Self Deception
Do you really want what you want?
Posted on July 2023
After my graduation in 2020, I told myself that I am going to have a successful career in data science. I also told myself that I am going to save up money to buy myself a house, a car, and pretty much anything I want in the future, or as people say it “financially stable”. Then something came up and that forced me to reevaluate my meaning in this life.
As time progressed, I realized that what I wanted is actually not what I really wanted. Turns out I just lied to myself. I do not find satisfaction in achieving those goals or walking the path that is supposed to be the path in achieving those. One of the reasons for my dissatisfaction was I confused myself between “will to meaning”, “will to power”, and “will to pleasure”.
If I compare all of my goals from before, many of them are actually a part of “will to power” and “will to pleasure”. As Frankl explains in Will to Meaning, if one wants to have satisfaction in life, one should not focus on “will to power” or “will to pleasure”, instead one should focus on one’s meaning, a “will to meaning”. This is because Frankl argues that “will to meaning” is actually the tension in our life. Will to power is not an end, it is a means to an end. Nor does Will to pleasure, it is just the by-product of will to meaning. I talked a little bit about “will to meaning” here.
The reason for this confusion is because I have lied to myself. I lied that by having a successful career in data science, owning a big house and a fancy car, or being financially stable to the point that I can buy anything is my ultimate goal. In my opinion, lying to oneself is worse than lying to others. This is because one cannot differentiate between one’s true self and the lie. Thus, one fails to discover one’s meaning. This is the connection between self deception and will to meaning. Self deception can guide us to the wrong will to meaning. Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov mentioned
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love”.
This is what I believe Dostoevsky is trying to convey. Instead of the general belief that self deception is about pertaining to our belief in spite of evidence.
I suspect the reason why one lies to themselves is because one fails to differentiate between what one is and what one’s society thinks one is. I agree that our nature as humans is transcendent. That is our tension is created because of our interaction with our environment. But in my opinion there is a difference between the tension that is created by our own but influenced by the environment and the tension that is directly created by the environment. Thus we, humans, are prone to conformism and totalitarianism. Conformism is the act of following what others humans did or does. Totalitarianism is the act of doing what other people told us to do. Furthermore, I suspect this tendency of conformism and totalitarianism developed because these allow us, humans, to survive.
At last, the ultimate question I would ask is then how does one know if one is lying to themselves? How do one know how to differentiate the truth and the lie? My answer would be by asking oneselves the question “Hypothetically if I have lived my life and I am on the last day of my life, would I be okay if I never experience/do/feel the suspected lies or truth?”
I have asked myself this and I found out that I don’t really need to have a successful career in data science nor owning a big house or a fancy car. What I really care about is if I do not spend enough time with whom I love. I care that I never get to do my hobby for the rest of my life. Of course the answer to this question will be different from time to time. But at least one knows the true self of one at any moment when one experience existential vacuum.