So perhaps it’s time to make trigger warnings a bit more inclusive. By definition, in the shoal-ridden and unpredictable waters of academe, said forewarnings are ‘explicit alerts that the material (a student) is about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder’ (NY Times, 2014). There is considerable controversy as to whether these well-intentioned, ‘protective’ efforts achieve the desired end of insulating students from being re-traumatized — or in fact, do the reverse: sensitize. More or less the equivalent of the B-movie scenario where we know the psycho is going to jump out of the closet. . . we just don’t know when or which closet. Perfect recipe for anticipatory anxiety.

Evidently, the Halton District School Board has found its own creative solution: simply don’t watch the movie. In case it got overlooked on your Twitter feed, a high school in Oakville is reputed to house a, well, we’re not exactly sure a what. According to hastily cobbled together defences from Board trustees, it’s neither student, nor employee. They (the trustees) are adamant that it’s not the teacher named in the ‘misinformed information in media, conventional or social’. Whatever it is (or isn’t), it’s gone viral — perhaps one of those rare circumstances where both the content and the speed of transmission is entirely aptly so described. In short, heads buried in sand followed hard on (as it were) by denial — and ultimately shelter taken behind that one-size-fits-all shield of freedom of personal expression, and insulated by the angst accompanying any trans(gression) of diversity and inclusiveness — seems to have been the prevailing Board wisdom. And in the unlikely event that none of the above succeeds, resort to corporate double-speak to further obscure:

While we cannot confirm the identity of the individual in the photos/videos/radio segments, we can confirm that the individual is not ________ ________. ________ ________ is a staff member of the Halton District School Board who is an entirely separate individual and is completely unrelated to this matter. (HDSB release, Sept. 20, 2022).

And so, in a world where institutions are regularly being taken to task for failing to give the heads up to unsuspecting students that the psychology video they’re about to shown may contain highly disturbing content (rats trapped in cages, forced to press bars to stave off starvation) or the text they’re about to open may reference animal abuse (‘beating a dead horse’), it may be time for the HDSB trustees to step up their game. Perhaps a word of forewarning that the shop teacher may not be entirely what was expected. Or perhaps they (the trustees) are just concerned about creating a generation of power tool phobics riddled with post trauma. How thoughtful of them!

If we think of ourselves as a ‘community’, rather than a single ‘person’ we have started down the path of self-awareness and self-understanding — and of becoming a more balanced and complete individual.

Four of the five large (empty) circles shown in Stage 1 are ‘new lands’, planets if you will that are largely outside of our awareness. We may not even know they exist. Or, if we are vaguely aware of them, they feel foreign, and are often viewed with suspicion, even aversion — the ‘no, that’s not really me’ pieces of ourselves. The small black circle, representing our consciousness, shows us living in a single space, encircled, limited. We haven’t yet looked through the telescope or knocked, with curiosity, on our next door neighbour’s door. There’s nothing unusual about it.

In Stage 2, our ‘awareness’ shifts slightly — or, more properly, expands. We continue to view things from our original ‘self’ (small black dot) — but we develop a sense of these ‘neighbouring selves’. Think back to the first time, as a child perhaps, when you left your home property to explore your ‘street’, maybe heading off to attend school. ‘Home’ continues to be your primary base of operation — but other, similar ‘houses’ now become a part of your world.

The move from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is significant. A number of changes in our conscious awareness occur.
– First, we move our primary point of view to a more central location — namely, into the centre of our ‘solar system’. Instead of the ego-centric, single-minded, ‘Earth-bound’ perspective, we allow that these ‘other worlds’ are a part of our space — and not ‘foreign bodies’ that occupy the house next door, or the neighbouring street.
– Secondly, we risk exploring these other selves. Recall first visits to a friend’s house. Instead of walking past and wondering who all occupies the dwelling, you go in, explore, and meet the other occupants — parents, siblings of a friend.
– As was likely true in childhood, the inhabitants of these ‘other spaces’ were people we already knew and liked. These were the ‘comfortable, easy places’ to visit and explore. Other ‘houses’, we came to know, were occupied by less appealing residents. Naturally, we tended to give a wide berth to those places; perhaps even developing a dislike of, deserved or not, the individuals, wishing they’d ‘move out of the neighbourhood’. Nevertheless, this second group is a part of the community and will remain so going forward.
– Our work in Stage 3 is to begin to understand and identify the parameters or aspects that define and characterize these other places in our consciousness. A useful exercise is to recall your immediate neighbourhood as a child. Who lived next door? Which houses did you frequent? Which ones did you avoid — and why? Which ones remained something of a mystery, had a particular ‘feel’ to them? Which ones became familiar destinations? Did you develop ‘short cuts’ to and from certain places? Were some ‘pathways’ well travelled, others risky and little used — and why? With this exercise, is it possible to suspend judgment of each of these ‘houses’; to think of them in neutral terms, without attaching a label, positive or negative, to them? The exercise is simply to remember, not evaluate or judge.
– Our perspective, as began with Stage 2, moves to a fully centralized posture. We effectively still ‘live our house’; but are aware of the neighbourhood. And we’ve begun to investigate.

