When people tell lies infrequently, their bodies register a physiological response. Blood pressure rises and heart rates go up, as do stress hormones. Parts of the body exhibit increased perspiration. But tell lies frequently, and these symptoms begin to decrease. Something comparable happens to people who are the victims of lying. At first they are shocked and offended. But, if they are subjected to frequent lies, the reaction begins to subside.
According to the fact-checkers of The Washington Post, Donald Trump uttered a total 30,574 lies or misleading statements during his four years as U.S. president. This was an average of 21 per day. It is unlikely that he exhibited any of the physiological symptoms of the infrequent liar. But the American public also adapted to the experience. During the course of Trump’s constant lying, they stopped being shocked.
In a psychological process called habituation, they began to accept lying as normal and stopped noticing. Indeed, once they accepted lying as normal, we can reasonably conjecture that they were less likely to exhibit the physiological symptoms when they lied. Their social and objective reality had changed. They were no longer bound by the limitations of facts. Truth became “truthiness”. They could say and think whatever they wanted because it might be true. “Alternate facts” became the expression for opinion unsupported by any evidence. And in this situation of invented reality, the cohesion that binds a society into a functioning whole begins to break down.
In a worse situation, “truthiness” becomes misinformation or its darker cousin, disinformation. Facts—for which there are no alternatives—become lies intended to misrepresent reality, a strategy that is culturally corrosive and evolutionarily destructive.
In evolutionary terms, habituation is a strategy we employ to survive because we do not have to notice the routine. Threats are unusual events that need our attention. But the ordinary passing of the usual events during an ordinary day do not need our awareness. This leaves us free to think creatively, solve problems, strategize, work at our jobs, cook dinner, play with the children, or chat with friends about something nondescript. Habituation, in other words, is a device that we use to recognize the normal.
We do the same with environmental issues. The oppressive smoke from a nearby forest fire is initially alarming. But after a few summers, it becomes a normal part of a hot and dry season. We soon forget that this is unusual. We do the same with excessive heat events. The conversations about such events begin to exude an attitude of casual acceptance rather than concerned alarm. We soon forget that the rivers that once teemed with spawning salmon are now empty of fish. The sparsity of birds, butterflies and miscellaneous insects is the indication of an alarming trend that eventually escapes our notice.
This lack of awareness is exacerbated by urbanization—more people now live in cities than in rural places. This urban living separates us from everything natural, including the health of all the species that constitute our natural world. It also disconnects us from our food production, our water supply, and the way we heat and cool our homes—or, perhaps, they are now more likely condominiums. To illustrate the extent of this separation, an August 15, 2004 study by the Kawamura Gakuen Women’s University found that half of Japan’s elementary and junior high school pupils living in cities had never seen a sunrise or sunset.
An important part of our survival psychology is not to notice what is normal. Unfortunately, however, we survive by noticing the unusual until it becomes usual and then we no longer notice it. Rising ocean temperatures are killing coral reefs and the amazing ecologies that they support. But the shock of this realization begins to lessen the more we hear about it. Compared to 100 years ago, only 10% of the ocean’s fish stocks remain, a shocking statistic until it is not. The same with extreme weather events. They are serious until they become normal, then we stop noticing—until, of course, we are the victims, but that is elsewhere for everyone else but us. Even Mordor becomes normal when you live in it.
This psychology of habituation has served us well in the past when we always had a new source of resources somewhere else to replenish what we have exhausted or destroyed. In a global world of more than 8 billion eager consumers, we are losing this option. Will technology save us? We don’t know. But, if we live in a culture of lies, the real answer to this question becomes more and more elusive. Perhaps, however, even technology is somewhat like a culture of lies. We eventually become so habituated to it that we fail to realize that much of its ingenuity is the source of our problems.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: Donald Trump speaking to supporters – Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)