They say 95% of all communication happens non-verbally. Blink is a book that really brought the whole idea of trusting your instinct to the mainstream. All it says is that we instinctively judge people when we meet them, the body reads micro expressions. For example when you see a beautiful girl/boy you instinctively have your eyes flashing because you want to see them more closely and hence your eyes open more than it’s usual self to let more light come in. You could always tell when someone looked at you and you knew it was not just a casual glance, you knew you were looking good! The book had an entire chapter on facial muscles and how they function in order to non-verbally communicate what the other person is not telling you. After reading this book I got all the more convinced that there is an inner voice that tells you all along to fight or flight. This voice has since centuries been a guiding light. Only the modern day has made us ignore this voice. The reference to this inner voice is found in many other genres too. While casually reading about hypnosis or some other meta physics books you hear about this voice. Ofcourse the Yogic literature will call it the antaraatma ki aawaaz, one book by a psychic referred to it as the voice of the guardian angel. Let these guys fight over what to call it. For me it is your first instinct. So the first time you meet a person or an event unfolds you immediately form an opinion. Only later we try to rationalize that opinion or change it based on newer facts. Mostly these newer facts are verbal communication either by the party or by others and herein lies the catch, verbal communication can easily be a lie/manipulation. While some people master the art of lying and become good at it some of the tactics employed are (these are all verbal communication).
1:) Rhetoric: They repeat a lie so many times it becomes a fact. Mostly employed by the media or car salesman or people who are naturally inclined to be communicators or people who are propaganda machines. You shouldn’t have trouble spotting them. Just hear them rattling about people they don’t like, gosh, they won’t stop. It has become such a second nature to them that they sound like a used car salesman.
2:) Half Truth: People who are master editors, these guys will edit out what they think you shouldn’t hear. We all do it. Hence the saying “there are three sides to a story, my side, his side and the right side”. This is a tough one to spot because of lack of information. The way to overcome this problem is to ask as many questions as you can. It makes them uncomfortable and often you hear them complain that you don’t trust them, or they don’t believe in clarifications or you don’t understand them and if the person is really skilled they fight your questions with tears!
There are other ways of lying, i ain’t the smartest kid around the block and this ain’t an article about detecting a lie. This ain’t a sermon or a post to tell you how skillful i am. All this built up is to narrate a small incident.
I am sitting in a birthday celebration with a bunch of guys and a girl. Everyone is being introduced to everyone else. The guys are all geeks, dressed shabbily. This is an after-dinner gathering in a famed hotel. The girl is two drinks down, little tipsy. The girl meets this one guy and says “i have seen you somewhere”. This was such a cliche that nobody uses it anymore, unless they genuinely mean it. The guy is as nerdy as a nerd can be. He says “i don’t think so, where”. I have my back to the girl she says “i don’t know but i think i have seen you many times, probably near my college or in a party”. Clearly this chap has no time to roam around in the iit campus let alone some other place. everybody else starts teasing him, the chap has no idea what is going on. the girl says it the third time “no i have really seen you somewhere”. During this entire conversation i have my back to the girl so all I heard was the voiceover. The third time around this inner voice told me it was a flirt for sure. Now whether it was flirting or a genuine query i will never know but then the first instinct told me it was a flirt and I believed it, didn’t ask anyone because that might be a noise in the data, who wants a verbal opinion. Well the topic was lost in other conversation. The guy was not smart enough or in the mood to flirt or whatever, but he didn’t play along. He should have prolonged the conversation, a filler bet may be, should have named a random girl and cooked up a story. May be she had seen him with this “random name” chic, anything to keep the conversation going. If the girl played along you know what it was. But alas reality is so boring they didn’t hit it off. I went home believing what I had to believe. So now i am thinking even if you don’t see, touch a person you can still instinctively tell what is going on. Probably there is an inner filter that reads voice modulation and tell you what it was. Evolution-wise this makes perfect sense you can sense a dangerous animal by it’s sound (larger the animal more base in it’s voice, generally speaking) and may be you can sense intention by just hearing a recording of a conversation. Anyone knows any book that has some research on the topic please let me know.
Also i will not be surprised if the tense in the above post is all over the place grammer was never my forte.
