Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see

[learnedax]

The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.

Someone once told me that I was, to paraphrase, an open book in a foreign language.

I don't think that I am a particularly private person, and there's little I won't happily talk about - but I can believe that it is nonetheless hard to get a handle on me. Very few people really know me that well, even knowing so much about me. And then I wonder how well any of us knows each other. If I could see inside your mind, would I really know you better, or would I just know better how little I know you? Maybe our brains are just wired so differently that seeing someone else's thoughts laid out before us we still couldn't figure out why they think the things they do. Or maybe we really all think alike, and we're just much more subtle and coy than I give us credit for. I don't know which would be sadder.

Either way we seem nearly as good at hiding from ourselves. We may be excellent liars to ourselves, or we may know ourselves completely and still not understand us. Maybe both. We certainly make finding ourselves hard.

Comments

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

You always seemed transparent to me! ;-)

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

That's because you have xray vision!

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Mr. Cellophane, coulda been my name...

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see

For future reference, I have found that "Hold you in my armchair, you can feel my disease" doesn't work very well as a pickup line.

For the rest, I'm of the opinion that we're just wired too differently, and that we lie too effectively to ourselves, to be completely read by anyone else. Emphasize completely - experienced people-readers can do very well, certainly well enough, but I believe there's some level that just can't be read.

[goldenoak.livejournal.com]

wired too differently, and that we lie too effectively to ourselves, to be completely read by anyone else

Yes. Layered on top of that is that society often demands that we present an edited face for one circumstance or another. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but most people have many different habitual layers of masking, even if they're fairly self-aware.

Also, sometimes the longer people have known each other, the less likely they are to look past the iconographic ideas they've built up to represent each other in their heads. I've had strangers grok things about me that friends I've had for decades missed because they 'already knew' me.

[rigel.livejournal.com]

What's got you thinking about that, pray tell?

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Mainly ruminations on identity, which probably everyone is prone to in times of major life change.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It's not just other people -- how good is anyone at knowing themselves? Are we really a "thing", or are we a collection of happenstance and retroactive justifications for our actions, with some planning and introspection thrown in for good measure?

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

That's what I was trying to say in my last paragraph, more or less.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

how good is anyone at knowing themselves?

Probably, like most traits, abilities vary. Some folk are very skilled, some not so much.

Are we really a "thing", or are we a collection of happenstance and retroactive justifications for our actions, with some planning and introspection thrown in for good measure?

Is there any contradiction between the two?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The contradiction/distinction occurs if you assume that a person is something that you can understand in totality, like a formula or a sentence. A view that doesn't promote this idea is therefore, to me, more realistic and less frustrating...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

I think that there's nothing about people that theoretically prevents them from being understood in totality -- but the entity doing the understanding would have to be considerably posthuman :-)