This post is about telling a downright lie with an absolutely straight face and making people believe it.
Okay, you think that I’m joking do you? That I’m one plain ugly son of a bitch who’s quite prepared to contravene the Trades Description Act on a regular basis without blinking an eye? Well excuse me precious! Hold on a minute! Exactly what is it you think politicians do? You know, the ones who knock on your door before an election and promise they’ll get rid of student tuition fees and bankers’ bonuses. Make the rascals who caused the economic crisis pay for it and fight hard to lower your energy bills. Well there’s a difference between them and me. I only tell a whopper occasionally and choose the moment. They do it all the time and can’t help themselves. Their whole life is a contravention of the Trades Description Act! You’d better believe it!
There are many times that crystal healing enthusiasts come to my stall bubbling with faith, with an absolute belief that quartz crystals and others have mind boggling powers and can do amazing things for them. They really want to believe. I mean badly. They need their belief. If I fail to confirm this and tell them what I know to be true they find it unpalatable. It’s just about impossible for me to get through and sometimes they hate me for trying. One cannot fight such faith so who bother? It makes them unhappy.
There are many whacky people who arrive at the stall with strange beliefs and it’s so easy to see that they want to be lied to. Hey, those are strange looking crystals… I’ve never seen anything like those in the books… They’re really weird… Where are they from? To this I reply with an absolutely straight face, “sorry, I can’t tell you how I got them but I know absolutely that they’re from Mars.”
At first it was meant as a joke but when I realised they actually believed it, I added, “I really shouldn’t be telling you this but I’ve got connections with NASA,” to which their response is invariably, no, you’re kidding me, connections with NASA eh!
It’s then that I realise no-one is joking here. Because of their beliefs they perceive nothing wrong or ludicrous in my statement. That’s because the spaced out lie I’m telling fully accords with their spaced out belief system so that the cognitive relationship between us is entirely normal! Either we’re two sane people in a mad world or two crazy people in a sane one. Whatever the case it doesn’t matter, not when we’re really brothers under the skin! Look at it like this. If I told a customer the truth and said crystal healing was crap they’d call me a crystal fascist! If on the other hand I said my rose quartz could help them find love they’d call me a pal. But then would I be a real friend if I told them a lie? A friend maybe only what kind of friend? And if I told them the truth? Suddenly I’d become a non-believer, someone who can’t play in your yard because I’m telling you things you don’t want to hear.
To me, you’re the one in a fantasy world and you don’t know it, but there’s no way I can bring you out of it so what do I do? Okay, I become a friend. I keep a straight face and tell you that I know absolutely that those crystals are from Mars.
From Mars eh? You don’t say! I didn’t know we’d got that far…
“Yes, an American lander brought a quantity back some years ago.”
Well how did you get hold of them? Suspicion!
Time to confess! Before I worked on the markets I was a scientist. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough money in teaching or research so I had to give it all up. I can’t tell you how, exactly, but I’ve still got connections.
You don’t say! How much are those crystals?
What I really want to say to them now is sorry I can’t tell you, or sorry they’re only for display purposes or something equally silly. You see what I’m actually doing is conducting an exercise in self-control i.e. not completely laughing my head off. Instead I usually reply, if I sell you one you mustn’t tell anybody. You’ve got to promise me first.
Is this request to share a secret likely to arouse suspicion you may ask? On the contrary, the creation of secrets and a trader’s willingness to share them makes him a confidant and undoubtedly increases his credibility. By making a customer understand his trust, what he’s actually doing is enlarging the customer’s self-esteem and strengthening their faith. In such a psyche, you have become the human personification of a piece of rose quartz! An instrument of love and support!
Please don’t laugh! This is a serious thing for so many people. I mean, it’s a bit like looking at the face of Nick Clegg when he’s being sincere and all that. You just can’t help can’t help cracking up!
But hold it. Hold it! You’ve got to keep a straight face when you tell an outrageous lie to a crystal healer- believer. So how do I do it when I know what I’m saying is ludicrous? Totally insulting to anyone with a shred of intelligence. Quite frankly, being a contortionist with iron control doesn’t help. A split second of thought and you’ve lost it and the sale along with it so you need something else. And that something is special, indeed the whole point of this post. In order to come across genuinely sincere and maintain it, you need to be able to believe your own lie, much the same as politicians or psychopaths. For some it’s a mental health issue, for others a matter of philosophical outlook no less.
