The nihilists are right, admits philosopher Loyal Rue. The universe
is blind and aimless, indifferent to us and void of meaning. There
are no absolute truths and no objective values. There is no right
or wrong way to live, only alternative ways. There is no correct
reading of a text or a picture or a dance. God is dead, nihilism
reigns. But, Rue adds, nihilism is a truth inconsistent with
personal happiness and social coherence. What we need instead is a
new myth, a noble lie. Only a noble lie can save us from the
psychological and social chaos now threatened by the spread of
skepticism about the meaning of life and the universe.
In By the Grace of Guile, Loyal Rue offers a wide ranging look at
the importance of deception in nature and in human society,
concluding with an argument for a noble lie to replace the
religious beliefs rejected by modern thought. Most of the book is a
provocative apology for deception, illuminating its role in the
shaping of history, evolution, personality, and society. Ranging
from the Bible and Greek philosophy, to Saint Augustine and
Montaigne, to Galileo, Kirkegaard, and Freud, Rue shows that it may
be more accurate to describe the history of our culture as a flight
from deception than as a quest for truth. He turns then to the
natural world to reveal how deception works at every level of life,
ranging from plants that mimic dung, carrion, or prey to lure
insects that then spread pollen, to a remarkable African insect
(Acanthaspis petax) that bedecks itself with dead ants and enters
the ant colony undetected to binge at will. Moreover, he points out
that psychological research has shown that strategies of deception
and self-deception are essential to our personal well-being, that
we sometimes shore up our self-esteem by deceptive means, by
leaving others in a state of ignorance, by manipulating others into
a state of false belief, by suppressing information from
consciousness, and by fabricating or distorting our own sense of
reality. And he argues that social coherence is achievable only
within certain optimal limits of deception--the social fabric would
be threatened by an overabundance of lies and false promises, of
course, but it would also collapse if everyone were perfectly
honest all the time. Finally, he argues that society is caught up
in a Kulturkampf with nihilists promoting intellectual and moral
relativism and realists defending objective and universal truths.
The noble lie, says Rue, would introduce a third voice, one which
first agrees with the nihilists that universal myths are
pretentious lies, but then insists, against the nihilists, that
without such lies humanity cannot survive.
The challenge, he concludes, is ultimately an aesthetic one: it
remains for the artists, poets, novelists, musicians, filmmakers,
and other masters of illusion to seduce us into an embrace with a
noble lie. We need a new myth that tells us where we have come
from, what our nature is, and how we should live together--a story
with the courage and presumption to say how things really are and
what really matters.
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