Think [the box] ing discussion

What is the box, to begin with, that you see yourself as thinking outside of? Context, in life as in art, is everything.

Good question :) Do you mean me personally or for this group? Perhaps each person has their own box and it is in thinking outside of that which is the context for that person. I try to presume as little as possible.

I believe the box is most definitely a different size and shape for each person.

However I also believe that there are other boxes or parts being added to the box, being erected, sometimes invisibly, around us. Perhaps individually, sometimes a group sized box, and even some huge culturally shaped boxes.
Interestingly some of these appear to be second hand boxes, perhaps passed down from family or others in our lives. Most fascinating of all are those boxes which are slowly and craftily being built up around us by others.

When I was a child I loved boxes and would often hide in them, fantasying. I realise now that there is a whole other world outside the box, even as there is a whole world inside the box.

I can not speak for anyone other than myself, but my box is all that has gone before. All the indoctrinations, answers, fears and lies amongst other things. I don't discard or recycle the box, the box is part of me, I keep a close eye on it and occasionally attempt some moulding of it. I try most of all to ensure that i either peek outside of it, rip a hole in a side or sometimes even fall outside of it!

Seek, I am hoping will offer up what they think their personal context is. What they bring to the table when they approach a discussion. It's not the academic, but the personal I am interested in this context. Of course, whatever people have to offer on the question is interesting in and of itself.

The "box" I came into adulthood with was one which was born out of being raised by California, liberal, environmentalist, democratic, anti-racist, politically active, social working parents. I lived in a commune when I was a child. I believed their world view was the "correct" one and that Republicans were evil, conservative people were evil, anyone who carried a gun was evil, and that non-violence was the only solution. If you were killed, that was okay, because non-violence was more important and eventually everyone would see that and no more killing would ever happen. I thought liberals were the "tolerant" ones. I thought our world view was "right" and anything that went against it was "wrong".

There are a lot more parts to that box, but that is the one I finally started thinking outside of within the last 10 years. I have begun to see world events, and human nature, as being more complex and nuanced than that. I still carry many of the core values I was raised with, but I am less naive. I no longer think I have the "right" perspective... but I do think I have a more informed one than I did. When I hear other people making the same arguments that I did earlier in life I react because I see fallacies in their arguments and I want to share with them the perspective I have come to. One of the things that concerns me in my country is the polarization between Left and Right, between one side and another. I think the more polarized people's arguments become, the less is accomplished in a positive way. One of the things I value about Barak Obama so far is his ability to somewhat diffuse those polarizations with his speeches.

However, I find I also have limited patience with what I view as liberal rhetoric. I feel that I have moved past that point in my thinking, it's somewhere I have already been, and what interests me most is getting somewhere new, somewhere further along in the philosophical thread I have been following for some time now. I have little patience for arguments that are ground I have already been over.

It may be that I should stay out of conversations where that is the case. However, I over estimate other people's ability to keep their personal feelings out of a political or philosophical debate. I find it much harder to put things into words sometimes when I am typing than when I am speaking. I have gone past the point where these issues are personal for me. I am eager to hurry up my process and find people who are where I am in figuring out solutions. There is no practical reason for this. I have no plans to go into politics, and I have no delusions of being some kind of global think tank. It's a personal process to figure these things out. I do it for myself. With no practical reason other than wishing to be informed and to know why I vote the way I do, and when someone asks me what I think to have some kind of answer.

So... there's my box. I'm curious about what other people's are. Perhaps if we have context we can better understand why we each think so radically differently about these issues.

