Madison Bumgarner says something interesting; & french prisons

He is presented with the MVP trophy, and the reporter asks him how he's feeling.

"I'm a little tired, I can't lie to you anymore". Anymore? So he was lying every other time, when he said he was ready to keep going?



http://www.ibtimes.com/les-miserables-french-prisons-bursting-seams-1306761

It seems pretty bad, although there's probably a bit of exaggeration in Abagnale's account. I also found out that the French first outlawed execution by guillotine(!) in 1982 (not an error), and the last time a prisoner was be put to death with one was in 1977.

DID YOU GUYS KNOW MAX HAS A BLOG?

...and it's really clever too!


Here's the link to it: http://cigarettesandcapitalism.wordpress.com


:)

"words are losing their meaning"

http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/03/betty-white-is-not-dead-the-internet-is-awful-hoax/

A very interesting article. The general idea seems to me to be that the internet enables "satire", which in these cases is just thinly veiled lying – making things up for "laughs", which is in turn just a thinly veiled way to be very nasty and get away with it. Excerpt:

There are a few things at play here. First, words are losing their meaning, cheapened by the blather found in places like YouTube comment sections and aided by anonymity. Second, bullying has traveled from the middle school hallways of our pasts into our daily digital lives, becoming the unofficial language of the internet. And third, we no longer acknowledge the humanness of celebrities; they are larger-than-life and fair game for a death hoax. Instead of consoling the daughter of a famous comedian, we bully her on the day of his death. Instead of disagreeing with a comedian’s style of humor and moving on to something more agreeable, we wish her dead. It’s as if we’ve traded our sensitivity chips for all of the ones in our gadgets.

The Grifters

In the competitive market of rationales, explanations, and motives (which we call life) , what is calculably better for me is what wins. What is better for me, is a question of life-preserving qualities. What can be calculated, if at all, is pleasure and pain.

--
There is always an apparent reason that not only masks – that would be far too simple – but supersedes and overwhelms (into near oblivion) the instinctual , the impulsive, the human. This 2^nd-order dominant reasoning that - like decrepit broken down stone homes in a newly industrialized city – is testament to another, dare we say, archaic vision of humanity, consumes for the sake of a logic not wholly complete in view of what it seeks and which,  because it is incomplete, is torn and thrust forth always in an incessant direction towards an endlessly enlarging appetite. Perhaps now it will be satisfied! This simple fact it does not come face to face with, for it would mean oblivion of itself. All the while, of course, the 1^st-order instinctual lingers awhile and as yet unrecognized, recedes and withdraws and sometimes we notice it implode.

--
The novel begins with Roy wrenching in pain. Thompson tells us " a hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one".  What kind of man receives such blows as this? What kind of a man is Dillon? Certainly one who seems to be normal, he possesses all the characteristics of a man in debt to society which is how we measure normalcy. Credit cards in stow, a police office ( discipliner of delinquents - those who leave society) is satisfied. Is it difficult to satisfy a police officer when you are a professional con-artist?

To be specific, Roy is a grifter. Thompson has entitled his novel, The Grifters. What then is a grifter? Thompson is kind enough to provide us clues. Let us return to Roy. After assuring the police officer that he is a typical white, credit-card owning man in the 1960s Los Angeles, Roy returns to his predicament.  "He was in a suburb of Los Angeles, one of the many which resist incorporation despite their interdependence and the lack of visible boundaries". The last part of that sentence gives us a clue to the state of affairs within the novel. Roy is in a space which occupies a paradoxical position in relation to the world around it. Like the suburb, Roy seems to lack visible boundaries with the normal civil society around him and yet he resists incorporation, despite a sort of reasonable call for him to do otherwise. Roy manages this desire and his simultaneous aversion from it in a strangely precarious way. Let us, however, take a step back. Roy "needed to be in better shape than he was". Having just escaped an event that seems to have caused much unease, Roy is in a transformative moment in his life. He tries hard to remember and reconstruct the events in his mind.

