jmcgready’s misc universe

How to Save the World

So suppose you are looking to meet someone, and happen to find yourself alone in a restaurant near someone, also alone, you are overwhelmingly attracted to. If you were a non-human animal in such a situation, you would initiate a simple approach, and mutual sniffing and body language would immediately signal to you, politely and without fanfare or embarrassment, whether the object of your affection was interested or not. As a human, when you approach, your body and face are already signaling your interest, and the body and face of the object of your affection are signaling a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ right back. Before you say a word, the decision is already made. So, assuming that (thanks to our dulled human senses and the miracles of modern perfumery) you can’t ‘read’ that decision, it really doesn’t matter what you say. You don’t have to try hard, or try not to try too hard, you don’t have to try at all. Just be yourself and do what you want to do — it won’t change the outcome.

In the years before AIDS, many of us learned this astonishing lesson, and it wasn’t because people were more promiscuous then. We just learned that not trying worked, night after night.

Same with your sales pitch to a co-worker or customer. Communicate the idea as clearly as you can, as simply as you can. Your use of media doesn’t matter, the arguments don’t matter. The listener will have decided ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within a couple of minutes, maybe even less, based on ancient baggage in their brain that you have absolutely no impact on. You don’t have to try at all — it won’t make any difference. If you lie brilliantly, you might dishonestly get a ‘yes’, but how long before it gets found out and turns into a no, leaving you to pick up the mess behind the bridge you’ve now burned?

So trying not to try not to try too hard gets reduced to just not trying and being yourself. You can’t keep up the pretense of being anyone else for long, and, unless you work on a stage for a living, it won’t get you anywhere anyway.

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