The Right Use of Tricks

Transcript

Welcome, beautiful thinkers! I’d like to talk to you about the right use of tricks.

So I was having this conversation with some friends, with my friend, Katie Kelly, and Georgia Cat and some other folks. I was over at their place for dinner. And I started talking about this book, very interesting book, and perhaps still a little controversial.

It’s called The Way of the Superior Man.

And it talks about how a man should be on his purpose focused on the things that are important to him his his great work, if you will, or his life’s work, and how a woman fits into that, on this play between masculine and feminine energies.

I no claim that this book is a perfect understanding of those subjects, because it is a very complex, enigmatic subject.

But the points he raises in the book are very interesting and thought provoking.

And when I read it with Katie Kelly, and Arielle Friedman, and some and Chris Greta, as well, we had some very interesting debates about this book.

I remember Katie saying, “Well, it’s true. But I really don’t like to admit that it’s true in this kind of thing.”

Because who really wants their nature to be called out real, who really wants to be truly identified? Clearly, down on the on a page, in a book called out for what you really are.

The flip side of that is, I mean, we all want to be understood.

So it’s a difficult choice to make, do I want to be understood?

Do I want to be called out? They are two sides of the same coin.

One thing it talks about in this book, it gives this scenario, so saying, a woman has agreed to go to the movies. But then when it comes time to get ready and leave, the woman is feeling kind of flat.

And the man says, “Come on, let’s go, let’s you know, we’re going to have a great time, we’re going to get popcorn.”

He gives her a little twirl and dances a little salsa with her in the kitchen.

And she’s like, “Alright, you’re, you’re right, we’re going to have a good time. Let’s go to the movies.”

And they go and have a great time.

And that’s as far as I can tell, that’s fine.

In the literal sense, in a broad sense of the world, on in the broad sense of the word, we could call this manipulation, and it is kind of manipulation.

The question is, what is the purpose? What is the intention? What’s the context of the manipulation, because somebody might give you an example, about a relationship that they’ve had, where you’re trying to talk to somebody about something very serious, and you’re upset about it, or you’re angry about it.

And you want to tell them what’s going through your mind and you want to express these feelings, hopefully, in the healthiest way possible.

And they don’t want to have that conversation.

So they do a similar thing they put on your favorite song, and they start, I don’t know cooking your favorite meal, or whatever it is. They do these things trying to change your mood.

But this isn’t because they want to get you to go to the movies and have a good time with them. It’s because they want to avoid talking about a difficult subject.

So what’s the difference?

When we might more correctly call manipulation because it’s to a selfish end.

It’s sort of win lose situation, whereas tearing someone up and getting them to go to the movies with you, is a win win situation.

Or Georgia mentioned another situation where it’s like, she had planned to go out with a friend to a club or something like that.

And she says in the hour? “Well, I don’t really feel like it, or I don’t really feel up to it.”

This is another sneaky thing that come up in the conversation I’ll mention later.

But she says, “I’m not I’m not really feeling like going out to the club.” And a friend says, “Well, you know, it’s still early, why don’t we go somewhere near your house, we’ll go out for tea, and some, something more relaxed.”

And this is kind of cool, because it’s like, well, you know, I meet you halfway, we don’t have to abandon our plans completely. But we can find a way to make this work that works with your level of energy that you have, and still have a good time.

And then you know, sometimes what happens is you end up going to the club anyway, because you, you go out and have some tea and you start to feel better.

You start to get into the vibe that your friend is bringing, or you build a fire together.

And then you feel like you have extra energy, and you’re like, “Oh, what was I even worried about anyway?”

It seems like with the vibration of your friends, all of those worries that you had somehow slip away.

That happens. So much of the time. And that’s the beautiful thing about friendship, that was kind of mentioned about that, that phrase, I don’t really feel up to it.

Because this is a kind of subtle, it’s not exactly manipulation. But it’s like, you can say to somebody, “I just I don’t want to go, I don’t feel like it. I don’t have a lot of energy”. What if you say? “I don’t feel up to it.” It sounds like it has a bit more force behind it, it is more likely to take you seriously.

So that’s kind of, I don’t know if you can call that manipulation, but it’s about this subtle way of communicating how you’re going to get your way.

I remember this another example.

Of course, a lot of, I’ve talked about this before, men and women would try to make potential partners jealous. So they can trick them into having a good time together.

And this is, I mean, it can be, I suppose, it can be a win win thing. But not quite because of course there’s going to be three parties involved in this interaction.

So it’s always going to, it’s always going to mean that you’re using somebody else, who perhaps is going to get their hopes up or you’re going to give them allusions, as they say in Spanish, you leading them on.

I remember in Harvey, one of my favorite films, Jimmy Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd. And they’re these people from their mental asylum and they’re trying to take control of him or convince him to come to the mental hospital, or they are trying, from their perspective, they’re trying to help Elwood be better, they are trying to improve his mental health.

And Elwood pretty suddenly notices that the doctor and his nurse are actually in love with each other.

Well, the nurse is more obviously in love with the doctor, the doctor quite disconnected from his feelings. And he doesn’t even know that he is in love with her. But, really, he is.

Elwood sees this slightly and he says to the nurse, you know? “Miss You look so lovely tonight. Do you mind if I take your hand?”

And he’s doing this not because he actually wants to cut this guy’s lunch or something?

What is, what he’s trying to do is manipulate the situation once again.

So these wonderful two young people really express their love, and it works.

So that’s a highly specific example. I don’t know if we’ll ever really be in that situation.

There might be better ways to go about that like to ask somebody but you know, sometimes asking is just too direct to reveal these things.

And what he was doing was genuine. In any case, like what he said about the nurse was real, like, she really did look lovely.

But this is the question that I asked, what is the right use of tricks?

When can we use these things? These techniques, or these ways of manipulation to actually increase the vibe, increase the level of happiness in the world, increase our communication and our understanding, our compassion and our happiness.

What is the right use of tricks?