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I actually hate this development. I think it's not nice when I'm being lied to. When I ask how someone feels and they lie into my face that's not politeness, it's a blunt lie.

And yes, I've been doing exactly the same for most of my life until I realized it. It's mean. When I ask how someone is I should be expecting to have a twenty minutes answer when necessary. If not, then I simply shouldn't answer.

To start a conversation you can also just say "Hi".

No, really, it just hurts when you have to ask a second time and "Are you sure?" to get an honest answer that ends with "I'm sorry".

Seriously, it's like technology really reduces emotions and if that's the case, the purpose of anything but plain reproduction (which again is without a purpose actually) is lost. Everyone talks about more efficiency, things becoming greater and better, but the purpose for all this is being destroyed and we're more like an ant hill that simply, plainly survives and reproduces.




This is not a new development driven by technology.

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. - Mark Twain, "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. - Thomas Jefferson

(By the way, Twain's essay is great: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2572/pg2572.txt)




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