Beyond Success and Failure by Willard Beecher & Marguerite Beecher

Author:Willard Beecher & Marguerite Beecher [Beecher, Willard & Beecher, Marguerite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Personal Development, Psychology, Self-Help
ISBN: 9780671820190
Google: GB1KwgEACAAJ
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1977-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

11

The manipulators

The habit of manipulating other people as a means of achieving our personal welfare is learned in childhood; it is the only way the child has in the beginning for getting what he seeks for his development. It is not a wrong action at that time of life. But it is the root of all behavioral evils if we continue this habit after adolescence. It is the root of all neurosis, crime and other similar destructive activity. Nothing is more important for us as individuals than to be fully aware of those areas in which we are still depending on others. Depending on others makes manipulation inevitable. If we can, we must exploit. This is like standing on tiptoe, and as Lao-"1'zu says, the man who stands on tiptoe must keep running.

Man is a manipulator of his environment. He has in his power the ability to remake the surface of the earth, to free himself of diseases, poverty, war, crime and similar worldwide evils. But this is only possible if he manages to educate himself for total self-reliance. We must be taught to manipulate circumstance in the impersonal outside world and to give up the childish habit of manipulating each other, as is now the common habit. Most of us depend on those around us, on dead tradition and custom for our direction, instead of thinking and acting on our own; this makes us conformists. We do not act, we merely react to what others do.

Whether a child or a dependent adult, we are obliged to develop and employ the political arts of manipulating others simply because we have no choice; we cannot function independently. Our lack of self-reliance gives us no alternative other than to fall back on the habits of our childhood and use those old tricks as a way of pressuring others into doing what we want of them. The crybaby cries; the impatient one has temper tantrums; the inactive one sulks and acts melancholy. These are but a few ways we use to disturb others and to make them serve our wishes.

Those who lack self-reliance have no alternative but to live or die by their ability to exploit others. It is not just a figure of speech to say that a person is driven into a life of crime or neurosis. If we have not developed physical and emotional self-sufficiency and must therefore depend on our ability to supply our needs through others by influencing them to serve us, we often run out of ways to bring pressures on them. At that point, we are driven to attack them more openly to get our way.

When the mature individual faces a need, he puts his mind to the circumstances surrounding the problem and invents a way to manipulate the elements that need to be changed. He is a doer of deeds and finds no reason to push others around or otherwise exert personal exploitative dominance over them. And by the same token, he does not need to fight to be the center of attention or to seek personal recognition as an individual.

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