Self-Deception as a Destructive Power

Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. It is often used to make life more comfortable, so that the not always pleasant truth does not have to be dealt with, as it might not fit our personal beliefs. Self-deception does not alter realty, however, if we did not run away from truth but confronted it and learn more about it, we could change the current conditions into better ones.


Self-deception s a form of selective exposure theory, according to which, people tend to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views and avoiding contradictory information.

There is one, very serious example I'd like to use to illustrate my point. Lots of people buy products made of leather or fur, e.g. shoes, coats, bags or some smaller items, like wallets. They know what these are made of, yet they do not think about it, they do not explore the subject in more depth and thus avoid the unpleasant story behind their new, beautiful boots. They deceive themselves by avoiding straight confrontation with the truth. In fact, if they actually thought of it and maybe looked for some additional information, they would realize how critical the situation is and could try to avoid contributing to animal cruelty.

Many animals have to suffer for human pleasure and the majority has to die in the end. While eating a delicious sausage for breakfast, people know what they are doing. They know what is on their plates, but do not thing about the terrible details of the 'pre-production' of their food, they fail or refuse to make the connection.

Of course, I do not wish to generalize. On the one hand, some may hate animals and even find pleasure in hurting them (although I do hope that most do not have such a sick attitude) . On the other hand, there are many organizations involved in helping animals in need.

Summing up, I think that self-deception can be very alluring, but in the end of the day, it should not be used, because sometimes the awareness of truth can open the eyes of many who through their action could change the future of the world that we live in.