Ummm, I don't think I was raised with a proper "box". My mother's box was a very conservative Republican "box", slightly racist (which she has completely grown out of Thank God!) and inapropriate in places. My father's box was a much more groovy, get along with everyone, Democratic, liberal, yet ignore anything that might be unplesant and hope that it simply goes away "box". He encouraged me often to grow up to be a feminist. My first set of Foster Parent's had a conservative, Christian, uber family oriented "box". My second set had a much younger, hipper, Christian, artistic leaning "box". My third set had a very progressive Christian, education leaning "box". I tried for a time to fit into each of their boxes to please them all...then I rebelled and found a very, very, small, fanatical "box" all my own. Try as I might, I couldn't fit in there. Through my 20's I spilled out every which way. In my 30's I tried to stuff myself back into my husband's box. I played the stay at home 1950's wife for a while, tried to keep up with his mother, began to learn more Socialist view points...it was a British box though, and I couldn't stay in there either, I was suffocating. Eventually I burst out of that box as well, I couldn't take it anymore. It only took him three weeks to find someone else who fit perfectly into his box...and I was "out in the cold" as it were. But, I find that I prefer it this way, I can't do "the box", I've never found one that fit, that was comfortable, that was "me". My thoughts and views change every day, every new thing that I learn, every new friend that I make, changes me, changes my shape. I'd be constantly searching for a new box, I prefer to be free, just naked, if you will.

So that's my view on "the box", "my box".

My box is doing what people expect you to do, question what you "should" be questioning, and stay in the mainstream of proper manners.

I'm a Mormon, and I truly believe that my standards are the ones I need, but that doesn't mean I can't think in any direction my mind fancies.

To the unaware, I might seem extremely uptight and unwilling to run with a new, unique Idea. The truth is that I am pretty flexible to anything that comes my way.

For me, thinking outside the box is pondering things that don't come up in conversation often. That's poorly put, but I'm not sure how else to explain it.

I was brought up in the loony left – I’m still fairly leftwing, but am actually fairly bored with a lot of politics – it either makes me feel frustrated, impotent or furious – often in equal measure. My family were so extreme left that many of our views were quite conservative – these things are more circular than linear. I remember reading a line by Arthur Miller that besides not believing in God a good communist was virtually indistinguishable from a good Baptist. Sad, but true, I’m afraid.

I find people generally don’t like to think, whether they are in boxes or not. So when Katherine says, “For me, thinking outside the box is pondering things that don't come up in conversation often.” I don’t think I could possibly put it better.

My mate Socrates reckons that an unexamined life is not worth living. I tend to agree with him – but that does mean that there are very many lives out there that are not really worth living. So be it. All the same, my life has hardly been an advertisement for the glorious benefits of reflection.

I see "box" as another one of those "nurture vs. nature" questions. Are our boxes made for us (innate), or are we architects of our own boxes?

It reminds me of Rousseau (the noble savage -- we are born innocents and corrupted by society) vs. Voltaire (the evil seed -- we are born corrupted because it is innate to our race).

I see Buddhism, meditation, self-help books, and all manner of other stuff as Battles with Boxes (or, in some cases, the overcoming of boxes, negating of boxes, reconstruction of boxes, etc.).

Boxing metaphors. What round are YOU in...?

i miss the box i think
i have always had a very flexible life
and have always been very adaptable
also inconsistent
vaciliating
morose
pessimistic
cynical
grappling
reflextive
brooding
ruminating
practical
pragmatic
and prone to the vagracies of nature, nurture and the wishes of the milkman
raised catholic by my grandmother while my single mother struggled, fed me all sorts of books, classic literature, modern classics, a sense of social responsibility, love of art, romantic as in the movement not the sentiment
i grew up in a harsh climate in northern maine with a farming culture and family history one generation back
my mother's generation were the fall from grace so to speak
functional alcoholism
no abuse but father's neglect (financial, emotional)
high moral sense of right and wrong from grandmother
self sacrifice from grandmother and mother
respect for elders from extended family, great aunts and uncles strong influence
yankee work ethic, new england heritage of puritanism
extreme provincialism in maine and counties of maine
northern maine was nearly arctic and that marked me in strange ways
cold war survivor/loring air force base was 1st strike due to ability to launch and reach russia in most direct route-b52's nuclear missle development site
engineer father, brilliant undervalued social worker mother
chronic poverty
catholic outcasts as child of divorced mother
and i was the curious one
the intellectually perverse one
the difficult one
there is no escaping the box it seems-not really
we think outside of it at times but live inside it

Maureen says:

there is no escaping the box it seems-not really
we think outside of it at times but live inside it

With the nicely written prelude to these lines, I'd have to agree. Put that way, we'll forever be inside the box we are outside of.

