Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[Jin+Guice]

@jp: I read that as well in my not very deep dive on Maslow. The article I read just said he didn't believe each stage had to be fully satisfied to reach the next, only satisfied in some capacity which was somewhat variable to the individual. So yours is more in depth and more interesting.

I'm not sure I see the deficiency needs as social inputs while the growth needs are individual (except that the "love and belongingness" need, which is to me the "social" need is classified as deficiency). I think a social individual would satisfy most of the needs socially while a more introverted individual would be more likely to satisfy them alone.

[Jin+Guice]

Cognitive Needs:

Next up on the expanded Maslow’s Hierarchy is “Cognitive Needs.”

These are characterized as knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and predictability. Cognitive needs drive our pursuit of knowledge and understanding. A student’s desire to comprehend mathematical theories, a traveler’s curiosity about different cultures, or an individual’s quest for deeper meaning all exemplify these needs. Meeting these needs facilitates personal growth, comprehension, and a deeper understanding of life and its complexities.

In the mythos of pathological culture, cognitive needs are supposed to be fulfilled by our work. Yet it is often challenging to find work that is intellectually stimulating and challenging throughout one's entire life. Many jobs reduce someone to continually completing the same task over and over again, with most learning completed in the first few months.

As such, meeting one’s cognitive needs is left up to the individual. Thankfully industrialized culture has much to learn about. From the mechanics of various machines to different philosophical theories, the amount of knowledge, things to know about and information available is staggering. Finding adequate intellectual conversation among peers can sometimes prove more difficult.

Sadly, continued education and learning into adulthood is the exception rather than the rule. Most adults are caught up in the rat race of acquiring ever more money, to store ever more stuff they don’t use in a larger and larger house.

Luckily, for the intrepid individual, this process can be mostly bypassed. A lifetime of learning and intrigue awaits. Because the illusion of cognitive pursuits is currently emphasized by pathological society and pathological society has made information resources very accessible and cheap, it’s possible to curate your own education, either using the institutions of industrial society for your own ends or by using the vast amount of information available to learn whatever you want. Once one unlocks oneself from the desk or assembly line, it is possible to recapture the wonder and amazement of youth. The most difficult task becomes choosing from all of the alluring options.

[jacob]

Keep in mind that most developmental personality scales don't correct for temperament. They just describe an average.

This also holds the other way around. Temperamental scales rarely describe development.

So there's much work to be done.

[Jin+Guice]

@jacob: How do you feel like temperament effects development and vice versa?

[jennypenny]

The deficiency needs require some social inputs. Food and safety are much easier to come by if you have a cohesive social structure around you. And no one would make it out of childhood if not for social inputs. From my reading on this, I also believe that divergent temperaments are a luxury of strong, reliable social inputs over time.

[jacob]

@jacob: How do you feel like temperament effects development and vice versa?

[Ego] development for different temperaments initially goes in different directions, yet eventually they come together at the same point as people develop/understand/integrate more and more of their functions/neurochemistry.

[Jin+Guice]

Aesthetic Needs:

Next on Maslow’s Hierarchy are “Aesthetic Needs.”

Aesthetic needs describe our need for beauty and form. It includes appreciation for the arts, music and other aesthetic forms of expression. Fulfilling this need goes beyond sensory satisfaction as we seek to find the emotional and psychological harmony that helps us feel at peace with our environment.

Aesthetic needs drive our desire to create beautiful objects and works of art. They drive our desire for well designed cities, spaces and objects. Aesthetics are not merely limited to the arts. A craftsman who makes beautiful objects, a scientist or engineer who recognizes elegance in their work, all of these are aesthetic.

On the surface, pathological culture dismisses the aesthetic to the economic. A pleasant environment is sacrificed for a productive one. Aesthetic concerns are given lip service but sacrificed to the productive. Aesthetic pursuits such as creation of art or music are seen as a waste of time and resources.

Beneath the surface aesthetics are acknowledged and celebrated. Those who become famous through aesthetics are worshiped as royalty or gods. Interestingly, sales and marketing recognize the importance of aesthetics. Though corporate culture creates bland aesthetics and advertisements degrade the physical environment with the use of billboards and other offensive mediums, marketers work with a strong sense of how we are influenced by aesthetics. From branding to design to commercials there is almost no place where the impact of aesthetics on emotions and decision making is more recognized than in marketing. A salesperson or marketing team who fails to realize the importance of aesthetics will not be successful.

