Living with deceitful people
Something To Think About I am liberally reprinting an article from the New York Times. It talks about something which most human beings do everyday. A Highly Evolved Propensity for Deceit By NATALIE ANGIER Published: December 22, 2008 When considering the behavior of putative scam operators like Bernard “Ponzi scheme” Madoff or Rod “Potty Mouth” Blagojevich, feel free to express a sense of outrage, indignation, disgust, despair, amusement, schadenfreude. But surprise? Don’t make me laugh. Sure, Mr. Madoff may have bilked his clients of $50 billion, and Governor Blagojevich, of Illinois, stands accused of seeking personal gain through the illicit sale of public property — a United States Senate seat. Yet while the scale of their maneuvers may have been exceptional, their apparent willingness to lie, cheat, bluff and deceive most emphatically was not. Deceitful behavior has a long and storied history in the evolution of social life, and the more sophisticated the animal, it