"Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves."

be careful who you listen to in that book mate. a lot of the characters are pseuds or retards who just talk out their asses to sound smart.

No. Actual sincerity does not. That doesn't even make sense. If the sincerity is inauthentic, then it's not sincerity.
This is just nonsense.
Well, no fuck. That means they were never being sincere in the first place.

one should surely be able recognize the implied connotation that the word 'sincerity' carries when connected to DFW,
the New Sincerity movement in literature attempting to be a return from modernist values (ironical) to classical values (what you might call honest, or rather, naive).

But can one really consciously will himself to become naive again after he has been spoiled by modern society, or is it, when he attempts to will himself so abruptly to be "sincere", just a step further down toward hell and suffering?

that's what they mean

Honesty is truth acknowledged.
Sincerity is truth shared between people.

all of you need to chill the fuck out. if esme said that quote, of course it doesn't make sense. she's a fucking strung out heroin addict who's a failed poet and also fucked out of her mind 100% of the time. which character said that? it sounds like esme. but it's been a while since I read it.

>No. Actual sincerity does not. That doesn't even make sense. If the sincerity is inauthentic, then it's not sincerity.
And that's why sincerity can never be deliberate.

If you're thinking about sincerity you're already lost, drowning in layers of irony.

Again. No fuck.
I get that OP mentioned Saint Dave, but the phrase which "blows dfw out" is idiotic.

Naive sincerity is not the only sincerity. The whole point of "new" sincerity is that it is post-ironic, i.e. a conscious rejection of those layers of irony. Do you think it's impossible to be serious after you learn about the existence of jokes?

Esme's whole deal was that despite being a fucking trainwreck she was more aware about these sorts of things than half the people in the book. You can't read if you think everything she says is meant to just be dismissed on account of her being a junkie.

Also that quote was in response to Otto telling her how sincere he was being.

It's not sincerity at all if you have to call it sincerity. At that point it's affectation. No one talks about how sincere they are/want to be/need to be until they're already full of shit.

In a way, yes, in the sense that from that point on you can see situations as serious or funny and that awareness of multiple approaches undermines 'true seriousness'. People who are really serious are in that moment not aware that the seriousness of the situation is an arbitrary matter. Seriousness is always ignorant, in a way. In a moment of complete seriousness people forget about jokes being possible. If the awareness of potential jokes is present real seriousness is no longer a possibility, and if the awareness of potential irony is present real sincerity is no longer a possibility.

The entire point of my post was that a person can go from being full of shit to being sincere. Sorry if that wasn't conveyed clearly.

>"dude what if being a thing you're actually the opposite of that thing"

Bravissimo, pls spread.

>At that point it's affectation
This is just where we will have to diverge. This is why I believe DFW's project has been a failure. It's defeatist, believing that will eventually lead to nihilism. I'm really not into movements that disregard self-discovery as an inauthentic gesture or affectation.

pic related it's you

To humor that example, yes. If you find yourself in an overwhelmingly stressful situation, and your first instinct is to think up jokes by the minute in order to relieve yourself from the painful anxiety, you can't really pretend that just because you aren't speaking the jokes out loud it automatically means that you're in a serious state of mind.

Only if you pull back and take a moment to calm yourself down and embrace your fears and stress and whatnot, will you relieve yourself of the previous instinct which was to think up jokes. And incidentally, only then will you be able to approach the situation from an actually serious state of mind.

Alrighty then, whatever you say my friend.

That's fine, you can define yourself by your instincts if you want. I prefer to use the front part of my brain sometimes, but that's just me.

It's quantum-ethics breh, by looking at the motive you change it.

yeyeee I know I'm not saying she isn't aware of that shit. was that before or after she left the gas on?

s-so, basically, you're saying that it's a good idea to completely ignore your emotions and just act exclusively based on what you've cold-calculated will produce the best possible outcome?

s-so basically, you're saying that we shouldn't have any personality? just do whatever provides the most """resources""" to ourselves or something?

what the fuck are you doing on my literature board fucking STEM socio

Sincerity is not inherently dishonest just because deliberate.
Especially if there is a mutual understanding between individuals of that deliberation.

