OFFENSE OR DEFENSE

“Fortune doesn’t have the long reach we suppose, she can only lay siege to those who hold her tight. So, let’s step back from her as much as possible.”

- Seneca, MORAL LETTERS, 82.5b-6

Everyday hearing politics, ads, whatever it may be, I feel like we live in a very offensive environment. People can be offensive in the way the speak to you, and sometimes it can be really tough and heavy to carry on a daily basis.

To be offensive to me is that notion of always wanting people to be thinking your way. Manipulation for everything. But it’s the foundations of our world, everything is a negotiation.

Every single discussion is a negotiation. For example, when speaking to someone, you don’t want him/her to feel like you’re someone weird or with bad values. You don’t want to sound too silly so that you can see each other again, and it works both ways. That’s manipulation, that’s the way we, as humans, make friends and build good relationships.

There are obviously different degrees of manipulation, and here I’m talking about the very first degree, the one where you just don’t want to look bad to the person you’re having a conversation with. I’m not talking about manipulation in sense of “brainwashing” that we usually use to describe a very bad act between humans.

Then there are several other degrees of manipulation : selling is an art, and it’s the art of manipulating. Politics speeches are manipulation, you got the pattern.

Among those types of manipulations there are several that are more offensive than others. Ads campaigns are offensive, selling, and all the types of manipulations I’ve quoted before.

But what is defense then? I feel like we can’t really talk about a defensive manipulation, so we’re going to talk only of “defense”. That term may describe the fact of having very tiny reactions in front these offensives from the exterior world, or catching those principles and understanding them and not being the “victim” only.

Let’s take a client and a seller, and let me do a parallel with football here. In football, the main goal of the offense is to gain yards all the way to the end zone to score. In the selling model, the aim of the seller is to get the credit card of the client and close the sale.

Here, offense is the salesman and defense is the potential client. The offense in football, to go all the way to the end zone will be using many tactics well practiced beforehand. Same thing is the selling model. The salesman is going to use very strategic negotiation and manipulation methods that worked out before in order to close the sale.

Then depending on the skills of each other the offense may go for a big play and score very quickly, or the defense is going for a big 3 & out (or 2 & out for my canadian fellows). Again, you got the image.

The thing here, is that there is a famous quote in football that says

“Offense wins game, defense wins Championships”.

I don’t know if you see where I want to go here, but think about it, and make your own interpretation of it, you can obviously go as far as you want.

If you want me to tell you my ideas and discuss yours just shoot me a DM.

Thanks a lot for reading the article until the end, I really appreciate it.

As usual you can contact me for anything on Twitter (@JBDX_), Snapchat (juanb_85) or anywhere you wish.

Tomorrow’s article will be called “Prepared and active” so for all of that, and more, see you tomorrow :)