Openness or Naivety
Openness is generally considered to be a good attribute in a personality, while naivety obviously isn't. Unlike what you may think the distinction between these two seemingly completely different terms is rather small.
An energetic vibrance entered the train as the girl walked in. As she sat down right across of me I noticed the twinkling in her eyes that is so typical for openminded and goodhearted people. It was that single twinkling -actually to be more precise it was a double twinkling as she fortunately possessed two eyes- that grasped my lingering attention. When she accidentally tapped my foot and immediately apologised in a way one could forgive her anything, we started talking. How strange that not more people are like her, I thought. But then I realised: how strange someone actually can still be like that.
In an ideal world everybody would be open about their own feelings and thoughts to other beings. In an ideal world nobody would be out to use the honest information they receive from your openness to their advantage by hiding their own true thoughts, feelings and plans. In an ideal world nobody would try to take advantage of information asymmetry in the personal atmosphere.
But it's not an ideal world: people are very aware of how vulnerable honesty (and openness) can make you. So whether they are protecting themselves from getting hurt or are looking to hurt others, people are generally not very open. This is where the the very thin line between openness and naivety comes into play. The sole difference between openness and naivety is whether your conversation partner is likely to take advantage of you with that information or not. In order to be open but not naive, you will have to develop a sixth sense to discover what kind of person is sitting in front of you.
Although Buddhism is a very pragmatic "religion" (or philosophy of life), karma can never explain the above effect at length. Openness CAN do wonders do certain people if you show your honesty and vulnerability as they will notice that there are others out there who are truly interested in them without trying to take advantage and hurt them. But there are also a lot of others who are not capable of showing vulnerability and will be running away from that by feeling powerful through the act of making others seem vulnerable. The only thing you can do at that time in their lives is ignore them and give your energy to someone who is more receptive.
It is not much unlike the picture above -I know, not very zen or positive, but hold on. Two people are facing each other with loaded guns, both feeling extremely vulnerable and willing to protect themselves by shooting the other person when the threat level becomes too high.
Now there are two possible options:
a) You put down your gun: if the other person sees this as a sign of trust and is receptive to your message, he will put down his gun as well and there will be much rejoicing. If the person is unwilling to put down his gun, he will take advantage of your "openness" and might shoot you.
b) You won't put down your gun: You will continue to have a standoff which in the best possible scenario will result in both of you backing off out of each others lives. Worst case scenario is ofcourse that both will get shot in the incident.
In Conclusion: In this non-ideal world it is extremely important to get a correct judgment of the person facing you before you lay down your weapons and become 100% open and sincere. The real difference between naivety and openness is knowing when you can be open and knowing when to believe in the words that are spoken to you. Idealism is a beautiful thought but it will hurt you too much and cost you too much energy that you could've devoted to someone who will appreciate what you do and return it. Learn to observe peoples intentions, learn to believe in your judgment and then be the first one to put down your gun, you'll be amazed at what you will encounter.
The Other Conclusion: I soon found out the girl was naive. A lovely girl nonetheless with an idealistic world view but so vulnerable. I wonder if she'll be able to protect herself from all the aspects of life.
Disclaimer: Please note that the semantics in this article have been loosely chosen. Some readers (no really, actually only one) have notified me of the five personality traits whereas in some cases I would have to change openness into extroversion. These readers are obviously correct in stating this but as these personally traits are often heavily correlated, I hadn't considered splitting them up at the time of writing.
Back to our Philosophy & Psychology page