All of the animals in Eeyore’s world, and all of the people in ours, pretend at times. They pretend to understand when they don’t. They pretend to be brave when they are afraid. Pretending is a way to cover a weakness. We all do it. Even pessimists. But pessimists sometimes pretend in the negative key by playing the fool.
Pretending, even once in a while, is not right, of course. Not something Christopher Robin really approves of, but it such a common and natural weakness that it’s hard to get too upset about it. Nobody is going to scold Pooh for pretending that he understands a big word when he doesn’t really have a clue. He even has problems with medium sized words, after all. And it doesn’t take long before Pooh admits that he is not keeping up with the conversation.
But Owl is different. Owl is not just pretending once in a while. His pretense is systematic and calculated. He is maintaining an image. The image is that he is educated and wise and superior. The truth is otherwise. Owl is taking advantage of the natural gullibility of stuffed animals. He is systematically pulling their legs, and sometimes even their tails. Now having someone pull your tail may not seem like much. Especially if you don’t have one. But for Eeyore and his soul mates, it is humiliating. And it hurts.
To be fair to Owl, he is probably a victim of society’s image of what an owl should be. He is just doing what the other animals expect. Owls are supposed to be educated and wise. He is an owl, therefore he must be educated and wise. It is what everyone expects. Not the least, what he expects of himself.
Systematic pretense in order to live up to a stereotype hurts everyone. When you spend your life pretending to be something you are not, you miss out on life. You are too busy trying to be something else to search for your real nature, your real talents, your real skills, your real likes and dislikes. The reality is that owls have big eyes to see in the dark, not to read books. Make believe is a wonderful escape from reality. Temporarily. But it cannot provide a lasting substitute for finding and developing you real nature. I suspect Owl would have a lot more fun floating silently across the forest floor on a moonless night than trying to keep awake reading the Critique of Pure Reason.
Some people are very good at pretending. Not Owl, he is hopeless. But some people seem to pull it off for their whole lives. Some of these people even manage to make useful contributions. A pastor who does not believe in God may serve his whole life and do a lot of good in his congregation. But that is the exception rather than the rule. Even those who are never exposed to the general public, never show up on Hard Copy, often do a lot of damage. Somebody may actually believe that they know what they are talking about and take their advice.
Imagine going to a doctor who just pretends to be good at medicine, a mechanic who pretends to know about your car, a lawyer who pretends to understand the law. Or more likely, a doctor who has pretended to keep up on the latest findings, but has really been spending all her extra time in investment seminars. Or a mechanic who has pretended to look up the setting for your valves, but is really just guessing. Or a lawyer who has pretended to prepare your case adequately, but really spent the afternoon playing tennis. Usually, pretending is not good enough to get the job done. Most people whose lives are built on systematic pretenses are like Owl, easy to spot and pretty useless in a crisis. The dangerous ones are the ones that are harder to spot. The ones we believe and give our trust and our money and our love.
At least Owl’s pretending is fairly benign. His goal seems to be merely a little status in the forest. He just wants to impress Pooh, he is not trying to sell him life insurance. But it tends to get worse when the stakes get higher. When it’s just honey and acorns, there isn’t much temptation. But put Owl on commission or offer him a performance bonus and things could get much worse. Even the lure of tenure or a promotion will put strains on a person’s, or a birds, integrity.
Pessimists are particularly sensitive to pretense when it involves friendship. With so few friends and such cautious natures, we find the easy friendship of paid friends both embarrassing and a little insulting. A paid friend is someone who is somehow getting rewarded for being your friend. It may be a salesperson, a manager, a politician, or whatever. The pay is not always money. It may come in other more subtle forms such as advancement and recognition. But there is still something he wants and so he is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. And whatever it takes, in this case, is to be your friend. So he is suddenly interested in whatever you are interested in. Suddenly on a first name intimate basis. Suddenly you are his long lost buddy.
