I was thinking about social skills again. Social skills are difficult and interesting to think about because Caino hypocriens has no social skills. To think about them at all, they first have to be invented out of whole cloth. Both funny and good practice.
Someone with social skills is easy to have a conversation with. They know to say things which have follow-ups, ideally ones interesting to both parties. They know how to pick up on cues from others to continue the conversation, and how to coax cues out of someone who isn't hitting their best game.
Those with social skills know how not to provoke unnecessarily conflict, in particular how not to seem aggro accidentally.
They also know how to win any conflicts which arise.
Despite America's extreme liar fetish, it is still the case that you can always straightforwardly win simply by telling the truth.
Imagine someone goes all passive aggressive. All you have to say is:
"That was rude." Don't be mad, be factual. Yes, folk are rude sometimes. It doesn't matter why.
"No it wasn't."
"Oh? Are you not aware? Let me explain." It doesn't matter if they lie: as with almost all lies, taking the liar's words as a mistaken sincere opinion defeats the lie. Clearly they need you to help them not be rude by accident, see?
How are they going to credibly disprove your stance - by admitting it's a lie? They're trapped.
Someone is bullying you:
"Ah, so you're being rude on purpose."
There's no win for the bully. They either admit it, "Yes, I'm a bully," or they deny it, and you can describe how it's rude.
"If you're being rude on purpose, why would I listen to you?" There is no good reason. Simply explain the truth.
Speaking the truth is also an exceptionally useful cooperative social skill. When you meet someone new, you don't know what interests them. So ask. "Hey, what interests you?" "Tell me about your best past conversations." Now you know at least a little of what to converse with them about.
Why did America become so lie-happy in the first place? If someone is inferior to you and they hate it, you can't fix it by telling the truth. Only they can fix it by telling the truth. Bringing it up will only make it worse.
Though it's hardly difficult to avoid bringing it up. Even if they bring it up in an attempt to force a falsehood, you can simply call it out. "You don't want me to answer that question, and therefore I won't."
1 comment:
it occurs to me all the "we're only human" type lines are an admission that 1) humans are holy animals and can be invoked to get out of bad situations, which means 2) humanism has failed, people treat each other worse than before, probably because 3) appealing to generics is just an awful way to apologize/convey/communicate. compare to all the usual pick-me ups which everyone knows; you !specifically were good that one time, you !specifically are good at this thing now, you !specifically just lost sight a bit. possibly in the past with astrology physiognomy and other kinds of "discrimination" it was even better, can read strangers and have a vague idea what could help, and close acquaintances even clearer. now we have friends that don't know each others tendencies and defaulting to "we're only human". might as well say "we're only breathing" or "we're only talking".
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