Before I start, I am going to operate under the premise that manipulation is a good thing, and everyone does it. I would also like to note that this is not a profile of me, these are my observations of other people and how they act.
I said in my last post that everyone manipulates people, and that is true to a certain extent. Everyone wants people to like them and give them raises and nice gifts. But there are other people who manipulate much more actively than that.
These people are often classified as jerks, or they're incredibly popular, depending on what they do and how much they care about what other people think. I've no doubt that you have met at least one person like this, even if you don't realize it.
These people, who I will call manipulators, are much better at getting people to do what they want than you are (unless you happen to be a manipulator, of course.) They always seem to know the right thing to say in a certain situation to make everything come out in their favor, however that may be. What I am speaking of would be perfect manipulators, of which there are very few, but there are many more manipulators of varying skill level who might not always have things turn out their way, but will have things go the way they want it much more than you do. These people will usually seem to care about you, but most of the time they really don't. They only want to be friends with you because of what you can provide for them, be it connections, money, experience, sex, whatever. Some would classify these people as socio or psychopaths. I wouldn't score them that high on the test, although socio and psychopaths are like this to an extreme degree.
In the proceeding posts I am going to outline a few tools that manipulators use, why they use them, and how you can use them to help your social interactions. The examples and suggestions are going to be through the filter of a guy, as I am of the male species.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Why Everyone Manipulates People And Why It Is A Good Thing
I'll bet you think your opinions are your own, don't you? Unfortunately you're wrong. At least a large majority of your opinions aren't your own.
It is impossible for anyone to re-think every thought a literate society has had. Because of that our brains use caching system of sorts. Essentially if you hear something from someone you are likely to believe it, even if they are not an expert in that field. Your brain saves this information in a cache of sorts, waiting for the right time to bring it to the forefront of your mind. Since our brains only work at 200Hz max, we don't have the time or brainpower to rethink every thought we have, so we don't question much of our precached thoughts and responses.
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
Because our brains take a lot of what people say as the truth and cache it, a large amount of our precached thoughts are not--in fact--our own. Hence, your opinions and even your thoughts are not your own. For example, in regards to life, death...what's the first thing you think of? Probably that death gives meaning to life, which--if you actually think about it and don't just parrot precached thoughts--doesn't make any sense at all. Why would death give life meaning? We are prone to rationalize a bad thing that happens to everyone as a good thing. If, say, everyone got hit on the head by a baseball bat once a day. Given some time, the people of our fictionality reality would begin to rationalize this daily head-bopping as having some kind of beneficial value. If we brought you into this new society of cranially-deformed people and they tried to convince you of the benefits of being hit on the head once a day, would you be convinced and want to join them? Absolutely not. Likewise, if you tried to tout the values of death to an immortal there is no way they would want to give up their immortality.
This is an example of a precached thought that society has loaded everyone with, and there are many others.
How does this relate to how everyone manipulates people, you ask? Simply put, if someone tells you a thought and you accept it as true and load it into your brain's cache, they have just changed your thinking and future reactions to people on the subject. Manipulation. Now, obviously most people do not do this on purpose, but they still do it. In fact, it is a good thing. It is how society has passed down information and culture for thousands of years.
Now, on to a slightly more traditional view of manipulation: getting people to think what you want them to think. Everyone does this, too. Why do you dress nicely for work? To make people think that you are smarter and are more in control of your job that you actually are. Why do you dress up for church? So people will think that your life is nothing but a happy paradise, just like everyone else's. Why are you nice to people at all? So they will think better of you. All of this is you trying to get people to think what you want them to think: that you are a good, wholesome, and smart person. Otherwise known as getting people to like you.
It is impossible for anyone to re-think every thought a literate society has had. Because of that our brains use caching system of sorts. Essentially if you hear something from someone you are likely to believe it, even if they are not an expert in that field. Your brain saves this information in a cache of sorts, waiting for the right time to bring it to the forefront of your mind. Since our brains only work at 200Hz max, we don't have the time or brainpower to rethink every thought we have, so we don't question much of our precached thoughts and responses.
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
Because our brains take a lot of what people say as the truth and cache it, a large amount of our precached thoughts are not--in fact--our own. Hence, your opinions and even your thoughts are not your own. For example, in regards to life, death...what's the first thing you think of? Probably that death gives meaning to life, which--if you actually think about it and don't just parrot precached thoughts--doesn't make any sense at all. Why would death give life meaning? We are prone to rationalize a bad thing that happens to everyone as a good thing. If, say, everyone got hit on the head by a baseball bat once a day. Given some time, the people of our fictionality reality would begin to rationalize this daily head-bopping as having some kind of beneficial value. If we brought you into this new society of cranially-deformed people and they tried to convince you of the benefits of being hit on the head once a day, would you be convinced and want to join them? Absolutely not. Likewise, if you tried to tout the values of death to an immortal there is no way they would want to give up their immortality.