Stage 4 is by far the most challenging shift. Now, instead of occupying one ‘place’, we allow that there are many selves. We recognize these aspects as significant pieces, parts of the whole. Our ‘core self’ will continue to be the centralized ‘bus driver’. But we begin to spend time in the other dwellings, ‘staying over’ in other houses. As with the ‘neighbourhood’ analogy, some elements will be acceptable, places where we like to hang out — the best friend’s home. Others will be more difficult to tolerate, perhaps being avoided, denied as a ‘piece of you’.

The critical work in Stage 4 includes a number of aspects:
– Recognition of not just the ‘who’ occupies a particular place, but what their ‘purpose’ might be. Why are they in the neighbourhood? What do they bring to the community? There will always be ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. Learning to allow someone to remain, despite the differences in values, beliefs, behaviours between ‘them’ and the core self can be very difficult. A simple exercise in recognition is to create a descriptive label for your various elements. Personally, my critic, my empath, my competitor, my cynic, my analyst are all part of the constellation. They have their roles, all of which contribute, many of which conflict, one with another. Could I do without some? Unlikely. Would I prefer one or two might be less present? Almost certainly.
– Acceptance that all aspects are a part of the fully formed ‘you’. Like any neighbourhood, each aspect ‘moved in’ for a reason. Stage 4 is about getting to know these ‘subs’ (sub-personalities) and cultivating a relationship with each that allows their presence.
– Learning from each aspect. If we can suspend judgment, we are more open to listening to what each of these individuals has to say, what they have to teach us. As is often the case, the more ‘difficult’ a resident is, the more important the lesson might be. Developing a sense of ‘voice’ is also critical. As with neighbours, not all ‘sound alike’. Learning to recognize ‘who is speaking’ — and giving them ‘air time’ — is a part of Stage 4. As these are all ‘pieces of us’, we have the potential equally to modify their ‘styles’. The neighbour who throws open the window and yells at us to get off the lawn is less likely to be heeded than one that uses a softer approach. Some of our aspects with be crusty, loud, inappropriate, and intolerant — benefiting from a bit of ‘socializing’.

Finally, as with neighbourhoods, occupants move in and move out. Residents may remain but will evolve, develop different relationships within the community. This is a dynamic process and one that benefits principally from openness, attention, and acceptance.

We don’t see the world as it is. . . we see it as we are.

Attributed to a variety of sources from novelist (Anaïs Nin) to Talmudic teacher, to business guru (Steven Covey). We could add philosopher (Kant) and psychoanalyst (Freud). From whomever’s pen the quote emerged, the meaning is essentially the same: presented with facts, truths (if you will), our efforts are directed not toward analysis, comprehension, understanding, acceptance. . . but toward fitting what we observe into our existing narrative. How we impose (superimpose?) what we want / need to be true onto what is.

To paraphrase Kant, ‘reality’ is not a passive reflection of the input our senses receive; but a reshaping, evaluating, classifying and very active process thrust upon it by the mind. All of those elements, in turn, have been long formed by a collaboration, a conspiracy in some cases, of events that are wholly psychological, social, familial, vocational, political . . . not physical or sensory.

Nothing particularly new in the above. Humans simply prefer a good story over data. When the two sources don’t mesh, the hands down winner is the story. Any number of factors come into play. A compelling fable is typically ‘cleaner’ — no challenging, hard to grasp nuances, shades of meaning. These ‘tall tales’ are typically framed in black and white, with a nice teaching point, a preloaded agenda that is easily understood, and even more easily repeated. Essentially the ‘headline’, without all the trouble of those words to wade through.

When facts oppose beliefs, the instinct is to avoid, not analyze; to rationalize, not reconcile; to demur, not dig. Cognitive dissonance is not a stable, sustainable, or even vaguely desirable state. The quick exit into a like-minded enclave, self-selecting a narrative free of those nasty, inconveniently contradictory elements restores one’s sense of personal ‘order’. The truly disturbing piece in this predisposition is the ease with which we slide into it. Good stories are quite simply found to be more credible and easily accepted. Critical thinking, the old maxim of ‘serious doubt’ as the core of true belief run distant seconds. Science and sense are ill-equipped to wind things back — once they gets rolling.

Not that the world has ever been insulated from this dynamic. What has changed — and only destructively so — is the ‘immediacy’ and pervasiveness of the propensity. A ‘cause’, at once, is reduced to its (often, wildly over-simplified) bits; masticated and spat back, at a pre-selected audience as polemic. Then swallowed whole and digested as ‘truth’ — to become the narrative that defines. . . and then divides. Dialogue, empathy, compassion, collaboration . . . all victims.

Examples are legion. Most appalling is Putin’s ‘special military operation’. The globe watches the hourly compounding horrors suffered by the Ukraine, dumbstruck by the narrative that has been spun around these atrocities. ‘What is’ is apparent to ‘any of us who have eyes’ (in the words of one MSNBC commentator) — but evidently not to all. A carefully crafted story continues to hold sway in Russia, fostered by media isolationism, seeded by months, even years of ‘historical’ fictions, and trading on decades old anxieties that harken back to WWII.

Less gut-wrenching, less inhumane perhaps, but no less catastrophic in their ends are the other narratives that easily fit (like an OJ glove!) the story-telling fictions that grow ever the more pervasive. The political invective, the ‘newsworthy’ diatribes that purport to inform, to ‘balance our perspectives’, the sources of pseudo-science that populate the digital world with little or no chance — or even inclination — of being questioned and fact-checked. Consumed then propagated like the next tasty bit of gossip. Worrisome in the ‘water cooler days’; disastrous in the internet age.