Skeptic Habits | The Ethical Skeptic

The best lies are those related through a process of being meticulously and selectively truthful, projecting an air of unquestionable authority and exhibiting an intimidating disdain for anything different. It is a compromise of integrity, wherein being correct becomes more important than being accurate..

Contrast Between Individual and Institutional Liars

If a person contended to me, “Bigfoot was standing in my backyard last night,” I have ways in which I can assess whether or not that person is a liar or is simply being deluded. I can many times detect when an individual is lying. Several times however, when I suspected a person to be lying, it turned out I was incorrect. As a skeptic however, I do not immediately cast every challenging datum I encounter outside my pre-authorized paradigms onto the “heap of hate,” as that is not being skeptical. That process of dismissal involves some kind of childhood trained defense mechanism, a psychosis inside of which I have no interest in participating. This process of denial is the trained circus act reaction of a person fully bought into the institutional lie. Consider for a moment, the religious pitches under which we have all been victim in the past. How did they craft a panorama of fear involving the unknown? How did they frame or imply a set of ‘knowns’ in an attempt to motivate you? You are going to hell after you die, everyone knows that, right? But the person or group making the pitch to you was acceptable and now represented the truth, right? And if you did not accept the contention in question at that very moment, you were in the bad group, right?

The person who executed this religious pitch was not individually lying to you, they were institutionally lying. A person can be meticulously truthful as regards their choice of moral trait, yet still stand for and promote institutional lies.

As in the case of the person seeing Bigfoot, it is useful in this type of process to possess the skills to ascertain when someone is likely lying to you. Possession of the skills set wherein one can detect an institutional liar is even more important than possessing that of detecting an individual liar. With the individual, I can collect more data, sense the habits of the person involved and eventually vett the observation for veracity. Nor do I have to in the end, actually do anything about their potential lie. It will not degrade my life one iota. With the institutional liar, it is not always this simple.

An institutional liar deludes self first, then operates from a playbook supporting an agenda to which they have surrendered fealty. They apply skepticism to all but their favored beliefs, compensating for any ethical inner doubts by being selectively correct, meticulous and intolerant of ideas which threaten this fealty.

One can readily deflect and disarm an individual liar. But what if the proponent is stepping way past simply contending a false observation, and is now authoritatively enforcing an entire ontology or policy centered around a very large set of implied claims under a guise of ‘correctness?’ With an institutional liar, the lie is much more complex and surreptitious, as it typically involves a complete set of claims inside a presumed factual basis which they hope to slip by without your notice, and is backed by an illusion of authoritative position. There are five key characteristics which make up the habitual foundation of an institutional liar.

The implication or contention that you lack a key understanding or mental skill
The adorning of a robe of personal authoritative acceptability on the part of the contender
A unique positioning or framing of a set of unknowns inside a group of unstated but implied ‘knowns’
Habitual polarized framing and disregard for the ‘other group’ in which they identify you as being part
Discomfort with your lack of assent to their particular manifest and implied contentions.

These are the five character/action traits of an institutional liar.

Fake SSkeptics were keen observers of the old method of religious proselytizing. Lie to them regularly and lie to them early, before they can hear anything else. While I give many fake SSkeptics credit for in reality, possessing an emotional distaste for the religious sales job which was foisted on us all from a young age, I also do not find acceptable, their employment of similar ilk tactics to enforce their religious beliefs. And if all they were doing is attempting to promote their personal religion, that would also be fine. But in similar fashion to Abrahamic religious pitches, they too promote an entire social fabric of control which they seek to imbue into government, academia, and our lives. One which I find to be highly unacceptable.