The
assignment was again simple enough for the iexamen, building off the idea of
the first iexamen we were told to perform self-observation regard to
communication during the course of a day, from waking up to returning to bed
that evening; or in the early hours of the following day. This time, however, we were not only to
catalogue & observe ourselves but to change our behavior, if necessary, to
only “say only what is kind, useful, and true”.
Going
into it I was curious to how I would react to the assignment, since within the
field of psychology that an individual can and will change their behavior to
meet with the social norms. Starting the
day I didn’t think that peoples’ behavior would be drastically changed as most
people are in tuned with their actions & are not motivated by being unkind
to others. I figured that like the prior
exercise I would be more conscious of how I acted and reacted in situations but
my actions would not be effected or changed by the need to only be kind and
productive.
I
guess performing the assignment and reacting to how I acted as a result were indistinguishable
as during the day I acted and reacted to what I just did and altered my behavior
based on such analysis of my actions. Let’s
jump into the day, I chose Saturday because of the lack of classes &
relaxed environment, with breakfast. My roommates
and I were eating our own breakfasts at the table and my roommate curiously picked
up the instructions and examined what was written & chuckled to
himself. Naturally this brought the
others attention to it & everyone then took their turn reading it and
giving their personal opinions of it. After
a good laugh from my roommates they asked if I was even going to talk at all
during the day. unfortunately sarcasm is
considered “not kind” by most. Instead I
issued the challenge of having the whole room partake in the exercise, much to they’re
annoyance they all eventually agreed.
The
remainder of the day went about between our usual joking demeanor towards each
other and extended silence as anyone else came into the apartment not knowing
the circumstances. Gaming was a poor
choice as per usual we chose a random game that naturally one of us amazing at and
the rest were average to dismal. Shockingly
this lead to much anger and rage-quitting till it ultimately ended up with only
one of us remaining. So sarcasm emerged
as the loophole and most of my roommates gave up after a few hours.
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