Day 62
"What's the point of dating without games? How do you know if you're winning or losing?"
- Jerry Seinfeld
The interesting thing about relationships in which each person can have a deep emotional effect on the other, is the profoundness of the power of pursuasion. I can honestly say (to confess) that I've made people feel guilty for things that were not wrong in any way, merely by overtly expressing that said things made me feel bad. This is what people call the guilt trip.
But of the many problems that occur with people guit tripping each other, there is a particlar one I'd like to mention in this evening's entry: There is a reflexive property to them.
I mean to say that if, for example, I make someone feel guilty for some minor lie or ommision, acting as though it is a big deal, I have inadvertantly made the problem worse, because it convinces the other person that there is no difference between what we might call the small things, and the big things.
Overt dishonesty loses its uniqueness if the little white lies we tell are treated with the same level of severity. Suddenly, all forms of untruth are created equal, and in spite of what the Bible says, I believe that this is not the case in the slightest.
The deeper problem that we could try to access might be this: relationships are poorly suited to binary emotional thinking. To develop a conception of somebody as being "either honest or dishonest" leaves us deprived of chances to recognize nuances within the human condition. It forces us, upon seeing one lie from a person to re-contextualize everything they do and say into a rubric of deception. And, like in any well-developed conspiracy theory, it is not difficult to interpret the world in whatever way that suits ones one perscriptions for it. The big picture, as it were, is lost. And if we're to expect anything from a big picture at all, we're to expect a variety of colours, shapes, and modes of being.
So, how should we best understand the human condition? Hell if I know.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The interesting thing about relationships in which each person can have a deep emotional effect on the other, is the profoundness of the power of pursuasion. I can honestly say (to confess) that I've made people feel guilty for things that were not wrong in any way, merely by overtly expressing that said things made me feel bad. This is what people call the guilt trip.
But of the many problems that occur with people guit tripping each other, there is a particlar one I'd like to mention in this evening's entry: There is a reflexive property to them.
I mean to say that if, for example, I make someone feel guilty for some minor lie or ommision, acting as though it is a big deal, I have inadvertantly made the problem worse, because it convinces the other person that there is no difference between what we might call the small things, and the big things.
Overt dishonesty loses its uniqueness if the little white lies we tell are treated with the same level of severity. Suddenly, all forms of untruth are created equal, and in spite of what the Bible says, I believe that this is not the case in the slightest.
The deeper problem that we could try to access might be this: relationships are poorly suited to binary emotional thinking. To develop a conception of somebody as being "either honest or dishonest" leaves us deprived of chances to recognize nuances within the human condition. It forces us, upon seeing one lie from a person to re-contextualize everything they do and say into a rubric of deception. And, like in any well-developed conspiracy theory, it is not difficult to interpret the world in whatever way that suits ones one perscriptions for it. The big picture, as it were, is lost. And if we're to expect anything from a big picture at all, we're to expect a variety of colours, shapes, and modes of being.
So, how should we best understand the human condition? Hell if I know.
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