RESPONSE:
My God, this is literally the
second lowest form of moral development. It is literally advertised as how to
manipulate people, and then you try to deny its identity as manipulation even
as you give us the literal definition of manipulation. BY definition,
manipulation is any sort of communication, verbal or nonverbal, that is aimed
AT A PARTICULAR OUTCOME, usually for one’s own benefit.
Beginning with self-interest ends
in moral corruption, every time. Often, what people want is disappointing or
disastrous. Their desires are expressions of their false feelings of being “incomplete”
or “broken”. The Buddhists describe this as
thrishna, or “thirst”, otherwise known as (ignorant) craving or desire.
Post-modernist thinkers ascribe desire to the entire force of schizophrenia in
capitalist societies, by avenue of which the market is sustained, so even a
series of minor disappointments from the perspective of the consumer amount to
disastrous living circumstances for producers. Desire also feeds a number of
health problems, such as addiction, obesity, avarice, complacency, confirmation
bias, (not in the sense of pattern recognition but the reaffirmation of dogmas)
and laziness. It is a form of Pavlovian conditioning that persuades people to
like you AGAINST THEIR BETTER JUDGEMENT, and in its most severe expressions it is
a means of imprisoning people who are helplessly attached to certain
destructive habits and cravings, segregating them from those who might compel
them to take the more difficult route and to CHANGE. So long as it is motivated
by self-interest, it is exploitative and unreliable, so that even those who can
continue to show their gratitude to the benefactor may be disappointed at any
moment. In the matter of drug addiction, such a flimsy arrangement even often
leads to DEATH!! It’s no surprise that addicts often describe the Devil as the
one who gives you what you want, always expecting something far more in return.
Manipulators thrive off of this
sort of “reciprocity”, though all that it does is to preserve a status quo
which accommodates the narcissistic sense of one’s own perfection and the egregious
wealth one requires to fund such an enterprise to begin with. To acquire such
resources, one often needs to develop a situational awareness far outside the
scope of “this for that”, whose Latin expression “quid pro quo” is synonymous
with rape FOR A REASON.
In more accommodating people, it
might be natural to give more, to begin with, with the HOPE of gaining status
and attaining recognition, but one soon thereafter learns that there is no
guarantee of such retribution by those who managed to attain power by more
aggressive or indirect means; most often, people just take advantage,
inexplicably, because they have become accustomed to seeing “preferred results”.
It is through desire that we give
in to temptation, sell out, and betray those who depend upon us, dissolving our
history as well as our conscientious identity. We know how we would PREFER to
be treated, but this becomes irrelevant when we no longer have to worry about
being mistreated. Unfortunately, we often run the risk of repeating the cycle
of abuse when we forget our history, thereby becoming what we hated, a mere
representation of power itself, a stuffed shirt devoid of personality and
humanity.
Giving unto others with the
expectation that they will return the favour is not genuine altruism, and
maintaining a status quo which is already morbidly perverse is not genuine
justice. Moral growth depends upon a series of sacrifices, as does heroism. We
advertise work as being heroic, somehow, as we are exposed to propaganda that
depicts war as though it were an end in and of itself instead of a tragic last
resort. Yet heroism cannot be attained by egoism alone.
Unfortunately, egoism is not
confined to dissenters and deviants. Often, the most heroic people are the
least popular and the most seemingly self-entitled, since the injustice that
they combat has a way of finding them and the group they angrily defend begins
to include themselves.
When more and more people sell out
and become corrupt instruments of the status quo, the general public is
comprised of egoists. How is this possible? One does not wish to believe it,
and far less does one wish to figure it out. Yet the bitter truth is that an
ignorant mob of hypocrites manages to prosper at the expense of a SCAPEGOAT,
and that scapegoat is often an upstanding and innocent character who is
portrayed as a “thief of virtue” by those who simply sold their virtue for
short-term happiness. In such a mob, not only do people do “good things”
EXPECTING to gain influence and privilege; if they are not repaid, they rally
the entire group AGAINST the “ungrateful” party, regardless of that party’s
actual needs.
We cannot have that in a growing,
humane civilization. For this reason, true compassion must take into
consideration instances wherein the use of force, reason, anger, demand, and
sacrifice are sometimes at least conceivably necessary to attain true justice.
The simple question “why do I owe you that?” is never an answer to the
statement “I need it.” After all: if every question has an answer, or at least
if this one is more than rhetorical, then that answer is usually a statement,
and in this case it’s the aforementioned claim of need.
No state that uses military force,
money, and a legal system can be legitimate without this. Giving people what
they want ought almost never to be in trade, but rather based upon mutual
understanding and spirited, intellectually informed dialogue, aimed at growth,
progress, and common goods.
It is for this reason that false
kindness is immediately suspect, often recognized at once as being insincere,
and in many of the world’s cultures customs are stringently honoured to ensure
that no gift is given for morally corrosive reasons. Desire is truly one of the
two monsters that guard the Buddhist Temple, since what we want will kill us.
Give people what they need, with consent and without debt.
[({Dm.A.A.)}]
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