The Power and Poison of “Rosebud”

BREATHE!

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Persuasion #4: Define the problem in solvable terms

If you live on a mountain, and meet someone who wants to debate with you about whether there is a mountain, does it make sense to argue with them? If you do not, are you “living in a bubble” or “echo chamber” or are you simply trusting your senses?

Adults have to trust their senses, their experience, the trusted sources they’ve gathered over the course of their lives. Can they still be wrong? Yes, but if you use the Three Gates, you also have error-checking built in: the integrity of sources, the logic of the implications of your beliefs, and so on.

Given ALL of that, you can still be wrong. There is literally nothing you can do to remove the last sliver of doubt.

But…it is not “useful” to debate endlessly. Ultimately, you have to act, let reality test your hypothesis, and based on that reaction, form your theories of reality.

Abusers LOVE to gaslight you, convince you that your senses are inaccurate, that you cannot trust your mind…you should trust THEIRS. As soon as you trust someone else’s mind and senses and integrity more than you trust your own, you are infantilized. Out of control.

It’s storytelling technique, used by Stephen King with superb skill: start by establishing the real world (establish rapport) then slowly, slowly establish rapport by speaking of universal human needs and wants, and then once…