Out of the Box
I was thinking about Stockholm syndrome and how it applies to many human dominance/control situations. The syndrome takes its name from an episode of bank robbery and hostage-taking in which the hostages ended up having more positive feelings towards their captors than to their rescuers. In established firms with a strong and authoritarian leadership echelon, and in some political entities (ditto), those who are employees of the former and members of the latter may find themselves locked into such a psychological response.
Whether this is true or not, it's probably a natural human tendency to like boxes and being in them, because humans are always happy to be able to delimit territory and determine boundaries. Humans will also test those limits and push those termini, but that seems mainly for the purpose of finding out what and where they are.
To think out of the box is not merely to puncture a membrane and look out, but to jump over the top into a place which is no longer bounded. When we are told not to conform to the pattern of the world, it is an out-of-the-box directive — and one extremely difficult to obey. That's because we're so used to being in the box, and so used to being relatively happy by being boxed up or boxed in.
I've found, myself, that doing work when out of the box is very much harder than doing work when in the box. In the box, you know what you can do and what you must do, so you don't have to spend extra energy pushing your personal limits and finding stuff to do on your own initiative. You don't have to attempt anything you aren't told to do. It's a great recipe for getting fat and predictable.
More insidious, perhaps, are the majority of the 'think out of the box' sessions that box owners sometimes hold. These enable box-dwellers to climb around on outside on the surface of the box, thus gaining relative freedom and not much else. Since these box-dwellers can't fly away, the surface of the box holds them almost as much as if they were inside it.
That's not to say that 'think out of the box' sessions are useless. Where box-owners have empowered their box-dwellers, genuine escapes and feats of imaginative and creative prowess can be performed by those who can jump, fly, tunnel, and otherwise transcend the surly bonds of boxdom.
Right now, I have just realised that having left one box, I spent quite a bit of time setting up my own box. Now I have to think my way out of this very nice, very safe, very comfortable box — if I want to do something more with my life. The question is: how do I do that, and why should I?
Sigh. Back to the box for now. At least it's my own box.
Whether this is true or not, it's probably a natural human tendency to like boxes and being in them, because humans are always happy to be able to delimit territory and determine boundaries. Humans will also test those limits and push those termini, but that seems mainly for the purpose of finding out what and where they are.
To think out of the box is not merely to puncture a membrane and look out, but to jump over the top into a place which is no longer bounded. When we are told not to conform to the pattern of the world, it is an out-of-the-box directive — and one extremely difficult to obey. That's because we're so used to being in the box, and so used to being relatively happy by being boxed up or boxed in.
I've found, myself, that doing work when out of the box is very much harder than doing work when in the box. In the box, you know what you can do and what you must do, so you don't have to spend extra energy pushing your personal limits and finding stuff to do on your own initiative. You don't have to attempt anything you aren't told to do. It's a great recipe for getting fat and predictable.
More insidious, perhaps, are the majority of the 'think out of the box' sessions that box owners sometimes hold. These enable box-dwellers to climb around on outside on the surface of the box, thus gaining relative freedom and not much else. Since these box-dwellers can't fly away, the surface of the box holds them almost as much as if they were inside it.
That's not to say that 'think out of the box' sessions are useless. Where box-owners have empowered their box-dwellers, genuine escapes and feats of imaginative and creative prowess can be performed by those who can jump, fly, tunnel, and otherwise transcend the surly bonds of boxdom.
Right now, I have just realised that having left one box, I spent quite a bit of time setting up my own box. Now I have to think my way out of this very nice, very safe, very comfortable box — if I want to do something more with my life. The question is: how do I do that, and why should I?
Sigh. Back to the box for now. At least it's my own box.
Labels: Creativity, Odd Thoughts, Self, Society
etched with acid at 11:09:00 am
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