The Power of Dialogue to Reconcile Polarity (pt 1)

                                                                        

               In a culture built upon paradigms that severely inhibit our innate wisdom, the velocity of social and cultural degeneration that accompanies progress has reached a new zenith in 2017. Instead of fixating on the breakdown that we see everywhere, perhaps it is time that we start looking past the symptoms and examine the root causes. In our rush towards results, we have created a world in which we serve the acceleration of time, rather than the rhythms of a deeper remembrance of who it is  that we really are. Our political process is completely polarized. Our educational systems are compartmentalized and focus on the transmission of information rather than lending any credence to subjective experience (which is, after all, our only ‘true’ and individually unique account of the world we live in). Honest dialogue is treated as a polite affair that bears no impact on civilization as a whole.

                 Politics: Since polarities are unavoidable, they are present in every individual, team, organization, affiliation and nation. Polarities are easily recognizable; home-work, activity-rest, intuition-facts, optimism-reality, caution-courage, self-other, structure-flexibility. Every team or organization is faced with managing the energy in polarities such as stability-change, global-local, mission-margin, team competency-individual competency, and part-whole. Because polarities are interdependent, they need each other and neither is sufficient alone. Each side is valid but incomplete without the other. Polarity thinking is about “both-and” and invites a move away from “you are wrong and I am right” thinking to “we are both right.” This kind of thinking supplements our traditional problem solving (either-or) thinking and acting. Can you imagine if the politicians who represent the public’s needs and wants authentically engaged with each other so?

                Education: Standardized testing and a consistent absence of dialogue about the subjective experience of the student has led to a deterioration in the quality of output from the Education establishment. Rote memorization, cramming information for tests, promptly forgetting said information, only to find out a decade later that we have been unwitting participants in constructing a world that perhaps we didn’t believe in; had we been allowed to question or foster dialogue as students, perhaps we may have chosen alternative methods of learning. Instead, we are taught to stop questioning the world, that there’s only one right answer to each question (I myself had particular trouble with these, when my class was the guinea pig for the first year of MCAS tests in the early 2000s. What I viewed as multiple potential outcomes, the test viewed as “either/or”). This focus on results and “either/or” scenarios leads an individual inevitably towards aligning with fixed belief systems, ideologies and a “this is right/this is wrong” mentality. While aligning with beliefs is not inherently a negative thing, by narrowing our understanding of the world through (presumably) objective information, we deny ourselves a fluid response to other potential paradigms, thought processes and solutions. We increase our cognitive dissonance from those who think differently.

                 “Western culture has been defined by critical consciousness, the willingness to examine and challenge traditional wisdom and answers in the pursuit of truth, and to stand in opposition to the political and social powers whose authority and legitimacy rest on the unexamined acceptance of received dogma. Science obviously has progressed in this fashion, but even in literature we find an impatience with tradition and a restless searching for ever greater and more finely nuanced explorations of the human condition. A whole genre, the aptly named novel, was invented partly as a vehicle for examining the fluid complexities of human psychology and social relations, a complexity ignored in the stock characters and plots of traditional story-telling. In this sense, Western literature has been the creation of what Lionel Trilling called ‘opposing sel[ves],’ all those dissidents who, like Socrates, are driven to examine the human condition and probe beyond the traditional answers. The spirit of Western civilization, then, is, as Alan Bloom has suggested, ‘Socratic,’ a process of raising important questions and examining critically the tradition of answers, as this examination is embodied in works of enduring excellence, starting of course with those of the ancient Greeks.”  ~Bruce S. Thornton, Classicist

                    In my next post, I’ll focus less on identifying and calling out these polarity problems and more on the positive aspects of dialogue already existent in our society. They are there, and they are growing in depth and breadth. Our deepest thinking is relational, and it communes with all life rather than breaking it apart in to compartmentalized units. To feel with the mind, and to think with the heart. This, I believe, is where we are ultimately heading. This is where platforms like Steemit are guiding us.

        Hello, Steemit world! Grateful for this platform, as well as the great quality content being generated here. I look forward to contributing more within this awesome community. This was my first post. I’m very interested in the nature of dynamic systems, from the micro to the macro, the physical to the metaphysical. I’m a musician based in Brooklyn NY and will likely write about all sorts of subject matters, as I’m a curious monkey. Cheers!

Sources:

• Original Thinking: A Radical ReVisioning of Time, Humanity & Nature by Glenn Aparicio Parry
• https://www.elsevier.com/connect/using-polarity-thinking-to-achieve-sustainable-positive-outcomes
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/line-dalile/a-dictator-racing-to-nowh_b_1409138.html