In discussions both here and in the “real world”, I notice a lot of ideologies who’s platforms seem very much based on the need to deceive.
Now I know this is going to be taken as contentious, but I will name a few: the NRA, feminism, BLM, the “gender-feelings” crowd.
One sees in their platforms, their literature AND in their SJW’s/ideologues the championing of a LOT of REALLY bad science, poor understanding of statistics, biased studies, incongruous comparisons, a playing up of fear and a playing down of logic and rational discourse. Partial and very limited truths are being parlayed into broad general truths.
One sees a lot of them trying to actually re-write scientific “knowns” that were properly established and scientifically documented 50 years ago. (introducing things like the notion there are no significant biological differences between the sexes; or that gender is a construct of feelings; or that everything is a dance between the saintly oppressed and the evil oppressors.
Questions:
Do you see this process, or is your perception of it muddled by postmodernist thinking?
Does it produce a red flag when you notice such tactics being used?
How do you think you can personally guard yourself against it?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
41 responses to “What do you think of “The need to deceive”?”
I know that the genders are not biologically the same. I have watched as a man and woman had the same job in the warehouse. They had to lift heavy packages of wiring. The man with his upper body strength, could lift the package and move it to another location at the rate of a package per minute. The woman could not lift the whole package and she opened it and carried 1/3 of it at a time. The male worker placed one sealed package on the shelf each minute. The female delivered 1/3 of the opened contents to the shelf each minute. She is doing 1/3 of the work and having to open and split the packaging. Do you think they should get equal pay? At the end of the job, he delivered 100 sealed packages to the shelves. In the same amount of time, she delivers 33 1/3 opened packages to the shelf. Do you think they should earn equal pay?
Of course, I know that there is now machinery to do such heavy lifting and Immortal Pirate’s tiny built daughter works in a warehouse lifting and stacking with a fork lift. She not only keeps up with the men, her bosses have taunted the men, saying, “You were beat out by a girl!!!” But then, she is one hell of a super woman. She does the same work, or better work. She deserves the same pay. She gets the same pay. Plus, she is always going to classes and seeking advancement. She had a different childhood and learned to be a blacksmith at her Daddy’s side. Not only able to beat out red hot steel to make a broadsword, but she can swing a mean broadsword, as well. She is tiny, but very strong. The difference is in the way she was raised.
Now, when it comes to men doing the same job as a woman, perhaps they can —– except for the part where she can give birth to a child. Men have not reached that same ability, yet.
@ladybarbara
These are things I would consider self-evident to anyone possessed of intelligence. They are in a way, “truths”.
And a truth doesn’t “need to deceive”.
When I see a person, a group, an ideology actively deceiving, I see someone or something essentially admitting an awareness that what they are proposing is not truth.
Your story about the warehouse workers before forklifts is a good one. It is a story about the key difference between equality of opportunity, and equality of outcome: and how they are often not the same thing.
Gee Jordan Peterson™, if you’re gonna make a huge claim like: “One sees in their platforms, their literature AND in their SJW’s/ideologues the championing of a LOT of REALLY bad science, poor understanding of statistics, biased studies, incongruous comparisons, a playing up of fear and a playing down of logic and rational discourse.”
back it up with an example
@luftballooneyegouge
I’m the one who has seen it. Over and over and over again.
Enough I could probably cite a few examples if you wished. But first I think it would be advisable to procure a promise out of you that you would critically examine them within a framework of reason and logic . . . and not just dismiss them from within a framework of feelings and emotions.
But for starters, a good one would be from the 90’s when Carol Gilligan, Harvard’s first dean (?) of Women’s Studies wrote the book “In a Different Voice” — essentially a highly autobiographical work about her experiences within the education system of the 50’s and 60’s. She found a very very very small study-group (a few dozen) of carefully selected students who’s current experiences matched hers, and sounded the alarm about inequality in the education system of the 90’s and it struck a chord with other women, now in positions of power, who recognized their own past experiences. But data was lacking; deemed “too private to share”. There was no peer review. But there was a lot of emotion mobilized.
