Slevin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 13, 2022 1:16 pm
Maybe there is an interesting thread in suggesting that lensic bias is a limiting factor to developmental growth, and by moving frames or lenses more often (abstraction or context growth of Chomskian idea to always read many news sources to encounter less information bias), is accomplished more easily in the Renaissance Ideal (multi-faceted definition of self through many "job" lenses, "hobby" lenses, "relationship" lenses, "academic" lenses, etc) provided you already have the capacity to define yourself through multiple lenses. Maybe it will grow the idea of lenses even if you don't have it? (Study / references needed)
Nordic Ideology suggests a six-sided definition to capital through talking about types of inequality, maybe this is a good starting point to start hedging where to start building these "skills". They might be "wrong" absolutely but I think the index is relatively "good enough" and broad enough to be useful. In the book they are suggested as "economic", "social", "physiological", "emotional", "ecological", and "Informational". So maybe the "less complex" explanation of the renaissance man can be someone who has a deep level of knowledge in one pursuit / skill in each of these categories (skills will be cross categorical by definition, but explicit details and kinks can be ironed out later). It may be that the most "value" is gained at a certain multiple of skills in one category, as they would eventually give you multilensic looks and understandings of the world from each type of lens. And it might be that the hexa- or dodeca- lensic bias might be enough to start scrubbing away much of the inherent built in single lensic (or lower dimensional lensic) bias of the embodied culture and allow one to operate / embody a more integrated life path. Given that time is a finite resource to humans, probably there is an upper limit on usefulness as well.
On the related topic of self definition, I also notice this is an issue that happens a lot when someone has just a couple ways they define themselves (self definition "modules" let's say). Resilience of the overall system of self is then linked to two factors, how many "modules" you have (I am a reader, I am a disc-golfer, I am a cat-dad, I am a philosopher, whatever you want), their relative importance to you, and ability to understand the underlying definitions of your self definitions.
For a breakup with an SO or a breakup with working (retiring a career, so to say), those are usually big self definition modules, and a lot of people lose themselves / go to a darker place when they lose something like that. The system resilience from enough self definitions argument is that if you have enough self definitions you will not lose yourself in losing one of these self identities, because while you may lose one piece, you have the other pieces to fall back on which can help blunt the blow. "Oh, I am not a boyfriend / girlfriend / NB-friend anymore, but I am still a father and a friend and a philosopher and a disc golfer, and that is enough."
The other piece of this argument I made in our discord group:
To expand on the thought of multiple self definitions; usually when a large self identifier breaks, it is just a small piece of a larger constructed object that breaks, as most larger self definitions are an amalgamation of smaller self definitions. Like "employed software engineer" may be a self definition of made up of the smaller definitions: "person who makes lots of money from this task", "person who is good at complex abstract problem solving", "person who can break large complicated tasks into workable bits", and "person fluid in xxx,yyy,zzz languages" (and probably a bunch of other stuff). Really just the component money bit broke here, all the rest are invariant or acquired qualities of yourself (To put it kinda even more in OOP terms, the object that broke inherited from a lot of more basic objects that are still fine, just one inherited object broke and thus the larger object broke).
So to some degree the way that I would think of making a career change or lifestyle change is by breaking the definitions into smaller pieces you can keep alongside you... I.e. you can take "abstract problem solver" and "ability to break large tasks into smaller workable bits" and employ the gained skills / qualities towards another field in a paid position, or volunteering, or literally just solving hard math problems from a club or website or something, so you don't need to abandon the parts that are important to you (unless you want to; which is also totally fine)
So the "Loving partner of XXX" self definition after a breakup still exists, just as a slightly different "Loving partner who is currently alone", and all the self defined traits that make it up can still exist too.
This is remnant of the stoics a bit, but I think they usually put it less pragmatically than I did here, and more in a "this is wisdom" sort of way without explaining the mechanism behind it.