I came up with the title of this post, believe it or not, while I was trying to conceive of a session title for an association management educational program geared toward encouraging association executives to think not merely "outside the box," but "across time in foreign languages." The idea was to create a session that would cause participants to question their most basic values and beliefs and to try to see their organizations and their own roles in those organizations from a completely different perspective.
The session would be intended to jolt people out of their comfort zones, force them to put themselves in the positions of people from other cultures and systems of belief, and consider what might happen if the world's current power and control structure were to change dramatically. For example, how would their lives be different if Islam, rather than Christianity, were the dominant faith in this country...or if atheism were dominant and Christians and Jews and Muslims were persecuted? What would their lives be like if the accumulation of wealth were regarded by society as an assault on the common man (or woman)? How would their associations be affected by the imposition of Urdu as the official language of the United States? What would life be like if the basic infrastructures of U.S. society were decimated?
Well, the session title was met with vacant stares by the people to whom I suggested it. Even after I explained it, I was questioned about whether it would attract any interest. It didn't matter...I had become intrigued by my own idea (as I am wont to do).
So I started thinking more about the concept and began imagining various scenarios that would fit with the idea. A very old television program, the name of which I can't recall, came to mind...it was about what happened to a guy when everyone around him started, fairly rapidly, speaking a language that he did not understand. Initially, the word "lunch" was replaced by "dinosaur." I remember that because the character in question was asked by a young colleage, "Do you have any suggestions about where I can take my girlfriend for a nice dinosaur?" The context quickly explained that the younger guy meant what we would call "lunch," but the changes had already begun. Soon, everyone around the older character were speaking gibberish. And that concept fits nicely into my theme: Thinking Across Time in Foreign Languages. What would we do if confronted by massive changes in our societies, in our personal lives, in the environment? How can we make ourselves give thought to these sorts of things? How can we enable ourselves and, more importantly, our political leaders, to think about these sorts of huge transitions that could affect us? Not just things that may happen, but things that COULD happen?
So, dear reader, tell me this? Do you understand what I am saying here? Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Post a comment!
2 comments:
Very interesting, to say the least. Having said that, I am reminded how (almost) totally adaptable we human beings are, and I think, therefore, that we would adapt. Surely, there would be temporary confusion, hostility, anger, and a variety of other reactions, but, in fairly short order we humans would begin to adjust. In short order, new leaders would evolve (as the old ones were the ones who allowed this terrible transition to occur, after all and we surely wouldn't keep them). Think about the reaction of hostages who begin to identify with their captors (the sociologists call it the stockholm effect I believe). So now that I've penned just a few immediate thoughts, I'm really begining to wonder.... so, now that it's time to go to bed and get some sleep, I'll probably not be able to get to sleep.... I'll spend some significan time thinking/worrying about the situations you proposed. Oh well, at least I'll be thinking. Hope you follow-up this blog with some comments, both your own and ones you garner from your participant targets.
Jeanne, the younger has some interesting observations that merit deep thought. "Our perceptions of ourselves in the world" is an important issue, no doubt. The rationality of our perceptions is equally important...yet rationality of perception, or its converse, sometimes does not matter in a meaningful way. What matters is what we choose to do with reason and whether the "steps of faith" color perception in reasonable ways.
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