Filters

  It has often been postulated that the world would be a better place to live if people were honest and open with their thoughts and feelings. That social intercourse would be easier if we didn't have these "filters".
  What is considered a filter? A filter is a conscious effort to either enforce or discourage any number of things. A diction filter, for example, would restrict the language one uses. (e.g. filtering out swear words for the elderly, or big-words for children, etc.) There can be conversational filters, i.e. avoid talking about death or marriage to a recently widowed woman, or avoid vulgar jokes and crude humour with the "clean, christian crew". There can be gesticulatory filters, not slouching in public, or tapping one's foot on another's chair. Avoid eating foods with one's fingers, if possible. There can be clothing filters -- avoiding pink clothes, or refusing to wear baggy jeans, rejecting anything that isn't from the GAP. Many, many filters which seem to restrict our speech and manner when speaking with other people. Why can't we just be honest and do away with them?
  Isn't that a filter? Since when does a filter have to exclude things? As people who [hopefully] seek to progress and improve themselves in some way or fashion, tend to focus on one thing at a time. These are filters that are designed to exude some manner or quality of that person. There are therefore grammatical filters, in which students of a second language carefully form their sentences. There are dialectic filters, in which people consciously try to speak a certain way in order to fit in, or not stand out. There can be even diction filters, in which people try to display their pomp and pretension -- middle managers who try to use "professional" language in an effort to impress their colleagues. Students who seek to impress their peers by speaking only in slang. And yes, there can even be filters to use only "big words".
  Most of the time, these people are blissfully unaware of their efforts, and find it "natural" to use those words, or to wear those clothes, or to act in those ways. But here's a concept: manners, clothing and language itself isn't natural. They're all man-made. They are, therefore, all filters. There are those who have been with a filter for so long that they have refined it. E.g., people who are the pinnacle of good manners, or those who possess diction of lethal accuracy and precision. But those of opposite disposition, who suddenly seek to turn around their habits, while commendable, is somewhat laughable that they would claim that such a new habit is "natural".
  There are people who find the rules of etiquette to be formulaic and insincere, when they themselves use the same, formulaic responses. "Hey dawg," "haha... icic," "o i c k," "hey 'sup?" etc, etc. They may not carry the same flavour as "how do you do," or "it was a pleasure to have met you," but really, their usage is exactly the same. It is an autonomic, dry response just as sincere (or insincere) as those who would use the older phrases.
  To take it a step further, I am willing to go as far as to say that it is shere lunacy and idiocy to truely remove all filters from one's being. Speaking consistently in one language is a filter. Dressing clothes from the same era is a filter. Seeing people as humans is a filter. A lot of perspective is used through these filters. In other words, with assumptions. Yes, we shouldn't make certain assumptions, but it is quite impossible to live without any sort of assumption. (That you or I exist is a very nice assumption. That this world is real is another comforting assumption.) So those who think that people shouldn't use filters are like the epistemological skeptics (who were nicely disproved by St Thomas Aquinas).
In short, these people who are against filters in general are like "moral imperialists" who impose their morals of calling it wrong to imposing ones morals upon another.
  And no, I'm not saying that all filters are good and valid, but just that it's somewhat silly to think that we can exist without any filters at all.