3 ms·

The Tragedy of Wiio's Law (or communication usually fails, except by accident)

• gruseom 14y ago
  This is actually pretty interesting. Such felt connections between humans are a space in which a great deal that is worthwhile, such as healing and learning, can take place. The psychologist Stephen Gilligan (a student of Erickson and Bateson who has articulated their work conceptually in a way that preserves some of its unexpectedness) calls it the relational field and says that it is a somatic process. The reason this kind of communication usually only succeeds by accident is that you can't force it. That's like trying to have fun. Or the old joke where someone screams, "I thought I told you to relax!" You can, however, learn the patterns whereby it tends to arise and cultivate them. The disciplines that have the most to teach about this are the ones where practical success depends on working this way; so, things like therapy, teaching, and the arts. By contrast, disciplines that work by reducing their material to mechanism tend to exist in a realm that is disjoint from it.