Love and Trust

There are two rooms in two houses.

The first house is the one she got when she was still working her way up. She didn't like it very much--not the best neighborhood, no front yard to speak of, difficult to have any decent privacy--but she keeps it, because it's hers, and because people expect it. In that house, she allows herself two luxuries: two places she needed, not for her work, but for herself, before she would consent to living in such a house for decades, for the rest of her life.

The first is not one of the rooms, but a back yard. It is small, but present, and enough to grow in. She's made it good publicity, since it is organic and environmentally friendly, but first and foremost her garden is her garden. Life from her, feeding her. That keeps her grounded, no matter how many people might try to knock her down. When something goes too horribly at work, she thinks, garden, and her head clears. There's hardly room for what she's managed to fit, but the garden is there. It's hers.

The second luxury in the tiny house is her room. In the dining room, there rests a blank panel that swings out if you press here. Behind, there is a room without a visible floor, because it only barely fits her bed. On each of the four walls, there are books. No one has ever seen this room, though a spouse would, if she married. Anyone she trusted completely would see it.

The second house is a luxury in itself, and she knows it. It's a second house, how could it be anything else? But her work demanded something, some show of status--it was a second house or a mansion. She hated living alone in large places. They always felt cold, and hollow, and empty.

So she bought the place, a small, cozy space, and snapped a picture from the right angle, and put a picture in the right place in her first house. She dropped, "my cabin," or, "my retreat," when necessary, using the latter just enough and in the right tone that no one ever asked to attend. Whatever her words said, she made her tone say, "my sanctuary," "my sacred space," "the place I go to be alone."

That one is more isolated. It had to be, to give the right effect. That is no luxury, that is work, that is showing off to impress the right people. Nor are the books luxurious, to her mind. They are the ones she cannot bear to part with--torn, beat-up, almost disintegrating, old, well loved, hers. They do not fit in the reading room, so they were in storage until she had her reading cabin.

The bed, here, is in one of the rooms she takes pictures of. She can't sleep without books around her. But there is one room she never photographs, she wouldn't even let someone she trusted completely photograph. Show them, yes, but not let them document.

In the heart of the cabin she built, she has something she calls a waiting room, though she only calls it that when no one can hear her. It is behind a bookshelf--push here and the wall and shelf swing in. She sleeps in her reading room, but she only enters this one to dust and polish.

Her garden grounds her, makes sure no one can knock her down.

Her reading room is home, where she can forget the world and sleep.

But this, this room...

Two chairs, one candle in the center of the table, and a small kitchen off to one side. No division--the dining room and the kitchen are the same room, in her waiting room.

Whenever she's in a relationship and her partner want to know if she loves them, or asks her to marry them, she thinks, Would I show them this room?

If she can imagine them in the waiting room to her home, her heart, then they get to come in. They can see the cabin, the room, even the reading room in her first house, that most guarded of sanctuaries. If not, she's honest.

She hasn't been able to say, "Yes," yet. But she may, someday, so she keeps the room. Sometimes, on the days where she takes down a romance novel and wears rose perfume, she imagines cooking with someone else, in that room.

My Line on Secrets

60 summarized posts+13 musings+26 somethings+this post=100 Posts

To start with the simplest way I can think of to say it: Any person should be able to keep secrets that do no harm. No person should be forced to keep a secret.

What I mean to say by the first is that I am not writing this as a part of a crusade to completely do away with secrets. I recognize that saying something like, "Ugh, you are [insult]" is something you might want to keep to yourself. Particularly if there's nothing constructive about the insult--"Your clothes are messed up" is worse than, "You're tag's sticking out," for instance. I also recognize that some secrets are simply difficult to communicate. I...obviously can't give an example of that one.

And, simply, I believe people deserve a certain level of privacy. Unless I am interested in a relationship/one-night stand with you, I don't need to know your orientation. I would say I don't even need to know that, only if you're interested, but there's an entire part of the courtship ritual devoted to winning over a potential mate so...gray area.

