{"id":6583,"date":"2014-12-16T13:13:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T18:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6583"},"modified":"2014-12-17T06:35:18","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T11:35:18","slug":"truth-telling-and-wu-wei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6583","title":{"rendered":"Truth-telling and wu-wei"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/16\/science\/a-meditation-on-the-art-of-not-trying.html?src=me&#038;_r=1\">A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying <\/a> is worth a read.<\/p>\n<p>If you take nothing else from that article, believe this: wu-wei &#8211; effortlessness &#8211; is one of the secrets of effective truth-telling.  It is an essential skill if you want to be a truly game-changing public advocate.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Ben Franklin said &#8220;Honesty is the best policy.&#8221;  The full subtlety of that proverb is lost in modern English, because the word &#8220;policy&#8221; has shifted in meaning. In Franklin&#8217;s time the word had connotations of willed manipulation and deception that it has since lost.  Translated into modern English it reads like &#8220;Honesty is the most effective way to manipulate people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And so, the wu-wei paradox of effective advocacy.  To manipulate, <em>speak truth<\/em>. But it&#8217;s not enough to have the truth to speak; you need to be able to say it without strain, in a way that flows naturally from who you are.  What is powerful is not just to speak truth but be <em>made<\/em> of truth clear inward to your bones.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m speaking lived experience here, not theory. I have spent decades becoming the kind of person to whom speaking the clearest truth I can formulate, even when it&#8217;s uncomfortable for me or socially frowned upon by others, comes as naturally as breathing.  Audiences sense this naturalness and respond to it.  This is why, when I speak difficult truths in public, I am much better than most people at inducing my listeners to actually grapple with them.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, there are other effective ways to manipulate people. The world is full of demagogues and sociopaths.  But I believe wu-wei truthfulness  has a tendency to win in the end,  So: to persuade others of the truth, first <em>uproot every lie from your own mind.<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying is worth a read. If you take nothing else from that article, believe this: wu-wei &#8211; effortlessness &#8211; is one of the secrets of effective truth-telling. It is an essential skill if you want to be a truly game-changing public advocate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}