#033 – Do NOT Listen To This Episode – part 2

#033 - Do NOT Listen To This Episode - part 2July 6, 2020

Transcript:

Ok, it happens on Fridays but was it a good idea to name this Fridays for Future? Why is a movement about sustainable agriculture called anti-GMOs? How is it possible that a campaign that is about racial equality features a hashtag that says #blackout? (blackout tuesday) we need to talk about this! The way the mind pictures these words is working against campaign goals! My name is Camille, you’re listening to Cosmic Dynamics, 5 min of exploration on art, change & the music of the universe. In Cosmic Dynamics #032, we introduced the dangers of negative framings in change communications. The “don’t / the “not this” “not that” / the “anti this” formulation and how the mind interprets them... you might want to start there.  This is not new knowledge, I would even say most communicators have heard this. As always, it’s not about “just knowing what’s the right approach”. Making a difference requires “integrating it”. And I think it’s worth talking about why many mission-driven organisations still go for negative framings. Why are we still stuck in the “Don’t this / don’t that “not this/not that” type of change communications? It’s a tough one, that we learn from the field of psychoanalysis: A good share of the people who work “to change the world”, who take part in some form of activism, in NGO projects - are individuals that are governed by what we could call “the opposition discourse” of the psyche, the ‘against the thing” the “not that” and “not that either”. It’s like an autopilot mode embedded in the unconscious mind, from early life conditioning. It’s not easy to overcome, because it is based on a constant feeling of “existing in the world through opposition”. For those of us who are trapped into this type of discourse, the unconscious mind naturally frames language on the thing to oppose, instead of framing on “the desired world”, which always seems impossible to express. Referring to the coffee example I mentioned in the last episode, “the world we desire is a world without sugar in our coffee…”  As usual, unless we have the firm intention to “hack ourselves” and go beyond the automatisms built in by our conditioning, a piece of knowledge like the one in this episode will quickly get ignored and forgotten, by fear of “not existing anymore”. This defense mechanism makes it particularly difficult to overcome. Difficult… but not impossible. At the campaigning level, the organization’s leadership can go a long way in shifting the culture of communications by empowering their team to overcome this challenge and providing appropriate support along the way. If this is something you want to talk about and explore, feel free to send me an email at hello@cosmic.show. We’ll be happy to guide you through this process.  And as art piece of the day, I’ll read Negation, by Wallace Stevens.

Do NOT listen to this episode.

Features the poem “Negation” by Wallace Stevens:

Hi! The creator too is blind,

Struggling toward his harmonious whole,

Rejecting intermediate parts,

Horrors and falsities and wrongs;

Incapable master of all force,

Too vague idealist, overwhelmed

By an afflatus that persists.

For this, then, we endure brief lives,

The evanescent symmetries

From that meticulous potter’s thumb.

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Thank you for tuning in.🎧

Camille

 

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