The insincerity of the response in this situation arose from the fact that the situation was predictable and allowed for a mechanical reaction. The “caring” reply to Alissa’s distress cries came from someone that did not care. In this way, insincerity is a blatant lie. I did not really want to hear her elaborate upon the situation—to tell me that she was not alright and why. I knew Alissa was complaining about another of her perceived life crisis. I knew what she would say in response to “Are you alright?”. She would tell me that indeed, as she had just been yelling, something that she did to herself, perhaps bumped her knee or hit her head, hurt. The insincerity backing my words to Alissa allowed for her to do what she wanted to do.
Insincere responses serve purposes well when the goal of the person eliciting the response is accomplished in the process. Alissa only wanted to speak out loud to express her importance and let her existence be known to everyone in the apartment. It let Alissa know where everyone in the apartment was located ( Laura, bedroom, Jenny, kitchen!) and perhaps what they were doing while she was putting her nose ring in. It gave Alissa control because a response would center all action in the apartment on her. At least she halted our progress towards reading and naptime. She won! However, this response that I gave her, as it was unfeeling, did not annoy me as much as if I had sincerely responded and become angry, annoyed, or let down by the lack of necessity for such a response. In this way, I won too. I avoided becoming too involved in her crisis. In fact, one could say that I turned off my listening ears for a while. Insincerity allows for both parties to be rewarded if people have an agenda in mind, and the situation indeed was what each perceived it to be. I was correct in assuming the unimportance of the situation.
Granted, the unfeeling would seem calloused to an outsider that had not experienced the frequent cries of Alissa. Alissa could have cut herself or needed assistance. Indeed, the continuance of her cries in pain would have signaled such a request, and perhaps a reaction, had she not cried wolf so many times before. Prior experience develops insincerity. The potential situation should have elicited a sincerely alarmed response. However, Alissa's message was not that she was hurt. To me, the message was: “Give me attention. Validate my self-importance. Let me bitch and complain about something little. Go ahead and brace yourself, and drop what you’re doing.” The message that my insincerity gave was: “Go ahead Alissa, give it to me!” Experience with an individual and expectation cultivate conventional interactions and practices between two people.
Typical situations create typical responses—insincere responses. A response without feeling comes from hardening to a certain individual or the situation itself. Guilt pangs one’s heart only if the assumption is disproved. If Alissa had truly been hurt, it would have seemed awful to her mother, for instance, to discover that I sat there on my bed and only yelled unemotionally from the other room. The simple detail that I hollered from the other room, instead of reacting with action and, thus, alarm, describes the insincerity of the situation with Alissa. The highly individualized situation results in an untypical response when viewed from an outsider. The “typical reaction” to an elongated cry like that would normally be to ask my question sincerely and to spring to my feet prepared to aid in the mass destruction that must have occurred. Once again, experience creates typical responses, which seem insincere.