Groucho Marxism

In a previous blog post I argued that spiritual and political awakening are two sides of the same coin. I also mentioned the main problem with going such an awakening: namely, that it makes it painfully obvious when others haven’t. It can start to feel as though you are the only awake person in a sea of sleepwalking zombies, which can be very isolating. As I pointed out before, I am not trying to claim any superiority here; I was lucky to have gone through such an awakening. Moreover, one of the consequences of waking up in this way is that it increases your compassion and empathy for your fellow human beings. After all it was not that long ago that I, too, was one of the people I now look on as sleepwalking through life.

The natural response to try and wake others up too, to try and shake them out of their slumber. Indeed, that is precisely what I did; but it didn’t work. They say you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker abruptly because they are in a deep sleep and can become confused, scared, or agitated, potentially lashing out or injuring themselves or you in a ‘fight-or-flight’ response. I now realize that the exactly same is true of those who are metaphorically sleepwalking through life. You can try to explain to them that they are being propagandized, that everything they thought they knew about how the world works is a lie, that money doesn’t really exist, that the career ladder is a trap to prevent people from achieving their true calling, and so on. But in all likelihood, all that will happen is that they will resent you for it.

This can be incredibly frustrating and brings to mind lyrics from the song Wake Up by the American rock band Rage Against the Machine: “What do I got to, what do I got to do to wake you up?”. The outro features the band’s singer Zack de la Rocha screaming “Wake up!” eight times in a row – and I can feel his frustration. But yelling at people to wake up will not work; it will only make them resent you further. So what should we do instead? I had naively assumed that presenting people with facts and figures would convince them, but that does not work either. It is remarkable how little this works in fact. People are generally only convinced by facts and figures when they confirm what they already believe to be true.

To understand out how to convince someone of something, we first need to understand why they might be unwilling to be convinced of it. In a previous blog post I argued that people often resent well-thought-out, reasoned arguments because they subconsciously perceive it as an attack on their ego. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that their ego senses it as an attack and acts to defend itself. The ego perceives such an argument as another ego trying to assert its superiority – even if that isn’t what’s happening at all. This explains why trying to convince people using facts and figures rarely works. The more well-thought-out and reasoned an argument is, the more likely the ego is to perceive it as an attack, and the more likely it is to be rejected!

In order to convince someone of something, therefore, we need to act in a way that doesn’t inflame their ego. Here we can elicit the help of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer, the best strategy to get by in life is to act ignorant. Schopenhauer advised ‘playing dumb’ in social situations to avoid triggering envy, resentment, and hostility from others. He believed that showcasing high intelligence makes average people feel inferior, leading them to dislike you. The same is true when showcasing a higher level of spiritual or political awakening. Pretending to be less aware than your really are is a strategy that ensures social harmony and avoids goading others’ egos into a response.

The key is to let people think that they came to a realization of their own accord. But how do you convince someone of something whilst also pretending to be unaware of it yourself? The best way is by asking open but leading questions. The danger is that they might feel like you are trying to manipulate them – which in a way is true. Ultimately, though, if the aim is to convince people of something that you already know to be correct, and that will have a transformative and positive impact on their life, is a little manipulation really such a bad thing? It is surely better than the alternative: allowing them to continue to sleepwalk through the rest of their life, doomed to being constantly manipulated by capitalist propaganda.