In what does a good con or grift consist? Certainly not what happened at the "confectionary" or "fountain" we would hope. What did happen? Its not entirely clear, not to us and not to Roy. On the surface, superficially, we can say that Roy tried to steal money using the first grift he ever learned and one which he is admittedly not very good at and he was caught and beaten as a result. Viewed with a bit more reflection, and following Thompson's narrative clues, we find that this image of Roy's memory, recounted in the narrative, is a little more complicated. The setting is a confectionary, for which there are various names, all of which reflect the shifting development of divergent histories, of West and East and America. A bat on the wall. Roy goes through with the "twenties" which he has done for the "tenth time" that day. "Some marks fall for the twenties repeatedly, without ever tipping". The clerk at the counter, however, has fallen one time too many. Apparently recognizing that he has been cheated, he assails his bat upon Roy. The clerk's language dances, moving from of justice, retribution and reputation to shame, blame, and accountability. From "dirty crook", "cheatin" , "cusses me out" to "askin for it", "you know what you did"  and finally to "it w-was j-just a mistake mister. Y-you made a m-mistake an' I m-made a m-m-mistake" and most interestingly "d-don't look at me like that" (7).  The clerk cannot bear to be seen in the administering of retributive force. It is terribly uncomfortable, inconvenient, and puzzling to come face to face with the effects of violence. Much easier to resort to m-mistakes, m-mis-understandings, and to turn away. The clerk cannot face the gaze not because Roy is in exceptional pain, but because to face Roy would be to face another human being - naked and without any euphemism possible about who he is, and who Roy is and what it is that has driven them to their current condition - blood, ulcers, internal bleeding, shame and everything in between. The clerk ends with an abstraction (it was a mistake). Roy is indeed dying, but he is not the only one. 

The "twenties" grift

A couple years back, while I was still working at McDonalds (I'm a bit ashamed to admit it), a customer walked in and ordered a few things from the dollar menu. I informed him of the total, and he proceeded to pull out a hundred-dollar bill. I counted out the change, all the while they fumbled around in their pockets. I handed himthe change, upon which he "found" a couple bucks and two dimes in their pocket, asking for his Benjamin Franklin back. I looked at the fellow askance, placed the two-twenty in the drawer, and asked him for the change I had already given hiem. With some mumbled excuses, he gave it back, and I handed him his hundred in exchange - not without a few protests on his part about wanting "the rest of the money".  I could have very easily been a victim of the same grift, but my presence of mind saved the fast-food giant a few bucks - and probably saved my job in the process.

"Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake"

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nietzsches-angel-food-cake

I used to work for this publishing company, and this is a short article from their daily humor website "Internet Tendency." Not so much to do but lying, but I thought you all might enjoy the attempt at Nietzsche humor.

A couple stories - enjoy!

I found these stories in a notebook I had been writing this and that down in – a sort of "diary of ideas" – and they're quite relevant to the course, I would think.

The first:
He said, he wanted me to tell him a story. I asked, what sort of story it should be, and he answered: "it shouldn't fit with reality, because words always deceive. As soon as an experience is transformed into words, it is no longer the truth. It might be something similar to it, but it is never interchangeable with it." I found that at first to be extremely strange, but after some pondering it cleared up and I do believe he was right. Life doesn't need to be a story.

The second:
She wanted to never lie and attempted to always say the truth, but more often as she wanted, she couldn't keep to her promises. In the beginning she didn't notice this, but as time went on she noticed that, despite her best intentions, she still lied, and this was a bit unnerving to her. The more she noticed that her words didn't do as she meant, she became all the more tense about this failing of words. To her, it seemed to become harder to speak, and when she finally uttered something, it tormented her to the highest degree. One noticed that she began to speak more infrequently. One day, she made the rash decision never to speak again, since her words were impostors and she didn't trust them any more. One couldn't speak a lie, if one simply never spoke. After a long while, her tongue no longer moved, and she forgot the language of her fathers. Her mind died, her memory extinguished, and her being disappeared.

The third:
Stories are like images in a mirror. They can be believable, but the most believable mirror image ist still something false, an illusion. Faces, which one makes in front of the mirror, are never found during a regular day, though they can seem soulful or true-to-life. One cann only hope to guess what the reality is.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Iron Maiden)

Sweet song. Came out a number of years before the Hogue stuff even happened, let alone had a book written about them, but has some interesting lines. Lyrics below (I have added red to parts that seem significant to me to our course and to the Hogue story):

Tough of the track
With the wind
And the rain that's beating down on your back
Your heart's beating loud
And goes on getting louder
And goes on even more till the sound
Is ringing in your head
With every step you tread
And every breath you take
Determination makes
You run, never stop
Gotta win, gotta run till you drop
Keep the pace, hold the race
The mind is getting clearer
You're over halfway there but the miles
They never seem to end
As if you're in a dream
Not getting anywhere
It seems so futile

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner

I've got to keep running the course
I've got to keep running and win at all costs
I've got to keep going, be strong
Must be so determined and push myself on

Run over stiles, across fields
Turn to look at who's on your heels
Way ahead of the field
The line is getting nearer
But do you want the glory that goes?
You reach the final stretch
Ideals are just a trace
You feel like throwing the race
It's all so futile

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner

The Severely Disturbing Story of Josef Fritzl

One night in high school, wandering as teenagers are wont to do in the strange, far corners of the internet, I happened upon the case of an Austrian electrician named Josef Fritzl. One article turned into five, and then I was on a full-blown information binge--the more I read about Fritzl's life and lies, the more questions I had. Fritzl was a criminal of the worst order. He was an incestuous rapist, a kidnapper, and a consummate liar. Here's an article about the case. Be warned--it's not an easy read.

