Forgiveness and Hatred as Persuasion

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Forgiveness and Hatred as Persuasion

I just read a most intriguing tweet by Scott Adams on the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

I'm quoting that below just in case anything happens on Twitter's side over time.

Quote

Republicans believe in forgiveness for your actual sins and Democrats believe in hating you for imagined sins. That difference has emerged as the major theme in this country.

 

Why political parties?

Let's not forget that this evaluation of political parties is happening at the end of President Trump's first term and right before the 2020 election. And this difference is promoted by the mainstream news so much, people are at each other's throats all the time. That makes the difference really easy to see.

On the other hand, I don't think Scott's observation was valid political party-wise during, say, the Iraq war under Bush. And, it certainly does not apply to never-Trump Republicans right now.

But for the general culture in America at the 2020 point in time, the Democrat versus Republican division is a clear and perfect example of those who hate what they imagine versus those who forgive actual shortcomings.

Rather than a correct category, it is an example for today's context.

 

A correct category division

So I prefer to make a difference between two mindsets irrespective of political party, and apply hatred of the imaginary versus forgiveness of the actual to those kinds of people.

Let's call them the Control-Freaks versus the Self-Assured.

(As an aside, there are a couple of other categories that Ayn Rand came up with, let's call the first the Rational Justice people. But they are hard to find. More often than not, I have seen here in O-Land a person start out trying to be a Rational Justice person in a Randian mold, then turn into a petty Control Freak. Rand also presented people rotten from within by Pure Altruism, whether they adopt it for real or preach it insincerely to deal with their insecurities. These are equally hard to find in large groups. So I won't deal with those types for persuasion right now. There are too few of them. But just for the record, I believe those two Randian types are best seen in reality as parts of people that surge and recede rather than types of people who are predominantly that way most of the time.)

So how do you use Scott's division for persuasion? Easy. Framing.

 

The Frame

You first have to detect whether your audience is a Control Freak audience or Self-Assured. This is more than important. It is critical. If you don't do this detection correctly, there is no way to use the division Scott mentioned for setting an effective frame.

And what does that mean? Easy again. Rather than trying to change their nature from hating the imaginary to forgiving the actual and vice-versa, you try to change the opinion of the respective group using their nature.

For the Control Freaks, you identify a hated target, then shift their hatred from that target to a different one by downplaying the things they hate most about their original target and assigning those things to the new target, then twisting the knife, so to speak, by making up even worse things and assigning them to the new target. You may not get them to stop hating their original target, but, if you do it right, they will go after the new target like a school of piranhas.

For the Self-Assured people, since they forgive actual sins and not made-up ones, you focus on whoever is remorseful in any wrongdoing event you want them to change their opinion on. Then you gin up the potential for good of the remorseful person and downplay the effects of the sin.

 

This is an extremely powerful tool when done by experts. Once you become aware it it, you see it being used all around you all of the time.

Michael