the site was a bit contentless.
its probably the dominance stuff though.
what might be interesting is the particular ways of negotiating it and what people consider teh currency
A point I'd take issue with is this: he uses the phrase "feel at ease" as shorthand for being able to play the body language game. I don't think those necessarily go hand-in-hand.I'd say they do, unless you're a really, really, really good actor. Feeling at ease might be better rendered *being* at ease.
I do know what the post, and the quoted bits from the Khan book, refer to. I didn't go to an elite private (high) school, but did go an elite college, and there I learned a substantial bit of what's referred to.
Formatting failure again. Do I really have to use a -- what is it, open and close paragraph tag (i.e. "p") to avoid this? I never do, and sometimes it comes out fine.
I know a decent amount of high-anxiety people who are still super congenial and able to work a crowd. Feeling at ease is not the same as knowing what to do.
Instead of closing the blockquote you nested another blockquote.
5: Well, I closed the blockquote. With (/blockquote), but substitute appropriate brackets. Then I hit return twice. Obviously I succeeded in nesting another blockquote.
I think if you add the p tag to your next regular text following the blockquote it will behave more normally.
Yeah, I don't know if I count as knowing how to work a crowd (and the longer you know me, the more my social awkwardness comes out), but I think I'm a high-anxiety person that can - for at least a time - appear at ease in most social situations.
the interesting question is how good are people at telling who is being themself and who is being an actor?
I imagine there is a gigantic range in how perceptive people are about fakers.
4: I think working a crowd is not quite the same thing; people can often feel, or sense, that you're performing rather than at ease.
One of the examples in the linked post is flopping on a couch in your advisor's office: it takes really good acting to do with appropriately and with ease that in performance mode. It's not just a matter of being congenial.
who is being themself and who is being an actor
I don't think it's merely a sign I was in grad school too long that I'm not sure what this even means.
it takes really good acting to do with appropriately and with ease that in performance mode.
I don't think that level of acting is that rare, though. Kids flop on couches. I can't act worth shit, but I can act like I might act, if I were on my game, in a situation where I'm not actually feeling it.
14: perhaps I've been in grad school too long (negative six months doesn't seem like too long) but I concur.
who is being themself and who is being an actor
Who is behaving in an easy manner, and who is forcing it, no?
Heebie: Not someone who really cares one way or the other.
I think in most situations, you can get by with acting or knowing what to do. That's good enough for teaching a class, or interacting with a supervisor. But for forming long-lasting professional relationships, I think it only works if you really are the person you're claiming to be. For instance, I vastly prefer to work with people who I trust not to screw things up, which means people who either aren't acting, or act well enough that at least they're consistent.
15: I think I'm talking about something slightly different, and which I took the OP's link to be referring to: there's a body language -- how you handle a knife and fork, how and if you lean forward to laugh, and with what tone -- that's just a function of your easy facility with a given socioeconomic class.
I don't doubt that good actors can do this, but the point is that you can't be acting all the time, and we all do find a range of behaviors to be second nature, and expanding your range of what's second nature is helpful in finding yourself at home in a variety of settings.
But that's slightly different, right? I prefer to work with people with similar work ethic/principles/etc. Sometimes they're charismatic and sometimes not, but that's a different axis.
the point is that you can't be acting all the time
No?
i think heebie was right. most people don't care if you are acting (as long as you don't look like you are forcing it.)
I had an eye-opening experience maybe in high school or so, which I hope I can describe without sounding horribly racist. Basically I got very awkward around the black kids I went to school with, unless they were in accelerated classes. White kids in any track, whatever. Black kids in honors classes, no problem. Anyway, the school was about 2/3 black kids in non-honors classes, so this certainly came up a lot. If I was the only white person, I wanted to fit in and be liked and instead I felt fraudulent and frozen.
So I had a friend who I found very funny, and basically saw him indiscriminately rib everyone he came in contact with. This same group of kids - black, non-honors, tended to look at him like he'd sprouted an extra head, but sometimes laughed and generally thought he was nuts, but not bad. It was such a relief to me to see someone model being yourself when you clash mightily with those around you, and still pulling it off through sheer jokiness and friendliness. I took the lesson to heart.
Yeah, maybe it is a little different. The acting I'm thinking of is where you portray yourself as collegial, like yes we're all in this together, let's collaborate on this project. But I think this is one area where people (and not just me) really care a lot whether you are acting, or you really mean it.
23: I'd say no. You'll seem off in one way or another.
We might want to insist that there's no such thing as authenticity, yo, and so it's all acting all the time, but if we ditch the fraught notion of authenticity and just go with the idea that we are able to behave unselfconsciously, and in fact do so fairly often, then I think there's room to say that only a small fraction of us is acting all the time.
