SD: Self-identity

The "other" ERE. Societal aspects of the ERE philosophy. Emergent change-making, scale-effects,...
jacob
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SD: Self-identity

Post by jacob »

Insofar it's possible to say something about how one's self-identity is constructed (see this timestamp https://youtu.be/0MGQgQZHx1Q?t=1107 ) in SD terms, it may be possible to change this identity by shifting the reference point and ignite a form of memetic mimicry once density is achieved. Much like an orange narrative is forced by asking people what they do for a living leaving non-orange identities hanging.

Purple I am: a Mom, Dad, ... (family role)
Red I am: "... of the clan MacLeod", Republican, Democrat, US Marine,... (extended family, tribe)
Blue I am: a Christian, British, ... (sociocentric)
Orange I am a: Chemist, an Accountant, ... (individual success, "what do you do for a living?")
Green I am a: ??? (mandatory inclusive, worldcentric)
Yellow I am a: ???

I'm finding it rather hard to nail down green and yellow. For the most part green always talks about community and being inclusive but there's not much ego involved. Yellow tend to be about "what differences they've made" and will talk about what they've contributed but be rather skittish in terms of defining themselves.

PS: There are obviously clever responses. Green would probably say "I am a human being".

white belt
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by white belt »

Another green one might be something like “I am a citizen of Earth”. I think it’s a common trope you see in science fiction that involves interplanetary travel and alien species. Suddenly identity isn’t based on individual country as much as a planet or species.

I think of Star Wars where you might have 2 individuals from different species that are from the same planet (e.g. human and twi’lek from Tattooine or Coruscant). Then again there are also some planets that clearly are home to a specific species (I haven’t seen many non-wookies from Kashyyk). You could also say you are a citizen of the Empire or a member of the Rebellion which would go beyond any planetary/species allegiance. In some cases we see this even going beyond the concept of species to include droids who technically aren’t even living organisms.

But is that perspective truly green, or is it just a another version of blue? Science fiction is usually full of allegory for contemporary human conflicts which generally come down to red/blue dynamics.
Last edited by white belt on Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

daylen
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by daylen »

For yellow, if you push they might say something like "I am a network" or "I am these networks", indicating a scale-free association that could direct the conversation in any number of ways. Leading perhaps to mentioning of cool facts/properties of networks at a particular scale that both parties presumably identify with.

Both green and yellow will tend to take context and tone more into consideration and gravitate towards edges. In terms of shifting the reference point, seems that talk of species and the relatedness of humans to plants/fungi starts to crawl on the typical edge of green comfort. As there is no ultimate or universal reason to believe that humans are any more related to each other than to a block of wood. Cycling further around to properties of networks and an attempt at locating the transition between animate and inanimate.

Tyler9000
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Tyler9000 »

I feel like "I am a good manager" might work at the green level. Anyone who can build and maintain happy teams seems to fit the description pretty well. There might also be a few judges in that category who seek equitable outcomes and community harmony through jury consensus. A key characteristic seems to be the ability to positively influence others.

For yellow, a few things that come to mind are "explorer" and "inventor".

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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What level is “self-employed slacker?” :lol:

I think maybe the Yellow perspective allows you to self-describe as appropriate to context.

jacob
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by jacob »

:idea: ... that the introduction of pluralism likely negates the desire/ability to self-identify with a single role beyond that point.

The OP question is thus void/answered.

That said, does anyone have suggestions for bridging/ghettoing the gap. Leading the next mingling event with "I am large. I contain multitudes" seems ineffective. Sorry, I just can't do that with a straight face.

daylen
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by daylen »

I tend to pick a role for myself just outside the edge of current comfort. As then I may take on an experimental disposition foreshadowing ego transcendence. Though, walking that edge is like tightroping with a partner between two paragliders gaggling up a turbulent wind current with an incoming tornado.

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Ego
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 11:17 am
That said, does anyone have suggestions for bridging the gap. Leading the next mingling event with "I am large. I contain multitudes" seems ineffective. Sorry, I just can't do that with a straight face.
To convey the idea you may need to say it several times, each time using the terms of a different tradition.
"The Buddhists call it.... "
"My fellow Physicists may say.... "
"Jesus said....."
"A computer scientist may think of it like...."

The listener who is otherwise open to the idea will hear the one they want to hear.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by mountainFrugal »

"Philosopher of multiple perspectives." You could then tailor follow-up questions/conversation to whatever your fellow cocktail party goes are interested in.
Last edited by mountainFrugal on Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tyler9000
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Tyler9000 »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 11:17 am
That said, does anyone have suggestions for bridging/ghettoing the gap. Leading the next mingling event with "I am large. I contain multitudes" seems ineffective. Sorry, I just can't do that with a straight face.
One thing that has worked for me when someone new asks the orange question "what do you do?" is to reply along the lines of:

"Lots of things, really. But these days, my top-3 areas of expertise are X, Y, and Z. What about you?"

Maybe that's not exactly yellow, but it at least avoids quick compartmentalization. And a bonus is that it allows the other person to select the topic closest to their own interests for further discussion.

jacob
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by jacob »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:11 pm
"Lots of things, really. But these days, my top-3 areas of expertise are X, Y, and Z. What about you?"

Maybe that's not exactly yellow, but it at least avoids quick compartmentalization. And a bonus is that it allows the other person to select the topic closest to their own interests for further discussion.
I like that one. It seems better than the non-offensive elite-corporate approved version of "What's your current project?" which presumes a singular focus.

OTOH, a sentence is not as robust as a single noun (dad, redshirt, federation, starfleet, ...), so I think maybe pluralist+ could do a little more work?!

Green: roost organizer, corps w/o frontiers, ...
Yellow: intellectual gunslinger, systems hatchet operator, ...

