Selfish communication

Recently, I've been pondering on the inherent selfishness of communication. The basic problem is that every time you tell someone something, the reason for telling that something is completely egoistic. You either 1) put on a show, you entertain your companion, or 2) you tell something in order to get your companion to tell you something in a tit for tat manner. In the first case the objective is then that you want to appear favorably in your companions eyes. In other words, in both cases you tell stories in order to get something, information, recognition, favors, or something similar.

That this egoism would be a problem, is an illusion easily solved. After all, is there anything that we do, that does not rise from our egoism? We work for money and to gain recognition. We eat an sleep to satisfy our needs. We love to be loved. Even altruistic actions such as helping the elderly, giving money to charity, loving someone without response, they all give us a good feeling. The reward from a altruistic deed is that we feel good, like a better person. In this sense, communication is no different. It is an egoistic process to gain something we want. If nothing else, we want to feel good.

However, the more interesting problems arise in a more advanced case. Some feel that in communicating with others, especially in light conversation, they are in fact entertaining, putting on a show and at the same time loosing themselves. As if they were not truthful to the others, trying to be something that they, in fact, are not. The simplistic answer would be to say that if the person does not feel comfortable with the communication, he should not communicate. But from personal experience, I know that it is not always that easy. Often, you feel external pressure to be social. For example, your friends ridicule you if you want to go the sleep when everyone else is going to the pub. "Oh come on!" Like choosing to be alone (=choosing not to communicate) would automatically be an inferior choice (hint: it is not!). Again, a simple answer is to insist on doing your own choices and not to surrender to coercion. While that is easier to say than to do, especially without hurting the feelings of your friends, still, this is not the complete answer. I have a faint feeling that there is something about the concept of "putting on a show" that I do not yet fully understand.

Putting on a show implicitly indicates that your are dishonest, acting untruthfully, or that you are faking something. The main problem is then not that you would be dishonest to your audience, they love your show (at least to some extent), but that you are dishonest to yourself. You're doing something that does not match your feelings. Or, perhaps, are your feelings about what you are doing mixed. You gain immediate satisfaction from putting on the show, while simultaneously knowing that it does not provide lasting gratification. I feel like I am approaching the essence of the problem. Perhaps it is the superficial nature of putting up a show that is the problem. Entertainment over a pint of beer does not leave a lasting impression. It just does not feel important. And participating in something less than important is, well, superficial.

What should one then do? Like always, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of awareness. Realizing the reason for the uneasy feeling takes you more than half the way to the solution. Mostly it is a question of braking the habit of putting up a show. Realizing that your at it again, is, like I said, half the solution. The complete solution, however, escapes me.