Eating the Dinosaur - Chuck Klosterman

Errol Morris

Modern forms of lie detection - methods that go beyond that polygraph.  The writer's idea was that we can actually record activity inside the brain that proves who is or who isn't lying.  It suggests that the brain is some kind of 'reality recorder' and that we know when we are lying.  But I think those kinds of lies represent a very small piece of the pie.  I think the larger sect of liars are people who think they are telling the truth, but who really have no idea what the truth is.  So the deeper question is, what's more important: narrative consistency or truth?  I think we are always trying to create a consistent narrative for ourselves.  I think truth always akes a backseat to narrative.  Truth has to sit at the back of the bus. 

Most lying is just an accepted part of the world... if you don't want to know something, can you not know it?  Can you convince yourself that you don't know it?  Can you actually not know it, in some real sense?  Can you form a barrier to knowing things? 

I'm a great believer in self-deception.  If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception.  Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe.  I'm not saying that the truth doesn't matter.  It does.  But self-deception is how we survive. 

31
But it wasn't just a nice car, it was a Lexus.  A Lexus.  That's a specific kind of nice car.  Everyone knows what owning a Lexus means.  To Cobain, a lavender limousine would have been preferable to a Lexus, because at least that would have been gratuitous and silly.  The limousine is awake of its excess; a Lexus is at easy with it.  A Lexus is a car for a serious rich person.  There are no ironic Lexus drivers, or even post-ironic Lexus drivers. 

45
Although I'm not sure which one it's unfair to.  I feel sorry for both of them.  I can see it both ways.  That's my problem.

145
Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged.  It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart.  And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always. 

163
It will always seem stupid, because canned laughter represents the worst qualities of insecure people... Insecurity is part of being alive.  But it's never less complicated than this.  It's never less complicated than a machine that tries to make you feel like you're already enjoying something, simply because people you'll never meet were convinced to laugh at something else entirely.