4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

The "other" ERE. Societal aspects of the ERE philosophy. Emergent change-making, scale-effects,...
jacob
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by jacob »

@ffj - Well, yes ... and at one point I actually contemplated writing a beginner's book... and an edited compendium of the blog posts has also been in the works. However, I learned that books alone don't provide an education. If it was that easy, we could get rid of all teachers and replace all schools and institutions with libraries. Many can't teach others and few can really teach themselves. Most just copy the behavior of those they relate to or look up to. I am not the former and at best the latter. (This is tangentially related to the thread, because the half of humans take at best a 2nd person perspective (how do I look to you?); troublemakers (about 1/6) take at best a 1st person perspective (FU, I do what I want). The remaining 1/3 take a 3rd person perspective or more (how we look to others?) which makes them efficiently employable and promoteable and thus not likely to remain poor for long.)

This project thus needs someone to create some material AND subsequently push it into people's minds; like I did with the book and the forum. This experience showed me that I'm no Dave Ramsey. It would need a Suze Orman of the "relatively poor" ... and technically the world already has that. It needs a relatable messenger.

To give an adjacent example. I'm somewhat active on Deep Adaptation, which is an organization dealing with the impacts of catastrophic climate change. The subject is not important. I just use it as an example to illustrate the "teaching" or the "change" problem. This organization is dominated by people who are high on anxiety and low on agency and many are convinced they're a victim of the situation. I think these psychological traits have things in common with the "relatively poor". Now, for over a year I have negotiated back and forth about making a zoom presentation of a few things people can do to avoid getting a Darwin award from the next tornado, hurricane, wildfire, pandemic, etc. and maybe stop worrying a bit. However, they're just not all that interested. The solution I'm offering ("A few simple steps on how not to die due to personal inaction") is not the problem they're seeing ("How to cope emotionally with a tragic world", etc.) and rather incompatible with the solution they're offering ("Join a circle to process our emotions to ground ourselves in what remains of nature"). Indeed, the latest workshop on "practical action" was basically a zoom meeting to "discuss how climate change makes you feel on a day to day basis".

To even make inroads in such a paradigm, it's impossible to take the solution from one paradigm, simplified or not, and introduce it into another paradigm. For example, ERE in its current form is constructed around the paradigm that objective reality is important and that by learning as much about this reality as possible, you can control it, and in turn make subjective reality better (e.g. become happier). This works on modernists who tend to take objective reality for granted. It does not work very well on postmodernists, who are more concerned about their subjective emotional reality, or traditionalists, who only find meaning in a God-given order. In order to communicate, ERE would basically have to be reconstructed from scratch within those paradigms. For example, prosperity gospel is capitalism in church language.

Thus ... it would require understanding the paradigm (4th order perspective) of the relatively poor---that's basically the water they swim in---and then craft a message based on ERE that gets them to see that water and behave differently. This is what the ERE book does for the educated modernist and that works because educated modernists include the swimming habits of reading technical books, debating, and being persuaded by logical arguments. However, other paradigms will require different methods such as deep emotional listening, preaching, games, festivals, outright fights, or what have you ...

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

ERE1 is about learning from books, but ERE2 expands into social interaction. What I am very hazily envisioning is that the social interaction of those at/near ERE2 might reach out towards the "relatively poor." This could include both those less likely to read and those in the pre-cariat or barista-with Fine Art MA- set and the overlapping sets. There are plenty of young people in the U.S. who have a good deal of potential likely to be squashed by contingency.

I should note that my current take is also somewhat based on my recent reading of Barbara Kingsolver's fine new novel "Demon Copperhead" which is about a high IQ , athletically gifted orphan growing up in recent times Opioid Addiction Era Appalachia.The reality is that sometimes humans truly are to some extent victims of their circumstances. I've seen variations on this kid in every low-income setting where I have taught in recent years. I believe in agency (or I at least believe in believing in agency), but pretty much by definition, Applied Capitalism, is never alone going to fix the problem set of relative poverty.

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by ffj »

@jacob

I think you are selling the poors a bit short but yes there are challenges. One of Ramseys strong selling points is that he very strong on personal responsibility which resonates with the very people that are characterized as not having agency. Not everyone, but enough. But he is also a showman, which you lack, but is that required for modest sales? I don't know, but it seems to me at least enough of that demographic would benefit to make it worth your while.

