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double binds are a concept that's pretty central to how i think about power dynamics and how people control others by creating pressures for them to disintegrate and compartmentalize themselves the closest thing to a primer on the concept is Gregory Batesons og paper on it, but/
/its kinda confusing to just drop as a reference to explain the idea like, the papers called "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia". the schizophrenia thing is very relevant to the whole idea, but can distract if this is new to you https://t.co/IaTgd4sdcX
^ (link is to a copy of the bateson paper I've annotated) a double bind is a situation you can find yourself in where multiple contradictory demands are being made of you, accompanied by a pressure to not talk about or notice the contradictory nature of the demands
some examples before more conceptual stuff https://t.co/SCUhbCtsdc
zizek anecdote "do this or be bad" + "but of course you must do this of your own free will" https://t.co/uv25g9B1Zf
from the bateson paper "be close to me!" + "you make me uncomfortable keep your distance" https://t.co/vYAXNZcme1
a REALLY big part of double binds, which the term doesn't help highlight, is that what matters is when this is a persistent recurring flavor in ones experience trying to identify a given interaction/experience as a double bind matters less than spotting double-bindy *contexts*
i don't yet have a catchy alternative phrase, but the closest i've got is Duplicitous Disintegrative Milieus social contexts where there's recurrent instances of various hypocrisy that can't be acknowledged and pushes you to ignore the contradiction and not talk about it
its living in these contexts, being continually soaked in double binds that fucks people up it cuts you off from creating shared understandings of whats going on, and it pushes you to Absorb the contradiction within yourself and disintegrate/compartmentalize
diffing double bindy stuff from other things i hear about like kafka traps and catch-22's those both point at "damned if you do damned if you don't" "there's no way out" dynamics someone gives you a "choice" and implicate there's a right answer but all options fuck you over
double binds have "a way out", there's just no HONEST way out take the mother son example. the mom can't handle real closeness or real distance and will punish either. she wont punish SIMULATED closeness. Act close to appease ego, but keep actual distance to not trigger anxiety
this is why i think of double bind contexts as the "inductive case" of self-deception when a nugget of self-deception exists in a person, group, or institution, it pushes outwards and tries to worm its way into all that are close to it
depending on the context, the intensity of the pressure towards silence, and how confusing the whole situation is, you can get sucked into others self deception, their contradiction becomes your contradiction, the knot within them ties you into a knot
K, next place i want to go is what sorts of things end up happening to people when they're immersed in such contexts for extended periods of times, cuz there's a much of different ways this can shake out i also wanna explicate "what it feels like from the inside"
one outcome - "insanity" this was the path that bateson was exploring in his og paper. if from a young enough age your under harsh enough pressure to Not Correctly Perceive what's going on it can really fuck you up and deeply confuse you about yourself and others
oh! important reason i want to focus on possible paths over "identify double binds" is SO MANY of the social contexts in the world are some flavor of a duplicitous disintegrative milieu with varying intensity so many institutions and relationships have a lie at their core
which means i see the game less as "is XYZ a double bind, yes or no?" and more "what pressures am I under in which contexts? how strong are they? what are they pushing me towards? what sorts of things could happen to me going down diff paths?"
