creating useful spaces of bewilderment
Photo by Ernest Karchmit on Unsplash
Summary: Coming-of-age rituals in tribal societies often use confusion to encourage initiates to find their own meaning, reflecting the struggles of adolescence. This approach contrasts with conventional training, which prioritizes efficiency. However, allowing space for bewilderment and struggle can foster deeper understanding, as meaningful growth often arises from navigating challenges.
Transcript of this video:
My friend Tim Pilbrow is an anthropologist, and he was sharing with me the other day his experience of witnessing rituals in tribal societies, in particular coming-of-age rituals, where the purpose is not really to teach the initiate what it is to be an adult but rather to deliberately put them in a state of confusion and bewilderment.
Where they have to figure out the meaning for themselves, which is of course what the process of adolescence really is like, isn’t it? You have to actually find your own feet and no longer be told what to do and deal with the conflicts that come with that.
So Tim talks about creating a space where you have to grasp to grow. And when he said that, I’ve got the feels, because I like phrases like that.
Because I think in conventional training environments, we’re often a bit afraid of leaving people grasping and leaving people bewildered. We’d like it to be much more efficient than that. But without a degree of confusion and struggle, I don’t think the really interesting meanings are likely to be made.
