Patronage/Matronage

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daylen
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by daylen »

Frita wrote:
Wed Jun 03, 2020 2:57 pm
Can pure altruism even exist?
The vast majority of what appears to be "pure altruism" probably isn't. "Reciprocal altruism" or "tit-for-tat" is common but is not really altruism. There is something called "kin altruism" where altruism within the kin (i.e. first or second degree relative) would be an evolutionary stable strategy (i.e. for the genes). Given the human cultural layer, this can be hijacked where family metaphors are used to trigger altruistic behavior. Hence why [some] priests are called "fathers" and [some] gang members call each other "brothers".

Another possible form of altruism may be lurking deep in our programming whereby if a human feels they are "worthless" or "dead anyway" then they may be triggered to commit suicide(*) or to sacrifice themselves in battle. Keep in mind that for almost all of human history, population densities were low and tribes were generally engaged in a zero-sum game for land/resources. This would be a form of lineage-level (i.e. not population-level) selection which is highly controversial but makes sense to me.

This can be modeled and simulated to some degree so it is not entirely hypothetical.

(*) To free up resources for more confident humans to reproduce with, I suppose.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Kegan imagines the perspective of a Level 5 couple after 25 years of marriage:
When we are at our best, we get a good glimpse at the fact that the activist, for example, also has a contemplative living inside him. The one who is strict with the kids has a part of herself that has a whole other, looser way of feeling about them. And on and on. It isn’t easy, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but our favorite fights are the ones in which we don’t try to solve the conflicts but let the conflicts “ solve us,” you could say. We mean by that if a conflict doesn’t go away after a while we’ve found it’s a good bet that one of us, or both of us, has gotten drawn back into being too identified with our more comfortable position. Like the end we’re holding onto so passionately is our whole story, our whole truth in the matter. When we can get out of the grip of our more familiar side then the fight doesn’t feel as if the other one is trying to make us give up anything. The fight becomes a way for us to recover our own complexity, so to speak, to leave off making the other our opposite and face up to our own oppositeness.- “In Over Our Heads”
One thing that struck me reading this is that this mindset is at least a half step beyond the realization that when your partner pushes your reactive buttons you should thank him for pointing out an opportunity for personal growth, because “personal growth “ could still be imagined as within given ideology. For instance, Level 4 perspective might be “Thank you for triggering me towards working through my emotional reactivity rooted in childhood trauma, so I can better achieve my self-authoring goals A,B, and C.” Whereas, Level 5 perspective would be more like “Thank you for helping me regain perspective that I also hold self-authoring goals A’, B’, and C’.

Another thought I had was that given that only 1% of the adult population ever achieves Level 5 and only rarely before age 40, it is more likely that this perspective would be held by older couple in second marriage than couple still in first marriage. I mean, it is very true that marriage itself, like higher education, can be a process through which this sort of growth is achieved, but I believe that it would very often be the case that one partner would fail at leveling up.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

@daylen

from sociobiology's point of view, meme replication success strategy programs behavior of clueless individual gene packet

daylen
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

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@Alphaville Everything I said is consistent with sociobiology. Not exactly sure what you are trying to say. Elaborate?

daylen
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by daylen »

Neither genes or memes program each other completely. Genes give up some control to memes and memes give up control to genes. Yes, the genes are 'clueless' about what memes do because of the Weismann barrier but this does imply there are no restrictions on memes.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFEgohhfxOA for a simple simulation.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

daylen wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 5:28 pm
@Alphaville Everything I said is consistent with sociobiology. Not exactly sure what you are trying to say. Elaborate?
of course, which is why i mentioned it, reading your post made me think about it.

but i just wanted to finish conceptually separating the impersonal mechanism of nature from notions of individual reality & morality & agency that we want to believe in.

i was reminded that the individual is a fiction of the natural machinery of information replication, and that our individual moral notions can't apply in reverse to it-- the attempt is a kind of bad translation.

i'm not really a cynic though--it's just a different game, with different rules.

does real altruism exist? sure, in the individual-social game it "exists", but in our concepts no longer make sense outside this context. they are only applicable internally to our game level.

which is what you're saying. i just.. wanted to dehumanize it a little more. :lol:
Last edited by Alphaville on Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

i guess what i mean to say: is {[is altruism real?] begs the question [is the individual real?]}

yes, altruism is "real" at the level that the individual is "real"

but the individual isn't "really real" :D

daylen
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by daylen »

Alphaville wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:06 pm
[is altruism real?] begs the question [is the individual real?]
Bingo. Individuals do not replicate. Even an "individual" is not a static entity across their "life".

Because of this, it use to sort of drive me crazy when people said they wanted to live forever. All I could ask is.. "What is living forever?"

This also reminds me of the trade-off between senescence and cancer early in life. If we did not grow old by setting a limit on cell replication, then some of our cells would probably become cancerous and kill us anyway [sooner than they already do].
Last edited by daylen on Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

daylen wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:09 pm
Bingo. Individuals do not replicate. Even an "individual" is not a static entity across their "life".
right? but fictions do persist...
daylen wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:09 pm
Because of this, it use to sort of drive me crazy when people said they wanted to live forever. All I could ask is.. "What is living forever?"
they want to watch a movie that doesn't end :lol:

it's funny though, the spectator...

