The Button

I've come to learn that the art of persuasion concerns itself not with bulletproof logic or silky eloquence. It's about pushing the button.

Not too long ago, I theorised that everyone has a green button and a red button. If I want to convince someone of a matter, I must keep my finger on the green button and never hit the red button. If I want to achieve the opposite, I simply need to hit the red button once, maybe twice. For the sake of my job, and for fun, I put this hypothesis to the test.

And I was not disappointed. Perhaps I was, in the 'human' sense of it all, but not by how well the theory worked to my ends (I had only sufficient gonads to try the red button once). So, if you want to know how to persuade someone, simply find out what his green and red button is.

Of course, whether what is said makes sense remains staple to the package of persuasion. But like how you won't have rice without the dishes, sense becomes nonsense when it is seen as sense and sense alone. Ironic, no?

But this is, after all, quite sweeping a sweeping statement. Hope has it that a good number of people do exist who assess matters as justly and objectively as they can. I struggle to be one of them. And I guess all this only goes to show that while humans are by nature rational creatures, hardly are they ever reasoning creatures.