TL;DR: Lies are about projecting a false image of ourself to the world. We all start doing this in "innocent" ways, but if we don't become conscious of it and actively work to prevent ourselves doing so (a lifetime's work), these false self-projections lead to a lifetime dedicated to protecting the "lie" that has become our life. PR images of the rich/powerful are the ultimate manifestation of these individuals working to protect the set of lies which they have now become as individuals. They've erected so many lies around their own internal vulnerability that the entirety of their life is now spent unsuccessfully protecting an image of "a strong good person" which all who see them are entirely aware is a lie. The small lies have snowballed into monstrous lies. For this reason, the smallest lies must be addressed - constantly - or they will become the big lies eventually. Keeping these small lies down (like weeding a garden) is a must if we seek to live a life of integrity.

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I have thought a lot about the question which comes up periodically on here of "Who is [They]?" and is there really a They, or is it actually Us? Is the moral disintegration we comment on regularly here the result of [Their] influence or does this represent all of us creating our own hell, including those of us on this board?

My personal history leads me to this question because - viewed in its entirety - my life has not been that of a saint. Far from it. Much of the advice I dispense on here, and the commentary I make, is rooted in my attempt to atone for my own past misdeeds. While I - correctly - condemn the absolute depravity I witness in the wealthy and powerful class of global humanity, years ago I was engaged in similar depravity. Who am I in that case? The deeply flawed and destructive person I was then, or the man I am now, trying to help us dig out of the mess our culture is so rapidly sinking into? It's not a simple question.

I write this post then as a reflection on the roots of my own potential to be the very evil we all rightly condemn. I know I have this potential, because I have lived it. I didn't enjoy it, but that doesn't matter. I did evil, and I will always live with that.

This leads to the title of this post. What's the root? Where does it start?

It starts with lies. It starts with presenting an image of ourselves to others to make ourselves look the way we want to appear rather than the way we are.

In my current form - hyper-consciously attempting to "be good" (to an annoying degree sometimes, even to myself) - I see details I simply didn't see before, and it is in these details that the roots lie. I'll give an example. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a bad headspace, quite depressed and overwhelmed by the state of our world. On a particular day, I had an appointment. It wasn't a crucial appointment, but it was with friends I feel a responsibility to maintain a bond with, because I feel the group of us provide mutual support, and we are a small enough group that my presence would be missed. In the headspace I was in, however, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to put the work into the project we were working on together, and I didn't want to admit to them that truth. I didn't want to tell the truth that "I don't want to put the work in to what we are doing together this week."

There's the lie. Immediately, I started coming up with the classic excuses. I could tell them I was sick. I could tell them something else came up and so I would be unable to make it. This was my instinct. I didn't want to tell them the truth - that I didn't want to go - so instead I was seeking some plausible lie to explain why I couldn't go. They wouldn't know the difference, right? We all do this. This is a classic human experience. Maybe our spouse calls in for us, or maybe we call ourselves to work and put on the "cough cough" voice to tell them we're sick today.

But as innocent as they seem (and in the grand scheme of things, they may truly have zero meaningful effect on anyone), these lies are crucial to understanding where our moral compass goes wrong. We are lying to create an image of ourselves that is false. It is a purely selfish and narcissistic act.

In this case, I was able to see what I was doing in my head, and I avoided the trap this day. I sent my friends a message saying I was in a bad headspace, and that I didn't have the mental energy to do the work we were planning that day; I confessed to them my mental weakness.

This is the secret. I demonstrated emotional vulnerability. I acknowledged to them that on that day, I was emotionally weak. I have heard from enough people in my life to be absolutely confident in the universality of this experience. Because of the way I handled it, as it turned out (not at all surprisingly, with hindsight), my friends were in the end sympathetic to the "mental health day" that I took. Now two weeks later, we have regained our rhythm, I am "back in the groove", and we're getting good work done again.

This is the turning point that faces us all regularly. It's not the last time it will happen in my life; this will come up again and again and again, just as it has always done so in the past.

But when I was younger and weaker, this was the root of where I went wrong, and how I hurt so many people. I refused to confess to my weakness. I refused to admit that I was in pain. Instead I put up the classic image of "I'm fine!"^tm and continued forward. Having done that, I was separated from the world. I was living in my own painful internal world, never revealing my pain to anyone, and given that it was unaddressed and unacknowledged, that pain just grew and grew until it became a monster, thereby turning me into a monster. I proceeded to spread monstrous behavior around me. All because I couldn't admit to the world I was in emotional pain, because to admit that would prove to people that I was weak. I couldn't admit weakness. People would surely take advantage of it, right?

The good news is that by addressing it the way I did two weeks ago, the energy is removed from the "confession", and within a day or two, I regained my emotional equilibrium and have moved back into a stable place of strength. Because I told my friends what was happening, there is nothing to hide. They know what happened, it happened, it's done and we all move on. No after-taste of the lie.

The challenge of course is that this is not a "one-and-done". The instinct to lie about this and protect our "soft underbelly" comes up again and again in life. We have to remain vigilant and resist the desire to "protect ourselves" again and again, seemingly to infinity. I know this will come up again. It's been doing so for decades; why would it stop now?

This is the cost of personal integrity. If we want to be able to present ourselves to the world openly and with pride, we need to present ourselves even when that self is not the "strong" person we wish we always were. Ironically, part of true strength is the ability to admit weakness. By being genuine and admitting that we have weak moments (we all do), we demonstrate the strength of being willing to face the consequences of appearing honestly before the world.

This is the magic of which our "leaders" are radically incapable. We know they are liars, because human beings are minutely tuned in to emotional mood. It's a survival mechanism. It is crucially important for us living in a social species to read mood in our herd. It's a life-and-death skill. Misreading the mood of someone next to us can get us killed in a dangerous crowded situation. Humans are very dangerous, as we all know. So we are gifted with a super fine-tuned ability to sense reality from lies.

But our "leaders" spend the vast majority of their energy creating an image that is in contrast with the reality of the vulnerable human beings that they are (just like we are). Welcome to the industry of Public Relations.

And there's the Big Lie.

While some of us work very hard to learn to be genuine and present honestly when we interact in the world (not always successfully, but at least we're trying), these "leaders" spend God-only-knows how many resources to hide and deflect from the truth of who they are and the weakness within them. Rather than demonstrate their fallibility (which is to say their genuine humanity), they put 90% of their effort into maintaining the image protecting that profound lie at their core. As the pain within them creates more and more damage around them, they have to erect PR walls that are higher and higher to pretend to be what we all know full well they are NOT.

I never expect to have power, and I thank God for that every day. But I look at these "powerful" people, and at some level I feel sorry for them. Living the lies they project is the most energy-inefficient life I can imagine. I cannot imagine coming to the end of life, looking back, and seeing what a waste I made of it. They must see this upon death, and the pain must be excruciating.

So yes. I did a lot of harm when I was younger, and I will live with that until I die. But for many years now, I am working to learn to live differently, and to contribute honestly and genuinely to the people whose paths run alongside mine. How this all balances out is God's business. I have no insights into the meaning of the final product. Am I a good man? Am I a bad man? Well, at different times in my life, I have been both.

It starts with the choice each and every moment I find myself tempted to present a "better" image of me than the truth of where I am in a given moment. That image isn't actually better, and lying about it is the beginning of a path I don't want to find the end of.