While it may be difficult for most individuals to eek out a living as an artist, musician or other aesthetic entrepreneur, thankfully, aesthetics are not limited to professionals. Supplies for aesthetic creation have never been cheaper. With the use of ERE abundant time can be created for aesthetic pursuits. For those who don’t desire aesthetic creation, making the spaces you have control over or your own body aesthetically pleasing to all senses can be a form of aesthetic expression and fulfillment. For those who crave market recognition, amateur, local and small scale markets are an excellent place to pedal your creative wares.

[Jin+Guice]

Needs, Insecurities, FI, Wheaton Levels and Resilience:

This concludes my series on Maslow’s Hierarchy (unless I think of something else compelling to say).

Maslow was primarily interested in the top two levels which are self-actualization and transcendence. While these are lofty and interesting concepts they go beyond what I’m interested in discussing for this series of posts.

I don’t think it’s important to use Maslow’s Hierarchy or any externally generated hierarchy. Maslow’s extended hierarchy felt roughly correct for my needs so I decided to use it as a template to show how one could think about their needs.



I think Maslow’s concept of deficiency and growth needs is interesting. Rather than strictly define certain categories of needs as deficiency or growth needs I think each need can have deficiency and/or growth components. For example food is necessary to live and when you are hungry you experience a deficiency need in food. But food can pretty much fit into every category of need. Aspiring to be a good chef can be an area of growth.

Rather than think about which needs are deficiency and which needs are growth, I think it’s smarter to ask yourself what you are deficient in and which areas you want to grow in?

Are you default alive or dead in those areas with your current resources?

It’s difficult to fully realize growth needs if you are unable to meet deficiency needs. Keep in mind deficiency needs can be in any area. You are likely to eventually be stifled in the areas you wish to succeed in if you don’t have enough sleep, don’t feel safe, are emotionally stunted or repressed, are socializing not enough or don’t have enough privacy, are intellectually under or over stimulated or if you don’t have a pleasant space to live and work in.

The purpose of knowing your needs is getting where you’re trying to go. It’s very difficult to do this if you cannot identify and interact with your needs.

This is where insecurities get in the way. Insecurities are the subconscious reactivating no longer useful survival protocols developed in situations where we were or perceived ourselves to be powerless. It’s the activation of the primal fear of not being able to meet one’s survival needs. For humans, survival needs include an element of social belonging (very difficult to survive completely on your own). Interactions with other people are highly governed by emotional awareness and health.

Insecurities cause a breakdown in cognitive abilities. The mind is covertly hijacked by the subconscious/ system I (Khamen and Tversky)/ the elephant (Haidt). Worse, the mind will attempt to hide this and it will happen automatically. An insecurity is a belief that a need will not be met, which will cause you to act as though that need cannot be met, which often leads to that need not getting met, creating a self reinforcing feedback loop.

Here are some signs of insecurities: lying in a situation where you are not powerless*; trying to accomplish something for a long time and being unable to accomplish it, make progress or reassess and change goals (weight loss/ exercise comes to mind); consistently complaining about something without acting to change it; often feeling negatively or feel negatively in general**.


*be careful if you think you don’t have power. Most adults in free countries have much greater power over their lives and decisions than they believe.

**not the same as optimism/ pessimism or expressing negative opinions. I’m talking about an internal feeling of general well being.

Power is very important when thinking about insecurities. Seek to change the things which you control and to accept the things which you do not.

Forbidding yourself from bitching or getting even angrier at yourself for repeated failure will only make your insecurity worse. Instead, try to notice this is happening without judgment. Then ask yourself where the insecurity lies (this is easier blogged about than done).


Insecurities aside, identifying needs can help us on our FI, ERE and semi-ERE journeys.

The first step is to become “default alive” in all needs. This means: if present conditions continued, would you be able to meet your needs? Do you have the cash flow to meet your needs? The time? The people? The energy?

If we are FI seekers, the next step is to become FI in our needs. Are you FI in your deficiency food needs? What about a warm and soft place to sleep?

