by Flemming Funch
There's a certain type of problem I occasionally have had in the past with certain individuals which usually ended up spending a lot of time for both me and them and ending in a depressing result for everybody concerned.
And, now, I've recently been wondering here what makes Mark tick, since he's a person who seems to have a lot of drive and willingness to do something in some areas I'm also very interested in, but we also seem chronically out-of-synch when we try to talk about it. And it seems like a case of different world views to me.
Now I think it was Mark's quote contest that made me understand something, and then step back and glimpse a bigger picture which might be worth looking at. And I will try to present that as objectively and constructively as I can manage. This is a bit sketchy, though.
The kind of problem I previously was having was that every year or two somebody would come along that I would have very lengthy and rather mental discussions with. You know, several 5-10 page letters back and forth every day, taking hours to write. And it was based on that both I and the other person felt that there was a great basis for collaboration and that we were really close and there were just a few details to sort out. And it then takes weeks and weeks to end up with the realization that we agree on most things except for one overarching meta-assumption that then ends up killing everything. One person I was having such conversations with was David Devor of the Project Mind Foundation. Extremely intelligent, well-studied and eloquent person. And it seemed like we agreed philosophically on most everything. Except for one thing. That one thing was that he believes in one absolute truth that can be expressed precisely in words, and I believe that everybody has slightly different perspectives and there's no way everybody can agree on what reality is. He believes in one reality, and I believe in many realities, and even though the way he looks at the reality is very similar to how I look at it, he can not accept my version and I can't accept his, because it would make us give up our basic assumption.
And now I realized that it is a somewhat similar issue Mark and I have had. One reality versus many realities.
That made me think some more about it and construct a list of the differences between two stereo-typical personality types or belief systems, or whatever we'll call it. And, lacking proper terms for them, I'll call them type X and type Y. I say I'm a type X.
| X | Y |
|---|
| Many Truths | One Truth | | Multiple realities, multiple viewpoints are all "correct" in their own right, but looking at a different parts of the whole. | One reality, one truth. Different viewpoints are just incomplete opinions about what is really there | | Language is imprecise and everybody has different references for the same words. | It is important to define things precisely and make an exact agreement | | We can't say what the absolute truth really is. It is the sum of all our truths, and then something more. | The most important thing there is to do is to state as the truth in a clear way that everybody can agree to. | | God is indescribable, mysterious, beyond words | God is the word. Divine and universal principles can be clearly and precisely stated | | Uncertainty is fertile and exciting. | Uncertainty is messy and shows lack of commitment. | | A creative chaos is productive | Orderly and deliberate progress is productive |
Now, the point is not just that we're using different words. At least not in my book, supposedly as an X person. It makes no difference at all that we use different words and different frames of reference, if we can still get what we're talking about.
Years ago I had a heated discussion with Richard Bach about reality on his Compuserve forum. That is, it was a heated debate until we realized that we were simply using the same words for different things. I talked about multiple "realities", and what I called realities he calls "illusions". Both would refer to our everyday type of physical world, though. And what he calls "Reality" with a capital R is the bigger or deeper universal intelligence that everything sort of is made from. And I perfectly well agree with him on that, and I see the point in calling them that, so no problem there.
No, the dichotomy I'm talking about here is where it is NOT a relief for both parties to notice that we're just talking about the same thing in different ways, with different words.
| X | Y |
|---|
| Backs up their world view by studying general semantics, quantum mechanics, new age "you create your own reality" philosophy, NLP, personality types, and anything else that shows multiple facets of life | Either studying or trying to construct ultimate presentations of reality. The Bible, The Kabbalah, ancient text, sacred geometry, The Theory of Everything, moral rules or laws, the right political agenda, etc. | | In a group: Looking for openness, honesty, free exchange of differing opinions. Tolerance of differences | In a group: Looking for purity and uniformity. People who've already agreed on the exact rules, who don't waste time questioning things, but get things done in a focused way. | | Bringing forward our different perspectives and sharing them honestly is refreshing. | If everybody has different perspectives it is very frustrating. | | It means we're about to get some work done. | That they have been brought out means we're even further away from an agreement. | | Next step would be more detailed sharing and laying out of different preferences, and we go to work. | Probably time to step back and bring forth some big important principles that everybody just MUST agree to, in order to re-establish agreement. | | When we have established our different perspectives, THEN we can busy. | When we agree on how things really ARE, THEN we can get busy. | | Things happen if you bring the right ingredients and the right players together, and you get inspired. | Things happen by making them happen - by predicting and controlling the circumstances. |
OK, this could use some more work, but am I making some sense?
What I'm trying to find is an understanding of there just being different ways of going about things, without any of them having to be wrong. Sort of like how some people are good at thinking about abstract ideas and general possibilities, and others focus on the specifics and the practical. And in any functional group, we need all sorts of capabilities.
So, I'm trying to get over my previous conclusion that I just once in a while run into somebody who doesn't accept the idea that different people can have different viewpoints, and that I should just stop wasting time with them sooner rather than later.
See, I suspect that there are many more people in that Y category than I maybe suspected.
And I suspect that maybe NCN needs to be more comfortable for those people as well. I.e. there are probably many people who get confused and frustrated by the general "anything-goes" and "whatever-you-want-to-do" approach of NCN, taking it to mean that they're somehow supposed to carry out their projects the same way, with a bunch of argumentative scatterbrain people who can't agree on anything and who think that everything will just miraculously happen by itself.
The Type Y person will often come into NCN and see it as something to conquer, or to convert to a certain program. Or maybe as something to understand the plan of, so that they can join the program, and maybe improve it. The type Y person tends to assume that NCN works as in the right column, that there's a clear agenda, some precise definitions of what we're doing, and a plan being executed, with any minor disagreements being eliminated along the way. And if NCN is found not to work that way, it should work that way. So, either they push for that to happen, or they leave. Somehow if would be good if that type of person had a chance of finding what they're looking for, without wasting time on engineering a hostile take-over of the network or something like that.
I have no intention of dropping my insistence on an underlying openness and multi-dimensionality of NCN. But I'm thinking along the lines of how to best make this all productive also for the people who will at first glance consider such a design a mistake that needs to be fixed.
Now, I must admit that in trying to construct the above, sketchy and incomplete charts, I ended up being confused by recognizing myself in the right column as well. Which is probably a good thing. And what I'm trying to say seems a little less clear than it was to me when I started writing it, but what the hell.
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