Münchhausen and the Principles of Mythomania

Back from the New World more and more people asked me to publish my lecture about the incredible art of Lying. Now it is up to you to learn and to pass on the old wisdom of beautiful untrue things!

Perception is always a peril! During the time I have studied the law all attorneys told me that there is no more doubtful evidence than an eyewitness. People only see what they want to see. I am sure the most of us have a dramatic miserable memory because probably the half of our memories are not true, the more time will pass by the worse it will be. Everything we have heard, and we have done is the very next moment no reality anymore and then the empire of fiction and glorification will arise. Most of our history is a big lie but nobody would like to know the truth about our heroes and parentage! No, my dear audience, liars rule the world and they are the more believable because they are convinced to pray the truth! Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, once declared: People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. He was also convinced, that if you want to fool the world, you just have to tell the truth. He was a great statesman because he refused to do so!

In Germany we even have a lying-museum, where you can admire the cut off ear of Vincent van Gogh. But where is the difference between this obvious fake ear and the half of van Gogh’s paintings which were forged after his death by his psychotherapist doctor Gachet? Even today it is difficult for experts to define which painting is a real van Gogh and which one is not.

Truth is something ambiguous. We laugh about the people in the mediaeval times, because they really believed our world would be a disk. In 500 years every child with laugh about us because we believe it is a round ball. The only difference is that you was burnt at the stake in former times if you believed the earth was not flat. Today you may believe in everything, but who knows about the next 500 years!? “All science of today, is the mistake of tomorrow!”

Well, so far about the relativity of truth. A chemical gas is less volatile than the truth, but a lie, ladies and gentlemen, will keep for some thousand years!

Anyway a lie as not a lie. There are very different kind of liars and also many situations when everybody of us is in favour of saying not the truth.

There is one lie, which is evil and a sin! Who of us does not know the famous commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor!” But there is another lie also, which is good.

Actually we can discern a lie as a sin or as a sanctuary! Those are the both sides of the medal  and I will prove that one side is evil but the other side is the basis of all art, because our real world became dull and very ugly in those modern times. Oscar Wilde noticed very right:

“The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

Facts are the venom that poison our soul. That’s why one should learn how to lie!

This evening is inspired by the magnificent adventures of Baron Münchhausen. He was a German aristocrat, who became famous because of his splendid cock and bull stories. He was never someone special but all people just  loved him, especially the ladies, because of his splendid talent to tell untrue beautiful things. Remember the good old times, as there was no television, no newspapers, no internet. People just loved it to listen to tall tales, “Lügengeschichten” in my language. It is not that long time ago that a wanderer knocked at the door of farm-house in the deep moorland  to find a place for the night and the farmer asked him first: “Hey, you! Can tell you tell good lies?!” If he could he got better food for dinner and maybe the heart of the beautiful farmer’s daughter but that’s another story, not to be told today.

Before we get back to the philosophy of Lying we should learn our lesson well and that’s why this lecture!

1. Talent

If you are a good liar, you create art, but not everybody can be a good artist. Some people just cannot lie, it is not in their nature. That is very tragic, but it is human. You will recognize it with the red face or you hear the difference of the voice or they don’t look in your eyes. Sometimes you can even smell a liar, as the witch smellers did it in the dark ages.

But talent for lying is the basis of our skills.  

2. Etiquette

Be polite if you lie, but never lie just to please everybody. A man without opinion will soon be exposed as a bad liar. Never pay someone a compliment if you don’t mean it seriously. It is often better to keep silent, than to lie.

3. Memory

Needless to say, that a liar should have a remarkable memory. Casanova was well known for that, he never forgot any event or any name in his whole life. He could impress people with that and he pledged his love to every lady, again and again. He was a splendid liar with a great sense of empathy and style. All ladies loved him and sometimes even gentlemen.

4. Risk Appetite

If you are afraid, nobody will believe you anything, even if you tell the truth! But if you act as Baron Münchhausen you dare to tell everything, the more unbelievable the better it is! But Münchhausen even found out a more intelligent strategy. He started his fantastic stories with the note that everything is a lie and no one should believe in it! Then he put more and more grains of truth in his stories, until his friends could not discern truth or lie anymore. This is also the next condition!

4. A Grain of Truth

Every lie should a have a believable groundwork. With some real facts you can create a fine composition of a tall tale. And of course there is no better lie, than the one you believe in it yourself. All story-tellers know about that secret.

Believe in your lies!

5. Reservation

If you sold a pack of lies take care to tell nobody about it. In German we have a wise proverb: “Lies have short legs!” Because if you are not careful enough, the truth will catch up with you very soon. That’s why never boast about your lies. You never know who you have to tell a lie again. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell. Always take care about that. And if somebody finds you that you are a liar, don’t mind it and admit that you are of course a liar, because the truth is without talent and imagination! Be charming and tell everything about your lie, maybe with a new lie, but be polite and be charming. Never make the mistake to justify yourself! You only cast a damning light on yourself while doing so! Stay upright and sovereign!

Never justify yourself!

Those were the five most important rules for a perfect liar!

Lying is really an everyday occurrence! The British professor of Social Psychology Aldert Vrij found out that every person tells two lies a day, even if they are insistent that they never lie in their life. The most commonly used lies are: “Sorry, I was in a traffic jam” or “But I have sent you an e-mail!” or “Of course, I love you!” and also “We have a computer-problem.” Oh yes, techniques cannot disagree. Techniques is the silent victim of our cooked lies, the same as a traffic jam. In former times God war responsible for everything , but today techniques and traffic are responsible for nearly every personal failure.

Well, that’s normal with humans and in some cultures, as in China, you have to lie, otherwise  you will  lose your face and nobody will trust you anymore in anything. Lying in the Far East is a kind of self-preservation.

But sometimes lying can be a disease. That’s a very interesting phenomenon, I had to face often during my job as an educator in a psychiatric hospital. We call this exceptional state of mind Mythomania, which is a beautiful name for a nasty disease.

Mythomania is a condition involving compulsive lying by a person with no obvious motivation or reason. The affected patients may have to create elaborate myths. All pathological liars just do so to impress other people and they even believe themselves to tell the truth.

 I know many such people even from my private life and who of us was not impressed by a friend, who could tell such unbelievable stories!?

Enough about pathological conditions, because Lying, as the philosopher Plato already knew, can be so much more beautiful than reality. All good art, all splendid legends, are often not true. Baron von Münchhausen told his friends such great stories, included riding cannonballs, travelling to the Moon, and escaping from a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair! He was a great entertainer and an honourable man as well. We all do not want the truth, we want to be entertained, by television, by internet, by friends, and the best entertainment ever was a fantastic lie! Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, J.K. Rowling, all their literary works are not true, but they are amazing and influenced whole generations.

It is always difficult to find a proper finish for such an huge and important topic, that’s why I will entrust it to a man, who has seen much of life and knew how to live it, to Oscar Wilde, who noticed:

“What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive this old art of Lying!”

by Starkall for Dances of Vice Festival  2008