Breaking the Set
Paradigms are hard to break. The institutions that promote and fortify existing paradigms are powerful and not easily confronted. When the matters are quite serious (such as conducting a war) then the existing paradigms are particularly resistant to change. There is no room for the playful exploration of alternative perspectives or practices. Yet, Abraham Lincoln somehow managed to invite in and explore alternative viewpoints. This exploration was often accompanied by heated debates and long stormy meetings. Yet, Lincoln hung in there. He even found his rustic, “frontier” humor and story telling to be of some value in not only toning down the emotions but also allowing him to offer some gentle, “down to earth” views that opened the vista (allowing new mutations to emerge).
What needs to be kept in mind is the goal of breaking an existing, dominating viewpoint—what psychologists call a “cognitive set” (the fancy German term is “Einstellung”). Once this set is broken, the vista expands–and new ideas can be considered. Ironically, it is often the most rigid and fortified cognitive set that is most vulnerable to being shattered. We see this in the fore-mentioned cartoon narrated by Orson Welles. It took just one person to declare “they might be right” for those on both sides of the gap to rethink their position and begin to listen to those on the other side. We seem this same vulnerability in the confrontation of “true believers” with a “black swan” that challenges these beliefs (Taleb, 2010).
Social cognitive theorist (led by insights offered by Kurt Lewin) propose that human beings find it hard to live with “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger, 1957) They will do anything (including changing their position on a specific issue) if they are locked into a rigid sense of self (good, thoughtful, consistent, etc.) alongside a rigid point of view about a specific issue (this viewpoint being “stupid” or “cruel”). The point of view is more likely to change then the self-perception.
I suspect that Kurt Lewin would have loved to sit down with Abraham Lincoln in order to share stories about rigid members of Lincoln’s cabinet changing their firmly held views on political and military matters. From their dialogue would have emerged a second lesson to be taught by Abraham Lincoln: by sustaining a relationship in the midst of major differences of viewpoint (cognitive set), one opens the possibility that one’s own cognitive set, as well as the other person’s cognitive set will be challenged and even set aside in favor of a new viewpoint that differs that which either party brought to the relationship.
I offer a more contemporary example of the breaking of set being engaged in a constructive (and often highly creative) manner. It results not in the successful conducting of warfare on a battleground. Rather, it results in a different kind of “warfare”—that which takes placed among those who prepare scripts for a television show. This example concerns the creative mayhem that was found in the meeting of writers for Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows and (later) Sid Caser’s Show during the early days of television (1950s). Along with such extraordinary writers as Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Carl Reiner, Sid Caser presided over heated meetings where chairs were thrown around (often by Sid), people were swearing at one another, and, most importantly, voracious disagreements were voiced regarding jokes to be told and skits to be enacted during the show. Cognitive sets (along with furniture) were being broken all over the place –as is appropriate in the production of jokes (which at their best involve the presentation of something that is unexpected and set breaking).
