So even though you have no religion or innate moral compass, you still behave in the same way as a good person does as a side effect of your fraudulence. This has been discussed in depth elsewhere.
One of the ways in which you will often find yourself coincidentally choosing the same actions as a genuinely good person would is with lying. And this is because you really suck at it. You suck at it like you suck at managing money or cultivating lasting relationships or not being neurotic. It's a part of you and you've come to accept it and probably work out some ways of getting around it.
But again, it's good to remember that the reason you tell the truth pretty much all the time has nothing to do with any sort of moral duty any more than it's the moral duty of the gazelle to run away from the lion or the priest to take out his repressed sexuality on children -- it's just nature.
So let's say you're asked to go to a party with someone you know pretty well, but you know this party is going to be a seriously torturous ordeal full of inane people with nothing but asinine and uninteresting stories to tell about other horrible people who you don't know but must be pretty horrible to have participated in the events of this story. You can't lie to get out of going to this party, so you will either:
a) be honest and risk a confrontation with your friend about why you refuse to do this one thing after all the many things this friend has done for you and that these people aren't that bad and you are a selfish prick
or
b) you don't say anything and you just go to the party and steep yourself in misery and resentment
See, if you do b), on the outside, you haven't lied AND you performed this self-sacrificial act, seemingly for the benefit of your dear friend. But really, what everyone else doesn't know is that you only didn't lie and say you were busy because you are a failure even when it comes to lying, and also that you sacrificed yourself to go to this party not out of some sense of duty or ethical obligation, but just because it's your first instinct when put in a bad situation. Like a mother throwing herself in front of a bus to push her child out of the way. Except in this situation it's as though what moves the mother to do that is not the instinct to protect her child but rather that she has some severe and dramatic motor skills problem.
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I do this. In fact, this weekend, I went to a totally not fun party where i was clearly the most well-traveled person in the room. I think it was safe to assume that most of the people in that room had ever left east brooklyn. Needless to say, there were a lot of blunts being rolled. Catch my drift? At any rate, I went to this party, knowing full-well that it wouldn't be up my alley, just because i felt obligated to accompany my friends... but not because i cared about my friends... more because i cared about what they'd think of me if i told them the truth: that the party throwers were totally ghetto and the party was going to be lame.
However, there is hope, because at the party, my friends also agreed that it was too ghetto. And we left. The moral: My instincts were right. I'm going to now start telling my friends how bad their ideas are ALL THE TIME.
is it morally wrong to invite a friend to a play your friend is in about the Iraq war without telling the friend that a) you might have to participate in the play and b) it's probably going to suck and lasts almost four hours?
I lie to get out of these sorts of parties, but lie badly. So it's not that my living is completely fraudulent yet so much as it is barely passable.
Alex -- the answer to your question is "yes". It is totally morally wrong to do that. But if you follow our advice, you'll realize that the simple fact that something is immoral is hardly a reason to stop doing something or to feel bad about it. However, if you feel guilty for doing this because the quality of a play you had nothing to do with seems like it's your responsibility, then that's an undeniably fraudulent and perfectly acceptable feeling.
Alex -- the answer to your question is "yes". It is totally morally wrong to do that. But if you follow our advice, you'll realize that the simple fact that something is immoral is hardly a reason to stop doing something or to feel bad about it. However, if you feel guilty for doing this because the quality of a play you had nothing to do with seems like it's your responsibility, then that's an undeniably fraudulent and perfectly acceptable feeling.
Where is option C?
Being fully aware of your neurotics and allowing yourself to exhibit not only wanton self-destructive behavior, but also exuding an outward vindictiveness in spite of all those willing to have you in their life: Attending said party free of moral inhibition or any conviction of decency, and in succeeding in pushing away all the ingratiated presences in your life, finally find something that you misplaced long ago, the obligation to self.
The problem with such is that it is difficult consult only yourself for advice, especially when you are young, and knowingly "neurotic."
I can only ask if it is an idyllic pule to hope for an actualized Hell, or if the thought of isolation within accountability strikes fear into all rational hearts/minds/souls/placeholders. I'd use proper punctuation--?--but I've already established my presumptions, also: admitting to a perspective aside from rationality.
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