# The Empire of Lies

## ᚻᛖᚪᚠᚩᛞᚱᛁᚳᛖ ᚢᛋᚩᚦᚪ (Heafodrice Unsoþa)

A group of my friends and I had gotten together over the last weekend for a game of D&D, as we so often do and have done for some years now concurrently. Taking a break to eat, we discussed other things in our lives meanwhile. One of our number had been in the market for a new job, having lost their previous employment due to the pandemic, and finally managed to get far enough as to be interviewed. These things being rather more serious than they used to be, they asked for advice on how to approach it.

One of my friends, naturally, told him to lie both on the interview and, in the future if such had not already been done, then to lie on his resume as well. It wasn't the first time I've heard such advice, which I myself have even given in the past, but it makes me think of the culture we find ourselves in.

As was said, lying as much as possible to obtain jobs is done so commonly now that it's pretty much accepted. Perhaps even expected. The trick is not get caught in your own untruths more so than to build a case immune to scrutiny, as if how well you can spin the falsehood is, in of itself, a desirable skill. I can't think of anyone I know, online or in reality, that hasn't done it - myself included. You'll learn a great deal about this if you ever take a class on marketing, as I myself did prior when still in college. I would go so far as to say that it provided better insight into human psychology than my psychology classes did, as that's basically what the nature of the course is. How to manipulate and abuse the human psyche, yours and theirs, for profit. Not always unethically, but those sort always seem to rise to the top.

It isn't seen exclusively in the job market either, but here is where it's most prominent, I think. Everything can work against you. Gaps in employment, grade average, extracurricular activities in school (or lack thereof), lack of eloquence in speaking, mental health records, and similar. There is for resumes, as for interviews: Lie about intent, it is a faux pas to say you're there for money even if it's true. Invent fake weaknesses that are really strengths. Come up with counterquestions regarding the company even if interest therein is absent. This trend spreads across both small businesses and large.

Wherefrom we could easily segue into the lunacy of other practices: Needing two or sometimes even three interviews for entry-level employment, rotating temporary employment to avoid having to grant benefits or raises, and the calls for a breadth of experience in jobs that prior existed to grant it in the first place. I shan't for the time being, save for that last point - whose solution is, congruent to this gemlog's topic, to lie. 

Rather than brook protest at the ridiculous stipulations placed upon employees, the tactic rather is to propagate the system by playing the game, even if doing so with duplicity. Compliance within a system is still aiding the system when we speak of something so large and intrinsic to society at large as in the case mentioned hitherto. Not that I can levy blame upon the people doing so, they need money to survive as much as anyone else.

Yet, there is something particularly disgusting, I think, in binding people's livelihood to how well they spin tales and act with glibness. Thus, I suppose, it's no surprise that modern capitalist society is the perfect hunting ground for psychopaths and other malignancies [1], and that these malignancies are seen as a boon rather than the bane they truly are. Indeed, rampant allegations of abuses across multiple spectra are rife these days, and oftentimes under reported due to fear of jeopardizing employment therein.

I would imagine such examples will only get worse and more common considering the downward state of the global economy appears to be moving towards, where the power of those already in secure positions grows in contrast to those beneath them. I have heard such things chalked up prior to capitalism working as intended, "survival of the fittest", to which I often say in retort that we aren't fighting as one man alone against nature anymore, but as a society. Natural selection has been supplanted by artificial selection, yet society itself seems unwillingly to apply the pressures necessary to filter out bad behavior and traits.

A society of cutthroats can't last, or as Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand". Or perhaps it can, if the people being stabbed in the back can't ever bring into focus whom it is that's stabbing them.

In today's world here are the virtues:
* Accumulate wealth
* Accumulate power
* Don't get caught
* Have someone to take the fall if you do

And the vices:
* Anything contrasting or hindering the inverse

⇒ HTTP Links
=> https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/the-corporate-psychopath