Obligation, Revisited

Maybe this will help make some sense of my line of thinking in my "Jerk" post.
Another illustration on the theme: The obligatory “How are you?”
Often, if I know I’d be asking out of habit or social expectation, and I don’t want to force them to lie and say “fine” out of habit or social expectation, then I just don’t ask. If they ask first and I don’t want to lie and say “fine” then sometimes I won’t answer the question, but rather jump to the “Hi, good morning” and bypass the whole routine of insincerity.

I find some genuine satisfaction that at least I’m not lying and pretending I’m nice if I’m really not.

I hate being a hypocrite, so I'm trying to avoid it.