When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the contradiction between our desire for honesty and our tendency to communicate indirectly.
In this quote, Steven Pinker critiques the complexity and often dishonest nature of human communication. He highlights how individuals engage in indirect ways of speaking, filled with ambiguity, yet paradoxically yearn for straightforwardness and truth from others. This hypocrisy, he argues, is a shared characteristic of humanity, revealing the tension between our communication styles and our authentic desires for clarity.
In practice
During a workshop on effective communication, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of honesty.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
True masters are those who've chosen to make a life rather than a living.
When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us.
The home to everyone is to him his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose.
In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.
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