Theodore Dalrymple: Delusions of Virtue

Nietzsche, in one of his disconcertingly piercing aperçus, wrote: “‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains adamant. At last—my memory yields.”

Hillary Clinton seemed to reverse the Nietzschean order of things when she “misspoke”: “I cannot have done that,” said her memory. “I must have done that,” said her pride, and remained adamant. At last—her memory yielded.

Was she lying? A journalist called and asked my opinion as a doctor (faith in doctors remains strong in some quarters). I said that the question might be unanswerable. Lying, by definition, is knowingly saying what is untrue; but the human mind is a subtle instrument, quite capable of uttering untruths by mechanisms other than lying. Sometimes we cannot distinguish among the possibilities.

Of course, if one could show that, immediately before misspeaking, Clinton had told her closest friend (if such existed) that she planned to tell an untruth in public about her time in Sarajevo in order to boost her image as a stateswoman, we should justifiably conclude that she was lying in a straightforwardly crooked way. But she is an intelligent woman and, if she intended to deceive, she surely would have realized that her lie would soon wind up exposed.

So perhaps she just fashioned a flattering narrative for herself and others, composed of genuine memories and ill-remembered film clips. It isn’t such a far cry, after all, from wearing a flak jacket to being shot at; why would she have had to wear such a garment unless her life genuinely was in danger?

The more interesting question is whether it would be better if she had lied than if she had fantasized. Personally, I come down on the side of lying. First, lying is a natural human propensity. If someone said that he had never lied in his life, we immediately would brand him a liar. Second, unless we are Kant, we all think that lying is sometimes morally justifiable. Clinton might have thought that lying on this occasion was warranted, given how much good she planned to do as president. She would be wrong, of course: but which of us has never been wrong or succumbed to temptation? If her tall tale was a sin, it was venal rather than mortal.

Suppose, on the other hand, that she really thought that she had been under fire in Sarajevo. Being under fire is not like the details of a trivial conversation you had five years ago: it is not easily forgotten. If she were not lying, therefore, it would mean that her inability to distinguish truth from fiction would be almost total. This is a far more dangerous quality in a potential president than mere lying.

I suspect (though I cannot prove) that Clinton shares with the former prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, that modern psychopathological symptom: the delusion of honesty. A delusional belief is impervious to reason or evidence. In societies like Britain and the United States, once steeped in Judeo-Christian culture, such convictions become common when a belief in Original Sin finds itself replaced by a belief in Original Virtue—particularly one’s own.

Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Theodore Dalrymple Delusions of Virtue We should hope Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia tale was a lie—and not a fantasy. 3 April 2008

Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

I don't much like Hillary and I surely would never vote for her, but it would seem Theodore Dalrymple has done what most do when it comes to memory. They assume memory is like a computer and everything is recorded and it can be recovered in original form.

The truth, as we currently know it, is far different. Memory has several problems. Daniel Schacter in his easily read book, The Seven Sins of Memory, lists these sins as: transience, absent mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and permanence.

I know these will seven will be puzzling. But don't worry you can find a review of Schacter's classic and definitive book on FR: HERE.

I wrote the book review on Schacter after witnessing the problems dealing with the Libby case. The judge refused to allow expert testimony in this case. If he had Libby might have walked since his was a virtual classic case of a memory failure by virtue of missatribution. He essentially, attributed something he heard in the White House to a journalist (Tim Russert). For this he was convicted of perjury.

In respect to Hillary I do believe she has a variety of problems-transience(forgetting) plus suggestibility and misattributing a heard to an actual event. Not an excuse for her considering her position, but surely not a calculated lie as many have decided.

Incidentally, I could go on and on about how and why people tell war stories. I won't. But do remember true traumatic war time events persist in one one's memory. They are never repressed and the best treatment is to distract yourself and count on some level of attenuation of affect associated with the persistent memory. I know this the direct opposite of what happens and did happen in VAH hospitals I worked at; however, the well done psychological literature would affirm that approach. Beides working at VAH my DEROS was 17 May 1969.

Memory, like everything else about us is really complex, multifaceted and open to continuous revision depending on empirical studies.

