It’s election season, so it’s hard to avoid the television and social media ads that are mostly a mixture of lies and half-truths by politicians who want us to vote for them. Some politicians, as well as nonpoliticians, are clearly better liars than others. Humans are so good at lying, and at accepting the lies of others, it suggests that lying is a natural expression of normal brain function.
The human brain has a region of the frontal lobes that is apparently very good at producing the lies that we tell ourselves and each other. This region of your brain becomes active when you perform complex behaviors such as lying. Lying seems to be a complex task that requires considerable attentional ability, a vast memory for past events, and significant participation by this frontal brain region. These highly evolved brain regions allow us to be rather good liars.
Psychologists believe that most of us tell a lie to someone we know at least twice a day, and that within a period of one week, we lie to nearly one-third of the individuals that we meet. Some individuals, such as narcissists, are born with cortical proclivities that induce them to lie almost constantly for the simple reason that they do not care about telling the truth.
Lying, or mythmaking, has been a common feature of human behavior that has had profound consequences throughout history. Politicians are simply a recent example of leaders who try to control their followers by offering a comfortable myth that is consistent with their own fears and desires.
The human brain can retain an unprovable “fact” even when presented with rational and substantial evidence that it is wrong. This resilience to accepting fact over fiction is probably as ancient as the Homo sapiens brain. The original lies those humans told each other were the creation myths, which brought comfort in a scary world where events seemed out of their control. One of the earliest and most well-known of these is the Babylonian creation myth Enūma Eliš, which was found written on clay tablets in cuneiform. It describes the creation of the world and a battle between gods; the story is focused on the god Marduk. If you lived in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago, you probably worshipped Marduk and were comforted by the knowledge that he would take care of your personal interests, such as bringing good luck or good health. You would have truly believed the myth; you would have willingly killed or died for the honor of serving Marduk.
During the intervening millennia, other creator gods were introduced, including Faro (who incidentally saved the world from a flood by building an ark) and Unkulunkulu (if you were a Zulu). No matter when or where you lived, you embraced your culture’s lie because doing so made it more likely that you would survive.
That is the critical first step: For these creation myths to work, people had to ascribe to them a level of truth. The myth had to be repeated over and over again. No matter how unbelievable the stories might sound, the believers accepted the lies as fact and, most importantly, acted as though the details were all true. Today, people can tune into their favorite pundit on social media and be told the lies they want, and need, to be true.
Humans love a good myth that is rich with heroes who seem larger than life, who fight against injustice and lead people against their oppressors. This need fits exceptionally well with the narrative some politicians are offering. Politicians need us to feel that the world is dangerous and frightening, full of chaos and scary people, and that only they can protect us. Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World that the “combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” Sagan warned that science and knowledge were the only way to combat these myths.
Source link : https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/your-brain-on-food/202410/why-do-our-brains-embrace-lies-so-easily
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 19:26:25
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