Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

Reason metaphorically with me.  Consider concepts and clichés, propositions and prepositions, images and imaginations, then cross the bridges.

The classic scientific cliché for discovery is Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, watching a falling apple, and experiencing a eureka moment that ends with gravity and the Laws of Physics.  Knowing as I do from my Rule that There Are No Laws of Persuasion and If There Were Why Would Anyone Tell You, this cliché and my vast knowledge of people standing around apple trees leads me to claim a new Rule:

You Don’t Persuade a Falling Apple

Given that Newton proved that apples fall Lawfully and given that Steve proved that there are No Laws of Persuasion, ergo, you cannot persuade a falling apple.  Taking this one step farther I will add now a preposition and create a corollary to my new Rule.  If you cannot (by the immutable Laws of Metaphorical Reasoning) persuade a falling apple,

You Should Not Persuade ABOUT A Falling Apple

My argument is that the apple will fall and nothing you say about it is going to change that Lawful fact.  Persuading falling apples is shouting at the wind, albeit a wind full of apples and even that image supports why you can’t persuade falling apples because if you are shouting into a wind full of apples, they will fall anyway and many of them likely on you and if they are young and green, that will hurt.  Thus, the apples will fall, you will bruise, and the event will prove my Rule and Corollary.

This also explains why no one stands under a Knife Tree and why you do not need to persuade people to avoid standing under Knife Trees.  People realize that Knives will fall like apples and that you can persuade neither to behave differently.

Do you see where this is headed?

Anyone who has a Law never needs to persuade.  The Law moots my Rules . . . or mutes them to quote a football player I once heard.

Consider the implications.

If you try to persuade while claiming a Law, the less other people will believe you, because why would anyone persuade with a Law?

Reasoning out the other side of this, people only persuade about the uncertain, ambiguous, unknown, likely or unlikely, possible, probable, or potential.

Just another persuasion crypticism!