All evil—that which works against a good world and good us—can be thought of as nothing but a kind of lie. Falsehood is discord with the underlying truth of the universe.
 
Reflect back through the many topics in this book. We find again and again in our society that the most popular views are usually wrong. Trying not to get faked out is like a full time job.
 
Genuine people, valuable products, and good ideas are scarce because being real, taking an ethical stand, and creating genuine value is hard work. We are always looking for the easy way, the short cut, and the reward without the work. Feigning knowledge is easier than doing the homework. Pretending to be busy at work is easier than putting a shoulder into it. Faking virtue is easier than living an ethical life. Practicing political demagoguery gets more votes than telling voters what they need to hear. Life experiences teach us, as Andrew Carnegie reflected in his later years, "to pay little attention to what men say and just watch what they do."
 
We want the look, the goods, the persona, and the adulation right now, minus the necessary sweat. Modern instant gratification culture fosters this something-for-nothing mentality. Tenured jobs, fat corporate salaries, union guarantees, entitlement programs, the stock market and lottery, plastic surgery, inheritance, and anabolic steroids can bring easy and instant success.
 
In the business world, faking it has become the standard Groucho Marx spoke of: "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made." All of the superficial, air-brushed, blow-dried charm being marketed to us from every direction is only a fool's gold. If we fall in line the commercial world gets our dollars and in return we get hokum and a degraded world for our children.
 
Not only does commerce pretend to be what it is not, so do people everywhere. Hypocrisy is cheaper, quicker, and easier than being the real thing. It is a funny thing how we clamor for freedom, but then when we can do as we please, we imitate one another. People run away from themselves into the shells of other people. But the cloak of an artificial persona is a fabricated thing that covers a soulless being. Such a person is like a tree without leaves or a home with no pictures on the walls.
 
Borrowed character only serves to show the poverty of the borrower.
 
The fake smiles that turn on and off like a neon sign, the glad-handing, the brags, and the empty promises fool nobody. As Dr. Seuss so wisely counsels, be who you are because "those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter."

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​Lying, faking it, and hypocrisy never work because truth always prevails in the end. The prizefighter with all the tassels, fancy footwork, and big mouth, but no real skills, gets decked. The basketball player with the garb and clever dribbling gets cut if he hasn't the competitive heart. The gussied-up aspiring socialite attempting to convince others she is beautiful, rich, famous, and of station deceives only herself.
 
Cinderella's wicked stepmother and awful sisters are hated, not because they were homely, but because they were hypocrites. Cinderella did not pretend to be more than she was; she was self-effacing, if anything. We love her not because of her beauty but because she was humble, genuine and even willing to be thought of as less than she was.
 
Being honest to ourselves and others is difficult in a world that is working hard night and day to make us everybody else. So it is a courageous venture to grow up and actually turn out to be who we really are. Being oneself is like a protest. On the other hand, if we fake it often enough we get to believing the lie. Hypocrisy is not so much a danger in its visibility to others, but in its invisibility to self.
 
An interesting way to look at our responsibility to be who we are is to loosely apply the philosophical concept of negation developed by the 19th century German philosopher, Hegel. In his study of being (ontology) he argued that we are in large part defined by what we are not, not what we are.1 In other words, if you defined all things in existence other than you, what is left over is who you are. So if we try to be those things other than what we are—to be who we are not—we in effect zero ourselves out.

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​We are all born originals, but try our best to die copies. How silly it all is because if we are ourselves we have no competition. By pretending to be someone else we lose ourselves. By pretending to be more than we are, we become less. It is far better to be who we are to ourselves, and less than we are to others. If we are unhappy with ourselves—and we all are to one degree or another—then we must do the work, make the mistakes, learn, and grow to be what we aspire to. That makes for a beautiful and true person, one forged with honesty and hard work.
 
If our world is to ever advance, it must edge toward the honesty that is reality. Unfortunately our institutions and popularized beliefs follow selfish agendas that bring superficial and short-term benefits. Only pretenses are made about truth. Gaining the discernment to cut through to the truth (which usually means being wrong in the eyes of the masses) and become part of the solution is no little task. But it begins at home, with honesty in our own lives and in our own person—being true to ourselves.