Simply put: maybe it's none of my business. I'm fine with that. As one of my goals is to know everything, I want to know, and as a friend I hope that if my friends wants to tell someone they can tell me, but I would not intentionally force an invasion of privacy.

And here comes the flip.

All that stuff I just said about being forced to tell a secret? Combine that with a need to communicate and understand, and a reflexive feeling of wrong about anyone being forced to keep a secret, and you begin to have how I feel about a person made to keep one.

Then there's the more conventional way to force: make it unsafe. If I have no particular thing standing in my way, I personally am open about my bisexuality. If I would become a target...well, I personally would probably be fiercely open out of spite, though that's not exactly the healthiest way to be open, but someone else might hide, and it certainly makes things more difficult. If I would be putting my family (or friends, or partner) in danger...that would stop me. At least for a while. And that lack of choice is not healthy.

There are multiple methods of force, of course. The simplest is one I've alluded to in talking about the right of secrecy: intentionally creating a situation where people are incapable of saying it. Back to sexual orientation--if a person does not know the word bisexual, nor that such an orientation exists, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to recognize that orientation in one's self, never mind explaining it to someone else. It's not as flagrantly dangerous, and yet...

If I'm under threat, I'm under threat, but if I lack the ideas, then I have no idea what is happening. I cannot speak for more than myself, but I would rather understand.

Doublethink and Acting

I've been reading Less Wrong. Several posts--mostly the comments section--inspired this post, but the Franz Ferdinand style sparks were the comments section on this one, and a practice SAT essay prompt asking whether we, the people, need to question authority.

Starting with the easy bit. Yes, we need to question authority. I believe the state of an ideal mind is perpetually and always questioning authority.

There is an important line to be drawn here: Thoughts and Actions.

> And of course, no matter how much you profess your love of mere usefulness, you should never actually end up deliberately believing a useful false statement.

I haven't yet needed to "deliberately believe a useful false statement" (to my knowledge), but I wouldn't be particularly disturbed if I tried to, and found it repeatedly successful. Another tool for my tool belt.

--manuelg 30 January 2008 08:04:00PM

I don't see the line in that statement. It isn't an insult to the person, because the difference, I believe, is merely one in communication. We would do the same thing.

Believing that the sky is blue allows me to behave as if the sky is green. The fact that in my head, I think, The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, and clouds are either white or gray, occasionally becoming dark enough to look black, does not stop the words, "The sky is green and there is never anything but green in the sky," from leaving my mouth. Believing that I should always question authority does not mean I believe I should always defy authority. It means that, if the authority is unjust, I have a system in place to recognize that fact. My system is probably not perfect. However, if everyone is questioning authority, and believes that this state of being is acceptable, then chances are good that someone will notice, and enough people will listen to make it possible to change the injustice.

In the absence of a telepath, what I think does not matter in terms of what other people think of me. If I need to appear to give into peer pressure to avoid being fed to wolves, then the answer is not to give into peer pressure; the answer is to give that appearance. There are places where this thinking reaches a stumbling block--"But I'm not a good enough actor. I have to believe what I'm saying or I can't say it convincingly!"

This state of mind is dangerous.

This mind says, "I can lie to myself easier than I can lie to others." Lying to one's self is also lying to others. And this lie is much more difficult to fix. A lie to yourself needs to be protected to remain, and so questions to it make more lies, before you think about it. You can't admit the truth to yourself; how could you admit it to someone else?

Parable Time
Continuing with peer pressure: Underage drinking. If you don't drink, the people you're with are going to leave you--and you'd rather not be alone in this neighborhood. So you figure one drink can't hurt...and then you're buzzed enough to figure that one more's okay...and then you get home, and your Mom asks you if you're drunk, and, well, you can't exactly lie about that one because you're walking funny and you smell something awful. You get in trouble, but tell yourself that it was your only choice to stay safe, and your Mom's being totally unreasonable, and...

Rewind.

