. . . a person who knows himself to be a coward is so terrified of being found out that he will deliberately run into a flurry of machine gun fire to avoid letting other people discover what a coward he is?
. . . that attributes we hate to see in others are what we secretly despise most about ourselves?
. . . that you must be true to yourself in order to be happy?
. . . that this thread will die after three posts?
Your answers and/or contributions?
In many cases I think so. Look at all the anti-gay guys who are caught having gay sex. And all the anti-sex “family values” types who have affairs in general. For that matter, watch America and France get mad at each other for being arrogant and stuck up.
Probably true to a degree; you are certainly less likely to be happy if you are constantly going against your nature since that pretty much precludes you doing anything you actually enjoy.
I doubt this one. I’m a coward, and I’m not afraid for people to know it. I’m actually quite vocal about what I’m afraid of, and the fact that I won’t do certain things. (I’m afraid of heights.)
We’re about to find out…
I think this one depends a lot on the level of self-awareness. As an example, my brother used to get very worked up about people being disorganized - he’s become a lot more tolerant of it (and much better at helping people be organized about the parts he really cares about/needs) once he’s accepted that he’s a Chaos Node himself.
What Der Trihs said.
No, but we’ll see whether it goes beyond three responses.
I got nothin’
I’m not sure about specific attributes, I think that probably has some grain of truth to it (the anti-gay example is a good one).
But in my experience people who are all around misanthropes generally don’t like themselves. I found this to be true of myself as a teenager (I either hated or had no respect for everyone; in retrospect it’s crystal clear to me that I didn’t like myself), and I see it as plain as day in others who constantly find things to be unhappy about in others.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of this one before, so I’ve got to question whether it’s actually conventional wisdom or a common trope in fiction.
This is true at least some of the time, although it’s certainly possible to dislike attributes that one does not possess.
Anecdote: A good friend of mine has remarked that President Obama’s manner of speaking reminds her a lot of her own father. Her father is a Republican so it’s no surprise that he’s not a huge Obama fan, but she says he’s specifically mentioned that he loathes Obama’s speaking style!
Sounds about right. Being true to oneself doesn’t guarantee happiness, but I don’t see much chance for happiness if one is false to oneself. Where one might go wrong would be in taking “be true to yourself” to mean “never change in any way”, but it’s not the same thing.