Propaganda and Motivation
W
henever we are conflicted, it is almost always because we have a genuine desire that does not serve the needs of others –
and we have been trained to believe that our genuine desires are always “wrong.”
Our genuine desire –
“I do not want to talk to my parents”
– does not serve the needs of our parents.
In other words, we must have a desire to satisfy the needs of our parents
– by attacking our own genuine desire as “wrong.”
This creates a truly terrible contradiction within us. Our genuine desires are
“wrong” – but our artificial “desires” (to please our parents) are “right.” Thus our desires are both “right” and “wrong” simultaneously.
Are we supposed to value our desires? Are we supposed to reject them? Who knows? All that is known is that we can waste our entire lives attempting to unravel these mad contradictions.
Power Versus Pleasure
If you do not want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you, then I have two basic options.
I can either ask you openly and with curiosity
why
you do not want to talk to me – with the goal of making our relationship more positive, enjoyable and productive for you – or, I can attack you for not wanting to talk to me.
In other words, I can either be the
“free market,” or I can be the government.
If I genuinely want to create real value for you in our relationship
, ask you how our relationship can better serve your needs, remain open to self-correction and improvement, and thank you for bringing up any criticisms of me – and in addition make genuine and successful efforts to change – then clearly I am a valuable person to have around.
In other words, if I care about your feelings, then we do genuinely have a relationship
, and so it can be improved.
On the other hand, if I do not care about your feelings, but rather only care about managing my own anxieties, then it would be very unlikely that you would ever want to talk to me in the first place, since no one really enjoys being a Band-Aid for rampant narcissism.
If I am only really bothered by my own feelings of being rejected, rather than your feelings of dissatisfaction, then it is all about me, of course.
If, then, I keep calling you and keep getting your answering machine, I am going to feel a steady escalation of anxiety
, because you are clearly communicating your lack of desire to talk to me.
You are implicitly communicating to me your dissatisfaction with your side of our relationship
. You are openly “saying” to me: “I am not taking pleasure in your company.”
If I believe – as most people do – that you
“owe” me a relationship – or even just an explanation – then any hesitancy, reticence or avoidance on your part will make me angry, just as if you were refusing to repay a legitimate debt.
You cannot reasonably call up your bank manager and say that you are feeling
“resentment” towards the mortgage and so you are just not going to pay it – but that you are also going to keep the house.
Your parents
very likely have the same approach to you – they have given you “the house” (life and your childhood), and now you owe them the “mortgage payments” of time, love and resources until the day they die.
Since you cannot give back
“the house,” avoiding your parents is the same as stealing from them – and will be met with the same passive or aggressive hostility that anyone would express if you refused to repay a legitimate debt.
I myself experience this from time to time with listeners who criticize me on various grounds. I offer to have a conversation with them over the Internet – or by phone, if they want – and yet they often come up with endless streams of excuses as to why this cannot happen. Their parents
will hear, they don’t have a microphone, they don’t have time, their cell phone is too expensive, etc.
I do smile when I hear all of this nonsense, and imagine whether they would have the same set of excuses if returning a phone call were to net them $1 million, or whether if a cute girl or guy wanted their number, they would say the same things.
Of course not
!
I do not get particularly angry with these people, because they certainly do not
“owe” me a phone call. I would prefer it if they told me the truth – but of course they do not “owe” me the truth either!
I simply take note of their behaviour and come to my conclusion, which is that I will not bother talking to them if they do not want to talk to me.