is the ability to delude oneself a survival tool?

Think religion - from the very beginning, humans have worshipped deities of one sort or another, offering up propitiations to appease the gods' presumed fickle tempers.

I started with thinking about that guy^♥, and how for the last several months we've maintained a mutually satisfactory fiction, that allowed each of us to get something out of it.

But eventually the fabric of illusion wears thin, and too many bits of reality start poking through.

It seems that some people (married couples pop immediately to mind) maintain a 'fabric of illusion' more or less successfully all the way through their lives.

I think the success of said mutuality depends on the

a) the ability of the people involved to suspend disbelief, and
b) the fact that *each* person in the 'game' is getting something out of it, usually something fairly substantial.

***
I also wonder if there are always those of us (one in each family?)

who, for whatever reason - intelligence? a higher than usual level of native skepticism? (and intelligence and skepticism often seem to go together, though it may not be correlative - I've known plenty of highly skilled left-brainers who seemed to be complete dupes in other areas).

Anyway, there seem to be *some* of us (g raises hand, slightly embarassed) who have this tendency to, when we see a 'rip' beginning to form, take a BIG STICK and poke it through the hole(s) and

RIP IT ALL TO BITS.

***
Now, it *occurs* to me that this may have something to do with

our ability to TRUST.

It's like the little kid who said the Emperor was naked,
or Dorothy pulling back the curtain that hid the wizard in The Wizard of Oz.

*Some* of us seem - ill-equipped? incapable, and/or possibly simply unwilling to accept the machinations of others, the LIES we're offered instead of truth, instead of security.

Maybe it is those of us who've never experienced secure, solid, dependable relationships? Who are most likely to 'question', become the skeptics, the cynics, the 'ingrates' who don't just willingly swallow the koolaid.

Dunno.