The next question is: are we resilient in our needs? This is the reason I started thinking about needs and ERE. After we cross over the moat from WL5 to WL6, how to choose which skills to focus on? If we are still pursuing ERE, the answer is becoming resilient across our needs.

An important caveat: not all needs can be met with money. Since we are finally able to remove most of our attention from the singular precious goal of optimizing monetary accumulation, we can also pay more attention to these other needs.

Also note that although I am listing FI before resilience, there is no reason we can’t become resilient in certain things without being FI.


Thus we can ask ourselves, are we default alive in our needs? Are we FI? Are we resilient?

It’s possible to be default dead in some needs, default alive in others, FI in others and resilient in others. As mentioned in the book, you can think “my investments cover my food and transportation expenses forever!” Now you can think “my current cash flow covers my permaculture project, I’m FI in food and housing and I’m resilient in friendship and objects I can make woodworking.”

When looking at which skills to work on, which projects to fund, which relationships to focus on, which capitals to build, we can think about how each interacts with our needs, particularly those which we currently feel deficient in and those which we are trying to grow into.

[jennypenny]

Next on Maslow’s Hierarchy are “Aesthetic Needs.”

Something about placing aesthetic needs separate from/above cognitive needs on the hierarchy doesn't sit right with me. Aren't they both cognitive needs, just viewed from different areas of the brain? I guess if you view it as cognitive=function and aesthetic=form, then it works (maybe), but I rarely hear it described that simply. Honestly, it sounds like someone who less artistic in nature assuming that artistic pursuits don't require as much cognitive ability or provide the same kind of cognitive satisfaction. (I'd argue that often, to an artist, form IS function, therefore separating the two is missing the point. Stated another way, what a function-first person sees as 'form' is often what an artist sees as 'function', making the stacking on Maslow's Hierarchy incorrect.)

[Henry]

I would distinguish within cognition the categories of comprehending and apprehending. You want to apprehend the Mona Lisa. You want to comprehend the Italian Renaissance period. Einstein comprehended gravity. I don't. But I do apprehend that unless I want to kill myself I don't jump off a bridge. I don't need full comprehension of gravity to possess true knowledge of it. I think post-enlightenment Western Civilization has lost the distinction and why we bifurcate the shit out of everything.

[Jin+Guice]

I stopped using heat this winter and it is actually rather pleasant. I wear a bunch of clothes inside. It rarely goes below freezing here, but the humidity makes it feel quite cold. My girlfriend usually turns the heat on when she is home. I do notice that I have a bit less energy when it is very cold.

[Jin+Guice]

"The Ascent of Humanity" by Charles Eisenstein

I finished reading "The Ascent of Humanity" by Charles Eisenstein yesterday. I highly recommend this book.

What I got from the book:

Humanity, both individually and collectively, suffer from anxiety.

This anxiety comes from separation from the universe and its natural abundance. In other words, it comes from a scarcity mentality rather than an abundance mentality. The "mentality" is both mindset and reality.

This separation is caused by technology. Eisenstein traces the roots to pre-human tool use. Each additional tool/ technology alters our relationship to the non-tool environment and slowly causes us to become dependent. Each tool unlocks the opportunity for new tools and ideas built upon existing technology and modes of thought. The majority of the book is Eisenstein describing this process and various ways it manifests.

His exploration of this was fascinating and I highly recommend the book. Some salient points of this process are that: 1) it has been happening for a long time; 2) it happens very slowly and imperceptibly; 3) technologies tend to be locked in after they are adopted (which also happens slowly and imperceptibly).

His hypothesis of anxiety caused by scarcity caused by separation was the most interesting part to me. "Separation," "anxiety" and "scarcity" are used very broadly. We are separated from the earth by our houses, but also separated from our culture, our communities, our families, each other, our work and ourselves. Cumulatively this adds up to a separate way of being that centers the "self."

Since we feel separate from the world, we start to form a concept of self/me/mine that is outside of the rest of the world. [Warning: this part is New Agey and I don't think you have to TOTALLY AGREE with it to get something from the rest of the theory. I, however, found this part resonated with me]. We view ourselves as completely separate from the universe instead of a part of the whole of the universe. On the level of the universe that we physically interact with, this means we see ourselves as separate from the things we interact with that are outside our physical shell of a body. We view "ourselves" ending at our skin. The concept of self as an entity which is separate from the rest of world is what causes the separation, anxiety and scarcity mentality.

