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2.07.2007

Escaping linguistic prisons

Ineffective professionals are trapped inside linguistic prisons. Their propositional structures (if-then) produce self confirming evidence. Years ago, Chris Argryis called this "single loop learning". The kind of questions asked maintain their flawed premise, assumptions and collusion with like-minded ineffectuals. They embrace a "flawed epistemology" which denies the cyclical dynamics and ecologies. They believe their perceptions and attributions are objectively accurate. They understand the world as causal: efforts make things happen and instrumental actions produce measurable results. They rule out the possibility that their presuppositions (as-if) come back around to haunt them or they are looking in a mirror at what they are looking with. They dismiss evidence of emergent, acausal and contagious outcomes. Their minds are not in nature, as Gregory Bateson understood minds to be embedded, evolving, influential and impacted.

They cannot do what works, make a positive difference or stop doing more harm than good. The outcomes and the effects of their conduct are "off radar". They see others objectively -- not subjectively, systematically or ecologically. Things will get better when others change. It makes no sense "to change the world by being the change". There's no objectivity in "change your mind and the world changes". There's no way the world would change by merely changing our language. Their linguistic prison overrules those escapes.

Everything I've written here is ineffective. I'm seeing what I'm being: an ineffective professional. I am poisoning my world with my use of language, propositions and objectivity. I am getting "all the more reason" to continue seeing a world of ineffective professionals trapped in linguistic prisons by seeing and saying this. Enough already!

Effective professionals are free of linguistic prisons. Our world is a reflection of what we have in mind, where we are coming from and how we see it. We transform situations by our use of language, perceptions and attributions. Our choices among propositional structures free us to say and do things that make a positive difference for others who are involved. We discover ways to be more effective by all the feedback that shows up on radar. We get the message when some side effect of our involvement calls for a change of our own mind, outlook or premise. We simply respond in the moment without conceptual baggage, conditioning or compartmentalized knowledge.

I'm continuing to see what I am being while I see something else. I changed my world by changing my mind. I escaped a linguistic prison that ensnares anyone who sees "ineffective professionals".


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