That would be the passive response though.
The active aggressive question might be "so what do you do beyond your job?" or "what are your interests beyond TV and sports?"

white belt
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by white belt »

Another common response I've heard is variations on the "I wear many hats" theme. Kind of like Tyler's quote except it is going one level deeper to appeal to sense of identity, not just activities that one does. "What are the top 3 hats you wear these days?"

I guess you also commonly see this in official biography blurbs and in obituaries, which are attempting to distill the complexities of an entire life into a few sentences. E.g. he was a father, pastor, farmer, husband, brother, businessman, chef, etc.

Toska2
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Toska2 »

I am my brothers' keeper.

Local and world centric while including objects, ideas and systems.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

I am becoming.

oldbeyond
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by oldbeyond »

Perhaps Lebenskünstler? https://blogs.transparent.com/german/un ... skunstler/

Also adopted by my native tongue as Levnadskonstnär, perhaps it also exists in the Danish language?

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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

When my kids were in elementary school we lived in a majority conservative rural small town with about 15% commuters to liberal university based city. My daughter consulted with me about what she was supposed to do when other little girls asked her to pray around the flagpole before school. I told her to do what she liked, it’s good to have all sorts of friends, and if anybody asks just say “We’re mostly Episcopalian.” (because it was never going to be the Episcopalian kids who are asking.)

There’s always a “We’re mostly Episcopalian.” answer to any question at any level.

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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Jin+Guice »

I think a lot of the problem of communication is how the levels relate to each other. Each level wants to be the n+2 level, so it mimics it to a certain degree. The n+1 level is despised since it is has the opposite focus but has transcended the nth level and the n-1 level seems sort of dumb since it has recently been transcended. So there is a strong motivation to mimic n+2, which means n-1 (dumb) mimics n+1 (hated) and so the nth level thinker can discredit n+1 by showing how n-1 level thinkers are fakers.

To use the concrete example that comes to mind, orange thinkers would like to be Yellow, think Blue is dumb and think Green is bad. Blue thinkers would like to be Green, so they mimic Green but ultimately cannot remove their clannishness/ ego from the equation, which is all too obvious to
Orange. There are more Blue thinkers than Green, so Orange experiences false Green more than true Green and is biased to use false Green to deny Green. Since Green has transcended these levels, it is aware that its language has been co-opted and senses the animosity of Orange (which also holds a larger population share) making communicating its insights difficult.

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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by jacob »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:58 am
I think a lot of the problem of communication is how the levels relate to each other. Each level wants to be the n+2 level, so it mimics it to a certain degree. The n+1 level is despised since it is has the opposite focus but has transcended the nth level and the n-1 level seems sort of dumb since it has recently been transcended. So there is a strong motivation to mimic n+2, which means n-1 (dumb) mimics n+1 (hated) and so the nth level thinker can discredit n+1 by showing how n-1 level thinkers are fakers.

To use the concrete example that comes to mind, orange thinkers would like to be Yellow, think Blue is dumb and think Green is bad. Blue thinkers would like to be Green, so they mimic Green but ultimately cannot remove their clannishness/ ego from the equation, which is all too obvious to
Orange. There are more Blue thinkers than Green, so Orange experiences false Green more than true Green and is biased to use false Green to deny Green. Since Green has transcended these levels, it is aware that its language has been co-opted and senses the animosity of Orange (which also holds a larger population share) making communicating its insights difficult.
This is a brilliant observation. It's a two-track Wheaton scale between the so-called "warm" colors (beige, red, orange, yellow) , which ironically are the individualist ones, and the "cold" colors (purple, blue, green, turquoise).

The spiral itself could be seen as a rather eccentric orbit depending on typology (introvert/extrovert) where extreme introverts don't spend a whole lot of time with the cold colors and vice versa. While many of these developmental models insist that temperament is NOT relevant, I question that assertion. Eneagram typology is the only framework that tries to combine them.

IOW, if instead of a spiral there is an individual track and social track which do have to interact and inspire each other (by virtue of not separating I and E into two societies)... we'll get something more like this.

I-track
I1) Beige
I2) Red
I3) Orange
I4) Yellow

We-track
W1) Purple
W2) Blue
W3) Green
W4) Turquoise

In that sense it is NOT that W2 has to follow I2 but that "2" appears at the same ego-development stage but is expressed as I2 (Red) by the individually oriented and W2 (Blue) by the socially oriented.
Since the step-stages are much larger than the Wheaton scale, their corresponding I3 and W3 will be seen as too extreme ("useless wiffle waffle hippie yuppie talk" or "a danger to the way of things"), whereas I1 and W1 as representing a severe regression ("assholes/crazies who are destroying the world").

Meanwhile, "one down" on the opposite ladder is used as a strawman to attack the same level on the opposite ladder and defending the I/E temperament of one's own ego (whether cold or warm is best).

I suspect much of this comes from lacking experience with the opposite ladder and thus falling into the pre/trans-fallacy: One would have strongly opinionated notions about development on one's own ladder, whereas the other ladder feels more or less the same (all inconceivable).

That's mostly repeating what you said but with different mathematics.

Alifelongme
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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by Alifelongme »

@J+G and @Jacob
So could it be structured not so much as a single spiral but rather like a DNA Double Helix?

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Re: SD: Self-identity

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Since I am neutral/balanced X for I/E and also female rational type, my perspective is more of an internal cycle between warm and cool colors. Kind of like the myth of Persephone, but with the seasons reversed. So the tension of the spiral makes sense to me.

I think maybe if you are, for instance, attempting to go from Orange to Yellow without fully integrating Green, you will tend towards unconsciously defaulting to Blue.

Kind of like how Ayn Rand sold Orange with very basic romantic theme.

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