What is Worth Accepting and/or Repeating?

In Weaponized Communication– my newly released book—I emphasize interactions among certain factors within you and outside you. Three interrelated concepts are particularly relevant.

The first is the psychology concept of Contextualism.  This is the idea that thoughts, feelings, behaviors, actions, and experiences don’t have a single, universal meaning. Instead, their meaning depends on the external situation and your internal situation. Imagine someone frowning. Are they angry? Sad? Deep in thought? The meaning of that frown depends entirely on the situation and person.  In my book, I emphasize context as being comprised of each individual’s history, temperament, thoughts, feelings, environments, and action tendencies.

Second, Idea Disassociation refers to a condition in which an individual’s thoughts, memories, or concepts become fragmented or disconnected within that person’s cognitive framework.  When that occurs, one entertains cognitive inconsistencies—sometimes to their benefit and sometimes to their detriment.  For instance, a person who considers their self as generous fails to donate to what they regard as a very well-deserving charity.  They dissociate their generosity from their failure to donate so as to avoid feeling guilty.  The dissociation is a benefit or a detriment, depending on your point of view.

Siloing is the third of the interrelated concepts.  Loosely speaking, this primarily is the organizational counterpart of  an individual’s Idea Disassociation.  Siloing is located in a group context wherein there is compartmentalization of information, operations, or decision-making within separate units or departments, often limiting communication between their personnel.  Those of you old enough to remember the Challenger explosion and the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001  might also recall that many people pointed to siloing as at least partially responsible for the disasters.

In the aggregate, all three concepts are relevant whether you weaponize or are weaponized.  I think about this by considering what goes on within us and outside us.  Contextualism is in play within us when our values and needs apply.  If an issue is low regarding  our values and needs, we probably will neither weaponize it nor be a victim of its weaponization.  If the issue is important to us as individuals, we might dissociate the idea from other aspects of our cognition, such that we attack with it or allow ourselves to be attacked by it, and still delude ourself sufficiently to maintain an illusion of self-consistency.  If the issue is important to us as a group participant, we might ignore the significance of siloing, and still maintain our basic identity as a fully group-consistent member.  

Regarding the contextualism, dissociation, and siloing factors, my main point, again, pertains to what is internal and external to you.  It would be tempting to conclude that only siloing is relevant to the external. But, in truth, all three factors are both internal and external to some degree. When I say internal and external, I am referring to features of a weaponizer or weaponizer target that consists of their history, temperament, thoughts, feelings, environments, and action tendencies.  These can singularly or compositely determine what is weaponized and one’s reaction to weaponization. 

Controlling weaponization depends on if, how, or when one is conscious of the role of their history, temperament, thoughts, feelings, environments, and action tendencies relevant to what is being weaponized.  At this very moment, you are hyperaware of the importance of those factors. However, only by being ONLINE AWARE can you use your understanding of the factors to avoid being a weaponizer, yourself, or falling prey to others who are weaponizing.  Therefore, when you make a pronouncement about an issue important to you or hear someone else do so, think whether the pronouncement is or is not consistent with other related issues important to you.  If the pronouncement is about something that you value or that is important to you, do not mindlessly accept or reject it. Instead, ask the following question: Am I likely to be automatically and/or irrationally swayed about this issue due to my history, temperament, thoughts, feelings, environments, and action tendencies?  Then, force yourself to find a reason - at least temporarily - to reject your instinctive, automatic acceptance or rejection of the pronouncement.  Having done that, you can rationally decide what, if anything, about it is worthwhile and/or actionable and/or worth promulgating.