@7

Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice if some of them had a guidebook out of their situation? My suggestion was never to solve relative poverty but offer an outlet at an introductory level for the ones that are ready to receive the message.

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@ffj:

Yeah, relative poverty is a tough nut, and I'm about the last person to suggest that Harrison Bergeroning the Haves is a great idea. Maybe all I'm really getting at is that the direct redistribution of skills can actually be a Win-Win-Win.

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Frita »

ffj wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:12 pm
My suggestion was never to solve relative poverty but offer an outlet at an introductory level for the ones that are ready to receive the message.
It seems that the 21 Day Makeover could be an overview booklet/ simple book with lots of white space and then another of a collection of how-to’s off Jacob’s blog (perhaps decreasing the page length and simplifying to maintain attention spans and cognitive load) are written. Marketing to connect those who are ready seems like a challenge though. I notice that more and more people are externally motivated and sensitive to criticism, especially those pigeonholed in the one-down position.

Edited to remove accidental angry emoji
Last edited by Frita on Fri Jan 27, 2023 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Riggerjack
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

@western red cedar

I'm sorry. My last post was completely out of line.

You were doing exactly as I asked, talking about the disposal of poo, while I was trying to force the conversation toward a particular blindspot, and shouting "look!".

One day, I will learn to play well with others.

In the meantime, if you would like to talk about water quality issues, I think a dialogue would work better than my collection of declarative statements. I am comfortable addressing any scale or geography you prefer.

I included links to the state's model, but I'm happy to follow any links you provide.

You became active here at a time when I was not. My background is in construction and telecom engineering. (And being a dick. But I'm working on that.)

I hope you accept my apology, and continue to post in this thread. If not, I understand, and I don't think there will be any doubt where the fault lies. :oops:

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

@7
As I just demonstrated, when I am concerned that someone isn't gaining perspective, it's usually me that isn't learning. :roll:


People act on self-interest. End of story. If you want to move the needle, then you align their self-interest with your goal.
This is conventional wisdom.

I would note that aligning my goals with the self interests of others is likely to create the possible feeling of manipulation on their part. Or any of a host of other defense mechanisms.

My own solution would be more like create an environment where the fulfillment of my goals is achieved in the creation of the space, and attracting people to that space by allowing others to demonstrate to others how being in that environment, helped them align their own self interest (as they define it) with their own goals (as they define them).

Jacob, did you see what I did there?
....
troublemakers (about 1/6) take at best a 1st person perspective (FU, I do what I want).
Any sentence I write that doesn't include "FU, I do what I want!" is an edited sentence. I am trying to let go of that anger, but it doesn't come from lack of perspective.

It comes from a few decades of playing this game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOBMFznkto

and being called an asshole for not being more enthusiastic. After all, we should always do what's best for Everybody*.

If any of our systems worked as well as the beneficiaries of those systems believe, we would be facing entirely different problems.




*Everybody, as always, means "people not like me".

ffj
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by ffj »

@Frita

Why the angry emoji? Am I missing something?

Frita
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Frita »

ffj wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:23 am
@Frita

Why the angry emoji? Am I missing something?
:shock: :oops: Ugh, my apologies, ffj! Thank you for pointing it out. I somehow accidentally added that emoji. In the future, I will be more careful.

Edited as I corrected my gaffe

ffj
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by ffj »

No worries, thankfully nobody is angry. :D

You make good points. And with the "blog" already written I would think the majority of the workload is already complete. But it's not my decision, I just think it's a worthy idea.

@rigger

"My own solution would be more like create an environment where the fulfillment of my goals is achieved in the creation of the space, and attracting people to that space by allowing others to demonstrate to others how being in that environment, helped them align their own self interest (as they define it) with their own goals (as they define them)."

I think you are having fun with the word salad but I want to know what your magic bullet is for aligning interests for the common good? Whacha got?

Riggerjack
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

@jacob,

I wasn't using enough words again.

The point I was trying to make is that your model is too simple. That 1/6 members of my culture stays at low kegan levels is a cultural output, not a constant. That "troublemakers" is the results of putting people thru our institutions and dividing the positive and negative feedback in ways where 1 in 6 find troublemaking to be the most rewarding path they see.

