My Default Personhood Scale

I have recently discovered something about myself. I've discovered that, generally, my default belief is that everyone has specific motives when dealing with other people -- specifically of fair play, communication, and intelligent self-interest. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but we'll just deal with these for the moment.

You can see already there is a problem. Communication is more of a tool. Fair play is more of a social grace. And intelligent self-interest is a "self" goal. So, I'm comparing and contrasting very different things. But they are strongly related in my mind. So if you are confused at any point, please ask, and I will try to explain.

Let's define the terms in terms of how I term the terms. Fair play means "equitable or impartial treatment", but for me it also has a chivalrous undertone marked by honor, fairness, generosity, and kindliness. Communication refers to every form of communication: verbal, physical, emotional, tonal, and word choice. Self-interest refers to the ability of someone to see what they want and do whatever it takes to get it: a form of selfishness. This is not what I mean. I add the word "intelligent" to "self-interest" to refer specifically to the ability to select the good things in life and do whatever it takes to get those. (For instance, someone who wants unmarital sex could make plans to obtain that goal; but that someone may also desire to get into heaven, a path which, when walked, doesn't lead to infidelity or degredation of the body.) Intelligent self-interest refers to proper goal selection, then doing whatever it takes to reach those goals.

You have probably already noted that many times these aspects are mutually exclusive or completely parallel or entirely unrelated to each other. Sometimes communication is overrulled by intelligent self-interest. Sometimes fair play requires you to be too honest. Sometimes you have to give up your self-interest in order to be fair, or to maintian intelligent self-interest you have to sacrifice fairness and communication. I see it as a circle graph, with each aspect touching and influencing the others to some degree.

When I first meet you, I label you according to which of the above three rules you use in your dealings with people. When I add Time to these ingredients, I begin to see what level of importance you place on each of these three pegs. This tells me a lot about your "personhood".

Generally, this is the measure I use to understand someone, and from there to build my respect or distrust for someone's motives. I will deal with motive on my next post.