BS: Public vs Private Perception

Subject: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: Mooh
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 09:07 AM

From reading another thread I am reminded of how public and private perceptions of people can be so different. For example, my father was clergyman, intellectual, teacher, mediator, a very serious though friendly fellow in public. Privately however, I remember him as outrageously funny, creative, sometimes irreverent, politically opinionated and often questioning authority, with wide, wide interests. It seems when people openly remember him to me they don't know him as I knew him. Sometimes it's hard to believe we're talking about the same guy.

Makes me wonder whether the same will happen to me and my kids.

Are we the same publicly and privately? Should we be? Do we hold back something from each to share only with the other? Is it instinctive, natural?

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 11:10 AM

Mooh, if MOST people I nknow raised this topic, I'd be SURE that Mudcat would be the worst setting for its discussion the OP could pick. But I know you, a little bit, and I know you to be a reflecting person, not a reactive one. So this reply is to you, as if no one else who is reactive will jump on any one word as I address your topic. (As I've posted elsewhere, time here is short right now. I may not post here again, much. I may not even see replies addressed to me, tho PMs are always welcome.)

Here's what all my experience has taught me thus far.

Privacy is natural. Secrecy is not. Privacy is about boundaries, and is healthy. Secrecy is about fear, shame, power, and is not.

Confusion about these can be immaturity of development (not pejorative, just descriptive-- read on). Or it can be denial. Confusion is natural, and can be healthy. Denial is not.

Confusion is most usually about needing information and insight. Denial is about fear, shame, power.

The rest of that meditation (thanks for sprouting it) will go with me, forward, thru the day. Most of that will not be posted-- I'll be too busy! :~)

Finally, Mooh, our older PMs. I remember. :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 02:51 PM

The public persona and the private ones are often at odds. Many of those who you would like to meet, you might find disappointing in their attitudes and behaviors and others who you don't care for publicly might surprise you.

My solution is to separate the human from the ideology.

I have a great many people in my life who I admire as people and I don't agree with
their ideologies or philosophies.

When someone is hurt in an accident or is starving or in a great need that I can supply,
I don't question their politics or religion. I opt to do the human thing.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: Amos
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 03:33 PM

Private life, too, is within known boundaries, providing a certain safety from slings and rebuffs found more commonly in public exchanges; so although we are not actually different people, it is perfectly natural to design different personas to manage different kinds of exchanges. Insult a brother in private and you can clean it up with an apology and some conversation; insult a banker in public and you may find your mortgage being called unexpectedly for no apparent reason. It's very different territory.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: Mooh
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 08:58 PM

I really don't have a secret life, though I have a very private life, aside from what the public sees. It's not that I consciously try to separate "lives", it's just that there are things I won't share with strangers. Details of my personal, emotional, sexual, financial, and family lives are my own, and those who have a vested interest. Sometimes things slip out, cross over, get shared accidentally or purposely, but generally I am happiest when my comfort zone is private. Instinctive, maybe.

I am often reminded of an old acquaintance who was known as a sports and fitness nut, but the true love he rarely shared was bird carving, and he was a champion.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Public vs Private Perception
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 06:53 PM

When we find out that someone we know in public is very different in private, the assumption temds to be that the public person is an act, and the private person is the real one. I wonder if it sometimes isn't the other ways round - that for example, some performers only really become themeselves when on stage.

Incidentally the very word person is interesting - it comes from the Latin word "persona", meaning "mask", referring to the masks that actors in plays wore.