THE THREE LIES OF DELTA GREEN

Delta Green is about lies. These lies haunt Agents throughout their career, and some Agents never move past the first lie. Others move back and forth between the lies as they attempt to "reset" their world view. Still others discard them all and live a life completely surrendered to cosmic nihilism, before they too fall under the sway of the forces Delta Green struggles to fight.

The following are the lies all Delta Green Agents face:

• Mankind is important
• Mankind can comprehend the unnatural 
• Mankind can WIN

MANKIND IS IMPORTANT
The first—and most prevalent lie—is that mankind is important. Some Agents clutch to this lie until their last breath. It is all they have. Everything we call spiritualism is simply a returned echo of this primal belief.  

Mankind matters. This is born and bred into every human being by default. We are here for a reason. There is an ultimate purpose to the billions who have come and died before us. This—all of this—can't just be random.
 
Mankind is not simply some dead-end mistake borne of a billion false starts and questionable outcomes. An ape-descendent not exceptional in any way except that the climate suddenly warmed and we happened to be ready to take advantage of such warming. We can't just be a poorly evolved, mid-stream being whose inflated brain forced it to stand upright, exposing its organs for attack by predators, living in an ecological bubble which will pop, and take us all with it in a tidy total of 300,000 years or so.

That's not possible.

Man believes it is important in the same way water might consider that the cup it is contained in is perfectly shaped for it. We appear important due to current circumstances. We see purpose in madness, because to embrace the other option—chaos—is madness. 

MANKIND CAN COMPREHEND THE UNNATURAL
After shattering the first lie, many Agents fall into the trap of believing this second lie. But the truth is that our world of physics and quantum strangeness is simply an illusion. Two nonsense images pulled across one another until a brief, but clear, pattern can be spied. Still, those images move ever onward, and soon, that pattern will fall away. Our cosmological model is not just off, it is like seeing an image in a floating cloud—the turtle carved from puffy white—which is not actually there. Just as our science is not really there.

The unnatural, and all the myriad forces which persist in the outer black exist in a place beyond the reach of our simple tools, and forever will be beyond such attempts at human thought. No order or reason can be pulled from them. No secrets can be collected and tested. Or at least, no lasting victory against them can be gleaned. Even the most enlightened human is nothing but a gnat drowning in the honey of infinite knowledge, and such a being will perish without ever knowing where such honey is made, for what purpose, or who pours it. In the cosmic equation, the job of mankind is the job of the gnat, that is, to die–and nothing more.    


MANKIND CAN WIN 

This last lie is the key to keeping Delta Green a going concern. The group must believe something will come of their risk and sacrifice. If the outcome is pre-determined by forces on the scale of the cosmic, and even the worst weapon in the arsenal of humanity is simply a pebble thrown at an elephant, then why even try?

Delta Green keeps the truth of this close to their chest for good reason. Sooner-or-later, all Agents that survive see the true lay of the land. They understand that the struggle of Delta Green isn't a struggle of mankind versus the Great Old Ones. For starters, the Great Old Ones would have to know we existed. Instead, it is a struggle of mankind versus the end of mankind.

Some Delta Green Agents believe they can stop the necessary doors from opening, and in turn prevent the release of the Great Old Ones. Others believe that if they can locate and destroy enough human operatives of the Great Old Ones and kill them before the knowledge can spread, that too will help. Some just put such larger considerations out of their mind and focus on the threat at hand.

But mostly, those who see past the third lie continue to fight for one simple reason: so many people they have known and loved have died in the service of Delta Green. And by the time an Agent arrives at this revelation they have seen too much to go back and pretend it is not happening; they are so damaged that to return to their old life means to be forever alone. There is a shabby nobility, after all, in meeting your end while surrounded by likeminded compatriots.