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kate_schaeferI've been posting in my own LiveJournal for a year now, a year today. I don't post every day; sometimes I'll let a month go between posts.
It's an odd thing, living even this much of one's life out in the open where strangers can see it and misinterpret it. Those who know me, of course, have far more context in which to misinterpret anything I write.
I used to know someone who said that all attempts at communication fail; that is, no matter what message one person tried to get across to another, no matter what method used for the communication attempt, the full communication would not make it; some meaning would be lost. We're always all alone in our heads. Even something as simple as please pass the salt? I asked. Especially something as simple as please pass the salt, he said. And because of this loss of meaning, we're all of us lying, all the time, no matter how hard we try to tell the truth. I'm lying as I say this to you now, he said, and you're lying right back to me.
There is, of course, a loss of meaning in my relating this long-ago conversation. I've edited out the things that I don't remember, the things I didn't hear at the time, the things I didn't grasp clearly then, edited them out without even thinking about them. They've always been lost to my memory, since they never got into it. I've left out the back and forth that I know we went through; I've left out the variations on the conversation we had over the course of months, wherein I tried to get closer to understanding what he meant. Did he understand a difference between deliberately saying a thing known not to be true while wanting the person hearing it to believe it to be true, which is what I think of as lying, and saying something that one mistakenly believes to be true but which is not, and again, saying something which one believes to be true but which is incomplete? Yes, he understood those differences, but all of them were still lies, as was trying to tell the complete truth.
I was never sure if I really heard him say that because everything everyone says is definitionally a lie, there is no more moral opprobrium attached to a deliberate lie as conventionally defined than to any other statement. We circled around that idea in several conversations; it seemed as though the closest he got to a definite statement on the subject was not to deny it, but then he'd point out that by his definition I still didn't know what he meant by denying or not denying anything.
He was right, of course. He was also deliberately, obtusely, perversely wrong. When we say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we are triangulating on an approximation, and we know it. We want to know those things that are germane to the matter at hand; we don't want to hear the witness's entire life story, no matter how whole that truth may be. Does that make the request for the truth so defined a lie? No, not as most of us define it, but yes, as he defined it.
It depends on what the meaning of is, is.
And what's my point here? I'm not getting to it yet, not just yet.
Many years ago, I had to take a prescription drug for several months which had the side effect of making me a little bit stupid and clumsy. There was no alternative to the drug, so I put up with it and apologized to the people around me. One of my friends reassured me that no one could tell the difference.
I was dismayed. No one could tell the difference? I could tell the difference; much of the intricate and entertaining inner life of my mind was missing. The delicate nuances of everything I had to think (and therefore to say) were flattened, so that the world I inhabited was much less interesting to me than the world I normally inhabit, but there was no difference to an outside observer.
And from these two anecdotes, about incomplete truth and incomplete thought, imperfectly presented, I arrive at LiveJournal, for incomplete narration. What do I write in LiveJournal? Whatever I feel like; whatever is at the top of my head when I begin to write; what I would write in a letter to a friend, barring personal content. What do I leave out? Most of what makes my life meaningful.
And what about you?
A later addition, because memory is faulty:
Glenn reminded me that what that conversation was about was not so much lying, although lying was part of the context, but manipulation: that all attempts at communication are really intended to manipulate the other person into doing something, and that the thing is usually hidden.
I find myself to be an unreliable narrator and go off to set some sleeves, knowing that the peculiarities of LJ make it unlikely that most people will see this addendum...
It's an odd thing, living even this much of one's life out in the open where strangers can see it and misinterpret it. Those who know me, of course, have far more context in which to misinterpret anything I write.
I used to know someone who said that all attempts at communication fail; that is, no matter what message one person tried to get across to another, no matter what method used for the communication attempt, the full communication would not make it; some meaning would be lost. We're always all alone in our heads. Even something as simple as please pass the salt? I asked. Especially something as simple as please pass the salt, he said. And because of this loss of meaning, we're all of us lying, all the time, no matter how hard we try to tell the truth. I'm lying as I say this to you now, he said, and you're lying right back to me.
