reticence, at some great length
(Unrelated to the substance of this post:
retrobabble and
madmanatw, could you contact me via e-mail? My gmail address is marissalingen. Thanks.)
cakmpls and
papersky have been talking about lying and telling the truth, and it's all very interesting, and I recommend that you go to their journals and read the recent posts and comments sections if you have any interest in these topics. I just wanted to reproduce part of what I said over at
cakmpls's, slightly edited, after some discussion of McCarthyism:
[...] I think it's important to keep the phrases, "I'm afraid I don't feel like talking about that right now," "I'm afraid I don't think that's any of your business," "I don't share that sort of thing except with my closest friends and family," and "That's more complicated than I'd like to go into right now," all in ready circulation, with their attendant rephrasings. It's very important to combat the idea that anyone who doesn't feel like talking about every last little detail of their lives has already told you what those details are.
I got upset with someone for spreading the gossip that an old friend's fiancee was not sleeping with him, because I considered it exactly the same as spreading the gossip that she was: none of my business. And worse, it introduced the concept that those friends' sexual choices were legitimate topics of investigation for people with no direct knowledge of same. I can't think of very many things they could be doing together that I would disapprove of, so it's not that I want to protect them in case they have something to hide. It's that their relationship is not my relationship.
I also routinely refuse to answer that I don't know that someone is pregnant (before she's announced it), because if I made a practice of saying, "No, X isn't pregnant as far as I know," and then later I said, "Well, I can't tell you anything about that," it would be the same as saying yes. It has to start long before the specific question comes up if it's going to work -- the answer always has to be, "I'm sure if X had anything like that she wanted you to know, she would know where to find you." I can't think of a situation wherein I would consider it shameful for one of my friends to be pregnant, so again, it's not that I want to protect them in case they have something to hide. The idea that not all relationships are my relationships and not all stories are my stories is very important to me. So is the idea that the stories that are mine are mine not to tell as well as mine to tell.
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[...] I think it's important to keep the phrases, "I'm afraid I don't feel like talking about that right now," "I'm afraid I don't think that's any of your business," "I don't share that sort of thing except with my closest friends and family," and "That's more complicated than I'd like to go into right now," all in ready circulation, with their attendant rephrasings. It's very important to combat the idea that anyone who doesn't feel like talking about every last little detail of their lives has already told you what those details are.
I got upset with someone for spreading the gossip that an old friend's fiancee was not sleeping with him, because I considered it exactly the same as spreading the gossip that she was: none of my business. And worse, it introduced the concept that those friends' sexual choices were legitimate topics of investigation for people with no direct knowledge of same. I can't think of very many things they could be doing together that I would disapprove of, so it's not that I want to protect them in case they have something to hide. It's that their relationship is not my relationship.
I also routinely refuse to answer that I don't know that someone is pregnant (before she's announced it), because if I made a practice of saying, "No, X isn't pregnant as far as I know," and then later I said, "Well, I can't tell you anything about that," it would be the same as saying yes. It has to start long before the specific question comes up if it's going to work -- the answer always has to be, "I'm sure if X had anything like that she wanted you to know, she would know where to find you." I can't think of a situation wherein I would consider it shameful for one of my friends to be pregnant, so again, it's not that I want to protect them in case they have something to hide. The idea that not all relationships are my relationships and not all stories are my stories is very important to me. So is the idea that the stories that are mine are mine not to tell as well as mine to tell.
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