Truth, Deception, and Identity in O'Brien and Twenge

Introduction: Perception, Truth, and Identity

One of the fundamental truths of life as lived by human beings is that people are largely the sum of their experiences. Experiences comprise many different forms and aspects of life, nearly all of which are filtered through the lens of an individual person's perception. It is virtually impossible to distinguish the information we receive from our conception and perception of it, which is one of the primary reasons why there are numerous variations of the truth, as well as of what truth itself is.

This concept of truth and deception is explored in a pair of essays written, respectively, by Tim O'Brien and Jean Twenge. In the former, "How to Tell a True War Story," O'Brien discusses the many different shades of truth found within a military context. His patrol unit in Vietnam serves as the source for a number of examples that mostly illustrate the deliberately subjective nature of truth. In Twenge's article, "An Army of One: Me," the author examines the ramifications and deliberate incongruences of truth by analyzing the generational tendencies of what she terms the MeGen — people born in the late 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. Twenge alludes to specific consequences that a masking of truth, or outright deception, can have on a person's identity. A careful synthesis of both works indicates that people largely see what they desire to see, and that such a subjective interpretation of events and experiences — which forms the truth for us and shapes our identities — is often used for situational purposes to aid us in coping.

Deception as a Coping Mechanism

Deception informs people's identities by allowing them to believe they are something they are not when situations arise in which they have reached their limitations yet still need to cope with demands that require more of them. In instances such as these, it is extremely helpful, and perhaps even necessary, for people to replace the truth with an alternative that is considerably more convenient for their ability to manage the situation.

This concept is demonstrated repeatedly within O'Brien's essay. In detailing an armed forces patrol in Vietnam, O'Brien describes traumatic experiences in which soldiers must cope with devastating psychological and physical events. Bending the truth — or even deliberately deceiving themselves — proves extremely helpful for many of the soldiers described in the story, as the following quotation illustrates: "I got a confession to make," Sanders said. "Last night, I had to make a few things up" (O'Brien, 273). The diction here is highly significant. Sanders tells O'Brien that he "had" to exaggerate a story that he had sworn, at the time of telling it, was verbatim truth. Sanders felt compelled to deceive because the events were so traumatic that the only way he felt he could properly do them justice was by embellishing them.

The need to stray from the truth because of a person's limitations is also evident in Twenge's essay, particularly when she references issues of self-esteem among students: "…education psychologist Harold Stevenson found that American children ranked very highly when asked how good they were in math. Of course, their actual math performance is merely mediocre…" (Twenge, 490). This is another illustration of the fact that people will deliberately deceive others when faced with situations in which their limits are reached. The American students who knew they were mediocre math performers nonetheless claimed competence. In instances like these, people choose to make the truth what they want it to be, which becomes an integral part of their identities and their response to adversity.

Negative Consequences of Habitual Deception

The consequences of a deliberate evasion of truth — particularly for people who have internalized deception as a part of their identity — can be manifold and are quite frequently negative. In order to sustain the lies created to compensate for their limitations, people must often engage in further behavior that maintains the illusion of the false truth they have constructed.

Twenge spends a significant portion of her essay's conclusion discussing these negative ramifications, focusing on students who have been deliberately deceived by educators and who in turn deceive others to compensate for their shortcomings. Narcissism is just one of the many pitfalls that people may fall into when they cannot live up to the lies they have substituted for truth. As Twenge writes, "Narcissists are also more likely to be hostile, feel anxious, compromise their health, and fight with friends and family. Unlike those merely high in self-esteem, narcissists admit that they don't feel close to other people" (Twenge, 493–494). Hostility and anxiety can lead to further subversive behavior, such as cheating in school or committing criminal acts out of a perceived sense of entitlement. This sense of entitlement, much like narcissism itself, stems from people holding higher expectations of themselves than they are capable of achieving, because they are accustomed to accounting for their shortcomings through fictitious means.

Negative consequences of a loose relationship with truth are also discussed in O'Brien's essay. People who habitually take liberties with the truth can actually lose sight of what truth is — a genuinely harmful development in someone's identity. This erosion of the ability to perceive a definite truth is shown in the following quotation: "Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' And if the answer matters, you've got your answer" (O'Brien, 276). This implies that the truth of stories, and the events they are based on, is something that does not "matter." Truth ceases to matter when it becomes too difficult to discern. O'Brien, himself a victim of the trauma he describes, exhibits ambivalence toward the importance of truth — a highly indicative sign that deception yields negative traits in a person's identity that extend beyond the merely situational. What begins as a reflex to an uncomfortable situation can become a permanent and damaging part of one's identity.

Conclusion: A Progression from Coping to Self-Destruction

The essays written by O'Brien and Twenge illustrate a progression of effects on a person's identity produced by neglecting truth or engaging in deliberate deception. Initially, reliance upon alternate truths begins as a situational means of coping with things that are beyond an individual's ability to handle — such as the trauma incurred in war or the pressures faced by an ill-prepared academic student. Eventually, however, such deception can lead to negative ramifications including a distortion of truth and the inability to accurately define it, as well as personality disorders such as narcissism and a sense of entitlement that can lead to subversive behavior like cheating. Ultimately, this subversive behavior can escalate to criminal activity — as in the case of the Trench Coat Mafia killers — and produces an inordinate sense of sadness and isolation in those who propagate dishonesty and deception.

Note 1: Twenge's reference to the thin line between high self-esteem and narcissism underscores the central warning of her article: that GenMe is being raised on a diet of unearned self-esteem, and that one of the ultimate expressions of this danger is the narcissism capable of producing potentially disastrous outcomes.

Note 2: Twenge also believes GenMe has been deceived through the replacement of the important values of self-discipline with the questionable virtues of self-esteem. Another quotation expressing this idea is: "These statements evoke the image of a young man speeding…in the world's biggest SUV…screaming…I'm important!" (Twenge, 494).