Cynicism

1609: 

If we’re hoping to reach people face to face, without the use of computers, we need to come up with a ‘total delivery package’. If we want to connect in a more inspiring way, we need to learn about how new information is taken in and how it might be resisted.

Anyone who sets themselves up as having answers will face cynicism. People have good reason not to trust ‘the soothsayer’. No one trusts a salesman or politician anymore. If we really want to educate one-on-one, we have to wait for the other person to be receptive. In other words, tedious though it might be, we have to wait for permission to speak. Unless we’re preaching to the converted or have an audience of drones, we're not likely to get too many listeners. And surely the Animal Rights movement doesn’t simply want people to tamely agree with us; we aren’t collecting numbers or wanting to gather people who’re bored with their lives and who are willing to accept any old ‘life-recipe’. Our cause needs imaginative, creative people, even difficult-to-persuade people, whose sense of free-will is strongly embedded. We should welcome anyone who wants to put up a fight with us. And if we can’t answer the big questions (to the satisfaction of the cynical questioner) we'll fail to break through their self-protective shell; we won't get the ‘big questions’ asked in the first place, unless we’re approachable as people. Today, an unwilling audience doesn’t exist, since no one can make anyone else listen, let alone agree.