Member-only story
Sunday Sermon : Why Influencing Others is Evil
Just because Obi -Wan Kenobi mentioned that the force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded doesn’t mean it’s not evil to change someone else’s mind.
In April, 1980, an evangelical Christian friend presented me with a book entitled How to win friends and influence people. I read the book and was horrified at the lack of ethics and the advice therein. The book could have been better entitled How to manipulate people. Whether the author realized it or not, he was a strong proponent of manipulation.
Several people on Medium have asked me why I am writing if it isn’t to influence others. This question has arisen on several occasions when I said that I disliked debating others or getting into a discussion with others. I explained that I write in order to earn a living and to eradicate the earworm in my head.
Let me tell you about that dastardly earworm in my head. At some point, I developed a compensatory mechanism to deal with short term memory impairment. It means that anything I think stays there until I have discarded it in some way. The only way that seems to happen is if I tell someone what I’m thinking or if I write it down. Then it goes away.
