The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, mused Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. It is so human to lie, to make things up. One does it as a matter of course, even when it is not a regular habit. It’s like a spasm in the monologue that is always running in one’s head, a sudden contraction in the verbiage – done involuntarily, almost like a sneeze. A really amusing example is a scene from 2012’s Moneyball. Brad Pitt asks Jonah Hill whether he did the player evaluation he was supposed to do.
