Mob wrangling
I often do things that anger people.
Yeah, what else is new, right? Everyone does. One of the things that's somewhat different, in my case, is that I often know I'm doing it. I often do it on purpose, knowing that it will anger someone. ( I don't do it with the purpose of angering them... )
Yeah, what else is new, right? Everyone does. One of the things that's somewhat different, in my case, is that I often know I'm doing it. I often do it on purpose, knowing that it will anger someone. ( I don't do it with the purpose of angering them... )
You can be indirect without shucking personal accountability. Actually, it's awfully hard to be direct, in general -- there's just too much data, you have to use context to communicate, and that's exactly what makes a communication indirect. I'm not really talking so much about directness, and certainly don't think it's a requirement. Just be straight about your motives, is all, even if those motives are communicated indirectly, and you can be indirect while taking personal accountability for your motives.
To elaborate on the "would you mind" thing I mentioned, which is the only time I'm actually talking about "directness" above, the thing that really sets off my warning bells is when someone, after the fact, disclaims any responsibility for the request by saying things along the lines of "I didn't ask you to do that". The warnings are especially loud if I notice that the person sometimes claims that he did ask, and sometimes claims that he didn't, depending on what answer favors him at the moment. By being indirect in this particular manner, you're allowing yourself the ability to be shifty, later, by "revising history" to be one that paints you in good light, or others in bad light. Being direct removes that particular ambiguity. If someone has been shifty like this, I no longer allow them the implicit ambiguity: If such a person asks if I'd mind doing something, I ask them to clarify if they're requesting I do it or not.
I may be reading a bit more into this than is actually there, but it seems like you're trying to disagree with me that being indirect is "bad". So I figured I'd clarify that I'm not actually stating that indirectness is bad. I rather like indirectness, in fact. I really dislike it when that indirectness is used as wiggle-room to rewrite history. It's the re-writing history that I dislike, though, not the indirectness.
As an aside, I'm pretty sure that a language's capacity for indirectness isn't an cultural attitude issue so much as a pragmatic one. I can certainly see pragmatic reasons for it, in any case.
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That should clarify.
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I think she has something on the "unique to America" front. I don't think it's actually unique to America, but I think it's a bit exacerbated. I really don't think that the capacity for indirectness means a similar attitude on the morality of being direct. I think you have something on the "same attitudes" front, too, but I think that attitude is one of getting things done, not morality.
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Ah, I see the difference now. Not the method, but the goal. I think I've seen the behavior you're talking about, but never really thought about it that way. Interesting.
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