About lying. If I tell you a lie, and you know I'm lying, you have a choice to make. You either call me on it or you pretend to buy it. If you buy the lie, you engage in the untruth. You further the lie. You become part of the lie. You come to own the lie as if it were your own. And of course, if you call me on it, maybe I'll go away mad and never speak to you again.

So buying the lie is as harmful as telling it, and if asked about, you will feel a compulsion to repeat it. You might not. You might say, "Well, the Wretch says..." and conclude with, "...But that's his version, and you know you have to take what the Wretch says with a grain of salt." If you say that you are admitting that you didn't call me on it, and that could be painful for to admit.

So the more a lie spreads, the more people buy into it, the closer the illusion comes to resembling reality. And as people know in their hearts and admit to themselves that the lie is not reality, the more they have to rationalize that the false reality isn't such a bad thing, in fact since others beside yourself maintain the falsehood, the lie comes to have--and here it comes, wait for it--A Reality of its Own.

Scary, huh? Might not always work out with such clockwork exactness in every case, but that is generally how it goes. And that is how the liar WANTS it to go, whether he thinks it out as a plot or just makes something up on the spur of the moment because he's afraid (FEAR is powerful) of what will happen to him if he tells the truth, and he hopes (HOPE is powerful) the lie can save him.