First Do No Harm
I optimistically reported an energy “surge” yesterday. That has turned into an energy trough today. Sigh.
Ah, the ebb and flow of my life…the story continues.
A week ago, I reported on overwhelming feelings of sadness in the aftermath of some deep-tissue work on my legs. I’ve also discussed, within these entries, feelings of rejection, heartbreak and loss with respect to past relationships. Authenticity, trust and the meaning of the human experience are also topics I’ve taken on. I realize that the discussion of these, and similar, themes, are likely to continue. Examining my emotional state, awareness of my physical self, exploring spirituality and existential questions are part of the fabric of my life; I write what I know (or think I do) and ask questions as they occur to me.
But: what, exactly , am I doing this for? What is this blog about?
The simple answer, I guess: my own therapy. I write because writing is what I do. I write because it provides an outlet for thoughts and emotions I don’t have any other place for. And this particular venue gives me a place to share, should anyone self-select into my online world.
But, in writing about myself, I sometimes need to make reference to others. I said in a recent email to ya’ll that “…given that you’re in my life, it’s possible that you could end up being mentioned at some point. If that happens, I hope I respect your privacy and feelings appropriately.”
This means I’ve been doing some serious thinking about blogger ethics. Can I be true to myself, talk honestly about my experience, and still, at all times, treat others fairly and decently? I surely have no outright intention of embarrassing, attacking, angering or hurting you. So: I’ve been asking: what is the “right” way to go about this blogging business, anyway (at least in terms of a personal-experience blog like mine)?
Some thinking has gone into this subject already, of course. I’m not the first to be pondering the ethical treatment of fellow humans within this communication medium. A bloggers’ code of ethics has even been proposed.
I have explored this topic, albeit somewhat superficially, with a colleague I went to graduate school with. Although currently not a blogger himself, he is interested in my attempt here — and he’s an educational researcher with keen awareness of confidentiality issues and the possibility of “harm” to participants in research studies. In terms of the kind of human interplay that is blogging, he opines that:
…we have to remember that this ain’t research!!!! It’s public, democratic, open-sourced, put it out there and see who takes a whack at it discourse.
This goes to my own sense of a communitarian, dialogical reality (put that in your blog and float it). That is, we live in a world where very little is private, even though we value privacy above much else. Privacy is negotiated, just like everything else. And a writer (blogger) has to make his/her own decisions about what s/he can live with if somebody else gets a feeling hurt.
Well, that gives me something to think about.
Now, I don’t have any tremendous insights or answers that I can share with you here today. All I can say is that I continue to think about the potential impact my public words might have on my fellow human beings. And I absolutely intend to do everything in my power to respect others’ feelings and their right to privacy.
Psychic Prisons
I’m in no way a student of The Classics. I regret to report that my formal, “classical,” general education has been woefully inadequate. So, when I now (presume to) speak about Plato’s Republic, and “The Allegory of the Cave,” well, you’re going to need to take what I have to say with not only a grain of salt, but maybe an entire wheelbarrow full!
I was browsing Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization (1986, my copy of the first edition) today, still (always!) trying to make some sense of my world. (You know me: I can’t seem to shut off my mind!) In the chapter that examines the metaphor of “organizations as psychic prisons,” the discussion begins with a description of Plato’s cave allegory.
The Wikipedia summary of the allegory (copied, pasted, edited) goes thusly:
From Great Dialogues of Plato (Warmington and Rouse, eds.) New York, Signet Classics: 1999. p. 316.
Imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood deep inside a cave. Their limbs are immobilized, and their heads are fixed as well, so that the only thing they can see is the cave wall. Behind them is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised walkway, along which men carry From Great Dialogues of Plato (Warmington and Rouse, eds.) New York, Signet Classics: 1999. p. 316.shapes of various animals, plants, and other things. The shapes cast shadows on the wall, which occupy the prisoners’ attention. Also, when one of the shape-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows. The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game — naming the shapes as they come by. This is sum total of their life: the only reality they know.
Now, suppose a prisoner is released and is able to stand up and turn around. At first, his eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows. Then, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. Gradually he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows, and only later brighter and brighter objects. The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.