The anxiety and scarcity we feel causes us to try to extend our physical domain by extending our realm of control beyond our own skin*.

*We also try to extend our realm of control over our own bodies as well, both as a result and cause of our separation from ourselves.

Eisenstein believes this attempt to extend our domain of control, which is an attempt to assuage the anxiety of scarcity, is the root cause of our problems. From war to poverty to addiction to pandemics to loneliness to climate crisis, as our desire for control to eliminate an anxiety that can never be satisfied extends, so do our problems.




While reading this, tying in this theory to ERE and my series of posts on needs was at the forefront of my mind. I thought of what taking Eisenstein's hypothesis as true and relating it to ERE would mean.

Viewed through the lens of anxiety, ERE is about lessening the anxiety of consumer culture and its implied scarcity mentality. It assuages the fear of scarcity by building resiliency. I thought about this in terms of the Wheaton Levels:


WL 0-2 is about scarcity. WL 1 is in fact named "Scarcity." At this level we are immersed fully in the consumer praxis, believing the mythology most of us have been surrounded by since birth. This is a world of competition for scarce resources, which are aggregated as money. At this level, introducing more money into the personal system, which it is assumed will extend the locus of control, is the solution to all problems. At this level we truly experience a scarcity of money. There is never enough of it. As we progress from WL 0 to 2 the reasons differ. At WL 0 it is because we are paying for everything several times over due to debt financing. At WL 2 it is because more money allows us to accumulate more things, experiences, friends, safety, whatever we feel we are lacking.

There is a well known flaw in this thinking. If someone who claims that a little more money will solve all of their problems suddenly gets a bunch of money, through an unexpected inheritance or lottery winning, it is well documented that often almost none of their problems are solved. They often get worse.

The shift in thinking from WL 0-2 is to stop believing the myth of scarcity of money. Once we wake up to the staggering amount of money we waste in order to perpetuate the myth of scarcity in modern society it is almost unbelievable. How many of us have had the experience of talking to a friend or loved one whom you've tried to help by suggesting they waste less, only to be met with their insistence that this is not only undesirable but actually impossible?

As we progress from WL 3 to 5, we realize that money is a less scarce resource than we thought. Where once there was too little for even today we now have 2-9x as much as we require. We think we've changed habits and we may have, but what ultimately changed was perspective.

The fatal flaw is that, at WL 5, we are still beholden to the myth of money. As we reach the "optimal" amount of money, this myth begins to crumble. There is no amount of money that one can have today that guarantees they will have enough tomorrow. No amount of money can guarantee that we will have money tomorrow, much less food, housing, clothing, friends and physical safety. Unfortunately, the myth of money is the dominant myth of our people. With no obvious myth to replace the myth of money, we become trapped at WL 5. Where a few short years ago, the realization that we could meet even today's needs momentarily freed us from scarcity, we now perceive scarcity unless we are economically secure in all possible futures. Thus as we initially free ourselves from scarcity by becoming masters of money, we must change our mindset away from the myth of money, at precisely the moment we most fully master it.

This is no short order. We must escape the myth of money, which is the foundational myth of our people (and if you're following along from Eisenstein a foundational myth of separation which has perpetuated for thousands of years, if not longer) just as we have become its master. If we do not do this, we cannot hope to escape from the anxiety of scarcity. I'm not suggesting that the anxiety of scarcity is not reduced in a very real, material and emotional way by mastery over money. I am suggesting that this anxiety is not fully escaped, which is why people most often lack fulfillment at this stage of ERE. The "WL 5 moat" is where people give up. Are there any examples of someone getting to WL 8 and going back to unfulfilling work because they realize they actually want more money?

What happens as we cross the WL 5 moat is we escape the myth of money. We require a new myth.

As we progress from WL 6 to 8 we build skills towards resiliency. Thus the myth of resiliency replaces the myth of money. In terms of separation, resiliency lessens separation as we take our first baby steps towards noticing the abundance around us. We realize that money is an abstraction and that needs can be fulfilled more directly. We start to recognize "yields and flows" from non-financial sources. At first these sources are seen as separate. As we progress from WL 6 to 8 we see these sources flow into each other. The outputs and waste from one source become the inputs for the next source. We "close the loops" of our personal system, thus eliminating the separation between resource flows.

