Out of the Box

Politics 101:

The advantage is gained by the politician who successfully frames the debate.

It is not enough for a politician merely to state a position. 

It is vastly more important for a politician to create a scale, with themselves at one end and any opposition at the other end.

For this is conflict, the stuff of cartoons and action-adventure films, and it is sure to grab our attention.

And the most attention will be given to whoever establishes the conflict.

The most attention will be given to whoever frames the debate.

For our attention is directed to the conflict, to the entire situation that the politician has designed, and to our allegiances, which must reflect, somehow, that the whole thing is important.

Whether the matter is real or not, whether it involves a true crisis or a bogeyman, whether it involves global economics or purely slanderous allegations, the politician who frames the debate is yards ahead of an opponent who must fight on a battlefield that she/he has not chosen.

For the successful politician has designed the alternatives to her/his own advantage.

They are positioned at the most admirable end of the scale and any opposition is placed at the less-than-admirable end of the scale.

And one more thing.

Whoever refuses to accept the frame, whoever refuses to accept the challenge, must be guilty of evasion at best, cowardice at worst.

That, by the way, is our judgment.

And the successful politician can depend upon it.

For our love of conflict depends upon it.

*

In the playground of an elementary school, Freddie picks a fight with Johnny.

Picking a fight is a most excellent way of framing a debate.

Of course Johnny will walk into that box, for precisely the same reasons that his elders fall  into that trap all the time: for the sake of his “cred” or his “honor” or his “integrity” or, in bygone days, his “manliness”.

Now, watch, how quickly their classmates split into opposing camps that support their favored one!

For precisely the same reason that they and their elders watch toons and action movies and much of cable news.

Conflict! 

So it continues, through the middle-school ratpacks that are dignified with the name of cliques, on through high school and into adulthood, on through the strife of the professions and the marketplace and the neighborhood and the clubs and the churches.

Reflected in, and fed by, our obscure passion for dramatizations of obscure conflicts.

For Freddie’s impulses rest in obscurity; who cares why Freddie picked the fight?

Who cares what the fight was about?

Freddie’s impulses draw but little concern; our attention is directed to the conflict, to the entire situation that Freddie has designed, and to our allegiances, which must reflect, somehow, that the whole thing is important.

Politics 101 is elementary.

Literally.

*

Through all of the phases of our lives, we are ever-ready to follow the call to take sides in a conflict of another’s design.

As if it were never possible to stand aside.

As if it were never possible to stand apart.

As if it were never possible to “come away”.

As if it were never possible to feel a total lack of engagement.

Oh, horror upon horrors.

In any given conflict, such persons are frequently regarded as “distant”, “aloof”, and “loners”, worthy of more contempt than one side heaps upon the other.

Because such persons do not accept the common frame of reference.

In the schoolyard, Freddie and Johnny will be separated by teachers who speak knowingly and sympathetically of pre-adolescent needs, aggressive tendencies, dysfunctional home lives, pecking orders and “the rough-and-tumble“, but who are less comfortable describing the “distant” and “disengaged” parties who may need some help with “adjustment”, who “don’t play well with others”, and who may, therefore, fall somewhere on “the spectrum”.

Perhaps such children wonder what the whole thing is about.

Or perhaps they wonder why the whole thing is important.

*

As we pass through adulthood, we encounter many such conflicts that we simply cannot engage.

Perhaps the conflict seems bizarre, surreal, unrooted in any reality.

Perhaps the alternatives seem to be false alternatives. 

Perhaps the whole business seems to be unworthy of any attention whatsoever.

For there were many more emotionally-disengaged onlookers to that cute scene that Freddie contrived than are generally credited; they just knew better than to draw attention to their lack of engagement.

Most of us come through maturity with an ability to determine which contexts we will accept and which debates we will choose to engage.

But the temptation to accept false contexts will dog us endlessly, tempting us with their false alternatives or their unimportant issues.

Tempted by the politicians; tempted by the pugnacious hotheads of cable news.

At our best, we will be tempted most strongly when we sense unfairness; if, for example, Freddie is a renowned bully.

Not so much so when Freddie and Johnny are both renowned hotheads.

In all of these disengagements, we deal with the incomprehension and anger of those for whom these issues carry great importance.

