Self-deception is a game we often play. It can be tricky as we have to be both the deceiver and the deceived. But many today seem very capable of this feat. But in order to achieve this deception we must both know something and not know it all at the same time.
Nevertheless, deceiving oneself is more of a way of being hopeful, or raising ones expectations, of wishfully thinking of what could be.
On the other hand, self-deception can be compared to a totalitarian regime in that a person is willing to rewrite their own history and change facts to portray themselves as everything wonderful, good, capable, faultless, blameless and beyond guile.
There are 3 main illusions or traits that people participate in to achieve this perfect illusion:
1. People overestimate their successes and downplay their failures and bad traits.
2. People overestimate the amount of control they have in their decision making...taking credit where non is due.
3. People are too optimistic in the fact that only good things will happen to them.
It is remarkable that we can manage to deceive ourselves into believing our own self-deception. It seems to be an American ideal today. Possibly we are not only deceiving ourselves on how great and good we are, but maybe as a Nation we are deceiving ourselves that we are as strong and as infallible as we would like to think we are.
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