(and now, the other part of my reply to your comment, with a quite intentional difference in tone)
I understand the sentiment, but I’d caution that the desire to be able to express yourself freely can be seen as cover for having license to say whatever you want without regard to how it effects the other person.
Certainly. I’m not suggesting that you ought to just run your mouth about any opinion that pops into your head, especially without giving any thought to whether expressing that opinion would be tactful, how the other person will feel about it (especially if it’s a person you care about), etc. Often the best policy is just to shut up.
The problem comes when someone asks you for an opinion, and communicates that they really want it. If they then take offense at honesty, then I am strongly tempted to despise them immediately and without reservation. (Tempted, note; there may be mitigating factors; we all act unreasonably on occasion; but patterns of behavior are another thing.)
One of the issues with behaving like this is: so what happens when you really do want the person’s opinion? How do you communicate that? You’ve already taught your partner that they should lie, tell you the pleasing falsehood, rather than be honest; how do you put that on hold? “No, honey, I know that I usually prefer falsehood to truth despite my protestations to the contrary, but this time I really do want the truth! Honest!” It erodes communication and trust — and I can think of few more important things in a relationship.
Behavior like this also makes your partner not trust your rationality, your honesty with yourself; I don’t think I could be with a person whom I could not trust, on such a basic level, to reason honestly. I couldn’t respect them.
This is bad even if you don’t intend to use it that way: you should be spending some cycles thinking about how the other person will feel about what you say. I speak from experience: saying what’s on my mind has at times been hurtful to people I care about and I should have censored it or redirected the impulse.
Yes. Certainly. Heck, I sometimes don’t want to hear the truth, or someone’s honest opinion of me. Not because I am necessarily in denial, or any such thing, but because I don’t want to think about it at the moment; or any number of reasons.
But you know what I don’t do in that case? I don’t ask them for their honest opinion! I don’t do what the girlfriend in the anecdote did, which is essentially demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink to support your own irrationality… I really have a hard time finding words strong enough to express how much the very idea revolts me.
But then, this might be one of those “different people have different values/preferences” things.
demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink
One scary thought I had a while back is that this is essentially what friendship and especially love is, i.e., sabotaging one’s rationality, specifically one’s ability to honestly asses one’s friend’s/lover’s usefulness as an ally as a costly way to signal one’s precommitment not to defect against the friend/lover even when it would be in one’s interest to do so.
On the other hand, it’s just as easy to make up a story in the opposite direction: friendship and love are what we call having a true judgement of a person’s fundamental virtue that is unswayed by transient, day to day circumstances.
(and now, the other part of my reply to your comment, with a quite intentional difference in tone)
Certainly. I’m not suggesting that you ought to just run your mouth about any opinion that pops into your head, especially without giving any thought to whether expressing that opinion would be tactful, how the other person will feel about it (especially if it’s a person you care about), etc. Often the best policy is just to shut up.
The problem comes when someone asks you for an opinion, and communicates that they really want it. If they then take offense at honesty, then I am strongly tempted to despise them immediately and without reservation. (Tempted, note; there may be mitigating factors; we all act unreasonably on occasion; but patterns of behavior are another thing.)
One of the issues with behaving like this is: so what happens when you really do want the person’s opinion? How do you communicate that? You’ve already taught your partner that they should lie, tell you the pleasing falsehood, rather than be honest; how do you put that on hold? “No, honey, I know that I usually prefer falsehood to truth despite my protestations to the contrary, but this time I really do want the truth! Honest!” It erodes communication and trust — and I can think of few more important things in a relationship.
Behavior like this also makes your partner not trust your rationality, your honesty with yourself; I don’t think I could be with a person whom I could not trust, on such a basic level, to reason honestly. I couldn’t respect them.
Yes. Certainly. Heck, I sometimes don’t want to hear the truth, or someone’s honest opinion of me. Not because I am necessarily in denial, or any such thing, but because I don’t want to think about it at the moment; or any number of reasons.
But you know what I don’t do in that case? I don’t ask them for their honest opinion! I don’t do what the girlfriend in the anecdote did, which is essentially demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink to support your own irrationality… I really have a hard time finding words strong enough to express how much the very idea revolts me.
But then, this might be one of those “different people have different values/preferences” things.
One scary thought I had a while back is that this is essentially what friendship and especially love is, i.e., sabotaging one’s rationality, specifically one’s ability to honestly asses one’s friend’s/lover’s usefulness as an ally as a costly way to signal one’s precommitment not to defect against the friend/lover even when it would be in one’s interest to do so.
On the other hand, it’s just as easy to make up a story in the opposite direction: friendship and love are what we call having a true judgement of a person’s fundamental virtue that is unswayed by transient, day to day circumstances.
“Love is the inability to follow a logical argument concerning the object of one’s affection.”
… is a quote along those lines, from a former classmate; with which I do not actually agree.
But “usefulness as an ally” does not at all fully capture a loved one’s value to me, even absent any failures of rationality.
(Not that you said it does, I’m just pre-empting likely replies.)
Feel free to substitute whatever you feel is appropriate for “usefulness as an ally”.
The difference is that I explain it in terms of game theory.