{"id":692,"date":"2012-03-17T00:20:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T06:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=692"},"modified":"2012-09-09T00:04:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T06:04:20","slug":"new-seven-deadly-vices-self-deception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=692","title":{"rendered":"New Seven Deadly Vices: Self-Deception"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_693\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-693\" style=\"width: 425px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MasksXSmall.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-693\" title=\"MasksXSmall\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MasksXSmall.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MasksXSmall.jpg 425w, https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MasksXSmall-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-693\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Masks of deception<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>&#8220;We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves from other people that in the end we disguise ourselves from ourselves.&#8221;<\/em> La Rochefoucauld<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Lying is certainly a common vice, but lying to oneself is much worse because insincere &amp; hypocritical behavior becomes a virtue and the lies we tell ourselves become legitimate. Our self-esteem is a bottomless wellspring for self-deception, which prevents us from accepting the crass desires behind our virtuous actions and keeps our vanity in disguise. We are all vain; we enjoy looking at ourselves, but because we&#8217;re also corrupt, we don&#8217;t like what we see. Thus we resort to self-deception and indulge our vanity without facing the truth.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If Desmosthenes says &#8220;the easiest thing of all is to deceive one&#8217;s self,&#8221; then how can we avoid such easy mistake? If we&#8217;re all corrupt and we&#8217;re all innately vain, then how is deception escapable? Do we just move from one form of bad faith to the next without ever breaking the chain?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps not permanently, but the pretense to not have a choice in anything is an outright denial of your humanity. You always have a choice, even if it is the choice to not choose. A choice made in good faith is a glimpse through the veil of self-deception, a brief glimpse of a permanently changing reality.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If self-deception is the pendulum between good faith and cynicism, then sincerity is the pendulum between self-deception and hypocrisy. As long we realize the ambiguous nature of reality and self-reflection, and reject excuses and complacency, we will be honest with our own self-deception. This might indeed be the most difficult of all vices, because we are the easiest person to fool and the hardest person to be honest with.<\/p>\n<p>#1. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=642\">Ignorance<\/a><\/p>\n<p>#2.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=654\">Seriousness<\/a><\/p>\n<p>#3.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=660\">Mediocrity<\/a><\/p>\n<p>#4.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=669\">Prudery<\/a><\/p>\n<p>#5.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=683\">Humility<\/a><\/p>\n<p>#7.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=703\">Boredom<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &#8220;We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves from other people that in the end we disguise ourselves from ourselves.&#8221; La Rochefoucauld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[9,1,4],"tags":[258,109,334,159,252],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Af2X-ba","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":701,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}