Tag Archives: paradigms

Principles – the Greatest Lens Cleaner.

09 Monday Mar 2020

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“You never find yourself until you face the truth.” Pearl Bailey

I have probably listened to or read Stephen Covey on Paradigms a million and three times. (How specific is that?) For any new readers, a paradigm is the way we see things and this view can be easily influenced by our upbringing, and our beliefs.

Which is why, today, I announce a new learning despite all that previous study.

In the shed where I store the world’s cr4p and my spin-cycle (why do people buy Peloton when they can do it for free), I was sat astride the offending clothes-horse as part of my Private Victory and re-watching an oft-watched video in which the Good Doctor Covey was espousing about Centres. He reminded me about how we see things through our Centres – if we are spouse centred we put their needs before others, including work: if we are work-centred she can bog off. You get the idea?

To be true to ‘life’, he advised that instead of seeing life through centres such as spouse, family, work, money, church, possessions, friends, enemy and self, we should instead see life through principles. Got that? Good.

He then suggested some principles, such as truth, contribution, integrity, and so on. He opined that seeing life through principles rather than centres provides for a more holistic, objective and effective way of living. So when it’s a choice between wife and work, we don’t just plump for ‘work’ because we always do – we look at the situation and make an objective, right decision. Got it so far? Marvellous.

But today, for the first time, I heard him address his audience and say, “Right now, you are even looking at principles through the paradigm of your centres.” AHA!

In other words, he said we look at Principles and ask, “What would my wife think?”: “How can I make this fit work?”: “Is this a way to make money?”: “What is in this for me?”

This is a default position for most people, and that includes you and me. Now, it may not always be a default acted upon, because context also has an influence on our decision-making, but it made me think.

Do I/we often make choices based on convenience, to avoid conflict, to make a fast buck and so on, when we could make better decisions if we just gave the situation a little more thought? Of course we do. We do it all the time. We know this because now and then we regret the decision we made, and not because the situation changed but because something happened that we could have known if we’d given thought to it, or which we did know about but we ignored in the moment because we weren’t being objective.

Yesterday, The Guardian published a cartoon of an Asian politician, depicting her as a pig with horns. They probably, in the moment, thought it would be funny. They looked at the situation through their Left-Wing ideology, concluded that all things Right-Wing are evil, and printed away.

Then some other people reminded them that they were supposed to be an anti-racism publication and depicting a Moslem as a pig was highly offensive: and, given the Guardian’s claim to be accepting of all races and ardently pro-diversity – clearly racist.

Looked at through a left-wing ideological paradigm, this was ‘good’. Looked at it from another paradigm, it was ‘bad’.

Looked at from a Principled Paradigm, it was plainly unnecessary.

Look through a Principle Centre – take a moment, think about what you’re about to decide, and then commit to principled action.

Because your Paradigms are a two-way lens – people can see the real you through them, too.

The Philosophy of Armitage-Shanks.

06 Wednesday Nov 2019

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In my ‘smallest room’, I like to keep a book handy for those longer visits where I can fill my mind while emptying other parts. As you may have surmised from the tone and content of my posts, I don’t like wasting time, and as my income and laziness have not yet stretched to having a door-mounted TV in there, reading is a great substitute.

Today, rather self-indulgently, I selected an old copy of The Seven Habits Workbook, something I buy from time to time to reinvigorate myself with some self-analysis. (I never seem to get to the bit on interpersonal communication, for some reason. Maybe that’s why I never listen.)

In the first pages, the book asks the reader to explore an event where their paradigms were changed because their first impressions were realigned when new information came to their notice.

My favourite example was the day I challenged some kids for throwing litter. Local shops suffered from youths ‘hanging around’ which resulted in repeated calls to police, which in that capacity I used to attend. Off duty one day, I was walking past a small group of teens when I heard a can hit the floor. I challenged the youths to pick it, probably quite brusquely, and they declined the offer. It was only as I stood there facing them down that I realised that the nearby litter bin was overflowing, and it was exceptionally windy.

They hadn’t dropped the can. Nature had.

I realised then, in my own AHA moment, what a paradigm is and how it affects our thinking. It is the way we see things, the lens through which we see and interpret what is happening. And like many lenses, it alters our vision. A lens can correct our vision, or warp it.

Yesterday, a politician was challenged for ‘something he said’. The reports outlined how he had insulted people who died in the Grenfell Tower disaster as ‘lacking common sense’. The funny thing was, he didn’t say that. People with an interest in challenging the politician – and the media, who can never let a fact get in the way of a good story – decided that ‘lacking common sense’ was what he meant.

You can see what he actually said, here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT2z-TtgElU

(You can also look up a previous post from 2016 about The Donald on this site.)

The aim of today’s post is not to tell you what to think. It is to remind you that we ‘think’ through a lens created by our history, our references and our values. And, importantly,  so do others.

Which means that when we are told something by someone else they, too, are telling us through their paradigm of the way they see things – which means that what they are saying may – emphasis may – be based on a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation, or even on mischief.

It’s not always easy to spot, and if you consider that adding our lens to their lens may warp things even further, perhaps the lesson here is to be really careful when starting to espouse your opinions on ‘what just happened’, too.

The other thing I felt about this incident was how our ‘enlightenment’ on matters which should be dealt with ‘sensitively’ (i.e. less than truthfully?) has resulted in a massive increase in tolerance.

“You should be more sensitive, you ignorant fascist bastard!” Irony.

