The first ever
televised trial in South Africa, Oscar Pistorious in the dock for the murder of
his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, is under way and it may yet be several
months before judgment is handed down.
The overriding
narrative is one of pathos, reaching the proportions of a mythological Greek
fallen hero or a Shakespearian tragedy. Within that reside numerous ‘minor’
stories and future University case studies for many disciplines including
psychology, law, sport, media channel communications ...
A host of broader
issues have been raised, including those of gender violence, gun control, human
rights, with one of the most important in South Africa being the imperative of an independent judiciary system for the
smooth running of society and government.
At an individual
level, thoughts may have been triggered about fairness, grieving, loss,
suffering, facing one’s own
death, values disconnects, effect of stress and trauma on the ‘whole person’,
impacts of parenting and critical incidents on our development, the nature of
human flaws and frailties, expert versus generalist credibility, our primal
voyeurism and lynch mob tendencies, how our potential may be stunted or
realised by our beliefs … witness Oscar’s athletic prowess and achievements
against all odds, or how we tend to believe what we must believe even in the
face of objective evidence to the contrary.
On the relationship front, we may have:
· taken to Judge Masipa’s firm yet fair
demeanor and obvious impartiality and empathy
·
considered
how the legal system mirrors our own communicating and relating in different
situations - adversarial and combative, negotiable where there is no immediate
common cause, avoidance, placatory …
·
thought
about how some favour sensate thinking and others make emotional/ intuitive
evaluations
· even wondered what the invisible
picture of unconscious mirror neuron interactions within the court look like at certain moments
And most of all, will
the truth of what really happened be revealed?
Concealing through Deliberate Lying
Perhaps we all at some stage or another tell ‘little white lies’, or even
bigger lies – when we’ve convinced ourselves of a high, honourable intent, for
example to protect the other, avoid conflict. Neuroscience has showed that our
frontal lobes are involved when we push down, cover up the truth. Unlike Carlo Collodi’s Pinnochio our noses don’t
grow longer, but our limbic system is activated and the lie causes anxiety.
Psychiatrist M. Scott
Peck has bluntly proposed the condition of ‘evil’. 1 A character disorder possessed by those
who deny the existence of evil, feel no love nor empathy yet use emotion as a
decoy, cannot accept any form of criticism, hide from their own consciousness
and habitually lie to deceive others and project blame, in order to maintain a
façade of perfection and guiltlessness.
On occasions of
course, when caught in a lie, such people will reconstruct events to make them
fit with their version of the ‘truth’.
Concealing through unintentional
lying
“In psychology, confabulation is a memory disturbance,
defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories
about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive. Confabulation is distinguished from lying as
there is no intent to deceive and the person is unaware the information is
false”.2 This may be an effect of alcoholism, a
thiamine deficiency, Alzheimer’s …
Sometimes we may emotionally hi-jack ourselves – shut out or rational
brains because of intense fear (real or imagined). These dishonesties may over time become ‘rationalised’
then even believed.
Or we have
blind-spots, know only a part of the wider truth – our perceptions and
judgements relate to a single story, not multiple stories around the same event
or person.
An ancient Indian
parable, told by Rumi amongst others, illustrates this3.
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a
village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in
the village today."
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided,
"Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it
anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched
the elephant.
"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the
first man who touched his leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the
second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a
tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the
fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth
man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth
man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone
of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated.
A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them,
"What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the
elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was
like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The
reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you
touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all
those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more
fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
What is our own truth?
Three things to think
about and mull over:
· Perhaps knowledge acquisition and ultimately
sense-making (regarding ourselves, others or events) is a bit like the elephant
and blind men story. In a court
situation, hopefully the full story is gradually revealed, and a just outcome
is reached. In our own situations, withholding judgement and being open to new
information, learning and insights (regarding ourselves, others or events) may be something to be practiced more conscientiously?
· We are on a journey to seek, discover
and be our true selves. The analogy of advocates hunting, probing, questing for
consistency has validity. They try to get behind blind-siding and self-deception.
We too need to cross examine our own ‘testimony’ of who we purport to be –
because authenticity involves more than telling the truth. It involves being the truth of what we say. A truth that is not hidden by ego and persona
performances. Embracing of mindfulness, contemplation and healthy introspection is
still undervalued.
· Weighing
the scales and reaching balance: the emergence of positive psychology to
complement and contribute to the wider field of traditional psychology has value
in preventing pathologies and enhancing how we live our lives. But it can be
misinterpreted and taken too far – witness the disquieting trend of making an industry out of selling abundant
success, power, wealth, fame, recognition and even adulation, achieving
anything you want in life, obtaining whatever your heart desires. Mae West’s
cynical “Life’s a bitch and then you die”,
is also not the full truth, but a good counterpoint.
Indeed, Franciscan Priest Richard
Rohr who speaks often about integrating action and contemplation, says that “The
entire process that we call initiation somehow makes it possible for a man to experience
these five difficult truths:
1. Life
is hard.
2. You
are not that important.
3. Your
life is not about you.
4. You
are not in control.
5. You
are going to die”.5
References
1. Scott Peck, M People of the Lie: The Hope for
Healing Human Evil Century Hutchinson 1988
2. Confabulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation
3. Elephant and the Blind Men http://www.jainworld.com/literature/story25.htm
4. Rohr, Richard https://cac.org/richard-rohr/daily-meditations and http://menstuff.org/columns/overboard/rohr.html An Interview with Fr Richard Rohr
5. Moreira,
Alexander Justiça (alexanderpmoreira@gmail.com).
