[Neurons] 2014 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #48
L. Michael Hall
meta at acsol.net
Mon Dec 1 09:39:13 EST 2014
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2014 #48
December 1, 2014
MINDFULNESS AND FERGUSON
One week ago today a community exploded in violence as they reacted to a
decision of a Grand Jury. I had just sent out last week's post on
Mindfulness, so I began wondering, How mindful were those who destroyed
their own community? Were they mindfully aware of the details of the
situation? Were they just reacting along with a mob mentality? Were they
mindful of the language that contributed to the problem?
Ferguson Facts
Here is what happened. This past August a young man in Ferguson Missouri
(part of the greater St. Louis area) was shot. The young man got into a
scuffle with a police officer, reached into his patrol car and attempted to
take his gun. In the scuffle, he struck the officer, then the gun went off
so that the bullet flew threw the windshield. The young man then ran away.
But not for long. When the officer recovered and got out of the car, he
yelled for the young man to get down on the ground. He did not. Instead,
he turned and ran toward him. Charging him. The officer again yelled "get
down" and began shooting. When the young man was still coming, and now just
8 feet away, he was shot him in the head. The first bullets hit his arm
several times; when the last one hit him in the head, that killed him. This
is what the Grand Jury found after weeks and weeks of deliberation.
But that is not what was first reported. Immediately after the event, some
witnesses who saw some or parts of the conflict, presented a different
narrative and the only narrative which the media carried: The young man was
surrendering, raised his arms, and the policeman shot him dead. Then, given
that narrative, people began protesting in Ferguson Missouri. Then the
protesting turned into rioting and then criminals and thugs took advantage
of the situation by breaking into and looting stores, setting buildings and
cars on fire, threatening people, and creating night after night of rioting
and looting. This is what the international press played over and over.
The case was turned over to a Grand Jury of 12 people who listened to every
witness that would come forward. After weeks of deliberation, the Grand
Jury released hundreds of pages of the information presented which included
the conversations, and the questions and answers which the jurers asked of
the witnesses and experts. Even with the very low standard set for a Grand
Jury so that they could recommend a full trial, the evidence in this case
led the Grand Jury to decide that the evidence did not lead to indicting the
officer for a trial. So said nearly all legal experts.
That led last Monday for chaos to break out afresh. Within an hour of the
announcement, people were looting stores again, burning them down, setting
fire to cars and businesses, destroying property, threatening people, and
creating a war-like zone atmosphere.
Of course, none of this violence and destructiveness is the way to resolve
differences or to push toward a more equitable society. In fact, these are
the very things that not only perpetuate inequality, injustice, conflict,
etc. Instead this is the way to make the problem worse, make it less
solvable, and distort it so that the real problem can't even be recognized.
Languaging the Conflict
The facts of a situation is one thing; how we language those facts and how
we language our thinking, feeling, and conclusions about the situation is
yet another thing. What we know in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and
Neuro-Semantics is that how we describe things controls how we think, feel,
and respond to those things. This includes our linguistic code (words,
language), our evaluative frames, the sequence of our thoughts (syntax), and
the assumptive frames that we hide in the shadows of our presentation. What
follows is an exploration in a bit of the language that makes up the
narrative promoted in the media which feds the rioting and violence and
which creates mindlessness rather than mindfulness.
First, languaging the person. The way the family and the media has been
consistently describing the young man, Michael Brown, who was shot inflames
the situation. Sometimes he is called a "teenager," yet most often as a
"child." A child! Yet the facts are that this "child" is that he was a 280
pound, 6 foot 6 inches man who had just strong-armed an innocent Asia
business owner and robbed him in full sight of people in the store as caught
on video-tape. So this was no "innocent child." If anything, he was a
bully and a thief. The word "child" creates a false picture that inflames
passions. A man who weights nearly 300 pounds and who is 6'6" is a giant of
a person. This is no child. Most heavy-weight boxers are not that big!
And when a man that big who assaults a policemen, will not stop aggressing,
and who charges at you ... that's a very different situation from the
language of "an innocent and unarmed child was shot down in the street."
Second, languaging the act. In terms of facts-there was a shooting.
Calling it "murder" or "shooting an innocent, unarmed young man in cold
blood," these are evaluations, not facts. The Grand Jury decided it was not
"murder." The evidence did not lead those 12 people to think of it in those
terms. So to call these things "murder" is prejudicing and imposing a
viewpoint. The day after the Grand Jury's decision, a group of community
"leaders" among African Americans held a news conference and called the
event the "brutalizing" of a young black teenager. Language it in that way
is like gasoline on fire. It does not help or bring calm.
At the same press conference, attorney Benjamin Crush seemed to attempt to
re-try the evidence which the Grand Jury heard, accusing them of being
"unjust." Of course, he was not there. Nor did he have time to read the
hundreds of pages of evidence from the Grand Jury that was delivered the
night before. Yet there he was presenting one side, making accusations,
asking no questions, but in outrage denouncing a system that he decided was
unjust.
Third, languaging the meaning. Most of the media framed the situation as a
racial problem: white policeman mistreating young black men. Yet to frame
it these ways, media leaves out that Michael Brown had just robbed a store
and man-handled the store owner. What does that make him? A poster-child
for civil rights? I hardly think so. Watching someone rob a store, bully
an older man, and do so in plain daylight, and then just walk out, I would
use such words as: criminal, felon, trouble-maker, etc. A few minutes
later he is walking in the middle of the road, back-talking to a policeman,
then he assaults the policeman, etc. To associate this person as someone
whose civil rights were being violated does not fit the facts at all. What
about the civil rights of those who he was violating? So when civil rights
leaders like Al Sharpen hold a press conference and frame this as a case of
civil rights violations, he is choosing the wrong person as his
poster-person. If anyone was violating the civil rights of people, it was
Michael Brown.
Critical Skills for being Mindful
What's the bottom line? Facts and language are two different phenomenon
and we cannot escape the power of language. Language sets frames on facts
and most of the time this influence is outside-conscious awareness. That's
why we need critical thinking skills.
Without critical thinking about how we and others language things, we can
become the victim of mis-information and even worse, dis-information. Then
those who wish to recruit you to their position depend on you being
uncritical in your thinking. To defeat that kind of mindlessness, start
with learning to recognize the list of common cognitive distortions:
over-generalizing, awfulizing, emotionalizing, either-or thinking, etc.
Then learn to use the Meta-Model questions to ask detailing questions so
that you can get back to the facts, to the sensory-based descriptions of
what actually happened prior to the labeling and judgment that others put on
those facts.
For more about the Meta-Model, see Communication
Magic (2001).
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Executive Director
Neuro-Semantics International
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, CO. 81520 USA
1 970-523-7877
Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net
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