IN WHICH I STILL <\/em>DON\u2019T QUOTE OSCAR WILDE!: <\/strong>EDITED 9\/28 to fix a ridiculously stupid mistake! \u2026I\u2019ve gotten two terrific pushbacks on my big post about sincerism<\/a>. You can find Camassia\u2019s here<\/a>. And Miss Ogilvy<\/a> emailed me thusly:<\/p>\n Just a quick question in reply to your recent \u201csincerism\u201d posts: where and how does a gay self-identity (as opposed to a queer self-identity, which is a bit more flexible and maybe less self-serious) fit into your arguments against sincerism? I think one could use your definition of sincerism (\u201crequiring a sincere, authentic, honest accounting of one\u2019s thoughts and emotions,\u201d which entails wrongheaded \u201cassumptions about our ability to know ourselves\u201d) to diagnose a gay identity as a symptom of sincerism or subservience to the sincerist ideal. Would love to hear your thoughts on this question. <\/p>\n And where and how does a Christian identity fit into your arguments against sincerism? What would a Christian apology for irony look like? Might be interesting to try on the following proposition for size: Protestantism serves the sincerist ideal; Catholicism does not.<\/p>\n Am feeling very sincerist myself as I sort through Gay Christian Whatnot. But I agree with you that the sincerist ideal is a mess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think it makes the most sense to reply to both at once. What follows will be so scattershot, it\u2019ll make a blunderbuss look like a laser. But I never promised you a precision garden!<\/p>\n From stupid through cute and maybe eventually ending up in worthwhile, let\u2019s proceed with our education, one and all\u2026.<\/p>\n 1) I would never have cited journalism as a sincerist profession! But then my genealogy of the profession looks like \u201cJournalism in Tennessee\u201d \u2013> SOMETHING ELSE AWESOME TK \u2013> the New York Post<\/a><\/em>. I suspect that there are other valid genealogies!<\/a><\/p>\n 2) Maybe helpful: My problem is not with sincerity. I\u2019ve seen women at the pregnancy center do amazing work through transparent personal sincerity. (It may be relevant to Camassia\u2019s comments that the woman I\u2019m especially thinking of here is black? But I\u2019ve also seen white women make amazing impacts, forging incredible connections with women who clearly wanted a sincere and heartfelt woman to talk to. In my own counseling, I try to shift between more heartfelt and self-revealing talk as vs. more complicit and nudge-wink talk based on what the client seems to be open to. More on cultures and subcultures, and leadership, in a bit.) My beef is with the attitude that sincerity is always <\/em>better than other modes of self-presentation. And this I think is a desperately American form of crudeness and anti-aesthetic, democratic\/majoritarian well-meaning callowness. More on this in what follows.<\/p>\n 3) Camassia\u2019s point about anti-sincere strategies serving minority communities in their internal communiques against <\/em>outside understanding or this-bridge-called-my-back-building is fantastic<\/em>. I never would\u2019ve thought of that, actually, and I really take to heart her defense of translation even though I think I still partly disagree. <\/p>\n Some things need to be universally translatable, like the Gospel. But does everything need to translate? Can we preserve some turf where the translator is still a traitor, and if you want to learn the language you\u2019d better be ready to go native?<\/p>\n And what does it mean to be a Christian if your answer to those questions\u2013like mine is, right now\u2013is \u201cno\u201d and \u201cyes\u201d?<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure, and I think Camassia and Miss Ogilvy are both on to something supremely important. All I can really say in response is that I suspect that sincerism, like boboism (\u201cbourgeois bohemianism\u201d), attempts to assimilate the minority into the majority and translate in that direction\u2013whereas Christian translation should work, I think, the other way. In other words, in the translation from Pepper LaBeija<\/a>\u2018s language to Peter Sprigg<\/a>\u2018s, a Christian should seek to translate Spriggish into LaBeijan rather than visa-va-va-versa.<\/p>\n I am open to accusations that this contrapposto <\/em>stance simply reflects my own need to shore up my bohemian self-image. (She said, with a hipshot grin.)<\/p>\n 4) I\u2019m tempted to second Miss Ogilvy by saying that the Protestant denigration of \u201crepetitive prayer\u201d is a sincerist stance. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s true really, because believe me, Protestantism is something I understand about as much as I understand the higher math. But here\u2019s something I wrote about repetitive prayer<\/a>. Confession seems to work (for me, anyway?) somewhat similarly, in that the practice is so humiliating that it makes it unnecessary to dig the awl of self-scrutiny too far in: If I weren\u2019t really sorry I WOULDN\u2019T BE HERE, ZOMG.<\/p>\n I think Miss O\u2019s suggestion that coming out is an inherently sincerist act is totally fascinating, since of course the gay subculture has traditionally (!) been one of the least <\/em>sincerist, and yet I totally take her point about how coming out to oneself feels<\/em>. Anyone have comments? I am at a loss!