Much the same point I made about the Stupid model:
The key thing about the model, is the harms others line. Where is that line, the stupid/bandit combination?

However you choose to measure it, there is a ratio of (actions/effects/people) that harm others, to those that don't.

What do you think that ratio is for the US? 1st world countries? 3rd world countries? When you include "unforeseen consequences " and "market externalities" and such terms? When you include crime at all levels?

How much of a society's productivity is offset by these harms?

I think of that as something like a cultural drag ratio. The amount of harm in total that a culture (allows/cultivates/fails to prevent) compared to its overall production.

Now think about what that ratio would look like in a tight knit tribal culture. With high information/low defection/rapid feedback societies, the incentives favor "not harming others" at a much higher value.

The difference between the "harms others" levels of that tribal society, and our current society is a direct result of our culture and institutions.

It is our institutions that have (created/enabled/failed to prevent) this increased level of harm to other. Our churches, schools, laws, and cultural norms naturalize the behaviors that harm others at a much higher rate than we know to be possible.

We haven't hosted a war in over 150 years. The 20th century was about the ascendancy of Pax America. Our institutions are not failing for lack of resources. This is just the best we can expect out of the institutions we have. This level of harm is our baseline. Our institutions are at their current point in each's glidepath of institutional decline. Based on previous attempts, I don't think much more can be squeezed out of these institutions in the way of better results.

Going back to the institutions that (brought/brings) us this increased level of stupid/bandits, seems unlikely to get a decrease in social harm...

But, on the good news side, we now have an idea of just how revolutionary it would be, to move that line.

A culture that could better align the incentive structure to discourage "harms others behavior" would not have that drag.

Riggerjack
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

I think you are having fun with the word salad but I want to know what your magic bullet is for aligning interests for the common good? Whacha got?
Well, I am having fun... ;)

Let's use the integrated septic system I described above as an example.

I could go to an engineer, get the plans wet stamped, take the plans to the health dept, and install it as part of developing a property.

I could market that property as having an integrated system, but as I pointed out, that's not an overwhelming advantage. Most people wouldn't know or care about that.

So maybe, instead, I made that property a high priced short term rental, and marketed to the urban "green elite", as a positional good.

Well, that's better, more money, but much more importantly for my purposes, I have moved into the innovation end of the market. I now have a positional good.

As such, I can focus on who gets an opportunity at it. I can focus on the sort of person who might collect all her garbage for a year in a mason jar, then fly all over the world to talk about it.

Who is going to sell my system better, me, or her?

What was her experience? Did she decide to sell my system? Or did she find a place where her goals more easily aligned with her self interest, then follow that interest?

This is certainly not the only way to create a positional good from this system, nor the most profitable, but it is the simplest.

I have... ethical issues with convincing someone that their interests align with my goals. I get around them by creating a situation/environment and allowing others to choose it, for their own purposes. The difference may seem slight, but it is very important to me.

The difference as I see it, is respect for her, reflected in respect for her choices.

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Riggerjack wrote:It comes from a few decades of playing this game:
The scenario in the clip could easily be made even worse. For instance, the guy who ended up with no cake after redistributing it to others could be also seen to be the one who had to push the plow all day long under the burning sun in order to grow the grain necessary to make the cake in the first place. The unfortunate reality is that grown-azz men in their prime are the least likely members of our society to be viewed with compassion for their unique vulnerability. There go all the women and children and old people and handicapped people into the life boats- here I stand slowly sinking, can I even exhibit my fear or my anger without being shamed?

You are not alone. It's an "ordinary dysfunction" or "common affliction" of those "locked" or "blocked" in their adult masculine energy, and it is experienced, one way or another, by men from all sorts of different socio-economic or cultural backgrounds. African-American men who grew up in the projects and were treated like pieces of meat on athletic scholarship, Muslim immigrant men working for low wages for years to keep their visas and then shunned by their co-workers after 9-11 , even White Suburban Guys who grew up in the most objectively priveleged situations, but were trained to repress any streak of anger or asshole in their nature until they find themselves just shaking uncontrollably behind the wheel of the SUV as they attempt to perform the next-next task on their Honey Do list...

