There’s a kind of manipulation which gets little discussion due to its invisibility.
Most people start out with some uncertainty about every form of social interaction. Then someone associates a social interaction with emotionally loaded language and undesirability, and then most people, without the benefit of appreciating that they can think and interpret autonomously in the opposite direction with some degree of plausibility, just go with the flow of what other people are saying is undesirable. Then, if someone tries to fight this gradual narrowing of tolerance with arguments which explicitly appeal to people’s conscience by trying to consider all the plausible perspectives on the matter, which is far more respectful to their intellectual autonomy than letting only one view dominate, it gets processed as manipulation, guilt-tripping, and antisociality because they are coming from a position which is unpopular due to the prior indoctrination.
Getting people to be as tolerant of innocent things as they naturally are is always an uphill battle against puritans and censors. People become puritans and censors in the first place because they believe they cannot solve their disagreements with logical argument, so they try to paint those which they feel tensions with as bad people in whatever way they can. So if Hitler ate sugar, and sugar is a niche rather than popular luxury, you start portraying sugar as evil, and the tolerance of respectable society narrows further: no more sugar for the few who enjoy it and don’t like hurting people.
There’s a kind of manipulation which gets little discussion due to its invisibility.
Most people start out with some uncertainty about every form of social interaction.
Then someone associates a social interaction with emotionally loaded language and undesirability, and then most people, without the benefit of appreciating that they can think and interpret autonomously in the opposite direction with some degree of plausibility, just go with the flow of what other people are saying is undesirable.
Then, if someone tries to fight this gradual narrowing of tolerance with arguments which explicitly appeal to people’s conscience by trying to consider all the plausible perspectives on the matter, which is far more respectful to their intellectual autonomy than letting only one view dominate, it gets processed as manipulation, guilt-tripping, and antisociality because they are coming from a position which is unpopular due to the prior indoctrination.
Getting people to be as tolerant of innocent things as they naturally are is always an uphill battle against puritans and censors.
People become puritans and censors in the first place because they believe they cannot solve their disagreements with logical argument, so they try to paint those which they feel tensions with as bad people in whatever way they can. So if Hitler ate sugar, and sugar is a niche rather than popular luxury, you start portraying sugar as evil, and the tolerance of respectable society narrows further: no more sugar for the few who enjoy it and don’t like hurting people.