Necessary Illusions

I have always had issues with fakeness and pretentiousness – life in general and relationship in particular. Perhaps that’s the reason it endeared me with the first few movies of Kannada actor Upendra. He has multiple themes – mainly psychological – running in his movies. One of his main hypotheses is that we wear many masks in life which makes us unreal, and we weave many illusions and some illusions are necessary to get through life – many people can’t live their lives normally without the ruse called illusion. The protagonist in the movie tries to live his life as per his rules, without pretentions, without masks, facing brutal realities as they are – but fails miserably in doing so. 

His thought process goes something like this – Say, in a marriage, whether the husband loves the wife truly or not, but if the wife thinks he does, she can live happily. It works the other way too. For that matter, societies can’t function without some illusions. It can be extended to cultures and even nations. As per him, all the existence is cobweb of lies and illusions. Maybe he takes the idea too far. But he has many valid points.

To illustrate the point, I quote a scene from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather :

Susan: All right, I'm not stupid. You're saying that humans need fantasies to make life bearable.

Death: No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?

Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

Susan: So we can believe the big ones?

Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

Susan: They're not the same at all!

Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet... you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?

Death : My point exactly

Without some of these illusions, relationships, societies may break. As ironic as it may sound, some illusions are necessary to get a grip of realities we have created or chosen for ourselves. Perhaps this is what many ancient Indian seers called 'Maaya' or the veil. Perhaps some veils and thus illusions are necessary.