What people want more than anything else from another person

Sunday 6/2/24

If I were to be asked what I believe that people want most in another person in their lives, I would answer by saying someone who lies to them. I believe that being lied to is essential to people and what they're most desirous of, despite what any of them would say.

I'll see someone, for instance, who cannot write at all. They have no talent, and, worse than having no talent, they're so inauthentic in their writing, in this part that they're playing, this assumed role, that they write the most cringe-inducing prose there can be. They're removed from reality, they have no idea how embarrassing their writing is. That someone else couldn't manage to get through so much as reading a single sentence of the work aloud without breaking into laughter.

But what do you think they want and need? Do you think they want someone in their life who gently, but honestly, points out that they might not be going about things the best way, or do you think they want and need 300 lying fools on the likes of Facebook hitting that like button and saying how amazing it all is?

That's going to be crucial to this person being who they are, is it not? Getting through their days. What's the alternative? Square up to reality and face it? Deal with that fallout? Take stock, start again, start differently, accept limitations, perhaps move on to something else?

I'm giving an example with writing, but this could be anything.

Love, to me, involves the facilitation of someone else's growth. That only happens when we deal squarely with reality and we have self-awareness. I think love is very rare in this world. I don't think it's in but a few marriages, for example. I think that's often about other things, and love is way down the list, if it's there at all. People don't want to be alone, they want these other things--kids--so that they can, in their minds, have purpose, they do things how they're done, how they think they're supposed to be done, etc.

But very rare is the person who does not wish to be lied to. That person stands head to toe with reality. And very few people are able to do that. Or want to. Or are strong enough. We want to get by as easily as possible. And people have this way of assuming--without even knowing that they're doing it--that facing reality is not going to be the way to accomplish that. They'll always be going uphill and it will be hard. I'd counter by saying that when you're not standing head to toe with reality, you're not alive, and what are you really doing, and why bother? You are here to max out on your humanity and to help others do the same.

Lies impede these pursuits. Frequently, though, the truth means work. People don't want to take on work. It comes at a cost to ego. One way in which ego is maintained is by leaving things alone, not by holding them up and evaluating them. Putting something through its paces. Testing it out to see how it's doing. Proving it, being it, doing it. We'd rather just think we're that thing and can do that thing without making the thing stand up.

Truth needn't be that hard. The trick is in the accepting of it. Once accepted, a person has agency. "Okay, so that's how it is. Now, what to do about it?" Let's use the example again of these writers. You're bad at this thing. You don't have any ability to do it, you don't work at it, it's not really that important to you. So? What are you doing it for? So you can call yourself a thing? Think of yourself a way? But looking at what is written with any honesty immediately shows that person not to be this great writer. Don't do it. Move on. Give it up. Work hard and honestly at something else. Find other things. Or, start again. Do everything differently. Make every approach a new one. Put the time in.

This isn't a writer thing. It's how everyone is. Almost everyone. The truth makes people defensive, angry. It causes them to do and say things that they later wish they could go back in time and undue and unsay. But when there's no truth, the car merely rolls along the road, no bumps, no breakneck turns, that person in the backseat lulled to sleep, or left staring out the window hardly noticing the changing scenery.

We have the hypocrisy, then, of all of these people expressing ire at the prospect of someone lying to them, like everyone is supposed to lie about lying and make sure it's good and covered up. This is ego, too. The idea of, "How dare you lie to me," when in reality there life is build upon a premise of "give me all of your lies, bring them on, make like I'm all of these things I'm not, and my behavior is this thing it's not, and my character is this thing it's not, and I'm so funny, and I know a lot about sports, and I look better than ever," etc.

Lying is the most important thing in the publishing industry. It's all lies. There is no one who says anything honest. They don't say anything honest about anything in the industry. There is not a single honest comment about anyone's work. There is no honesty in why this story runs in this venue, why this person got that Guggenheim. There is nothing that is not a lie. "I loved this so much." You didn't. "That's an amazing story you wrote." That person is lying. Everyone wants and needs to be lied to, because no one in the publishing industry is any good at writing. No one is not awful at it. Everyone learns to do the same bad thing the same bad way. That's the system. The system makes its money by teaching people to write the same bad thing the same bad way.

If I take the name off anything that it out there and present it on here as an example of terrible writing, every person who sees it will think it's terrible. But if someone had said, "Look at this amazing work by so and so," then that other person is going to say, "That is so amazing, wow, brava," because of who so and so is and the lie those people know that they're supposed to say about so and so. People in the industry cannot face reality or the truth. That's why they're in publishing. If publishing was the NFL, all of the rosters would be stocked with the worst athletes, the most out of shape people, players who couldn't catch, throw, or kick a ball. No one would go to the games, the owners wouldn't make any money, no one would care. But the NFL couldn't be that way. It's not based on lies. Players have to be good at their jobs, fit, athletic, they have to catch, pass, kick. But sports are merit-based, unlike just about everything else, so there's a lot less lying. There's things like not being good enough, getting sent home, having to find something else to do.