ooo, sarah's roam page on double binds has some good stuff here, thanks malcolm for linking it https://t.co/CLtNP19DFy
diff outcome: "getting with the program", i.e figuring out implicitly how to comply with the contradiction. this is where i think most people end up it's a transition from being stuck in confusion to figuring out how to dissimulate yourself in accord with others contradiction
notably, in this state, even though you've figured out the game can't be played straightforwardly you don't have much ability to talk or think about your understanding of the situation and the implicit understanding you have actively resists being explicated
you've let the contradiction at the heart of the game into your body enough to act in accord with it, but you have not integrated it into your holistic understanding of your situation you can vibe with the lie, but you can't strategize about the lie or talk about the lie
when one lies to oneself, its rarely the case that zero incriminating evidence ever passes through the awareness of conscious mind. it's just that when it passes through, it doesn't get integrated into any ongoing explicit or symbolic structure. its "in one ear and out the other"
i've had lots of conversations with people where i was non-judgementally inquiring about how they ended up where they are, and i often find they can describe "watershed moments" where they decided to push things away. it's less that they "forgot" and more they don't *index* it
like they probably don't have many explicit though paths they could go down to find that moment of deciding to ignore the contradiction (because it's not indexed), but if im non-threatening they and i'm looking for it they can often be prompted
the best illustration of ive ever encountered of what self-deception looks like in real people is in The Golden Notebook by doris lessing self-deception is an ACTIVE PROCESS that you have to constantly engage in to keep a certain worldview shift at bay. its fucking draining
very much so. i'm still struggling to find straightforward ways to talk about what actually goes on in people and how it very holistically changes you. again, current best thing i can point to is The Golden Notebook https://t.co/R4Z2E2CYIb
ben has a great post that kicked off some of this thinking for me, he describes a group level strategy that vibing around the contradiction can connect to https://t.co/8pLkBE4pgN
another outcome: you integrate your understanding of the contradiction into the explicit and have a worldview shift this can be really tumultuous! and there's various places you can land after this happens the jaded cynic is a classic bucket
when you're here, you've retained/created an explicit examinable understanding of the contradiction, but you've also got a shattered "sense of opportunity" "shits fucked and there's not much to do about it" you understand, at least partially, and don't see anything to do
to be clear this is diff from the "cool kid jaded cynic" think Mike from better call saul. ex cop, son was killed by dirty cops for fucked up reasons. he can talk about the whole dynamic clearer than most, but also seems to have checked out of making good things happen in life https://t.co/EXlI9z1XIP
it IS POSSIBLE to integrate an understanding of the fucked up hypocritical cores of double-bindy contexts while still having a sense of opportunity! though i rarely encounter media or detailed examples of what this can look like
i think an additional pressure that keeps people in the Vibe With The Contradiction state is not seeing good examples of what navigating a tumoltuous worldview shift can look like the most visible examples of people who understand are very unhappy fucked up jaded cynic types
i've had at least one person directly tell me that they are ignoring everything that's fucked up about working in the corporate environments they work in because "if i didn't i'd be fucked up, demotivated and too depressed to provide for the family i want to have"
I know a some people in academia who've navigated the worldview shift and can perceive and talk in great detail about the contradictions that enclose them they both seem to take psychic damage in proportion to how much they Vibe With The Contradiction to get along/
fucky shit happens when there's pressure against clarifying what is going on when I talk about this sometimes people bait and switch with "so you think everything should be explicit? That just doesn't work!" No I'm obviously not saying that
from R. D laing ambiguities and implicit comm is always going to be a part of the equation. its just that in "straight talk" if there's ever a problem you ask for clarifications of ambiguities and bring explicate the implicit as needed https://t.co/VrjIK8y9NX https://t.co/jFvq9JHZKl
when people speak in insinuation and aren't willing to clarify what they mean you get this smokescreen over everything that disorients and confuses https://t.co/P7Xr7TxSCp
more from rd laing, from Self and Others one of my big missions is converting more muddling confusion into clarifying conflict https://t.co/sPAx0K8R0R
@natural_hazard The Double Bind: Trap or Gate? post by Ken McLeod: https://t.co/6R3QaBmNKd
@natural_hazard another fun eg: https://t.co/xn6iCfiqLn
@natural_hazard @SarahAMcManus has a great page on Double Binds on her roam which includes a brilliant excerpt from an Anthony Wilden book, describing in detail the structure of how they are created and maintained https://t.co/XBr0WhbXRk
@natural_hazard FUUUUCKK THIS IS SO GOOD HAZARD!! This explains my "freedom isn't free" phenomena really well because I keep on being double binded by different expectations and I struggle endlessly trying not to "succumb" to accepting the "paradox" of the world.