Business is often about the opposite of empowerment. Before Christmas I finally went to see a professional about my back. He didn't want to show me ways I could relieve pain and move more easily. He was pleasant, extremely convincing and after some trials possibly even effective but he wanted to do it for me, through manipulation, requiring my total trust in a stranger with my bones, regularly, over the long term and at great expense. Perhaps it's true you get what you pay for. In contrast, my friend's brother, a physio (unfortunately in Spain) will only take clients who agree to do his exercises, who start to become empowered and who want to take or at least share responsibility for their own well-being.
Money so often trumps other considerations that the juxtaposition of “ethical” and “business” is usually the exception rather than the rule. Yet good businesses which take the long view provide a product or service so valuable and so useful that word of mouth is sometimes all the marketing the business needs - or they make customers partners and stakeholders rather than dependent.
Any business with the bottom line as the top consideration (because, say, the business is struggling) doesn’t want you to be independent and empowered. It wants you in a state of dependency because that’s when you keep paying. They need you to believe you need them. It is paradoxical that learning is about becoming independent yet the process in some cases - especially where money is involved - can be about keeping people dependent on the teacher.
In what other context do we hear about “users” of a product and “dependency”? Even where the degree of the nefarious effects is different, the model is the same.
"Perhaps it's true you get what you pay for."
ReplyDeleteOf course that's a truism except that the payment may be better made in personal effort rather than money. I too once had a back problem which even now I have to manage. Necessitated by excruciating pain, three visits to a physiotherapist convinced me that I had to take matters into my own hands. I became my own exercise therapist. I would never have believed at that time that, 18 years later, I would now be so fit, so capable of demanding so much from my back (and the rest of my body) to dance. Tango is a whole body dance, despite the limited characterization prescribed by many teachers, and you need your whole body to be present, available and active.
And three cheers for the brother of your friend.
PS. My pet hate is for chiropractors who by only manipulating seem to generate the dependency both you and I deplore. And my Uncle was a Osteopath who also did not suggest exercise as a remedy. So be as aware of quack therapists as of quack tango teachers.
It sounds as though I have things to learn from you!
DeleteI don't know why today we trust so easily strangers who set themselves up offering various professional services. I have always found the most valuable things I have learnt or understood in life have been through experience which is either accidental or things you set out to as you say learn yourself, with - crucially - no externally imposed limitation; or I have learnt them from other people: friends, family or sometimes strangers met by chance.