Traps

Just listen to yourself defending all your actions.

It’s the surest sign you already know you’re wrong.

We know, but other things occlude the clear and simple

judgment of the soul, which cuts through all our knots.

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I once crafted a three-paragraph email to explain why I didn’t need to apologize. It was airtight—calm, well-reasoned, even generous in tone. I professed good intentions, alleged miscommunications, and stood upon philosophical principles of autonomy. It was pure bullcrap plated up like escargot. I knew I was in the wrong. I just couldn’t admit it. My logic was flawless but I still didn’t sleep that night.

Smart people are good at self-deception. We don’t lie any better than anyone else—we just rationalize better. While others feel discomfort and adjust to it, we construct theses. We turn emotional responsibility into a courtroom drama with our pride as the defendant. We have lots excuses, but no humility. And since most of the world rewards articulate performance, no one notices that we’ve built a cage of self-defensive logic and trapped ourselves in it.

I once knew an ethics professor, of all things, who refused to attend his sister’s wedding because he objected to the groom’s politics. He explained his refusal eloquently in long letters about moral consistency, the danger of normalization, the duty of intellectuals to take a stand. His reasoning was airtight. But the wedding came and went. Years passed. The sister stopped calling. At some point, he confessed to a friend that he couldn’t even remember the groom’s name anymore—only that, somehow, he had proven something. “But surely I lost more than I proved,” he said regretfully.

The soul doesn’t deal in theories. Its truth comes from out of the mouth of babes. That was cruel. That was kind. You could have said less. You should have said sorry. But the ego prefers complexity. It builds defenses that are true in the head and false in the heart. And if you’re clever enough, those defenses can last years. It’s just that they cost you your life.

I remember an episode of The Newsroom in which a press operative clandestinely overhears a private and embarrassing political conversation on a train and threatens to publish the embarrassing material—which would be a real scoop. She spends the whole of the episode trying to justify her rather unethical decision to the person who imprudently allowed himself to be overheard. But at the end, she tells him she’s not going to publish it. “When you’re compelled to justify yourself, you know you’re in the wrong.”

Real wisdom is simple—not easy, but simple. It comes not from proofs but from pauses. Pascal warned that evil begins with people being unable to sit quietly in a room. Clarity about our motives often arises from unhurried honesty with ourselves. Maybe that’s why we argue so much. Anything to avoid the stillness that might reveal what we already know.

So, what is the most defensible lie your intellect is still protecting? Is it subtle at all? A story about how your boundaries are being violated, when really you’re afraid to be known? A memoir-in-progress about being the wronged party, secretly composed to excuse your guilt? Whatever it is, I assure you: your soul already knows it is fiction.