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Issue: The best way to give advice to others is to find out what they want and then advise them how to attain it. All people need others advice, especially when they met some difficulties which they can not solve by themselves some opinions from others will help them to find the key to the lock. In the ancient time, even the greatest emperors need to consult with their huge bureaucracies how to govern their empires; in modern society, we always play the role of either advice seeker or advice provider. It is true that when we are requested to provide our suggestions we hope that ours could be adopted and be testified valid. It is said that the best way to give advice to others is to find out what they want and then advise them how to attain it. I highly doubt the effect of this view point because it is practically unworkable, although theoretically perfect. First of all, knowing others feeling and circumstances is the precondition to provide suggestions. I think that it is hard to find out what others really want because people are different and putting our feet into others’ shoes is easier to say than to perform. In China there is a famous story which can exemplify my viewpoint: two friends went out for tourism, and when they saw a pool in which a lot of beautiful gold fish were swimming freely one guy said that how carefree those fish are. The other promptly refuted “you are not fish how you can make you conclusion so easily that they are carefree.” Immediately, the former guy presented his answer to his partner “you are not me how you can make you conclusion that I can not get their feelings”. There are, however, at least three problems which are obstacles for us to find out others real desires: the first one is that the necessary information we can acquire is so limited that depend on which we can hardly speculate others real intention; the second one is that in most cases people who seek advice from us provide some information which might misled us; the last one is that the advice seekers themselves don’t know what they really want and if they don’t know their desires themselves, how others should know. Secondly, even though people can know what others really want it is not wise to advice them how to obtain it directly. Primarily, just as the above mentioned that people are different and different people tend to give various advices which consciously or unconsciously are for some purposes. However, too many suggestions will confuse the advice seekers if they don’t have superior abilities to analysis, to deduce and to induce. Moreover, I believe that compared with advising directly, enlightening is a better way because giving a general idea or a direction about how to deal with something is more useful and applicable than imparting specific procedures. The difference is that unlike the latter one, the former is a kind of methodology, when the advice seekers meet the same problems later they can make their decisions and deal with them independently. In sum, from the above mentioned we can make our conclusion safely that the best way to give advice to others is not to find out what they want and then advise them how to attain it. Because it is unfeasible although sounds fine.
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发表于 2006-2-7 17:19:00
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