Re: The Meta Functions ↑

metanymous 04 января 2018, 10:26 в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)

1) Classify. “The context (or meta-message) classifies the message…” (Bateson, 1972, p. 247). “In human life … there occur signals whose major function is to classify contexts” … context markers (Bateson, 1972, p. 289). With each new frame we simultaneously set an internal context for our experience. Each meta-level is simultaneously a meta-state, named by some meta-term, a frame, an inner context.

2) Qualify. “All messages and parts of messages are like phrases or segments of equations which a mathematician puts in brackets. Outside the brackets there may always be a qualifier or multiplier which will alter the whole tenor of the phrase.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 232). As a higher level is set to classify members of the set, it modulates and qualifies their members.

3) Govern. “… in the process of therapy, there must have been communication at a level meta to these rules. There must have been communication about a change in rules.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 191). The higher modulates the lower as the bias set in a thermostat controls the range of flexibility of temperature in a room.

4) Expand Perspective. The process of moving up to a meta or higher level simultaneously expands one’s perspective. When a person moves from a particular to more general and abstract level (the class or category), the person at the same time gains a broader perspective of a large horizon.

5) Gestalt and Emergence. The process of “going meta” is not always additive, in fact, it is more typically exponential. It multiples things so that a gestalt experience arises. Then something “more than and different from the sum of the parts” arise. This is an emergent property in a system of multiple variables. Many complex states (courage, forgiveness, self-esteem, seeing opportunity, etc.) are gestalt states.