There is, of course, a loss of meaning in my relating this long-ago conversation. I've edited out the things that I don't remember, the things I didn't hear at the time, the things I didn't grasp clearly then, edited them out without even thinking about them. They've always been lost to my memory, since they never got into it. I've left out the back and forth that I know we went through; I've left out the variations on the conversation we had over the course of months, wherein I tried to get closer to understanding what he meant. Did he understand a difference between deliberately saying a thing known not to be true while wanting the person hearing it to believe it to be true, which is what I think of as lying, and saying something that one mistakenly believes to be true but which is not, and again, saying something which one believes to be true but which is incomplete? Yes, he understood those differences, but all of them were still lies, as was trying to tell the complete truth.
I was never sure if I really heard him say that because everything everyone says is definitionally a lie, there is no more moral opprobrium attached to a deliberate lie as conventionally defined than to any other statement. We circled around that idea in several conversations; it seemed as though the closest he got to a definite statement on the subject was not to deny it, but then he'd point out that by his definition I still didn't know what he meant by denying or not denying anything.
He was right, of course. He was also deliberately, obtusely, perversely wrong. When we say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we are triangulating on an approximation, and we know it. We want to know those things that are germane to the matter at hand; we don't want to hear the witness's entire life story, no matter how whole that truth may be. Does that make the request for the truth so defined a lie? No, not as most of us define it, but yes, as he defined it.
It depends on what the meaning of is, is.
And what's my point here? I'm not getting to it yet, not just yet.
Many years ago, I had to take a prescription drug for several months which had the side effect of making me a little bit stupid and clumsy. There was no alternative to the drug, so I put up with it and apologized to the people around me. One of my friends reassured me that no one could tell the difference.
I was dismayed. No one could tell the difference? I could tell the difference; much of the intricate and entertaining inner life of my mind was missing. The delicate nuances of everything I had to think (and therefore to say) were flattened, so that the world I inhabited was much less interesting to me than the world I normally inhabit, but there was no difference to an outside observer.
And from these two anecdotes, about incomplete truth and incomplete thought, imperfectly presented, I arrive at LiveJournal, for incomplete narration. What do I write in LiveJournal? Whatever I feel like; whatever is at the top of my head when I begin to write; what I would write in a letter to a friend, barring personal content. What do I leave out? Most of what makes my life meaningful.
And what about you?
A later addition, because memory is faulty:
Glenn reminded me that what that conversation was about was not so much lying, although lying was part of the context, but manipulation: that all attempts at communication are really intended to manipulate the other person into doing something, and that the thing is usually hidden.
I find myself to be an unreliable narrator and go off to set some sleeves, knowing that the peculiarities of LJ make it unlikely that most people will see this addendum...
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:49 am (UTC)I always thought I strove to tell the truth, and valued the truth, and judged people harshly if I caught them in a lie, or betrayal, a bigger kind of lie. I thought about the subject a lot because I felt I was a communicator - a musician and poet and that it was put on me to tell the truth as I saw it to the best of my ability in many forms, using many types of media. My upbringing made me feel very very guilty if I told what I thought was a lie. So much so that all Vining's from our family obsessively judge people over lies. I don't think it's such a good thing.
I always thought you were one of the most honorable people I know. I never heard a lie from you. I believe in truth. And loyalty.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:49 am (UTC)Second, the differences may be more obvious from inside, because someone outside sees that you're/I'm/we're still in the same range of ability as before, and doesn't notice that you're consistently at the bottom of your range. Or they may have seen a slight difference and thought that the lie was comforting, which it's not.
Third, I do write chunks of what makes my life meaningful, including but not limited to my beloveds, other relationships, work, my city, and books. Even the exercise posts--an individual workout is trivial, but the pattern of them, and how it affects me, is not. But I also use filters, some of them very small, though the last time I used the "sweeties" filter was to put some details of travel plans someplace that all three of them and I can easily access if needed.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 02:27 am (UTC)I always tell the truth about what I feel.
There are of course some valid points to your old interlocutor's assertion. There's always something lost, and we DO live alone inside our own heads.
This had led me to the belief that even if we encounter intelligent life elsewhere in the universe we may very likely be unable to communicate with it. I mean, we're all bi-pedal, symmetrical mammals who are one of two sexes (yeah, exceptions noted) and we can't communicate very effectively with each other a lot of the time. How would we communicate with a silicon based, gender switching, irregular thingy? We sure haven't done too well with dolphins and whales and they're at least symmetrical, carbon based, mammals.
MKK
"Imperfectly presented."
Date: 2006-06-30 02:40 am (UTC)Just think; you might just be the one who believes I am talking about them! When, actually, I am just writing nonsense for no-one...
