My Version 2.0
I had always harbored the belief that your environs change you in multitude of subtle and not so subtle ways. The job we choose, the partner we live with, the friends we hang around with all make a difference in our total being, most of the times without conscious realization. But the breaking and remolding of my schemas that I am currently experiencing, as a result of the exposure to new knowledge and personal opinions, is far beyond what I had comprehended, and even bargained for.
Any transformation is not an easy task. You want to hang on to all the ideas that have helped you coast through much of your previous life, because give or take a few, they have worked for you. But it undoubtedly is an essential task; like that glass of milk that every mother pushes down the throat of her child. This post is a rambling I need to share to feel less disoriented because of the stripping away of my basic road posts.
My compass always pointed inwards, with a strong sense of individuality. I have always believed that there is one ‘ideal’ self that everyone possesses and continually attempts to achieve. The answer to the question ‘who am I?’ is based on solitary beliefs- of being disciplined, perseverant, empathetic and the like. There has been a differential acknowledgement of others, but in choosing most of my actions, others have escaped the radar. Until a revolutionary course I attended on group behavior. The course prescribed a book called ‘Presentation of Self’ by Ervin Goffman which makes some bold claims about behaviors in a social setting. He states that we have a personal agenda each time we enter a social situation. He further posits that each of us has an ‘idealized view’ of how things should turn out in an interaction, and there is a script in our head based on which we operate. If our behavior does not produce the reactions of others that our script prescribes, we modulate the behavior to match our idealized view. This would not have been too hard to digest till he qualifies this with the postulation that we do this ‘playing out of the script’ all the time. Authenticity, unpredictability are all thrown out of the window. We may argue that there are times one performs actions without an audience, say working out alone. But Goffman counter argues that the audience could be self or an imaginary audience. So the fact that I choose to work out is based on the meanings I have given to the action of working out from my interactions with others, and the importance I attach to it is based on my personal history of other’s feedback on my action. My whole being then is not an answer to the question ‘who am I’ but to the question ‘how am I experienced by others?’
The audacity in these claims is bound to raise anyone’s eyebrows and make them roll their eyes. No one wants to believe or accept that we are continually playing out a part the script of which is molded by others. The controversy does not end here. When two or more people interact each is operating from her own idealized view, and what makes the situation complex is that most of the time we are neither aware nor willing to share this idealized view. If this is true, and we are unable to understand others and sometimes our own idealized views, then all interactions become complex and difficult.
Adding to the controversy is another facet that shreds to pieces the widely held belief of separating an idea from the person. The ‘most-important-to-me-is-knowledge-acquisition’ me always believed that a person should not be equated with his ideas. This rationalization was used each time I countered someone’s idea. I assumed that the other person knew it is not a ‘personal’ attack. But if that person’s idealized view involved expressing his idea, then my criticism would have hit the person and not just his idea. Whether I intended to challenge the person or not is not important. The bitter after taste is what would have remained in the other person’s mouth. How many of us and how frequently we engage in such a crime must be a huge statistic.
This also takes away the garb of separating style of expression from its content. One cannot justify rude or neutral expression by the relevance of the content. So a great scholar who shoots down the point of view of a colleague with a single sided view of speaking what he thinks is the correct understanding, is fostering negative sentiments in the colleague. This is irrespective of whose understanding is correct.
Amidst this flux what has anchored my thoughts is the realization that all this need not be equated with not disagreeing or insincere praise. Each of us has some fundamental needs like need to belong, need to be acknowledged and heard, need to feel influential. If I am sensitive to these needs in the other person, I can still express my opposite point of view without making the other feel threatened.
None of us creates or owns ideas. We each provide a different slant to what has already been said. This is a humbling realization. To work seamlessly in a group and synergistically in relationships we need to accept that the necessity for the other to play out her idealized view is as strong as the necessity for us to act on our script.
