There is a saying: They beat you and they beat you and they don't even let you cry. But why do they beat you? One reason might be to get you to see the truth. Picking up the truth of life is referred to as «the school of hard knocks».
You know that our psyche is assimilated to our body … so all psychological qualities are actually physical qualities. A person is hard, warm, brittle, bouncy, deep, &c. In a similar way, psychologically, a truth that affects your self-esteem is experienced as a blow.
This little story is by way of an introduction and an admission that, unlike many, I am not a perfect person. When I described my experience of reviewing my wonderful insights as shock-horror! in that recent blog, I was not 100% honest. No. I must have been too embarrassed to write that I usually notice that I have cheated as well. Well, perhaps not cheated. Shall we say 'bent the rules'? Life is difficult and it's hard not to bend the truth. But then representing a bent product as the truth of life leaves me extremely uncomfortable.
Quite a range of frameworks in diverse parts of the Taxonomy have now been discovered. In this process, inquiry principles have been developed, tested and validated. These are «the rules of scientific method». I could get away with it because virtually no-one else knows these, even if I refer to them regularly on the website. But a good night's sleep is far more important.
These rules are specific and some are unusual in that they are only valid for THEE-style inquiries. What happens during early stages of working is that the framework develops a superficial plausibility and I gain an emotional sense of completion. It may be all totally false, but superficial plausibility plus emotion is a powerful brew. I am not immune.
My protection is to come back when I don't have any stake in the framework accounts and say: "OK, guys, just look for rule violations and take this sucker apart, entity by entity, formulation by formulation, until it screams for mercy!"
The crucial requirement is distance. You have to be totally identified to handle the inquiry and develop the insights. But that identification makes criticism tricky. So however dedicated to the truth you may be, there is a resistance and a blindness.
But allow the heat to settle, move on to other things, and the identification settles. When I return to the framework, it feels as if it is someone else's. I also apply other validation tests. By the time the process is complete and the framework is in reasonable shape, I don't mind being identified with it. I am so used to making corrections that I am inured to errors. Also, I know it so well that I welcome criticism, partly because I will have heard it before perhaps a dozen times. So the reply rolls off my tongue. When, occasionally, there is a new criticism, then I am grateful.
Quite often, completed frameworks have lots of small uncertainties buried in their nooks and crannies. If criticism touches these, then it confirms my sense that there is more to be discovered.
Great! What more can one ask for?
There are so few truths of life to depend on: but I know I can count on my ignorance.
WK
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Warren Kinston