Delphic Maxim 46: Fear deceit

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.

46. Fear deceit

Of all the verbs we’ve come across in these maxims so far, ‘fear’ has to be one of the strangest. They’ve typically been quite active, confident and forward-looking, and suddenly we get this imperative to ‘fear’ deceit. Strange. Because fear seems like a really disabling emotion — it can hold us in place, or invoke a flight reflex, and we run from something. But then maybe that’s the point.

Deceit functions in two ways. The first is being on the receiving end of it, and I suppose that’s a really logical thing to fear. Nobody wants to be intentionally (or even unintentionally) deceived, since this means we’re misinformed about a situation that might impact us in some way. The alternative is of course that we are deceiving someone, which might be a strategic choice in a situation, for nefarious purposes or otherwise.

I think the word deceit is loaded though: it’s not lies of omission (where the ‘truth’, whatever it is, is left out because it isn’t necessary or appropriate to share it), or white lies designed to spare somebody’s feelings. Deceit implies a degree of malice — that there’s an intent to harm or a lie for personal gain involved in the whole affair. That’s probably a good reason to fear it.

Can fear be a productive emotion? Yes, I suppose it can, if it keeps us on our toes. I don’t think it makes sense to get around paralysed by fear of deceit in our daily lives: what if this person is lying to me for some hostile purpose? Can I trust what my colleague is telling me right now, or are they trying to make me look bad? That’s all a bit silly. However, there are ways in which a consciousness and awareness of the possibility of deception can be helpful.

Advertising is a classic here — people can be lured in by false promises and untrue claims. But even more salient for our times is the idea of ‘truth decay’: the internet has given rise to a whole lot of false information, and we’re awash with deceitful material. You only need to look at the professional lies perpetuated by the anti-vax movement, or political interests who are opposed to action on climate change. These pressure groups are actively deceitful — they spread false information which can be highly damaging.

A productive fear of deceit might encourage us to think a bit more critically about the messages we encounter online: who wrote it, when was it written, how reliable is this, what kind of evidence supports it, what kind of disciplinary or political biases exist within it, who is the intended audience? My librarian-ness is coming through here: what we call ‘information literacy’ is, in part, about understanding the production and consumption of information, and looking at how it can be distorted for a range of purposes.

Deceit functions in a range of ways for a range of purposes. I’ve understood it here as something with distinctly harmful or bad intent, as opposed to some of the more gentler or strategic reasons that we might have to lie. But we live in an age where technology has enabled the propagation of deceit on an industrial scale. A productive fear of being misinformed can help us to be more critical about the media we consume, and so it should.