| Thursday, April 14, 2005 |  |
| Negative or Paradoxical Strategies |
 Antony Judge writes a paper about Liberating Provocations. You know, the "rational" approach, if you want somebody to do something that is good for them, has usually been considered to be to positively promote constructive behavior. I.e. tell them why it is good for them, outline all the advantages, provide useful information, encourage them. It is just that a lot of the time that doesn't work at all. Lots of people do the opposite of what they're supposed to. So, one could go a different way altogether and do the opposite. Promote the negative behaviors. Act surreal and start a campaign for doing all the wrong things. Get the government to support them loudly.This is a two-pronged strategy. By advocating a "negative" approach, those resistant to being told how to behave would reactively consider a "positive" approach. Those scandalised by the "negative" approach, would invest their energy in "positive" campaigns -- where previously they would not have been engaged.Now, I'm not even sure if I want to buy the idea that we collectively want to make people do a certain list of good things and not do a certain list of others. Although a society of course needs some kind of list of things one ought not to do. I'd want it to be very, very small, though. What I'm more interested in, which Tony also brought up, is the angle of infinite game playing. In a finite game there's a set of rules and you're supposed to follow those rules to win, against some kind of opposition. In an infinite game, however, you play with the boundaries and you change the rules, in order to keep playing. A very different thing. Fixed rules about what you're supposed to do and not do will create a finite game. Obviously. It constrains people. And for it to be a game, different people will tend to take different sides. If some people make a finite game with the goal of making you not smoke, not use bad words, not watch porn on your computer, or whatever, well, that's a pretty dull game. The only way of making it half interesting is to play the opposing part. I don't know about you, but negative campaigns trying to tell me what to do or not to do gives me an instant compulsion to disobey. I don't always bother to follow it, but such a campaign obviously is doing the exact opposite of what it tries to do. OK, so a fixed game of compulsion or repression will quite naturally and automatically motivate a lot of people to do their best to do something else. It suddenly becomes important, and somewhat interesting. The opposite-game is limited too, but not quite as limited as doing what you're told. Limited games tend to make people do things they wouldn't do otherwise. Maybe do what you're supposed to, maybe follow the rules, or maybe what you're not supposed to do, specifically disobeying the rules. Which you might not bother to do that way if those particular rules weren't there. Unnecessarily limited rules can be harmful. I'd say that anti-smoking campaigns is probably one of the biggest killers is our society, probably responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths and many more millions living miserable neurotic lives. Because they present a very limited game. Either you do what we say or you die. Not much fun in it either way. There's hardly even two factions in it. Having a choice is fun. And if you feel free to make your own choices, changing the rules as you go along, you're probably playing an infinite game. The playing of infinite games defuse the power of a finite game. Which was an illusion in the first place, but one might not notice before one changes the rules. Carrying out unexpected paradoxical strategies might work, not just because people will do the opposite of what they're told, but because they give a hint of the joys of freedom of choice. It shows you that you don't have to do what you're told. You're free to not smoke, regardless of whether the government unwittingly spends a lot of effort on compelling you to do so, or not to do so. Which is roughly the same thing. The thing is that most people are quite capable at choosing the best option that is available, or a new option that previously wasn't available, IF they're not being held stuck in some kind of fixed for or against situation. Not surprisingly, most people will choose what they feel good about, if they have the choice. Or, rather, if they have ALL the choices. Because there are a lot more choices then two in life. That all seems very paradoxical to people who try to rule other people and condition them to do the right thing. That people are more likely to do the right thing if you don't force them, but rather allow them to move the rules around. And, for that matter, you have no business thinking you know what the right thing is for everybody. What people want is to have fun playing the game of life, and playing it as long and as well as possible, and they probably don't really want your stupid little game of following a rule that's known in advance. Oh, I probably went off on a tangent. Tony's article is superb and gives lots of good examples of provocative and surreal and perverse strategies and pranks that have worked well. Some very amusing ones, like the Cannibal Flesh Donor program, pornocracy, horses running for public office, etc. Humor is great, because it breaks the rules, at least a little bit. It makes people pause and see things a little differently. And that is what is needed. Not being for or against. Life is too short and too big to only use it for playing two-bit games. We need to keep evolving, in millions of different directions at the same time, if we at all are to have a chance. Good paradoxes have much more generative power than clearly stated goals that are handed to you. [ Knowledge | 2005-04-14 23:59 | 10 comments | PermaLink ] More > |