It is a poor lie that is a farrago of falsehood, whose only connections to the truth are a camouflage of verisimilitude calculated to further the deception. The art of lying lies in abundant and creative truthfulness. The victim goes to his grave asking "How did that happen? Everything we checked was true and we thought we had checked everything."

There is a moral tale to tell, about how liars are undone. Not by being caught and punished, oh no, not that, but by losing the key. Forgetting "where the bodies are buried", forgetting to remove the rotten apple from the barrel, the liar loses sight of the few, key falsehoods that unlock the whole deception and becomes a victim: a believer in his own lie.

That is not the tale I wish to tell, for it is itself a lie.

The true tragedy of the human condition is self-deception. The reason that we do not see through the lies of those who deceive us is because they come with a double helping of comfy coziness. The lies feel comfortable and cozy because they were constructed that way, to meet our emotional needs. Believing them feels comfortable and cozy a second way, due to the warmth of the familiar. Believing falsehoods to meet our emotional needs is how we live, even when no-one tries to deceive others.

The liar is not caught and punished for few truly resent the false comfort he brings. Nor does it matter if he believes his own lies. His life is built on unconscious untruths of which he is unaware. Suppose that a consciously constructed untruth, designed to further his own interests, were somehow to convince and take its place besides unconscious self-deception, how what that be different?

The true danger lies in abandoning the fight against self-deception. Deceiving others is hard work, and takes time and effort. The fight against self-deception is starved of resources. Worse still, the fight against self-deception is starved of legitimacy. While we work hard, carefully concealing the truth that we know from others whom we wish to deceive, what chance have we of realizing that our truth is itself a lie, deceiving us. Self-doubt may save us from self inflicted disaster, but no-one can manage the convoluted thinking needed to doubt the "truths" that we are taking pains to conceal from others. We live external lives, jousting with others, piercing their lies with our lance, defending our own lies with our shield.

We are each of us like a king defended against foreign enemies by a formidable army. The King stands on the tall battlements of his castle, looking out towards the far horizon, glancing at the vertiginous drop, secure in the knowledge that no foe could scale such mountainous ramparts. One day his son will push him off.