I was as gullible as I ever got to be in the late 1960s, a time when idealism died for many. Then, with all the snotty arrogance of youth, I contemplated writing a book-length screed called “Lies.” In an era of assassinations, Selma, Watergate, Vietnam, The Cold War, televangelists, the counter culture, falsity seemed to be everywhere.
Not only was Santa not as advertised but all our causes were not noble, all our wars were not moral crusades, and all our products did not deliver what they promised. Our democracy was not the uplifting spectacle of the history texts but an often tawdry and cynical hoax designed to delude and exploit the electorate. And, as James Simon Kunen wittily observed at the time, even Walt Disney couldn’t be trusted. The man who had used Davey Crockett to teach a generation to “be sure you’re right, and then go ahead,” banned young people with long hair and beards from Main Street, U.S.A. Et tu, Walt?
I could go on, but as things in this country went from bad to worse, the lack of any need for comment from me became more and more apparent. My parents’ generation gradually became just as disillusioned as their sons and daughters. But before that happened, the generations became disillusioned with each other. We were upset that we’d been lied to. They were upset that we’d realized before they did that the emperor had no clothes on.
I haven’t gotten mellow with age, but I have learned not to expect the best from my fellow beings. Human, all too human is code for flawed, fallible and, according to one explanation, fallen. But now, here comes an historian’s positive spin on our weakness for telling and believing lies, concocting fables, fictions and nonsense. It turns out this is our defining strength.
In “Sapiens,” Yuval Noah Harari argues that what separates our brand of ape from all others is a cognitive revolution that occurred sometime between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago. Previous ape species could communicate and could even lie. Harari describes a green monkey making the call that means “Careful! A lion!” in order to scare another monkey up a tree so that the first could steal the banana left behind.
Other Homo tribes lived in small organized societies, made simple tools, but all of a sudden sapiens underwent a great leap forward, a genetic change that gave them superior abilities and the rest is history—literally. What Harari calls the Tree of Knowledge mutation was the ability to make up things that aren’t true, but might be.
“Only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
This sounds trivial, but it’s not. The ability to make things up that aren’t true is our killer app. We can imagine a man with a lion’s head, like the one that is among the earliest works of art found so far – an ivory figurine of this mythical creature dates from 32,000 years ago. We can imagine gods or monsters, but also a better life and how to achieve it, a boat and how to build it, how to plant crops, organize a complex society, a division of labor, a trip to the moon.
Most important of all, we are able to share these fictions and myths. And if we can get enough people to share our belief in the unreal things we make up, we can get them to work together to make the never-was become real. A Roman Empire, a gothic cathedral, a Supreme Court, a transcontinental railroad with a stock exchange or tax system to fund its construction.
“Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something everyone believes in, and as long as that communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world.” By this means we have created laws and religion, roads and air traffic control, government and corporations, money and morality.
“As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of [real things like] rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.”
In short, my younger self was wrong to object to all the lies I was being told simply because they were lies. That’s what makes humans human. But I was not wrong to think that some communal beliefs are malign – racism, ISIS, the Nazi Party, cults – and others are beneficial. And it is surely right to believe that the good myths are too important to mess with and have to be safeguarded.
We claim to have a country based on the notion that all men are created equal, but if we don’t act like it the communal belief that keeps the country alive and well will be weakened. Government of, by, and for the people is another of our myths, but to get people to believe it we have got to practice it, not just preach it.
If our behavior contradicts our stated belief, the effect is corrosive and pretty soon our institutions no longer command allegiance. Every pedophile priest, politician on the take, cheating teacher, inside trader, lawless cop rusts and erodes trust in our shared beliefs. And that trust is all that keeps them from vanishing like a soap bubble. This is not an abstract worry in a time when so many political campaigns resort to the toxic strategy of destroying trust in the very institutions the candidates themselves hope to lead.