About manipiulation...
Warning: The following entry is evidence of me thinking far too much about mundane things when I have nothing cool to post...and when I'm trying to avoid school work.
Manipulation. We've all heard the word before and we've all been a practioner and victim of it. Don't believe me? Next time you are asking for something from someone, observe your own actions. Manipulation doesn't have to be malicious, all it has to be is something to help you get what you want. But when does manipulation become harmful? And what can we make of manipulation that has no gain to the manipulator? To try and come up with an answer to these questions I have selected two examples that come to mind where no particular gain was intended by the manipulation.
Example 1: My hair dresser Darlene. Mind you, the woman is hilarious, if not just very quirky. She's always "effervesing" as my mom likes to say; basically she tosses out a lot of compliments which may or may not be sincere--I haven't figured that out yet. My personal issue with her is that she's always seeking confirmation, but that's not what we're exploring today. My case example comes from just the other day as I was getting my roots dyed and decided to have my eyebrows waxed along with that whole mess (believe me, in the long run it's actually less painful-I should know as I've done both methods). If you've ever had your eyebrows waxed you'll know they generally either ask you what shape you want them, how thin, etc or you'll just tell them up front. If I'm asked I generally reply "As long as it doesn't look like two caterpillars sitting on my forehead, life's great." Which is really about the truth, as long as I have some sembalence of eyebrows and they don't look like caterpillars I'm a happy camper. The manipulation from Darlene comes in when she asks me how I want my eyebrows done this time. "Surely you don't want your eyebrows thin do you? Cause thin is yucky." ....Okay, so she may not have said yucky but her sentence was the exact same format. The you-don't-want-this-because-it's-bad formula. It's easy to see the manipulation once it's singled out, however, to Darlene's credit this is just who she is I think. Apart from being someone who makes a good portion of her pay off of tips, it just seems she's generally good natured and doesn't mind handing out compliments as she sees fit (which is apparently every two seconds sometimes but I digress).
So what was the point of this manipulation? Most people would say (due to the ammount of compliments she throws out combined with the fact that I have relatively thick eyebrows and that she would probably want to do as little work as possible) that she was looking to help boost her tip ammount in the end, right? BZZT! I don't see that as plausible, especially after working jobs where I've had to placate customers befor myself. In a job like Darlene's I imagine you would want to wait until your customer responded before giving your opinion on whether you thought thing eyebrows looked yucky or not. So what is the point if you have nothing personal to gain from it? It's not a malicious manipulation, but it is still a manipulation seeing as how I have relatively thicker (yet cleanly defined now) eyebrows on my forehead currently.
Example 2: This example extends from a recent fight with a friend of mine where I manipulated her into letting me drive her home (it was 11:30 at night, I don't care if she lived only 10 ft away--let's just say this college town has had more rape cases that I'd like to know). I say manipulate rather than convince or any other word because it had forethought put into it (hmm, this may be a key mistake of mine made in example 1). True, the forethought was only for both of our benefits and no one was intentionally harmed but it was a manipulation. Had I relented and not played my cards right she probably would have walked home (where something bad could've potentionally happened) and I probably would've felt really bad if anything would've happened to her. Did I manipulate her so that I would feel better? or did I manipulate her so that she would be safe? The correct answer is both. Both she and I gained something from having me drive her home--true, she wasn't happy about it at the time (and she could probably still be pissed knowing now that I actually manipulated her into letting me drive her home) and true I don't feel all that great about it myself but it was a manipulation none the less.
So is it bad to manipulate people? Even if it's for their own benefit? When does benign manipulation cross the line into being malicious? And what makes the manipulation malicious? Intent? Result? Or something else entirely?
I don't like being manipulated myself. Not at all. Realistically I suppose we could go the ultimately all encompassing route and say that everyone is manipulated by everyone and therefore we're all just puppets on strings. However some of me likes to hang on to the vestiges that as humans we have free will and therefore a choice of our own to do what we and and become who we want to be, consciously if we so choose. So why then do we, ourselves, manipulate others? Is it that we fear being manipulated, therefore we make sure to manipulate others before they have a chance? If so, doesn't that count as a kind of manipulation over us regardless? (i.e. by mainpulating others before they manipulate us, we are being manipulated in to manipulating....er, y'follow me?) What view do you have on the world and through what colored glasses do you see these things?
From being manipulated into terrible things to being manipulated to get a different piece of candy, where do we draw the line? What percentage would you say you are manipulated and how much would you say you manipulate? I'd be interested to hear some answers if any of you actually don't mind reading my way too analytical drivel.
