Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    
    Exagerration is great for story telling, but there is a difference
    between every-day conversation and those that we have around the
    camp fire.  
    
    Everypone loves a good story, but they KNOW it is a story, it is
    fiction... maybe with a grain (or many grains) of truth.  We hate
    to "tell the truth when it is much better with a little help from
    exagerration".  
    
    To avoid exagerration, one must change their outlook on truth. 
    TRUTH, must be a demand, an expectation, and valued above all else.
    If you "stretch" the truth to sound good, later apologise (real
    hard) and correct "your story".  Do not allow the children to EVER
    lie, especially if you know the truth.  Treat everything they say
    as true... sometimes their story will blow up in their face.
    
    Example and responsibility are two ways to teach truth.  
    
    Also make it a GREAT SIN to lie.  A sin to yourself, to others, and
    to your familly.  Install (yea, easier said than done) this notion within
    your children... through example, discussion, and actions (like
    punishment, exposure, et cetera).
    
    Be ready to forgive a lie which is admitted to... the person is
    taking the responsibility for their mistake.  Another part of this
    whole process is to tell the truth even when it hurts.  (Of course,
    a person will learn through time "how" to tell the truth so it doesn't
    hurt (well... most of the time))
    
    good luck, 
    
    dana
    

    Thanks for the advice, Dana...but I was talking more about adults
    that exagerrate.  It is one of those quirks in a person's personality
    that you have to deal with, I doubt you can change it.
    
    What do you folks think?

    in amswer to something you KNOW is an exageration, especially in
    front of others, say:
    
    "I've told you 5 billion times, don't exagerate!"
                  
    It usually gets a laugh, and its a light-hearted way of saying:
    
    "hey, don't bullsh*t"
    
    and you are less likely to get a punch in the mouth!
                    
    Andy.

    
    It is my tendency, in casual conversation, to speak in hyperbole.
    It's a function of my sense of humor.  However, I tend to be too
    didactic in serious conversation.  Oh, well, I guess I just can't
    win.
    
    DFW

        I put a great deal of stock in honesty and integrety and
        sincerity, but on the other hand I sometimes think that our
        modern views on truth can have its bad effects as well as its
        good ones. For many of our ancestors exageration was a part of
        normal life. Their view of reality had a rather mythic quality
        to it. Tall tales, exagerations and likely stories that weren't
        known to be false were a part and parcel of life. 
        
        You can find this in all sorts of cultures. People tell stories
        or embroider them or explain things they don't fully understand
        or make guesses and the story grows. Because what we say and
        what we believe affects our view of reality, these stories
        become real to the tellers and they believe them themselves. 
        
        And I often wonder if it's such a bad thing. In the note on
        subliminal learning people were talking about how our beliefs
        and expectations can condition our reality. This can be a good
        thing. If I tell a story about how brave I am, and if I repeat
        it and if I come to believe it, it can make me brave. There are
        a lot of ifs in that chain, but it can be effective and it can
        work out for the good.
        
        Fantasy Role Playing games like D&D get a lot of bad press, and
        at times I think that there's a partial truth to the concerns
        regarding them. Play acting and role playing can be very
        powerful tools. If our fantasies and our role playing is of
        being unscrupulous or mean spirited folk, we can, I feel, find
        ourselves changing to match the fantasies and that can be bad.
        But if we play at heroics, at virtue, that too can affect what
        we are. 
        
        Role playing out side of games can be seen as being phoney or
        some such, but it can also be a way of changing ourselves and
        our world. Sometimes untruthes, exagerations and half-truths can
        be just lies and dishonesty, but they can also be the way we
        want things to be and the tools for making them be that way.
        
        JimB. 

    An ego boost?  Some people do this to make others think that they
    are more or have more than they really do.  A lot of times it can
    make feel people feel more important than they think they really
    are.  Too bad that they need to do that......all are so imporant.

The annoyance you feel with exaggeration or hyperbole or whatever
you want to call it could come from a feeling of "not being on the
same wavelength" with the other person.  I get the same sort of
reaction to people who seem gullible or prone to believing whatever
sounds nicest without applying any critical thought.  But, who knows,
maybe they've tried critical thinking and decided that if you're
gonna get f***ed you're gonna get f***ed no matter how good a critical
thinker you are.  The difference just grates on me.

"Not being on the same wavelength" when it comes to matters of what
is truth and what is fantasy can be one of the biggest barriers to
communication between two people.  When you read old Irish myths and
folk-tales, everyone in them is bragging and exaggerating right and
left.  But the fact that they all know that this playing with the
"facts" is acceptable and not to be taken (too) seriously allows
them to communicate in spite of the factual inaccuracies.  Take sone
of those characters and put them in the middle of a bunch of modern
corporate lawyers and somebody would end up with a bloody nose.

