Guest guest Posted September 4, 2000 Report Share Posted September 4, 2000 Dear Devotees, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Normally, I try to make a point of never offering advice to others when it hasn't been requested. I usually get into trouble when I do. But sometimes it might be worth the risk if I'm ready to receive a knock on the head from those who do not appreciate my suggestions. This is one of those latter occasions. On these public conferences, we often read texts which offend our personal sensibilities, not so much because of what they contain, but rather from the tone or presentation. I often get the impression that the content of the message is not understood or appreciated by its readers because it gets lost in the emotional delivery. So, I want to offer a suggestion that might be useful in communicating with those who do not necessarily agree with our opinions, but are sincere devotees of Krishna nevertheless. A long time ago, one of my godbrothers taught me the art of effective letter writing (long before the Internet Age). Essentially, the method is to carefully reread the letter after writing and remove anything that sounds angry, pejorative, insulting, condescending, or that could be interpreted as a personal attack. The end result is a message that sounds cool-headed, reasonable and professional. Over the years, I haven't always been successful at reigning in my passion and following this advice, but I have found that, when I do, my communications are far, far more effective. The problem with sounding angry is that it severely limits our audience. While a passionate tone my inspire some, those are usually people who already agree with us anyway. It's the other groups, those that disagree or who haven't made up their minds, that we really want to reach. Generally, those groups will mentally reject anything that sounds abrasive and then our message is lost. I just wanted to pass this along so your valuable comments will have a greater chance of reaching their intended audiences. Please forgive my presumption in offering this unsolicited advice. Your servant, Sri Rama das [srirama.acbsp (AT) pamho (DOT) net], or [sriramadas (AT) home (DOT) com] < Please note new address. [http://www.krishnagalleria.com] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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