People lie
I'm feeling very emotional and ugly today. My hair has been misbehaving three days after I blew $120 on it, and my sweater looks frumpy the second time I've worn it. I got into an argument with a friend today via Yahoo! IM. The specifics are stupid and as such a bit embarrassing, but in general, she was mad at me because I either don't consider what people mean to say when they say things to me or I assume they mean something mean and I was mad at her because she just says stuff and doesn't care how it comes off to people and because she can be patronizing, but, really, a lot of people are patronizing to me.
And that prompted the following revelation: I hold the truth of what people tell me as largely irrelevant. Which is not to say that the truth is unimportant because it's not. It's just that in conversation, people say things that have varying degrees of truth, and there's very little of that I'll be able to immediately distinguish as true or false. I tend to think of language, rather than primarily as a means of communicating information, as a tool with one of its uses being to communicate information.
People say things to achieve an effect of some sort, get a reaction. Feedback is, after all, an integral part of the communication process. You might tell someone what time it is to convey information. You might ask for money to receive something. You might insult someone to make them feel worse or make yourself feel better. I'm of the belief that most people who say nice things to me are doing so to make me more inclined to do something that they think I might otherwise be disinclined to do. More often than not, that something is be nice to them. Basically, when people tell me things, I'm trying to determine what they want or expect me to do in response.
She told me that I'm too young to be so cynical. I found that kind of funny because I don't think I'm all that young or cynical.
And that prompted the following revelation: I hold the truth of what people tell me as largely irrelevant. Which is not to say that the truth is unimportant because it's not. It's just that in conversation, people say things that have varying degrees of truth, and there's very little of that I'll be able to immediately distinguish as true or false. I tend to think of language, rather than primarily as a means of communicating information, as a tool with one of its uses being to communicate information.
People say things to achieve an effect of some sort, get a reaction. Feedback is, after all, an integral part of the communication process. You might tell someone what time it is to convey information. You might ask for money to receive something. You might insult someone to make them feel worse or make yourself feel better. I'm of the belief that most people who say nice things to me are doing so to make me more inclined to do something that they think I might otherwise be disinclined to do. More often than not, that something is be nice to them. Basically, when people tell me things, I'm trying to determine what they want or expect me to do in response.
She told me that I'm too young to be so cynical. I found that kind of funny because I don't think I'm all that young or cynical.