How does Star Trek's "Prime Directive" of non interference relate to how we interact with others on an interpersonal level? How does it relate to healthy boundaries? Being objective? Can we use our positive influence without violating the volition and boundaries of those we interact with?
It is not fair minded nor objective to lower our standards of thinking to engage with those who are prone to closed mindedness, or are in the midst of an emotional bias causing them to engage us with motivated reasoning. Meaning, we do not need to dialogue with, nor consider, closed minded, biased, one dimensional, irrational, and judgmental perspectives in order to remain fair minded and objective. Engaging with the biases and closed mindedness of others enables their poor thinking and wastes our energy, while it also fails to allow them to experience the natural consequences of their poor thinking.
When we practice non interference, and allow them to experience the natural consequences of their thinking, they are more capable of learning from their mistakes. However, when we interfere with their thinking, feelings, or behaviors, we become an authority figure that they will resist and fight, nor will the be motivated to seek out the actual causes of their problems, which is contained within their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When we save them from their natural consequences, they will become entitled to our continual energetic support and rescuing, which is unsustainable by us in the long term.
It is not our responsibility to engage with, improve, or correct the poor thinking of others, nor to rescue them from the natural consequences of their poor reasoning. We lose our leverage and forfeit our ability to influence people when we attempt to interfere with their poor thinking, or when we rescue them from the natural consequences of their poor reasoning. However, we maintain our leverage and influence when we let them experience the natural consequences of their poor reasoning, and are available to them as a neutral adviser and guide should they choose to consult with us. By expecting more from our exchanges with others, we empower them to rise up to our standards of thinking, and thus allow them to be inspired by our objectivity, fair mindedness, and emotional neutrality, rather than playing us for the fool and manipulating us with our desire to be objective, fair minded, and emotionally neutral.
This is a natural boundary that we must clearly set within ourselves, and enforce with extreme prejudice. It’s not that we are setting a boundary on their thinking, feelings, and behaviors, but on our own thinking, feelings, and behaviors in relationship to them, as we clearly identify to ourselves under what circumstances we will choose to engage them. When we maintain our standards of thinking, and maintain our clear boundaries about how we will and will not interact with others, we will never again find ourselves in compromising situations, and we are free to be who we choose to be, and do as we please. In this way, we are not beholden to anyone or anything, which is what it means to be a sovereign and empowered individual.
INFLUENCE AND THE PRIME DIRECTIVE
Remaining a neutral observer in a conflict does not mean that we are to be emotionally detached, but rather that we are to use our positive influence to empower the participants to come to a solution from within themselves. It is important to realize that influence does not equate to interference, as interfering in the development of others is not empowering, but rather enabling. On the other extreme is the tendency to emotionally disconnect from conflicts, but that is just the opposite extreme of enabling, and is not neutrality. We should not interfere with the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others, nor emotionally disconnect from them, but make the necessary insights, tools, and ingredients available that will empower their own discoveries and evolution, should they decide to ask us for our support.
Dissertation: Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages:
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1400581789&disposition=inline
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