Monday, July 12, 2010

Prime directive

In his classic Sci-Fi book, I, Robot, Asimov has one of the technicians observe the following: "He (the robot) believes only reason, and there's one trouble with that..." his voice trailed away.
"What's that?
"You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason--if you pick the proper postulates."
The reason many people cannot discuss religion or politics is that each side has a different postulate. If your postulate (your fundamental starting point, your conviction that you never yield on) is a slogan "Government is the problem, not the answer," you will always come to conclusions that flow from that. The reason "big lie" propaganda works is that once you establish the postulate, data does not matter.
Some Christians believe "Every word of the bible is literally true." They shed science and historical data like an ill-fitting garment, and they embrace physical impossibility like an affectionate child-- all because of their postulate.
Our Enneagram style functions like a postulate, in a moderate softened sense. If I am a style Nine,my postulate is that I MUST have harmony. If I am Three,I MUST have success. The more neurotic I am, the more rigid and determining is my postulate.
The postulate filters out all information that conflicts with it and suggests that all responses lead to it. If I am a Four, I filter out all (or at least most) suggestions that I am just one of the folks and I respond in such a way that reinforces my belief that I am unique and not quite acceptable in my uniqueness.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Wrong in general

Of the variety of ways that we exaggerate, distort, delete, obfuscate and in general screw up communication, probably one of the most deleterious is generalizations. On vacation I did a lot of reading a talking. Surprise! I had the most trouble dealing with generalizations. I was trying to be fair and balanced, so I watched some Fox news and read several conservative blogs. Whereupon I reflected on the havoc generalizations can cause.
Which reminds me of a story. I was invited to a home with two teen age boys. The whole family was doing a lot of fighting and not relishing the conflict. I went to live with them for a week. Within two hours of my arrival the boys began to argue loudly and warmly. I was invited to magically stop them. So I did.
I did it by simply getting them to agree that whenever they used the words always or never, they had to pay a quarter into a pot. It was considered cheating by finding synonyms like "invariably" or "habitually" or "you have the habit of."
By the end of the week, everyone was laughing and amazed at how often they were fined. The interruption of generalization fractured most of the fights and made the fights they had more real, about current concerns.
Look at what a generalization does. It brings the energy and pain of the past into the present and overloads the emotional tenor of the conversation. It also accuses the person with whom you are arguing of either refusing to or incapable of change. They "always" whatever. "Always have, are now and always will be." It's a grammatical curse.