The Will to Convince

It was a bit difficult to come to an opinion about the topic itself this time.  Is it asking about the desire for people to agree with us?  Is is the interest in control?  The Source gave the barest of descriptions at the time of voting, but was, ahem, convincing enough for it to be chosen.

He explained in more detail to open the meeting: trying to convince others is bad manners.  To support the assertion, he pointed to the style of TV news today, and to fundamentalists of all stripes who stick their noses into everybody's business.  They have a deep-seated need for their point of view to be taken seriously and accepted, so much that they harass and lie to force others to agree.  They present twisted or even completely fabricated evidence.  The Source admitted that there is such a thing as merely presenting one's point of view, which differs from pushing it on somebody else, but he still had the strong suspicion that more force or coercion is used normally than is necessary.  For him, the rudeness comes from the fact that the opportunity to think and come to one's own opinion is being cast aside.  At the same time, people who have seen themselves forced to outwardly accept an opinion, might not have real agreement with it.  He quoted, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."  Later he spoke of the use of emotions to manipulate opponents into either agreeing or conceding some correctness in an argument, or to rile up listeners and get them on the "right" side.  Part of the willingness of people to be convinced, not just to convince others, is the fear of disorder, and in the opinion of the Source, since our natural mental state is doubt and not certainty, our minds will be in constant, natural, disorder.  There is also the drive to find and create order that seems to come from within us, and compels us to create certainties.  We not only have to convince others for our certainties to be real, we have to convince ourselves.  There is a strange fear of saying, "I don't know" when it should be what we say most.  For the Source, violence exists in every attempt to convince, even when done in the gentlest way, with the best of intentions.

Our Doctor began by musing on the similarities and differences of human beings; "We are the same animal, but not the same," he said.  Then he asked why it should be considered bad manners to try to convince somebody of your opinion.  However, he also believed that conviction is always a fight, a struggle.  Categories, something we build our certainties on, have disappeared in the modern world, so everything must be argued over and everybody must be convinced.  If you are to survive, you must sell things, and you have to be convinced of their value to sell them.  Everything in theater is based on conviction, he reminded us, as a good actor is not the person but the character when performing.  The actors themselves have to be convinced of their character.  The Doctor ended his first contribution by warning us that although we should believe, we should be ready to change our minds immediately.  Later on, he stated that language has changed everything, so we should be careful how we use it.  People who want to convince you may be liars, but they have to be lying a little to themselves also, in order to be convincing.  Not only actors, but politicians and religious people are professional liars.  However, for the Doctor, good liars are more interesting than truthful people who do not speak well.

The True Philosopher focused on the "will" of the title, having given short explanations of Aristotle's tools of persuasion in his preparatory writing.  We are compelled to do things by our own wills, it is what pushes us into action.  While doubt is a natural phenomenon, he also insisted that we all have some convictions under normal circumstances.  To sort out some of the sources of persuasion in our lives, he discarded purely informative presentations, and also said that logic on its own has no power to convince.  Authority does not need to have will to convince us, all it needs is recognized authority.  The evangelist, however, relies on pathos to convince the flock that he knows what the divine will is, another participant was sure that we tend towards pathos to convince and allow ourselves to be convinced.

Our Leader allowed a number of voices to be heard before adding his own.  His short writing focused on the action in the act of convincing, and he repeated some of the pressures of conformity to remind us.  He first stated that the badness of manners was really dependent on the situation.  Although there might be some implied threat of violence, most civilized interactions are without physical force.  However, many social pressures exist to push us into certain behaviors and attitudes, like family and peer pressure.  The problem of convincing others is being certain about your own information, and information tends to come from other people to you.  In answer to the question of why we fear revealing our doubts, he said that we are trained from childhood to be right, and punished for being wrong.  Referring to logic, he said that facts do not exist for the purpose of convincing anybody, rather they are simply the result of a methodology.  Towards the end, he proposed a distinction between persuasion and convincing, saying persuasion was more about actions while convincing was more related to beliefs.  But, the biggest weapon in the arsenal of somebody set on convincing you is money.

A Newer Recruit gave a somewhat impassioned opinion about the relationship between children and adults, in particular children and their parents and teachers.  For her, the adults have the obligation to convince children to do and not do certain things for their own safety, such as not leaning too far out of a 5th story window.  The adult has to be careful about how the need to behave in a certain way is presented, and avoid using violence for the purpose of convincing the child to do what is safe or appropriate, but teaching new members of society how to act correctly should not be bad manners.

I agreed with this Recruit on the need to convince children of certain things, and it made me think of the attempts by more authoritarian groups who act without much authority as much more insulting to their targets.  They do not have merely the human need for order and support, they think people who disagree with them are like children while they are like mature adults.  Ideologues are convinced that they have the most reasoned and wise outlook, and anyone who disagrees must be a stubborn juvenile person, as yet undeveloped and able to think in a logical manner.  At the same time, these same ideologues will use emotional manipulation to convince rather than reason, since it is not terribly hard to out-think their goals with cold logic.

The Source was allowed the privilege of closing the meeting, and ended saying that teachers have only the duty to inform, not to convince.  He reiterated his view that violence is inherent in any attempt to sway another's opinion, and on the topic of ideologies and religion, said that dogma always engenders violence.

He probably needed some more pathos to convince us completely.