The Byzantine official Procopius wrote three historical works in Greek. In the first two, he dealt with wars and public works projects, but the third was something of a departure from this kind of history.
Referred to as Anekdota, from the Greek a meaning not, and ekdidonai meaning to publish, it contained bitter attacks on the emperor Justinian, his wife, and other notables of contemporary Constantinople.
Door-to-door salesmen have existed for many years. Although it’s difficult to determine when the first door-to-door salesman made his first pitch, door-to-door salesmen gained a lot of their popularity following the release of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller in 1949, and by 1952, two percent of the entire American workforce was comprised of door-to-door salesmen.
Many American children’s organizations encourage children to sell products door-to-door in order to allow the children to gain important sales experience. The Boy Scouts of America, an organization aimed at teaching young boys certain values, skills, and self-reliance, encourages its members to sell popcorn, and the Girl Scouts of America, the equivalent of the Boy Scouts, but aimed at young girls, encourages its members to sell cookies.
In the time following the advent of telemarketing and emailed advertisements, door-to-door sales declined considerably. However, these days, with strong anti-telemarketing bans and better-designed spam filters for email, many American companies are returning to using door-to-door salespeople to sell their products.
Many telecommunications companies prefer to use door-to-door salespeople to sell their products. Some modern companies that use door-to-door salespeople include AT&T, Schwan’s Food Company, and ADT Security. In 2010 door-to-door sales was a $28.6 billion industry – a rise from $28.3 billion the previous year.
Despite its name, the Current War is not happening now, but took place primarily in the late 1800s. It was a war fought between Serbian-born, American-immigrant Nikola Tesla and the American Thomas Edison.
Tesla had difficulty convincing the American public to use his alternating electric current to power their homes and businesses. Alternating current (AC) had the ability to provide electricity over long distances much better than Edison’s direct current (DC), which required power stations to be built close together.
Nevertheless, despite the demonstrable superiority of AC to the spread-out American public, Tesla had great difficulty convincing people to use his system of AC over Edison’s DC. This is because Edison was much better at marketing to the American public. He sold himself as well as his product, and also attempted to discredit AC by incorrectly claiming that it was more dangerous, which he demonstrated by publicly electrocuting stray animals using AC.
As a result of Edison’s marketing campaign DC was the standard electric current for many years. However, this began to change after George Westinghouse, an American engineer and entrepreneur, acquired Tesla’s patents for AC and the induction motor.
Westinghouse was much better at selling AC to Americans than Tesla had been, and the first major victory for Tesla’s current occurred during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, in which General Electric, using DC, bid to electrify the fair for $554,000, but lost to Westinghouse, who bid $399,000 using AC.
Shortly after this, Niagara Falls Power Company awarded Westinghouse a contract to begin harnessing the power of the waterfall for use, and on 16 Nov 1896 Buffalo, New York began to be powered by AC from Niagara Falls. General Electric also switched to AC, and it wasn’t long before AC destroyed DC. Even Edison eventually switched to the more productive AC.
Sunday. September 26, 2021. Federal elections in Germany. Angela Merkel, after sixteen years in office, four consecutive terms, had decided not to run for re-election. In a few weeks we’ll know who her successor is.
Serge Schmemann, one of the world’s sharpest observers and analysts of events in Germany, and in Europe, wrote about Frau Merkel:
“These traits of honesty, modesty, discipline, persistence and reserve would seem almost quaint elsewhere, in New York City, say. But when someone facing almost insurmountable political odds — as a woman, an East German and a scientist — rises to the pinnacle of German power and stays there for four terms, there’s something for America and other democracies, where decent people are increasingly shunning politics, to learn and emulate.”
Günter Jauch, moderator of the very popular German version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, is known for his dry, rational delivery and his uncanny ability to open up his quiz show guests with wit, irony and subject matter knowledge.
Robert H. Goddard, now considered the American father of modern rocketry, was often mocked and ridiculed by his fellow Americans during his lifetime, but was well-respected in Germany, largely because of his persuasive techniques.
Early in his rocketry research, Goddard funded his own testing, but as his work grew in scope he began to seek outside funding. However, as a publicity-shy man who tried to keep media-focus on his work instead of himself, most of his attempts to solicit financial assistance failed, with the exception of the Smithsonian Institution, which agreed to grant Goddard modest funding.
