Skip to main content

Verbal Manipulation and Cheap Psychology

Most of what we say is intended to maintain relationships.  
Very little is the actual conveying of information.  
Some of our conversations are designed to convince people of something;
that is what we call rhetoric, but mostly we chatter about the weather,
and what happened today, and other such socially lubricating matters.

I know all that. It still drives me mad.

I used to teach at a school whose team colors were blue and white.
An enthusiastic athletic director put a blue roof on the fieldhouse,
a blue surface on the track around the football field, 
and spongy blue surfacing on the tennis courts.  It was awful!
The people who liked it most moved to Boise and painted 
the football field blue, too.  And put blue uniforms on the team.

People loved to say they "bled blue".  
I know I didn't.  I was a commoner.

Jargon.  We love jargon.  
Do you have too much on your plate?
Is it really what it is?  
Can you walk the walk and talk the talk and chew gum at the same time?

"Those are really great questions!" (if I do say so myself).

The psychology behind saying, "That's a really great question!" is interesting.
The intention is to affirm the questioner.  "You asked a really great question,
possibly the greatest question since God asked, "Adam!  Where are you?"
in the Garden of Eden.  And I just happen to have a really great answer,
possibly the greatest since Adam said, "Huh?  I dunno.  What else is there?"

Most of the really great questions aren't.  
They are just questions.  
In fact, to speak factually, sometimes they are dumb,
but that doesn't matter.  The point is to co-opt the other person.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work.  
You just admitted that my question was great.  
Even if you disagree with me, I am probably right.  
I have great perception.  Right?

Anyway, my blood is blue.  What color is yours?  



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more