We’ve been told to “fake it until we make it,” as if pretending our way through life will somehow bring us truth. But pretending has a price — one paid in authenticity, integrity, and the quiet collapse of self.
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We’ve all heard the term “fake it until you make it,” harkening back to a New Age concept that made its way into the mainstream, where self-help gurus and motivational speakers took it in stride and etched the idea into their everything. You can sense an almost religious undertone to it — and that’s not by mistake, either.
I’ve said many times that you cannot lie to yourself. The idea is simple, in principle: pretend to be who you want to be, live the life you want to live, so that the universe will attract and draw to you the people, places, resources, and opportunities that align with that behavior. Well — how is that working for you?
It can certainly work in Hollywood, where actors desperate for roles will say all day long that they have a certain skill or ability, because they can figure it out later once they’ve secured the work. But Hollywood is a business built entirely upon fakery, deception, and illusion. Actors are professional pretenders, and yet we celebrate their fakery, admiring their work, their looks, their presence — as if they’re superhuman. Certainly, done well, those representations on the screen can be moving, inspiring, entertaining, and more. But it’s all fake, even when they’re “based on a true story,” which is easily the most deliberate form of revelation of method you’ll ever witness. Real history is routinely rewritten and misrepresented by the political and industrial complexes of Hollywood fakery.
Regardless, it’s the perfect environment for those bent on living out their lies in view of the public, proudly strutting their stuff down the red carpet (after several hours in hair and makeup) in borrowed or gifted clothing they’d never actually buy for themselves. It’s a giant put-up, and they know it. It’s an industry rife with dysfunction, self-destruction, backstabbing, drama, trauma, and criminal activity. Those afforded the biggest blockbuster budgets of creative accounting celebrate their power to promote and inculcate through the world the greatest of reality inversions, twisting around and distorting your perceptions, what you should value, and care about. If that’s something you aspire to — best of luck.
In the real world, life works differently. Yes, we can fake it until we make it — in certain ways. If we’re genuine about what we aim to achieve, not simply chasing success or material rewards for their own sake, there’s a chance, because you’re actually in line and acting, moving, walking toward something that is authentic, real, and true about you. You’re not putting on airs, wearing uncomfortable costumes, speaking in a certain way, or carrying yourself in an unnatural and exhausting manner. You’re just being you — testing your boundaries, pushing yourself out of complacency and even learned helplessness, a widespread and deeply integrated cultural practice that destroys the hearts and minds, and eventually the lives, of countless humans, regardless of race, color, or creed.
You’re developing real confidence and character, honing your skills and abilities, surprising yourself at every turn — shaping and reshaping yourself into the highest vision you hold for this short life, regardless of what it throws at you. And it will throw everything at you; suffering and pain are endemic to life on Earth. You’re not faking it. You’re not lying about who you are or what you really want.
You can’t manipulate the universe — and, again, you can’t lie to yourself. Some aspect of you is always aware, awake, and wondering what you’re trying to prove. Your spirit is aligned with soul — true essence, your original creative spark. It’s offensive to think you can in any way circumvent the natural law of things, to try and “get away with it,” when you’re fully aware of your actions.
Think about how this kind of mindset will always destroy you, and those you care about, from the inside out. You’ll be quietly desperate all your days, falling into destructive behavior, coping and getting by, going along to get along. You’ll settle into dysfunctional relationships, make commitments for the wrong reasons, maybe even start a family whilst in this fog of uncertainty, in the misguided hope that maybe if this, then that will work itself out. That’s insane — and it’s remarkably childish and shortsighted, considering what you’ll be putting your own children through in the coming years and decades as a result of your plain and simple faking it until you make it. Ah, my hormones and desires got the best of me. What can you do?
There are countless nonsensical notions implanted into the consciousness of the masses — and I’d argue most of them are deliberate, malicious, and crafted with a great deal of planning and forethought. There are controllers, parasites, and predators poisoning and perverting the foundations of reality throughout every society. They’ve operated in the shadows at all times — and today increasingly right in front of our faces.
