If you want to escalate an argument, a very effective method is to deploy one of the final set of danger words in our little series. I call these the maximisers. There are four that get deployed most often, and I expect you’ve used them yourself. They are…
Always
Never
Everybody
Nobody
These tend to introduce sweeping generalisations, and as Agatha Christie once said ‘Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.’ Which is itself a generalisation, of course, and thus to be grasped lightly.
In the case of the maximisers, the generalisations are often blaming or self-pitying, as in ‘You never listen to me’ (the most common complaint in relationships) or ‘Nobody understands me.’ They can crop up in business too, for example in phrases deployed in meetings or sales conversations starting ‘Everbody knows that…’ And of course, they are the basis of many aphorisms such as Ruskin’s ‘Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort,’ or Churchill’s ‘Never, never, never give up.’
As with all the other danger words and my Seven Deadly Sins of speaking, I’m not suggesting you necessarily ban these altogether, but I do think it’s important to be conscious of your use of them. With humour or when qualified as a feeling (‘Feels like you never…’) they can be potent. However, when used as absolute statements of fact, they are typically inflammatory and so to be launched with great caution.
So always take care, never go unconscious in your speaking, or everybody will get upset and nobody will listen to you!
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