The American Association of University Women sought to do something about this. So they commissioned a study (my notes on this are at home, so numbers are from memory) of 3,000 school-aged students to ask them about their experiences in school: did they feel at all “marginalized” by their sex? And it was found that (with some leading), 50% of the girls would admit they had in some way.
The weighting of the study, was 2400 girls . . . and just 600 boys. And from this, the whole education system was overhauled to favor the way girls learned . . . but at a time when girls were already enjoying unparalleled freedom and advancement over boys in the education system.
Enter, “the need to deceive”.
So I’ve put some effort into this. Let’s run an experiment now to see if your interest is dialectic, debate, or dismissal! (Try to put some effort into it, K?)
I would challenge that this “need to deceive” is seen everywhere . . . provided one is not too blinded to notice it.
@griz I was a student in the 1950s and 60s and boys took shop and were good in math. The classes for girls were Homemaking, with cooking and sewing, and a class called Modern Living where we trained to select traits of a good husband-type, plan a wedding, decorate a house, or apartment, study about pregnancy, birth, and caring for an infant. We learned to do laundry and how to fold items like t shirts, towels, and fitted sheets. We learned to run a budget and manage a checking account. All of this was planned around the idea that “Mr. Wonderful” had a good job and gave his wife his paycheck. At that time, most every girl in the class thought that she would be a housewife and mother.
I took all the girls classes, but I was considered to be a freak. I had a job at a roller rink and ran a grinder and fixed roller skates, when I wasn’t running the Snack Bar, and cleaning the roller rink. I had a second job in a metals shop, sweeping metal shavings from around the mills. I was learning to dance between the handles of an old Bridgport milling machine and the parts I made had step lines in them because I did not have the required 5 ft. reach to crank the handles smoothly. But, I wanted to be a machinist. I learned to program a Cinamatic 2000 NC/CNC mill. I was the only female wanting to train on it and learn to do the required math. I made little aluminum salt and pepper shakers, but when I took them to school to show my Modern Living teacher, my skills were frowned upon. I got called names —- like dyke and queer. I wasn’t as feminine as the other girls, but I am hetro-sexual. I did not think that wanting to learn a skill had anything to do with sexuality. Wanting to fit in, I dumbed down and got back on track to be a homemaker. I got pregnant and married and kissed my dream of working in a machine shop good-bye. Yes, I felt pressured to only have homemaking skills. I got a job as a cocktail waitress and nude dancer, but it was not what I wanted. I wanted to work in the factories.
It did not hold me back. By the time my sons were in school, I was learning about computer disk packs and started my own business cleaning and inspecting the large hard disk packs. This led to moving up into an electronics firm in inspections, then Quality Control Management. I worked my way through college while holding down a good job and raising a family —– and running my household. There was never deception. I was never pretending to be something I am not.
@ladybarbara
On one hand it’s easy to understand how Dr. Gilligan’s snapshot of her past struck a chord with so many women in the public education system in the 50’s and 60’s.
But by the 90’s girls were flourishing (in some ways more than the boys) and benefiting from the right to be as outspoken as they wished to take whatever class they wished.
The real world of the day didn’t match “the reality” painted by Dr. Gilligan’s anecdotal book, and the UUAW sought to do something about this through deceit (bad science).
And now we have a system where girls have radically over-taken boys in all school pursuits except sports — and this is now being actively targeted by tax dollars as the next arena of “male privilege” that has to go.
I personally think this has been handled poorly — and that a marker of such bad processes . . . is “the need to deceive”. If it’s a good and valid point, it will essentially make itself without a lot of maneuvering or deceit necessary.
@griz had the nerve to plop out, “But first I think it would be advisable to procure a promise out of you that you would critically examine them within a framework of reason and logic . . . and not just dismiss them from within a framework of feelings and emotions.”
