Why people believe things they know aren’t true

Why do so many people ignore facts they know aren’t true? Why do small lies get a pass if they serve a bigger idea that feels right?

Something fundamental is shifting in how meaning is made and how language is shaping culture. This can be explained both as a shift toward post-literate culture and Iain McGilchrist’s conceptualizations of right- and left-brain hemisphere dominance that can shape people and whole cultures.

There may be a deeper shift underway in how truth itself is recognized.

In a post-literate culture where images, fragments, and symbols matter more than structured argument, truth becomes less about what’s provable and more about what feels real. Meaning isn’t constructed piece by piece but sensed all at once, emotionally and intuitively.

This mode of perception isn’t universal, but it’s gaining ground. To understand it, we can turn to Werner Herzog and his idea of ecstatic truth.

Herzog and lies that reveal a deeper truth

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker who delights in lying in service of a deeper truth, what he calls ecstatic truth. One of his clearest expressions of this idea is “Lessons of Darkness,” a film that opens with a fabricated quote attributed to Blaise Pascal: “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur—like creation—in grandiose splendor.”

The quote is entirely fabricated. Herzog wrote it himself and enthusiastically explains the deception in interviews. He chose the line not because it was factual but because it sounded right. It set the tone and shaped the emotional terrain of the film.

The film documents the post-Gulf War landscape in Kuwait of blazing oil fires, with little commentary, no historical background or context, opening with the haunting and menacing overture to Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” alongside the surreal (but real), apocalyptic imagery. It’s stylized and manipulative, and that is absolutely intentional. The goal isn’t to make a logical argument but to evoke a kind of implicit understanding of what is happening.

A fabricated quote doesn’t subtract from the message or cast doubt on the broader purpose of the film. This is the essence of ecstatic truth. Herzog builds illusions, then breaks them, insisting that the lie reveals something deeper about understanding. The emotional impact of his images tells the story differently than statistics, logical arguments, or slide presentations about carbon emissions.

Post-literate myths

Herzog even describes himself in mythic terms. He is a Bavarian born in the ruins of empire, a child of apocalypse, shaped by catastrophe but documenting and imagining stories across languages, nations, and times. It’s part of the performance and part of the point: Ecstatic truth is constructed deliberately. Herzog enjoys participating in his own myth-making and brings the audience along for the ride. The illusion and the ambiguity are intentional. And it works because it feels meaningful, not because it’s logical.

This isn’t casual language. Herzog takes the art of storytelling seriously. “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” aren’t structured like essays. They’re closer to dream logic driven by obsession, rhythm, and repetition. Watching them is immersive, not explanatory. The main characters are completely illogical, driven to compulsively pursue impossible dreams that will eventually destroy them. This makes the story compelling.

Herzog’s career predates the post-literate culture, and his work is deeply literate. His films are steeped in European literature and philosophy, but he uses that style of knowledge to create sensory, emotional, and symbolic messages. His version of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” wasn’t about plot; he said the plot of “Tannhäuser” doesn’t really matter, but it’s more about the show and the spectacle.

The break from history

This new relationship with meaning also changes how we use history. In literate cultures, history demands deep reading, context, and complexity. In post-literate culture, it becomes another aesthetic tool, something to be felt rather than analyzed.

American historian Christopher Lasch warned that a culture obsessed with the present would hollow out its memory. And while history is immensely popular and connected with literate subcultures, history has also been flattened out for many and is increasingly repurposed for emotional alignment with present-day values and sensibilities.

History in pop culture is rarely a record of what happened but a story that justifies who we believe we are now. History has always been used in that way, but it’s still important to recognize when and where it happens.

This isn’t just a cultural phenomenon; it helps to explain how people construct meaning at a psychological level.

Narrative identity theory suggests we understand ourselves through story. We link past, present, and future into a coherent sense of self. But when that story revolves too closely around the present, everything else is pulled into its gravity. The past loses its shape as something that exists independently of the individual and their experience; it becomes symbolic.

When distant history is used as a superficial explanation of one’s present emotional state, it doesn’t support a deeper understanding of behavior or its consequences. Instead, it fixes the person in a fuzzy, liminal space that feels impossible to escape. History shifts from a record of choices and outcomes into a set of defense mechanisms that protect against discomfort but block any real learning from past mistakes.

That flattening of history can have psychological consequences. In personality psychology, dysfunction is often assessed across four domains: identity, self-direction, empathy, and intimacy. Two are especially vulnerable here:

• Identity risks becoming both overemphasized and unstable when history is continually reshaped to validate present emotional states. Without a stable narrative framework, identity becomes dependent on external sources so that any sort of coherence or self-awareness is fleeting.
• Self-direction breaks down when the sense of time and continuity is lost. If history must be continually revised to support present feelings, it disrupts the ability to form consistent and meaningful goals.

When everything is reframed to justify the present, we lose sight of how our behavior interacts with the environment and the consequences of that over time.

The place for ecstatic truth

The lesson, whether from Herzog’s ecstatic truth or from neuroscientific research, is about balance. Cut out logic, and we lose all structure. Cut out feeling, and we lose meaning. Ignore either, and we risk chasing beautiful delusions or doggedly following doomed plans while losing sight of everything that matters.

This is the deeper point about truth and lies, stories and reason, left hemispheres and right. You can’t purge either from wider culture. You can only blind yourself to the appeal of one or the other.