If you don't drink, they're going to leave you, and you'd rather not be in this neighborhood alone. You look around and confirm, yeah, there's really no one who'd stay with you, except that one girl who's smaller than you are and shrinks in enough to basically be shouting, "Hey! Muggers! Easy target!" So you take a beer and sip at it, moving around enough that no one notices that you're not actually drinking more than a sip of the cheap, weak, beer. You also start walking a little funny, which is easy enough because there are some blasted people around to mimic and no one has ever seen you drunk, so any mild mistakes are dismissed as quirks specific to your drunkenness. You get home and decide that the people you were hanging out were all being unreasonable. Honestly, who would leave a friend like that? And the girl who always draws in on herself probably needs some help, she drank from peer pressure and you know her Mom's going to ground her for that, so maybe you should bring her a cupcake at school tomorrow to cheer her up, and find some new friends who won't ditch you for following the law...

You told yourself the truth, and so reacted to the truth, rather than a comfortable, confining lie.

If anyone has a counterexample short of telepathy, I would love to expand my knowledge.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

I sat down to think about the title aphorism when I was younger.

I came to the conclusion that I agreed with the statement as written, and disliked how it seemed some teachers were using it. "Honesty is the best policy," does not mean "Always tell the truth."

There are two values of always that I heard used for this interpretation. One: whenever you think of something that is true, you should communicate it to the best of your ability. This may include insults that are untrue, as it is true you have thought them. This is rude. Two: Everything you say should be true. This is unhelpful.*

So I chose to follow what I believe the statement means, rather than how I have heard it used by people trying to get me to be a good girl, because that way is useful and the other is not. I had trouble communicating this for a while because it seemed so obvious to me that that is what a policy is: Something you need a good reason to move away from.

"When in doubt, tell the truth."
--Mark Twain

I hesitate. Nothing has given me any useful information about this, but everyone is so scared; it must be important. I may not pull the trigger, but I'm directing. Whatever happens, I'm responsible.

"Red or blue!" a voice barks over crackly transmitter.

It's hitting me. Everything. I'm certain, for once I can't hide behind error, because I know what button he wants to hit. He wants blue. But is it right? Is that what I should do?

"Kat!"

I don't know I don't know I don't know. There's no help I can see from picking one or the other, It's a coin flip, no matter what I do, no matter whether I choose red or blue.

So I assume the worst. I assume that I'm going to choose wrongly, I'm destined.

Do I want look back, years from now, and realize that I destroyed my life because I chose to lie?

I hit the orange button on the side of the communicator and shout, "Blue!"

Or, if you prefer to see how my mind worked through it:

Situation: Someone asks you, "T or F?" This is all the information you have. You know that T is the true answer, and F is false, but you have no idea which will benefit you, anyone you care about, etc., etc. But you do know that one of them will cause a clearly positive outcome. So you make your choice.

The chart that appears in my head:

Going by the T or F choices gives you coin flips, so your choice doesn't matter. So let's look at the +/- rows. The universe is secretly trying to screw you over, and you will lose no matter what. This isn't necessarily true; it's just how you're putting your mind together to limit yourself to that row. All things considered, I'll look back mournfully on the truth easier than a lie.

* e.g. "Do you think I can do well enough to get the part?" asked right before an audition. The true answer is 'I'm not sure,' and silence will communicate 'No.' So you lie, at the very least in the moment, because it is what a good friend does.

Faith and Trust

Just for the record, I do not plan to look up either of these in the dictionary while writing this post, and I do not recall ever having done so in the past. I may look both faith and trust up at the end, and put down the official definitions at the end of this post. However, even if they are there, I will change nothing earlier. That is why this part does not establish whether I will do it, even though you, the reader who is reading through the time it took me to write this, can scroll down a few inches and see.

Inspired by a Simpsons quote (paraphrased),

Wiggum: You have that much faith in me?
Homer: No, faith is what you have in things that don't exist. Your awesomeness is real.

I will be writing as if I am referring to people, though you can have faith in or trust something as much as someone.

In the most basic terms: Faith is believing that someone will aid you. No reason to really, no guarantee, no need. Just you believe this. Pretty much the exact opposite of the scientific method*. It doesn't have to be absolutely certainty--though that is what absolute faith is. Even without evidence, the bedrock-solid knowledge that this fact is true.

