Over the past few years, my friends and colleagues in the International Bateson Institute and particularly Nora Bateson have been talking about the nature and dynamics of scripts. In the cognitive psychology literature, “scripts” are discussed as ways in which we reduce cognitive load in our everyday lives. Some examples include:
- The first time our parents take us into a bank and teach us to set up our own account, we have to learn every step of the process. As we go through the process of dealing with bank transactions, we no longer have to think through every step. We’ve learned the script or steps and ways of talking that allow us to complete transactions without having to devote much thinking about the process.
- The same sort of scripts are learned as we go to grocery stores with our parents. We pick up on how to complete the shopping process so that little thought is needed other than remembering what we need to buy.
- When we first learn how to use a computer or a smart phone, we need to go through step-by-step learning processes. As we gain comfort and knowledge with the processes, we no longer need to think about the basics of using a computer or phone.
If you have travelled to a very different culture, where the scripts may vary, sometimes in subtle and sometimes in not so subtle ways, we may confront the cultural variation of our own scripts. When I was visiting Malaysia, I bought a greeting card for a colleague. However, after purchasing the card, I realized it had the wrong message on the inside. When I tried to exchange the card, the store refused. My whole script short circuited. Although a really minor issue, my script destruction amplified the whole situation. The “you bought it, you keep it” no-return-script never occurred to me. My reaction to a script-short-circuit was actually quite embarrassing.
However, scripts are much more than these procedural sorts of automated behaviors. Scripts can be tightly intertwined with our various identities. They can manifest in a mother or father identity, in a student identity, in a teacher identity, in any professional identity, in a religious identity, in a victim identity, in a bully identity, and so forth. Depending on the context we are in, these identity scripts can dominate how we talk, how we walk, how we act, and how we relate.
I’ve certainly relied on these scripts throughout my life, but I’ve never been particularly comfortable with them. I don’t know why I’ve been uncomfortable. Scripts usually provide a certain degree of comfort. They can provide a sense of safety, where we don’t have to expose our vulnerabilities, and we can function in our familiar contexts without much effort.
As a teacher at all levels (grades 2 through 12 and university), I tried not to “be” in the typical teacher role of authority figure and controller. It just did not feel honest. When I did fall into those teacher scripts, it never worked out that well, and were probably some of the most embarrassing moments for me. Although students and other teachers may not have perceived these as embarrassing moments, they tended to be excruciating for me. The same sort of issues occurred as an academic, when I went to conferences and presented my research. At professional conferences, with 20,000 people acting out their scripts, the few of us who resisted the scripts did not particularly “fit in.”
I often found it most comfortable to sit somewhere in these monster hotels that were hosting the conferences, while drinking coffee and watching “the suits” (I never wore a suit) with their noses scraping the ceilings as they walked by. While sitting in these hotels, a few people would sit nearby and start up conversations, many of which were script-less and quite interesting, even when talking about our research. It was just a situation of people relating as real people. And, with the regularity suggested by probability, a small number of my script-less friends would walk by and join me. These moments of sitting on the side-lines were probably the most valuable and interesting parts of the conferences. Sitting in sessions where people just talked at the audience, did their dog and pony show, and took up more than their allotted time to give their talks were painfully dull and uninspiring.
In the times of pandemic, I, like so many others, have been spending a lot of time on Zoom. Most of these Zoom meetings have been surprisingly and wonderfully inspiring and script-less. We talk with one another about substantive topics, relax, drink coffee or some other beverage, and just be ourselves. There is no strutting, no avoiding our vulnerabilities. We just relate to one another. Then, I was invited by someone in one of those meetings to another Zoom meeting with a different group of people. I joined in and started talking in my usual unscripted fashion, and quickly realized I was the only one not scripting. It was a shock to my system. It was the reverse of acting out one script in a context where that script didn’t work. Just like in Malaysia, I was flabbergasted by the mismatch of scripting. In this new meeting, I found myself in a group of people scripting and expecting scripts, while I just tried to avoid scripting. It was quite awkward and the contrast just about knocked me off my chair, which would have been a great marker of that contrast during the meeting.
As I continue to play around with this dynamic of non-scripting and scripting, I’ve been thinking about how interesting it would be for others to explore this as well. Maybe we can have some unscripted conversations here on this blog.