AUTOMATIC DEFENSE SYSTEM – INSTINCTS

Have you ever read stories like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time? In which, the protagonists grew up being told a big lie about their parents, and then somewhere in their teens, the protagonists accidentally found out the truth. Now, this is a big lie, but often an instinctive lie, or even an unintentional lie. In cases like these, an instinctive lie can be seen as an automatic defensive mechanism of the human body, in particular of the neural system. Just like when you cut yourself cooking your sister dinner for the first time at the age of ten, or when you burnt yourself making yourself some ramen noodles for the first time in your college dorm room, you probably immediately and instinctively moved your fingers out of the way, and perhaps also followed by an instinctive scream or curse.

This jerking of the fingers is an example of the built-in automatic defensive mechanism of the human body. Physical pain tells us the effect of our encounter with a sharp or high temperature object. In response to this message, our body instinctively moves the fingers out of harm, to a safer place.

ABILITY TO LEARN - MEMORY

While having these instincts prevent immediate further damages, instincts, by itself, is not enough to cope with the ever-changing world that we live in. Like with all animals that have a big enough neural capacity, human beings had developed the memory system in order to prevent future accidents. From memory, we know to avoid touching sharp, pointy objects so we wouldn’t be cut again. This ability is known as learning. We avoid future accidents by remembering the effects of past ones. This system is designed in such a way, so that the more it hurt, the better it gets recorded. Furthermore, to be foolproof, forgetting an incident that is significant enough to cause such a memory is impossible because memory is what we depend on to avoid future accidents. We had come to trust memory so much that there are countries with laws based on it:

Criminal Law. Trial. A Defendant Suffering from Amnesia May Not Be Tried If His Lack of Memory of the Events Surrounding the Crime Prevents an Adequate Defense. Wilson v. United States, No. 20,887 (D. C. Cir., Jan. 18, 1968)
Harvard Law Review, Vol. 81, No. 8 (Jun., 1968), pp. 1870-1874

UNINTENTIONAL LIES - MENTAL INSTINCTS

Even though the debate of whether other animals, aside from us human beings, have emotions still go on, it should be clear that we, human beings, have emotions. And, as our languages describe, just like our physical body, our emotions can be hurt, traumatized. When we get into an argument with the milkman in the morning about his late delivery, we are angry and our mind is under stress, much like when we touch a sharp or high temperature object. This stress is often experienced as a headache.

A lie can be seen as an automatic defensive mechanism of the human mind. Mental pain tells us the effect of the traumatic encounters. The mind, just like our fingers, is trying to move itself to more comfortable place, the lie. At that moment, the mind is not only lying to the listener, but also trying to lie to itself in an attempt to ease the pain.

MIND AND BODY – DUALISM DOUBLE-BIND

Continuing our analogy of mind to body, we avoid touching sharp, pointy objects and stay away from hot, boiling water, because we have learned that these things can hurt us and cause physical pain. The cause of our mental pain is the memory of what we believe as the truth, however dislikable and unacceptable. Being in touch with this memory is what our mind tries to avoid. How does one avoid truth? How does one continue to avoid the truth?

In the case of a physical wound, a pain-causing object causes the physical wound, which, then, causes the feeling of pain. In the case of a mental wound, the memory causes both the wound and the pain. We think about it because it hurts, and it hurts because we think about it. So we try not to think about it, and hopefully that eventually we won’t think about it.

Memories do fade when they have not been accessed for a long time, especially for those that do not have strong emotional attachments. (However, complete disappearances are extremely rare under normal conditions. That is why Alzheimer is considered as a disease and the Harvard Law Review has a page for me to cite.) Since by the definition of lying, (to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly… Dictionary.com), one has to, logically, access the truth in the memory bank in order to speak what is not true. Just as when one is trying to intentionally forget a memory, one has to access the memory, in order to pick which to forget. Since accessing it only makes it less likely to be forgotten, in other words, intensified. We find ourselves in a neatly interwoven catch-22.

KNOW YOUR BODY, KNOW YOUR MIND – SUPPRESSION OF PAIN

Fortunately, as with all animals that have a big enough neural capacity, we can suppress some of our instinctive reactions in order to attend our goals. Lions would fight one another for the pride, while ignoring the pain on their wounds. Parents will go hungry in order feed their young, even if themselves are starving. Whether these suppressions are conscious or not, this are things animals do.

We often practice suppression of our instinct when we treat a serious physical wound. We fight the urge to jerk our hands away while applying ointment to a serious cut. If we have to endure the extra physical pain to obtain a fully healed body, it only seems logical that we also have to endure the extra mental pain to obtain a fully healed mind. Even though the right way to treat it, or to think about it, varies from memory to memory, lying and trying to forget are definitely going in the wrong direction. We have to suppress our instinct to lie. (Note, this is not the same as memory suppression, which is to forcefully forget.) We should try to look deep within and find out the source of the wound, only then can we properly patch it. In the story of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time?, Ed’s lie is related to his painful memory of his wife’s desertion. He felt that he did not fulfill his responsibility as a father and gave Christopher a broken family. He was afraid that if Christopher knew the truth, Christopher would not love him anymore. However, as the lie grew bigger with the passing of time, the wound also got worse due to the lack of attention and treatment, eventually untreatable.

CONCLUSION - INCONCLUSION

Telling and facing the truth is sometimes hard and painful, but it is what we have to do, what we should learn to do, in order to heal our mental wounds. Remember, many times, as we all experienced growing up, the truth, as we see it, may not always be the truth.

This is just my opinion, man.