It is impossible that you should be sincere

‘I am sincere!’ she broke in, with more passion than he had ever imagined her capable of uttering.

‘I cannot call it sincerity. It is impossible that you should be sincere; you live in the latter end of the nineteenth century; the conditions of your birth and education forbid sincerity of this kind.’

George Gissing – A Life’s Morning (1888)


As Gissing points out here, there is something not quite genuine about sincerity within certain social circles. Beatrice is the young woman being accused of insincerity, not because of what she could be but because of what her social class and education demand of her.

Within the social circles of people such as Beatrice, sincerity is a vulnerability. To be sincere is to be exposed in a way which could become a social disadvantage among those who accept fashionable discourse as a measure of what they are. The adopted solution is a careless insincerity, a cousin of nihilism without being thoroughly nihilist.

Within the lives of people such as Beatrice, fashionable discourse gives no hostages to aspects of life which others regard as important such as integrity, duty, honesty, facts and even reality itself. Talk is part of the social game, an expertly articulate shallowness which is never quite caught out by genuine sincerity.

Maybe this is what sceptics try to retain - the ability to be sincere even within a comfortable life. To be a sceptic is to accept the discomfort which may be inevitable on the social tightrope of unfashionable views. Maybe within that discomfort, it is possible to retain a degree of uncomfortable sincerity.