I love it when the illogical makes perfect sense.

Tim, I liked your definition of the box. I have seen this box, even lived in it. I would recognize it anywhere.

However, sometimes I can't find the box. Weird huh

I think we all live in not one box but in a small box inside a slightly larger box inside a larger box inside etc etc. The smallest box is perhaps our own, the next the one constructed in concert with our closest family as we see it, the next, our familial context which includes those influential on its views of what is proper, right, normal and real and possible, and then the next box, our greater community of friends and those to whom we compare ourselves,evaluate behaviors, values, success/failure...those in our church,neighborhood school or workplace,socioeconomic or educational fellow traveleors and then the box of subculture which extends to all those we share identity of commonality within the greater culture/regional or national, then regional,national, linguistic group (ie English speakers..)..which could be further separated by
region of the world...and then Western (which includes the concept of thinking of man as separate from nature as opposed to more Eastern etc)and of course...all boxes are in context (as Charissa aptly pointed out )of time , that is epoch, century etc..
I think of one of those Russian box sets..wooden figure boxes containing smaller and smaller hollow boxes of matching shape..which fascinated me as a child.
One of my most successful freeing adventures was at 21, to take a freighter across the Atlantic to Europe and immerse myself in travel on my own for 8 months or so...exploring my inner world as I encountered much new and different in the outer world, deliberately and consciously challenging myself to grow out of my comfort zone, out of my boxes. It changed my perceptions dramatically. A previous leap had been leaving my home with my divorced mother and younger sister for college at 17,never to return to live there.
Prior to that, reading was my way to explore different ways of thinking,living, and acting..and I was particularly fond of science fiction..and even wrote it a bit.

hmm, thinking out of the box is when you dont think in such a concept of: a 'box' and the outside of a 'box'. or else, we will still be 'boxed' up thinking about thinking out of a box, within the box..

Working in the North Bay restaurant scene...my ass was often referred to as "a box" - always in an affectionate matter, of course.

For me the box is convention.
Some examples:
women are supposed to want to have babies.
people are supposed to want to have sex.
having to eat, drink, pee, poo.
americans are supposed to "hate" terorists.

all things I am looked upon by peers to be a weirdo because of my dislike for.

Isabella, it's good that you're one of the few who constantly attempts to break out of your box!

Years ago, I read an article about the boxing of life, how everyone tends to create their own boxes and limit themselves to them and that very few are courageous to break out of these boundaries. This is attributed to Man's innate need of classifying things which is evident in the way we classify literature and somehow, man had accidentally began to classify themselves into boxes too.

For me, I am kinda lost and trapped in the box that I created for myself. It's really depressing to think about it and I hope that I am able to break out soon.

My own box was what my parents called “Christian Socialist”, though my father added to his Christian Socialism a strong dose of anti-Semitism. I myself spent much of my teens stripping away these layers one by one.

The anti-Semitism was the first to go. When I was about 10 years old, an excellent schoolteacher told us all about the holocaust and Hitler, and I discovered that anti-Semitism was just not on. I was later surprised to find just how deeply I had imbibed racist attitudes, and it was only in my early twenties that I consciously threw these off. Later still, I came to live in Northern Ireland where “even the lampposts are Catholic or Protestant”. Here, I came to dislike anything that smacked of racism, nationalism or ethnic pride, though my professional task was to understand rather than criticise it. Luckily, I also learned the local trick of “loving the sinner but not the sin”.

The next to go was Christianity. In the way some people "get religion" I "got atheism", and I spent much of my teens berating anybody and everybody about the utter stupidity of religion. Eventually, I stopped doing this to the benefit of both my blood-pressure and my personal relationships.

My socialism hit a bad patch when my education introduced me to History, Economics etc, all of which challenged my most naïve ideas. However, this education also got me to read a lot of Karl Marx, and I never lost that influence. Also my work in Ulster required me to write “impartially” on difficult social issues, so it was inappropriate for me to get involved in practical politics. I find in later life I am rediscovereing my socialism. So you might say I’m now on the loony left, but somehow sane.