Nice attempt at triggering an emotional response while at the same time demeaning my character.
I will be dismissing this War-on-Christmas/definition-of-marriage level, con-serving of bullshit on the practical basis that it’s a goddamned waste of time on some nonsense that doesn’t really matter in the lives of most people.
I’m not sure why we have to keep going over this political-correct-boogieman once the fuck again, but oh well….
You bring up Carol Gilligan & “In a Different Voice” being the inspiration for the 1994 Gender Equity in Education Act. The whole thing being about girls being treated DIFFERENTLY from boys & this being a factor in why girls did poorer in certain subjects than boys.
You trail off about some sort of deception, but then with searing obfuscation, you leave out the old Paul Harvey rest of the story……
The 1994 Gender Equity in Education Act was passed and decades later guess what,….
….girls math grades rose to equal boys.
It worked.
So you’re arguing against a program that actually did what it set out to, but let’s examine that….
It’s not really your argument,….. is it
It’s this goddamn Jordan Peterson’s schtick which you’ve blatently taken on as your own. You not only repeat his nonsensical polemics ad nauseum, you’ve even taken to copying his writing style to the point I figure the dude brainwashed you in Toronto.
You’re his surrogate, wasting your time, on his path, disregarding your own.
Girly math scores:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/education/25math.html
Jordan Peterson sucks:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
@luftballooneyegouge
6 days before this soul-post:
“I’m a college philosophy professor. Jordan Peterson is making my job impossible.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/86tnz7/im_a_college_philosophy_professor_jordan_peterson/
@luftballooneyegouge
The trick with learning . . . is to actually learn and not just perfect one’s ability to regurgitate-on-demand!
One can learn a lot from the study of ideologies . . . provided one doesn’t become an ideologue.
And one can be greatly assisted by a wise teacher . . . provided they don’t “become fans” of the person.
“Don’t seek to follow “great people”. Instead, seek what they sought.”.
Peterson’s teaching tends not to treat you as if you are an idiot, incapable of self-directed thought and learning. There remains a LOT of people who are just “sponges” — soaking something up and then wringing the same out.
I don’t doubt that “sponges” would have a problem with Peterson’s teachings — especially where they might diverge from another prof’s teachings.
The idea is to make it a part of your informed position . . . and not just move “your position” to that camp. I don’t envy the teacher overseeing a classroom full of sponges who just move their position to another camp.
BTW, have you noticed that most of your responses have nothing to do with the teachings mentioned, but have much to do with finding fault in the man? Or now with what others choose to do with the teachings of the man?
Tie this into what I offered about dialectic, debate, or dismiss.
@griz
See this is thee bullshit. You take a condescending tone that you’re here enlightening us and teaching us, but you’re always coming up with content full of errors.
You’re going to tell ME about learning?
You’re going to tell ME how I should think?
I think you need to “sort yourself out, Bucko.”
@luftballooneyegouge
We talk about learning, because it is what has enabled our species to flourish: “. . . as iron sharpens iron”.
Seeing condescension in this is your right, even without it being my intent. Which it is not.
So that just leaves you out in the field, feeling like an object disdained.
And only you can put meaning to this.
@luftballooneyegouge
There is only one way noting your past process could be an attack on you. And it’s not something I have any control over.
You do tend to be a dismiss-o-matic about a lot of things.
Actually the statistical changes you cite were already well underway before the book was published. That’s why when applied, they over-shot the mark and disadvantaged boys.
@griz
You tend to say alot of shit without backing it up. You tend to be wrong alot.
I will always dismiss bullshit.
there are sometimes legitimate needs to deceive.
in war. Would you really say “yeah my buddy, he’s over there hiding in the bushes” ? Would you tell the nazis “yeah, I have a whole slew of Jews in my attic”?
If you were a doctor, would you want to give the news that the patient is dying… or try to spare them by saying they are fine?