I actually also saw him do this with snooty wealthy types, and also pull it off.
expanding your range of what's second nature is helpful in finding yourself at home in a variety of settings.
So true, but so very hard sometimes.
Known for not having situationally adept body posture.
HURRRR DURRRRRRR :-D
SUP BRAAAAAAAAAH
I don't really get the point of your story, heebie. It's probably just me. Just that you don't have to act in order to get along? Sure.
Not even remotely. I probably didn't use enough punctuation, that's all.
Huh. I guess I'm not comfortable chatting with zombies. This is awkward.
I bet heebie's more comfortable around White Zombie than she is around other zombies.
(I rib! I rib!)
Parsimmon, you are so stern.
And heebie is known for her aft.
I fucking hate most zombies -- port, starboard, larboard, whatever.
i actually only wanted to chat with philosophical zombies.
Knowing how to be at ease is a great skill to have. I'm currently doing the consulting game. Talking to clients is always interesting. You want to sell your product -- which means appear as an expert -- without sounding like a smart arse. Oftentimes this involves disagreeing with the client. You also want to get along with clients, which can require crossing a large chasm of different life experiences. I'm not great at this yet, but I'm getting better.
also, how this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAfFfqiYLp0#t=3m51s which i may have previously referenaced plays into the aquisativei american culture.
body language.
Right about when I came across the original link, I also read something about Will Smith in 'Six Degrees of Separation.' Aside from being a great movie, I think Smith's character really captures what this is all about.
And Talented Mr. Ripley, I suppose, but the whole murder stuff in the latter muddies the waters.
Catch Me If You Can, too.
The rollicking sequel, where DiCaprio's forger-chameleon returns to a life of crime and insinuates his way into even more unlikely careers and life roles until he is eventaully caught and, having blown his one chance for leniency, dies in prison!
...but the whole murder stuff ... muddies the waters.
Did someone ask for the baddest handsomest best-groomed humblest detective in town?
Will Smith in 'Six Degrees of Separation.'
I really love this movie.
50: "My neck had grown two inches and you bought me that shirt for my new body!"
I really love the play and wish someone else had directed the movie, which is clumsy.
"Paul must have looked at all those names
in that book and said: I am Columbus. I am Magellan. I will sail into this new world."
Going to see House of the Blue Leaves this evening. John Guare was so perfect for a while. (I went to 1/2 of A Free Man of Color. The less said, the better.)
I think Smith's character really captures what this is all about.
Guare is kind of playful about it. He has Paul (the character played by Will Smith) coached by someone who tells him things like "don't say 'couch', say 'sofa.'" He makes reference to Henry Higgins who (if I took the lesson right) believes you can pass yourself off among people of a higher class mostly by talking like they do.
When Paul actually does pass himself off, it's through some ham-fisted flattery, some kind of ridiculous gestures (some name-dropping mixed with a very unbelievable story) and a memorized precis of someone's MIT senior thesis on Salinger. The idea of the character, and one that may excuse casting not-so-terrific actor Will Smith, is that with a certain kind of charm, the rest of your strategy need hardly be all that sophisticated.
Or something. I didn't read the linked article.
53 gets it exactly right. Definitely one of the best comments I've read on this blog, or on any blog, in fact. As I was just saying to some of the Timberites the other day, it's really a shame that Smearcase doesn't comment over there more often. He could give Henry or Berube or Kieran a run for their money!
Smearcase is almost a post-modern incarnation of Holden Caulfield, the ur-unreliable narrator of mid-20th century fiction. He tends to eclipse Holden, however, in the sense that his well-timed interventions clarify and underscore, rather that obfuscate and diminish, the contradictions inherent in narratives of self.
54: Twenty-four hours after his disappearance, the curious case of Clark Rockefeller was being handled by Special Agent Noreen Gleason, a tough, blonde, 17-year veteran of the F.B.I. assigned to the Boston field office.
Nice.
55, 57 - Smearcase is also delicious with apple butter.
55 is a pretty awesome concatenation.
The whole thing about acting versus being one's "self" seems to make a spurious assumption that people actually have a single personality.
Yesterday I caught myself making the fundamental attribution error.
60: Well, it was yoyo, I think, who made that distinction.
We've talked time and again about code-switching -- Witt's talked about her work in coaching members of cultural minorities in how to switch, and several of us have talked about being cross-class (raised working or middle class, educated upper class) -- and I take it that the post linked in the OP is about being taught a particular code of behavior, not just in order to simulate it, but to actively add it to one's repertoire or that-with-which-one-is-at-ease.
So much time wasted looking at myself
Through too many other people's eyes
Years and years just moving from disguise to disguise,
Look in a mirror, all I see are lies....
Only self-pity to spur me on
Because the best of me is gone.
i was the one saying 'acting' is common and done with varying degrees of comfort. real is just when the personality role is common for you that you don't really think about it anymore.