Not really? Feel free to wallow in the meaninglessness of life you wish.

[continuation]
then, since having everyone be sociopathically "sincere" with each other isn't the real solution, what is?

Well, similarly to how your comedian instinct tones down when you take out the root cause of your unseriousness -- i.e. overwhelming anxiety,
so would probably your ironical-jester instinct tone down when you take out the root cause of your unnaivety.

Therefore the real debate should be: what should we change about us and our surroundings/society in order to reclaim actual naive honesty, and not just dig ourselves deeper in the hole?

It's certainly not the same sort of sincerity, but it could be argued that choosing sincerity makes it much more meaningful than simply having it as your default setting.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to misrepresent what I said. Instincts are what tell us to act in the interest of resources, all I'm saying is that if you feel that your instincts are leading you to a course of action you don't desire, it's possible to overcome them. If you don't feel like choosing to be sincere, fine, but I can assure you that it's not impossible.

These are all good points actually.

I have nothing on you then except that however we chose to act, the root cause of our instinct to act and speak ironically will still remain.
And that therefore consciously struggling to be Newly-Sincere and patting yourself on the back for it can in the long run just turn merely into a fancier anaesthetic not itself unlike the song of a bird who has come to love its cage.

You can either do irony or sincerity in order to survive the pains of the world, but in the end you should still fucking better be trying intensively to cut out the actual pains, and not just contemplate how you should best anaesthesize them.

Well, you can train the irony out of yourself, in the same way that you can train out anxiety. By definition, you'll never be "naïve", but you can create the same response that you had when you were unaware of irony. As for changing society, you'd need to first get rid of the rampant sociopathy, which I doubt will ever happen.

I appreciate your ambition, and though it might not be practical in every situation, it's certainly worthwhile here. I think sincerity itself is a way to combat the root cause of irony, which is lack of empathy. If you relate sincerely to others, they'll be more likely to understand and empathize with you, and translate that experience to their interactions with others. Of course this is difficult, since it'll result in ridicule much of the time, but it ends up moving people in the right direction.

The root cause of irony is absurdity.

I think we're referring to two different instances of irony here. In what way do you think it comes from absurdity, and in what way does that sort of irony affect people?

It's Esme. And yeah, the conscious putting-on of an air of truthfulness overtakes actual truthfulness for people who can't "live deliberately" as Wyatt tries to. Otto, you motherfucker.

>you need to be sincere before you are honest
whut? why?

I'm talking about all forms of irony while you're only talking about "irony" in the sense of detached, "cool" behavior, but it's not a distinct thing from the broader idea of irony. Irony is always an attempt at protecting oneself from the unknown and the unreasonable; an effort to transcend or supersede it. To react in an obvious, simple, or honest way to certain things leaves one vulnerable, so the illusion of control or understanding provided by ironic thought or behavior acts as a safety net.

No matter how much empathy there is in society, the inherent vicissitudes of existence make irony necessary.

>cannot
Not will not.

Blaming our sincerest lord and saviour for his subconscious' growth...

I liked the guy until I found out he was a filthy gun grabber. Maybe he is right that we should keep the artist separate from his art.

Let me just add my own substitutions to his reasoning: "Lets regulate internet posting like we do magazine publication, what's the problem?"

Oh well in that sense I think irony is a good thing, although it tends to offend my sensibilities when it's found in art or literature that's supposedly trying to achieve aesthetic merit. But other than that, I agree that we need dark humor to make life bearable.

Is that supposed to matter at all? It's just some dweeb getting caught up in words and projecting. No one can say who is and isn't being honest.

this in no way pertains to the genre of new sincerity... a title that really means nothing

I can't wait until the Gaddisposter finishes his book and moves onto some other meme pomo novel to spam this board with. If I wanted a collection of cheap out-of-context quotes from a writer I would go to wikiquotes.

Awesome. That book was terrifyingly autistic. Definitely going to guve it a crack after GR

It is you. You're literally using 'it will lead to nihilism' as an argument. Your argument is 'if this were the case it would lead to unwanted results so let us assume that it isn't.'