Flip side, used less: Knowing that it will all go wrong fits equally well. Knowing that the person with the wrong scar over the right eye is going to stab you in the back. You don't know the person. You just see the face.

Laconic: This I believe.

Trust is different. You might have faith in some people after not seeing them for years, but trust has to be kept up. Help you up; stand by you when no one else would; just be there when you need them to be and you trust them. You have seen how they acted in the past, and it leads you to believe they are good people. You know they'll help you and yours.

Flip side, used less: Pretty obvious at this point. Push you down; run when someone else stood with you; leave when you need them most. Worse, do that and then expect you to help them. Maybe even worse than that. Because you will, and tomorrow they're back to this knife-twisting trust, you know they'll hurt you. But you choose. Do you turn you back on you own ideals? Do you stick to them, cruel people or no?

Or do you change your ideals for a new situation?

*I am not belittling the scientific method or faith. The scientific method does require setting one's faiths aside for the sake of seeing reality as it is--but not everything is scientifically provable. And stuff that isn't scientifically proven may well still be true.

Dictionary, closest to mine posted:
Faith: b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
Trust: a : assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something

Musing #6: Truth, Honesty, and Stories

Truth: facts

Honesty: straightforwardness, adhering to facts; see also honor, integrity

Story: Ha. Anything told. An anecdote, a fiction piece, a lie.

Oh, and of course.

Lie: something that is untrue that the speaker knows is untrue, but is reporting as truth.

WARNING: Opinions contained from here on.

Occasionally, I go through and try to figure out oxymorons. Most of the ones people bring up are fairly obvious, e.g. jumbo shrimp are large in comparison to shrimp, military intelligence is military wisdom/knowledge, information gained pertaining to the military.

For today: an honest liar, a truthful liar, a lying honest person and and lying truthful person.

The simplest is a lying truthful person. Stating facts, but only the facts one wants to. Nothing factually inaccurate is being presented, but the image created in the listener's mind is false.

A lying honest person is also fairly easy, though a bit harder to wrap one's mind around. If honesty is related simply to telling the facts, then it would be the above. But it is not--at least, not how I'm using it.

One can mislead by telling only the facts. But there are also times when this very exclusion can serve for greater honesty. If a person has genuinely reformed, then bringing up his or her past serves to do nothing but mislead. So that might get swept under the rug.

Or it might be someone asking if person X said, "Jane Doe needs to lose a few pounds." If the technical answer is yes, but it was said in a joking tone and meant to be taken as a joke among friends, then the honest answer is no. If X doesn't know Jane, or Jane is particularly sensitive about her weight, it gets trickier. But if it is given and taken as a joke, then saying yes is dishonest, even if it is factually accurate.

And, of course, it could also be taken that the honest or truthful person is being deceitful just this once.

A truthful liar is someone who regularly tells the truth and regularly lies. This would almost certainly imply the above example, using facts to mislead. But where the above implies doing so once, this implies doing it as a matter of course.

An alternative is much simpler, and therefore less fun to work out. It is simply someone who regularly lies and regularly tells the truth. This is probably the most dangerous type of liar, as people tend to ignore him/her--and 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' aside, it is rarely just the person misleading who suffers for this. Imagine, if you will, that the flocks are kept close together. The shepherds have to keep taking their sheep away, and finally when the wolf shows up, they don't. They lose their sheep, get injured, etc., etc.

An honest liar. This has the same deal as a truthful liar; it can be someone who tells factually inaccurate things for the sake of the true picture regularly, or someone who is honest and dishonest as a matter of course.

But because of how honest can be used, it has another way to take it. It would be someone who lies, but will not mislead on particularly big stuff. So, for instance, would say, "They went that way!" to get someone off a (friend) thief's trail, but wouldn't do anything that would end up killing someone. Or killing someone 'important', though what that means varies. More commonly referred to as a trickster, scalawag, or playful/mischievous [noun].

And, of course, it could just be a poetic way to refer to a storyteller. One who says things that aren't true, but in such a way that s/he doesn't expect anyone to believe them.