Mendacity

Not enough is said about the sheer sensual joy of mendacity, a constellation of the joy of performance, of worldbuilding, of will-to-power over others. Lying is sometimes talked of as a sort of moral laziness or laxness, and sometimes as a question of lesser evils, but there is also this sheer positive pleasure in it which, however deplorable, motivates many humans to lie. So for example: the pleasures of sexual infidelity are only partly erotic; they are to a much greater extent sheer vertiginous pleasures of mendacity.