I know I think too much, but it's about the only thing that keeps my brain actually alive and not shriveling in on itself and reducing to the size of a peanut. ;)
Manipulation. We've all heard the word before and we've all been a practioner and victim of it. Don't believe me? Next time you are asking for something from someone, observe your own actions. Manipulation doesn't have to be malicious, all it has to be is something to help you get what you want. But when does manipulation become harmful? And what can we make of manipulation that has no gain to the manipulator? To try and come up with an answer to these questions I have selected two examples that come to mind where no particular gain was intended by the manipulation.
Example 1: My hair dresser Darlene. Mind you, the woman is hilarious, if not just very quirky. She's always "effervesing" as my mom likes to say; basically she tosses out a lot of compliments which may or may not be sincere--I haven't figured that out yet. My personal issue with her is that she's always seeking confirmation, but that's not what we're exploring today. My case example comes from just the other day as I was getting my roots dyed and decided to have my eyebrows waxed along with that whole mess (believe me, in the long run it's actually less painful-I should know as I've done both methods). If you've ever had your eyebrows waxed you'll know they generally either ask you what shape you want them, how thin, etc or you'll just tell them up front. If I'm asked I generally reply "As long as it doesn't look like two caterpillars sitting on my forehead, life's great." Which is really about the truth, as long as I have some sembalence of eyebrows and they don't look like caterpillars I'm a happy camper. The manipulation from Darlene comes in when she asks me how I want my eyebrows done this time. "Surely you don't want your eyebrows thin do you? Cause thin is yucky." ....Okay, so she may not have said yucky but her sentence was the exact same format. The you-don't-want-this-because-it's-bad formula. It's easy to see the manipulation once it's singled out, however, to Darlene's credit this is just who she is I think. Apart from being someone who makes a good portion of her pay off of tips, it just seems she's generally good natured and doesn't mind handing out compliments as she sees fit (which is apparently every two seconds sometimes but I digress).
So what was the point of this manipulation? Most people would say (due to the ammount of compliments she throws out combined with the fact that I have relatively thick eyebrows and that she would probably want to do as little work as possible) that she was looking to help boost her tip ammount in the end, right? BZZT! I don't see that as plausible, especially after working jobs where I've had to placate customers befor myself. In a job like Darlene's I imagine you would want to wait until your customer responded before giving your opinion on whether you thought thing eyebrows looked yucky or not. So what is the point if you have nothing personal to gain from it? It's not a malicious manipulation, but it is still a manipulation seeing as how I have relatively thicker (yet cleanly defined now) eyebrows on my forehead currently.
Example 2: This example extends from a recent fight with a friend of mine where I manipulated her into letting me drive her home (it was 11:30 at night, I don't care if she lived only 10 ft away--let's just say this college town has had more rape cases that I'd like to know). I say manipulate rather than convince or any other word because it had forethought put into it (hmm, this may be a key mistake of mine made in example 1). True, the forethought was only for both of our benefits and no one was intentionally harmed but it was a manipulation. Had I relented and not played my cards right she probably would have walked home (where something bad could've potentionally happened) and I probably would've felt really bad if anything would've happened to her. Did I manipulate her so that I would feel better? or did I manipulate her so that she would be safe? The correct answer is both. Both she and I gained something from having me drive her home--true, she wasn't happy about it at the time (and she could probably still be pissed knowing now that I actually manipulated her into letting me drive her home) and true I don't feel all that great about it myself but it was a manipulation none the less.
So is it bad to manipulate people? Even if it's for their own benefit? When does benign manipulation cross the line into being malicious? And what makes the manipulation malicious? Intent? Result? Or something else entirely?
I don't like being manipulated myself. Not at all. Realistically I suppose we could go the ultimately all encompassing route and say that everyone is manipulated by everyone and therefore we're all just puppets on strings. However some of me likes to hang on to the vestiges that as humans we have free will and therefore a choice of our own to do what we and and become who we want to be, consciously if we so choose. So why then do we, ourselves, manipulate others? Is it that we fear being manipulated, therefore we make sure to manipulate others before they have a chance? If so, doesn't that count as a kind of manipulation over us regardless? (i.e. by mainpulating others before they manipulate us, we are being manipulated in to manipulating....er, y'follow me?) What view do you have on the world and through what colored glasses do you see these things?
From being manipulated into terrible things to being manipulated to get a different piece of candy, where do we draw the line? What percentage would you say you are manipulated and how much would you say you manipulate? I'd be interested to hear some answers if any of you actually don't mind reading my way too analytical drivel.
I know I think too much, but it's about the only thing that keeps my brain actually alive and not shriveling in on itself and reducing to the size of a peanut. ;)