It's Not About Being Yourself. It's About Fulfilling Your Long-Term Dreams

MQ: When we spoke last time, you were very upset at the manipulation that we’ve had to apply to the population in general. Can you nail down exactly what is so wrong with this, in principle? Do you think it is always wrong to lie? Or do you think that we’re not allowing people to be who they really are?

Dan: No, that’s not it. I know where you’re trying to lead me. I’m not going to fall into those traps. Look, I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything you’ve been telling me in the last three days. I don’t believe that that are never situations where you have to lie. I also don’t believe that there is any “true self”, “you must be free to express who you really are”. I know that everything that makes me who I am is either random genetic variation or just what the people around me programmed me to be as I was growing up.

MQ: Great. So what is wrong with programming people to believe a different reality? You don’t seem to believe that one reality is more “true” than another.

Dan: I didn’t say that either. I don’t care what made me who I am. The things that I care about, those values that I am consistent about, those are what matter to me. I don’t only care about my survival. It’s also about achievements that give me meaning. It’s about the people I want to help, to make their lives better and richer and happier. It’s about where I want humanity as whole to progress to. That is as much part of who I am, as survival, and I don’t care if that’s what my mother brainwashed me into believing when I was a kid. I do what I do to further those goals. I feel frustration and pain when I don’t succeed at them.

You take that away from me when you appeal directly to my short-term needs and wants. Looks like you guys always know exactly what makes me tick. You know just how to distract me, to make me angry at the wrong people or to addict me to keep going for another five-minute dopamine rush. I don’t like myself afterwards. That’s not what makes me happy in the long term. You guys know us so well that you just see us a set of buttons to push.

MQ: Let’s say we never play off the short term against your long term goals. I still don’t get it. What is so wrong about giving you a picture of reality that isn’t exactly the way it is.

Dan: Not exactly? Not exactly? You little creeps. What I’ve been led to believe the whole of my life by you guys is just a lie!

When I want to achieve some goal, the only way I have of getting there is to apply my knowledge of the way the world works to take the actions that will make it happen. When you lie to me, when you give me a false picture of the way that world works, you’re condemning me to never achieving my goals. I’ll never find out why. I don’t even have a hope that I’ll get there someday. I don’t even know that I don’t have a hope.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash