I don't think you're dishonest in the sense of trying to trick people. I'm talking about with yourself. Who you tell yourself you are vs. who you are. I'm not saying there's any malicious aspect to your dishonesty. If you want to quibble over the terms, and call it self-trickery or whatever, that's fine. My musings are for myself, so I don't have to worry about semantics on my end, since I know what I mean, so I'm happy to use whatever terminology works for you.
But you hit on what puzzles me about people in general. You're aware you aren't objective. You're aware that you're tricking yourself. How do you keep that knowledge which you possess from impacting how you behave? Is it just compartmentalized? Is it a voice that you can just turn off?
Using your reliability example. You know you've struggled with reliability forever. You know nothing has changed from the previous incident of unreliability. Yet you say 'this time is different' even though you have all the information necessary to know that this time is not different. Where does that knowledge go? I'd guess in any other setting, you'd call someone a 'fucking idiot' for not being able to see such a clear and obvious pattern, no?
Do you want to believe you're reliable? That seems like it could be the motivation. To be something you're not. Which doesn't mesh well with your 'indifference/behave how I want to behave' mantra.
Do you ever worry that there are a bunch of traits you believe you possess that you don't (or vice-versa), but you're just tricking yourself? If you know you can trick yourself so thoroughly in the face of a mountain of evidence that you are well aware of, what can you really be sure of about yourself? Or is that just another example of the self-trickery. That you maintain a really high level of confidence despite having knowledge that should lead to self doubt.
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We have some stuff in common. I have a very detached 3rd person point of view of things that tends to make other people's points of view appear to be nonsense. I'm lucky in that I can see myself from that 3rd person point of view as well, and that's probably made adjusting a little easier, rather than being trapped in the 1st person perspective which seems tougher to break out of.
You've mentioned an interest in Poker. It seems like these traits are potentially devastating. Being objective, and viewing things from other people's different perspectives are part of the foundation of making good decisions. Are you able to overcome those things in that setting?
Regarding wasting my time, I don't view it as wasting my time in any context. And it makes sense I seem slippery and deceptive. For the most part, you should put my actions in the context of indifference. In that context, the prison dating thing was just an offbeat possible solution to a tricky problem I came across. All this rambling about you being self-deceptive is just curiosity over something I'm looking at. Although, being honest, I do like to make myself laugh, so things can be rooted in mean-spirited jokes, but I think I'm usually fairly blunt in those situations. So if it's not clear I'm making a joke, I'm probably not making a joke. Then again, what I think is clear sometimes isn't clear to everyone. So your skepticism is certainly justified.
But you hit on what puzzles me about people in general. You're aware you aren't objective. You're aware that you're tricking yourself. How do you keep that knowledge which you possess from impacting how you behave? Is it just compartmentalized? Is it a voice that you can just turn off?
Using your reliability example. You know you've struggled with reliability forever. You know nothing has changed from the previous incident of unreliability. Yet you say 'this time is different' even though you have all the information necessary to know that this time is not different. Where does that knowledge go? I'd guess in any other setting, you'd call someone a 'fucking idiot' for not being able to see such a clear and obvious pattern, no?
Do you want to believe you're reliable? That seems like it could be the motivation. To be something you're not. Which doesn't mesh well with your 'indifference/behave how I want to behave' mantra.
Do you ever worry that there are a bunch of traits you believe you possess that you don't (or vice-versa), but you're just tricking yourself? If you know you can trick yourself so thoroughly in the face of a mountain of evidence that you are well aware of, what can you really be sure of about yourself? Or is that just another example of the self-trickery. That you maintain a really high level of confidence despite having knowledge that should lead to self doubt.
---
We have some stuff in common. I have a very detached 3rd person point of view of things that tends to make other people's points of view appear to be nonsense. I'm lucky in that I can see myself from that 3rd person point of view as well, and that's probably made adjusting a little easier, rather than being trapped in the 1st person perspective which seems tougher to break out of.
You've mentioned an interest in Poker. It seems like these traits are potentially devastating. Being objective, and viewing things from other people's different perspectives are part of the foundation of making good decisions. Are you able to overcome those things in that setting?
Regarding wasting my time, I don't view it as wasting my time in any context. And it makes sense I seem slippery and deceptive. For the most part, you should put my actions in the context of indifference. In that context, the prison dating thing was just an offbeat possible solution to a tricky problem I came across. All this rambling about you being self-deceptive is just curiosity over something I'm looking at. Although, being honest, I do like to make myself laugh, so things can be rooted in mean-spirited jokes, but I think I'm usually fairly blunt in those situations. So if it's not clear I'm making a joke, I'm probably not making a joke. Then again, what I think is clear sometimes isn't clear to everyone. So your skepticism is certainly justified.
