How to Win Friends and Influence People
… was written by Dale Carnegie in 1936. It was a best-selling book full of (self)-helpful advice. The key idea is that most people’s favourite topic is themselves. If you ask people questions about themselves, and smile, look them in the face and listen, they will like you.
Making friends like this is not as easy as it sounds, because most of us would rather talk about ourselves than listen to others talk about themselves. You know the experience – you tell a story looking for empathy, and the listener tells a better version of that story about themselves.
What if I told you there was an easier way to win friends? Gossip – and one particular type of gossip – contempt. Gossip is fundamentally about forming triangles. You are inviting the listener to form an allegiance with you against a third person. If we both share our frustrations about ‘Fred’, we feel consolation and connection. The bond between us strengthens.
In normal gossip, the bond between you and I strengthens at the cost of our connection to Fred. This game is both risky and has no positive gain. I might feel closer to you, but now further from Fred, so net effect, I am no more connected to other people. Furthermore, I might meet Fred, who shares some gossip about you. Or worse – you might meet Fred, and he shares some gossip about me! Triangles are risky and unstable.
This is why contempt is a better form of gossip. Contempt is gossip and disrespect about a third party that neither of us knows. There is no risk or potential loss – we have no skin in the game. We can feel closer to each other, vindicated that we are not like ‘them’, and we don’t have to listen to others talk about themselves to get them to like us more.
The crowd at the Australian Open Final expressed shared contempt for our Prime Minister. Leadership is a common and easy target for contempt.
But contempt is not constructive. In Hebrews 13, we are commanded to “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters... to show hospitality to strangers… to remember those in prison,… [and to] remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you.” We are to love the people we know, and those we don’t, to love the people beneath us and above us.
Contempt sits and side-lines and throws stones, and brings the whole tone down, whereas love does not count the cost, but leans in and builds up.
By Rev. David Rietveld