I had always harbored the belief that your environs change you in multitude of subtle and not so subtle ways. The job we choose, the partner we live with, the friends we hang around with all make a difference in our total being, most of the times without conscious realization. But the breaking and remolding of my schemas that I am currently experiencing, as a result of the exposure to new knowledge and personal opinions, is far beyond what I had comprehended, and even bargained for.
Any transformation is not an easy task. You want to hang on to all the ideas that have helped you coast through much of your previous life, because give or take a few, they have worked for you. But it undoubtedly is an essential task; like that glass of milk that every mother pushes down the throat of her child. This post is a rambling I need to share to feel less disoriented because of the stripping away of my basic road posts.
My compass always pointed inwards, with a strong sense of individuality. I have always believed that there is one ‘ideal’ self that everyone possesses and continually attempts to achieve. The answer to the question ‘who am I?’ is based on solitary beliefs- of being disciplined, perseverant, empathetic and the like. There has been a differential acknowledgement of others, but in choosing most of my actions, others have escaped the radar. Until a revolutionary course I attended on group behavior. The course prescribed a book called ‘Presentation of Self’ by Ervin Goffman which makes some bold claims about behaviors in a social setting. He states that we have a personal agenda each time we enter a social situation. He further posits that each of us has an ‘idealized view’ of how things should turn out in an interaction, and there is a script in our head based on which we operate. If our behavior does not produce the reactions of others that our script prescribes, we modulate the behavior to match our idealized view. This would not have been too hard to digest till he qualifies this with the postulation that we do this ‘playing out of the script’ all the time. Authenticity, unpredictability are all thrown out of the window. We may argue that there are times one performs actions without an audience, say working out alone. But Goffman counter argues that the audience could be self or an imaginary audience. So the fact that I choose to work out is based on the meanings I have given to the action of working out from my interactions with others, and the importance I attach to it is based on my personal history of other’s feedback on my action. My whole being then is not an answer to the question ‘who am I’ but to the question ‘how am I experienced by others?’
The audacity in these claims is bound to raise anyone’s eyebrows and make them roll their eyes. No one wants to believe or accept that we are continually playing out a part the script of which is molded by others. The controversy does not end here. When two or more people interact each is operating from her own idealized view, and what makes the situation complex is that most of the time we are neither aware nor willing to share this idealized view. If this is true, and we are unable to understand others and sometimes our own idealized views, then all interactions become complex and difficult.
Adding to the controversy is another facet that shreds to pieces the widely held belief of separating an idea from the person. The ‘most-important-to-me-is-knowledge-acquisition’ me always believed that a person should not be equated with his ideas. This rationalization was used each time I countered someone’s idea. I assumed that the other person knew it is not a ‘personal’ attack. But if that person’s idealized view involved expressing his idea, then my criticism would have hit the person and not just his idea. Whether I intended to challenge the person or not is not important. The bitter after taste is what would have remained in the other person’s mouth. How many of us and how frequently we engage in such a crime must be a huge statistic.
This also takes away the garb of separating style of expression from its content. One cannot justify rude or neutral expression by the relevance of the content. So a great scholar who shoots down the point of view of a colleague with a single sided view of speaking what he thinks is the correct understanding, is fostering negative sentiments in the colleague. This is irrespective of whose understanding is correct.
Amidst this flux what has anchored my thoughts is the realization that all this need not be equated with not disagreeing or insincere praise. Each of us has some fundamental needs like need to belong, need to be acknowledged and heard, need to feel influential. If I am sensitive to these needs in the other person, I can still express my opposite point of view without making the other feel threatened.
None of us creates or owns ideas. We each provide a different slant to what has already been said. This is a humbling realization. To work seamlessly in a group and synergistically in relationships we need to accept that the necessity for the other to play out her idealized view is as strong as the necessity for us to act on our script.
posted by Garima at 3:33 PM
1 Comments:
Good post. Very thought provoking. What is this course you are doing? seems very interesting!
Post a Comment
<< Home