Chapter 1773: Summer in Fool's Village (22)

"This tells us a truth, dear miss, try to stay on the moral high ground for a while longer, and grasp every second, so as to denounce the evil that may exist or actually does not exist around you."

"Be a hypocrite, huh?" Pamela seemed to have been poked at a laughing point. She picked up the teacup to cover her not-so-polite grin.

"This usually has benefits," Shiler smiled and added water to the teapot, turned the lid of the teapot to a suitable direction, then straightened the cup in front of him, looked at Pamela after raising his eyes and said: "Our nature makes us unable to be good people from the bottom of our hearts, unless doing so is profitable, but many people pay too much attention to actual interests and forget to emphasize the moral status that will bring advantages in words."

"Then how should it be done specifically?"

"First occupy the moral high ground."

"What if there is no moral high ground?" Pamela said as if she was deliberately making things difficult: "Just like facing Talia, she came to find your trouble in a hurry, and she indeed has reasons to do so. Your student drugged her during the date. Just looking at this one thing, you are standing in the moral depression."

"Then create a moral high ground."

Pamela leaned her body forward with great interest. She saw Shiler pour water into his teacup with the teapot, very slowly, as if observing the water flow.

"You can try to 'forgive' others."

"Forgive? Okay, I understand. Express yourself as tolerant and kind, make yourself look like a good person, but this shouldn't be a universal approach either? We are discussing the situation where we are not reasonable..."

"Then forgive her first."

"Ah?"

Pamela made a confused sound. She looked at Shiler with a face full of doubt, as if he was talking nonsense, so she repeated it again: "My meaning is that the other party didn't make a mistake, the one who made a mistake is us..."

"Did the other party really not make a mistake?"

"Uh..."

"The criterion for social equality is to discuss the matter as it stands, and the criterion for social suppression is never to discuss the matter as it stands."

"What do you mean?"

"When you think you made a mistake and the other party didn't, you might as well look at it from another angle," Shiler said after taking a sip of tea.

"There are two methods. One is to pull the timeline long. The other party might not have made a mistake in a short time, but as long as the time is long enough, no one can not make a mistake."

"Digging up old accounts?"

"It doesn't have to be dug up, but to treat their previous mistakes as a given fact, and then forgive them."

"What about the second method?"

"Broaden the scope wide enough. The other party might not have made a mistake in this matter, but their temper, personality, and principles of handling things always have problems to pick."

"And then also..."

"Treat it as a given fact, forgive them."

Shiler blew the tea, leaned his body back, turned his head to look at the withered garden, and then said: "The other party's factual advantage is like soil blocks and stone bricks, building a solid moral high ground for them, and 'forgiveness' is like a thin pillar, supporting a sophistry air pavilion for us."

"It sounds not much different from pestering."

Shiler shook his head and said: "Never think so. Pestering, making trouble unreasonably, and looking for trouble, these adjectives used to judge bad behavior, usually don't point to the unreasonable part, but the aggression in a person's behavior."

"If you are not reasonable but scold, people will naturally feel that you are making trouble unreasonably, but the difference between forgiveness and that is that this has no aggression and is a way of solving problems that is more favored by civilized society."

"When you take the initiative to forgive the other party, it implies that the other party also has mistakes in a longer time or a wider range, and it can also trample the aggression revealed by the other party because they are reasonable under their feet. After all, if I choose to forgive and the other party doesn't, then who is making trouble unreasonably?"

Pamela listened very intently. Some past social experiences appeared in her mind.

Then she heard Shiler continue to say: "In a social environment with bystanders, a very magical situation will occur, that is, the vast majority of bystanders will pay more attention to attitude than truth."

"This has the influence of a certain herd effect, but a fact is that emotional impact is stronger than logical impact, and people perceive emotions faster than logic."

"Therefore, the essence of social confrontation is not about who is right or wrong, but about who can better control their own emotions, or even hone them into weapons, unsheathing the blade or returning the sword to its scabbard at the right time, guiding the emotions of bystanders to change along with them."

"Many people think that the pressure of social suppression comes from extreme personal aggression, but in fact, social and public opinion pressure is always much stronger than the pressure brought by personal aggression."

"Rather than allocating emotions to anger to reveal aggression, it is better to utilize them more efficiently, letting them transform into social and public opinion pressure to crush them from their weak flanks."

"It sounds... incredible." Pamela commented. She looked at Schiller's unfocused gray eyes and said, "It's as if your emotions are a precise machine; you can make each of their parts rotate separately, and rotate just right."

"We all can, Miss."

"I don't understand." Pamela's gaze became more serious. She hoped to get a response from Schiller's eyes, but when those gray eyes focused slightly, she instantly broke out in a cold sweat.

