There’s not much difference between a liar and a thief when the lie is not defensive towards their own survival.
At its formal essence, a lie is a conceptual form of theft.
When liars lie, they do it because they are trying to replace a lack of influence that they have not earned and are not entitled to with control that they are trying to steal, in order to achieve an outcome.
In my experience, it is not desperation that drives the non-defensive liar but often a misplaced sense of entitlement and a self-perception of grandiosity.
The irony is not lost on me that when the self-perceived grandiose steal control with deception, that in the act of lying they erode away the very things that would make them worthy of that grandiosity, which they used to justify it– they ensure in that movement that what is real about their identity becomes unreal.
In this, the non-defensive liar is in fact not stealing, but merely by rite exchanging the substance of their identity for something worth far less, under the belief that no one would know that they have sold themselves away, and the additional belief that if no one knows then that they have not lost something.
But, ultimately, someone does know, and it’s the liar. In order to rectify this the non-defensive liar must also lie a second time with each act of deception to reconcile their grandiose identity: A lie to themselves about who they are and what they really stand for — and they must do so convincingly and often repeatedly to the point of absurdity.
That hollow absurdity becomes the nature of their new internal existence as a result of the exchange. The act of lying irrevocably transforms the substance of the self into a false appearance of the self– outwardly and inwardly.