In 1917, Goddard made several proposals to the U.S. Army and Navy about the possibility of his rocket research being used in the military. Although both organizations were interested, the only one of Goddard’s proposals that he was allowed to develop was his idea for a tube-based rocket launcher to be used as a light infantry weapon. This launcher became the precursor to the bazooka.
After WWI, Goddard returned to researching rockets, and in 1919 he published a book titled A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. As part of this book, he mentioned the possibility of sending rockets to the moon. At the time, this was considered an outlandish and impossible suggestion. Although this was only a small part of the book, Goddard was soon subjected to what David Lasser, the co-founder of the American Rocket Society, called the “most violent attacks.”
In 1926, Goddard successfully launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Partly due to Goddard’s poor reputation and partly due to his media-shyness, this launch was largely unnoticed. In 1929, following one of Goddard’s rocket launches, a local newspaper mockingly printed the headline “Moon rocket misses target by 238,799.5 miles”
Although Goddard had difficulty convincing Americans that his ideas were useful, his work was very persuasive to Germans, and it wasn’t long after his book was published that Goddard began receiving queries from German engineers asking about his work. Initially Goddard answered these queries (his help is even acknowledged in Hermann Oberth’s 1923 book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen) , however, increasing aggression from Germany began to worry him, and by 1940 he had stopped responding to the engineers’ questions.
Realizing that he may have inadvertently assisted in German development of long-range missiles, Goddard attempted to warn the U.S. Army and Navy about a potential German threat from rockets. Although Goddard was not able to sell his idea that long-range missiles were a possibility (both organizations considered his warnings too far-fetched to be worth contemplation), he was able to sell himself well enough that between 1942 and 1945 the Navy employed him as Director of Research in the Bureau of Aeronautics, where he worked developing experimental engines.
German products focus on the technical. German advertising focuses on the technical. Cars are often presented without the driver, wristwatches without the wrist, newspapers without reader or author. Quality should speak for itself.
German tabloids may personalize the news by displaying large-format photos. Serious publications do not. Content should speak for itself. For Germans it is self-stated that a good product or service aims to serve people. A view under the hood of the car is, therefore, more persuasive than a happy face behind a steering wheel.
The safest way to win an NBA championship is to land one of the league’s few unstoppable players. But even superstars require the right surrounding parts. They are the Australians. And every team in the NBA could use one.
Australian players tend to be the opposites of most American players. They don’t seek superstardom. They actively avoid attention. They excel in the egoless roles that most players reject.
Aussies can be so obsessed with their teams, in fact, that individual awards make them uncomfortable. They want to win more than anything else. “The kids in the U.S. are told from the time they’re 12 years old that they’re the next Michael Jordan.”
German academic training focuses on methodology. The quality of results – whether in the natural sciences or in the humanities – is determined by the quality of methodology. German students are taught that the person applying the methodolgy, but not the methodology itself, is interchangeable:
“… the conclusions verifiable; the starting point and operating assumptions logical and understandable; the individual steps taken re-traceable; so that the same results are arrived at by anyone taking the same path of inquiry.”
The academic (scholar, scientist, inquirer) is fully detached from the topic substance, both in the execution of the inquiry and in the presentation of results. Message and messenger are kept separate.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ambivalence as “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action; continual fluctuation (as between one thing and its opposite); uncertainty as to which approach to follow.”
Attraction and repulsion. Germans are attracted by logical, well-researched and -argued statements. But they are also attracted by personal appeal, by a speaker who is both appealing and appealing to. Appealing to as in reaching out to.
Germans are repulsed by an imbalance between rational (objective) and personal (subjective) appeal. Mehr Schein als Sein, which translates into more appearance than substance, is a severe criticism. But they are also repulsed, perhaps moreso, by a sophisticated and effective appeal to emotions, to the less rational.
Germans are also capable of persuading by placing themselves front and center, by establishing a personal connection, by appealing to emotions. They choose not to, however. They choose not to teach, train or reinforce it. Ambivalence. They can and often want to, but are wary of the negative effects. Instead, Germans feel the need, the obligation, to constrain themselves, to not go there.
Why? Partly it is their strong scientific, rational, intellectually rigorous approach. Partly it is their belief that persuasion should not be deceptive. Appealing to human emotions – pushing all of the right buttons without the listener being aware of it – is a form of manipulation.
For if the listener is not aware that their thinking is being steered by their emotions, she is not in a position to freely choose to accept or reject the arguments presented. That person is reduced from subject to object. Deception. Manipulation.