To adulterate is “to debase by adding inferior materials or elements”. It is also “to make impure by admixture”. Random House includes a definition of adulterate that is to “use cheaper, inferior, or less desirable goods in the production or marketing of any professedly genuine article”.
The adulterated marriage might be one in which the purity is spoiled by contamination. Or maybe the production itself makes the end product less valuable as a result of Chinese porn. What marriage is not Made In China these days?
We bargain over time, that commodity made scarcer by modernity and wristwatches. Who argued over “free time” when the sun was the primary light by which homo sapiens lived? It is the clock and the regulation of time which gives us the industrial goods we spend so much time purchasing. His time, my time, family time, couple time, church time, extended family time- the only regularity being in the shape of the arguments themselves. There is not enough time, it seems. Never enough time.
The scarcity of time swells into the problem of trust- do we trust one another to consider the other, to regard the other’s fulfillment and happiness as highly as we regard our own? Generally, trust refers to the confidence that people have in others that they will act as we might expect. Hence, it reflects people’s subjective perception of people’s reliability. Specifically, the levels of trust we have in a relationship reveal our investment- our “buy-in”- the lengths to which we will go before jumping ship or selling our shares.
Trust is the foundation of most personal relationships, and these personal relationships are bandied about by social scientists as key determinants of human well-being and economic development. The economic value of trust is no longer disputed- not since Grameen Bank and the failure of Jeffrey Sachs’ top-driven model for post-communist transitions. Trust, if it is matched by trustworthy behaviour in others, reduces the costs of dealing with risks and uncertainty. The more trust, the less worry. So in marriage as it is in political economy.
Laura Kipnis’ bitter(sweet) Against Love is not without its resplendent truths. She notes that lovers reveal so much to each other- so many secrets- “Perhaps love affairs are for the unsayable”. Or maybe love affairs are a means of discovering one’s self on a distant planet, far removed from the burdens and expectations of the everyday. But the discovery tends to be a facade, only as true as the lies we tell to get us in that bed.
And Kipnis points out that our new object of love is not really another person- we’re holding too much back from them by staying married or maintaining another life- no, the new object is actually ourselves. Oh the thrill of watching your cheeks turn red as roses from a night of love- and how pretty it looks- let’s face it, love suits you.
Truth plays a premium role in trust, the basis of extended relationships. But lying alone is not elaborate enough for the complexity of human civilization. Kipnis thinks a “a significant degree of self-deception is also required”. She names, for example, “the self-deception of thinking of yourself as ‘an honest person’ while engaged in these fundamental social deceptions”.
The social scientific experts on deception report that “not only is deceiving others automatic social behavior, a willingness to be deceived is equally automatic, meaning that when it comes to knowing when someone is lying, typically we don’t”. We are bad judges of deception. The cues we count on- faulty eye contact, nervous twitches, vocal hesitation- are false cues which studies show are mostly unrelated to honesty or truth-telling. So we hedge our bets and lie to ourselves about whether another person could be lying; there is hope that this protects us from loneliness that stems from detecting lies of friends and lovers.
Of course no one wants to know. Then, once they do, they don't want to believe- refuse to accept the implications for recent timelines and narrative co-chronologies. But public polls show that truth matters to us. The general surveys reflect the view that when truth-telling fails, so has the relationship. The irony lies in the fact that the usual rationale for deception is to avoid hurting someone. We calculate that the truth, as it stands, will put something or someone at risk, and we select deception as a so-called “lesser evil”.
(I know a rat when I see it always looks like the lesser evil.)
The dead authors in my head continue their conversation- some felicitous, others made weary by the world they warned me against.
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being love,” says the gentle voice of George MacDonald. He warms the coldest corners of my soul.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you,” mutters Nietzsche. I fear the lines we draw in the name of love and logic.
“Loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to,” says a famous Broadway actress and film star. Oh that she knew how to add a sequel to this statement.
"Above all, don't lie to yourself,” insists Dostoevsky, his words in the pages of The Brothers Karamazov. I listen for more, and he continues: “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love." Is there no reprieve?
“Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.” Neil Gaiman grins and hands me the pen.
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image,” writes Thomas Merton. He continues, “If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” exclaims Ralph Waldo Emerson. I look in the mirror and wonder at myself and all the pieces of others that it contains.
“Well, I sort of don’t trust anybody who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin,” quips Jack White, a musician whom I enjoy without ever bothering to trust.
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you,” says Clive Stapleton Lewis, still grieving. If only I had a small white flower for his lapel.
"There are two ways to be fooled….. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." Soren Kierkegaard speaks then squints his eyes shut, rubbing his furrowed brow.
"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides," thunders Andre Malraux. The existentialists who lived through the second world war in Europe will never let us forget what the forgetting cost them.
"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity," whispers Andre Gide to a nightingale, the sort of creature preferred to people for the purpose of poetry.
"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak," says Gandhi, legs crossed over white robes, smaller even than me. Such a tiny person with such a colossal will.
“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection,” sings Lady Gaga in her fuck-me pumps. As if there is anything more deceptive than wearing fuck-me pumps and then not fucking anyone. The lies and deception, like the trust, begin with a choice.
