****
Later on, when he had some spare time, he powered up his laptop and checked his email. She had sent him some materials. They consisted of a list of links to a YouTube channel titled Instant Charisma. It had titles like:
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How to Talk to a Total Stranger
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How to Get Someone to Like You in One Conversation
- The Instagram Rule
-
The Zen Method
And many more besides. All of them were about how to alter your own behaviour to make yourself more appealing to others.
Nate looked at the videos and spent some time in contemplation. It deeply disturbed him to think that a person could consciously control their appearance and behaviour through a calculated move to influence another. It didn’t seem “natural” or “authentic”, and it made him question the way he’d understood his interactions with other people in a really disconcerting way.
He decided he’d ask Barb about it, so he set up a time to meet her in her official capacity as the staff’s “Spiritual Director”. She’d probably have something useful to say about it---she usually did.
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She had time for him that afternoon.
“I’ll be honest, I was expecting you. Kelly said that you’d probably be contacting me because of some new personalized training he had you starting. He said it is a secret project, but to tell you not to worry because I have clearance to discuss everything.”
“That’s convenient”, Nate was only slightly snarky. It really was helpful.
“Yes. It is.” Barb was sitting behind a desk and Nate was in a comfy chair. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to talk about?”
“Sally had a one-on-one meeting with me and started me on a training program that kinda freaked me out. It’s about learning how to manipulate other people through strategic use of body language and the way you talk to them. It’s kinda made me rethink what it means to be a human being.”
“Can you give me a specific example?”
“Well, there’s this one that supposedly tells you how to get someone to like you with one conversation. It comes down to tactically presenting a conversation based on a few principles that can be generalized as working for most people. It just gives me the creeps to think that getting someone to like you can be planned out and learned, and then used in order to get your own way. Part of me thinks I could never do that, and, another part thinks that I don’t ever want to be the sort of person who could do that.”
Barb leaned back in her chair and put her fingers together. “Tell me about what your life was like when you were young. Did you have a lot of friends and spend a lot of time with other people your age?”
Nate scowled a bit. “No, I grew up on an isolated farm and I literally never saw anyone my own age outside of school. All summer long---from May to October---was spent mostly working by myself from about 12 or so. I never did anything extra-curricular or even rode a school bus---my mom drove me to school to maximize the time spent doing chores.”
Barb leaned back with a snap and crossed her arms. “Well that explains a great deal.”
She took a moment to think, leaned forward onto her hands, and, started to explain. “Ever see someone in a crowded place baby-sitting a puppy with one of those ‘service dog in training’ bibs on it? What is happening is called ‘socialization’. It’s an important part of a dog’s life. It teaches them to not be anxious around people. Puppies only have a short period of time to go through this. And if it doesn’t happen, the adult dog will always be anxious around groups of people---which makes them worthless as service dogs.”
“I suspect that you missed most of your socialization in your childhood and as a result are pretty clueless about how people interact with each other. You’re like a puppy that never got socialized, so every time you are in a group of strangers, you get a bit anxious. And anything that stretches you a little makes you even more anxious.”
“But it’s more than that. When they are young most people develop all sorts of informal, subtle behavioural tactics to get along with each other. At first, they usually aren’t very good at it, which is why teens do such goofy things---like boys slathering themselves with obnoxious ‘body sprays’ or wearing their trousers with the seat sagging down. Girls do the same thing when they put on way too much make-up and totter around on high heels.”
“The thing is, we are genetically programmed to form groups and eventually pair up. And the way humans do this is through the type of subtle socialization that you are ‘creeped out’ by in these videos.”
“If I have such a hard time with this, why would I be chosen for this job by Kelly and the Elders?”
“I suspect that it’s specifically because you aren’t properly socialized. By your age, most folks just do things on instinct and follow whatever has worked for them in the past. In your case, you have only the barest of experiences and feel that not much has ever worked for you. That makes everything excruciatingly obvious. In effect, you are a ‘blank slate’ that they can work with.”
This wasn’t terribly flattering. He thought about protesting, but realized that Barb probably knew a lot more about him than he did himself---so he’d just look like a fool if he did. He didn’t interrupt.
Barb leaned over her desk, rested her right elbow on it, and laid her cheek in the palm of that hand. Looked at him sideways. Decided he wasn’t going to argue the point, smiled and then sat back on her chair.
“The other thing you have to understand comes from the mission we might be sending you on. The problem the Old Ones want to deal with is the explosion of ‘influencers’ in our world. Many of them are leading ‘lost souls’ astray so they can use them. These type of influencers amass their power almost exclusively through their use of charisma. And they feel the need to do so mostly because---just like you---they weren’t socialized properly. They haven’t learned how to properly interact with people based on mutual respect, so they’ve developed techniques that dominate, control, and, exploit.”
“Because you lack most unconscious instincts for getting along, these techniques will be more obvious to you when you try to use them. Another way to say this is to point out that you are something of a ‘blank slate’ that we can imprint our own mechanisms upon. We hope that this will allow you to eventually ‘out influence’ these malefactors and short-circuit some of the devious things that they doing to undermine democracy around the world.”
Nate stiffened on his chair. With anyone else and any other group, he would have already stormed out of Barb’s office and be hitching a ride back to civilization. But he trusted both her and the Elders so completely that his discomfort was held in check. “Why didn’t Kelly or Sally tell me about this?”
Barb let loose one of her tired-looking smiles. “They wouldn’t have been as good as me in articulating what you are going through. Spiritual/psychological stuff fits into my bailiwick. Moreover, we planned on telling you when you asked. You asked, I answered. You know the Old Ones never ask someone to do something without first coming up with a very clear and reasonable justification. That’s because we never do anything that isn’t in the general interest and doesn’t make sense.”
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