From: jmd@bear.com (Josh Diamond)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Honesty, Your word, and Trust -- a crisis?
Date: 25 Jan 93 20:16:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: lion.JMD.93Jan25151632
Organization: Bear, Stearns & Co. - FAST
In-reply-to: tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu's message of 23 Jan 93 05:46:44 GMT


In article <1993Jan23.054644.17038@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode) writes:


   in <JMD.93Jan22123711@lion.bear.com>
       jmd@bear.com (Josh Diamond) writes:
   ]
   ] [Extract of my post on honesty eliminated for brevity]

   This reminds me of someone I know who has severe, debilitating attacks
   of anal retentiveness; this tends to result in conversations along the
   lines of

	 "I'm going out to pick up a couple of CDs; want to come along?"
	 "Which two CDs are you going to buy?"
	 "I haven't decided yet; I'll probably figure that out after I have
	  a chance to see what they have."
	 "Then how do you know you're going to buy two?"
	 "I don't; I feel like buying some, but I might not even find any
	  that I like."
	 "You said you were going to buy a 'couple'--that means two;
	  exactly two.  So you lied."

   As a result, we don't go shopping together very often.

That is a bit extreme, and there is a limit.  We mustn't forget the
vagaries and ambiguities of coloquial english...

   I think the great majority of people let the feelings of others
   influence their actions and whether or not others are hurt is much more
   important in deciding what to do in a given situation than whether or
   not what they do is exactly what they had initially remarked that they
   were going to do.  In most people's value structures, being faithful to
   a spouse is much more important and deserving of much more attention
   than whether you happen to show up five minutes later for a party than
   you had said because it took a little bit longer to finish decorating
   the hors d'oeuvre tray you're bringing.  The latter incident can't
   really be called a 'breakdown in honesty' and it's fairly unlikely that
   affairs are that much more common among those who have miscalculated how
   long it will take them to get ready for a party and have shown up late.

   [ other examples of marginal cases skipped ]

Trygve -- I agree with you here.  There are cases where priorities of
committment come into play, and it becomes inevitable that you break
your word either entirely or partially.  And thats ok.

You see, the problem is _not_ that we break our word.  It is that we
break our word and do not acknowledge it.  And also, that we are so
unwilling to confront people that we lie (i.e. Dave Fuller's point
about saying that we're going to the party when in fact we just dont
want to tell the person that we're not interested), or that we are
unwilling to confront and thus do not tell someone that their broken
promise bothered us.

BTW, you seem to be attaching a little to much meaning to the example
I used.  I intentionally chose a trivial, yet common and obvious
situation -- one which all have experienced.

   ] It seems to me that this can only lead to a breakdown in trust.  If
   ] our relationship with our word is like it is, how can we trust each
   ] other?  How can we expect others to trust us when our word does not
   ] matter to us?

   How about on the basis that we expect other people to behave in a
   manner that respects our feelings and expectations, with the importance
   on living up to their words depending on how important it is to us for
   them to do so? 

This seems perfect to me -- and is exactly what I had in mind.  But it
is important to be certain that we are _completely_ clear on just how
important the action is.


Spidey!!!
--
You don't hunt ducks with a turnip! 

 /\ \  / /\  Josh Diamond                                          jmd@bear.com
//\\ .. //\\ AKA Spidey!!!                        ...!ctr.columbia.edu!ursa!jmd
//\((  ))/\\
/  < `' >  \                                              Do whatever it takes.