<\/p>\n 5) I can think of two main categories of experience which prompted me to articulate why I think sincerism so often provokes bien-pensant stupidity on one hand, and cruelty-with-the-tweezers on the other. I have a hard time talking about sincerism because I find it much easier to point at than to define, and therefore it\u2019s easy to pat myself on the back for identifying examples. There\u2019s a way in which rationalism, for all its obvious falsehoods, is humbler than prudence, which requires so much trust in one\u2019s own perceptions. (Even if the examples are taken from my own life, there\u2019s still a showiness in the decision to display them in the light of my current better judgment.)<\/p>\n But here are the experiences. First, when I\u2019ve been in a leadership position I\u2019ve dealt with women (always women\u2026 I\u2019m going to say this is cultural, and the guys would\u2019ve framed their objections to my leadership this way if they\u2019d thought it would win them masculinity points) who thought that the mask of command, as such<\/em>, was inauthentic. Presenting a different persona when in leadership meant lying<\/em>.<\/p>\n I think this is wrong on both rationalist grounds (I chose my leadership persona, so doesn\u2019t that choice incorporate the persona into my \u201cself\u201d?) and, obviously, aesthetic grounds. Leadership is <\/em>an aesthetic act. It isn\u2019t rationalist, because there\u2019s always another syllogism, or an alternative premise, you can pose against the syllogism which would require of you something you don\u2019t want to do in the service of someone or Someone you don\u2019t love. It is leadership which guides you to the beauty or Beauty you could love enough to choose one set of syllogisms over another equally consistent.<\/p>\n So um yeah. I will, if necessary, pay for your trust by sharing some deep dark painful secret\u2013but I\u2019ll respect you a lot less in the morning. I should be able to lead you without groveling for your pitying endorsement of my perspective.<\/p>\n b) I\u2019ve several times tried to \u201crelate\u201d on a deep dark authentic level with someone going through a kind of suffering I can\u2019t share. I\u2019ve tried to ask How You\u2019re Doing. I\u2019ve tried to Be Real.<\/p>\n In no case has this ever been the right thing to do.<\/a><\/p>\n I get that people with much more sophisticated senses of how to be in the world (like Camassia) understand that what you do, when you\u2019re dealing with another person\u2019s desperation, is listen and be there and try to roll with what they give you, and not push. I don\u2019t think any of that is sincerism, even though it\u2019s sincere. But I do think sincerism is what I believed when I thought it was right <\/em>to press my fingers against other people\u2019s bruises. I didn\u2019t think I was really acting as their friend unless I poked. I could not have been more wrong.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s where I\u2019m coming from, on this question.<\/p>\n 6) I\u2019m not sure I want to overphilosophize here, since really I\u2019m not sure what exactly sincerism is\u2013like I said, it\u2019s easier to point at than to anatomize. But I am tempted to argue that sincerism is a part or a result of two philosophical tendencies I abhor anyway<\/em>. (\u201cYou want a second opinion? Okay, you\u2019re ugly!\u201d)<\/p>\n a) My strong impression is that sincerism is connected to a belief that ethical discourse is the only valid philosophical discourse. Talk of right\/wrong always <\/em>trumps talk of beautiful\/banal.<\/a> (I hope this formulation indicates that I do think sincerity\u2013like ethics-talk!\u2013is frequently appropriate.) If you say, \u201cWomen covering their heads in church is just another sign of Paul\u2019s misogyny!\u201d, and I drawlingly reply, \u201cWell hmmm, I\u2019d rather see a bulldyke in a mantilla than a nun in a pantsuit\u201d\u2026 I\u2019ve stepped out of the ethical discourse into the aesthetic, and therefore forfeited my right to be taken sincerely\/seriously.<\/p>\n (And I mean it, too! I\u2019d clip a daggone diaper to my head if it meant that most women would wear actual pretty lace to church instead of board shorts!)<\/p>\n b) And on a deeper level, I really think sincerism is a subset of the Heideggerian fetish for authenticity and commitment. In this worldview, on the top level, Truth is found within\u2013it\u2019s self-expression. I know that there is no philosophy without some level of self-trust. A radical skeptic can purchase bread, even though he knows it might be a hallucination, but he can never practice philosophy, because Sophia is nothing if she isn\u2019t real. (Even Derrida ETA 9\/28 DESCARTES!!! \u201cknew that he existed, and that he spoke French\u201d!) But it is possible to distinguish between a philosophy of expressing the God within and a philosophy in which the self strives to recognize and love the God without\u2013a philosophy in which recognition <\/em>takes the place of expression, and submission is another word for love.<\/p>\n On the lower level, of course, \u201cmy real true deep self\u201d becomes simply whatever my culture\/subculture\/biology\/some complex interaction of all three tells me to value. That\u2019s one reason Heidegger\u2019s Rector\u2019s Address<\/a> (which I used to be able to quote, as a party trick) is actually a valid conclusion from his premises. The naivete of sincerism is that it assumes that the self expressed will come pre-tamed.<\/p>\n