For a job “Yes I have this experience” or “yes I will keep this job” when it’s this opportunity or nothing and face homelessness.
To your girlfriend. Not many men could get away with saying “yes, that dress makes you look fat… and by the way, you’re a bitch.”
To your husband / wife, boyfriend/ girlfriend “yeah, you’re good in bed” when you think that their sex is awful – or you get none at all.
The wife who says “I have a headache” to avoid having sex.
When you get a lemon and can make your insurance pay for it by destroying it, and you get something else (well… others want do this, I don’t see the point. You buy something, you pay for it) but if it were legitimately destroyed some other way, that’s a different story
When you are asked on the street by a bum if you can spare change, and while technically I can, but I have other things to do and I don’t want to risk getting mugged so I say sorry no.
@Jear77
I don’t think I’ve ever said or implied there is never a need or purpose. You point out some good ones.
I’m talking more as a general indicator, if a person or position either continually adopts a theme of deception, or if a very egregious deception is intentionally made for a net reason that is not in any was as noble as protecting a buddy or a cache of Jews from the Nazis!
The “need to deceive” speaks more of a lifestyle or ideology that depends upon it.
@griz my “friend” does this. I see through his nonsense tho, but not many others who just meet him can. He claims he doesn’t lie… but the fact of it is that he changes his story for every audience… and doesn’t see the problem in it, and most of the time I end up getting hurt in the process.
@Jear77
I’ve picked that up from things you’ve shared.
So you have a “template” to help you understand the notion that “the need to deceive” (constantly, and/or grossly, and/or to the harm of others around you . . . or even yourself in the longer run?) represents a kind of (being creative here) . . “psychic static” in the process of a person or ideology or train of thinking.
It’s a sort of “static” that indicates not everything is on the up-and-up; and perhaps drowns out awareness of the reality of others or of ethical consideration.
I don’t think we can really affect it or bring it to another’s attention. It’s like the static is “self-protecting”. If you come close to being heard, the volume (or defensive rhetoric) is just increased.
One sees this a lot in ideologues (like Christian ideologues) when some point of fact or truth is perceived as “threatening the ideology”. They get very defensive, very fast.
@griz the thing is that if a belief in god is meant to be based on truth… those truths need to be backed by solid science. Remember the 72% I keep going back to? If any truth can’t pass the muster of the placebo effect, then I must dismiss it. Couple that with the idea that 99.9% of humanity will be going to hell. What does batman say? “He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there’s even a 1% chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty.” And since he’s an enemy of 99,9% of humanity, it is a 100% certainty!
@Jear77
There are truths that science has never been able to measure even up to today.
They are not suddenly rendered untrue just because we cannot attach an equation to them.
What you seem to keep coming back to is this same irrational position.
@griz and you irrationally dismiss the evils of a god who would destroy / condemn all but 1% of humanity or less!
@Jear77
You dismiss the good while hunting out even the perception of evil.
“Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. (ie, accepting that no religion or work of our hands, mind or imagination is going to render us worthy of anything but a grave. )
@griz There are 99%+ needlessly condemned is not a “good” no matter how one looks at it!
@Jear77
Regardless of what we each might want to call this, it is just Life.
And being at odds with it for whatever reason is not an effective strategy in any conceivable context.
@griz how can one not be at odds with evil that purports to be good? I see through the lies, see it for what it truly is.
@Jear77
What you were asking is how one could not be at odds with life!
And there are far better ways of dealing with it then trying to blame it on an entity you keep asserting is make-believe!
Or else you are asserting that you would be a better God than God. (If you are still a closet believer)
Both are psychologically problematic and self-defeating.
@griz if there *is* a god, it is not “all that.” Any sort of benefit in this life is easily duplicated using other, even atheistic methods/ ideologies. And those that have the greatest faith have the worst problems.
@Jear77
Consider that even an atheist who seeks good, seeks God.
There has been generations of trying to “do away with God”.
If the benefits were “easily duplicated” as you assert, where are they? And why don’t most people find them?
