"Locked and blocked" explains a lot
Entry #69 on framing, unframing and then remembering to do the laundry
Entry #69
As you all probably know by now, I am wont to travel down rabbit holes of a deep, philosophical nature, getting lost in thought and reflection whilst the dinner burns and the laundry remains unwashed.
Stumbling across the incredibly generous lecture series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” by John Vervaeke has been good for the mind and soul, but not good for other things. Thankfully I have limited my ‘lecture time’ to car drives only - as far as I know, I cannot do much else but listen and drive whilst in the car.
In episode one of the series, John uses the phrase ‘locked and blocked’ when explaining why so many people get stuck on the 9-dot problem (head here to 51:00 minutes to watch this explained).
Locked and blocked has bubbled back up so many times ever since. It explains so much, or so it seems to me.
We live within our familiar frames. We encounter things that fit that frame and we experience comfort, contentment, or neutrality (whether we realise it or not) - this seems to be a bit like confirmation bias to me. When something ‘fits’ it is pleasing, is it not?
We inevitably bump into things that do not fit our frame, things we cannot predict or control. We feel disoriented because we are ‘locked and blocked’ by our frame, unable to unframe and understand the thing with which we are presented.
Onto unfamiliar inputs we may project meaning, attempt to mould it into a frame we can accept as close to our own, we may totally reject it, we may avoid it…and on, endlessly. These are all behaviours that now seem more explainable to me - thanks to the ‘locked and blocked’ description of the frames we live within.
Remember, in the 9-dot problem he says that the most common frame people lock onto is that the dots form a square and that the problem must therefore be solved within the square by joining the dots. Locked and blocked on a square frame, the solution is almost impossible to fathom. The instructions do not mention a square, we do that part ourselves.
Some world news examples that seem to exemplify locked and blocked thinking:
The Saudi Arabian ‘Neom’ project - dubbed ‘the line’, this 150 storey architectural monster will host the 2029 Asian Winter Games (yes, in a desert) and house nine million people whilst construction has already forcibly displaced the Huwaitat tribespeople of this region. One Saudi Prince and many architects locked and blocked on a vision.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won the Brazil election, ousting the far-right President who has been in office for the last four years. A close race, at times ‘bruising’ and bitter between two men with very different ideologies for their country. Both locked and blocked on the ‘right’ Brazil, but only one winner.
We frame and we use frames - almost constantly.
But do we know how to unframe and observe the frame we dismantle? This seems far less common.
How about you? Do you have a sense of your ability to unlock, unblock and unframe the realities you live within?
If this looks appealing, how you could cultivate this more often?
I highly recommend more of the John Vervaeke series if anything in this entry has been your cup of tea. It sure is mine, but now I must do laundry.
And that is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.
With love,
Michelle xx