Betraying Gestures #23
truth is an improvisation
Dear readers,
A delay betrays a failure, a gap suddenly invaded by air;
my plans receed and on the shore I find myself listening to Imposturas Filosóficas #236 - a verdade é um improviso (com Geni Núñez), a mixture of philosophy podcast and anticapitalist sense-making platform.
Rafael & Rafael give me blood.
It is as simple as two friends interested in philosophy, yet their conversations are able to present cheerful perspectives and tools toward that dearest of my concerns: how to change the world. I’m not even sure that’s their goal, but they’re commited to thinking together, and I would like to invite you to think together with us too.
Sinceridade, part of their “Relational Anarchy” series, and the opening text for this episode, explores the quality of sincerity as necessary ingredient for relations of vitality, challenging the idea of a fixed truth, and a fixed emotional reality, as guiding principle in our dealings with each other.
If you do not partake in the luxury of understanding portuguese, I have drafted a translation just for you. You, who will probably hear me ask “have you read the newsletter” at some point next week, as I hope this conversation continues offline.
This is a rebelious little translation, though, one I hope our Situationist friends would be pleased with. Rest assured, no authorization was requested.
None is necessary, when there is trust in a togetherness generated by shared ideals.
Sincerity
written by Rafael Lauro at Razão Inadequada
translated by Marina Dubia at Betraying Gestures
Any idea of sincerity presupposes an idea of the truth, and also of the lie. Most of us expect that others will be sincere, because it seems impractible to build a good relation without it, more so in the case of love. However, who is able to say exactly what is truth and what is lie when it comes to things as shifting as our desires?
In general, we think of truth in our loving relations as an intimate fact that must be comunicated; while the lie is usually treated as the original sin that tends toward all kinds of infidelities. Could it be that, by thinking in this way, we are undermining our own condition of being sincere?
It cannot be denied, sincerity involves risks: to say the truth is to balance in a line of conversation that could break. A sincere act of speech can, indeed, bring a relation to an end. In that case, to reposition the problem of sincerity, perhaps we need to rethink the meaning of truth and lie in relational terms. A different way to conceive of the true may help diminish our fears of bringing desire into play.
We are used to the idea that certain desires are offensive, and that our loving relations are too fragile for them to be positioned. For this reason, we spend a good deal of our time together disguising interests. Not that we would be able to leave them completely aside: we content ourselves with minor joys, distant from the gaze of others, lived in secret, through nooks and crannies. At times those interests involve other people affectively or sexually; and at times they also happen to be expressed in intimate experience, sustained by ideas still too fragile to be exposed. And so, for a fear of loss, we prefer consensual lying. In doing so, however, we lose sincerity as the principle that makes of loving relations a shared fruition of the world.
It seems that the lie is, first of all, a kind of comfort, that allows for an escape within the relation with ourselves and with others. We can also think of it as a shortcut, that brings us faster to satisfaction, although complicating the way back. But before blaming ourselves and going out there judging each other for lying, we need to remember the weight of sociability. Among colleagues, family members or strangers, it doesn't matter, the majority of dates demands a certain tonus, an attention to posture, a disposition to appear in a certain way. We are not always able to be truthful in these moments: we mask sadnesses, leave problems at home, to support certain situations. Actually, sometimes we do need distance, for a time, from our truths.
To think sincerity we need to deal with the fact that the lie happens by the nature of sociability itself and, given its inevitability, we can't appeal to cheap moralisms by way of solution: the dissimulations, the half-truths, the subterfuges are part of our interaction with others.
This, however, doesn't change the fact that we feel better in relations that can receive and embrace us whole. One of the things that qualifies relations is exactly their capacity of suspending the usual demands of sociability: silence shared among friends without discomfort, for example, is a small sign of this quality, which we call sincerity. Now, the problem isn't the lie in itself; the problem is that the lie always involves a sadness. However justified it may be, to avoid excessive suffering or facilitate conviviality, the lie ends up leaving others aside in our considerations. As such, by deceiving others everyone loses, because what is gained is irrelevant compared to the results of possible association. Sometimes a relation is sustained because of the lies, but can we still consider that an interesting situation to be in, when we think in terms of mutual joy?
We are used to thinking about falsehood in moral terms, but that doesn't help us deal with the problem of truth in relations. It's no use to recycle the "thou shalt not lie" commandment; an universal moral law cannot handle the countless peculiar and particular situations presented by life. Instead, it seems better to value sincerity as a practice of shared reflection, which bets on the fact that when we are being sincere, we are creating the conditions for truth to emerge from within the relation.
In relational terms, the truth does not wait for us, readymade, it is yet to be made. Relating with sincerity does not mean obligation to disclose every thought or action, but to create conditions through which we can be and show that which we are, contradictions included. As such, sincerity is not the simple communication of certainties, but fundamentally a careful conversation about the uncertainties. This disposition to share vulnerabilities is what allows us to break the idea of truth as intimate fact, planned ahead maliciously. Remembering that we don't quite know what we want and, even when we have some idea, we're not quite sure what to do with it, is what brings ease for things to be thought through.
On account of being such a delicate dynamic, there are several previous conditions for sincerity. A receptive embrace, for example, is fundamental when we think relations available to truthfulness. It makes no sense to expect sincerity if we punish each other for feeling things differently or if we blame each other for not always corresponding to expectations. Sincerity depends on an openness to embrace the unexpected and look at that which does not fit the plans.
Change is an unarguable reality in any relation: nothing that lasts remains the same. We are truthful when we tell each other what is taking place in our intimate processes of change. This is what makes of sincerity a need, to the extent that it allows for novelty to emerge gradually, offering those involved the opportunity to participate in its time. When the transformations are not accompained with tenderness, thought through together, they end up submitting others to the violent pressure of adequation.
What is the meaning of being together, if not to co-exist in the matters? To communicate with others is not to inform, to deliver something readymade, but seeking a common field for building shared understanding. To be sincere is less about informing others of something, than to understand something together with others. Those who wait for assurance to communicate their processes and think sincerity as the exposure of stable facts, end up losing the opportunity to build a shared means of experimenting new desires.
By being sincere, we choose the longer path, because we know that truth requires effort both on ourselves and together with others. We know that a joy of our own sometimes can cause the sadness of others and, by openly addressing it, we are betting in our capacity to slowly transform the unavoidable sadnesses into mutual joys, instead of continuing to bet only on private satisfactions - so small, petty.
Sincerity is a condition for the possibility of a shared understanding around a certain matter. That's why one of the saddest things is to ask of others that they would know it all beforehand: "reach out only when you have figured out what is happening". Now, there are countless matters to be thought together, as they unfold. Of course there are questions to be thought by ourselves, but we are addicted to appealing to individuality to solve problems that demand much more than we are capable of sustaining in solitude. Have no doubt, if we think together we will arrive at different answers.
Thank you for reading,
from a town in an island in the south of Denmark,
from a desire of making these words my own, to chew on them, drink their juice,
a desire of together made open flesh of the days,
where you is mixed with I and we is always singing.