All you want in return for all your hard work is maybe some kind of show of respect, maybe once in god damn while a "Thank you", a god damn piece of god damn cake, and, yeah, a little somethin' somethin' on a Saturday night. Is that too much to ask?
the sort of person who might collect all her garbage for a year in a mason jar, then fly all over the world to talk about it
Why would someone do this? What is her motivation? Can you empathize with her on any level? Because it has been my experience that unti/unless you can empathize with your "customer", you're always going to be "just pimping", and less than in alignment with True North.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Riggerjack wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:05 pm
I hope you accept my apology, and continue to post in this thread.
@Riggerjack - this was extremely gracious of you. Any miscommunication is as much my fault. You were interested in having a broader conversation on cultural paradigms, and I got caught up looking at the weeds growing in the drainfield :D

The reason your initial posts caught my attention is that I've lived in Bellingham, Seattle, and on Whidbey and I'm pretty familiar with some of the plants and systems you mentioned. After college I spent multiple months doing environmental restoration at Post Point - grubbing out blackberries, planting native vegetation, and carrying more wheelbarrow loads of mulch than I could count. We were building a buffer for Heron rookeries, and had an opportunity to observe the wildlife and ecological conditions of the local estuary over the course of a year. That was one of many projects that I worked on that year in Whatcom, Skagit, and Snohomish County. That was an amazing period in my life, even though it would occasionally include working 10 hour days in the Bellingham rain. It planted a figurative seed that many years later led to a career in environmental work.

------

I think the concept of treating waste is a really good, practical way to think about the ERE 1 and ERE 2 distinctions. One can develop a really well-designed and efficient system at an individual level. But it gets challenging to figure out how to scale that up at a community or municipal level. Medieval towns or villages offer an example of how sanitation can work more sustainably at scale. For thousands of years human "waste" and "garbage" (organic food scraps and such) were fed back into the land as fertilizers. The carrying capacity of the environment created a natural check on the growth of communities - at least for a while.

This thread got me thinking about Lewis Mumford's thoughts on the topic:
"As for the disposal of ordure, this has always been the bete noire of close urban settlements; and it still is. Most of the big cities today, throughout the world, have not yet showed sufficient technical resourcefulness in dealing with this problem; for in their reliance upon the flush toilet, they pollute their streams and waste the precious nitrogenous materials that might have enriched the soil. Where in earlier days the nearby farmers and market gardeners took advantage of the city's nearness, by systematically collecting human excrement for use on the land, both city and soil were the gainers: indeed the bigger the city the richer the land outside it, and the more profitable activities of the market gardener.

The point to note, in coming to a judgment on medieval towns, is that crude sanitation is not necessarily bad sanitation; for a medieval farmhouse, in which the common dung pile was the only domestic privy, was not as great a menace to its inhabitants' health as the progressive pre-Pasteur town of the nineteenth century, blessed with refined water-closets in every middle-class dwelling, and cursed by a supply of drinking water drawn from the same river into which the sewage of the town above was emptied."
He goes on to say:
"What applies to human excreta applies also to garbage. Leftovers were eaten by the dogs, chickens, and pigs, which acted as town scavengers...By the sixteenth century, in well-managed towns that had made provisions for street cleaning, there was also a ban on keeping pigs in any part of the town, even in the gardens behind the houses. But in the early days, the pig was an active member of the local Board of Health.

Non-edible waste was doubtless harder to dispose of: ashes, tannery offal, big bones; but certainly there was far less of this than in the modern city; for tins, iron, broken glass, bottles, and paper were scarce, or even non-existent. In the main, medieval refuse was organic matter, which decomposed and mingled with the earth."
Last edited by Western Red Cedar on Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

jacob
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by jacob »

@Riggerjack - I don't think the rhetorical approach or the "did you see what I just did" approach is very effective in communicating this issue. There's too much pre/trans-fallacy risk. For example, I can't tell whether you include the subjective as part of the environment or strictly talk about the objective aspects.

The *th-person perspective" relates to the ability to see the various depths of the intersubjective or interpersonal environment (I include the subjective in the environment) such as personal appearance (2nd), culture (3rd), symbols (4th), unity (5th+).

The interobjective perspective is usually not given in orders but an analogous suggested path of transcending could be magical, mechanical, quantum, quantum field, string-theory. This would of course only describe reductionist physics. For holistic physics it would be something like atoms, statistics, networks. The personally objective (e.g. a particular theory) is a subset of the interobjective (the set of all theories).

