Means but not ends & absurdity.
By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari ‘The closer I get…,the more I see how far I am…’.
Means but not ends
* Humans can will the means but not the ends.
Challenging
absurdity (pick if you can).
·
‘Hypotheses are imaginative and inspirational in character. They
are adventures of the mind’. We can, therefore, say hypotheses are adventures
of the mind as they are imaginative and inspirational in character.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
·
The
Ninth Rule of the ethics of means and ends is
that any effective means is
automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. The first sign of
corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
·
“You
think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the
means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends
cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social
upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman
and make the end unattainable.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
·
“You
are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections
·
It is not a matter of ends
justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.”
― Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea
― Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea
·
“It isn’t always true that
a critical end justifies desperate means.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, The Tarishe Curse
― Richelle E. Goodrich, The Tarishe Curse
Identity negotiation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Identity refers
to the processes through which people reach agreements regarding "who is
who" in their relationships. Once these agreements are reached, people are
expected to remain faithful to the identities they have agreed to assume. The
process of identity negotiation thus establishes what people can expect of one
another. Identity negotiation thus provides the interpersonal "glue"
that holds relationships together.
The idea that identities are negotiated originated in the sociological literature
during the middle of the 20th century. A leading figure in this movement was Goffman (1959,
1961), who asserted that the first order of business in social interaction is
establishing a "working consensus" or agreement regarding the roles
each person will assume in the interaction. Weinstein and Deutschberger (1964),
and later McCall and Simmons (1966), built on this work by elaborating the
interpersonal processes that unfold after interaction partners reach an initial
working consensus. Within psychology, these ideas were elaborated by Secord and
Backman (1965) and Schlenker (1985). The actual phrase "identity
negotiation" was introduced by Swann (1987),
who emphasized the tension between two competing processes in social
interaction, behavioral
confirmation and self-verification. Behavioral confirmation
occurs when one person (the "perceiver") encourages another person
(the "target") to behave in ways that confirm the expectancies of the
perceiver (e.g., Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968; Snyder & Klein, 2005;
Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid,
1977). Self-verification occurs when the "target" persuades the
"perceiver" to behave in a manner that verifies the target's firmly
held self-views or identities (Swann, 1983; 1996).
Psychological view of identity
negotiation
When the expectancies of perceivers clash with the self-views of
targets, a "battle of wills" may occur (Swann & Ely, 1984). Such
"battles" can range from short-lived, mild disagreements that are
quickly and easily solved to highly pitched confrontations that are combative
and contentious. On such occasions, the identity negotiation process represents
the means through which these conflicting tendencies are reconciled.
More often than not, the identity negotiation process
seems to favor self-verification, which means that people tend to develop
expectancies that are congruent with the self-views of target persons (e.g.,
Major, Cozzarelli, Testa, & McFarlin, 1988); McNulty & Swann, 1994;
Swann, Milton, & Polzer, 2000; Swann & Ely, 1984). Such congruence is
personally adaptive for targets because it allows them to maintain stable
identities and having stable identities is generally adaptive. That is, stable
identities not only tell people how to behave, they also afford people with a sense
of psychological coherence that reinforces their conviction that they know what
to do and the consequences of doing it.
Groups also benefit when there is congruence among group
members. When people maintain stable images of themselves, other members of the
organization can count on them to "be" the same person day in and day
out and the identity negotiation process can unfold automatically. This may
free people to devote their conscious attention to the work at hand, which may
explain why researchers have found that groups characterized by high levels of
congruence perform better (Swann et al., 2000). Also, just as demographic
diversity tends to undermine group performance when congruence is low,
diversity improves performance when congruence is high (Polzer, Milton, &
Swann, 2003; Swann, Polzer, Seyle, & Ko, 2004).
Some instances of incongruence in relationships are
inevitable. Sudden or unanticipated changes of status or role of one person, or
even the introduction of a novel person into a group, may produce discrepancies
between people's self-views and the expectancies of others. In work settings,
promotions can foment expectancy violations (cf, Burgoon, 1978) if some members
of the organization refuse to update their appraisals of the recently promoted
person. When incongruence occurs, it will disturb the normal flow of social
interaction. Instead of going about their routine tasks, interaction partners
will be compelled to shift their conscious attention to the task of
accommodating the identity change that is the source of the disruption.
Frequent or difficult-to-resolve disruptions could be damaging to the quality
of social interactions and ultimately interfere with relationship quality,
satisfaction and productivity.
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