I have enjoyed our fascinating discussion about manipulation and would
like to offer these thoughts:
It seems to me that in *every* interaction with another human being...
- We always have some effect on the other
- Our motivations and interests are involved, both at the conscious and
at deeper levels
These are the ingredients of manipulation on one hand. But, to me they are
part of all living.
My conclusions are:
- Ethics and integrity tell me that we must take responsibility for our
actions
- Taking a line from Argyris, this means we must work harder to be aware
of our motivations and the role they play (too much of what we do is on
"autopoilot")
- We can never remove our own motivations. But we can increase the
attention we pay to the legitimate desires of others
- We are probably manipulating others more often than we realize; it's
our job to be aware and decide. Sometimes manipulation is exactly what we
want to do.
The label "manipulation" has so much negative baggage in normal use
(whether it's neutral in the dictionary or not). We will succeed in
convincing ourselves that we are not manipulating when we need to face up
to the fact that we are.
-- Rick
On Fri, 21 Nov 1997, Mnr AM de Lange wrote:
> I will set the ball roling with one observation. What do we
> understand linguistically about the word "manipulation".
--
Richard Karash ("Rick") | <http://world.std.com/~rkarash>
Speaker, Facilitator, Trainer | email: rkarash@karash.com
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