One confusion I’ve had; where people treat emotions as a level on which it is difficult to fake things but then later don’t act surprised when actions are at odds with the previous moment to moment feelings. Like, I was happy to accept that your current experience is validly how you feel in the moment, but I didn’t think how you feel is strong evidence for your ‘true’ beliefs/future actions etc. And it’s weird that others do given that the track record is actually quite bad. So if I take one perspective, people are constantly lying and get very mad if you point this out.
This made a lot more sense when I stopped modeling people as monolithic agents. The friction arises because they are modeling themselves as monolithic agents. So I changed the way I talk about people’s preferences. But it is still tricky and I often forget. I’ve thought of this as a sort of extension to NVC, NMC or non-monolithic communication also encourages you to remove the I and You constructs from your language and see what happens. It isn’t possible in real time communication, but it is an interesting exercise while journaling in that it forces a confrontation with direct observer moments.
One confusion I’ve had; where people treat emotions as a level on which it is difficult to fake things but then later don’t act surprised when actions are at odds with the previous moment to moment feelings. Like, I was happy to accept that your current experience is validly how you feel in the moment, but I didn’t think how you feel is strong evidence for your ‘true’ beliefs/future actions etc. And it’s weird that others do given that the track record is actually quite bad. So if I take one perspective, people are constantly lying and get very mad if you point this out.
This made a lot more sense when I stopped modeling people as monolithic agents. The friction arises because they are modeling themselves as monolithic agents. So I changed the way I talk about people’s preferences. But it is still tricky and I often forget. I’ve thought of this as a sort of extension to NVC, NMC or non-monolithic communication also encourages you to remove the I and You constructs from your language and see what happens. It isn’t possible in real time communication, but it is an interesting exercise while journaling in that it forces a confrontation with direct observer moments.
What is NMC?
(For anyone who doesn’t know: NVC stands for Nonviolent Communication. I would highly recommend it.)