Belated response Re: coping mechanisms

In article <b112c8ce-c2bd-4cfc-9fa7-f589add582b4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Kate Gladstone <handwritingrepair@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

We learn coping mechanisms.

My father taught me in second grade that I didn't have to
believe what the teacher said, I only had to learn it long
enough to regurgitate it on the test. I needed that lesson
because I had a teacher that pushed her opinions as dogma.
It's been a very helpful lesson.

My parents urged learning the same lesson (of lying on
demand when authority required),

I didn't consider it lying per se; I considered it telling
the annoying person what they demanded to hear, and
remembered it simply as "this is what X believes".
It went into the same mental-emotional category as being
polite to people I didn't like, or remembering the events
in a fantasy. Lewis Carroll wrote that the playing cards
turned into leaves, and that teacher said certain things
that were equally untrue. People could discuss _Alice_
in terms that sounded absolute ("Alice went down the rabbit
hole"), and in the same spirit I could write the teacher's
"fantasy teachings" as if they were absolute while being
fully aware that they weren't in any way true.

but they eventually agreed with my observation/complaint/
demonstration that at least throughout my childhood/teen
years in order to do this I had either to:
/a/ actually *convince* myself to really believe
the falsehood I had to say or write
(which made it hard for me and others to "un-convince"
myself later)
or /b/ thoroughly (if perhaps temporarily) convincing
myself that truthfulness no longer mattered for any purpose
whatsoever.

In my case, nobody else ever saw the written tests anyway, and
since she already believed and insisted on what she demanded
I write, I felt that it wasn't lying any more than any pretend
game was lying. What my father gave me was _permission
not to believe it_. So I didn't have to believe it, I only
had to learn it as "what the test would require".

It's not much different from someone who knows some advanced
physics having to put the "simplified" version on an exam
in a basic course that is a prerequisite for the really
advanced course he ought to be taking.

I suppose that says something about how little I cared
about the topic, too. The material taught in second grade
is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.

=Tamar
.

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