Persuasion and Truth

You will compromise yourself to persuade.

Remember this, if you wish to persuade people you are, in most cases, going to necessarily compromise yourself to do it.

This is due to an unfortunate fact about human behavior: most people do not believe things because they are convinced by evidence or argument. As has been said:

“A man convinced against his will

is of the same opinion still.”

-Belfast Mercury, 1786

Keep this indisputable fact in mind, you would-be persuader: Most people believe something, not because it is demonstrably true, but because believing it makes them feel good about themselves.

A belief that makes someone feel as if they are special, blessed, or morally superior will be believed, by most people over one that does not flatter their sense of self, no matter how strong the evidence and argument.

This explains racism, which makes people feel as if they are inherently better than “the other,” sexism, since it allows people to believe that there is an inherent hierarchy of gender, and they’re at the top of it, nationalism, since people who are “patriotic” in the sense that they believe their nation is exceptional, and most religions, since worshippers believe that they are a blessed elite, chose by their god and morally superior because of their “true” faith.

President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Once you remove all the bigots of every stripe, all the “patriots,” and all the self-serving religionists, there’s not much of humanity left.

This means that if you are attempting to persuade a crowd of people, most of them will be much more reliably swayed by an appeal to their innate sense of superiority than by all the evidence and argument you can present. And if you’re willing to do that, you are turning your back on any honest attempt to present Truth.

This is why politics, advertising, and other forms of mass persuasion seldom present honest facts, data and rationality as the primary reason for believing what they propose. They will often claim that their proposal is “rational,” even though this is seldom followed up with honest, fact-based argument, or that it is “common sense,” that is to say, in alignment with what they already believe.

You, reading this, are of course the exception — which is exactly the feeling I just warned you about.

If you would persuade the masses, you will meet success not by making sound arguments, but by flattering the crowd. This has always been the case - demagogues have been around for time immemorial, but we’ve gotten much better at it now. There is an entire, enormous industry dedicated to motivating people by means of finding out what people already believe about themselves, and tailoring the presentation of what they want them to believe to that self-image. Focus groups, jury consultants, advertising agencies, public relations professionals, lobbyists, political consultants and many others spend billions, not searching for Truth, but for the emotional and social triggers of belief.

You will not compete with that by proving that you are “right.” You win by convincing them that they are right, and you agree.