is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Lessons other people teach yourself.
I once tried to date a guy who, it turns out later, was a bit of a sociopath. Actually, that happened to me twice, but only one of them is worth talking about, and when I say talking about I mean thinking about the philosophical ramifications of it-having-happened. Of course it's unfortunate that once you end up with a pathological liar (or twice) it makes it really easy to think anyone, anyone at all, could be lying to you. Because pathological liars lie about everything, even things it makes no sense to lie about, like what kind of sandwich they had for lunch. And once you've counseled yourself to give up suspicion and just trust someone, who then later turns out to be a pathological liar, you have basically been given a green light for the rest of your life to let in any worry you might ever have about someone else's truthfulness. And let's face it, lots of those worries can be pretty crazy. It would be better to be able to call yourself crazy and dismiss them. So it's sad to have had them confirmed once (or twice), for that reason only.
But this guy I'm talking about, he taught me something that at the time seemed like a face-slap but then later had the air of a philosophical clarification. We had a lovely lively email exchange before he took the really hyperbolically romantic step of flying across the country to take me on a date. It wasn't internet dating; he was a friend of a friend, and I had recently run into him when we were both in cities in which we didn't live. Anyway, we had a lively email exchange, because we both really like writing and reading and he's a smart guy. At some point he said something, and I said something, we both quoted poetry, and waxed intellectual, and somehow we ended up at a point where I remarked about how reciprocity is over-rated. Because it is. If you enter every relationship, whether it be romance, friendship, or even the civil sociality you have with a neighbor, as if the only thing that mattered were getting tit for tat (even if you don't like tit, as they say), then you aren't engaging in human relationships. What you're doing is participating in a market economy where what gets traded is human behavior or something else that can become a commodity. Markets do not form relationships. They merely accommodate transactions of mutual benefit. And when you think about what matters to you about being with others, it (I hope) isn't covered by mere mutual benefit.
Things happened. And later, after what happened happened, and he turned out to be not only a pathological liar but a truly terrible person (with a few good qualities, and some really amazing accomplishments that it would be interesting to go into further but that would totally blow the anonymity of this description. But maybe I don't care? Let's just say that he campaigned for Bill Bradley after having worked with Vaclav Havel, and did some other interesting things too.). As I was saying, after what happened happened, he said: "but I thought you said reciprocity was over-rated!" [Click here and hit play for the effect.] What he meant was: but you basically gave me permission to take from you whatever I wanted without giving thought to what I owed you in return. And there's a way in which he was right. I had told him that reciprocity is over-rated, and I meant it. And so it could, from his perspective, seem like I said that he owed me nothing and then got mad when he didn't give me what he owed me. Except that only a sociopath would read it that way. He thought we were involved in a market transaction and I thought he was a human being who saw some things the way I did. It's not much more than a sick twist on the he-said/she-said mars/venus reductio line segment of dime store psychology-explanations of why people don't understand each other.
But on the other hand, it does say something about the different ways it is possible to live in and walk through the world. Lots of people could read the statement, "Markets do not form relationships. They merely accommodate transactions of mutual benefit," and not quite get the difference between relationship and mutual benefit. And the thing is, I'm not sure it's possible to explain to someone who doesn't get the difference what it is he or she doesn't see, or know, or feel. Is it?
Here's one point: there is more than one kind of owing. Equivocation is the name for the error that occurs when two people discuss something but are using the same words to mean different things. Like if I was talking to you about my human heart and you were talking about artichoke hearts.
I;m sure in the end he felt like I treated him unfairly. No outside observer to what happened would say the same, but that's how it is with truly anti-social behavior--it's hard to understand. All that really can be said is that we were both guilty, to some extent, of believing what we wanted to believe. I take responsibility for my part in that. But I also think it matters that what I wanted to believe can form human relationships, whereas what he wanted to believe can only destroy them. I'm not the type to seek revenge (because the Nietzschean in me recognizes the futility and self-destructiveness of a search that, rather than freeing you from a past, keeps you tied to it by making it your continuing focus). And when I think of him, something that rarely happens these days, I no longer get angry. (Can you believe this meditation occurred only because someone else made reference to him in a status update on Facebook? Ha! It was like a shock-reminder: "oh. he exists.") But I do think that it may be sufficient justice that he will, given the way he is with people, spend the rest of his life alone no matter how many people he spends time with. That's not really revenge, because it doesn't require that I do anything or even think anything for it to happen.
There's a coda here. After what happened happened, and because he was, like I said, a really smart guy, I sent him a long handwritten letter explaining what his error in thinking was--because I knew he would be able to follow, and part of our interest in other had been our mutual love of ideas. At the time he didn't get it, in part, I'm sure, because he was invested in his defensive smoke screen and a view of himself as a right-acting individual. But a few years later, out of nowhere, he wrote me an email admitting that he didn't at the time get my meaning but that it had somehow hit him later, that I was right, and that I had been trying to teach him a lesson that wasn't vengeful and wasn't even about me. I didn't write back. I have let the past be what it is.
1:09 p.m. - November 02, 2008
liz dunn - 2008-11-13 19:50:12
Isn't it amazing how Facebook has the ability to hurtle you into the past, without warning nor desire. Lately many of my friends from Santa Cruz when I was a teenager have been making contact and it's overwhelming me with memories and I can't help but analyze those relationships and events with my Now Mind, even though I don't want to. You know?
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js - 2012-10-31 15:19:16
yup. i know!
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