In today’s era, it seems sincerity is in short supply, but why? Any thoughts?

Which culture are we talking about? That’s true. It does differ, but not so much as to make any one culture stand out entirely as more sincere than others.

Too much politeness? Yes, that contributes, but so does the aggrandizement of being a “rebel”.

Then lack of accountability? Well, we do get into definitions, and yes, accountability has much to do with sincerity or its lack today.

Does this apply: The quality or condition of being sincere; genuineness, honesty, and freedom from duplicity. Yes, it does. Thank you.

That part “freedom from duplicity” seems to be in very short supply. And is the basis of today’s topic of sincerity, actually.

How many faces do you have, friends?

• Three. Though I’m dropping down to two.
• Well in Second Life that goes way up compared to real life.
• So many I forgot most.

Now, how many selves do you have?

There’s a difference? There is, yes. I have one self, but many faces. But faces are like a mirror. They can be broken up and scattered, so that we lose track of what any face was supposed to be in the first place. The self is that which is behind each face, that which can go from one face to another, one point of view to another.

Afraid I only have three faces and one self then. I was never good at splitting my personality. Well, excellent, and we may touch on why you were not good at that, because in fact no one is good at that.

I think it also had something to do with complete disinterest in it. Your disinterest is natural. People convince themselves that having many faces serves a purpose. That they have to be all these different things for different people. This leads to much suffering.

I role-play a lot of different things with different opinions/states of mind, but when I’m out of context like this, you can tell who I am no matter the avatar. Yes, but is this true of everyone? Can you tell everyone for who they are?

I have a tendency to be consistently inconsistent. Excellent, but I would offer that you are likely more consistent than other people perceive. Maybe more so than even you yourself perceive.

I seem to have a knack for figuring them out most of the time. Learned to look for the subtle cues that show when people are exerting an effort to maintain a personality or behaviour. The little pitfalls.

I think you can get a feel for who anyone is given the more encounters you have.

This is all true, because all insincerity given time is doomed to fail. We are creatures of our natures, and yet, who can say confidently what their nature is these days?

I should probably rephrase. I have a tendency to seem consistently inconsistent. Thank you. That is important actually. On one hand, life is semantics, on the other hand, real life has nothing to do with semantics. Your faces arise from the need to acknowledge a common ground with other people, but you can be “absent” behind that mask.

What does consistency have to do with sincerity? Well, being constant for artificial reasons is not sincere, so that’s a good question. Without trying though, we will all fall into a form of consistency, for many reasons, and it’s important to recognize and accept this.

People get irritated with me often, because I don’t put on the happy face or blend into their needs. That’s natural, or rather, I should say it’s artificial, and they are bending their mind to fit the semantic content of the situation.

Yes, people dislike you if you refuse to play that game. They actually dislike that you are on a different page, because it points out the errors on their page. There is a concept originating in China, the “Tao”. Loosely translated it means way or natural order.

Your theory assumes that there is a specific “nature” that a person must fall back to in the end? No single nature, nor nature as a static.

What if, say, the person lacks an actual personality? A person cannot lack a personality short of brain death. Even then, it can be argued that they still retain a personality. My definition of personality moves away from the aesthetic. You have a personality because you have memories. You have experiences. You have opinions and reactions, and having a strong tendency to empathize is one facet of a personality. It can seem to dominate it even, but they have the ability to function in private as well.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~