Manipulation
This is the same subject I was rambling about in my last post (equipment-thinking), and an attempt to express to myself (the rapt and nodding audience I pretend to have) a new viewpoint on the subject.
I remembered the several times I've had discussions about the concept of manipulating other people. A script that seems to come up automatically in those discussions is someone (usually me) saying, "well, we are always manipulating each other. But there's good manipulation and bad manipulation." Now I don't think that's necessarily true. It sounds a bit like an effort to re-enforce the idea that everything, including a person, is a tool (that has a purpose), and that this is an unavoidable fact. An effort to retain the ability to "manipulate," as if it's the only path to Power and Wealth.
It can be a fact that everything is a tool, but it's not the only fact. There are other regions of this elephant that we're blindly feeling up. There are other ways of seeing the world. Speaking to the "everything is a tool" perspective, I would say, "In order to acquire and encourage freedom, it would be useful to first allow, in your mind, everyone and everything to be free, and to avoid forcing your worldview or desires or needs onto them. Utilize your imagination as a tool to visualize everything that you encounter as a free agent, here under it's own will."
To a "no thing/person is a tool" perspective, I would say, "We don't manipulate, we interact. We don't use, we dance. We don't control, we co-operate. But we sing the song of slavery when it's time to see what it is. We build the machine when it's time to carve ourselves apart. That time is nearly over when we begin to remember love. When it seeps into our song and kisses the gears and floods the punch-card holes that we once called our goals. When we've said Yes to the End, to the cold grasp of the dark, to the threat of the Other, we find ourselves returning to the dance."
Thanks for reading.
I remembered the several times I've had discussions about the concept of manipulating other people. A script that seems to come up automatically in those discussions is someone (usually me) saying, "well, we are always manipulating each other. But there's good manipulation and bad manipulation." Now I don't think that's necessarily true. It sounds a bit like an effort to re-enforce the idea that everything, including a person, is a tool (that has a purpose), and that this is an unavoidable fact. An effort to retain the ability to "manipulate," as if it's the only path to Power and Wealth.
It can be a fact that everything is a tool, but it's not the only fact. There are other regions of this elephant that we're blindly feeling up. There are other ways of seeing the world. Speaking to the "everything is a tool" perspective, I would say, "In order to acquire and encourage freedom, it would be useful to first allow, in your mind, everyone and everything to be free, and to avoid forcing your worldview or desires or needs onto them. Utilize your imagination as a tool to visualize everything that you encounter as a free agent, here under it's own will."
To a "no thing/person is a tool" perspective, I would say, "We don't manipulate, we interact. We don't use, we dance. We don't control, we co-operate. But we sing the song of slavery when it's time to see what it is. We build the machine when it's time to carve ourselves apart. That time is nearly over when we begin to remember love. When it seeps into our song and kisses the gears and floods the punch-card holes that we once called our goals. When we've said Yes to the End, to the cold grasp of the dark, to the threat of the Other, we find ourselves returning to the dance."
Thanks for reading.