In sum, Fritzl--a well-respected professional with a wife children--kidnapped his daughter on her 18th birthday and took her to a secret apartment he had excavated beneath his basement. He told his wife and neighbors that she had run away to join a cult somewhere, and that was that--she had disappeared. He began systematically raping her, siring several children over the years. Most of these [grand]children he also kept in the apartment, though he adopted one boy as his own, inventing a story to explain the boy's origins.

This went on for 24 years, with no one in the town or house any the wiser. He was found out when his oldest [grand]daughter developed a severe case of pneumonia and had to be taken to the hospital. Her mother smuggled a note to the doctors in the girl's clothing, and down tumbled the facade.

What fascinated me most about Fritzl was not his crimes against his daughter. Though disgusting, they seemed within standard limits of human depravity. The detail I found most concerning was the fact that he maintained the charade for twenty-four years. No one--not his wife, not the son he freed at birth, not his friends and neighbors--had any inkling of his secret life.

We have to wonder, as the article does, whether Fritzl was a superb liar or whether his dupes were particularly willing to believe him and to lie to themselves.

Jacques Verges - Lawyer for "monsters"

This is an interview with Jacques Verges, a French lawyer who specializes in defending controversial figures. He has represented a variety of "terrorists" (left-wing, right-wing, religiously motivated) as well as holocaust deniers and war-criminals.

The interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjs7kqbIZ5Y

A documentary about Verges:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXpw9rQfY5s

Kanye West: The 21st Century Friedrich Nietzsche

Apart from being a very intriguing article for several other reasons, the author's statement that Nietzsche thought that "anything obscuring the truth is inexcusable" was interesting given our discussion on Monday.

That said, I do like the song.

On The Decay of the Art of Lying - Mark Twain

ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING by Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens]

ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.[*]
[*] Did not take the prize.

Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, A Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high- minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to criticise you, gentlemen--who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing-- if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than fault-finding; indeed if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention, the encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or shred a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition. [It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and to give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and confine myself to generalities.] No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools--even in the newspapers. What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per--against a lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward,

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unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain --adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In another place in the same chapters he says, "The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of us could live with an habitual truth-teller; but thank goodness none of us has to. An habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is a platitude. In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying calls, under the humane and kindly pretence of wanting to see each other; and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out" --not meaning that they found out anything important against the fourteen--no, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home-- and their manner of saying it expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact. Now their pretence of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth. Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even utter the fact that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be an ass, and inflict totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their intelligence and an honor to their hearts. Let the particulars go. The men in that far country were liars, every one. Their mere howdy-do was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no conscientious diagnostic of your case, but answered at random, and usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said your

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health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time." When he went, you said regretfully, " Must you go?" and followed it with a "Call again;" but you did no harm, for you did not deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made you both unhappy. I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble, is one of whom the angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own welfare in jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this magnanimous liar." An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth--a fact that is recognized by the law of libel. Among other common lies, we have the silent lie--the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once lived, there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and pure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She was amazed, and said, "Not all ?" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but frankly said, "Yes, all --we are all liars. There are no exceptions." She looked almost offended, "Why, do you include me ?" "Certainly," I said. "I think you even rank as an expert." She said "Sh-'sh! the children!" So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and we went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, "I have made a rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never departed from it in a single instance." I said, "I don't mean the least harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of

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pain, because I'm not used to it." She required of me an instance--just a single instance. So I said-- "Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank, which the Oakland hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This blank asks all manners of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse: 'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the medicine?' and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions. You told me you were perfectly delighted with this nurse --that she had a thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse. How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?' Come-- everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that question." She said, "I didn't; I left it blank! " "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter." She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one single fault, and she is so good?--It would have been cruel." I said, "One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Now observe the results of this inexpert deflection of yours. You know Mr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet-fever; well, your recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him, and the worn- out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa--However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one, in fact, as the undertaker." But that was not all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse. All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital which filled up the neglected blank, and stated

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the facts, too, in the squarest possible manner. Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but in lying injudiciously. She should have told the truth, there, and made it up to the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She could have said, "In one respect this sick-nurse is perfection--when she is on the watch, she never snores." Almost any little pleasant lie would have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of the truth. Lying is universal--we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then--But am I but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I cannot instruct this club. Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all lie and we do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid-- and this is a thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this experienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and without undue flattery, Old Masters.

ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING By Mark Twain Page 5 of 5

Poem

Walking, I think of You 

And Me,  and our year spent together.

And only now do I see,

How My love erred.

Was it You who deceived Me 

Or Me who deceived You?

Perhaps I who deceived He,

Who speaks now in truth. 

But still the question on our lips 

What remains if not the lie,

Cherished in the bosom,

Of our spent lives.

And I fancy you think not,

Of such as worries me,

But live as if never was,

You with me. 

Neither now nor forever,

My eyes close'd no longer.

Straddled between the two,

I come to an answer,

Unsatisfying and true. 

Thinking of the themes of this course, I chanced upon a passage in Heidegger that seemed remarkably prescient in describing Hogue. The passage is in Being & Time (New York: Harper Perennial: 2008) pages 216-7. I have reproduced the text below. 

"When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen  (that is, to come into a Being towards it) butjust in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world. Therefore curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying along-side what is closest. Consequently it does not seek the leisure of tarrying observantly, but rather seeks restlessness and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounters. In not tarrying, curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marveling at them - [greek word]. To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest. Rather it concerns itself with a kind of knowing, but just in order to have known. Both this not tarrying  in the environment with which one concerns oneself, and this distraction by new possibilities, are constitutive items for curiosity; and upon these is founded the third essential characteristic of this phenomenon, which we call the character of "never dwelling anywhere" [Aufenthaltslosigkeit]. Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein - a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself."

Hogue constantly uproots himself in his unsatisfied search for self-creation (and so self-destruction). Runners can never satisfy themselves for the exact reason that they satisfies themselves: the incessant need to run precludes the possibility of a pause long enough to interrupt the running. The policeman Samuels interviews says something similar in regard to Hogue's criminal activities. Noting that criminals like Hogue are caught not because of the remarkable aptitude of the investigators, but because of the simple fact that criminals cannot stop committing crimes, the policeman references the repetitive nature of Hogue's crimes. To what extent that is a correct diagnosis remains to be seen. Nevertheless, there is something particular about Hogue's uprootedness. Clearly an intelligent person, Hogue could easily find employ or a degree of financial security in one way or another. Let us not forget that his Princeton professor gives him asecond chance by recommending him to the Harvard museum, whereby Hogue proceeds to repeat, and repeat, his incessant movement from crime to crime. Hogue is taken in by a life that promises too much for one persona. And so, his ability to recognize his own possibility leads him to the direct experience of the possibility itself, or in other words, lying. In a position of "never dwelling anywhere" Hogue realizes the latent promise of the American dream, in so far as one has time to do so. Our collective fetishization of creative potential finds itself manifest in characters like Hogue. To one extent or another, we are all liars, not in the sense of telling an untruth, but in the openness with which we face our possibility of being-in-the-world. That which distinguishes the liar is the ease with which the liar regards truth and untruth as one and the same, and so , leaves the decision by which such recognition can arise, open to the one constant beholder of the lie: the liar themselves. Curiosity, as described by Heidegger, "know[s] in order to have known". 

Vergiss mein Ich (English title: Forget My Self)

http://www.pandorafilm.com/produktion/index_details.php?query_var=id&query_value=112

http://www.the-match-factory.com/films/items/lose-my-self.html

Jake mentioned memory as a way of determining self: This film is about a woman who forgets every single memory, and in the course of the film learns how to pretend to "be herself" again.

Interesting is also the name of the distribution company: "True Fiction Filmverleih".

Here the synopsis from the first link above:

Lena Ferben has lived almost half a lifetime when she loses all of her memories, the entire “I” of her self. Her husband is suddenly a stranger, her friends are unknown to her, her whole life is a fictional narrative. She must decide whether to become who she was or to remain someone else...

I recommend the description in the second link as well, it has much to do with the linguistic consequences of Lena's (main character) amnesia.

Unfortunately I cannot find a trailer of it in English – it would seem though, that it has been at the very least set up with subtitles, considering that it exists with an English title in the world of the internet.