Mearscheimer On Why World Leaders Lie

[aurum]

This is a good talk by Mearscheimer on lying in politics:

I was surprised to realize I had never heard a talk specifically on this topic. Many people don't seriously bother to do sense-making on "why" these things happen, they just grab their pitchforks and engage in mindless moralizing.

In reality, deception can be an extremely powerful tool for survival. But because it is so powerful, it's also a threat to your survival agenda by others who employ it against you. Queue the mindless moralizing.

So citizenry engage in all the same tactics Mearscheimer describes here in their own personal life. But almost never is deception condemned or even thought of as deception when performed in favor of their survival agenda. They are self-deceived about their double-standards around deception, as they must be.

Something else to consider that I think Mearscheimer misses: it's not just that leaders lie because they think it's in the best interest of the public, it's that political leaders who lie are often a tool of collective ego. It's tempting to think that the citizenry is good, pure and doesn't want leaders who lie, but this itself is self-deception. Of course people sometimes want leaders who lie, for the same reasons that you lie to yourself. 
 

Edit:

An additional nuance I thought of later. Of course Mearscheimer is right about “blow-back” from lying. This should be obvious for anyone doing consciousness work. But when people with more consciousness attempt to explain this to people at a lesser degree of consciousness, often it is turned into a kind of rigid morality. “Lying is a sin” would be a good example. This also contributes to mindless moralizing and often creates its own problems, but also can be a necessary stage of development for people.

Edited September 24, 2024 by aurum