When I Say No, I Feel Guilty by Manuel J. Smith Page A

they want to talk you into changing it. If I were asked to explain to a small child what the word “logic” means, I would not be too far off the mark in telling him: “Logic is what other people use to prove that you’re wrong,” and he would understand what I meant. Logic is one of the external standards that many people use to judge their own as well as your behavior. In spite of the misuse of logic in human relationships, many of us have the trained childish belief that “good” reasons must be given to justify our desires, our goals, and our actions, that the keen intellectual razor of reasoning and logic will slice through personal confusion and expose the proper course to follow. Many people will use logic to manipulate us into doing what they want us to do. The basis for this manipulation is our childish belief which says: You must follow logic because it makes better judgments than any of us can make . Examples of logic-bred manipulation are seen in our everyday relationships. In college, for example, some faculty advisors use logic to manipulate student choice of classes. Advisors manipulate with logic to keep the student “on schedule” and to keep the student from taking “unnecessary” classes in another department which may interest that student. This is done by reminding the student that he wants to graduate, wants to go to graduate school, or wants a good job when he graduates. The advisor then points out logically that unnecessary classes in Egyptological pornoglyphic sarcophagi (graffiti on mummy cases), for example, will not help thestudent graduate on time, go to graduate school, or get him a good job. It is never pointed out to the student, however, that graduating as fast as possible with a maximum of courses from the advisor’s department benefits the advisor’s department in terms of funding and teaching positions. If the student lets the advisor “logically” make his judgments for him he is likely to queue up like another sheep for departmental processing. If he assertively makes his own decision on what is more important to him—taking extra classes that interest him or possibly graduating a semester or quarter earlier—he is more likely to respond to his advisor’s logical manipulation by saying: “That’s true, I may spend more time in school this way, but I still want to take some of the classes that interest me.”
    You can observe many other examples of manipulation by logic in your everyday experience. Spouses commonly point out to each other that they shouldn’t do one thing or another because, “We will get tired,” or “We have to get up early the next day,” or “Cousin Mildred is due in tomorrow night,” or a hundred other possible negative consequences which may result from doing what we want to do. This manipulation is done in a helpful, altruistic, logical way without the manipulator coming right out and saying what he or she wants to do in place of what was proposed. This logical manipulation cuts off the potential negotiation of conflicting wants between husband and wife as well as making the manipulated spouse feel ignorant or guilty for even suggesting such illogical behavior.
    One of the first things I learned in graduate school was that in order to survive, it was necessary to keep the electronic equipment in the laboratories working for the professors. The second thing I learned, consequently, was that after you wasted your time by going through all the logical steps in the maintenance manual to figure out what was wrong with a piece of apparatus, you still had to turn the damned thing upside down and randomly jiggle its wiring to make it work! Being logical does not necessarily mean that you will solve your problem. Being logical does mean you will limitwhat you will work with only to those things you completely understand, while, in fact, the solution to your problem many times will be outside these limits. Sometimes you just have to guess, no matter