There's also a tension and release to the detective novel; whereupon the main character solves the mystery. I don't need to remind you about how many mysteries in real life are really, really hard to solve (if you forgot: these can quickly get down to the basic existential ones; as in God, Life's Purpose, and problems with Free Will and Fate; but they can also be like why am I sometimes more successful than other times? or that one chemistry problem that you just don't have the caliber to solve yet because you haven't done the prerequisite work).
So the release of watching someone solve their mystery gives us a sort of reassurance that we can solve our mysteries.
Meanwhile, the most complex creatures on this planet at least, are humans. And humans lie! Dr. House's catch phrase is "Everyone lies." That's the catch phrase! Pretty harsh right?
It's cooler and more complex than straight up lying, however. We tell embellishments. We tell romances. We talk obscurely so that people can tell that we believe in something when we don't believe in that. We exaggerate for humor of the story and people take for granted that that humor is real. We rationalize our behaviors after we do them. We justify our behaviors after we do them. We habitually say the same thing; so that something we say one time that is true that just slips out the next time might not be true. Example of the last one: water treatment guy goes to his boss every day to say that the water level is at the red line. Boss says it's okay everyday. One day, however, the water is not at the line, but because it's a habit, the minion accidentally says that it is at the red line.
We lie to ourselves. We lie to other people. We argue so well for something that we actually believe our arguments. That is, we make the worse seem the better. Socrates was put to death for making the worse seem the better. That is, we make mistakes, and sometimes they look like lies. What is the difference between a mistake and a lie? Motives! At least I think it's motives....
I liked Mistakes were made, but not by me by Aronson and Tavris, which gives a pretty good view of how cognitive dissonance theory applies to everyday life.
So it's a facade! There's a phenomenological thing we can say: every time we empathize, we acknowledge ourselves in others. When we empathize in a character, we acknowledge that character within ourselves, and that character's needs, ability to meet challenges and so on.
It's a facade! Lies are the surface, by their very nature. Because there are motives behind them, there is a nakedness. There is a fear: fear that we don't live after we die, fear that there is no bigger father figure in the sky, fear that we won't see our dads again. There is a fear that people won't like us, fear that we did the wrong thing and it's done irreversible damage. There is hope that everyone likes our daughter, or everyone will treat us right, or that everyone will think that we are cool. There's a lie because we don't want her to think that everyone thinks she's fat, even if she is fat.
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