As a long-time
blogger, I have more than my fair share of experience with frameworks. For my
purposes here, I'll use the word "framework" to apply to any
systematic conceptualization of an issue. A framework is any structured way of
looking at anything at all, any narrative that does the job of conceptualizing
the matter in a way that makes it easier to think about.
To use plainer
language, human beings have a tendency to do their thinking via the use of stories. The Big Bang Theory isn't just a set
of laws about physics, it's a narrative that tells the story of the creation of
the universe in a way that can be absorbed by ape brains. Before we had the Big
Bang Theory, we had other theories about the creation of the universe, and most
of them really were stories, written in
storybooks, which characters who said dramatic things like "Let there be
light!" Over time, as we learned more about the universe, we spent less
time on those stories, and eventually replaced them with a new one. It would not
surprise me at all if we were eventually to replace the Big Bang Theory with a
new narrative, one that does a better job of narrating the earliest moments of
the universe. Should that come to pass, it, too, will be told as a story.
Stories are useful
for what they describe, and useless for what they do not describe. This sounds
obvious, but the importance of it is not obvious at all, so I will illustrate
with an example: Comic books from the 1950s are really useful for telling cool
stories about magic superheroes; but they're really awful, completely useless,
for telling stories about how men and women should treat each other. Comic
books from the 1950s are broadly sexist, by today's standards, and possibly
even by the standards of the 1950s. People still read those old comics from the
so-called "Golden Age," but they don't read them in order to learn
about gender relations. The only reason anyone reads old comic books is to
enjoy cool stories about magic superheroes. These comic books serve that purpose very well; but we shouldn't use
them to explore civil equality unless we're looking for a What Not To Do
manual.
* *
*
Back to my main
point: frameworks are useful for
describing what they describe, and useless otherwise. Yesterday,
I mentioned a possibly racist Scott Sumner blog post. That an example of a
framework poorly matched. The "strongman" hypothesis of Donald
Trump's political success may be a useful framework for analyzing the current
presidential administration - it's not my preferred framework, but I have seen
people use that framework to make good points. But the "strongman"
hypothesis is not a good framework for describing the results of public opinion
polls among Hispanic Americans. It's important to use your framework only for
its purpose, to avoid extending it beyond its usefulness, and to only apply it
to new subject matter experimentally. (That is, maybe it would be interesting
to apply the "strongman" framework to a physics problem or a problem
in psychology - but also maybe not; feel free to experiment, but remember that
it is only an experiment, and be ready to reject what you find as readily as
you might accept it.)
Being wrong is one
way that a mismatched framework can cause problems. Being confusing is another
way. This latter thing is arguably much worse. For example, this AOC
congressgirl recently presented a policy wish-list that attempts to apply the
Socialism framework to the Environmentalism problem. One reason this attempt is
problematic is that it is wrong: there is probably not enough taxation and
redistribution in the United States to change the course of global climate
change, especially considering that the major polluters today are in other
countries, such as China and India.
Like I said, the
mismatched framework is bad because it's wrong. But more problematically, it's
bad because it's confusing. If people come to believe that climate change can
be solved by merely passing legislation then we won't stop climate change at
all. Climate change is not a political problem, of course, but a science problem. It may also be an engineering problem, since technology must be
invented to clean our air and our oceans and to establish more environmentally
sustainable ways of housing human beings and processing our waste. It might
even be true that legislation can help direct us toward addressing the science
problem or the engineering problem - the reader knows where I stand on that,
but let's concede that it's possible. Even though it's possible, climate change is still
fundamentally a science problem that must be conceived of in a scientific
framework and solved through a story about science. Not a story about legislation. Our environmental problem is not
that too few people understand politics; it's that too few people know how to
do the kinds of science and engineering that we need to stop climate change.
We'll never get there without the right framework, and time spent on the wrong
framework is confusing us.
* *
*
We also experience
frameworks for dealing with our every-day lives, and thus we experience the
same kinds of pitfalls as they pertain to our individual relationships.
Take your sibling,
for example. Early on, you developed a framework for understanding the
thoughts, feelings, and actions of your brother or sister. To the extent that
this framework was accurate and did a good job of explaining your relationship,
it was useful. One day, though - or, more accurately, over the course of many
years - your sibling grew up and became a new person. It would be foolish to
attempt to explain the actions of your adult sister by referring to a childhood
framework about her motivations, based on how she once played Monopoly with
you.
That's extreme, but
we don't have to rely on extremes. It would be foolish to apply the framework
you built that explained your brother's drive to be a high school varsity
football player to your 40-year-old brother's recent divorce. If you want to
apply a framework to your brother's recent experiences, then you need to learn
about what he's been through lately and
find a framework that explains those
experiences. In short, you need to accept that your adult siblings are
not exactly the same people you grew up with, that they have been shaped by the
years, and that the old frameworks never apply.
Failing to do this
will cause relationship problems. The map has to match the territory, as the
saying goes.
* *
*
An additional
problem arises when we try to apply macro-frameworks to micro-problems.
Consider how wildly inappropriate it would be to analyze your relationship with
your sister using the framework of climate change! It sounds ridiculous,
doesn't it?
Why, though, do we
not hesitate to apply the feminist framework to the child-rearing problem? Why
do we become so entrenched in our feminist framework (or, equally, our
anti-feminist framework) that we work to make our children an incarnate
representation of our beliefs about gender equality?
Why do we attempt to
indoctrinate our children in any such ideology, forcing them to behave in
accordance with what we see as universally and morally right? Why do we pat
ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we're good parents when our
children repeat our own nonsense back to us for approval? Why do cry out in
anguish when our children grow up to develop their own ideas about morality and
behave in accordance with that new set of morals, so different from our own?
Why do we consider that a failure? Why do some parents consider it a failure if
their children grow up to gay, or Democrat, or atheist, or a lawyer, or…?
The answer is simply
this: We've mismatched the framework and the problem. Child-rearing is not an
ideology problem, and so should not be understood using an ideology framework.
Parent-child interaction is not political, and so it should not be understood
using the framework of politics. Indeed, I'll even go this far: raising a child
is not a spiritual problem, and thus
cannot be understood using a religious
framework.
I'm not saying
ideology, politics, or religion are bad; I'm saying that those frameworks only
apply to ideological, political, or religious problems, respectively. Using
religion to understand child-rearing is as erroneous as using religion to
understand a physics problem, and the results will be similar.
Nor can you use
these macro-frameworks to solve any of your other micro-problems. You can't get
a promotion at work using an ideological framework; how would that even work?
You can't mend fences with an old friend using a religious framework; god may
have told you to forgive, but nobody told you to steal his lawnmower. You can't
pay your weekly grocery bill by thinking about red states vs blue.
* *
*
Frameworks are
highly attractive, because narratives are the way human beings understand the
world around them. Despite all that, the application of frameworks comes with
deep pitfalls with respect to matching the correct framework to the correct
problem. Not only must we choose frameworks that accurately reflect the problem
we're trying to solve, as measured by the usefulness of the framework to
describe that problem, we must also apply the right level of framework to the
right level of problem. At best, choosing the wrong framework will result in a
wrong solution, and your problem will go unsolved. At worst, though, choosing
the wrong framework will cause persistent confusion that will render your
problem unsolvable.
No comments:
Post a Comment