Living in an age of deception

Hope Bonarcher is horrified by how deceived our culture is today, but a look at biblical examples shows this is nothing new

Deception: hiding the truth, especially to gain an advantage. Maybe your favourite Disney movie villain comes to mind – Ursula’s conspiring pact to steal Arielle’s voice, or Cruella, scheming to get her hands on those adorable Dalmatians for her fur collection. With self-deception, however, the waters are murkier. It’s defined as the process of rationalising away the relevance of opposing evidence, leading individuals to convince themselves of a false belief or reality. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that philosophers divide over the question of self-deception’s intentionality. Are self-deceivers morally responsible for their state? Can collectives be self-deceived, and how so? Is our bent toward self-deception social, psychological, biological or simply an inadvertent byproduct of evolution?