Unless it makes you laugh. In that case I meant to do it!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 02:51 am (UTC)When we say we love someone, and we know we mean it because there is that funny disconnected from reality feeling in our guts; that is the truth. At least for that moment.
When we lash out in anger because we have reached the limits of our endurance; that is truth. At least for that moment.
When we tell someone who is ugly they are beautiful, because they are in ways that don't show; that is the truth. At least for that moment.
I could go on and on about the emotional things humans say that are truth, but all of them will share one thing: They are about the moment. You might be able to say the same thing to the same person a week, a year, or a decade later and have it be the truth. But it is very possible you cannot.
However there are at least two kinds of things humans can say with truth eternal: Things we can express with mathematics. And things we can express with art.
The funny thing about either of those is the fact that the truth we say with them may not be the truth we meant...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 02:53 am (UTC)Particularly, claiming that "pass the salt" can be a lie is a silly sort of category error. To be a lie, a statement must first purport to transmit true information. But "pass the salt" doesn't purport to tell you anything at all. It's a behavioral cue to trigger an action. I don't actually care how it affects your internal beliefs after I get my mitts on the salt cellar.
Me, I write what it occurs to me to write. Sometimes because I want to point at something in case someone else would like to notice it too, but most often because the writing sharpens the act of observation by focusing it. Writing in my LJ helps me see things a little more clearly, or, at least, a little more verbally. And, for me, the act of writing and the act of thinking are often one and the same, so I write here to find out what I think.
But then, I think rain is wet, so who am I to say? Nice piece of fish.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 03:38 am (UTC)Yes.
I used to have no reserve re: spilling my guts in public. Now, what I post is a rung below water-cooler talk. My meaningful life can't really interest anybody outside of my family; and it's a lot of bother to write about it, in any case.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 03:43 am (UTC)A lie is an intentional untruth, intended to deceive. Other unfactualnesses and incompletenesses have other names.
Perhaps the reason nobody could tell the difference re your "stupid and clumsy" is because they were not privy to the fuss blocking the pathway between your thoughts - or your desire to think - and your expression of them.
I have four or five modes of communication that I cycle among. These are not deliberate modes, but just the way things happen. I doubt if anyone else notices.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:00 am (UTC)It's good to hear from you again.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:10 am (UTC)Yes, the differences are more obvious from inside. Another conclusion I came to during that flattened period (or perhaps right after it) is that most of what most people experience in life is invisible to everyone around them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's just a thing.
You are more open in what you write than I am in what I write. Perhaps I should use filters more often, but part of what I intend to do here -- here, on LiveJournal -- is write in such a way that anyone, friend, foe, family, fum, can read what I've set down.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:15 am (UTC)Are we actually trying to communicate with dolphins and/or whales? I know we train them and we track them, but do we try to talk to them? There must be somebody doing that somewhere... dunno if I want to Google it or just speculate wildly.
Re: "Imperfectly presented."
Date: 2006-06-30 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:26 am (UTC)I think I think that, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:33 am (UTC)Precisely. The revelation for me in that experience was the realization that most of what I think I never express aloud, and the fraction that I do express aloud didn't change much even when the thought behind it was much less complex than it normally is. If this is true for me, it is likely to be true for other people as well, and if it's true for other people, then probably a lot of people I had dismissed as uninteresting are in fact living more interesting lives in their heads than I had suspected.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:53 am (UTC)I hope you never have the experience I once had, of being told, "You're lying when you say you don't care for that music" (or book, but in this case it was music). "Everybody likes it. You're just trying to be a snob."
I don't remember what the exact piece was, but I remember what I'd said that triggered this. It was, "Like 90% of jazz, this does nothing for me."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:58 am (UTC)No.
Did you mention that you'd blacked out?
Not at that time. I did mention it later when explaining why I didn't intend to take LSD again.
Were you okay after that?
As much as I ever was in those days.
Reductio
Date: 2006-06-30 07:32 am (UTC)Or, if you rememeber, "Zeno be damned, sooner or later ya gotta get laid."
The writing of characters
Date: 2006-06-30 07:49 am (UTC)My problems with this are, it usually is presented as something entirely new and original to the web (as if blogging, diaries, correspondence, etc. never existed before the web), and also I see it as a form of blaming the reader for the choices of the writer.