At this point I again ask you to indulge me in some New Agery. I'm using my interpretation of "The Ascent of Humanity" as a guide. I am WL 6 so my interpretation of anything beyond WL 6 is speculative and intellectual, not coming from my lived experience (also true of WLs below 4).

At WL8 we have closed all loops and fully exited Plato's Cave of Consumerism. We have done this by recognizing the abundance around us which goes beyond they myth of money. While our goal was resilience we have also removed separation from the world around us by becoming more engaged with it. What catalyzed me over the WL 5 moat was boredom and ennui. It is not particularly interesting or fun to hoard money by doing repetitive tasks for someone else (or your internal dictator, the shadow of all anxiety to come before you). I don't think it is particularly fun to learn survival skills out of necessity. What is fun is play. WL 6 is nothing if not rediscovering the world around us through play.

As we rediscover our sense of play and wonder, ostensibly building skills to build resilience, we become more connected to the world. Not only is our anxiety reduced, but our time and energy become more abundant. At WL 8 we have built a system that takes minimal effort to maintain and is capable of meeting our needs in multiple ways. The time and energy which were once sacrificed to myth that we could capture enough money to control our way to fulfillment are now freely gifted back to us. Again we move from scarce to abundant.

At WL 8 we max out the self-serving ego state of unlimited want. The separate entity known as "me" has removed the separation between "ourselves" and the abundance around them. If we were born into a society that taught us how to survive and thrive, I speculate that this would be the point where we reach adulthood.

What we learn beyond WL 8, where we are fully able to take care of and participate in ourselves, is that a life lived in isolation is not much of a life at all. There is in fact no isolation and no strict separation between us and the rest of existence. While the WLs beyond 9 are still being generated, it is clear that the focus must turn outward, as the internal system takes care of itself.

While I don't know what the next steps are, I suggest (and again draw on "Ascent of Humanity" for inspiration), that we continue to close the separation between "us" and "not us" by engaging as a full participant in moments as we experience them. Engaging fully with our bodies, minds, hearts, family, lovers, friends, work, play, community, tribe, world and universe. That we seek our purpose and place in each of these groups as we pursue beauty and creativity in thought, emotion, sensation and connection as well dissolve the boundaries between them.

In other words:

"The person will be a playful fountain of creative solutions and connections, yet feel none of the frustration that earlier stages encountered when misunderstood. They will hold multiple perspectives including perspectives on perspectives and further perspectives on those meta-perspectives both in a theoretical sense and practically useful way. Engagement with the systems, sub-systems, and meta-systems of the autonomous person earlier will be based on a wide and deep level of experience and thus appear natural, spontaneous, and concordant with ethical principles."

[Jin+Guice]

"Ascent" and Community

"Ascent of Humanity" has an idea about community I think is useful given the recent interest on the forum to generate IRL communities as well as the discussion around (lack of) community in our present cultural moment. Eisenstein posits that community is built around mutual dependence. He has a lot of ideas about money, but one is that our current monetary system perpetuates isolation by making us wholly dependent on money to meet our economic needs. This causes a breakdown in community because (among other reasons) we no longer depend on those around us to meet our needs. If we attempt to build an "intentional community" where people do not rely on each other, we are doomed to failure.

Building community in this way is very difficult (and possibly impossible) as existing structures make it so dependence is unnecessary. We deeply fear dependence on other people. In the present system, the other party can opt-out of a mutual dependence based community and go back into the myth of separation system. We also lack experience in non-monetary community, making the task all the more difficult.

We've tricked ourselves into believing we don't rely on other people. The truth is, as we've monetize things we used to do for ourselves in addition to things we used to get from the people we knew, we've never been more reliant on other people. These people are invisible to us. However, anything you pay for is in some way or another handled by other people. In this way we've extended our community to the entire globe. If economic needs were the only thing that mattered, as the myth of money asserts, we would have a stronger feeling of community than ever before. Yet even writing this into a sentence feels like a demented joke, as I know on some deep and visceral level that a community of strangers who I manipulate with the abstract symbol of money is no community at all.

