S2E15: On the Art of Ethical Persuasion and Influence

I have often observed with a mixture of fascination and unease how readily we humans yield to persuasion, and yet how fiercely we guard against admitting this susceptibility. We believe ourselves impervious to rhetoric's charms while daily succumbing to its power—in marketplaces both literal and metaphorical, in council chambers and courtrooms, in the hushed confines of intimate conversations, and across the clamorous forums of public discourse. This contradiction seems to me a peculiar blindness, one worth examining if we are to understand not only how we are moved by others but how we might move others without doing violence to their dignity or our own integrity.