That the first is manifestly untrue I hope a few names will suffice to show: Barrett & Browning, Durrell & Miller, Mrs. Fitzgerald & GBS, Frank Doel & Helene Hanff. The list could go on and on, obviously.
The second appears to be trickier, because I've had usually smart and sensible people not get it. Which is probably my fault. (And hence, part of my point.)
The reason I'm replying to this comment specifically is the link to fiction. That is, I see online writing of the journal/diary/blog variety as an exercise in creating an epistolary character, comma, non-fiction division (usually). That means, just as with a fictional character, what the reader sees is what the writer chooses for them to see. For the writer to then go and blame the reader for lacking information the writer never let the reader in on in the first place seems to me the height of arrogance, and/or masochism.
So, yes, if I don't "know" the writer secretly makes anonymous donations to help the poor, thereby mitigating all their snarkiness... Well, who made that a secret in the first place?
I'd also say your interlocutor was suffering from a large dose of projection. It may well be he was lying, even by his own daffy, non-standard definitions of same. But to turn around and then insist that everyone lies seems like extrapolating from a very small sample of data. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:07 pm (UTC)Re: The writing of characters
Date: 2006-06-30 12:11 pm (UTC)A related aspect of this is the "you can't trust people you meet online, because they're only showing you part of themselves," as if anyone you met at a party, or walking in the park, or through your ex-roommate's mother, immediately showed you the entire truth about themselves.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:38 pm (UTC)I wouldn't, and neither would (I think) a court of law. "Telling an untruth that's not intended to deceive" (e.g. joke, tall story) is a different kind of deception, and so it would seem reasonable that "Telling a truth that is intended to deceive" would be another kind also.
In fact, people sometimes go to great lengths to arrange their behavior so that they can be totally deceptive when speaking of it while not uttering an actual untruth. The classic example is the man who limits his sexual activity with his mistress to oral acts so that he can say quite honestly that he hasn't had sex with her. (And no, that man is not Bill Clinton. His name is Newt Gingrich.)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:45 pm (UTC)I'm reminded of the conversation between two characters at the end of one Firefly episode (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers) in which one treats lies and manipulation as the only way for people to interact, and the other tries to explain that they're not, and that you get more options as well as a richer, happier life by surrounding yourself with people you can trust.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 02:54 pm (UTC)Tim Kyger, not anonymous
Date: 2006-06-30 04:03 pm (UTC)I do think so.
Well, take heart, then; that person thinks well of you. *HE* is convinced *you* ran Iggy for the last month, *and* throughout the convention itself.
Re: Tim Kyger, not anonymous
Date: 2006-06-30 04:19 pm (UTC)I know you find the Anonymous crap annoying. I found it annoying, too, so I got a free LJ account just so I could comment on other people's LJs. A long time later -- months? A year? -- I started posted here and switched to paid status. It doesn't eat much of my time, because I don't post very often, but it does eat some. It certainly eats more of it than before I got the LJ account; on the other hand, it provides a space where people can find me, since I use the mysterious pseudonym of "Kate_Schaefer."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 04:27 pm (UTC)"Sorry" is another one, used for both sympathy and apology, or either sympathy or apology.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 05:06 pm (UTC)MKK
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:28 pm (UTC)Re: The writing of characters
Date: 2006-06-30 09:46 pm (UTC)I assume that we are conversing here, and that this is a thought connected yet tangential to the conversation rather than a description of what I've said.
All of communication is -- of course -- an exercise in editing as much as it is an exercise in revealing. I think my readers know me, just as my friends know me (and I assume that the majority of my readers are in fact my friends who know me in other arenas), through accumulation of consistent detail, some of it under my conscious control, some of it not. I think the things they don't know about me are the sorts of things most people don't communicate, in non-fiction essays, in fiction, in conversation, in street mime, and they are the things that make it most interesting to be me.
It would be dull in the extreme if I were to write up a commentary on the bugs I watch in the garden, and how they compare to bugs I've seen in years past, and just what the metallic wingcases of the beetles look like in the sunlight, and how much I hope that stain will come out of those pants, and then go on and detail the eleventy-three other things I think in the course of a minute or so. It's not dull to give a summary of such things, because it evokes such a list in your head as well, of dozens of things you notice and forget in a moment. And that's not what I was starting out to say, either, but I'll leave it in, because this is conversation, and conversation is not tidily bounded.
