Integral Reframing: The Engineering of Empathy

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Michael

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. ~ Henny Youngman

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[Francis]

A frame, or 'frame of reference' is a complex schema of unquestioned beliefs, values and so on that we use when inferring meaning. If any part of that frame is changed (hence 'reframing'), then the meaning that is inferred may change.
To reframe, step back from what is being said and done and consider the frame, or 'lens' through which this reality is being created. Understand the unspoken assumptions, including beliefs and schema that are being used.
Then consider alternative lenses, effectively saying 'Let's look at it another way.' Challenge the beliefs or other aspects of the frame. Stand in another frame and describe what you see. Change attributes of the frame to reverse meaning. Select and ignore aspects of words, actions and frame to emphasise and downplay various elements.
Thus, for example, you can reframe:
•   A problem as an opportunity
•   A weakness as a strength
•   An impossibility as a distant possibility
•   A distant possibility as a near possibility
•   Oppression ('against me') as neutral ('doesn't care about me')
•   Unkindness as lack of understanding
•   etc.
You can often change a person's frame simply by changing their emotional state, making them happier, more aggressive, etc. When they are happier, for example, they will be more positive and optimistic (and vice versa).
Example
You say it can't be done in time. But what if we staged delivery or got in extra help? I'm sure we can produce an acceptable product in the timeframe.
It does seem stupid, but it's also stupid not to look again and see what else can be done.
It's not so much doing away with old ways as building a new and exciting future.
We have shown we can argue well. Maybe this means we can also agree well.
Discussion
Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch (1974) describe the 'gentle art of reframing' thus:
To reframe, then, means to change the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the 'facts' of the same concrete situation equally well or even better, and thereby changing its entire meaning.
We make meaning from the world around us by taking a limited number of facts and inferring or assuming other detail to be able to make sense of things. Reframing leaves the facts alone but may well challenge the assumptions. With care, you can change the other person's reality without causing conflict.
Within the inference filters we use, we classify things into groups and types which have defining attributes. Reframing may deliberately challenge these. Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch describe this thus:
In it's most abstract terms, reframing means changing the emphasis from one class membership of an object to another, equally valid class membership, or, especially, introducing such as new class membership into the conceptualization of all concerned.
Reframing may also challenge superficial desires, appeal to more fundamental needs and interests. For example a request for a pay rise may be reframed as an imperative to keep talented people.
Reframing may even be done physically and symbolically, for example where a social leader goes for dinner with someone who has hereto been ignored, reframing the person as a friend.
Hale (1998) describes how reframing can be used in dramatic games, for example where people play roles of victim and hero.
Philips (1999) describes three ways reframing happens in active listening:
•   Reflecting some words and ignoring others.
•   Inviting or discouraging collaborative meaning-making on selected topics.
•   Reformulating what people say (i.e. common usage of reframing).
The term 'frame' also appears in the common usage of a 'frame of mind', typically used to describe a cognitive position or mood. Whilst our current emotional state is not the whole of a perceptual frame, it is an important element of it and changing emotions will change the frame and hence created meaning.
Beyond personal perception, All ideologies from political systems to religions are frames for creating meaning. Cultures, likewise, embody methods of interpreting and shared ways of making sense of the world, as are the models by which we perceive ourselves and others. When we share frames with others, we share meaning. When we have different frames we can easily fall into conflict if we consider the frames of others to be non-legitimate.
Reframing is a particularly useful method when two or more people are stuck in opposing and seemingly-intractable positions. Reframing here effectively changes the ground from under their feet. It is thus a common method in conflict resolution. A typical approach is to:
•   First get each parties to understand their own frame, and that it is a frame.
•   Then each must appreciate that other people have different frames that are, for them, valid.
•   Then each accepts that no one person has the 'right' frame
•   And hence accept that the other person's frame is valid.
•   Then to equitably explore similarities and differences.

After you’ve gone through all this analysis of frames, you have two choices:
1)   Pick a frame and go with it.
2)   Create a hybrid frame composed of some combination of available frames and go with that.

[Michael]

Interesting, Francis.  Reminds me of an NLP book I read years ago, called Reframing.  (Richard Bandler and his partner in crime)

The Engineering of Empathy sounds sort of warm and fuzzy, and potentially a good thing till you consider how it spins out in the nauseating world of ideological spin, and the engineering of perception.

