A little more about influence

When I wrote on influence the last time, I used the analogy from physics about inertia and forces. In this post and several more to come, I continue along this line. Just as there are different types of forces in the world of physics, there are several types of influence; some good, some bad, some ugly. This is where choice matters.

Speaking of choice, I do not only refer to choosing the kind of inluence you want to be or expose yourself to. I also refer to an equally, if not more, important choice: the choice of response to different influences. Making this choice appropriately starts from understanding: understanding what kind of influences there are, identifying them when you see them and knowing what options there are.

In my next series starting at the end of this month, my attention will be on drawing parallels between the forces known to physics and the influences that mankind always has to deal with. 

Let's start with this basic classification. In physics, there are contact forces and there are non-contact ones. Contact forces do not exist unless there is direct touch between at least two objects. The force will arise as a result of the action of one or all objects in contact and/or their reaction. An example is the support force that bears you up when you lean against a wall. Non-contact forces do not require material contact, they act from a distance and in some cases they're so far away that the object experiencing the force does not even know it's there. An example is gravity. Most of us do not even realise that our body weight is simply the downward pull that the earth exerts upon our body.

In a more practical sense, there is the direct influence of parents and teachers (when you discount the effect of the internet) and there is, of course, the non-contact influence of celebrities, government policies and so on. Responding rightly to any of these requires that we know they're even there and that they affect us. A closer look at specific examples of each influence type will start at the end of this month.

MEN THAT WILL SUCCEED 19: They would rather be right than be popular

 If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me; if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me (John Bunyan)

Success, it's been argued, is a matter of choice; and there are choices we make, I argue, that invalidate the opinions of others. For everyone who has lived through the generations past until now, the huge differences in the number of options available for getting things done is much more glaring. For instance, until 1971 it was impossible to send e-mails; you had to wait for weeks to get messages around via regular post. Today, the options are allmost limitless. That's just one example out of many. But with the new possibilities new threats have also come, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for poeople to decipher right from wrong. The end, it seems, always justifies the means.

But for everyone that would truly succeed, there would be an absolute standard of choice: the right things at all times as far human fallibility would allow. More often than not the right choice is unpopular, and could even attract stigmatisation! Nonetheless, the men whose names we remember in honour today almost all made these unpopular choices and that made all the difference. I borrow the words of Robert Frost to finish this off:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

'The Road Not Taken' in Frost, R. (1920). Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company