But because it is so difficult and draining to make reliable friends and influence the right people (as you might have noticed after any cocktail party or family gathering), our brains have evolved mechanisms to do most of the job unconsciously, while we merrily engage in (mostly elevating) self-deception and apparently boring small-talk.
In fact, recovering some of Freud's most enlightening hypotheses, Smith (along with many other evolutionists quoted in his book) argues that our conscious mind is not at all responsible for making decisions: "only results become conscious". We're like the user-friendly computer screen, as opposed to the hard disk, where all the real important information gets processed. Which means that what's going on even in our yapping heads is not really under our "control" -- at best we are informed of the final verdict (though we actually tend to be given false information by our unconscious!).
This split between conscious and unconscious, Smith argues, actually helps us blissfully cheat and manipulate each other without noticing it (thus avoiding unnecessary and possibly violent conflict) -- except when we, all too often, betray ourselves. The book is full of witty and convincing examples of situations in which the gap between our real but unconscious opinions/intentions and our fake but morally/socially acceptable actions becomes visible.
With all this social poker taking place on a daily basis, it becomes clear that society itself is mainly sustained by lies and deception, from religion through the judicial system to elections -- like a collective hallucination. (Which would really explain why politicians, celebrities, the media, schools, etc can come up with the greatest imaginable nonsense without anyone feeling particularly insulted -- it's just normal, after all.)
Thus, Smith's book may lead to two basic conclusions:
1) Either you are totally honest with yourself (if this were possible at all) and must therefore bluntly and unashamedly lie to others;
2) Or, far more likely, you mostly deceive yourself about your true opinions/intentions, in order to keep the conviction that you can be totally honest with others (just like mum and dad and all the other grown-ups taught us).
In any case, reading Why We Lie might give you some valuable hints about how to go on participating in this farce called life -- and enjoy the brief moments of enlightenment that may follow, once we understand that we are swimming in a sea of fables... starting with our own minds.
| | Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin I never lie.... | Reading the LA paper tonight on the Star Jones /Barbara Walters lie/truth/lie things....bored.. I was reminded of this book and pulled it from my shelf and reacquainted myself with the text. On some level I thought...is this for real or is it really a lie? No, just lying, I didn't. I really thought about the state of our world, journalism....
Actually what I thought was popular culture is so terrifically difficult for kids, I'm a teacher, to contextualize around the issue of lies or lying. Other reviews here give remarkably good insight into the content of the book. I will tell you why I, a school teacher, enjoyed the book. Practcally I wanted to understand the issue better. It's one thing to find yourself telling white lies to explain that Coach purse you snuck in for yourself for your birthday or participating in something like NCLB which seems embedded in bigger societal lying, but it's another issue altogether understanding the issue in children. From time to time a child perplexes me when using falsity as a coping mechanism,or in a situation where it seems so much a fabric of their particular interface caught between school culture and home culture-creation of lying seeming a way to cope- or simply let's say within my work I need a frame for understanding the issue. It happens I ran into the book at one of those times when a student seemed to use untruth to their own detriment.This was a child with many issues, anorexia, poverty, large family, extremely ill parent and I was feeling so sad both for the child and for how her coping was making it all so much harder. I really didn't get the answers to that child here in regard to that specific incident-seeking out some psych reading/thinking/people in the field later-but I did get a remarkable insight into my simple question(why is this child lying?)as being such a complex part of human development. I found many references and forward sending pointers, it helped me be a better thinker about an issue that is with us every moment. In fact just sitting here I thought how difficult it is to move thought or feeling or experience even of my own working with this issue in school to word, how removed it is from intial experience. As an artist as well as teacher, who then creates work third removed -it begins to be truth several times away from that experience (wasn't that Aristotle?) and yet....who is to say it might not be less the lie more the truth. I once debated that this notion of truth as lie, lie as truth.I know working with the student I often debated whether her inner world wasn't the more real to her and often felt she was too fragile to deal with my dealing with the untruth. The book gives a very good account of deception.. biologic foundation to self deception. I enjoyed it .
I recommend this to all readers. Really. | | Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin Know Thy Lying Self | David Livingstone Smith presents Why We Lie as a beginning step in the direction of an evolutionary psychology of deception. "Nature is awash with deceit," he claims. He produces many fascinating examples of deceit in nature (jumping spiders, for example) as a survival strategy and points out that "although we claim to value truth above all else, we are also at least dimly aware that there is something antisocial about too much honesty."
Smith gives an evolutionary account that in a nut shell goes as follows. As our evolutionary ancestors began to gather in larger and larger groups, the increasing complexity of group dynamics led to an "arms race between deception and detection [that had] huge implications for the evolution of human intelligence." The advent of language upset the balance between deception and detection and gave a huge advantage to the liar. "Most of us are embarrassingly inept at spotting liars." The problem is that we tend to privilege speech over raw observation, and thereby miss the clues that give the liar away. "Once our ancestors learned to gossip, they could form secret alliances, deceive each other far more effectively about where they stood in relation to other community members, and stab each other in the back."
Under Smith's account "the power to deceive is our main weapon in the struggle for social survival." Self-deception was an adaptation that enabled us to better deceive others. The result for us today? Not so good. "Self-deception has been a wonderful gift, but it is now destroying us. Our taste for it resembles our craving for sugar and animal fat." Further, "the most dangerous forms of self-deception are the collective ones. Patriotism, moral crusades, and religious fervor across nations like plagues, slicing the world into good and evil, defender and aggressor, right and wrong."
Smith's book is, as he admits, thin on evidence and light on research. Even so, it is a quick, easy read with enough interesting insights to nudge the reader a little closer to that ever elusive goal of self-knowledge. After all, shouldn't you know whether, at the most fundamental level, you are a self-deciever? It's worth thinking about.
| | Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind by St. Martin's Griffin Product Description | Deceit, lying, and falsehoods lie at the very heart of our cultural heritage. Even the founding myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the story of Adam and Eve, revolves around a lie. Our seemingly insatiable appetite for stories of deception spans the extremes of culture from King Lear to Little Red Riding Hood, retaining a grip on our imaginations despite endless repetition. These tales of deception are so enthralling because they speak to something fundamental in the human condition. The ever-present possibility of deceit is a crucial dimension of all human relationships, even the most central: our relationships with our own selves.
Why We Lie elucidates the essential role that deception and self-deception have played in evolution and shows that the very structure of our minds has been shaped from our earliest beginnings by the need to deceive. Smith shows us how, by examining the stories we tell, the falsehoods we weave, and the unconscious signals we send out, we can learn much about ourselves and our minds.
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