My recent post “Self-Betrayal and Loss of Senses” drew a great number of thoughtful comments and inspired me with the idea of this post. I mentioned in that post that most humans’ bad behavior has the root cause of self-betrayal.
- Promise to self not to smoke only to smoke more.
- Promise to self not to lie or spread fake news only to repeat them at a larger scale.
- Promise to self not to lie and lying more frequently.
- Promise to self not to break the secrets of others only to make them public-known secrets.
The discussions reminded me of a story that I experienced. My class at elementary school decided to arrange a competition on who sells to the students from other classes the maximum number of chewing gum. It turned out that the winner enjoyed his deception. He sold the chewing gum at half the price he bought them.
He won the competition but lost his money. This is an example of a Pyrrhic victory that is not worthy because it costs more than its reward.
We see this in recent wars where the cost of fighting wars far exceeds the profit of winning them. This is a form of self-deception accepting meaningless winning.
What drives people to self-betrayal and self-deception?
The discussions by many wise readers covered this question in very interesting ways that I wished to share a summary of them with the readers.
Zen 🌍 Benefiel shared a leading idea. Part of his comment reads, “Let us flip that to self-love. Self-betrayal comes from a lack of love of self, which promotes self-deprecation and drawing those things to one that edifies their unworthiness.
Charlotte Wittenkamp agreed with him and wrote, “Your comment made me think of collective illusions, Zen 🌍, and the difference between what I think and what I think other people think about any subject”. Charlotte is referring to the “illusion gap” between self and others.
Milka Zadoc Dubai comment is consistent with that of Zen by highlighting self-love as well. She wrote “Self-betrayal, self-fulfilling fakery, are all forms of self-deception. However, why the betrayal of self, why the fakery, why the deception? Close to the answer to this question is the opposite of self-betrayal is self-love is the recognition that we are inherently worthy, not flawed…”
Jumana Anani offered a new perspective “My opinion that supports the core of this masterpiece is self-betrayal (self-sabotage) hooks you into toxic relationship and situations and make us turn against ourselves”.
Madhu Kumar Gambhir proposed a worthy explanation “The dissonance when we see the mirror of what we promised to be and what we do rages a war within of guilt and self-defacement”.
Laura Donnelly offered a good explanation for self-betrayal “Self-betrayal can put one on a slippery downhill slide. It can lead to shame, self-blame, and anger.
No one will change until they have the awakening of awareness inside”.
Two close explanations are those by biljana savic and Rached Alimi.
Biljana wrote, “Only when we are face serious challenges can we be sure whether all the promises we have made can pass the test”.
Rached wrote, “May I say that the last temptation is the worst betrayal: doing the right thing for the wrong reason?”
Reinforcement for the causes of self-betrayal arrived from Jean L. Serio “While self-betrayal can be caused by the violation of one’s own values, beliefs and principles, it comes in many forms”.
John Moore highlighted the rippling effect of self-betrayal “I agree with your pointing out that self-betrayal can be a root cause of bad behavior. Over time, the numbing to the consequences of our actions can also lead to further betrayal”.
Consistent with the above is the comment of Elena Gabor “How much does a person need to doubt himself/herself? It is all about doubts, fear, lack of hope, and joy”.
raवि ‘Ashant’ Chaturvedi (Grasshopper) focused on the deterred effect of self-betrayal and the resulting Pyrrhic victory “It is difficult, very exhaustingly, sometimes for pleasure those come in future pain’s disguise”.
The challenge to beat self-betrayal and abandonment of seeking Pyrrhic victory is great indeed.
The process of lying to oneself more or less consciously is a particularly subtle form of self-sabotage which reflects the mind’s tendency to protect our integrity, understood as coherence with the idea we have of ourselves, of what we believe in, of our values and the world around us.
The aspect that most struck me (in a seminar) is that of strategic self-deception, a form of lie, that is, that we “knowingly” tell ourselves, capable of producing beneficial and functional effects for our goals.
An example: you ask yourself a series of questions about what you could do to make the situation even worse. The paradoxical effect of this technique is to stimulate the mind in search of alternative strategies which, acting as a defense mechanism, oppose the answers obtained on how to get worse.
This technique is an integral part of strategic problem solving, a methodology for finding effective solutions to complex problems.
Great commnerm Aldo
What drew my attention the most is “The aspect that most struck me (in a seminar) is that of strategic self-deception, a form of lie, that is, that we “knowingly” tell ourselves, capable of producing beneficial and functional effects for our goals.”
Amazing that some people lie to themselves and because they keep repeating the same lie they believe in it. Highest degree of self-deception this is.