While I can't think of any solutions at the community level, I think a useful first step is attempting to become more personally dependent on those around you while also taking care of others. Eisenstein's suggestions of how to achieve this are: 1) to take note of the abundance around us (so that we may believe in abundance, but not in a niave way) and 2) to become more generous, particularly learning to exchange and receive gifts. I think these are wise first steps.

[AxelHeyst]

Great writeups.

On the last point, I think one failure mode is attempting to rush modern humans into dependent relationships with e.g. income sharing. There are a few communities out there where that seems to work and that's great, but I think it's also wise to take a 'meet people where they're at' approach. This could look like not starting with a community vision where everyone has to give up their savings, share all income, and be totally dependent. Make room for individual property ownership, give people an out, and be cool with people coming and going.

I had a conversation with an intentional community once and the founder made it clear that he was only interested in people who wanted to move their for the rest of their lives.

[jacob]

"Ascent of Humanity" has an idea about community I think is useful given the recent interest on the forum to generate IRL communities as well as the discussion around (lack of) community in our present cultural moment. Eisenstein posits that community is built around mutual dependence. He has a lot of ideas about money, but one is that our current monetary system perpetuates isolation by making us wholly dependent on money to meet our economic needs. This causes a breakdown in community because (among other reasons) we no longer depend on those around us to meet our needs. If we attempt to build an "intentional community" where people do not rely on each other, we are doomed to failure.

I prefer the standard definition of community that only requires "a shared socially significant characteristic".

For example, if you are traveling abroad and hear someone else speaking your native language, you're probably inclined to go introduce yourself because the language is a "shared socially significant characteristic". The scientific community shares the socially significant characteristic of thinking about the same things in the same way.

It may be that the intention of a constructed community is to depend on each other. The socially significant characteristic is thus being dependent. Insofar the dependence is mutual with no other dependencies outside the community (like money)---independence not allowed---it sounds borderline codependent to me. I suspect that why intentional communities built around no-other-choice dependency tends to fall apart.

The thing I fear most about such dependence---actually I don't fear it as much as I resent it---is becoming the "work horse" for a bunch of "show and talk horses". This is perhaps best summarized in the pithy statement: "They need me more than I need them!" The NASA-term for this particular situation is that one person is overfactored in that he can do all the jobs better than any of the rest of the community or team. There are typically three outcomes to this: 1) He leaves being better off on his own. 2) He ends up overworked either doing other people's jobs for them or teaching them on top of his own. 3) The team produces inferior work.

The third outcome is often seen when the outcome doesn't matter, like when the kitchen counter in a community kitchen goes uncleaned. Insofar individual contributions are easily seen AND it is possible to kick inferior performers and free-riders off the team, dependence turns into interdependence and this can be a beautiful thing. For example, it's impossible to do a very smooth job at sailing a yacht single-handed. A coordinated effort between competent crew members yields a much better result. Likewise, a hockey team is far more effective than group of show-boaters who just happen to wear the same shirtcolor (compare European soccer as it was in the 1980s to what it became in the 1990s and has been since then).

But if you're in a situation, where the value of individual contributions becomes unclear and non-obvious---perhaps because of ideology---the effectiveness goes way down. Things take twice or ten times longer than they have to. Meanwhile, people manage to convince themselves that they actually "got a lot of work done" because in their mind, "together" was more important than "done".

I see the FIRE community as having the shared social characteristic that they're financially independent. They can talk about what they do all day when they no longer spend all day working for a living. They can get together and do it together instead of being off on their own. I see the ERE community as having the shared social characteristic of not depending on money and thus not depending on making it. They can talk about how they do that on their own (as we we here on the forum, an online community, in the form of international travel, hikes, appliance repairs, small builds). They can get together and do it together than maybe make something more incredible than what we currently spend our time on individually.

[daylen]

But if you're in a situation, where the value of individual contributions becomes unclear and non-obvious---perhaps because of ideology---the effectiveness goes way down. Things take twice or ten times longer than they have to. Meanwhile, people manage to convince themselves that they actually "got a lot of work done" because in their mind, "together" was more important than "done".

