Blind Acceptance Is A Mistake

Has anyone ever analyzed a programmer’s message?

Or, to take it a little out of that realm, have you ever really stepped back and listened to a manipulator at work, when they are working on someone other than you?

It’s hard to see it when it’s being aimed at you, when it’s in your head and working on you already, when it’s your emotions and your vulnerabilities getting played – but seeing the same person using the same tricks on someone else can really give you a whole new perspective on what they’re doing.

I think the thing we fail to see when it’s aimed at us is that, objectively speaking, the messages don’t make sense. The programmers and manipulators talk like experts on subjects about which they are intensely ignorant. They make assumptions and accusations that have no bearing on reality. They make huge and thoroughly incredible leaps in logic and fact. They tell us who we are like they know. They tell us what other people will do or how other people feel like they have the first clue about those things, like they know more about it than the people to whom those feelings or actions belong. They interpret the events of our lives like they understand them better than we do.

They target our fears and insecurities, our doubts and vulnerabilities, our hurt and anger – they play on our emotions in order to cloud our judgment and our reactions so that we swallow their ideas whole, without really thinking them through.
And it works.
But it shouldn’t.

Every single one of us has developed skills in critical thinking, and we need to use them, all the time.
We need to think for ourselves.

The world at large is perpetually bombarding us with excessive and frequently conflicting information from which it is truly impossible to escape, even if we don’t necessarily seek it out – and if we do seek out information, we can learn far more than we bargained for. Listening to various sources can provide us with important information about ourselves and the world around us. But just because someone says it or writes it or makes it public, and even if they wholeheartedly believe it themselves, we absolutely cannot substitute someone else’s certainty for our own. We must apply our own critical thinking skills before we decide to accept anything into our belief system.

If our histories have taught us anything at all, they should have taught us the dangers of blindly accepting someone else’s views or ideas or words. We should never let anyone tell us who we are, or what to think, or what to believe. We should never let anyone else revise our truths – and if they wish to interpret our experiences for us, then we need to listen with a critical ear, because our histories should also have taught us that the way in which information is presented can be a clue to the intentions behind it.

If information is presented in a way that targets our fear, shame, guilt, doubt, insecurity, hurt, or anger, then that is a red flag.

Someone who has our best interests at heart will not provoke these feelings intentionally, and will not play on the feelings if they are provoked. On the other hand, someone who intends to manipulate us will make it a point to target our emotions, hitting sore spot after sore spot with their “sympathy” and “understanding” until our common sense is drowned out by our feelings – and once this happens, they can twist us however they want.

When we were children, we had neither the freedom nor the knowledge nor the abstract skills to see these mental manipulations for what they were, but is there a single one of us who does not know firsthand the damage they caused? And knowing that, why would we ever allow it to happen again, in the current day? Why are we not more protective of our selves and the things we allow into our worlds? Why are we not more discerning about what we accept and what we reject?

Emotional rhetoric is intended to get past our guard, provoke our emotions, and circumvent logical thought, so that we accept what is presented purely on its emotional appeal. But emotions notoriously make really bad decisions, and if someone – anyone, in any situation – is encouraging us to make decisions based on emotion, then they do not have our best interests at heart. They are trying to manipulate us – and if we accept what they say and act or react on that basis, if we let our emotions rule our thoughts, then they have succeeded.

But if it does succeed, it is only because we have been parties to our own manipulation.