mdlbear | (re)Defining my terms: open, transparent, receptive (Reply)

My recent post defining "openness" pulled in a surprising number of comments -- thank you. Thanks in particular to filkferengi's suggestion of "transparency" for the sending side of openness. I realized a few days later that "receptiveness" is a better word than "open-mindedness" for the receiving side.

So, just to get down to the roots and make the definitions explicit...

One is transparent when one is sharing information about oneself.

One is receptive when one is taking in and taking into account information about somebody else.

So where does this leave "openness"? Is it merely transparecy plus receptiveness? I think not -- I think there's a whole other aspect of it that I hadn't considered last time. (See how language affects thought? Now that I have good words for the two concepts I was trying to get at downwhen, I can pull them out and consider the remainder.) I think it's captured best in phrases of the form "open to new {ideas, possibilities, relationships}". It's less about the information than about one's relationship to that information. As we will see, this will allow us to capture the meaning of such things as an "open relationship".

So...

One is open to new information, relationships, possibilities, etc. when one is not merely receptive in those areas but ready to be receptive in them. Not necessarily actively seeking out opportunities to be receptive, but willing to persue them if they should come along.

Similarly, one is open about an area when one is ready to be transparent about that area when the occasion calls for it. (Note that I originally had "willing" instead of "ready" in these two definitions, but I think that "ready" better expresses the idea of active preparedness that I'm looking for.

It's worth noting that any kind of relationship requires a significant amount of both receptivity and transparency -- one has to be ready for both in order to be "open" in the more general sense.

A relationship is open when both parties in that relationship -- by extension all parties where applicable -- are open to new relationships. Similarly, a group is open when it is open to new members. Note that there may be -- and usually are -- quite restrictive conditions on this kind of openness.

As usual, comments are welcome. What are your definitions? Do mine seem to work, or am I still missing something or getting something wrong? Inquiring minds...