It seems there is an important tension here between implicit and explicit value. If the effectiveness is purely "I know it when I see it" or "We know it when we each see it", then there is an implicit assumption of value being held by the individual or group recognizing that "work was done". Say the work is hunting and the implicit assumption is "meat good". Everyone scrambles to get more meat until the ecosystem has no more meat. A race to the bottom occurs that could have been perhaps avoided by making the assumptions more explicit and expanding them into some kind of framework or ideology. These frameworks, if successful, may then become instantiated into institutions that continue to evolve and overcome various game theoretic traps. Or maybe just delay them.

A balancing act seems to be at play to avoid oppressive ideologies and their respective institutionalization as well as to enable players in implicit games to make their own decisions without crashing the games. This applies more to larger collectives with laws but still relevant to smaller collectives that are less explicit about values.

There seems to be this arc in life where you start off not really knowing what you want or what "done" even looks like. Somewhere in mid-life people tend to get more certain about their values and what "done" looks like. Then they spend the rest their lives modifying their values and goal posts to be more nuanced as reality checks kick in. For many people this arc goes a little smoother together and that probably isn't going to go away.

That third way between individual and communities.. dividuals that are not bound to ideology yet also not ignorant of its significance. Both able to succeed in games and steer the course of games away from collective traps.

[Jin+Guice]

Thanks for the comments y'all.

To clarify my previous statement, a lack of dependence is a problem for modern day communities. The solution is NOT forcing dependence. @jacob points out another reason modern communities face difficulties. Most people lack skills to be interdependent. I don't just mean the social skills of interdependency (although we lack those too) but enough skills to be interdependent with other people because we can't do enough for ourselves.

"Ascent of Humanity" is getting the interdependent community idea from hunter/ gatherer tribes. It's well documented that these tribes are very communal. It's well known that this is not a choice, it is much more difficult for them to survive and thrive without each other. So these are not "intentional communities" they are "necessary communities."

The ideas the book draws on are: 1) Hunter gatherer community is so strong because they depend on each other (in a group where everyone is trained to contribute from birth) and 2) hunter gatherer society is where we came from, so we are built to seek this type of "community" but unable to replicate it in our present environment.

So following this the hypothesis is we crave community we are unable to create because the modern world does not give us the tools necessary for its creation and provides us with alternatives that dissuade community.

Long on problems short on solutions. However, knowing the problem allows us to search for solutions. @jacob is coming from the other side of the problem, observing present day reality and guessing at solutions. Eisenstein is trying to figure out the root cause of the problem and using that to try to guess solutions.

[jacob]

"Ascent of Humanity" is getting the interdependent community idea from hunter/ gatherer tribes.

In particularly Green circles, you'll hear people talking about "the innate wisdom of human beings" while passing around a "talking stick" to ensure that everybody is heard and no one is heard more than anyone else. People symbolically arrange themselves in a circle, this presumably being the best geometric image of something that lacks hierarchy. Another common method is to place an empty chair or a potted plant in the middle of the circle and talk to [the plant]. This signifies that there's no leader and that people are talking to the circle and not each other. I am not making this up!

I think this works IF AND ONLY IF people are almost equally skilled with equal stakeholderships, such as is the case in a hunter/gatherer tribe. In this special case everybody has almost the same [intersubjective] understanding of the situation and the [interobjective] situation is the same for everybody. The circle then serves to make some subjective adjustments.

In modern contemporary groups this probably works in therapy groups, AA meetings, a play groups of snotty school children, and congressional committees, but it's terrible for project-management because non-tribal humans are rarely equally skilled and often do not have the same stake in the outcome.

In my highly judgemental opinion/experience, these arrangements are mostly welcomed by underfactored people, who are better off together than they are on their own. (They can be recognized by their insistence that nothing can be done without community---which is probably true in their case.) In these situations overfactored people end up in two roles, one good and one bad. Either they're the "facilitator" (like the teacher or the therapist), because being called "leader" would be hierarchical. Since there are can only one facilitator, the other overfactored people in the circle eventually end up with "all the responsibility, but none of the authority"; the circle having equitably used their innate wisdom to agree on what the "group" wants to be done and left it to the work horses to get it done. Basically, overfactored people get the raw end of the deal unless they can maneuver themselves into the "respected elder" (benign power monger) position. Because of that there tends to be quite a bit of backroom politics outside the circle in order to get the circle to vibe in their desired way.