I do leave out most of what makes my life meaningful. I refer to the people I love, the things I do, the thoughts I think, but the reference loses most of its particularity by the time it's turned into words. At that point -- and at the point where I urged Holly to write more fiction rather than addressing the meaningful aspects of her life on LJ -- fiction would be a more truthful medium than the non-fiction essay for conveying the emotional impact of life. It would be a more truthful medium, and it would require more discipline of me than I have ever displayed in that particular area.
And there I go back into that edge between truth and lies again. True fiction? False facts? I have no conclusions.
My interlocutor was suffering from projection, for sure. As noted above, I was suffering from poor recollection of the main point he was trying to make, perhaps because of my own obsession with truth and falsity rather than with a confusion between straightforward communication and manipulative communication for gain and perhaps because there were so many conversational variants on this particular set of topics, so many years ago.
Re: The writing of characters
Date: 2006-06-30 11:51 pm (UTC)Absolutely. I'm sorry that wasn't more clear.
I blame the writer, myself. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:56 am (UTC)MKK
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 07:09 am (UTC)I think a lot of times when people say stuff like that - the "don't be a snob" response - they are thinking of other snobs they've known and are, in a way, fighting ghosts. "Eh, does nothing for me" is often a prelude to "It is inherently dumb, and people who like it have poor taste." [Jazz, romance novels, monster trucks... you name it.] So people get their backs up.
It also might be that they want to convey, "If you had a slightly different subset of knowledge to relate this experience too, like, knew all of music theory and etc. etc., you would understand what the jazz is saying and then possibly like it, but since you don't know the 'language' of it you can't reject the jazz-heads' judgement of it or say that they are fools who like crap." And are conveying it clumsily, furthering misunderstanding all around.
I think when it's done for real - "I know better than you do what you think" - it's evil. I particularly hate it when I encounter a psychoanalyst or an aura-reader, and feel grateful I'm not in their power.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:49 pm (UTC)No, I don't think that's what the person meant to convey, or he wouldn't have called me a snob. I think he was of the opinion that jazz is a popular music, that it's instantly appealing to everyone, and that if you say you don't like it you're an uptight liar. I see this kind of attitude a lot: for instance when I critique a popular but lousy movie, and am told "Why can't you just enjoy it?" when the point of the critique was that its lousiness made it unenjoyable.
Ironically, these days jazz is a snob elitist's music second only to classical, which is my music of choice. (These people probably doubt that I really like it; I'm just being a snob.)
"Eh, does nothing for me" is often a prelude to "It is inherently dumb, and people who like it have poor taste."
Not if it begins with "Eh," I wouldn't think. In my case it was no prelude, for I said nothing else, and my general reaction to the appeal of jazz is one of bafflement. If I'm going to denounce some kind of music, it'll be something else.
"You LIKE broccoli..."
That can often be, "You liked it the last time we had it" or "You said you liked it." Answers can be: 1) the child doesn't know what they like; 2) their tastes have changed unknown to themselves since last time; 3) it was fixed a different way last time; 4) they haven't conveyed that it's not that they don't like it per se, it's that they really don't want any right now. (We are talking about rather small children.)
My experience is that you get more "It's good for you" (irrelevant, and hard to believe of something that tastes repulsive) or "It's delicious" (i.e. my tastes are the entire world's) or "Eat it anyway" (the fascist approach).
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:56 pm (UTC)If they were feelings about your personal tastes and preferences, those should be unarguable, though they might generate useful talk about why you feel that way, how he feels differently, whether you both match up with the world in general.
But on the other hand, I once had a business conversation about the print run for a book with someone who felt that her feelings, which she did not feel necessary to provide any explanation or justification for, took precedence over any established policies or procedures, educated guesses or other relevant thoughts about marketing, etc. That was just the way she felt and that was the end of it.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-05 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 04:47 pm (UTC)And speaking of finding things in old comment threads, when I said "whisper it" in fact I didn't mean to hide from my friends the fact that we think we've found a house we'd like to own, but rather just that the act of typing that out at all seems alarmingly like tempting the gods to smite our hopes. The velocity of housing on the Seattle market is dizzying. As we've been going through our "still just looking" phase, plausible houses have come onto the market and gone into escrow in merest days, sometimes more like hours. Houses I wouldn't touch go just as fast. Until we at least have a lender pre-approval in hand, saying that we've found something seems dangerously like tempting fate. But I'm a bit house obsessed at the moment, and had to say something.