[Having stated a challenge to you all, I couldn't drop the matter
until I came up with an example. Don't read into this example any
suggestion that a response must contain all three parts.]
Anomaly: While helping to facilitate a meeting this week, I walked around
the room several times and exchanged papers with each participant. Every
person except Mrs. X made a motion or gesture that 'met me half way', by
holding out a hand or a paper, or by making a head gesture. Mrs. X saw
that I was coming and knew what I was doing, but in no instance did she
make any motion or sign that 'met me half way'. I even had to pick papers
off her lap, which made me uncomfortable.
Paradigm violated: There is a strong cultural pattern that such
exchanges be acknowledge with a coordinating motion or sign. Mrs. X
repeatedly violated this pattern which 40 other people adhered to
without fail. She was not distracted. An alternative explanation is
that she either liked me or didn't like me, but she acted the same way
with another person. While she is known to be a frustrating
bureaucrat, she is not psychologically distrubed. (Oops, there are a
million standard reasons I would have to reject. Let me stop there.)
New paradigm: People are deracinated from man's environment by living
in the abstract world of offices and computers. The result is loss of
control of the body and its coordination with meaning. The person may
either become hypervigilant in preventing touch, or accepting of touch
because it has lost meaning. This paradigm extends: it could help
explain the loss of gesture and dance, and the inability to
discriminate touch from sexual advance.
-- kent_myers@smtplink.sra.com