The concept is called ‘ketman’—that term was popularized by Czeslaw Miłosz, who wrote about its practice under Communism.
I’m not sure if the pressure comes from lying per se—it’s not as if the practice is recent or uncommon—or from having no place to go where you can escape the necessity to lie. Dalrymple was on to something when he said that the purpose of forcing public profession of the official idea under Communism was to humiliate; any place to tell the truth is a blow against the regime’s goal of humiliation. Underground acts of non-public defiance aren’t a new concept.
Secret societies aren’t a new concept either; they don’t seem to be as common anymore as they once were (but then again, how would I know?), but that’s because they’ve been replaced by open but obscure/anonymous pseudosocieties online.
But there’s a problem with the act of practicing ketman and going underground. Say you get n utility from having a secret society or similar, having an outlet to assert the truth outside the watch of the authority demanding that you lie—but you’d get n^2 utility from getting the official lies dethroned. But you’d lose a great deal of utility if you got caught not believing in the lie.
That’s a difficult coordination problem, since you clearly can’t dethrone the official idea yourself. Perhaps it is deserving of study.
I’m not sure if the pressure comes from lying per se—it’s not as if the practice is recent or uncommon—or from having no place to go where you can escape the necessity to lie.
I believe it’s the latter. On emotional level, if I can’t speak openly with a person, I have a feeling like they “don’t belong to my tribe”, they are a stranger. There is a difference between being sometimes with strangers, and being alone among strangers, all the time.
It is much easier to have clear rules about when to use my “public” face, and when to relax and be myself. Using my “public” face increases my internal pressure; I need a place to talk about it and relax. If I don’t have that place, then I will lose attention in random moments, and expose my internal heresies. It is easier to keep control, if I have clear boundaries for when the hypocrisy begins and when it ends.
Having just one person to talk honestly with already helps a lot. (I am tired to google now, but there is probably some article on LW about how the first voice of dissent is most important.) It is much easier for me to think, if I can talk. Talking makes my thought processes much clearer. Not having a sane person to talk with is like not having a part of brain, or for a more realistic analogy, like being drunk or exhausted all the time.
The concept is called ‘ketman’—that term was popularized by Czeslaw Miłosz, who wrote about its practice under Communism.
I’m not sure if the pressure comes from lying per se—it’s not as if the practice is recent or uncommon—or from having no place to go where you can escape the necessity to lie. Dalrymple was on to something when he said that the purpose of forcing public profession of the official idea under Communism was to humiliate; any place to tell the truth is a blow against the regime’s goal of humiliation. Underground acts of non-public defiance aren’t a new concept.
Secret societies aren’t a new concept either; they don’t seem to be as common anymore as they once were (but then again, how would I know?), but that’s because they’ve been replaced by open but obscure/anonymous pseudosocieties online.
But there’s a problem with the act of practicing ketman and going underground. Say you get n utility from having a secret society or similar, having an outlet to assert the truth outside the watch of the authority demanding that you lie—but you’d get n^2 utility from getting the official lies dethroned. But you’d lose a great deal of utility if you got caught not believing in the lie.
That’s a difficult coordination problem, since you clearly can’t dethrone the official idea yourself. Perhaps it is deserving of study.
I believe it’s the latter. On emotional level, if I can’t speak openly with a person, I have a feeling like they “don’t belong to my tribe”, they are a stranger. There is a difference between being sometimes with strangers, and being alone among strangers, all the time.
It is much easier to have clear rules about when to use my “public” face, and when to relax and be myself. Using my “public” face increases my internal pressure; I need a place to talk about it and relax. If I don’t have that place, then I will lose attention in random moments, and expose my internal heresies. It is easier to keep control, if I have clear boundaries for when the hypocrisy begins and when it ends.
Having just one person to talk honestly with already helps a lot. (I am tired to google now, but there is probably some article on LW about how the first voice of dissent is most important.) It is much easier for me to think, if I can talk. Talking makes my thought processes much clearer. Not having a sane person to talk with is like not having a part of brain, or for a more realistic analogy, like being drunk or exhausted all the time.
The recent history of getting homosexuality mainstreamed is an interesting example.