Giving advice is a dangerous endeavor. You become unpopular, are accused of being a control freak, a nitpicker, and being bossy. If you’re like many of us and prefer to give advice than receive it, it can lead to reciprocation, which is unpleasant. It’s not appropriate for people who live in glass houses to throw stones.
Fortunately, there are rhetorical devices we can use to make our glass houses impenetrable, at least when we want to give advice to the credulous: techniques for prescribing undercover, covert methods of giving advice that are undetectable, at least to the unwary. Here are a few, inspired by that sweepingly crypto-prescriptive and sanctimonious pop-psych best seller “A New Earth” (by Eckhart Tolle) and my discussions about it with friends who present an argument in support of it, but when pressed to do so, refute the claim.
I don’t want to advise you, but… I’ll just say up front that I’m not giving any advice. This method shouldn’t be effective. We are all aware that words have little value and that it is simple to justify motivations other than our own. I could say, “I don’t mean to kick you,” and then give you a hearty boot. Not my stated intent, but the bruise, would stay with you. Even so, talk is cheap, so in a pinch I can claim I have no intention of giving advice and some people will believe me. They should be quieted by that.
I’m just giving you the facts, you see… We’d adore a tried-and-true formula for what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Failing that we cling to unreliable ones, including those for distinguishing between right and wrong interventions in other people’s lives-between “telling people what to do” (which sounds bad) and “sharing” (which sounds nice and generous). Many of these have to do with the words you use and how you construct your sentences. For example, one recipe would contend that sentences in command form (“stop smoking!”) are clearly telling people what to do, whereas declarative statements (“I don’t like smoke”) or statements of fact (“Smoking one cigarette shortens average life expectancy by seven minutes”) are supposedly just sharing. Of course, that isn’t accurate. Many of the things we say aren’t expressed in words, but rather in context, timing, situation, voice tone, and eyebrow expression. Giving advice would be the act of approaching you while you are smoking a cigarette, raising my eyebrows and relaying some information about the link between smoking and cancer. I might get away with denying it to the credulous by saying that it wasn’t advice because of the way the sentence was put together. They ought to stop talking after hearing that.
Look, I just said… A characteristic of crypto-prescription ploys is illustrated by the first two schemes. Consider them single-spaced strategies. A single-spaced strategy eliminates any room for reading between the lines and writing indentations, much like single-spaced formatting. If challenged (“You’re a real tyrant, Jeremy!”) I can get out of it by saying that the words themselves contained all the meaning, as if my carefully crafted tone and gesture were completely irrelevant. “Hey, don’t try to read into what I said; I merely said that smoking reduces life expectancy (or whatever).” They ought to stop talking after hearing that.
It’s all good. In general, there are two ways to look at life. One is the individual and local level, where I want my life to work, or, more benevolently, where I want everyone’s life to work and, as a result, look for better tactics and actions. The other is more cosmic, the perspective of the great sweep of geological time from which our human thrivings and strivings are “all good”-the grand scheme in which they don’t mean very much if anything at all. People who couch their advice in cosmic contexts (spiritual teachers, gurus, self-help authors like me) have an opening therefore to hide their local prescriptions for how to live within a cosmic “it’s all good” cover. This is especially handy if you’re preaching one of those “don’t be judgmental” theories. The advice to not judge is awkwardly hypocritical. “You shouldn’t judge” has the word “shouldn’t” in it, which is judgmental. That kind of anti-advising advising calls for subterfuge, and so if I can say, “I’m not advocating anything because I surrender to the great cosmic nature of things,” I can get away with giving the advice and avoid getting called out for being hypocritical. I can steer clear of any disagreement over whether the guidance is sound. As soon as someone challenges me, I can say, “Why are you acting so judgmental, whoa? I didn’t offer any guidance. I think everything is good because we are all a part of the same universe.” That ought to put an end to their complaining.
Your actions are egotistical, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing… Another verbal trick is to smuggle advice into “facts” in the form of loaded terms. For example, if I said, “In actuality, when one’s ego is threatened, people become frightened and begin to judge others. They go on the attack for ego gratification, to feel superior to their fellows,” the sentence structure is declarative, but it’s full of judgmental words. Describing people as “scared and feeling threatened” suggests that they’re weak or off-balance. “Judging people” is meant to be pejorative. (According to the judgment, one shouldn’t judge other people.) “Ego gratification” sounds indulgent, and “feel superior to your fellows” doesn’t sound healthy at all. Given the connotations of the words, my target might accuse me of being overly judgmental and prescriptive, but I can refute all of that because, on the surface, all I’ve done is declare a correlation. In other words, I’m describing, not prescribing. What’s incorrect about that? That ought to put an end to their complaining.
Well, you can interpret it however you like… There is always room to read and write between the lines of what we say, despite the dubious implications of single-spaced strategies. They are interpretable in various ways. It’s never entirely clear what we should make of what other people say; it might be their intended meaning or something we infer from them. Often, it’s difficult to tell if an interpretation was made intentionally by the speaker or if the listeners were doing so. This ambiguity allows me to insert advice and then accuse others of reading it in. In fact, I can point my gun barrels at their glass houses with a simple gesture. I can act shocked at their “misinterpretation” and dismayed at what it reveals about them. “Wow, my innocent message sure has you on edge. I’m curious why your response to what I said was so inappropriate.” That ought to put an end to their complaining.
I’m just trying to help, look… If all such crypto-prescripto techniques (and there are more) fail me, and someone reveals the ways in which there can be no denying that I’m giving advice, I can switch swiftly to a “well, what’s wrong with that?” approach. But I’d better go about doing that covertly as well. Saying I’m opposed to advice while later claiming I’m in favor is not a good strategy. However, if I act hurt and saddened after being cornered, I can still have a similar effect without drawing attention to myself. They ought to stop talking after hearing that.
Double protecting: I can use these techniques to smuggle in any judgment or advice, but they have special effectiveness when used to judge and advise others not to judge or offer advice. I can use my judgment against judgment to deflect any objections to the validity of my position once it gains some traction in conversation. I can use the theory to answer any criticisms of my hypothesis. If someone says, “Jeremy, your advice is flawed,” in addition to all these tricks that let me deny that I can either claim that they’re being judgmental or that I’ve offered advice. It’s a tried-and-true method for giving totalitarian dogmas a solid foundation to double protect a theory like this.
“If you question our standards, then you can be categorically declared a sinner by our faith, which has the authority to do so.”
“If we decide you’re a communist, we’ll blacklist you, and if you disagree with our assessment, you’re obviously one.”
“If you pass judgment, you are declared egomaniacal, and if you have any doubts about whether this is a fair standard, that alone suffices to prove your egomania.
That must make them stop talking.
But resist allowing it to silence you.