All our life we are programmed to find “solutions” to the “questions” without questioning the questions even if the later are ridiculous.
“Double bind” communications pose such questions which force us to step up to the plate.
If we don’t negate these communications we are left with either “oppression” or “ live in a psychotic world”.
First, I want to elaborate how “double bind” communications are oppressive with examples from our day to day life. The “double bind communications are very effective tools to “control” the employees. Say for example – an ER physician is advised to keep the wait time low but also expected to “prioritize” patient contact time based on the urgency of the clinical situation. It translates to him being penalized if he spends “average” time with all patients without prioritizing or if he spends more time on serious cases and keep less emergent patients waiting longer than the “advertised ER waiting period”. Catch-22
What should he do in this situation?
A very apt example described in Sukaina Hirji’s paper “oppressive double bind” is as follows –
“Imagine you are an untenured professor and the only woman and person of color among the faculty in a philosophy department. You are frequently approached by students, typically women or members of other underrepresented groups, looking for mentorship and emotional support as they navigate their academic experience. While you believe this service work is valuable with a view to increasing the representation of minorities in philosophy, it is also emotionally draining and takes significant time away from your own research. You feel trapped. If you do this sort of mentorship work, you help diversify the field in a way that will be better for you and other members of underrepresented groups. Moreover, if you refuse to do this work, you indirectly help to maintain a status quo in which women and people of color like yourself remain dramatically underrepresented and underserved. But by doing this service work, you compromise your own research and reinforce a system where disproportionate burdens are placed on women and people of color, making them less likely to succeed in the profession.”
Before, we scratch our head to find a solution I want recall the story of the Buddhist monk(from my previous post) who “ snatches the stick from his teacher” – word of caution though “both the problems and their solutions are going to be much more complex to define”
The first step though is “ defining the problem as clearly as possible” and laying out all solutions “even if they seem ridiculous” like in the Buddhist monk example.