When people aren't lied to, they'll throw a fit, but they'll call what they're doing something else, usually by blaming someone else: the non-liar. This suggests that I'm talking about someone who goes around and tells someone who is obese that they are, because it's true. That's not what I mean. The truth has a way of coming out from time to time, though, with an honest person who also cares about people; people in general, the world, the people they know. Lying can put those things in the way of harm. For instance, if you lie and pretend that everyone is super duper amazing, you are hurting the world, because people aren't, and acting like they are does more--in however small a way--to erode standards and accountability. That's how it happens: People do that in their small, single-person way, and so many of them do it that it becomes the larger way--the way things are--of society and culture. The human race. Think of it like voting. People tell you that your vote matters, though it's just one vote. This is similar. We must each of us model and stand for the right things. It's a duty and it's important.

The non-liar, with that pitching of the fit, is said to be this thing that is also, ironically, a lie. The offended party is simply trying to do avoid the truth, which is what they generally do. The lie is a go-to. Lying about the lie is a crucial technique for them. Now you have anger further distorting the thought process as such, an undermining a person's ability to reason. The anger will pass, to some degree. When anger passes in such a situation, it may be replaced with regret. What to do? Apologize? Go back? Say, "I was thinking about what you said..." And it need not even have been said directly either to that person or about that person.

I'll write things on here that are perfectly true, and someone can lose their mind. Like some magnet, they'll try and pull anger towards them, so that it can fill them up, these words serving to undermine what they want to think of themselves as as a person, or in a line of work, or whatever it may be. It's like people try to attract that which they may pull into themselves as anger to blow up into more anger. But if I were to rationally counter with a question, then another, then another, the answers would inevitably be in keeping with what I had said. "So do you think that..." I mean basic, third grade type questions, very simple. Very logical. They'd have to answer a certain way, because most such things in these pages, for all of the complexities, has something very simple and logical at the root of it. Something that if I were to bring up in one of these simplistic questions, the other person would have to answer those questions as I would.

Look at the prose offs and the losing entries. If I use the example of a sentence from Motorollah and ask someone, "Did you think that's effective?" they're going to say no. The person who wrote it will say no. If they said yes, out of childish defiance, and I asked, "What do you think makes it effective?" they wouldn't have an answer--no words to say at all--which is a form of an answer. That person in publishing would get angry--or angrier--at me. But they don't believe that thing is any good any more than I do. I've said that a number of times, right? It's because it's true. But the absence of the lie makes them angry. The lie is what they want. They want to be lied to. They want that thing to be lied about. Ask these simple questions that only have one simple answer, and eventually they'll storm off. They will likely try to do something to and against that person who knows this same thing--think of how ironic this is--that they know as well. They insist on the lie. No matter how ridiculous. And that's so many people everywhere.

If they were angry then, with the asking of the simple questions, it would be because they couldn't be as angry as they wished to be, so there'd be some new anger. Or they'd be embarrassed and rather than have that feeling, they'd see if they could figure out a way to replace it with anger. This is the bad anger, not what I've written about as the good anger. The good anger, to give one example, is what we have when we've been pushed too far by someone doing something bad to to us, and we marshal our ability, our strength, our convictions, our focus, our wisdom, our self-respect, our decency, our knowledge of what is right and wrong, our awareness of how important that which is truly right really is, and the good anger helps to actuate us in doing things that are difficult to do, which require emotional forces from within that do not impede upon our reason and our perception and our good decision making processes.

What will often happen, too, is a person will forget that they've said words to the effect that are the same as your own, or have conveyed the same meaning. Most people forget what they say and what others say. They usually have awful memories. There are many reasons for that. It's not just that, well, humans suck at remembering stuff. They don't--not automatically. But they can certainly get that way rather easily. The person will be angry that someone else has not lied, never mind that they've said the same thing, made a similar statement, at another time or times.

What if the person who has made them angry by not lying remembers that time or times? This doesn't even need to be about that other individual directly. It can be tangential. Perhaps it ties in to a group that is identified as a group of theirs. It could be about someone's experience with people in that group. But that can itself be deceptive, because we might get hung up on labels, when what we're really talking about is experiences with people who happen to be group-able in this given way. That's just an organizational device in the conversation. Because from group to group, people are people. If most people are stupid--and they are--it's going to be pretty consistent across the groupings and the categories that we use conversationally. But maybe someone spent five years here, doing this, in this area, in that group, and they had firsthand dealings with a bunch of not-smart people. For the sake of conversation, for the topic at hand--and it could be relaying information about a period in their life--if they speak with specificity, in order to be clear, someone else can take offense that the speaker isn't saying that an entire--insert whatever--is on the whole this very good thing.

But nothing is. That's not how the human race is. It is less that way than ever before. That other person can know this to be completely true. But lies are not being said, the magnet is at work, and anger is taking over. Defensiveness. It's time to go on the attack, which will take a childish form. Because there's no foundation, no cause, no supporting reason or actual belief. Again, if the simple questions of a yes or no variety were to be asked--"So, do you think that..."--both the person who is angry, and the person who has angered them, would give the same answers. Then what?

Ask very basic, simple questions--the most basic and simple you can--and we often will find that we get more insight into things that aren't so basic or simple.

People want to be lied to more than anything else they want from another person. More than they want to be loved. Love is growth, the facilitating of, and lies and growth are adversarial. We call so many things love that are not love, not born of love, not conducive to love. And we want to be lied to about that, too. Our motives, what we're really doing, why we did it, why we are where we are, why we're with and surrounded by the people we're with and surrounded by.