Whether interobjective or intersubjective, each next level is able to differentiate the former as a "part" of its perspective. For example, the blob that is a baby eventually differentiates its body from the rest of the world by realizing that biting its thumb causes pain whereas biting a pacifier does not. A selfcentered person may realize that other humans are people with their own opinions and thus differentiate between his own viewpoint and those of others (instead of just declaring them wrong).

[FWIW, I don't have a very generous view of the average human's capacity to take high perspectives. I've seen otherwise functional 50+ year olds finally grok that "other people carry a little image in their head of how they see me", basically making the transition from Kegan2 to Kegan3, and being astounded by that insight. Some humans realize this before age 9. Some humans never realize this. Fifty is late but not too late.]

Similarly, Newtonian physics is included as a special case of quantum physics.

And more generally, politically, special interests tend to be part of partisan political positions which again is part of the political process which is part of the political framework (e.g. political compass, Duverger, and others) which again is part of ... something something.

Thus, I totally agree with the idea of "changing the environment" which I read as operating on the underlying perspective, that is, one perspective beyond the problem. The question is WHICH level of perspective. This is what I need to know in order to have this discussion. I can do most of them.

To give an example, a poverty/gang/individual in a physically dangerous (whether the danger is imaginary or real) environment will often focus on "protecting themselves" and so they own weapons and potentially fierce dogs and often behave in a physically confrontational way whenever they feel threatened. One key to unlock this is to channel the "me vs the world" and the confrontational attitude into controlled violence like team sports or the military. The underlying perspective here introduces the idea of rules, [self-]discipline, and caring for others (the team or the squad) beyond the self which didn't exist at the simpler level(*). The process essentially takes familiar (uncontrolled protection of the self) and changes it into a semi-familiar thing (controlled protection of the team) which over time becomes the new identity, e.g. willingness to sacrifice for the team; not protecting me but the soldier next to me, which in turn spills over to the rest of life.

(*) To clarify "existence". Rules were seen as a kind of oppression or adversarial punishment for breaking them rather than "a good idea" to make everybody get along and stop the [in]fighting. Team was seen some opposition to attack the others rather than caring for one's own team simply because they're on our team. So it's not like people don't understand the words. It's how those concepts are understood in a new way.

And so there are keys or rather transitional interfaces that can process one type perspective into a bigger perspective where the previous perspective is still part of the bigger perspective. E.g. a soldier can still be violent, but they now have an off-switch (that they control themselves) and ability to differentiate between when to be violent and when not to be violent, which a hooligan, who is always violent or at least easily provoked, lacks.

The key problem with the metacrisis is that we have a bunch of different perspectives that cause different problems but we lack a universal interface that will fix them all at the same time. Instead each perspective tries to fix it in their own way without realizing that their solution inadvertently becomes someone else's problem. This in turn causes endless debates and disagreement. The least-worst-way for resolving this is democracy. Unfortunately democracy is messy and allows the introduction of bad ideas with respect to a reality that doesn't care about uninformed or misinformed opinions. And this is where we currently are.

This issue of multiple different perspectives existing at the same time also means it's important to be aware of WHOSE environment you're changing. Because the environment you're building to attract some solution (people) might incidentally kill off another environment. Even more complex is the problem that humans tend to live in more than one environment at the same time.

Riggerjack
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

@WRC,

You are familiar with the sites and practices at these WWTPs, and the issue of water quality. Have I mis-characterized anything?

To other readers with STEM backgrounds, any feedback?

@jacob
I seem to spew confusion wherever I go. I'm writing a longer post for you. But the simple response is below:
@Riggerjack - I don't think the rhetorical approach or the "did you see what I just did" approach is very effective in communicating this issue. There's too much pre/trans-fallacy risk. For example, I can't tell whether you include the subjective as part of the environment or strictly talk about the objective aspects.

The *th-person perspective" relates to the ability to see the various depths of the intersubjective or interpersonal environment (I include the subjective in the environment) such as personal appearance (2nd), culture (3rd), symbols (4th), unity (5th+).

The interobjective perspective is usually not given in orders but an analogous suggested path of transcending could be magical, mechanical, quantum, quantum field, string-theory. This would of course only describe reductionist physics. For holistic physics it would be something like atoms, statistics, networks. The personally objective (e.g. a particular theory) is a subset of the interobjective (the set of all theories).

