Staying Alert

How do you stay alert and prevent manipulators from attacking you? Levine describes in his book, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold his experience working as a car salesmen, and gives the following statement made by one of his old fellow colleagues, "All you need to know in this business is this: All customers are liars. And all salesmen are crooks".

Levine mentions that not all salesmen are out to con you. He says that we need to 'find a balance between openness and skepticism, to approach the world as a critical thinker but without always assuming the worst'.

There are 2 levels of awareness developed by mindfulness practitioners:

1. Practice attending directly to the details at hand
2. Learning to decide what information more warrants mindfulness

Ellen Langer quotes: 'The most important function task for any CEO, and for the rest of us is choosing what to be mindful about,' and that 'Rather than spending all day inspecting every expense account or widget in the factory, the mindfully mindful executive chooses where to pay attention'.

Levine tells us that we must 1) recognize which types of exploitation are most dangerous, and 2) to distinguish between persuasion and exploitation.

Levine also mentions that all persuasions are manipulative, but we must identify which is to exploit and which is to educate. Therefore, we must have in mind which persuasive message to resist, which to ignore, and which to accept.


Be aware of your situation

Train yourself to monitor how situations effect you. Keep track of how you react in different situations through out the day. By doing this you will discover at which places and times you are most vulnerable and is susceptible to impulse purchasing. You should be careful of situations that have you react, as Levine says, automatically and mindlessly; and especially in those situations which the 'intensity of your reaction exceeds the seeming importance of the situation'.


Ethical and Unethical Persuasion

The next time you are faced with an advertisement, or a friend trying to convince you of something, take note whether their agenda is to ethically persuade you or not. One way to identify this is whether they are trying to ask you to buy something, or perform an unethical, immoral, or even illegal act. Those that do not have a deceptive agenda will be trying to persuade you for your own best interest. They do not gain anything from you in any manner. And you after having logically analyzed the situation, are well aware of what you are getting yourself into, know what is expected of you; and what you are committed to do.

As Bronson Alcott describes a 'true teacher', or someone that has your best interest at heart, 'defends his pupils against his own personal influence'.

I would like to end this chapter by quoting directly from The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold, 'The fact is that persuasion and psychology are essential human activities. They define our social being, never more so that today'. 'It's up to each of us to use the psychology wisely and ethically, to see that it illuminates rather than electrocutes'.