Reframing.

I thought I would share with you a posting that TBH just made on www.baselinescenario.com , his response to "pick yourself up..." This site is always interesting and informative about the current world crisis.

Interesting stuff huh? Cruising isn't always what you imagine, well not for us anyway....!


Thank you James for your words on Torture. I think President Obama addressed this when he said, "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals". His speech did not need specifics because it was a small masterpiece of reframing (see www.yalaworld.blogspot.com).

One must be at ease with the unfamiliar and the con¬tradictory to navigate change and create newness. Change agents must learn to live with the unknown, untamed, for a while. Those mentally accustomed to vagueness, complexity and ambiguity are better prepared to produce original ideas and cope with newness. Familiarity with paradox is necessary to survive the never-ending surprises of our rapidly changing world

There are many ways to cope with paradox. You can accept the conclusion but explain why it is unacceptable, reject the reasoning as faulty, reject one or several premises explaining why they seem acceptable, misunderstand or deliberately refuse to consider the paradox altogether, live humbly or peacefully with the paradox unresolved, or transcend the frame of reference that is making the situation impossible.

Zen masters employ paradox in the last of these ways. Zen teachers formulate "koans", questions that are designed to be impossible to answer, because they want their students to learn to reject the question. The koan is intended to annoy the learner so much that in a sudden moment of illumination, of "satori", they come to see that all rules can be broken, all boundaries transgressed.

This lesson is vital… for we may damn ourselves eternally if we fail to reject certain questions. This is the terrible message of the book and film "Sophie's Choice".

Waiting in line at Auschwitz, Sophie is told, "You may keep one of your children, the other must go."
"Don't make me choose, I can't," she begs.
"I'll send them both. Make a choice," the soldier replies.
"Take my little girl," Sophie cries. "Take my baby."
And thereafter she is inconsolable; even the son she kept with her dies in the camp.

In particular, beware oversimplification. Simplification is deceptively appealing in its apparent lack of ambiguity.

In those few words – "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" – President Obama denounces the double-bind into which the devious framing of the issue of Homeland Security had placed Americans.