Why are so many people struggling finding genuine love, joy, peace and purpose greater than self?
You have the greatest faith in science; well as least as much as you can make it serve you! Is that why you have so many problems?
It’s NOT the faith that is problematic; it’s when people try to incorporate it religiously, aka as just an ideologue.
Atheists do this; and so do you.
@griz the Netherlands. Prostitution, drug use legal. Happiness for the people living there well above other areas in the world. Church attendance – near 0 (zero)
@Jear77
So how exactly did we get from “transendental value/morality” and “Life” (aka God) . . .
. . .
……………..
…………………………………………………..
To “church attendance”?? (And prostitutes and drug abuse??)
You REALLY need to nail down just what your angst is pointing at.
@griz think of this simply: Google happiest countries. There’s data which tells why the countries are happy. But that’s only surface level. The next layer would be to find out what laws are in place.
@Jear77
We’ve already discussed at great lengths that “happiness” is a meaningless measure. Firstly because it’s entirely subjective and anecdotal. Secondly because it is fleeing. And thirdly because it is just a reaction (of the lower base instincts) and not proactive (of the higher functionability of the Human being).
You are are reaching — and reaching far to make a shaky point. So again, perhaps you need to define (even if just to yourself) EXACTLY WHAT your major point of angst is.
@griz you have. But for your edification here are the statistics used to determine the happiest countries in the world since you wouldn’t be saying this if you knew what it was based on: income (GDP per capita), healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust (absence of corruption) and generosity.
@Jear77
How easy is it for any of these things to evaporate?
Happiness is a meaningless measure because it is fleeting.
@griz much of those things are social structures. It’s a way of life.
@Jear77
They are all fleeting, and therefore bad things to base one’s psychological (or spiritual) well-being on.
Can’t you see that a major factor in the increased psychological illness in our society, is that on some level we know that all of our happiness-generators rely on the shakiest of foundations– and are desperately trying to repress this knowledge lest we go insane??
@Jear77
But any one of them can evaporate in a heartbeat, rendering happiness void.
It’s a relatively meaningless factoid. It’s like measuring personal success on whether the Sun is going to shine today or not.
So we may be back to your needing to define just what is at this moment cause it you the greatest angst.
@griz You’re saying an *entire society* can evaporate in an instant? The only way that could happen is if someone dropped a nuke on them
@Jear77
Why must people always jump to the most extreme worst example trying to prove their case??? (The answer is, they know they’re on shaky logistical ground! It’s why any whisper of “gun control” is very rabidly escalated into “They’re coming for ALL your guns!)
“Happiness” is SO bloody fragile, that even minor disruption in any one of these things can have it flitting away.
That’s why . . . it’s a relatively useless factoid/indicator.
I think its been going on, both ways, for so long that it is accepted.
Bullshit to offset bullshit is normal now so that I personally don’t believe either and have allowed myself to reside in the FI camp. I mean seriously; what is the point?
@spitfire3dc
I was thinking of it more as an indicator. Everyone feels “the need to deceive” from time to time. Sometimes it’s nefarious, and other times it’s just that one feels they don’t have the time to properly research something themselves.
But I find it a valuable indicator in both:
1) Quantity — how often does a person or ideology employ it and
2) Quality — was it a slip? Laziness as noted above? Or is there the very real impression that there IS no truth to be found in the position so deceit was the only option that kept the construct from crumbling?
(The latter would seem to be the case in the AAUW study I mentioned several posts above. When investigating whether a sex-based bias is present, one doesn’t just “accidentally” build a study-group of 80% females and 20% males!)
I can tell you for sure you do not have the Holy Spirit, so you are effectively operating merely with a sinful man… and comparing that to the Spirit is probably ego enhancing to you. But, sooner of later, God will show you the difference between the wicked and the holy.
Until that time, it is blasphemy of the Spirit you are engaging in. Which is transparent for anyone who gets this.