But Schiller laughed and said, "I mean that people who are naturally emotionally rich find it harder to control their emotions, and you are clearly not one of them, right?"

Pamela suddenly became a bit coy. She put down her teacup, pursed her lips, and said, "Many people say I'm like a block of wood, with no reaction to many things, but... well, that is the fact."

"The less water in a bottle, the greater the amplitude it can sway, and the easier it is to conduct experiments to find balance. This is an advantage, not a defect, as long as you don't care whether you are truly happy. Do you care?"

"I don't seek happiness from people." Pamela said bluntly. She said, "Being with plants makes me calmer. I like calm, not excitement."

"Then you can fully utilize your innate advantage to achieve complete social suppression; no one is your match."

"Is this what you are doing?" Pamela still couldn't help but continue looking into Schiller's eyes and asked, "Did you use this method to suppress Talia?"

"No, this is not the approach I would take, because it is a bit too laborious."

Schiller put down his teacup and leaned back. He opened his shoulders and rotated his neck, as if stretching his muscles and bones. With his knobby, slightly rough hands, he pinched his tie knot, hooked his index finger over the top, and pulled it left and right.

This caused the huge double Windsor knot to tilt slightly, and wrinkles appeared below the previously flat and symmetrical shirt collar.

Pamela's gaze was involuntarily attracted by this movement. This was hard to avoid; after all, Schiller's body movements had been few before, and every movement was within expectations, bordering on conventional, just like a statue wrapped in gorgeous suit fabric. What was more attention-grabbing was his speech, not the person himself.

Yet, Pamela saw a crack in the statue from this small movement. Through it, a vivid vitality shone out, and it also seemed more like a glimpse of an unknown intimacy revealed from beneath a rigid and serious exterior.

That hand must have done many things in places she hadn't seen—pulling, stroking, dismantling...

"Forgive me, my dear Miss, I am not your professor. Explaining the logic of psychology or behavioral science to others at length is a tiring task. I think I need to relax a bit."

When Schiller's low voice sounded in her ear, Pamela felt a series of highly suggestive messages rush from her left ear to her right ear. In this instant, she felt she was a god of linguistic analysis.

To her, this passage sounded roughly like: Please don't forgive me at all and get to the bottom of this, my dear Pamela. I am not your professor, so there are no professional ethical constraints between us. Explaining the logic of psychology or behavioral science to you at length is very boring. I think we can do something more interesting.

So the question is, is the other party really hinting at her, or is it just an unintentional slip? And can the price paid to explore this question really match her gains?

Wait, what was she just trying to explore?

Pamela's hair stood on end instantly. She stared at Schiller with wide eyes, "thumped" herself against the back of the sofa, and said with some horror, "I don't like men!... What was that just now?"

"Answer me what you saw first." Schiller said with a smile.

"I..." Pamela stuck herself tightly into the sofa like an Indian flatbread. Her hands gripped the armrests tightly, and she cursed in a low voice, "I have never had any fantasies about the opposite sex since I was born. I usually only..."

"Only receive signals transmitted by the same sex?"

Pamela nodded with lingering fear, staring at Schiller without blinking, as vigilant as a meerkat seeing a natural enemy.

"Think carefully again, Miss. Is the association you formed about me really the kind you think it is?"

Pamela loosened her hands in a daze. Now she couldn't feel anything from Schiller again. The crack in the statue had disappeared, and he was once again like a sun hanging in the distance—too far away to be a threat.

"What happened?" Pamela couldn't help but turn her head slightly from side to side, as if wanting to find some chemical agent that was interfering with her, but she knew she couldn't find it. She knew that as long as she wanted, no toxin could interfere with her perception.

"What did you associate it with?" Schiller asked again.

"Some..." Pamela didn't know how to start, but suddenly she froze again. She frowned and said, "Wait a minute, I think I got it mixed up. That wasn't sexual attraction..."

Schiller revealed a smile and said, "Then recall carefully what it was."

"You were... your hand..." Pamela maintained that slightly panicked expression, froze for about ten seconds, and then said, "You were stroking someone's body..."

"Is that so?"

Pamela swallowed, looked straight at Schiller, and said, "To be precise, it was someone's spleen and pancreas."

Pamela tried hard to move her stiff shoulders and arms, and while clutching her own arm, she said, "Hell, how on earth was this done?"

"This is the method I adopt." Schiller picked up the tea again, took a sip, and said, "I only reveal my dangerous traits to the chosen target, letting them be attracted to me and have no time to think about anything else."

Schiller turned his head to look at the scene outside the window, glanced at Pamela with his peripheral vision, and said, "... It is especially effective against dangerous individuals who like excitement."

"Too effective." Pamela said in her heart. She took a sip of tea, then turned her head with Schiller to look out the window, and to calm her heart that had been pounding wildly since just now.