Below are some quotes from Schacter:

"...As I showed in my earlier book, Searching For Memory, we tend to think of memories as snapshots from family albums that, if stored properly, could be retrieved in precisely the same condition in which they were put away. But now we know that we do not record our experiences the way a camera records them. Our memories work differently. We extract key elements from our experiences and store them. We then recreate or reconstruct our experiences rather than retrieve copies of them. Sometimes, in the process of reconstructing we add our feelings, beliefs or even knowledge we obtained after the (memory) experience. In other words, we bias our memories of the past by attributing to them emotions or knowledge we acquired after the event….”
"...Thousands of experiments have demonstrated the truth of the above paragraph:
"...Memory is “adapted to retain information that is most likely to be needed in the environment in which it operates.” (page 191) Since we seldom need to remember all the precise sensory and contextual details of every experience; memory is designed and produces that information which might be later needed.

The most horrific of mistakes of memory are not those listed above but the concept of "repressed memories." I won't discuss this, but if you are interested merely Google "Elizabeith Loftus."

Here’s the way I see it: In both Clintons, lying is second nature: it’s been observed of Bill that he would apparently rather lie even though speaking the truth would offer no advantage over lying -—the truth wouldn’t hurt him, HE WOULD JUST RATHER LIE. He just prefers lying, tweaking, overstating, because he’s “better at it” than “remembering”, which is boring, dry, and does nothing toward buffing up the mystique and legendary legacy
people like Bill CLinton are always working on.My favorite recent Zelig-like claim of Bill’s , made during the Rosa Parks memorial period, was how Bill and his 8 year old buddies would make a point of sitting on the back of the bus out of solidarity with the “cause”. It’s been said that it’s better to always tell the truth, because the truth is easier to remember. Liars like the Clintons are basing the “truth of their lies” on what they wished happened rather than what did happen, their lives as politicians who say everything for public consumption involve a never-ending fictionalization of who they are in order to appear to be “all things to all men”.They were everywhere, did everything, were way ahead of the curve in all things political, and moral. Need to “correct” misperceptions about you of being anti-Military? THen co-ordinate, for the first time anywhere , matching stories about how badly Hillary wanted to be of service to the Military, but how it was her bad eyes, and her age (27) and the fact she was a woman that kept her away, not to mention “down”-—Boy, talk about killing two birds with one stone, that one of the current week was highly-honed and polished Clinton disinformation/spin.Liars like them are continually caught up short by never being able to
keep their facts straight, and it’s fact and how or if it’s remembered that serves as the basis for both truth and lies. Truth is not something that has ever interested the Clintons—to quote their one-time friend, Al Gore, it’s “inconvenient”.

Thanks for your post, which is interesting. As primary caregiver of my late mother, I saw her memory break down over time from Alzheimer's, and realized that we do not remember everything but rather we reconstruct what we need or want to know from what we do remember - thus opening the door as you say to the corruption of earlier memories with inputs from a later time.
The example which sticks in my mind is when she told my doctor of long standing that she had always been his patient and that I had not - the reverse of the situation since I had brought her to my house in a different state from her home in order to take care of her. And, obviously, there was no possibility that that was a lie, since there was not the slightest possibility of deceiving my doctor about that. It was simply a symptom of the failure of her memory system. She didn't simply not recall at all, she "recalled" what was directly contrary to reality.
But with all due respect I don't think that relevant to Mrs. Clinton, whose extensive record of "convenient memory syndrome" is crystal clear. Dalrymple has it right:
Being under fire is not like the details of a trivial conversation you had five years ago: it is not easily forgotten. If she were not lying, therefore, it would mean that her inability to distinguish truth from fiction would be almost total. This is a far more dangerous quality in a potential president than mere lying.

I suspect (though I cannot prove) that Clinton shares with the former prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, that modern psychopathological symptom: the delusion of honesty. A delusional belief is impervious to reason or evidence. In societies like Britain and the United States, once steeped in Judeo-Christian culture, such convictions become common when a belief in Original Sin finds itself replaced by a belief in Original Virtue—particularly one’s own.
"A belief in Original Virtue—particularly one’s own" strikes me as a perfect definition of "leftism." Lying is simply the logical conclusion of the belief that the end justifies the means, and just about any means is justified if it means assuring the empowerment of your own inherent virtue.

Yes, you and the author's points are well taken. But I do not believe Hillary lied about this in the way described. There is an assumption she knew perfectly well that the facts she were relating were true. I don't think so, and I do think for the reasons I gave.

Daniels does quote Nietzsche. To be noted, Nietzsche antedated Freud in his description of unconscious mental processes (although he did not use the word "unconscious'). Both he and Kierkegaard were early existentialists although that word was not invented until much later (Sarte).

Existentialists point out many big decisions are often little decisions made over a period of time. You are still responsible for all those little decisions and even for you decisions you don't think about. This means that Hillary and Bill aren't off the hook for their behavior even though it may not be conscious lying as we define it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.