It’s damn difficult to separate what you believe from what you’re pretending to believe at the same time as updating a major chunk of your beliefs. This is really unrealistic for most humans.
Don’t most of us at some point or another pretend to not be attracted to an “off limits” hotty, pretend to like people we really don’t, pretend to find interesting something our children do, pretend to believe in our boss’s vision for success, pretend not to believe in stereotypes, pretend to like a friend’s cooking,...
You have great points, but these are generally one-time events (maybe except the interest in our offspring’s activities) or extremely low-investment. What about being asked to make a concerted, extroverted attempt to be the best friend of that person you don’t like?
I find the concepts of look-once-then-avert (hotty), fake smile (unliked friend), smile and saying “Woow” (kid), enthusiastic-nodding-then-dissent-with-coworkers-later (boss), and the like much easier than actually spending the next x years actually living and acting like I agree with these. Again, perhaps the children’s interest one is different, as could be the boss situation.
I’m inclined to agree that the sign of the cross and saying Amen is not a big deal and probably on par with a fake smile.
Then again, where does one draw the line? What if the unliked friend started inviting you to something weekly? Where would you draw the line and eventually find some way to say that you’d just prefer not to hang out with him that much/at all? It would seem that these forms of self-taxation are mostly to get through a situation where dissent would be untactful. One-time-use tools, not a fix for a lifetime.
I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.
Agreed, and why I replied above that this is most difficult when actions are involved. Faking “beliefs” via non-action, non-participation, non-dissent, non-verbalization is pretty easy, from my experience over the last 15mos.
Not feeling conflicted when I either do or don’t make the sign of the cross when we’re having people over for dinner, whether to actually lead prayers when we host because that’s the “man’s role” in the Christian house in order not to make people suspicious by having my wife lead them (which is what we’ve been doing) is much harder.
Fantastic. I actually bring that up in a non-prayer way quite often, as the idea that god provided the food that I earned via work and my wife made via effort is silly, indeed.
It’s damn difficult to separate what you believe from what you’re pretending to believe at the same time as updating a major chunk of your beliefs. This is really unrealistic for most humans.
Don’t most of us at some point or another pretend to not be attracted to an “off limits” hotty, pretend to like people we really don’t, pretend to find interesting something our children do, pretend to believe in our boss’s vision for success, pretend not to believe in stereotypes, pretend to like a friend’s cooking,...
You have great points, but these are generally one-time events (maybe except the interest in our offspring’s activities) or extremely low-investment. What about being asked to make a concerted, extroverted attempt to be the best friend of that person you don’t like?
I find the concepts of look-once-then-avert (hotty), fake smile (unliked friend), smile and saying “Woow” (kid), enthusiastic-nodding-then-dissent-with-coworkers-later (boss), and the like much easier than actually spending the next x years actually living and acting like I agree with these. Again, perhaps the children’s interest one is different, as could be the boss situation.
I’m inclined to agree that the sign of the cross and saying Amen is not a big deal and probably on par with a fake smile.
Then again, where does one draw the line? What if the unliked friend started inviting you to something weekly? Where would you draw the line and eventually find some way to say that you’d just prefer not to hang out with him that much/at all? It would seem that these forms of self-taxation are mostly to get through a situation where dissent would be untactful. One-time-use tools, not a fix for a lifetime.
Would you agree?
I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.
Agreed, and why I replied above that this is most difficult when actions are involved. Faking “beliefs” via non-action, non-participation, non-dissent, non-verbalization is pretty easy, from my experience over the last 15mos.
Not feeling conflicted when I either do or don’t make the sign of the cross when we’re having people over for dinner, whether to actually lead prayers when we host because that’s the “man’s role” in the Christian house in order not to make people suspicious by having my wife lead them (which is what we’ve been doing) is much harder.
It probably won’t help socially, but there are alternative prayers.
Fantastic. I actually bring that up in a non-prayer way quite often, as the idea that god provided the food that I earned via work and my wife made via effort is silly, indeed.