Deception, self-deception and healthcare
In a politics of deception, it is easy to presume that deception is only a political tactic. It is also used in healthcare.
Researchers Jan de Vries and Fiona Timmins reported in Nursing Philosophy (this year’s issue) that this behavior is also used in healthcare under a rationalization of protecting patients from diagnoses that are negative and overwhelming. However, their study revealed that deception can occur only through self-deception.
Since deception and self-deception are essentially unnatural, they create what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” a form of internal un-peace or incongruence as a consequence of lying. (It is close to what Catholics call “conscience”). This means that the more a person lies to others the more they lie to themselves.
The reverse is also as predictable. The more a person lies to himself, the more he lies to others.
In this first Breakthroughs article for 2017, it remembers the radical honesty that Jesus brought into this world. His birth in the manger, which we celebrated last Christmas 2016, confirmed the natural poverty of mankind and the lie that we tend to coat it on through our material possessions and the reverence society places on those who exhibit these in public. And yet on the embalmer’s table, everyone looks much the same.
This New Year calls for a renewed effort to stand for the truth and be beacons of truth for others. Evil (and the devil) has a field day for those who lie.
With these thoughts, I recalled a groundbreaking work I came upon during my Masters days in Psychology in a Catholic school in the city. The book, The People of the Lie, was a seminal work on the scientific investigation of evil, which the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck pioneered. It is a good reading for January 2017. You can also get an audiobook on it in YouTube.com.
Let me quote him from the book: “When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit… It is possible to kill or attempt to kill… without actually destroying the body… Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.”
The country enters a stage in history wherein the angel of death is working feverishly, even far more effectively than during the Marcos era. And there are signs of the Filipino spirit losing the fight as killing becomes a viable option to resolve criminality. Let us not forget that despite the massacre of the innocents, the Lord survived to be with the good. Let us be with the Lord then this year at least.