So there might be a cultural or upbringing angle behind this behavior.
There are also cases where certain individuals really have trouble
distinguishing between reality and their own fantasies.  In those
cases, you sometimes have to guard against being sucked into (or
subordinated to) the other person's fantasies; otherwise you can end
up being one half of a "folie a deux".

    Another thing about exaggerations: Sometimes a plain truth is
    embroidered because the person doing the telling feels, for whatever
    reasons, that the story as it stands isn't good enough. 
    
    -- it makes me look bad
    -- it isn't convincing; I won't be believed
    -- the plain facts don't convey the emotional truth
    -- plain life is uninteresting or frightening; by embroidering I
       can change the reality to make it less threatening

    Children are especially prone to amending life like this. My
    three-year-old son recently told me there were monsters in the trees
    outside the car. I thought at first he had fantasized monsters climbing
    over the car and couldn't tell they weren't real, but it turned out
    that he had seen a picture in the newspaper that showed a car under a
    tree that fell during the last storm. We regularly drive down a road
    with overhanging trees, and he was trying to tell me he was afraid a
    tree was going to fall on us. 
    
    I presume that as he grows older, he'll learn that more straightforward
    communication (I won't say "more honest" because his statement was
    certainly true to his perspective) is more effective. . . 
    
    --bonnie

    re. .8 You've got me wrong Steve - I am separating fantasy and reality.
    I am impressed with people for the way each is - a separate and
    unique individual - I think it IS a negative when they try to cover
    up who they really are with bu****it.  I am who I am - I have good 
    qualities and qualities that I feel could use improvement.  I am
    honest about these things.  I know that when I USED TO exaggerate
    about myself or my circumstances I didn't feel good about myself.
    I was creating a false world around myself - maybe one that I wished
    for and didn't know how to obtain..........
    
    As far as fantasy and imagination go those are separate issues -
    you're talking to a person who fantasized for an hour yesterday morning
    what it was like to be in my guppy's fins when he found out that
    he had just committed unintentional suicide, by trying to increase his 
    diving abilities...........out of the tank and onto the kitchen counter.

    I think we are discovering that there are a lot of forms of
    exaggeration.  The type I find difficult to handle is the one where
    individuals might say, "I have just received my pilot's license".
    My X told me that at a point in time along with the fact that he
    had access to a plane.  I suggested that he fly up here to visit
    his children, told him I would look into the regulations for landing
    at the local airport, etc.  He then had to present some excuse for
    not doing this.  Which I accepted gratiously.  Then at some future
    time the subject came up and I said something about his license
    and he denied ever saying he had it.  We had a similar instance
    over a college degree...he told myself and the children that he
    had received his bachelor's...then his new wife wanted the children
    to celebrate his receiving his GED.
    
    My boys do similar things...my oldest has told me he has purchased
    a condo for instance.  The difficulty is that I have to evaluate
    each statement and determine whether I should mention it again based
    on whether I determine it is accurate.  With Nick sometimes they
    are true.  
    
    So telling a story, relating an instance is fun and can make the
    telling more enjoyable.  
    
    But relating specifics about your life that are not true can make
    it hard for friends in future conversations.
    
    

    I would not call this simply exaggeration!  I thought you meant
    something on the order of bragging about selling a big computer system
    to an important customer -- three MicroVAXen, DECnet, and a floppy
    drive to the corner variety store. 
    
    If, in the pilot's license example, he was in a course to get the
    license and everybody knew he was in the course, I could see him
    lying about it if he failed the exam or something, but it sounds
    to me like this man is into deliberate fabrications -- and possibly
    can't tell reality from fantasy.  
    
    I presume your sons learned this habit from their father.
    
    Now that I think of it, maybe he just wanted to make the kids think he
    was an important and exciting person so they'd love him more. 
    
    But whatever his motivation, I wouldn't call this an exaggeration.
    I would call it a lie. 
    
    --bonnie, who has of course never lied in her entire life! :) :)

    
    
    
    	"Yea, I was drivin' down the road in my Fo...Ferrari! Yea, that's
    	it! And sitting next to me was my fri...My Wife! Morgan Fairchild!
    	Yea, that's the ticket!"
    
    							mike
    

    re .14  Stealing the act again, huh Mike?  I talk that way all the
    time.  "I was riding up the elevator with my broth, ah Tom Selleck.
     Yea yea"
    
    Cathy

    RE: .15
    
    	Tom Selleck? Why, that's me! Like I said, I was drivin' down
    the road in my Ferrari with my wife, Morgan Fairchild. 
    
    	:-)
    
    							mike