Frames and Narratives: The Question Controls the Answer

See the Cage Before You Can Step Outside It

The way a question is framed predetermines the range of acceptable answers. Loaded questions, false dilemmas, and frames baked into single words all rig the ground before you speak. The Sanskrit name is Prakarana. The Vaadin's first move is to inspect the frame.

The Question That Was Already Wrong

The two armies stood on Kurukshetra. Eighteen akshauhinis. Several million men. Arjuna, the greatest archer of the age, sat in his chariot looking across the field at his cousins, his teachers, his uncles, his grandfather, his childhood friends. He looked, and his bow slipped from his hand. He sat down on the floor of the chariot and could not get up.

Then he turned to his charioteer and asked the question.

He asked it well. He spoke for nearly forty verses. He cited dharma. He cited the destruction of family lineages. He cited the corruption of women that follows the death of the warrior class. He cited the hells that await those who destroy their own kin. He concluded: "It would be better for me if the sons of Dhritarashtra, weapons in hand, slew me, unarmed and unresisting, on the field." He laid his bow down and looked at Krishna.

Then Krishna did something that almost no one notices.

He did not answer the question.

He did not say, "you are right, this war is wrong, let us go home." He did not say, "you are wrong, this war is just, take up your bow." He did neither. Instead he said:

अशोच्यानन्वशोचस्त्वं प्रज्ञावादांश्च भाषसे। गतासूनगतासूंश्च नानुशोचन्ति पण्डिताः॥

aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṃ prajñā-vādāṃś ca bhāṣase gatāsūn agatāsūṃś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ

You grieve for those who should not be grieved for, and yet you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

Bhagavad Gita 2.11

Then he asked his own question, in his own frame: "Who do you think you are?"

The Bhagavad Gita, all eighteen chapters, is the answer to a question Arjuna never asked. It is the most famous reframe in history. Arjuna's question was loaded. Loaded with the assumption that he was a body that would kill other bodies, a son who would orphan other sons, a relative who would destroy a family. Krishna refused every one of those assumptions. He answered a different question, on different ground, in a different frame.