Pessimists have learned from sad experience to watch out for people who are being paid to be our friends. This is not to say that we don’t want the people we meet or buy things from to be friendly. But we react very badly to the sleazy old pal bit. It makes us want to take a shower, if we could just find a soap that would cut through sleaze. And most of us have had a few bad experiences with people we thought were our friends. Not necessarily come over to dinner friends, but friends none the less. When the crunch comes, you find that they were somehow getting paid for that friendship. And when the pay stops, so does the friendship. Suddenly they are gone. Along with your tail. No friend, no self-respect, and no tail. So you chalk it up to experience and move a little deeper into the bog.
One of the most unfortunate trends in industrialized societies is towards de-personalization. It affects many aspects of our lives, but is perhaps best illustrated in our work places. I am old enough to remember when organizations at least pretended that they cared about individuals. When they at least gave lip service to the importance of their employees, not just as job descriptions, but as individuals. When they would make a place for a talented, hard working employee, even if he or she didn’t fit into the organization chart very well. When everyone worked together to get through the tough times and everyone shared in the good times. And it only rained on Thursday evenings.
More and more business and other large organizations are being run by buzz words. A few years back the buzzword was Quality. It was a nice concept. And even though it quickly lost meaning by over-use, it still tended to put emphasis on the employees as individuals who did their jobs with skill and integrity. But like an old faded billboard, the Quality sign is quietly being taken down. In its place is Economy. Manage the bottom line. Do it for less. Who can you get rid of and still make this quarter’s numbers? Can you replace a skilled, experienced worker with a cheaper person?
The argument is that this is reality of tough economic times. The reality is that we are selling the seed corn. Skilled, experienced employees, research and development, loyalty and integrity. These are the building blocks of the future. And they are all on the auction block. Because by concentrating exclusively on the short term, organizations can pretend that they are doing well. Costs are down, profits are up, and the jobless rate continues to climb. Organizations, like people, can pretend only so long, then reality catches up with them.
Unfortunately, it is hard to talk about integrity or loyalty or humanity when dealing with organizations. It is not that businesses and other large organizations are immoral. It is that they are amoral. It never crosses the mind of the Vice President who pretends that he cares about his employees, or the sales person who pretends that he cares about his customers, or the dean who pretends he cares about the students, that he is doing something wrong. Pretending is what it takes to get the job done. And doing whatever it takes to get the job done is the first commandment in business. The only measures of right and wrong are success and failure.
The second commandment is don’t get caught. If you end up on 60 Minutes, you loose. The people who live their organizational lives by these rules would be both shocked and hurt if you accused them of being immoral. We have allowed our society to degenerate so that these are simply the rules of the game.
It’s even worse. The pretense and lack of integrity endemic in business and other organizations spills into our private lives. If you spend all day on the phone covering up a mistake your company made so that your customer won’t think it is your fault, it becomes all too easy to apply those same skills to cover up an affair. If it is OK to lie a little and cheat a little in business, then it is tempting to think that it is OK in your personal life. If you can lie to your employees, you can lie to your kids. If you cultivate the right image and personality to work your way up the corporate ladder, it seems natural to cultivate the right image and personality in your congregation, or club, or circle of friends. You learn to say what is expected, do what is expected, and pretend to be what people want you to be.
One of the greatest disappointments in life for pessimists is when someone we know and respect, maybe even think of as a friend, is exposed. Not the Pooh sort of pretending, or even the Owl’s puffed up image, but the hard core, self serving, taking advantage of people, covering your nasty deeds kind of pretending. Finding out that people we respect or even love have just been pretending can be a major cause of pessimism. Imagine discovering that Christopher Robin tortures Piglet every night or that he is fattening up Pooh to sell to a strange sect that sacrifices stuffed animals during some bizarre religious rite. Pessimists know a lot more about people than we ever wanted to know.
I wish I could claim that pessimists are immune to pretending. That it doesn’t affect us, since we can always see through it, and that we never do it. Unfortunately, neither of these is the case. Pessimism means that you expect others to be pretending, of course. So we may be slightly better than the Polly Anna types at recognizing, and avoiding, the worst of the pretenders. But the ones who are really good at it still take us in. And we are just as shocked and stunned as normal people when we find out the truth.
