"On Lying" from HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE?

 

                                                                         ON LYING

Suspension of Disbelief, or The Agreed-Upon Lie

Now I’m going to tell you a story, and you know I made it up, because the cover of my book contains the words, “A Novel.” So, right at the start you, reader, accept the fact of the lie. You will be told lies and you agree to suspend your disbelief for the course of the book and live in a world of lies.

Thornton Wilder used this phrase—“the agreed-upon lie”—to describe the relationship between actors and audience at a play. The houselights dim, the ushers move to the back of the auditorium, the crowd noise abates, slowly hushes, finally ceases, as the spectators relax and enter into the agreed-upon lie.

 “Sit back and relax, enjoy the flight,” says the pilot on the intercom to the airline passengers. He’s lying too, he’s telling you there’s nothing to worry about while you are suspended for three hours in the absolutely unreal and terrifying thing of flying through space and time.

 But then, much of human life is based upon agreed-upon lies. We lie to our nearest and dearest—sometimes the lies are utterly cruel and deceitful, sometimes they are ameliorative, white lies—but we lie all the time. And, on a daily basis, perpetually and over the course of a long lifetime, we tell lies to our very selves. It’s a survival mechanism, developed over eons of years of evolution. We must lie to ourselves in order to survive.

(excerpt from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We? In the Shitstorm Year of 2020)