Whether interobjective or intersubjective, each next level is able to differentiate the former as a "part" of its perspective. For example, the blob that is a baby eventually differentiates its body from the rest of the world by realizing that biting its thumb causes pain whereas biting a pacifier does not. A selfcentered person may realize that other humans are people with their own opinions and thus differentiate between his own viewpoint and those of others (instead of just declaring them wrong).

[FWIW, I don't have a very generous view of the average human's capacity to take high perspectives. I've seen otherwise functional 50+ year olds finally grok that "other people carry a little image in their head of how they see me", basically making the transition from Kegan2 to Kegan3, and being astounded by that insight. Some humans realize this before age 9. Some humans never realize this. Fifty is late but not too late.]

Similarly, Newtonian physics is included as a special case of quantum physics.

And more generally, politically, special interests tend to be part of partisan political positions which again is part of the political process which is part of the political framework (e.g. political compass, Duverger, and others) which again is part of ... something something.

Thus, I totally agree with the idea of "changing the environment" which I read as operating on the underlying perspective, that is, one perspective beyond the problem. The question is WHICH level of perspective. This is what I need to know in order to have this discussion. I can do most of them.
My mistake number 1: The title of this thread was a reference to the thread you were using to describe your investing methods. I really didn't mean to spend any time or attention on Kegan levels. This is just my messed up sense of humor at play. Sorry for the confusion. :oops:

But since we are here, let me try to describe my perspective.

I'm autistic. Autism seems to be something of a junk category the DSM uses for similar looking problems as experienced from the outside.

In my case, my mind works extraordinarily well at some tasks, and almost not at all in other tasks.

So I am confident that I will do well on nearly any written test, often without needing to be familiar with the test material beforehand.

But everything about individual humans is slippery. Holding any details about any one person is very difficult. Predicting even very basic reactions is effortful and error prone.

As an example:
https://smubelltowerdotorg.wordpress.co ... k-culture/
Those who think in the lines of guess culture often rely heavily on a “same page” mentality that requires both people to be able to pick up on subtle hints and context clues. This type of high context communication hinges on the belief that asking for something directly might be seen as rude or hurtful. A typical example of someone using a guessing mentality would be a student mentioning to their parents when they finish with class at a specific time and expecting the parent to ask if they need a ride. Conversely, culture thrives on direct questions and responses. So instead of mentioning passively that they need a ride, a student who is predisposed to an ask mentality would seek an immediate response to their need through inquiry.
When I first read that I was incredulous. The idea that anyone could achieve that level of high context communication accurately was simply ludicrous.

But of course my culture has been breeding/training for this trait for over a century, so I shouldn't be surprised at the success. But I doubt I will ever achieve this kind of proficiency.


Earlier, when I discovered Austrian Economics, it gave me a basic science of incentive, and a framework to predict individual behavior from incentive. This was a huge breakthrough for me, as I could predict better, at volume. Accuracy vastly improved.

I was playing with my new models, and exploring those new possibilities when I found your forum. IIRC, my first post here was in a thread about us all being Keynesians, now.

Each time I run into a new model for understanding social phenomena, I get a chance to refine my models. I can say my models are pretty good, now. People have gone from being black boxes that spit out random (occasionally violent) actions, to being very predictable with varying degrees of certainty. I am rarely surprised, now. When I am, I can generally trace where my models diverged from reality, and this is very comforting to me.

But it makes each of your Kegan levels seem much less relevant.

