Creating your very own idea fence

I was reading this Tumblr post someone sent me recently and there is an interesting reference to ‘fencing’ at the end of it. The idea that a debate or a metaphor can provide a fence around our ways of thinking is something I had written about ages ago.  In fact large portions of my PhD work had been involved around the ideas of conceptual framing, the idea that we create reference points to refer to things we experience.   I think the ‘idea fence’ concept is much more interesting and I want to write about it.  So I did!

Idea fences mean we create a way of seeing things that inhibits us from seeing another perspective.  Someone I know would say about a problem,’Well it’s either this or that.’  My response was, ‘why can’t it be something else?’.  The idea fences we build put the issues we want to discuss in a neat little basket.  We fence them off and say, ‘this is my position and you can only enter my idea house if you are willing to open the fence of my idea gate’.   Metaphors ahoy.

I am very good at making idea fences.  I often resist changing my ideas because I like them and have grown accustomed to having them in my mind’s garden.  Yet, I know I have to do it and I hate it.   I think I know something then I find an article or somebody says, ‘have you thought about this?’ Then I hop back on the merry go round again and wheeeeeee more ideas.   Ideas also mean power in my world, ‘Oh you are the guy who wrote that paper or you are an Information Systems person aren’t you?’   Then I am fenced in by others.  This kind of fencing reinforces the fence around me, which in essence has no place in any real terms outside of my own thoughts; and creates a comfortable seat for me to sit in and contemplate.   I am fenced and fencing.

In closing this ramble tamble, let me assure that ideas have a persistent quality.  The ingredient of persistence is ‘belief’.  That’s what makes them real.  We believe they are and so they are and we act on them and it is so.  Yet, this perspective is yet another example of a fence I have built around myself and ask me in five years, if I am still alive what I think and the chances are I will have changed my mind!

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