The 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called it mauvaise foi ('bad faith'), the habit that people have of deceiving themselves into thinking that they do not have the freedom to make choices for fear of the potential consequences of making a choice.
For Sartre bad faith is not a case of a person being mistaken, rather it is more to do with falsehood. Sartre believes that an individual who is in bad faith is being false to themselves and that some level they realize this.
People may pretend to themselves that they do not have the freedom to make choices by pursuing pragmatic concerns and adopting social roles and value systems that are alien to their nature as conscious human beings. However, to do so is in itself to make a choice, and thereby to acknowledge their freedom as conscious human beings.
One example of bad faith that Sartre gives is that of a waiter who does his best to conform to everything that a waiter should be. For Sartre, the waiter's exaggerated behavior is evidence that he is play-acting at being a waiter, an automaton whose essence is to be a waiter. However, in order to play-act at being a waiter, the waiter must at some level be aware that he is not in fact a waiter, but a conscious human being who is deceiving himself that he is a waiter.
I agree in some extent with Sartre. I do believe that sometimes people use faith as an excuse to escape from the reality and stop moving forward. And just as Sartre says, these people realize their excuse but refuse to admit it. I do not believe in faith, or in that faith can manipulate our life. I think we human beings still own the initiative of our life. No one should blame such a nonexistent object like bad faith for their own life. Although life is unpredictable and mysterious, we are in charge of our life, not faith.
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