I’m wondering if this allegory may be the source of the term “thinking outside the box” – for certainly the freed prisoner is absolutely forced to “think outside the cave” when confronted with a world so dramatically removed from his prior experience. What a total shock to the system to be freed, leave the cave, and discover what’s there to be found!
Is there a modern-day equivalent to the cave? Could our families, workplaces, and/or significant relationships ever be considered versions of the cave? Is it possible we are (or can become) so myopic in terms of how we view the world that we think the shadows on the wall are “reality”?
And, what if we removed ourselves, even for a little while, from the warm cocoon that is our family, job, or relationship, and took a look around at the rest of the world? What would be our experience? Would it be similar to the freed prisoner, who, if he ever went back to the cave, would undoubtedly have significant problems trying to communicate his experience “outside” to the others still imprisoned there? How would it be possible for “the enlightened one” to share his knowledge? What resistance would be met? What ridicule and contempt would he experience for, saying out loud, his newly-acquired version of reality? How could he ever function in the “old way” (seeing and naming the shadows), when he knows “truth”? And, how could the prisoners ever accept an entirely new perspective without the external experience themselves? Wouldn’t this type of new information, so different from their own, be viewed as a tremendous threat?
Aren’t we, everyday of our lives, trapped in the illusion that our experience is “real” – and the only thing? Aren’t we convinced that this is “the way the world works?” Aren’t we, more often than not, content to remain in the dark – neither risking exposure to alternate ways of thinking nor seeking new experiences? In what ways do we all have the tendency to be(come) psychic prisoners, trapped in a reality that gives us a totally skewed understanding of the universe?
[See Morgan, 1986, p. 200, for the discussion that was my inspiration for these questions.]
Soundtrack Suggestion
Chains, my baby’s got me locked up in chains.
And they ain’t the kind that you can see.
Whoa, oh, these chains of love got a hold on me, yeah.
Chains, well I can’t break away from these chains.
Can’t run around, ‘cause I’m not free.
Whoa, oh, these chains of love won’t let me be, yeah.
I wanna tell you, pretty baby,
I think you’re fine.
I’d like to love you,
But, darlin’, I’m imprisoned by these...
Chains, my baby’s got me locked up in chains,
And they ain’t the kind that you can see,
Oh, oh, these chains of love got a hold on me.
(“Chains” - Carole King)
Cellular Response
Last spring, after the breakup of a significant long-term relationship, and during the most anxiety-producing days surrounding the decision of my “interim-position” status, I developed extreme muscular tension in my legs which had some other, rather scary, side effects. Ever since then, I have taken a, more-or-less, physical-therapy approach to the problem and, after long months, was making progress: almost able to see light at the end of the tunnel by December. However, over the holidays, I had somewhat a reversal of fortune, and I seem to be more symptomatic these days, rather than less.
I’ve approached this as primarily a muscular issue, with anxiety as the root cause. I've done many, many sessions of deep-tissue massage and ultrasound in order to attempt to settle my leg muscles down. Some of the early work, with the deepest massage treatments, produced rather dramatic emotional responses on my part. The work on my body would result in waves of feelings of sadness and loss, for example, and I would end up crying in the office before I was able to gather myself together and get dressed to leave. As I started to get better, less symptomatic, I stopped having such responses. But, yesterday, again, as we worked and probed and pressure-pointed spots on my lower body, I was once more similarly affected. Like a tsunami, feelings of extreme sadness rapidly, and without warning, totally engulfed me.
Although there are a number of possible explanations for what's going on (including neurological), I suspect my body is sending me some kind of message that, to date, I've not totally deciphered. But, my working theory is that the overwhelming loss, and potential for loss, that created last spring’s anxiety led my body to react the way it did, and that the depth of the physical pain — memorized at the cell level — is reflective of the severity of the emotional wounding. Further, when my physical being is poked and prodded in just such a manner, there’s a direct link to the emotional scar tissue. The physical part of the experience yesterday was quite painful, of course. But, the emotional aspect, for me, was profound. And, today, twenty-four hours later, I'm still processing and asking “what is this all about?”
Which part of my being do I heal first: my body or my soul? How do I go about doing that?
Becoming REAL
I don’t know what it is about me, but I seem to attract women into my life who apparently think of me as “little-boy-like” ... perhaps, want me to be more little-boy-like? (Or, maybe it’s something else that’s going on?)
