Strong's Amer. Framings as a way to mitigate polarization?

[npeden]

Hi All

I think this is the area where these interests might fit.

I am curious what others think/feel about a recent article from Strong of the metaphor project, suggesting that there is an American framing that can help "end" or "soften" polarization. This is from her email:

(This article is) "...published in the Quaker Eco-Bulletin. Although it was written for a Quaker audience, I feel it has even wider application as a compact, up-to-date sample primer on American framing for all kinds of progressives and liberals, because the values and issues with framing discussed in it are widely shared among us all."

I am curious who among us has done either nlp or something like the metaphor project training or resources, and how much it may or may not have helped your practice. If you would like the Strong's article on "eco-friendly persuasion" I will be glad to email it to you or post a url here if Susan Strong sends me one.

I think I will try to create a poll question just to try it out.

Many thanks for your views.
_________________
Nancy Peden, M.A.
www.livedlearning.net

[Michael Briand]

Any strategy, method, or tool that can reduce polarization in the current political environment is worth learning about. I wonder whether anyone familiar with the approach Strong describes has read Mark Gerzon's A House Divided: Six Belief Systems Struggling for America's Soul. The book offers some important insights (though, in my view, probably not enough) into the nature and depth of the divisions that characterize U.S. society today. I'm curious how this approach would be used with the folks Gerzon describes.

[npeden]

Michael

Thanks for alerting me to Gerzon's work. I looked up the book on amazon and it looks very good and that it actually may attend to something I have long felt strongly about: locating one self in a conversation by identifying ones prefered "paradigm."

This I believe, can, by taking a stand and revealing one's beliefs and assumptions, and allowing others to reveal theirs, we may actually become more open to change as we continue in conversation.

I suspect that might be what occurs if one reads this book: to locate oneself ad nauseum almost and perhaps begin to recognize ones uniqueness and non categorizable-ness (!), where & how one is a unique being.

Really it is writers and thinkers who encourage us to categorize especially in media. What I think Gerzon may be doing is a kind of paradoxical practice (which I love) and that is by over-categorizing, we become more able to break out of categorizing, experiencing a gestalt of a new way of seeing & being.

I wonder if we all accepted our differences (ie our uniqueness) and the uniqueness of others. would we need a system like Strong's? Could we accept language differences and appreciate them?

Maybe Gerzon attacks the problem at a more "root" level...I am interested. My library doesn't have it but I will look more.

Thanks!
_________________
Nancy Peden, M.A.
www.livedlearning.net

[Michael Briand]

Yes, Nancy, I think there is something counter-intuitive, at least on the surface, about Gerzon's deliberate "over-categorization." But he's trained as a therapist, so there's a "method to his madness." The method involves what Buber would call "confirmation," or validation, of the other person's humanness. In my view, this is particularly important in America today because, as the late Christopher Lasch argued, ours is a society in which people's identities have become increasingly insecure. The "culture of narcissism" is not one in which people love themselves excessively, but rather one in which they have become preoccupied with meeting their basic (Maslovian) need for a psychologically secure identity (too often through ineffective strategies).

Gerzon tries to show that in each belief-system he describes there are things that all Americans value. Recognizing and openly acknowledging these helps people who subscribe to a different belief system to secure their identities. As a result, they begin to let down their defenses and become more open to dialogue and all it makes possible.

This is easier theorized than practiced, of course. But I think the theory is sufficiently sound that it warrants determined efforts to test it. My curiosity about Strong's approach stems from my sense that great skill will be required to achieve the mutual confirmation that in theory is fairly straightforward.