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead to harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or waste energy); and those that lead toward entropy ( or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict or disorder.)...

...Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration.

Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system(i.e., and organ such as the brain, or an individual, a family, a corporation, a culture, or humanity as a whole) is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the different parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals. A system that is more differentiated and more integrated than another is said to be more complex. -“The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium “ - Czikszentmihaly(author of “Flow”)
So, which system is more complex; Level 5 individual maintaining polyamorous relationships with 3 Level 4 individuals, marriage between two Level 5 individuals, or Level 5 asexual non-romantic individual in relationship to all the different species in her permaculture project?

Also, it is clear to me, based on definition above, that lentil-baby style “mooching” is toward greater harmony, because it strives towards making use of the unused or waste energy to be found within the domains of most single or otherwise available American men over the age of 42 AND it also strives towards tidying up like Cat in the Hat before making exit, leaving no trace of resentment ( as evidenced by frequency of subsequent reach outs and hugs when encountered at random.) Ergo, the practice tends towards net decrease entropy.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

if i may be allowed to troll a bit (in friendly jest)... wouldn’t public claims of achievement unlocked fit squarely into lev3 activity matrix though? :lol:

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Alphaville:

Yes, if I was primarily seeking social validation and/or not attempting to amuse myself :lol:

It seems like attempting rational justifications of the semi-ridiculous is a flow activity for eNTP Level 4 on cusp of 5.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

ha ha ok, i’ll drink to that then 🍻

lentil baby description was a good one though, and its eco-friendly aspects totally fit the pattern of mutualism

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Right. The other way to achieve ERE ecological goals would be to freely move humans around to resource flows. For instance, if 48 year old single American man is living in house that creates $1200 month in base mortgage/utility/tax/maintenance flow, if you moved one woman from Bangladesh and her two kids in with him, you would be within spitting distance of 1Jacob/human overall spending possibility.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

as long as it’s voluntary it would be awesome. fidel did that in cuba with disastrous results. in the scenario above i’d fear for the woman and kids 🙈

but there’s a swedish movie that came out more than decade ago and deals with post-nuclear living arrangements (post nuclear family not bomb) i think it was called “together”? lml...

20 years ago! (but i watched it on disk much later than that)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203166/

check it out maybe if there’s access, it was a nice story overall. lentil baby is different though. hey, maybe lentil baby can be a book/film. now that could be fun...

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Thanks for the recommendation. Will add to my list.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 2:35 pm
Thanks for the recommendation. Will add to my list.
i tried to look for it yesterday because i felt like watching ot and it was only offered as standalone rental on amazon. :roll:

this is very annoying. i remember a time when you could get anything on netflix.

so maybe it’s on “dvd.com” spinoff. uffff... hm, maybe not a bad idea for me to cancel stupid netflix streams and retry the dvd version for a bit.

oh, i don’t have a dvd player 🙈

damn you, fumio... i want my stuff back...

but hey please entertain us with more tales of lentil baby. i bet it’s better stories than generic tv shit.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I am more in Pumpkin Mama (more rounded variation on asexual non-romantic Cat Lady theme) mode lately. However, I am wondering if this might have more to do with the fact that I had to have minor surgery on my butt yesterday, the extra recent addition of jelly on my belly, and the fact that I am living with a partner who has no sexual interest in me.

The Yacht Guy (former polyamour) texted me yesterday to tell me that he bought a new boat and ask what I was up to, and I didn’t even reply (yet), because how can I even go sailing or have sex in my current condition? Whether or not I want to go sailing and/or have sex with the Yacht Guy can only be secondary consideration.

Frita
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Frita »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jun 03, 2020 4:56 pm
@Frita:

I meant that a Level 3 choir leader would be more easily self-deluded that her motivation was pure altruism.

Obviously, Kegan suggests that the higher educational process can promote growth towards higher levels. I think this is because the process is a form of good stress. I think either good or bad stress/change can lead to growth...

Absent stress or change to the external environment, I suppose one could just contentedly tread water, if it weren’t for the fact of your own encroaching decrepitude and mortality. It’s more difficult to gain perspective on the decrepitude of an organization or civilization of which you are simply one member.
Yes, Kegan 3 seems like self-delusion reinforced by the group delusion. I still am trying to sort out adult variability at Kegan 2 (i.e., immature versus antisocial personalities).

People are more educated than ever before, yet it doesn’t seem to be having the results Kegan would have predicted.

Most people don’t take advantage of their time existing, moral evolution, or knowledge of their decline/death to change. The only way to gain that perspective to transition beyond Kegan 3 is to get outside of the group. This is scary because many desirable groups won’t tolerate that.

Just rambling...there are many related problems with no solutions. I think I will make muffins for breakfast.

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Alphaville
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Re: Patronage/Matronage

Post by Alphaville »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 8:39 am
I am more in Pumpkin Mama (more rounded variation on asexual non-romantic Cat Lady theme) mode lately.
oh, but you're not lentil baby. lentil baby is a character with a beginning a middle and an end.

she goes in, fixes things, and leaves. a bit like the man with no name in sergion leone's films or the truck drivers in tampopo.

eta:
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 8:39 am
minor surgery on my butt yesterday
OUCH :shock:

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