Isn’t it amazing just how thoughtful you become after reading a book when sat with your trousers around your ankles?

And on that image, I’ll let you go. Another toilet metaphor. I could go all day……..

Poor old Donald Trump. Picked on by a lying media……..

13 Sunday Dec 2015

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“Make sure your paradigms are true to principles.” Stephen R Covey

A doozy of an example, this week.

Not that long ago, Republican Party Presidential hopeful Donald Trump made a speech. Following that speech the media had a field day, and thousands of people signed a petition to bar him from entering the UK on the basis of what the media had reported. The media had reported that Trump had expressed a desire to ban Muslims from entering America. That was the headline, that was the repeated mantra, that was what most people heard.

But that isn’t what he said. Or, to be more accurate, that is not ALL that he said. The press missed out the bit before that, thus deliberately (I suspect) erasing the context, and then also omitted to mention the next bit, thus deliberately ignoring the qualifier.

What he said was, and I am paraphrasing so you can ignore me if you want, was that there were people out there who hate America (Al Qaeda, ISIL being two pretty confident examples), and  Americans don’t know why that is and need to find out; that SOME people who hate the USA are entering the country with malicious intent (true, or at least reasonably expected); and that the immigration system currently run by the US government was in chaos and was not fit to ensure that those who had malicious intent could be distinguished from genuine refugees/immigrants (up for debate but many commentators agree).

The bit After the reported ‘stop Muslims from entering the country’ comment was ‘until we can sort out the (bit before the comment)’. In other words, he was proposing a bar on Muslims entering the USA until their government had in place a system for better assessing who was coming for what reason – good, or bad.

That’s the press for you – as fair and unbiased as any Liverpool FC fan.

But I can’t help wondering if there’d been as much ire in 1939 when we declared war on Germany, and in 1941 when Japan attacked the USA and the Far East.

There was a quite legitimate feeling that it might be prudent to stop German and Japanese immigration and to further protect the countries by putting their nationals in camps. Now I’m not proposing the latter by any means, but given there is no reasonable certainty that ISIL AREN’T coming in as refugees, or that they are ONLY coming from one country, why not prevent terrorist atrocity by pausing immigration while figuring out how to best prevent that? How you pause it and what you do while paused is then the legitimate follow up question.

Unfortunately, as the new theatre of war is not drawn by national borders but by the abuse of an international religion, nor fought on battlefields between combatants but in the streets and against civilians, the nationality test can’t be used any more. Security can’t just be served by declaring a country ‘persona non grata’.

At least in WWII the enemy wore uniforms, invaded in bulk and (generally!) complied with the Geneva Convention.

(Blue touch paper lit, now stand well back…….)

So why this Covey quote? It suggests that the first thing you ought to do when you see or hear something from a third party is to make sure that what you are seeing/hearing is, in fact, true – completely, not partially – and not a false paradigm, whether or not well meant. To research further until the truth is fully known.

Then, if you still feel Donald is not a good person, at least that feeling is based on a full assessment and not the blind faith that vested interests want you to apply.

That way you won’t be led by the nose by someone whose only interest in you – is your uninformed support in serving their interest.

Perception filters – not just for Doctor Who.

02 Friday Jan 2015

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“We must look AT the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and understand that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.” Stephen R Covey

When Manchester United play Liverpool and a player goes down in the penalty area, does your allegiance to either team influence whether it is a penalty or a dive? If you love the Green Bay Packers, then when a Chicago Bears player hits a Packer, is it or isn’t it a foul? Do you think David Cameron or Barack Obama is the devil incarnate (Fox news do) or is it Ed Middleton/Mitt Romney who fuels your ire?

And in all cases, is your viewpoint tinged with essence of ideological bias?

Yes it is, and don’t pretend otherwise. It is because that is the way we are made up – what we ‘like’ we agree with and what we don’t, we don’t.

However, and this is what Dr Covey proposes, the mere awareness of this bias means that we can choose to ignore it and look again at whatever it is we saw, with a more objective eye. Then we can look at ‘our’ player and see that it was a somewhat pre-emptive throwing of self to the floor, and we can look at a politician and decide that s/he didn’t get up this morning and decide ‘what I will do solely to annoy the opposition today’?

It would be nice if the press/media could do that, instead of deliberately fuelling things for the purposes of selling a story they know to be a lie, now and then. It would be nice if Congress stopped simply opposing everything on the basis of ideology and just once started to work for their country instead of just against Obama. It would be great to acknowledge and respect the needs of minorities without turning the world around to suit them at the expense of the majority. It would be best if the whole world stopped being so partially blind based on their expectations of an ideal world, and started looking at what they can do with the realities, instead.

In the end, what we see is a reflection of who we have chosen to be. That is influenced by what has gone on before and what we have heard. But it doesn’t have to be solely based on experience and learning, both of which aren’t as comprehensive as we think. (Don’t get me started on educational psycho-social indoctrination by ‘accident’!)

If we utilise the Three Resolutions, we can discipline ourselves to think more proactively, deny ourselves the ‘comfort’ of blindly agreeing with anything that seems to be in accordance with our ideology, and we can show the character required when we realise that what we thought to be true is no longer so – and say so. And we can serve others better when we aren’t so caught up in what we ‘think’ they are, and just decide to serve them regardless.

That isn’t easy. But the Three Resolutions aren’t supposed to be.

They are hard, but they are great.