The revelation of the method seems to require that they announce their plans — and they always do. Behind the scenes, the mechanisms of the machine are in constant motion, preparing the soil for more bad seeds and toxic crops. It manifests as all manner of corruption in every industry, institution, and infrastructure that civilization is built upon. So don’t think you’ve escaped it, regardless of how awake and aware you may consider yourself to be. The enemy knows you implicitly — because at some level, it is an element of you.
Fake it until you make it.
All is love, everything is for you.
One love. We’re all in this together.
You need a savior, or you’ll go to hell.
Prayer is the answer.
Get saved. Convert. It’s your soul!
Nothing matters. This is all a simulation.
Money is evil.
Money is the root of all evil.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Evil wins when good men do nothing.
The wealthy are all corrupt — they lied, cheated, or stole their way to success.
If I had better parents, I’d have done better in life.
Men are the problem.
Women are the problem.
There’s no such thing as a man or a woman.
You have to take from others in order to succeed.
Someone has to lose so you can win.
Life is a zero-sum game. Get used to it.
Sell, sell, sell!
There’s enough for everyone, but you have to work hard.
There is never enough. You have to take what you can.
Resources on Earth are limited. We must protect what’s ours.
Gas, oil, water, air, trees, electricity — it’s all running out.
Live minimally, give away your wealth, or others will suffer.
The Earth is on fire and we’re the cause.
The government uses taxes for our benefit.
There are millions of these stupid and deceptive phrases integrated in various ways throughout every society across the world — most of them finding their origins in some kind of religion — and they’re all broken in one way or another. Organized religions were devised as systems of control, and have been wildly successful in that regard. But that’s a topic for another day.
What’s key here is to recognize that these age-old ideas and adages have had their effect. Some societies are certainly more resilient, able to weather the influence of Empire — or perhaps simply ignored — while others have been so completely destroyed that they’re now in the process of rebuilding, and so seem to be in a positive upward progression: open, innovative, welcoming. It’s part of the cycle.
In the West, we’re largely in decline — even racing toward collapse, to some. We can feel it, sense it in our daily routines, see it in the faces of friends and strangers. Ongoing psychological and information warfare takes its toll. Governments continue to bloat, growing increasingly tyrannical, even as the fundamental issues — the lies and dysfunction they were built upon — become more evident by the day. But their kind of fakery has tremendously destructive effects, because they enact fake laws to perpetuate their fake power — and they intend to keep it. Especially in the U.S., where the average age of politicians keeps climbing, and the wealth they’ve acquired by exploiting a deeply corrupt system for generations demands protection. So to them, the working man and woman — and the immigrant, legal or not — serve their ends.
You and I are not like them. We’re built, wired, and configured differently. This can be infuriating, even impossible to reconcile, because they — the power-hungry, corrupted, groomed and indoctrinated, predatory and parasitic — can never behave as we do, yet they occupy nearly every position of power on the planet. Their path was designed and defined by those aligned with an alternate take on reality. They’re automatons for a cause, and we’re not part of the club.
You — the one reading this — who has a purpose, who finds meaning and satisfaction in plying your trade, creating your art, or raising your children, cannot fake it through life. It will spill over into everything you do and become second nature. Second, because what’s first — what’s primary, what’s natural law — is being authentic, real, and true. You cannot be honest with yourself, nor can you be genuine or present with anyone else, blood relative or otherwise, if you’ve been conditioned to fake it.
Look at the world around you. It’s all fake. Most corporations are built upon false promises and hollow ideals, pretending to create and offer real value. Most jobs and careers feed into those same systems. How long will that last? And do you really want to be part of it as it collapses under the weight of its own lies, deceptions, and distortions? It takes tremendous resources to sustain all that — and for some, you and I are the raw material that fuels their strange game.
Don’t be so easily won over by clever words or polished personas. Those who fake it are desperate to make it, and they’ll pursue their ambitions at all costs. You won’t have to look far to see the cracks in the mask.
Solvitur ambulando.