Maybe and Might
I’ve learned recently that its better to tell people that I might do something or that maybe I will be going to this. You get better feedback this way. Rather, you actually get feedback this way because it creates an opening for it. People are reluctant to speak their feelings when its clear that you’ve made up your mind already.
It calls to mind a remark by William Tecumsah Sherman, who once told a friend he never gave reasons for what he thought until he absolutely had to. Because after a while, a new and better reason would pop into his head and he’d want to use that instead.
It’s what Polonius told Laertes in Hamlet. Keep your thoughts to yourself, he said, and “take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgement.”
Part of strong opinions, loosely held is side-stepping the tendency to reify. There is no need to amplify your intentions by repeating them as certainties. By wording things as contingencies, I feel that I am to make room for change based on the facts as they come. To set things up literally as only possibilities, but mentally as assumptions. Function follows form, as some say, and this is the proper form.
What this means presenting externally the signs of ambivalence, while beneath, know firmly what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Because, with the exception of special circumstances, people who seem sure of themselves and their future are threatening. On the outside, be like everyone else: indolent and unsure and drifting. On the inside: none of these things.
This post reminded me of a book, and I recommend it to you:
“Inner Voyage of a Stranger – Pathways to a New Perception”
By Kenjiro Yoshigasaki.
Yoshigasaki is the teacher of his own style of the martial art aikido, and the book is filled with his no-nonsense take on a lot of issues. But he deals very much with the relationship between action, thinking and perception. Your post reminded me specfically of this passage:
“People around you always ask you what you are going to do in the future. This you have to answer. In order to answer their questions you have to be able to guess what you will probably do in the future. You must know yourself so that you start to understand how you will behave in each circumstance and then you can say what you are going to do and still be free from what you have said.
In the beginning try to give as few answers as possible.”
Page 77.
I understand you to be talking about this in a strategical manner, as in retaining the advantage. Yoshigasaki focuses more on it in an epistemological manner. But the book is still worth a read.
“people who seem sure of themselves and their future are threatening”
Can you elaborate on this? I believe this is true- but I have been trying to understand why it is so. Could it be that those who perceive the threat actually are insecure and fearful?
Yes and because they are, a person who is not reminds them of their own great weakness. In, let’s say, an office setting you “threaten” your co-workers with your ambition to get promoted they might sabotage your ascent or work against you once you do ascend because they are jealous or insecure or they too have the same ambition and so it would be wise for them to eliminate competition.
This is exactly what I was going to explain. Sometimes what you say about yourself, by extension, says something about someone else.
unless you want to lead people…
people prefer leaders who state their words with conviction.
I think you’re misunderstanding what he’s saying. It’s not that you never speak with conviction, it’s that you hold off. Think of it in Robert Greene terms as mastering the art of timing. The fact that this was a common tactic of Sherman’s is proof that you can do this and still be a great leader.
on the outside I will be a flip flopping imbecile, on the inside however I will be calculating always calculating , a cold calculating monster ready to bite the head off the nearest gazelle that nears me. Little will those limp dicked corporate suck ups realize that there is something much more threatening, much more rotten looming in their midst. Ha, i can’t wait to see the looks on their stupid faces.
Or you could just think a few steps ahead. When you begin telling people your plans, you begin thinking they already happened, and then you tend to become a big headed egomaniac. Ryan explained all this is the posts. It’s not about being cold and calculating, its about being a strategist.
I do agree with the reification point, and have read it before in Ryan’s points and really like it. I am currently switching careers and people ask me my plans and I explain to them that I don’t want to talk about it and explain the reification point as my reason sometimes.
Whenever in real life someone like a salesman uses a technique to deal with me and I detect it, I immediately lose some respect and trust for that person. That is the problem that I have with maybe and might.. I feel it is important to build a lattice of trust around oneself (something from charles munger), and maybe and might and any such interpersonal technique to get power interferes with that. Compromising our word is too big a trade off.
“People who seem sure of themselves and their future are threatening.”
This is because they are a little more mentally unstable than the average. They have to be a little deluded to expect that they will be favoured by lady luck and that the pins will all line up in exactly the way they have imagined. They are usually unhappy people staking their happiness on some far off future achievement. I would be careful if you suspect you are dealing with this type of human. They are statistically more likely to bring a gun to work when things don’t happen as they wish. They also tend to be very boring people.
I think this post sums up the reason why politicians in general are extremely reluctant to take strong positions–“X needs to be looked at…” “Y raises concerns…”
Not being too sure of yourself is a way to gain more votes, mask your intentions, and appear more reasonable. People who are too confident in their statements have no room to back pedal if they make a mistake. The line between self-confidence and madness is thinner than we like to think.