Are You Sincere?

 “Are you sincere?” is a question that resonated deeply enough with the American public to have been the title and theme of a song recorded 14 times, and that reached number three on the Billboard chart. The song resonated, I believe, because it portrayed a fundamental. issue in all interpersonal experience. In my Questioning & Answering book, I coupled sincerity with reasonableness to address those essential features of human discourse. There I suggest that in all important discussions wherein we ask a question, are asked a question, provide an answer, or receive an answer, we should consciously consider its sincerity and reasonableness.  Among other considerations, sincerity and reasonableness must be contextualized for time, place, and person [That merely is one aspect of contextualizing for your internal context (body and mind) and your external context (everything outside your body and mind)] 

Evaluate why the questions and answers are being presented now, why they are being presented in this particularsetting, who is presenting them, what your internal context is, and any other relevant contextual elements within and outside of your body and mind.

 

Anytime, anyplace, anyone can question and answer about anything, but the questions and answers that deserve our greatest attention and effort are those that are most reasonable and sincere. 

 

“Sincerity” means that the speaker has no hidden agenda, especially no disingenuous or manipulative one.  Subjective sincerity is the speaker’s honest confidence in that which they say.  Objective sincerity is the sincerity level that the average unbiased observer would attribute to the speaker.  “Reasonableness” means the extent to which the speaker’s comments reflect reality.  Subjective reasonableness is the speaker’s belief in the reasonableness of their position. And objective reasonableness is the extent to which the best available information supports the speaker’s belief. 

 

As is obvious, different questioning and answering environments demand different levels of sincerity and reasonableness from each questioner and answerer. One certainly would hope that a teacher in a classroom is as highly sincere and as highly reasonable in their communications as possible.  On the other hand, one could forgive a friend at a sporting event if they were moderately insincere and unreasonable, especially if they intended to be entertaining rather than informative.

Why Did You Say That ?

I accept your right to your conclusions. But I don’t necessarily accept the PROCESS by which you reach them.  That is the guiding belief that undergirds my discussions with other people. In this blog post I offer only a few of the many reasons for the PROCESS by which I came to my belief.

First and foremost, if we each inform the other of our process, We can more objectively decide the specifics of what we do and do not agree with.  And that knowledge of process can enable us to adjust our opinions of the issue, and/or of each other.  That is, we can understand our extant messages and our extant dyadic relationship variables in ways that increase the chances for rational objective discussions and of mutually satisfying resolutions in the here and now.

Second, we both do well to be aware of and sensitive to the personal identity factors that influence our capacity for rational discourse.  Some of the factors are relatively easy to infer. For instance, given the USA hyperattention and hypersensitivity to all things racial, in black-white discourse even the most well-intention, innocuous comment can be deliberately or inadvertently interpreted as a microaggression and used as an offensive or defensive weapon.

Third, in contemporary discourse, traditional definitions of personal identity are swamped [connotations deliberately implied] by what some social psychologists call "mega-identity," meaning potential features of your identity grafted onto you when you succumb to rules dictated by so-called influencers, such as politicians, actors, sports figures, relatives, or friends.  Accordingly, in conversations, interlocutors never can be sure what social identity forces might complicate and distort the presumed neutral message they had intended to convey.

The final reason for this truncated explanation of the process by which I came to my blog post beliefs is related to the third reason.  To wit, “mimesis” describes my belief that too often individuals reach conclusions primarily due to their conscious or unconscious propensity to imitate other people rather than to their own independent analysis.  This imitative tendency is one more explanation for an interlocutor’s disinclination to engage in objective questioning and answering that can facilitate rational conversation and resolve disputes, since the imitator might have insufficient objective information and/or sense of agency to support what they say and what they refuse to hear from their interlocutor. Those unaware of or unwilling to accept that their statements were not adequately rational and/or agentic, might be too ashamed to recognize and/or admit that their comments were mostly due to mindlessly parroting influencer pronouncements.

Hopefully, my having raised the issue of the processes that underlie your beliefs and communications will prompt you to consider your own personal idiosyncratic belief processes and difficult conversations more carefully and to strive to maximize your rationality and communication agency.  That advice presumes that you have sufficient interest, willingness, and personal identity investment to expend the effort to understand your thought processes and to converse adaptively. Since that attitude often demands courage and effort, you might consciously or unconsciously conclude that it is not worthwhile. In that case, be prepared to accept the natural consequences of your choice.