“The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.”
~ Demosthenes ~
“Misremembering” is the human ego’s favorite way to lie. It starts when someone either avoids the whole truth – and/or maybe sprinkles a little seasoning on a story to give it a little more zest and personal credit to the storyteller. Having never written seriously on this subject from my half century career perspective as a mental health professional until the Brian Williams example came to light, however, let’s establish some ground rules that cannot be easily “misremembered” by any of us:
(1) I don’t mean that I’ve never used the word “misremember” in print previously. I used it yesterday in “Misremembering: The Sweet Spot of Deception:”
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/misremembering-the-sweet-spot-of-deception/
I also used it earlier here at The Pecan Park Eagle in a quasi-serious column entitled “Corporate Speak at the Big League Level:” (How a word like “misremembering” could slide into a column so titled hardly requires any explanation – and I did not explain it there. – I explicated it.
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/corporate-speak-at-the-big-league-level/
SABR colleague Tom Trimble also informed me today that I included “misremember” or one of its variants in a past column, but I cannot readily find the article without a title reference and do not wish this missing piece to hold up a clear, concise treatment of how this misremembering business works in everyday life. We are talking here about the way some people – perhaps, quite a few – represent themselves to the world. Sometimes all the behavioral types who stream into this river of effect share only one broad ban of connection to each other: They all are projecting a view of the truth about themselves that is not based upon facts – but upon a projected image of what a certain individual wants the rest of the world to think about them.
Does that sound familiar? Have you ever known anyone who might do such a thing? Have you ever heard the old expression that it is important to “put your best foot forward” when you take on the world in the hopes of getting a job or starting a dynastic enterprise? Joseph Kennedy, the father of the Boston Kennedys, is famous for once telling his sons that “it isn’t so important who you are – but who the public thinks you are – that wins elections.”
Depending upon the needle pointing of your own moral compass at this point in your life, the elder Kennedy’s “wisdom” may sound like anything from great advice to garbage that needs to be hauled away and burned. Either way, what Kennedy was suggesting was “lying” – a calculated commitment to the idea of creating an electable brand that would appeal to the voters. It didn’t have to be true. People just had to perceive it as true.
I see “misremembering” as a special kind of lie. It may start with something the individual says deliberately, but my own experience working with it in relationship therapy tells me otherwise – even if we were not calling it “misremembering” over the years. We used words that may have been equally clumsy as explanations. Words and phrases like “denial”, ” “avoidance”, “self-aggrandizement”, and “self-delusion” flowed too easily from our tongues and typed expressions of the phenomenon. Now that same game of the ego finds new daylight as the root path of “misremembering”.
People don’t really “misremember” deliberate conscious lies. They deny them – and that denial itself is nothing more than the commission of another lie.
“Misremembering” most often occurs when someone fails to correct a false favorable comment that some significant person makes to them right away, affording the untruth to take on a life of it’s own. “Misremembering” may also occur when someone embellishes a little on a true story to make it more appealing to his or her audience. This sort of thing happens often in reported baseball history. The storytelling perpetrator probably doesn’t intend to deceive, but he or she is spicing up things to make the story more appealing. Along the way, the plain truth often gets snuffed. (Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series is a prime example. – “Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?” kicks in hard and fast in tales of that magnitude.)
The St. Louis Browns Deception
Question: How Many Grandpas in the Old Days either encouraged or allowed their grandkids to grow up thinking they played for the St. Louis Browns? Answer: More than I care to recall. A few years ago, I was quite active at the old St. Louis Browns’ website handling questions from the public about the old franchise. Mixed in with all the queries about George Sisler, Eddie Gaedel, Bill Veeck, and Ned Garver were a stream of requests for confirmation of “grandpa’s” record when he played for the Browns. Guess what? Not a one of these queries ever turned out to be about someone who actually did play for the Browns. Some played minor league ball and a couple may have gone to spring training with the club, but most of those I checked out had never even played professional baseball.
It makes more sense now. There was no Internet in the really old days of the 1920s and 1930s, the decades associated in my mind with these phantom Browns. If Grandpa wanted to let the kids think he once played big league ball, let them jump to their own conclusions that he once played for the Browns. – Once you get past Sisler, hardly any of the real ones are remembered anyway. And besides – those lying grandpas may have thought everything from “What’s the harm?” to “Maybe I did!”
The Role of the Human Ego
The human ego wants to hear what it wants to hear. It also wants to avoid anything that disparages its usually overly-inflated sense of control.
We don’t know what happened to set this credibility crisis in motion for Brian Williams, but if it’s like any of the uravelings I’ve been through in my longtime first career office, it may have gone something like the following, but I want to make it clear here first: None of us know, or may ever know, what happened in the case of Brian Williams. All we can know for sure is that it was set in motion by something he either said – or didn’t handle – immediately after the first of two helicopters was forced to the ground by enemy fire.
It wasn’t Williams’ second helicopter in the two copter mission that took on damage, but the first one that was hit.
Maybe someone on the ground after the landing – or maybe someone from NBC calling after the event said something like: “Brian, are you OK? We were very worried when we got the news that the enemy was shooting at you! That’s pretty scary stuff, isn’t it?”
Perfect Time to Say: “We were OK. They weren’t shooting at our copter! Or if they were, they didn’t hit us. It was the guys in the copter ahead of us that got forced down. They are the ones we need to be talking about.”
Also a Seductive Time to Say: “Yes, getting shot down is pretty scary stuff, alright! I’m thankful we are all still alive!”
The seductive path, if that’s what happened, feeds the ego’s need to be honest with an answer that leaves the door open for undue credit to Williams. Now all the seed of heroic occurrence needs from this point are a few more public confirmations from Williams himself and it becomes the now public perception that the ego will treat as the whole truth – even though it is not.
I do feel great compassion for Brian Williams. I think he’s a good man who made a big mistake. Unfortunately, even though none of us are perfect, the mistakes that strike directly at people’s ability to trust us are usually the most fatal ones. Brian’s best hope for survival on any level as a media man is now dependent upon time and what he does with it. If he could get some help recovering or owning up to the details of how he factually fell into building this trap trip into censure for himself, he might have a chance to restore enough confidence in a man who was brave enough to see and publicly acknowledge what he did – and didn’t do – that led him directly into the ego’s favorite way to lie.
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