Hi how are you is the threat we exchange to make sure everything is in order no one is going to revolt make sure that u are good are you good? Yes. Respond yes to preverbal gun held to head because no one wants to hear that you’re not good In a casual setting. Make sure your acting skills are kicked in, the rehearsed smile or nod, the well timed glint in the eye if you can’t muster up the other two. We are conditioned to be good, present good, reflect good. Why is that the greeting? Why not hello. most people ask without making eye contact and don’t wait for a response before asking for their iced vanilla latte. I serve them their big coffee milk and they take it without a word. 

How are you is a practice in double think. We are taught to separate how we are from social interaction. It is very nuclear, isolating. This turn of phrase conditions us, as repeated words so readily do to our neural processing, to create distinction between the reality, whatever it may be, and the social expectation, resulting in a perceived right and wrong answer. The false social projection as the correct answer and the  truth as the incorrect one. And how many times a day to we ask how someone is and actually mean it? But to take a personal question and flatten it into every interaction is only deepening our internal mistrust and disconnection with most. But to not ask seems rude, uncaring, blunt and the niceties that are not actually nice give us the illusion of order, of grace, of civility. In a time without any of these, where veils have been pulled back to reveal ugly, teeming cavities, maybe niceties are destined to fall as well.