In the part of the world where I live, among the most valued traits a person can have is freedom. The freedom to choose for themselves their destiny. The freedom to choose their path in life. It is considered a sign of strength if a person is able to exercise their freedom, and do as they please in all situations. Often, however, in order to actually succeed in one’s projects requires that others take up those same projects in the same fashion. That is, if I desire to build a house, it makes a lot of sense to convince others to help me in building that house. If I am unsuccessful in convincing others to help me, I may still be able to build a house, but it may take me much, much longer to complete that project, and I may also be limited in the size and complexity of that house. Consider how difficult it can be to lift a large 4-by-6 plank of wood by one’s self, never mind placing it with accuracy while fastening it to other structures.
In many cases, in our modern world, large projects cannot reasonably be completed alone. Those projects require many different people working together to accomplish the project. The group of people who come together to work on the large project are all individuals in their own right, each with their own ideas about what precisely the project is that needs to be accomplished and how best to go about completing that project. Through deliberation and negotiation, agreement is hopefully reached in how best to proceed. But complete agreement is rare. Compromises need to be made. Some, if not all, of the participants cannot entirely have everything they desire in the project.
People can be stubborn. In this part of the world, people often do not want to compromise. People embrace a culture where freedom is all that is really important to them, and the exercising of that freedom is the ultimate goal, no matter the cost. One ought to be able to do whatever they desire, uncontested and unchanged. How do multiple people with conflicting projects fully realize their individual freedom uncontested? The answer is they cannot. Someone, and often everyone, will not actually be able to realize their projects. At least not as they may have envisioned them.
There are many ways for me to ensure the success of my project. The most obvious solution is to convince others to change their projects to match my own. If their project matches mine, then the probability of my project’s successful completion increases dramatically. Furthermore, if I can convince others that my project as I envision the project ought to be their project too, then I can probably convince them that they should defer to me in decision making regarding that project. If it is my house being built, those workers who help me build the house ought to come to me to ensure the bathroom is located in the correct part of the house, as I am the only one who really knows where it ought to be. In a sense, I am the project leader. I indicate precisely what the project is and its parameters, and I direct precisely how the project ought to be completed. I can defer to experts who may know more about what materials ought to be used in the house’s construction than I do, but as the project leader, I still decide whether to follow the expert opinion or not. I could always disregard the expert opinion and make my own choice with regard to materials to use.
There are many ways I can convince others to take up my projects. Force is a common approach. That is, I could literally grab your arms and move them myself. This, of course, will only work if I am stronger than you are. After all, if I am not at least as strong as you are, you can resist. Thus, if I spend my life ensuring I am the strongest person among my community, I can force others to follow my projects. The biggest problem with using force is that there are any number of ways that others may use to resist this approach. For one, the others could band together, agreeing to a contrary project of opposing my project, and if they work together successfully, I will need to be stronger than all of them combined. Hercules was said to be as strong as “ten ordinary men,” but he was also part god (according to myth). Most of us are not part god, and most of us are unable to be even twice as strong as the person next to us.
An alternative to using force is to use coercion. That is, I can threaten others to take up my projects. The threats can be any number of undesirable events that I could suggest will take place if those others do not take up my projects. The most common example that is used is to suggest I could hold a gun to someone’s head. The threat is that I could pull the trigger, which is presumed to result in the death of the individual. As an undesirable event, the person ought to be inclined to take up my project as their own. Guns may be popular in the part of the world I live, but they are far from the only tool of coercion used to convince people to take up projects they might not otherwise take up. Politicians frequently describe to voters the undesirable events that would take place if their adversary is elected instead of them. Elect me, otherwise all those undesirable people will take your house away.
The greatest weakness with both of these approaches is that most people can see that I am trying to manipulate them. If it is clear that I am attempting to convince you to change your projects to mine, you are likely to resist as you will recognize the affront to your own projects and to you as a free individual. And so I may wish to consider another alternative. If I can convince you that my project is your project, perhaps that it has been your project the whole time, then you will definitely take up my project as your own. That is, if you believe that my project is in fact your project (in all the important ways) then of course you will take up my project, because it is actually just your project. This is, in some fashion, the heart of what the 2010 film Inception was all about. With all of its fancy special effects and mind blowing concept of dreaming within dreaming, the ultimate purpose of the inception was to convince someone to change their mind, thinking that the new idea was in fact theirs all along. The team’s goal was to change the target’s project into the team’s desired project. In the film, the team would know they were successful if the target believed the new project was his own.
The film was quite popular, and the concept quite insidious, but it does not require entering into the dreams of others to change their projects in this way. The field of marketing and advertising do this sort of altering of projects constantly. It is often much more difficult for me to detect the attempts at changing my mind about what brand of automobile I ought to purchase, but the automotive companies spend an insane amount of money on all those commercials I stumble upon when watching television, or the billboards I see while driving around town. They often refer to it as “brand recognition,” the simple idea that when I think about that particular brand, I get a positive feeling of some kind. It can work in reverse as well, making me feel a negative feeling about a competing brand. All with the goal of adopting the company’s desired project: that I should purchase their automobiles.
The final technique of convincing that I would like to briefly discuss is argument and debate. In this technique, I simply engage in conversation with you, providing you with evidence and reasons that you should take up my project. You are aware that I am attempting to make you take up my project, and that I may be undermining some of your projects in the process. But I don’t try to make you believe that my project is your project necessarily. Instead, I try to convince you that if you are a rational being, practicing good reason, that my project simply makes sense for you to take up. This is insidious in its own way, as it suggests you ought to take up my position because otherwise you would not be considered a rational being. However, it does also leave open the opportunity for you to flip the argument against me, suggesting that perhaps my evidence and reasons are not themselves reasonable, and then perhaps I am the one who is not being a rational being at all. It can become a contest in sophistry; who can fabricate the most convincing evidence. Ultimately, it can be seen as a measure of the contestants’ respective levels of intelligence (especially knowledge of the world) and skill (ability to successfully negotiate their position).
In the end, through whichever technique I decide to use, I try to convince others to take up my projects. If I am successful, my projects are likely to be completed successfully. If my projects are often completed successfully, regardless of whether others take up my projects or not, I am said to be in control.