Upfactoring underfactored members is possible to a degree, but often they're not actually that interested. They may not be skilled but they do possess enough innate human wisdom to realize how this will mean more work for them. Overfactored members can downfactor themselves by avoiding "becoming known as the guy who knows how to fix the printer". Playing dumber than you are is a wise coping strategy when smart people are forced into underfactored teams, such as school group-work.

Methinks humans just want to be seen as who they are. Namaste! I do think circling does that for some dimensions of being human, such as being able to fog a mirror and expressing emotions, both of which are widely ignored in modern (Orange) society. OTOH, it's also terrible in situations, where skills differ by orders of magnitude. Of course a highly skilled person also want to be seen by another equally skilled person. However, this is not going to happen by forcing him into a group where he'll have to learning the socialization skills of playing dumb in order to be accepted.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of looking into prehistoric times to see what humans need

[zbigi]

In modern contemporary groups this probably works in therapy groups, AA meetings, a play groups of snotty school children, and congressional committees, but it's terrible for project-management because non-tribal humans are rarely equally skilled and often do not have the same stake in the outcome.

It also works quite well in software development. Many modern teams are leaderless by design, as no single person could hold enough of the problem in their head to routinely have better ideas than individual team members. Your conditions also hold true here: "people are almost equally skilled with equal stakeholderships".
Situations like Linux kernel development, where Linus is still the dictator (or was, until recently he was sort-of forced to take a break to address his "anger issues") are an exception, requiring a truly exceptional individual like Linus.

[7Wannabe5]

It seems there is an important tension here between implicit and explicit value. If the effectiveness is purely "I know it when I see it" or "We know it when we each see it", then there is an implicit assumption of value being held by the individual or group recognizing that "work was done".

+1

Playing dumber than you are is a wise coping strategy when smart people are forced into underfactored teams, such as school group-work.

It can also be seen as an opportunity for creativity with the "under-factored" humans in your group akin to random ingredients found in a kitchen where you are charged with making dinner. My 8th grade (1978) production of "Napoleon Fever" comes to mind.

I see the ERE community as having the shared social characteristic of not depending on money and thus not depending on making it. They can talk about how they do that on their own (as we we here on the forum, an online community, in the form of international travel, hikes, appliance repairs, small builds). They can get together and do it together than maybe make something more incredible than what we currently spend our time on individually.

I think you need to expand on this and share it on the ERE City thread. I was considering my answers to the survey, and happened to be re-reading "Getting Things Done", and Allen's observations on exploring "purpose" in project design struck me as highly relevant, because the survey at level "what?" seems to be putting the cart before the horse a bit with asking "where?" and "how?" prior to clearly answering "why?" One of the primary reasons humans generally group together socially (starting with the dyad) is to meet their more basic mammalian level needs (such as Jin+Guice discussed above.) Clearly, ERE city is not primarily imagined/visioned with primary purpose being something like providing forum members with all the hugs or other forms of warm communion they might need/want. My current understanding is that the primary "purpose" would be more like that of Bell Labs, a sort of human high-skill "factor"y towards 21st century resilience. IOW, the emphasis would be on creative work, but as with all things there would still be boring or annoying work such as "the dishes" and "fixing the printer" that would have to be addressed, and your concern is not that the creative work (writing/directing/costume-design/musically-arranging "Napoleon Fever") will largely fall to the more highly factored, but that they will also be on tap for much of the boring/annoying work (typing up "Napoleon Fever", filling out the associated worksheet.) If this is reflective of your concern/possible resentment-vortex, my response would be "Hello, welcome to the world of just about every high-factored female prior to approximately 1969."

I would also note that the feeling of resentment is almost always indicative of the poor practice of forming covert contract, so the solution is towards forming overt yet flexible contract. One simple example of how an overt, flexible contract may be formed in flattish hierarchy is Group Agrees On Potluck -> Facilitator Request All Members in Moment to Write Down Their Contribution to Potluck on Post-It Notes -> Post-It Notes are organized on Potluck Project Board -> Gaps are noted -> Gaps are voluntarily filled. This is pretty much how work assignments were handled in the Co-op with over 30 member I once belonged to with little stress or difficulty.