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[ 6 minute read ]

Vicarious Mistakes

I have so much more to learn

I am fairly certain I made a mistake in the previous post I wrote yesterday morning; on the subject of third person narrative, most commonly found in self-help books and such; though successfully used in fiction: 'Bright Lights, Big City' by Jay McInerney in 1984, which was adapted into a film starring Michael J Fox in 1988. All that is true and can be found at:

https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/point-of-view/second-person-pov/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Lights%2C_Big_City_(film)

and if you want to waste a lot of your data download allowance:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094799/

The mistake I made was through what I call a 'vicarious mistake'. A vicarious mistake, in my mind, is the repetition of someone else's mistake while believing that there is no mistake. It comes down to 'Who do you really trust?' A weak example of a vicarious mistake is to use a double space after every full stop when you write. That used to be the norm in Britain. I had a girlfriend who taught MBA's at Exeter University and most of her classes had foreign students. My girlfriend insisted upon her students to always use a double space after every full-stop, so they did. I told my girlfriend double spaces are archaic. It is an archaic practice. It is true. She stopped telling her students to use a double-space after full-stops. However, if any person was told by one of her students to always use double spaces after every full stop because they themselves were told by my girlfriend to do so, they, the person advised by her student, would be repeating her error and making a vicarious mistake.

Vicarious mistakes happen all day every day across the world and our attention is drawn to them when someone realises they have been doing things wrong and says, 'Oh! I have always done it this way!' because they were shown to do it  that way. (There is actually a double space after the italicised 'it' - for letter spacing purposes; learnt in calligraphy lessons)

I made a vicarious mistake by omission in yesterday's post. The source I had for learning about 2nd (second) person narrative was a person who failed to explain that, as with first person narrative:

'I went to the shops. It started to rain. I got wet' 

and third (3rd) person narrative:

'He/She/They went to the shops. It started to rain. He/She/They got wet'

2rd (second) person narrative can also include the centre sentence 'It started to rain'.

I failed to include any sentence in my earlier example in yesterday's post that was merely descriptive. Not every sentence needs to have a character in it, such as, 'It started to rain'.

If you want to read about POV and narratives you might go to:

https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/point-of-view/

Some of the following uses a fourth (4th) person point of view 'we' and 'us'.

Lying and Paltering

Suppose someone is asked, 'Did you eat the last piece of pizza in the fridge?' There are a range of answers that we might consider to be not honest.

Let's assume a single person answering did eat the last piece of pizza in the fridge. 'Not me' is an intentional lie by commission; 'I ate some' is an intentional lie by omission because it does not include the information that the 'some' is the last piece. 'I ate the cake' is an intentional lie by obfuscation because if it is true directs the questioner away from their question. This means it is paltering. The last, 'What pizza?' is not lying at all but is using obfuscation, diversionary tactics and delay to avoid confessing anything.

In economics, 'needs and wants', amorphous as they are, are regarded to have more value for different people and at different times. In order to be able to keep track of the value of these needs and wants they are given values known as 'utils'. See the Diminishing Margin of Utility in economics for an accurate explanation. The American (no cookie opt out) Investopedia (https://www.investopedia.com should be able to give a succinct definition. Use the drop down menu at the top left of their page to be able to search, otherwise: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp

Diminishing Margin of Utility If I am hungry, I place more value on the first pork pie in a pack of four than on the second; more on the second than the third; and so on. By the time I have eaten the third, I may have had enough or I am just bored with pork pies. This means that I could give significantly more 'utils' to the first pork pie then the fourth pork pie. The utility of filling me up has been accomplished by eating the first three pies.

In my local shop I discovered mince pies in multiples of three. There were packets of 18 and 27. Odd number, twenty seven isn't it? I suggest, most people might stop at eating three mince pies one after the other, so packaging four mince pies together is a waste of a unit from the manufacturers point of view. Is it a vicarious mistake to put four mince pies in a box, after commodification of products was universalised? I think so. Yet, is a triangular box more expensive to produce than a rectangular box? (a square is a special kind of a rectangle because it has four right angles and two opposite sides of equal length twice). I am slightly digressing in that I am drifting away from how much value we place on eating and what preferences we have. However, the number of mince pies in a box links two things: utility; and a suggested move away from making the same marketing mistake (vicarious mistake or inherited mistake).

If the owner of both the pizza and the cake places more value (utils) on the pizza than on the cake, it may be preferable to confess to eating their cake and withstand their wrath in the hope they will go away after venting their anger and forget about their much more precious pizza. In fact, what might actually happen is that the person who ate the cake may get vicariously blamed for also eating the pizza, if someone else ate it. Yet, with no confession for eating the pizza from any party the heightened anger felt by the owner of these foods for the loss of the cake is less than the sum of the loss of the cake and the pizza directed at two separate individuals, or even a single individual if it occurs as a single event.

So, if someone eats someone else's pizza and cake, it may pay to 'palter' by confessing to eating the cake in response to 'Did you eat my pizza?' or the last piece of pizza. A manipulator, despite never be asked about the cake, may reason that it is best to take the hit for eating the cake so everyone can move on, even if someone else ate the pizza.

The American Psychological Association says in an article 'True Lies: People Who Lie Via Telling Truth Viewed Harshly, Study Finds' (2016) that when people are asked an uncomfortable question they often will continue to tell the truth but without answering the question itself to create a mistaken impression.

References

The American Psychological Association (2016)

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/12/true-lies