Lenses

What I consider lenses are the ways of seeing the world that reveal some fundamental rule at work that you wouldn’t either see or not see as clearly when you didn’t know about a particular lens.

Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture ¶

“I would prefer not to.”

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

• asking without any expectation of the answer vs. asking only when you’re relatively confident you know what the answer is going to be
• conflict ensues when these two clash as one sees the other as impolite when they’re not aware of this difference
  • An Asker requests what to a Guesser seems unreasonable, yet a Guesser themself would not request something like this unless they expected the other party to agree. The Guesser now feels being placed in a weird situation where they have to agree with these unreasonable demands.
  • asking what the other person wants to eat and not getting a straight answer
• Abilene paradox - a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned with the preferences of most of the others.

Status Games ¶

“Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really ‘motiveless’. It was hysterically funny, but at the same time very alarming. All our secret manoeuvrings were exposed. If someone asked a question we didn’t bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked. No one could make an ‘innocuous’ remark without everyone instantly grasping what lay behind it. Normally we are ‘forbidden’ to see status transactions except when there’s a conflict. In reality status transactions continue all the time.”

Keith Johnstone, “Impro” (1979)

• everything we do signals status in some way
  • not only in relation to other individuals, but also towards the environment we’re in and the things we interact with
  • being low-status, high-status, expert at lowering or raising status as need be
• assuming a certain status “posture” results in various other actions connected to this to follow
  • stillness from high-status influencing and leading to speaking in complete sentences, holding eye contact, moving more smoothly, occupying more space
• there’s a sort of see-saw at work—when one goes up the other goes down
  • you tell about your successes, the others feel down
  • lowering yourself is equivalent to raising the other
• we find things amusing when someone is lowered in status, yet we don’t have to feel sympathy for them
• tragedies often concern high-status individuals. When they get wiped out, everyone feels pleasure from moving up a step.
• further reading:
  • Impro (1979) - Keith Johnstone