I spend a great deal of my time thinking how to convince people to change their habits. How to convince my family, my friends, my community, my country, and humanity in general. I do this because I am convinced that specific values and customs that they hold are wrong; and by wrong here what i mean is dangerous. I do not think I am alone in this. To the contrary, I think a concern for the actions and beliefs of loved ones is something that consumes most people. And that ultimately is what an attempt to change something about a person really is, a concern for their and your well-being. What I want to discuss here is not the validity of such an endeavor, but the illogical way in which the majority of us go about it.
Thinking about my own life, when someone i love holds a belief or practice that i feel is dangerous my response is to show them why what they believe is wrong and what they should believe instead. Or to put it in other words, to attack the belief or practice. Does that make sense? At first it appears to make sense. After all, I care about them, so of course I would look out for their best interests. But let's think about it a different way. I want to prevent people I care about from experiencing danger, but I attempt to reach this goal by attacking them, which to the human mind is synonymous with danger. Does this make sense?
I don't think it does. And yet, from my experience this is the way most people attempt to change people. They might attack the idea by calling it stupid or ridiculous. If they have obtained a liberal arts education, there is a good chance they will attack the idea using the tools of western logic to show the other that they are being irrational in their belief. If they have any sort of higher education the use of scientific knowledge is generally a part of the assault, and if not, there is always the sword of experience and age to thrust into the belly of youth and inexperience. This variety of methods of persuasion are all an attack of some form or another.
Why do we attack when we want to save? Isn't this just taking a perceived threat and substituting it with a real threat? Is it any wonder that people respond defensively to these attempts? You will rarely change someone's mind by attacking them, because we as humans are naturally distrusting of what hurts us. When touching a stove burns a baby the baby reflexively puts distance between its body and the stove. We react in the same way to hurtful ideas. The only reason our loved ones tolerate continued verbal assaults is because we are so integral to their self conception. This again is a reference to my notion of self (an essay I have not written) but the quick version of the idea is that a "self" is a network rather than a discrete body. Your most intimate relationships are literally a part of who you are. When your finger burns do you chop it off? No. In this respect, even though a particular relationship may continue to attack you, because it is a part of your self as whole you learn to cope with the attacks. However just as with attacks to your body, damage can be so severe that you have no choice but to amputate the limb or undergo some other sort of corrective surgery. I argue that the same is true from the self. We are defined by different relationships, some more important than others, but ultimately we are the heart-mind of our self, and if necessary can cut any and all other relationships to save ourselves. However, amputation or surgery are always painful events that leave the body irrevocably different from what it was before. In an ideal life, we would be able to avoid such things, and thus in our real lives do attempt to avoid such things at all cost. Even if it means dealing with a constant source of pain.
To summarize, I am suggest that the most common form of human persuasion (attack, which could also be defined as argument/debate) is one that we are naturally adverse to and suffer from. In the following essay I will suggest some alternative methods of persuasion that I am personally trying to integrate into my daily life.
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