Book - Chapter - Relational vs Transactional

[TOC] Book - Chapter - Relational vs Transactional

-- 2020 05 25 - 1009 - iteration 01

I like labels - words that sort reality are friendly to me.

The problem is that they frequently hide complexity.

Putting things, people, and problems into boxes is very useful.

It reduces them to the properties of their boxes.

However, boxes aren't meant to hold problems.

Or relationships.

Often words are implicitly transactional.

They're snapshots of a thought, a discussion, a frame.

And they always leave something out.

It's why, to understand a word, you need the context.

Because the context isn't inside the word itself.

Similarly, language isn't just the words:

it's the expression of content within a corresponding context.

Thus, language is relational.

And so are most of the important things in life.

I have been guilty of trying to understand other people by reducing them to words.

But doing that is lazy - because it doesn't require you to engage them as individuals.

What if you treated everyone as an individual?

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some additional thoughts:
- rough comparison to analog vs digital - how digital music always loses some dimensions
- tie-in to improvisation - and how, if you approach things transactionally, improvisation is harder
- association to connection to God - if you base things transactionally, you always lose
- also how man is not an island - but we like to think we are - because we often feel like we are
- would it be possible/ethical to make laws or policies relationship-based vs transactional-based?