Deceit: Presenting One Thing as Another

Deceit is presenting one thing as another. A short definition — but hidden inside it is a question that unsettles the familiar picture: if a person says something and genuinely believes it, are they deceiving? For someone who knows more — yes, they are. But the speaker may not know the nuances the listener knows, and to them, what they say is the truth. So one and the same phrase turns out to be both deceit and truth at once, depending on what each participant in the conversation knows. Deceit is not a property of words. It is the distance between two maps of the world.

Take a situation from a relationship. First a partner says one thing; later their view changes, and they respond to the same situation differently. Deceit? Look at one thing only: did they announce the change and give their grounds for it? If yes, and the other person accepted the new circumstances — you go on living in one shared reality. If not — a second reality is created, and the same situation begins to grow two different potentials. Sooner or later the lines of those realities will cross, the potentials will collide, and the energetic ties between the two people will change with complete certainty. Not because someone was «bad». Because you had long been living in different stories.

Deceit is presenting one thing as another.

On the «bitter truth»

There is a saying: better a bitter truth than a sweet lie. Take it apart. Truth cannot be «bitter» — by its nature it is always «sweet». What tastes bitter to us is not the truth but the moment of parting with the lie we had been calling truth. While we call a lie the truth, it is the lie that looks sweet. The instant we learn that our «truth» was a lie, the thing that used to taste bitter becomes the truth. Truth is always the right direction of development for a person — even when its first few metres are unpleasant.

From here comes self-deception: the unwillingness to see the end result — and, as a consequence, the unwillingness to bring it closer. A person invents for themselves the idea that everything will somehow rearrange itself the way they want, and rushes to act out of that invention. Don’t rush. Better to do nothing than to make a mistake, because a mistake changes your relationship to the result — and the more such mistakes, the less that result is worth to you. «Measure twice, cut once» is not about caution. It is about measuring reality rather than your fantasy of it.

Self-deception is the unwillingness to see the end result.

The invented «I» can always be felt

The subtlest form of deceit is an invented life. A person replaces the true story of particular events with a fabricated one, comes to believe it themselves, and then convinces others, broadcasting an invented «I». Why? To raise their own significance — deceit aimed at themselves. And to draw the needed emotions from others — admiration, pity — deceit aimed at them. Most often this manipulation is unconscious: absolute belief in the invention genuinely changes a person’s inner state, and until the moment of exposure they live in an illusion of comfort. People feel exactly the way they think.

But the construction has a weak point. People do not only hear words — they feel vibrations. So when a person deceives, it can always be felt: not through facts that could be checked, but through the mismatch between what they say and what radiates from them. An invented «I» may fool someone’s mind. It fools no one’s feeling.

So the real question of this chapter is not «how do I recognise other people’s deceit». The question is: where are you yourself presenting one thing as another — to yourself, about yourself? Find that place. Behind it, as a rule, hides exactly the thing you want most.

When a person deceives — it can always be felt.

The work on the cover — «Deceit» →

— Evgeny Fleysher