Religious History Explains the Effectiveness of Trump’s Lies

A television pundit recently bemoaned that “we live in a world where lying has become a fairly common occurrence.” This is certainly not true. Lying, or myth-making, has been a common feature of human behavior that has had profound consequences throughout history. Donald Trump is simply a recent example of leaders trying to control their followers by offering a comfortable myth that is consistent with their own fears and desires.

Humans love a good myth that is rich with heroes who seem larger than life, who fight against injustice and lead people against their oppressors. As soon as our ancestors started to write, they wrote about their myths. These written myths were born of oral myths that have probably existed as long as humans began talking to each other almost two hundred thousand years ago. Creation myths have been popular topics because they are useful and help to reduce the fear born of ignorance of the natural world. Trump’s modern myths serve the same purpose that myths have served since anyone started writing them down.

The original myths humans told themselves, ones that brought comfort in a scary world where events seemed out of their control, were the creation myths. One of the earliest and well-known of these is the Babylonian creation myth Enūma Eliš that was found written on clay tablets in cuneiform script. It describes the creation of the world and a battle between gods; the story is focused on the god Marduk. If you lived in Mesopotamia four thousand years ago you probably worshipped Marduk and were comforted by the knowledge that he would take care of your personal interests, such as bringing good luck or good health. You would have truly believed the myth and would have willingly killed or died for the honor of serving Marduk. During the intervening millennia, the names of the creator gods changed, for example, to Faro (who incidentally saved the world from a flood by building an arc) or Unkulunkulu (if you were a Zulu) or Buga (from the Tungusic people of Siberia). No matter when or where you lived, you embraced the lie because doing so made it more likely that you would survive in a very scary world. Unless, of course, you were chosen for sacrifice.

For these creation myths to work, people had to ascribe to them a level of truth. This step was critical to the success of the myth-makers. The myth had to be repeated over and over again. No matter how unbelievable the stories might sound, the believers accepted the lies as fact and, most importantly, acted as though the details were all true.

The myths reduced the feeling that the world is dangerous and frightening. Trump’s myths perform the same function for his followers. He tells them lies to comfort, and sometimes confirm, their fears. However, lies only succeed if you can keep your followers ignorant of the truth. Today, social media serves this purpose. Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World that the “combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” Sagan warned that the only way to combat the myths was science and knowledge; this is why Donald Trump never failed to attack science at every possible opportunity.

The human brain actually devotes a special region of the cortex to produce lies. This region of your frontal lobes becomes active when you perform complex behaviors such as lying. Lying is apparently a complex task that requires a considerable attentional ability, a vast memory for past events, and significant participation by this frontal brain region. These highly evolved brain regions allow us to be rather good liars. Psychologists believe that most of us tell a lie to someone we know at least twice a day, and that within a period of one week, we lie to nearly one-third of the individuals that we meet. Some individuals, such as narcissists, are born with cortical proclivities that induce them to lie almost constantly for the simple reason that they do not care about telling the truth. This may explain why narcissists, such as politicians, are more likely to become wealthier and more powerful than the rest of us.

© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D.