We get bored, and we self-deceive.
Everyone gets to proudly ask: "How could they have let this happen?" The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive.
The veil of middleness is self-deceiving.
If taken seriously, it is likely to be profoundly self-deceived in its application.
Is Brutus a hero of the Republic, or the ultimate self-deceiving idealist?
We now see that our guide and mentor is dull-witted, complacent, perhaps self-deceiving; we are turning the pages faster and faster.
Given the dingy, run-down London and the ambivalent cold war world of 1974 (which is actually not too far removed from our own self-deceiving, deeply dishonest times), each is as likely to have become a double-agent as anyone else, though for different reasons: self-advancement, a political choice of a historical kind, a desire to be on the winning side, a Machiavellian, Iago-like perversity.
The key is that we self-deceive: we don't realize we are taking advantage of the duality of our actions.
Moreover, that some overcome their self-deception seems to indicate such a capacity and thus control over ceasing to be self-deceived at least.
Our ability to self-deceive it unlimited.
Even after the trauma and embarrassment of "finding out" that some of our childhood beliefs are unfounded in reality, it's a rare adult indeed who doesn't self-deceive -- or, I think I'd rather say, doesn't believe in something or other that isn't logically airtight.