This is an example of a precached thought that society has loaded everyone with, and there are many others.
How does this relate to how everyone manipulates people, you ask? Simply put, if someone tells you a thought and you accept it as true and load it into your brain's cache, they have just changed your thinking and future reactions to people on the subject. Manipulation. Now, obviously most people do not do this on purpose, but they still do it. In fact, it is a good thing. It is how society has passed down information and culture for thousands of years.
Now, on to a slightly more traditional view of manipulation: getting people to think what you want them to think. Everyone does this, too. Why do you dress nicely for work? To make people think that you are smarter and are more in control of your job that you actually are. Why do you dress up for church? So people will think that your life is nothing but a happy paradise, just like everyone else's. Why are you nice to people at all? So they will think better of you. All of this is you trying to get people to think what you want them to think: that you are a good, wholesome, and smart person. Otherwise known as getting people to like you.
Courage Under Pressure
I've read more than one place that you can't know how someone will react when under pressure or actual danger. I realized that I had actually already experienced something like that quite a few years ago, interestingly enough.
It was a number of years ago, I think I was like 12 and I was on a Boy Scout camping trip to a place called Yellow Mountain. The campsite was actually an old barn about a mile hike from the parking lot, on top of the mountain. We got therein the early afternoon and set everything up, then we hiked out to the actual top of the mountain and ate lunch or dinner up on the rocks. The wind was blowing strongly enough that I could stand at about a 45 degree angle off of a formation and it would hold me up. I love wind.
Before I left dad had given me his old construction jumpsuit in case it got too cold, and I had this on because it was pretty chilly. Probably around 40 or 50 degrees.
After dinner we came back to the barn, which was a really old two story one. Totally wasn't air tight or anything even close to it, but it did keep most of the wind off of the tents, which we set up on the second story. If I remember correctly a group of people actually camped out in sleeping bags on the ground level but were gone by the time we woke up.
So we all went to sleep. I was sharing a tent with a guy whose name I have since forgotten, but sometime in the night some kids from another tent snuck over and removed one of the support poles of our tent, so it fell down on top of us in the middle of the night. Wasn't a huge deal to fix, probably took like five minutes. Of course we then had to go take one of their poles out of it's holder as well. Fair play and all that. At this point it wasn't all that cold, but it was chilly, being on top of a mountain and in a barn.
After that incident nothing bothered us until the morning. I remember barely waking up a few times because I thought my head was brushing the side of the tent, which felt wet for some reason. Turns out, when I actually got up, my head wasn't brushing the edge of the tent. It was poking out of my sleeping bag, and the air was so cold it felt like it was wet.
Apparently it had snowed sometime in the night, and was snowing when the leaders woke us up, which was, I would guess, around 5 or 6 AM. It was snowing quite hard outside, we couldn't see very far, and it was cold. I later heard one of the leaders say that it was below zero.
It was a number of years ago, I think I was like 12 and I was on a Boy Scout camping trip to a place called Yellow Mountain. The campsite was actually an old barn about a mile hike from the parking lot, on top of the mountain. We got therein the early afternoon and set everything up, then we hiked out to the actual top of the mountain and ate lunch or dinner up on the rocks. The wind was blowing strongly enough that I could stand at about a 45 degree angle off of a formation and it would hold me up. I love wind.
Before I left dad had given me his old construction jumpsuit in case it got too cold, and I had this on because it was pretty chilly. Probably around 40 or 50 degrees.
After dinner we came back to the barn, which was a really old two story one. Totally wasn't air tight or anything even close to it, but it did keep most of the wind off of the tents, which we set up on the second story. If I remember correctly a group of people actually camped out in sleeping bags on the ground level but were gone by the time we woke up.
So we all went to sleep. I was sharing a tent with a guy whose name I have since forgotten, but sometime in the night some kids from another tent snuck over and removed one of the support poles of our tent, so it fell down on top of us in the middle of the night. Wasn't a huge deal to fix, probably took like five minutes. Of course we then had to go take one of their poles out of it's holder as well. Fair play and all that. At this point it wasn't all that cold, but it was chilly, being on top of a mountain and in a barn.
As I remember it, this is similar to what the barn looked like.
Apparently it had snowed sometime in the night, and was snowing when the leaders woke us up, which was, I would guess, around 5 or 6 AM. It was snowing quite hard outside, we couldn't see very far, and it was cold. I later heard one of the leaders say that it was below zero.
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