A Nation's Looking

NLP (Neural-Linguistic Programming) has models for the way individuals store their experience. As you store a memory or piece of important information, it threads together with all the other reality-maps, experiences, and information you have stored. People thread experiences and information together in different ways: some connect it chronologically, some by relationship (between people), some by concept, some by place, some by emotion or feeling. There are many ways to thread things together.

The dominant method of mapping in a person tends to create 'looking questions', or a question that is always-asking in your mind. Questions can be anything and quite varied, but some examples that will give you the idea include: "What is the meaning here?" "What am I missing?" "What can I control here?" "How can I participate here?" "Who is the leader here?" These kinds of constant-questions, though usually subconscious, guide a person's perspective when interpreting experiences.

The dimension of time also plays a big role in the filtering, interpretation, and internal mapping and threading of experiences and information. Past, present, or future: where do you classify this item, and - most importantly - from which of those time 'zones' are you living and looking?

What I find fascinating is that, usually, whatever we can apply to individuals in this area can also be applied to groups, companies, cities, states, and even nations.

We can then figure out how, say, a nation's attitudes developed - and perhaps what perspectives are missing or over-important - by finding the 'looking' of the nation in the past.

The historical era that first comes to my mind is post-World War II. What a sociologically rich time period! Fresh from experiencing the horrors of the war, we didn't want to look back. If you examine the advertising, movies, and social 'looking' of society in the United States in the 1950's, you'll find that it was almost always future-oriented. We wanted to look to the future, build a better place, and most of all get the horrors of the past out of our daily perception. We wanted our children to have a great life, great future, and great days to make up for the huge tragedies, loss, and hardship that had been the war.

You have to remember that practically everyone in the United States lost a brother, father, son, husband, or uncle in World War II. The world lost 40 million people in that war, and the mood of mourning was deep and bitter. I'm not going to go into the terrible things that people were faced with during the war; you can do some research on what people had to do to survive, fight, and clean up after all the death. You'll find that the plot for "Old Yeller" is almost a comedy in comparison, especially considering the scale and numbers involved.

As a nation, we only wanted to dream up a fabulous future, and make the present moment as Disney-esque as possible. This explains much about how neighborhoods (in general) worked in the 50's. We wanted sweetness, optimism, and 'pleasantville', especially for our children. It also explains how ready we were to jump into the space race and land a man on the moon in the 60's. It was good, clean, future-looking science and it was exciting and good for our kids.

But the drawback to placing most of your focus and consciousness in the future is that you miss most of the present moment. I believe that 'lash back' of the hippies and flower children in the 60's was a complaint around not being present in the real here and now. They were calling 'fake' on the Disney-esque, paint-it-over tactics that were society's healing bandages from the war. These kids hadn't seen the horrors, they hadn't experienced personal loss or hardship in the war. They weren't wounded, and so their perspective wasn't so future-scoped. They wanted to talk about the present and the past, and they were angry with their elders who were not cooperating on that front.

I don't know if, as a nation, we are presently looking from the past, present, or future. Made up of millions of perspectives and minds, the power of a nation is that we really can be 'covering all bases' if we are aware, nurture different points of view, and allow people to process and think and learn as they will.

What would you say is the current dominant 'looking question' or 'sorting question' for the United States? Remember, it is usually at the subconscious level, so "where's the best price on home furnishings?" probably isn't it. What perspectives are we missing in the moment?

What is your personal perspective? Can you tell how you like to sort experiences and information?