we've already established that they don't care- the communication at best can be one sided. it is their fault that they dont' want to speak... but perhaps it hurts them. whatever the reason, it is your choice to stick with them and try to influence them - to have an effect, because your compass says you can change them, make them happy. or have them understand you and make you happy.
ignoring who is right or wrong and examining only in the communication that ensues - what is effective and ineffective? effective is if you manage to in a one way conversation cause them to change. ineffective is if you can not cause that change.
if you failed to cause an effect.. it is not because they didn't try - you knew that from the start. sure it affected the likeliness that you are able to influence them, but that is not the dynamic part of this problem - you are the dynamics. your effort to change them is the dynamics.
if instead you were to tell them that following their actions now, even though it is true to their beliefs (say... what benefits them is always right), that in fact they don't benefit from it... that will suffer consequences for the things the do... well, you would have been effective at changing them, though not who, nor why they do the things they do.
i was not referring to failure to try to communicate - you tried. i was referring to failure to communicate effectively.
i should also qualify that internal change can not be forced upon, but influence can still be had.
Why are you defining effectiveness exclusively in terms of how it affects *other* people? If my thought affects me, then *by definition* it's effective, period. The effectiveness you speak of is only one type of effectiveness, it's definitely not the only one.
to have an effect is to have caused change.
your personal thoughts are effective - i think you missed the point. do you think about something, and say - that's true.. then forget about it? No, it cascades down and affect your other processes. it may be small, but by my definition, by you're acting different in even the smallest aspect of your life due to a thought that you have.. even if it is indirect.. it is effective.
that said, why shouldn't something's effectiveness be measured by its effect in the world?
let say you are looking at a rock. that rock has feelings and morals - a thought came to it that if it rolled back and forth, people would love it. now think how you perceive that immobile rock, unable to express itself. is it not true that the rock's thought is ineffective? the rock has no form of expressing that thought, therefore caused no change in you, nor its environment?
that to the world of actions- it is a mindless, meaningless rock...