Two Prisoners

Two Prisoners are held at gun point by their captor.

The Captor addresses both Prisoners.
"Tell me what I want to know, or I'll shoot you in the head."

The first Prisoner has this thought:

If I tell him what he wants to know, I'll be helping my enemy.  I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to tell him anything.

The second Prisoner has this thought:

If I tell him what he wants to know, I will be saving my life.  I'm going to tell him what he wants to know!

Which Prisoner is right?

And more importantly, how is this situation relevant to your life?


You may have noticed that the first Prisoner correctly states that his actions would be helping the enemy, while the second Prisoner incorrectly states that he will be saving his life.  This statement is incorrect because it assumes something the Captor did not say, but we often imply.  The Captor said that he would shoot the Prisoner if he did not cooperate.  The Captor did NOT say he would spare the Prisoner's life if the Prisoner cooperated.  The Captor said nothing about what would happen if the Prisoner cooperated, just what would happen if the Prisoner didn't cooperate.  So while it's implied that the Captor will not shoot those who cooperate, all we know for certain is that if you do not cooperate you will be shot in the head.

I think this kind of thing happens far more often than I would like to imagine.  I think it's most often an unspoken thing, like when a parent doesn't show affection towards his child and the child thinks if I can act differently, better than I was acting, I'll get my parent's attention.  And when the child behaves differently, the parent still doesn't show affection because the lack of affection had nothing to do with the child's behavior.  But the child continues to this that he is bad, so he continues to change, trying to get that parent's attention.

I've become fascinated with the Double Bind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind
From the article:

"A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, and one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will automatically be wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore can neither resolve it nor opt out of the situation."

The example they use is when a mother tells her child to "be spontaneous".  If the child is then spontaneous, he is doing it because he thought about it, so he's not being spontaneous.  Or when a mother says to her child "you must love me".  The child cannot win, as love is something that cannot be ordered.  There is also a connection between the development of schizophrenia and sustained double bind situations.  I stumbled across double bind while I was looking up "attention seeking behaviors".  And it made me think of a familiar double bind I've seen in action a lot:

1) teachers, parents, and lawyers tell a child he must talk to his parents

2) one parent says that he must talk to his parents

3) the other parent tells the child not to talk to the first parent, or else there will be punishment

If the child talks to his parents, he is disobeying the second parent, who has told him not to talk with his first parent.  If he doesn't talk with his parents, he is disobeying the first parent and other authority figures.  The child is unable to successfully navigate this situation and be correct.  He will always be wrong, and he will always be disobeying one of his parents.  Furthermore, if that child has witnessed the second parent-- the parent who has told him not to talk to his first parent-- emotionally and physically disowning the child's older sibling because the older sibling didn't obey every command given by the second parent, the first child now has an even bigger, unspoken punishment awaiting him if he doesn't do what his second parent says. 

I desperately tried to find something that would help alleviate the stress of this situation, something that would help the child.  I couldn't find anything.  I'm not sure there is anything that can be done.  Along with the stress the child goes through in this situation, so are those who love him also taken through the stress of this situation, to varying degrees.  Primarily, his parent is stressed, as that parent feels rejected and is not given a reason for the rejection, as the child is following the directions of the second parent who has said not to talk with the first parent.  This is a slow kind of death for the parent.

I struggle with telling my story.
I want to tell my story so that I can get it out.
I want to tell my story so that others can know about it.
I want to tell my story so that others can know what they have done.
I want to tell my story so that others can know what their friends and acquaintances have done.
I want to tell my story so that others can be warned of the dangers of the people my family has come in contact with.
I want to tell my story with every detail included, so that people can know exactly what happened, and I can purge it all.

And I am nervous about telling my story because it could potentially hurt those I love.
Those I have talked with about telling my story become nervous.
Especially while those we love are still under control of dangerous people.

And more than purging, getting over it all, and informing others of dangers, I want to keep my family safe.
More to the point, I don't want to just keep them safe but I also want to act in a way that keeps danger from visiting them.  I don't want my actions to cause more injury than assistance.  I don't want to embarrass. 

And I really want to tell this story to the world.
The world I came from is nothing like the world I'm in now.
And I'm constantly shocked that people still behave like cavemen on a regular basis.