Nor is it true that pessimists are never guilty of pretending themselves. We tend to avoid some of the situations that encourage some forms of pretending. I don’t think there are many hard core pessimists in sales and marketing. We also avoid management whenever possible. But we are none of us all we pretend to be. This pretense is a major cause of stress since there is always the fear, and for those of us plagued by the belief in a final judgment, the inevitability, that we will be found out. Owl probably consumes mass quantities of antacid. Eeyore, of course, lives on it.
How does pessimism deal with the lack of integrity all around us? First of all, we try to avoid people who are paid to be our friends. Of course, we may have to deal with these people at times. But we try not to allow ourselves to believe that friendship bought and paid for is real.
Pessimists always consider the possibility that this person is just pretending. Even when, especially when, they are telling us what we want to hear. This does not mean that we trust no one. Eeyore has learned to trust Pooh and Piglet and Christopher Robin. If you trust no one, you have not just isolated yourself in the bog, you have left the forest altogether. There can be no meaningful, loving relationship without trust. This does mean that we are much more careful than most about choosing the people we trust. Care in choosing friends and loves is no guarantee that we will never be wrong and never get hurt. But it helps reduce the risk. Stuffed animals make a good choice.
Then there is the problem of our own pretenses. My mother -in-law once tried to comfort one of her grand daughters who was afraid of the dark by telling her that she had a Father in Heaven who loved her and would watch out for her. My niece later wanted a drink. As she sat in bed drinking it she asked, “Can that guy up there see me drinking my milk?” It’s no good pretending if someone knows the truth. If you don’t believe in God, or if the God you believe in can’t see you drinking your milk, then think about all your friends, who will find out eventually.
When it comes to integrity, I have five categories of people. The first category are the worst and I simply avoid altogether. Don’t go anywhere near them. When you get a pushy sales person on the phone, don’t try to be polite, just hang up. If they show up as your professor, drop the class. If they come out on the basketball court with you, suddenly remember something you have to do.
The second category are OK to be around, but always keep one hand on your wallet. One of my bosses had a simple sales philosophy which he also applied to other areas. His philosophy was find out how much money the other person has, and take it. These people can be very good, so even if your hand is on your wallet, it doesn’t hurt to take it out and check once in a while. Or if you are female, make sure you still have your bra on.
The third category are people you trust, as long as the temptation is not too great. You don’t have to keep one hand on your wallet, but don’t leave money lying around. This is where everyone starts out and where most people end up. It is not so much that you don’t trust them, but that you don’t know. So you play it safe. Owl would probably go here. Probably Tigger.
The fourth group are the people you trust. The people you would give a thousand dollars to hold for you until next week. And not ask for a receipt. The people you try to be around as much as possible and make your friends. Pooh and Piglet would go here. Although, with these two, I would be a little careful about anything more valuable than say a quarter. But not because they are dishonest. However, they tend to be a little absent minded and careless, Remember what happened to Eeyore’s birthday presents.
The final category are very special indeed. They are the ones you would let hold the rope. This goes back to an old Mormon story. It is about some botanists who found a very rare plant that they wanted to collect, but it was on a ledge over the edge of a cliff. They asked a little boy playing in the field nearby if they could lower him over the cliff to get the plant. He said, “Sure.”, but then ran off. A few minutes later he came back with a farmer. “This is my Dad”, the boy said, “I want him to hold the rope”. Despite all the pretending and weakness in the world, there are indeed people that you would let hold the rope while you were lowered over the edge of a cliff. People you would trust blindly. People of integrity. People who are not only impeccably honest, but responsible and capable. For Pooh and Eeyore, it was Christopher Robin. These are our real friends and loved ones. The lights of our lives. The joys of our being.
Eeyore and the rest of the world’s pessimists would like to propose a boycott on the worst of the pretenders. Don’t buy from them, don’t work for them, don’t vote for them. And above all, don’t marry them. By making pretense less profitable, perhaps we can make it less pervasive.
Pretending is the counterfeit for living. Integrity, being true to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our colleagues is not easy, especially in a society that condones and even encourages pretense. But the counterfeit is useless in the end. And life is too precious to exchange for a counterfeit. Integrity in our own lives and the lives of the people we choose to have around us, may even bring a certain warmth to the bog.
Besides, if you go on pretending you’ll probably get caught.
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