How manipulations alter reality

How do manipulators and narcissists alter reality to their advantage?

They show themselves perfect and splendid with strangers and in public, while they make “cannon fodder” of their victims in private.

Is the victim a good person? We can take advantage of her (or him).
Does she (or he) believe what we say? We can deceive her.
Does she need information? We give incomplete, false or wrong data to her.
Is she willing? We can exploit her.
Is she sweet? We can devour her.
Has she a good reputation? We can defame her.
Is she sensitive? We can torment her.
Has she anything that we need? We take it.
Does she trust? We can cheat her.
Is she happy? We can scare her.

They use techniques of destruction of personal identity. They instill insecurity and disorientation in their victims. They blackmail and discredit them to obtain what they want. They confuse them, to the point of overturning situations and events completely. They make them feel guilty and inadequate. They demand to have them at their disposal always and immediately. They invent. They pretend. They accuse. They tease. They create discord, anxiety, and uncertainty. They play with the lives of other people. They love to hold people in their power and do not want to let them go.

They simulate urgencies, difficulties and needs, which do not exist. They ask for sacrifices and renunciations from their victims with the excuse of the common good, when, in reality, it is only for their own interests. They show themselves committed to resolving a delicate issue of the victim, and let it expire and putrefy instead. They raise obstacles, where there would be a cleared way. They create problems instead of finding solutions. They blame the victims for events that never happened.

If you are unaware of these dynamics, everything is confused and clouded. If the situation is not clear or is altered, decisions could be made on impulse or wrongly, with dangerous personal, family and collective consequences.

In English all this is called “gaslighting” and is described very well in the 2016 film “The Girl on the Train”.

However, manipulations are based on words and images, while the real and verifiable facts tell a completely different story.

Paola Morgese, PMP
Civil Hydraulic Engineer
M.S. Sanitary and Environmental Engineering
http://it.linkedin.com/in/ingpaolamorgese/en  
https://sustainableprojectsblog.wordpress.com/

Photo: The key © Paola Morgese 2023

Translation of the Italian article: “Come le manipolazioni alterano la realtà”

Come le manipolazioni alterano la realtà

Stolen Sustainability

I appeared suddenly at the table where Monica and Mohamed were having their breakfast with two other unknown project managers. “Good morning, Paola. I was just saying to our colleagues that you are the right person to answer their question about the meaning of sustainability in project management”, said Mohamed. “Good morning”, I smiled to them. One of the unknown colleagues asked me with a big surprise: “How have you found just this table?”. He was right. There were hundreds of round tables in a huge hall, where thousands of project managers were having their breakfast at the congress site. How? This is another story (see the note below).

I provided a detailed answer to Mohamed’s question. At that time, I was the Knowledge Management Leader of the Global Sustainability Community of Practice of the Project Management Institute (PMI). It was about ten years ago.
Events proceed very fast in this period. Now everyone knows what sustainability is and why we need it everywhere. Or they should know, or they think to know. Unfortunately, the first and the most important goals of sustainability have been lost along the path. The word has been manipulated cleverly.

The well known “green washing” is used to replace true environmental sustainability.
“Social washing” is used to confuse true social rights, that are about human rights, workers’ rights, and users’ rights. Social wellbeing is mistaken for social security and surveillance.
“Economic washing” is used to replace durability, repairability, savings and prosperity with the interests of particular entities.

The recent propagation of the sole thought has led to the disappearance of the PMI Communities of Practice. They were more than twenty, about different subjects of project management.
And, also, PMI is no more “my” PMI. Even though I was able to have one of my comments about sustainability approved and added to the latest version of the PMBOK® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), the real direction of the profession is just opposite.

The supremacy of the “agile” way of working overwhelmed more fair approaches. Simplifying very much, agile could be understood like the Italian saying: “Tie the donkey where the owner wants”. The owners have just the money and the power and could know nothing about donkeys, where and how to tie them, and if they really need to be tied. They take no responsibility for the decision and no one is in charge for what happens. The global and comprehensive vision in time and in space is lost. Sustainability needs a holistic approach, which means with competence and from different sides at the same time.

I found this definition of sustainability, dated 2009, in a document of the Project Management Institute, and liked it very much from the very first moment: “Global sustainability is the attainment of endurable economic, social, and environmental wellbeing of all elements of society”.
If you want to know what sustainability really is, you should go back to its roots, including my book “Handbook for sustainable projects – Global sustainability and project management” published in 2014, and to the books of that period of other colleagues on the same subject. Later on, some thieves took possession of this powerful word and changed its meaning for their own interests.

Poor sustainability, it has been stolen and counterfeited.

Paola Morgese, PMP
Civil Hydraulic Engineer
M.S. Sanitary and Environmental Engineering
http://it.linkedin.com/in/ingpaolamorgese/en https://sustainableprojectsblog.wordpress.com/

Photo: Azalea, Rhododendron, © Paola Morgese 2023

Note. To know how to appear in the right place at the right moment, it could be useful to read my latest book “Timeo, Iside svelata e La dottrina segreta nei loro concetti più belli” only in Italian, or its direct sources published in English (“Timaeus, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine in their most beautiful concepts”).