Wednesday 16 November 2011

Nothing Will Ever Change Until There's a Change of Worldview

...to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motor cycle because it is a system is to attack the effects rather than the causes; and as long as the attack is upon its effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systemic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There is so much talk about the system and so little understanding. [Emphasis added] (Robert Pirsig, 1974, p. 94)
For change to occur, people need to make different choices in familiar situations. Since values lie behind all our choices, this means people need to undergo a values shift. For a values shift to occur, people's world-view must change. The diagram below shows the main things which shape a person's worldview:



The fastest way of shifting people's world-view is through deliberately provoking a "significant emotive event"--brainwashing techniques are an extreme example of this. If you think people would never resort to these techniques, think again! The question we must ask is, are techniques which deliberately provoke "significant emotive events", ethical?
   The debate around this issue could rage on for years, however, the debate can be completely sidestepped. How? Well it turns out that, though creating significant emotive events is a very effective way of modifying a person's world-view, those provoking the event have no control whatsoever over how the person's world-view will change. If you cannot control the outcome, then what's the point of employing the technique?
     How can one be so sure that you cannot control the outcome? It's a basic principle of chaos theory. When you provoke a significant emotive event in a person's life, you create a bifurcation in their meaning-system (i.e. the way they'd made sense of the world until that point in time is broken down--bifurcated!). The brain's system of making sense of the world--it's meaning system--is as about as complex as system as you can get --in fact it might very well be the most complex system in the universe. Chaos theory tells us that when a bifurcation occurs in any complex non-linear system (not just the most complex in the universe) no one can predict the outcome.


     So this means, if you deliberately provoke a significant emotive event in a person's life in order to impact on their worldview, you have no control over, nor any way of predicting, what new worldview they will have after the event--how useless then is this as a technique make any change?
   What does work as both an effective and an ethical means of world-view modification? The answer: "Use a combination of dialogue, experiential learning, and structural change."
     The key to change is gaining real rapport with people. For genuine rapport to exist, people must really know that you are able to see the world through their eyes and thus understand why they have the value priorities they have.


Change = Rapport + Information


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2 comments:

Jobove - Reus said...

very good blog, congratulations
regard from Catalonia Spain
thank you

RonaLynn said...

It seems apparent that we create our world based on decision choices that reflect our world/view. However, I am wondering if a distinction needs to be made between creating our world and reacting to our world and how that orientation affects values identification and realization.

What I am wondering is, when people are motivated by negative influences rather than positive by focusing on what they do not want rather than what they do want, how many of their values are being lived? It seems that a negative world view might inhibit the identification and realization of personal values and therefore cause confusion as well as result in limited goal realization.

Robert Fritz distinguishes between creating/generating and reacting/responding. In his book, The Path of Least Resistance; he explains that the orientation, Reactive/Responsive is when circumstances are the driving force in your life. People either react against or respond to situations and thus the circumstances, rather than personal aspirations and values, are the driving force of life. Fritz explains that the Creative/Generative orientation is vastly different. Here the driving force is not the situation, but personal desires, aspirations, vision, and values. The challenge seems to be learning how to change a negative world view and orientation from reacting/responding to creating/generating.