"But the real, the fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the Princess de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, or entirely converting him to their faith, the like or which they had never come across in anyone before."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 265
Proust is explaining why the Vendurins stopped inviting Swann around, which in the end had nothing to do with his affair with Odette or his failure to share the intimate details of said affair with Mme Vendurin. Instead, they discovered to their horror that they could not entirely impose their will on him, discovering "an impossibility of imposing their dogmas upon him." In this case Proust is not talking about dogma or faith in a religious context, although that may have played some very small role, but rather in regard to world view. They wanted him to believe what they believed and feel the same way about certain people and concepts and objects. It makes you wonder, is this what we really want when we make new friends, whether we've done so deliberately or accidentally? We don't actually want to learn about new ideas or try new things or, at the very least, hear new stories. Rather, we're all in our heart of hearts evangelical; we're actively spreading the faith, and, again, the faith is our view of the world and its people and places and things. Or maybe it's better to think of us as capitalists, continually looking for new markets. And so our new friendships fail not because the person is not interesting, but because we can't convert them or get them to buy our products?
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