Supermarkets are like televisions…
When you see much variety and choice,
You get overwhelmed and think
Ah! Yes customer is king!
But scratch your head and see again
You only can buy what is sold
And much of what is sold, buy you won’t
Just as on TV, they show you a lot of trash
And in flipping channels for more, you imitate
Life’s story of seeking the beyond. And yet
When you stop to see, you can
Never see what you wanted to see – you merely
Choose from what they think you should see…
God bless you for thinking you are king!
The king in real is the one who owns
The channel that hoodwinks you into thinking
It shows all you wanted to see…
The king in real is he who owns
The shop that outwits you into thinking
It sells all you wanted to buy…
Hmm! Customer is king? Neat deception!
Deepesh Chandrasekharan
Showing posts with label deception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deception. Show all posts
23 Sept 2008
16 Jan 2007
Dangerous is the lie we tell ourselves
“O Sancta Simplicitas! How strangely simplified and falsified does man live! One does not cease to wonder, once one has eyes to see this wonder”- Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
We all agree that we are always deceiving others, and as T.S.Eliot said, we ‘prepare to meet the faces that we meet’. Even Shakespeare has compared life to a stage and people as merely actors continuously acting roles. But the story of deception doesn’t end here. Some of the greater deceptions we practice are subjected against our own selves.
We are constantly telling ourselves lies that suit us; lies that make life convenient for us and lies that help us feel nice and happy. A chain smoker I know seems to need cigarettes like we need oxygen to breathe. He refuses to believe that every cigarette is cutting his life short and protests that he would die if he didn’t smoke. He is lying to himself.
Obesity works much in the same way. When some obese people take recourse to suggestions that it is hereditary, they are lying to themselves..
When we want to feel good about ourselves, we tell lies like, ‘ we are putting in our best, but aren’t getting the results’ or ‘there is no time, I am so busy’. We are unable to blame our complacency, our inhibitions or ourselves. Each blame is justified like this. When we subscribe to a particular ideology, we convince ourselves of its infallibility and refuse to accept flaws in its premises. George Orwell brilliantly exploits this psychological possibility in his brilliant novel ‘1984’. Truth in his society of 1984 is the picture the government has cleverly presented and there is no evidence of any fact that makes it uncomfortable and so no one knows what is actual truth. People can only verify truth through government owned documents and every piece of information is cleverly and efficiently doctored to suit convenience and protocol. So, here, the people in power decide what you should think and this is called ‘double-think’. There is ‘ thought-police’ that monitors people’s thoughts 24x7 and any person thinking divergently is effectively eliminated in order to create the ‘perfect’ government and the ‘perfect’ governed.
Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger condemn self-deception as bad faith, an inauthentic response to the anxiety produced by contemplation of human freedom. When we deceive ourselves, we are abandoning ourselves to chance and to others. The cocoon of lies we weave around us may make us feel very secure, but we become incapable of intimacy and we lose our integrity.
Shakespeare says in Hamlet Act I Scene iii
‘To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not be false to any man.’
“O Sancta Simplicitas! How strangely simplified and falsified does man live! One does not cease to wonder, once one has eyes to see this wonder”- Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
We all agree that we are always deceiving others, and as T.S.Eliot said, we ‘prepare to meet the faces that we meet’. Even Shakespeare has compared life to a stage and people as merely actors continuously acting roles. But the story of deception doesn’t end here. Some of the greater deceptions we practice are subjected against our own selves.
We are constantly telling ourselves lies that suit us; lies that make life convenient for us and lies that help us feel nice and happy. A chain smoker I know seems to need cigarettes like we need oxygen to breathe. He refuses to believe that every cigarette is cutting his life short and protests that he would die if he didn’t smoke. He is lying to himself.
Obesity works much in the same way. When some obese people take recourse to suggestions that it is hereditary, they are lying to themselves..
When we want to feel good about ourselves, we tell lies like, ‘ we are putting in our best, but aren’t getting the results’ or ‘there is no time, I am so busy’. We are unable to blame our complacency, our inhibitions or ourselves. Each blame is justified like this. When we subscribe to a particular ideology, we convince ourselves of its infallibility and refuse to accept flaws in its premises. George Orwell brilliantly exploits this psychological possibility in his brilliant novel ‘1984’. Truth in his society of 1984 is the picture the government has cleverly presented and there is no evidence of any fact that makes it uncomfortable and so no one knows what is actual truth. People can only verify truth through government owned documents and every piece of information is cleverly and efficiently doctored to suit convenience and protocol. So, here, the people in power decide what you should think and this is called ‘double-think’. There is ‘ thought-police’ that monitors people’s thoughts 24x7 and any person thinking divergently is effectively eliminated in order to create the ‘perfect’ government and the ‘perfect’ governed.
Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger condemn self-deception as bad faith, an inauthentic response to the anxiety produced by contemplation of human freedom. When we deceive ourselves, we are abandoning ourselves to chance and to others. The cocoon of lies we weave around us may make us feel very secure, but we become incapable of intimacy and we lose our integrity.
Shakespeare says in Hamlet Act I Scene iii
‘To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not be false to any man.’
3 Mar 2004
DOUBLE GAME
In this game of ping pong,
We play to seek enjoyment
In the vacuous display of
Dislike and defence.
Why is it that we need to defend?
Why, when the game has no end?
We put up bold faces and
Emphasize on symbolic gestures.
Why do we not act, but just pretend?
Why get victimized by
Wicked political games?
Why do flowers look thorny
And thorns sweet?
Why can’t we resign from
This end game?
Cunning and deceit win you the game
And the deserving always lose.
As Darwin said,
The fittest survive and not the best.
Can’t we let go the yearning to hurt?
Can’t we suppress the desire to cheat?
C.DEEPESH
In this game of ping pong,
We play to seek enjoyment
In the vacuous display of
Dislike and defence.
Why is it that we need to defend?
Why, when the game has no end?
We put up bold faces and
Emphasize on symbolic gestures.
Why do we not act, but just pretend?
Why get victimized by
Wicked political games?
Why do flowers look thorny
And thorns sweet?
Why can’t we resign from
This end game?
Cunning and deceit win you the game
And the deserving always lose.
As Darwin said,
The fittest survive and not the best.
Can’t we let go the yearning to hurt?
Can’t we suppress the desire to cheat?
C.DEEPESH
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)