It is one thing to take an opposing side.

It is another to refuse to accept the validity of either side; to refuse to accept the commonly-held context, to refuse to accept the commonly-held frame of the debate.

Which is the bane of Freddie and the politicians and all of their various manipulations.

Which is the defiance of any either-or framework.

Which is out-of-the-box thinking.

*

Moving out of the box is a bit like moving from a square to a cube.

It enables connections that are not so easily discerned by traditional or “flat” perspectives.

As in the fine children’s book  by Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time, where two points might be more closely related than one might have imagined; where, indeed, seeming-opposites may be more closely related than one might have imagined.

For a cube is nothing more than an infinite number of squares stacked on top of each other, wherein one may move easily from one square to the next without running into frames.

I have no doubt that a fourth-dimensional shape would allow one to move easily from one cube to another without running into frames.

Which would enable connections that are literally outside of a “box”.

But such insights are not so easily gleaned in either the schoolyard or the workaday world.

Not to mention our spiritual homes.

So it continues, through the middle-school ratpacks that are dignified with the name of cliques, on through high school and into adulthood, on through the strife of the professions and the marketplace and the neighborhood and the clubs and the churches.

How strange it is that we Christians should accept any such divisive frameworks.

How strange it is that we, who profess to walk in the footsteps of one who consistently stepped outside of the traditional alternatives that were presented to him, should step into the framed debates of some of his followers.

Forgetting that Jesus consistently stepped outside of the alternatives that were presented to him.

And forgetting that this “stepping outside” was a hallmark of his witness.

Forgetting that Jesus refused to be trapped into a contest between Roman and Heavenly authority by saying: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”

Forgetting that Jesus refused to enter the power-plays of his would-be successors, saying of the “beloved disciple”: “What if I ask him to remain until I return.  What is that to you?”

Forgetting that Jesus drove from the Temple both sides who bickered in barter, knowing that their well-accepted, “framed debate” over prices was an unconscionable nickel-and-diming of a tribute owed to God.

Out of the box, indeed.

Or, with reference to an earlier article, out of the booth; a refusal to be captured and confined within a framework.

*

We, who choose to walk in his footsteps, can hardly aspire to his profundity of vision.

But we are all free to accept the freedom that his vision engenders.

Talk about an easy yoke.

It is less important to identify ourselves or each other, or to put ourselves or each other into some kind of box than to love one another and ourselves.

It is less important to identify God or put God into some kind of booth than to love God.

More important than boxes or booths are connections.

Connections that are engendered by the two commandments.

Connections that are engendered by he who prevails over conflicts and contexts.

*

Yet we haggle over who has “authority”, as if  “authority” itself was a necessarily critical issue; yet we argue over hierarchies and “pecking orders”, as if a scale of privilege was a necessarily valid or critical issue; yet we argue over points of doctrine, as if doctrine itself was a necessarily valid or critical issue…

So we argue over many things that somebody said was important. 

So we have accepted someone’s framing of a debate.

Whether the matter is real or not, whether it involves a true crisis or a bogeyman, whether it involves global economics or purely slanderous allegations…

For our attention is directed to the conflict, to the entire situation that the politician has designed, and to our allegiances, which must reflect, somehow, that the whole thing is important.

Which may have only one real consequence: that we have crowned Freddie or the politician or one of their ilk with victory for having framed a debate.

Surreal that victory may seem, to one who strives to follow in the footsteps of he who consistently exploded the framed perspectives of his followers.

So much for old wineskins.

Surreal that victory may seem, to one who strives to trace the path of she who stepped out of the box and into the darkness of the night that witnessed her quest.

*

I post new articles twice-monthly in “Author’s Corner”.

If you live in or near the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and you would be interested in meeting with others for discussion and/or prayer, please contact me at rob@towarddawn.org.  All are welcome, regardless of identity or personal choices.  Please understand that I do not have the resources to guarantee that I will be able to read or respond to all other correspondence.

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                                                                                                                                                              Rob Wright

Rob Wright holds advanced degrees in education and performing arts, and he has been a professional teacher for over sixteen years.  In his home denomination, he has served as a lay minister in liturgical, educational and ecumenical activities.  He lives in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire with his spouse of twenty years and their daughter.