What is manipulation? LO16023

Winfried Dressler (winfried.dressler@voith.de)
Wed, 26 Nov 1997 18:53:59 +0100

Replying to LO15981 --

At de Lange asked in a dialogue with Rol Fessenden:

> Can we and may we manipulate other people?

I thought a lot about this question about two years ago. My thinking was
triggered by a bad feeling regarding the word manipulation: The negative
deceptive connotation on one side and the impossiblity to have a contact
without manipulate the other person. I don't like negative things which
are impossible to avoid. My starting point was:

Is it possible to have contact with other people without manipulate them?

My feeling, as stated above, was: No. Every contact lead to other
thoughts, other images, other biochemical states of the other person than
she would have had without our contact.

But then I doubted: This understanding of manipulation is too wide.

I found two senseful restrictions:
1.) A contact is manipulative, if some kind of deception takes place (on
purpose or not).
2.) A contact is manipulative, if there is a purpose in the contact (including
deception or not)
(I didn't think about handcrafting, because I was thinking about contact
between persons)

I found the second restriction not too helpful for it reminded me too much
of argueing as a child ("He did it on purpose!" - "No I didn't!" - "Yes he
did!"). It doesn't help if you know whether something was done on purpose
or not.

So I prefer the first restriction - in accordance to common understanding.
My feelings where settled when I came to the conclusion: I have many
contacts and some of them are manipulative. But it is not always in my
hand whether I act manipulative or not due to lack of sufficient
consciousness.

Can we manipulate other people? Yes, we can.
May we manipulate other people? We should not, but it is difficult to avoid.
So one should be mercy with those who did. If manipulation is done on
purpose this would be part of the BO (backroom-operations).

I wish to share one example:
When I say: "God bless you." it is not manipulative although it can be a
sign of very intense contact and initiate a big deal of change.
When I start any white magical rituals, although they are meant to be helpful
und supporting, they are manipulative. Why? Because I try to make some
forces to do something, which they wouldn't do if I would not force them.
This need not to be explicit - there are very deep going mental models
adressed of what is needed to get what one wants.

God bless you!

-- 

Winfried.Dressler@voith.de

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