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Deceivers vs. Promise-Breakers | Aug 22 2000

My friend Lee Winkelman reports that Bateson’s theories about Schizophrenia (see post from August 20) have been pretty much discredited. “Like Bettleheim’s theories about Autism,” he writes, “they led to a blaming of the mother and much resulting guilt. Current thinking is that Schizophrenia, perhaps more than any other mental disorder, is caused primarily by a chemical imbalance, and not by child-rearing environment – i.e., by nature, not nurture. Thus, if current thinking is true, Bateson et. al. caused a lot of guilt for nothing.”

A confession: Even if it’s wrong, I still prefer Bateson’s theory, for I consider it beautiful.

Another friend wrote to say that he’s met Paul Ekman, the guy who believes that the human face betrays emotion in a universal language. Feeling acutely self-conscious about his expressions in Ekman’s presence, my friend spent most of the evening hiding from him. However, when they finally spoke, my friend noticed how little expression Ekman makes.

This segues nicely into a discussion of my social life these days. Maybe I’m imagining this, but it seems that some of my friends have been acting a little funny since I began CROWBAR. Actually, I’m CERTAIN about this. For example, one person – a friend of long standing – made me promise that I wouldn’t mention anything in CROWBAR about the project we’ve been working on together, not even in a veiled way. If you knew what this project is, you would wonder what my friend was thinking when he made me promise this, but unfortunately I can’t tell you anything about it, not even in a veiled way, so you’re going to have to imagine the sort of project that no one in their right mind would ever have such concerns about. There have been other, similar incidents, and what they make me think is that I should announce my privacy rules to all the world, so that the world, such as it is, no longer fears that I will betray its puny secrets. Here then are my privacy rules, or rule, for there is only one: If I want to write about something from my personal life which may embarrass someone, I ask that person if I can include it. If this person is not comfortable with such inclusion, even in a veiled way, I don’t do it. That’s my rule.

Now that I’ve stated my rule, I should mentioned that when I was 14 or so, Lori Sitner, on whom I had a crush, told me some secret about my friend David Hess on the condition that I never tell David. I swore that I would never do so, then immediately did so. (Unfortunately, I have forgotten what it was that Lori told me; otherwise, I would tell it to you, as the statue of limitations has run out on that particular promise.)

Did I lie to Lori when I made the promise? Well, it certainly appears that I lied, but the way I remember it is that when I made the promise, I really had no intention of telling David, so in this sense I wasn’t lying. Admittedly this is a lame defense: I promised I won’t, and then I did, and that makes me a promise-breaker, which is a kind of liar. Yet it is a different kind of liar than the kind that NEVER INTENDS to keep his promise. This is a deceiver, and deceivers are worse in my book than promise-breakers. If I end up violating my privacy rule above, I will be a promise-breaker, not a deceiver, as I truly have no intention of doing so.

More on this tommorrow.