Here's something that popped up on my radar this morning:

True Enough: the science, history and economics of self-deception

Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 10, 2008  7:02 AM            | permalink    

[Francis]

I think that basic standards of factual veracity and logical integrity can be set up so that re-framing becomes a worthwhile way to reconcile arguments. A fact needs to be objectively verifiable. A logical string of ideas leading to a conclusion needs to be free of known fallacies. With these safeguards in place, re-framing would allow each side to see the other viewpoint, as previously-ignored facts and priorities are illuminated for all parties involved.

I admit though, that tv and the internet have completely lost all credibility. That would be ok, if at least more people realized that the most polluted resource we have is the mass media. Re-framing like any powerful tool can be used by sinister people to accommodate an evil agenda.

[Jana]

"A fact needs to be objectively verifiable."

No it doesn't it just needs to be backed by the multinationals, expressed along with the word God, and  then repeated by enough shleep...then you can make any thing you want into a fact.

Robert (RAM) and Diane came into the store today to buy Maitreya...
man they are looking good...said something about moving to Ashland eventually.

[Francis]

No, but a falsehood can help generate a thoughform that perpetuates the falsehood which in turn reinforces the thoughtform, etc. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. You can make anything into a statement and then pretend that statement is a fact. That does not make it a fact.

Michael said "For centuries, a large number of people "knew"  that Jews used gentile baby-blood in Passover matzoh. They "knew" that  phrenology worked. That gypsies stole babies. That the laboring classes  lacked the capacity to learn and participate in society. That women had  fewer teeth than men."

All of these ideas can be tested. Most of them were, at least that's what's implied by the quote above. He's saying "now we know better" but can we prove that no jews or gypsies ever behaved that way? The gutsy question is: can we treat a whole group based on these accusations?

Fallacy of Converse accident / Hasty generalization
This fallacy occurs when you form a general rule by examining only a few specific cases which aren't representative of all possible cases.

Those problems that Michael points to are the result of the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization, for example: "Jim Bakker was an insincere Christian. Therefore all Christians are insincere."


   

[Jana]

Our Pal Bucky F. had a breakdown-thru around this, and was determined to create a model of the universe based on tacit experience. I think his intuition to be exactly the type of attitude we need to get us through this current schizoid crisis where the orthodoxies of the past no longer en-trance. And if you start reading Schauberger you realize that this culture is built on faulty premises from its roots right up to its tips.

[Francis]

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
-R. Buckminster Fuller

[jimtzu]

how do you move culture(s) beyond the ego-driven worldview?

[henry]

how do you move culture(s) beyond the ego-driven worldview?

  weeping, kicking and screaming . possible turbulence ahead...nostrahenry

[Francis]

Our so-called "ego problems" -- lack of ego development, or an unbalanced ego, or an "inflated" ego, or the terrible qualities which are assigned to the ego in general -- are never the fault of the ego itself; they are due to our misunderstanding and misapplication of this instrument. ~ http://www.theorderoftime.com/politics/cemetery/stout/h/ego.htm#We%20can%20"transcend%20the%20ego.

[henry]

also there is the collective or cultural trance in which ego problems are embedded. double whammy . love can help....henry

[Jana]

You cannot overcome suicidal-self-interest via the mind alone...only the heart and intuitive wisdom or direct perception can overcome the drives of egoic separation. Spiritual relationship requires this though, for otherwise it is not relationship but materialism (gross economic exchange of services rendered). Waking up necessitates the emergence from self-incest, and yet higher community requires we evolve our selves toward our supreme vocation. Once models for cosmically moral mystical communities are generated...then all those exposed to the experience of spiritual community will be infected with the bug of cocreative vocational realization. For at the core of our humanity is the need to be useful, meaningful and creative in community with resonant others. To build and enhance, to grow who we really are beyond all that the past has made us...and to not be undermined in our efforts to realize our supreme being.

[Francis]

The ego is a highly effective agent. An agent in the sense that it needs an outside agenda to work toward. If the ego is allowed to develop and adopt its own agenda, then there's trouble. Worse yet, if many egos are working as agents together for some other ego that has its own agenda.

The ego is an instrument, like a car. You don't let a car decide where it wants to go. Such behaviour constitutes misuse of the instrument.

Modern socialization fails the ego because it does not provide an outside agenda. I really think the key problem is quite subtle. Socialization tells the ego, not to go find a worthwhile agenda, but to make up its own. Like going to a store cashier and asking him what you need from the store. The cashier cannot tell you what you need, but can only help you get it, if you know already. The ego is like that. If you let the ego set the agenda, you end up in all these weird situations, with a bunch of odd stuff, and none of it really satisfies.