September2, 2013

There are innumerable stories. It's a more complex form of individuality. This unique person meets that one, the dynamic takes some twists and turns. It all unfolds within a circle of other individuals with their own quirks, and a setting, club, organization, with its own norms. All this happens in a larger culture and time in history that adds its own circumstances. Truly, we live as stories, not as abstract categories. People most naturally think as stories---it's traditional schooling that has distorted our more organic mental life so that we think in terms of separate categories, abstractions, interacting with others in a dry mathematical way. Truth is that in every interaction there are many textures that remain unknown, such as how A feels about B. That in turn is affected by many variables---see my papers on my website on "tele" or the foundations of rapport.

How we feel about a person dictates unconsciously how we interpret that person's behavior---cute, tiresome, darling, overbearing, whatever.