….We have now reached a moment at which we can begin to know something of the process of this phony and crooked disease in the pathway we are following. At present, I don’t think there are very many of us. A few thousand maybe. But this is a very extraordinary epoch in which this knowledge is now becoming a part of the thinking of quite a lot of people. Thank god.
– Gregory Bateson, “Paradigmatic Conservatism.”
I developed this hypothesis, which I call The Charmed Loop of Didactic Incitement, as an elaboration of Bateson’s Double-Bind hypothesis. I believe that it is at least a component or aspect of what he was talking about in that statement, specifically where he says, “We are beginning to know something of the process of this phony and crooked disease in the pathway we are following” .. he is alluding to a mechanistic process wherein abuse and exploitation under a phony rubric of “teaching” or “lesson giving” facilitate quantification of interests accruing to perpetrators, overcoming the borders and boundaries of the victims while the qualitative, niche ecological differences of victims are ground down, any recourse they might take apparently justifying the abuse.
Bateson culminates his epoch studies with a question, “As teachers, are we wise?”
Bateson added,
“the road to hell can be paved with bad intentions as well.”
I propose The Charmed Loop of Didactic Incitement as a useful elaboration on Bateson’s Double Bind Theory.
The Double Bind proposed by Bateson in “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia” entails:
A preliminary paradoxic injunction such as
“I am a liar”
“Disobey me”
“Be spontaneous!”
A prohibition of metacommunication – prohibiting talk about talk that might clarify the confusion, particularly to clarify good will or lack thereof on the relational level of perpetrator and victim.
A tertiary re-framing which prevents escape from the circumstance – for example, a child as dependent upon their parents cannot easily escape the field, and is therefore confronted with an intolerable choice between [confidence in one’s perceptions as accurate or necessary relations] protecting their capacity for sensible judgment or the relationship – as mammals, relationships are profoundly important. And they begin to manifest communicological pathologies (in a futile attempt to protect the necessary resource of their faculties, as one cannot not communicate)
There is no apparent way out, as one proves that the cruelty of didactic incitement is justified no matter what recourse is taken…
Didactic Incitement, that is to say abuse under the rubric of teaching, and making one tough, particularly if it is overdone and there is enough contextual force over the victim to keep them from escaping the field, can create a reflexively recursive phenomenon of a pernicious Charmed Loop.
No matter what avenue of escape the victim chooses, they will lose and only add to the warrant of the perpetrator’s recursively accruing interests.
The Charmed Loop of Didactic Incitement
There are some infamous command paradoxes in psychology:
“I am a liar”,
“Be spontaneous”,
“Disobey me.”
“Be a Man!” would seem to be yet another form, as the one taking orders is not really in power, not really a man, are they?
I would like to submit the hypothesis that when one is not in a sufficiently powerful position that they are susceptible to a charmed loop of didactic incitement.
Bateson also remarked that “it isn’t funny” (he was alluding to the destruction of qualitative, niche ecological disbursement).
In the classic paradox (para-doxia – two faces) of comedy and tragedy: one’s comedy is another’s tragedy.
However, unlike the classic paradox, this one seems to split four-way and may more characteristically unfold over time.
There is no apparent way out, as one proves that the abuse of didactic incitement is justified no matter what recourse is taken:
One is a “Wimp” if they do nothing in response:
The abuse is justified as one proves their own ineffectiveness.
A “Pig” if they respond, fighting back directly in their self interest:
One justifies the abuse as they reveal their primitive self-interest and lack of restraint.
A “Dupe” if they try to reason and bargain with the inciter:
One justifies the abuse in this case and they risk the hideous result of sharing the best they have with the person(s) treating them the worst (in an attempt to reason with them by sharing resource, perhaps precious resource).
Forms of having the “10 taken” in a prisoner’s dilemma scenario come into play.
A “Permanent Puerile Initiate”:
The instigator(s)/others can always treat the abuse as a “lesson.”…and one may be left with little choice but to treat the didactic incitement as an experience not that bad, at worst, if not a necessary lesson or even an inspiration which takes credit for achievement in transcendence of the loop, thereby justifying the abuse in this case also.
…hence, the charmed loop of “didactic incitement.”
I’d like to give the readership a clue: It is probably not an impossible situation for the “victim” in most cases – at least not if granted some time. The perpetrator(s) have to have a quanta of power to hold enough contextual force over the victim(s).
However, its going to be near impossible to overcome for some, especially kids, who I guess will escape into some narrative for better or worse, but…
“Great destruction can be visited upon the victim”
The Charmed Loop of Didactic Incitement
A development from Bateson’s Double Bind Hypothesis, an important theoretical turn, among other reasons, for taking psychology out of the head and into interaction.
Bateson concludes his epoch with the question:
“As teachers, are we wise?”
He adds, “the road to hell can be paved with bad intentions as well.”
The Charmed Loop of Didactic Incitement is not only wont to visit the destruction upon qualitative ecological niche positions, having them yield to “this phony and crooked disease of quantification” instead, but the strained effort to overcome the loop and find one’s precluded self agency on the part of the victim will tend to effect terrible anti-social overcompensation into aberration, This would factor into the dark side of self actualization, its reflexive effect on socialization, the moral order and disordering thereof.
…as teachers, in didactic incitement, are we wise?” …” the road to hell can be paved with bad intentions as well” – with that the victim can go into runaway of social correctivity and become the victimizer, a sociopath, a sociopathology.
A Form of Didactic Incitement in therapeutic intervention: a coy treatment of angry reaction by the patient, as if his objections are the expression of the oppressor, subverting the resistance by the suggestion that HE is the oppressive, despotic one for trying to defend himself and his agency; and, with a enough logical force, pressure the “liberation” from responsibility for what is being imposed on you by the one bit of clear advice (“do you know how to teach a woman”).
What I am talking about is a form of the deliberately manipulative “therapeutic” technique of pragmatic intervention (practical force overcomes pre-figurative force) as practiced by Haley, Weakland Watzlawick and Milton Erickson. Without really knowing what the patient wants or thinks, frustration and confusion of everything he can say is induced and then one clear bit of advice is given, “do you know how to teach a woman?” So, rather than trying to find the correct woman, you are more random and find one less selectively to begin with on the idea that you might to teach her how to be your partner. Now you have been lured in with a woman that you don’t really like, of course she does not appreciate the pedantry and you are in less position to expect a virgin wife and are less empowered to object to society’s promotion of low sexual standards. The intervention is based on a stupid assumption that a man could only be angry about society because he “can’t get sex.”… I told Naomi that what she had done was analogous to rape, holding a woman down, fingering her clitoris, producing an orgasm and a hysterical reaction, saying “there! she’s had pleasure and a hysterical reaction – she’s happy!”
Moreover, in order to stop the torment and assert one’s dignity in response to this – can-opener-like mechanism – one begins to divulge uncultivated philosophical resource ….some quite self indicting, of course, as it is in raw form, while other aspects can become the stuff of marked personalized theory, held as it can potentially transformed to merit public accord, a treasure in its own right besides what was raped, one’s most personal prerogative, laid at the feet of the “interventionist” in seeking relief, “seeking a human response from the ‘deliberately manipulative’ interventionist.” … … But you can’t object because spilling out, along with that, is the raw, uncultivated will to retaliate….you are eminently blackmailable….. you can’t object to what’s goin on.