Dempsey
April, 2007
The Pragmatic Diplomat: a method of persuasion
There is a thing called “persuasion”, and it is the attempt to move someone’s feelings (thoughts, ideas, or emotions) from one attitude to another. There are several different methods of persuasion; that is, there are several different ways that a person might try to persuade another person. All of these different ways works on one aspect or another of human psychology; for example, emotions, rational, common sense (which may be related to rational in some cases, but in other cases, such as culturally relative situations, common sense may not necessarily be strictly rational based). In this essay, a method of persuasion will be discussed that is both emotionally based as well as rationally based, it is called “The Pragmatic Diplomat”.
Pragmatic Diplomat-ism is the art of persuading a person, while at the same time preserving their esteem and also what they originally wanted or were thinking. This maneuver is possible in many rhetorical situations, but strictly speaking, changing a person’s mind from one thing to another, but at the same time making them think that they have not been swayed, is usually a difficult thing to do. So to do this, the persuader must complete the following:
A: Change the subject’s (the person being persuaded) mind set from their original attitude to the desired attitude.
B: Make the subject believe or feel that what they are being persuaded to believe (or feel) is simply what they were already thinking or wanting.
Simply put, the persuader must persuade the subject while having the subject feel as if they are hearing only what they want to hear (which is what they are originally thinking, also known as their original position). The persuader must orate as if what they are arguing for is simply a variation of the subject’s original position. The subject must be moved to believe that what they are hearing is different from their original position, but ends up having the same results or characteristics, so is really just the same thing. It seems contradictory to make them believe that what they are hearing is “different” from their original position, if the goal is to persuade them that you are arguing for what they originally wanted (as that would not be different, but instead the same); however, while the subject is supposed to feel as if they are not being persuaded, to successfully persuade someone their mind, after all, absolutely needs to be changed (or else they weren’t persuaded at all). All this means is that the diplomat, the speaker, the persuader must create an illusion that causes two things simultaneously: one, the subject’s mind is changed from one place to another; and two, the subject believes that their mind has not been changed, but none the less is now looking at the situation from a “different” angle. So for example, instead of telling the subject that they will have cake, which is what they want, they are persuaded into thinking that pie will be better than cake, that it will satisfy their craving or want for cake, or that they will have more pie than they would cake, etc. The goal is to substitute the subject’s desired characteristics of one thing, with characteristics from another thing that are then argued to be similar or identical to the subject’s original “thing”; in this case the “thing” could be cake, or new clothes, maybe it is the desire to go on vacation, or to do some activity more or less. The idea is that we don’t ever really want anything, but rather, we only want how that thing will make us feel (the mental experience of object’s is all we ever really want from them). And so by persuading someone that one thing will make them feel the same as another, the domain of the pragmatic diplomat is entered.
In the end, to successfully perform the described method of persuasion, the persuader must tell the subject what they want the subject to hear, and at the same time, wording his/her words to sound like what the subject wants to be told (which is what they are already thinking). The persuader must say one thing, but have it cause something else within the subject’s mind. This method is emotionally based because it appeals to the subject’s ego in that they are being told what they want to be told, and they are simply hearing (or so they think) what they are already thinking, which makes their esteem stay the same, if not causing it to increase (in this case I refer to the subject’s esteem in their own mind, and not the esteem they might hold with others). The method is also rationally based because the persuader may appeal to rational or reason while at the same time attempting to pump the subject’s ego. This mixture of rational and emotional appeal is the success of the Pragmatic Diplomat method of persuasion.
a. Dempsey
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