It works this way. You go along with the lie by temporarily abandoning the truth. It’s not that it’s forgotten. By no means! You just let it slide into the pending tray at the back of your mind. It’s like giving yourself a dentist’s anaesthetic, a mild knock out drop. You don’t care so much for the truth anymore when you’re talking to a crystal customer. You’ve numbed yourself so the lie you’re about to tell or go along with is painless! You can tell it. It’s not so ridiculous anymore and won’t jar on your moral nerve. You can keep a straight face because you’ve injected yourself against the truth. You’re still you but you’re not quite the same you. You’re partly one of them now.
So what did you do not so long ago? Well I’ll tell you. They looked good on television didn’t they? They said all the things you wanted to hear so you went and voted Liberal Democrat. Then after a year of them shitting all over you the injection wore off and you realised that you’d been lying. To yourself more than anything!
It’s the same principle at work, telling an outrageous lie to someone who prefers to be lied to than told the truth. David Cameron doesn’t lie to you. The Tories tell it as it is. They’re going to be shitting all over 90% of the population while they’re in power. He’s able to keep a straight face without even trying. People like that. Appreciate his honesty. They’re going to have their standard of living endlessly attacked on behalf of the rascals in the money markets, credit rating agencies and bank directors. Like Captain Spalding in the Marx Bros film, Animal Crackers, David Cameron is a very moral man!
The real issues here are purpose and integrity. How can you actually allow yourself to tell someone a lie like crystals on your stall coming from Mars you may ask?
In response I’ll begin by asking you to consider this fact. How can the Bank of England, the key financial player in the British economy, allow billions of pieces of paper to be printed with a number on them along with the Queen’s head and pretend they mean something when they’re supported neither by a reserve of gold nor a successful export led booming economy? There’s simply nothing to underpin their numerical value! They’re just stylised pieces of paper with a dirty great big hole of Government debt currently running to the tune of a trillion underneath them. In short, the worth of these pieces of paper is an illusion, a confidence trick that must be maintained because if people stopped believing in them the whole economic system would collapse. In much the same way, saying that some of the crystals on my stall come from Mars is a thing people want to believe. An assurance doesn’t have to be a lie but a lie often has to be an assurance, otherwise people would stop believing that money has any real value or that crystals can heal or come from another planet!
So how can I do it? Where’s my integrity, my sense of honour? Okay, don’t go on! For one thing I don’t tell that many lies. Just the occasional few and only to absolute arseholes. And unlike many other market traders I always know when I’m telling them. Where the big ones are concerned I simply inoculate myself and participate in the party spirit of crystal fantasy. Crystals from Mars is a lie but it’s harmless. Furthermore, no-one has ever come back to the stall requesting a refund. Whether it’s crystals from Mars or a piece of glassy rock shot out of a volcano in the Peruvian Andes, it’s too small to be a big deal. Something I need to stay up at night worrying about. Do you think M.P.’s ever did that with their claims for expenses? If you do, come to my stall and let me sell you a Martian Crystal!
That leaves us with questions. Should we stand up for the truth against liars? Believe in men of God and their preaching, or cosmologists who tell us the Universe started with a Big Bang, or multi-millionaires who own media empires and say whatever they like?
Virgins who have kids? Men who come down from heaven? Miracles, resurrections, visions, and of course Rupert Murdoch! Please, leave it out!
Ultimately the message is this. There’s a difference between truth and lies. Always. But small liars and their lies, outside of human relationships, are generally harmless. Inside, they can be devastating. It is these emotional psychopaths we need to worry about along with the really big liars who have power over so many. The first cause harm to individuals, the latter to millions. The biggest most dangerous liars are best recognised by the small scale duckers and divers who are reasonably well practiced themselves and may spot some incipient Goebbels. We may have need for such men and women, to cackle like geese when the time comes.
This post, about selling crystals from Mars on a London street market, was supposed to be about telling a lie with an absolutely straight face and making people believe it. As it turned out it became something more. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
