Ideas are Pigs: How to Persuade
Never assume your audience has ‘common sense’
In Louis Sachar’s Holes, a Latvian peasant needs a fat pig to win a wife. Unfortunately, he has no such hog, only a piglet. A wise woman promises him that if that piglet drinks from a mountain stream every day, it will swell into fattest pig in the village.
Lugging a fat pig up and down a mountain day after day, how’s he supposed to do that, the peasant asks. The wise woman responds: Of course, he’s too weak to carry a pig. But he only has to carry a piglet. As the piglet gets fatter and fatter, he’ll get stronger and stronger. That’s how he’s supposed to lug a fat pig up and down a mountain day after day.
Start small, that’s the moral. If that peasant started with even a moderately plump pig, he’d have broken down after a few days of climbing. Start small and build bit by bit to your goal. This moral holds whether we’re talking about pig carrying, habit formation, or even how to persuade others.
Ideas are pigs. The ideas which make our personalities and guide our actions — such as, ‘Democracy is good’, ‘Science is the only way to know’, ‘Money can’t buy happiness’ — are weighty. We’ve carried them so long they feel weightless. But tell Louis XIV that ‘democracy is good’, a religious mystic that ‘science is the only way to know’, or Scrooge McDuck that ‘money can’t buy happiness’, and they will call you an idiot. It is too heavy for their hands, just as their beliefs are too heavy for yours. You have handed them a fat pig that they have never seen before and they have, naturally, dropped it.
they assume the audience has ‘common sense’
I go to Toastmasters to practise public speaking, and there’s a mistake that every speaker makes. The speaker could be eloquent, poetic, engaging, hilarious, but this mistake sets their arguments on quicksand: they assume the audience has ‘common sense’.
It’s obvious that when persuading someone of something, you can’t assume they already believe that something. But to lead someone to your conclusion you must start from something they do believe in — you must start from common ground. The mistake people make is assuming their own common sense is common to all. Quite often, however, ‘common sense’ does not go beyond one’s peer group.
Say you want to persuade someone that: ‘We should donate most of our income to suffering children.’
This is certainly a hefty hog. You wouldn’t expect your audience to take your word for it. You must give them a leaner pig, and only then fatten it. So, you start smaller, with a statement built on common sense principles of human kindness.
You say: ‘Suffering children deserve money more than us.’
And you are shocked that your audience drops this hog too.
as ‘common sense’, it isn’t common enough
‘My money is my money!’ The words scream through a few of your audience’s minds. ‘I didn’t hurt those kids, so why should they get my money.’
Maybe your statement was right, maybe wrong. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that, as ‘common sense’, it isn’t common enough. You thought your lean pig was light as feather, but it was heavy enough to crack your audience’s back.
You must start smaller, with the most inoffensive, most uncontroversial idea you can.
So, you begin: ‘Children shouldn’t suffer needlessly.’
This is your piglet. It will take a long time before it’s full-grown, perhaps too long for a single speech — but you will at least strengthen your audience. Your audience may not end up believing they should give most of their money to charity, but maybe you’ve made them believe that suffering children deserve some of their money.
Of course, how small your pig needs to be depends on the audience. If you were speaking at a conference for a children’s charity, you could be sure that ‘Suffering children deserve our money’ is common sense to your audience. You could start bigger, closer to your goal of ‘Give most of your money to suffering children.’
start with the commonest common sense you can
But often you don’t know what your audience’s common sense is. To have any chance of convincing them, you must either investigate their beliefs or, failing that, start with the commonest common sense you can.
We assume the best of others: we assume they have ‘common sense’ — we assume they share our biases. When persuading others, this assumption is the most harmful. We hurl gigantic hogs for our audience to catch, and are surprised to find their arms crossed. Start as small as your audience needs. From there, strengthen them.