If I were to ask you to simulate a perspective, it would be that of E1 or E2, from Michael O Church's 3 ladder system. I posit that wicked problems only exist within the context of the G ladder, and can't even be communicated in the native lexicon of the other ladders.
To give an example, a poverty/gang/individual in a physically dangerous (whether the danger is imaginary or real) environment will often require people to "protect themselves" and so they own weapons and potentially fierce dogs and often behave in a physically confrontational way whenever they feel threatened.
Or even when we don't. :oops:
One key to unlock this is to channel the "me vs the world" and the confrontational attitude into controlled violence like team sports or the military. The underlying perspective here introduces the idea of rules, [self-]discipline, and caring for others (the team or the squad) beyond the self which didn't exist at the simpler level(*).
This doesn't match my experience. But I could understand how it may appear to, from the outside.
The process essentially takes familiar (uncontrolled protection of the self) and changes it into a semi-familiar thing (controlled protection of the team) which over time becomes the new identity, e.g. willingness to sacrifice for the team; not protecting me but the soldier next to me, which in turn spills over to the rest of life.
In the parlance of the army I joined in my youth, this is "being green". I felt it towards the end of Basic. But it didn't survive AIT. Bureaucracy destroys everything it touches.
(*) To clarify "existence". Rules were seen as a kind of oppression or adversarial punishment for breaking them rather than "a good idea" to make everybody get along and stop the [in]fighting. Team was seen some opposition to attack the others rather than caring for one's own team simply because they're on our team. So it's not like people don't understand the words. It's how those concepts are understood in a new way.
My understanding of rules followed a different pattern.
More like:
Rules were seen as "a good idea to stop the fighting".
Rules were seen as a kind of oppression or adversarial punishment for breaking them rather than "a good idea" to make everybody get along and stop the [in]fighting.
Rules were seen as means of containing the fighting, and redirecting the damage.
Rules were seen as means of maintaining current power structures.
Rules were seen as means of identity management.
Rules were seen as means of redirecting thought away from actionable paths.
And so there are keys or rather transitional interfaces that can process one type perspective into a bigger perspective where the previous perspective is still part of the bigger perspective. E.g. a soldier can still be violent, but they now have an off-switch (that they control themselves) and ability to differentiate between when to be violent and when not to be violent, which a hooligan, who is always violent or at least easily provoked, lacks.
This is a very restricted view of the situation. I don't know where to start...
The key problem with the metacrisis is that we have a bunch of different perspectives that cause different problems but we lack a universal interface that will fix them all at the same time. Instead each perspective tries to fix it in their own way without realizing that their solution inadvertently becomes someone else's problem. This in turn causes endless debates and disagreement. The least-worst-way for resolving this is democracy. Unfortunately democracy is messy and allows the introduction of bad ideas with respect to a reality that doesn't care about uninformed or misinformed opinions. And this is where we currently are.
Well, that's one way to frame it. An excellent frame, if one wishes to preserve the crisis. When I ask that you look outside the hall of mirrors, I am asking you to look outside this frame. Consider each of those statements. How true/certain is each of those statements, by itself? Even very small uncertainty when multiplied by the uncertainty of multiple statements becomes significant.
This issue of multiple different perspectives existing at the same time also means it's important to be aware of WHOSE environment you're changing. Because the environment you're building to attract some solution (people) might incidentally kill off another environment.
Or less incidentally, if one is being strategic. ;)
Even more complex is the problem that humans tend to live in more than one environment at the same time.
Yeah :D Isn't that awesome? :)

ffj
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by ffj »

@rigger

Yeah, you apply your internal value system when making these appeals. But so do others if they actually have any and the rest are there to prey upon your morals which they perceive as a weakness to exploit. When you offer to fall upon your sword they are happy to oblige you.

I've been a follower, I've been a leader. I've watched shit burn to the ground and I've intervened and saved the day. I know why simple things don't get done. And it astounds me when complicated issues get resolved. It's remarkable when it occurs because it's uncommon. And there is always manipulation involved.

Anyway, this discussion is over my head to be honest. I don't really know if you are trying to provide answers or find them. Or clean the cobwebs from your itchy brain.

Riggerjack
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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by Riggerjack »

The scenario in the clip could easily be made even worse. ... Is that too much to ask?
Uh, sure. I guess so. I don't dispute any of this, but it's not what I was trying to describe. I recognize the anger you describe, but I see it as a bug/feature produced by my culture. An acceptable/accepted outcome...

See comments below to ffj for where I was trying to go.

In thinking about culture, it's important to separate causes from effects, inputs from outputs, constants from variables. Whenever I thought I had a constant, it has turned out to be variable.
the sort of person who might collect all her garbage for a year in a mason jar, then fly all over the world to talk about it

Why would someone do this? What is her motivation? Can you empathize with her on any level? Because it has been my experience that unti/unless you can empathize with your "customer", you're always going to be "just pimping", and less than in alignment with True North.
I'm sorry for being unclear. Years ago there was a thread here on ERE about a woman who saved all her garbage for a year in a mason jar, then wrote a book about trash and recycling, then began her book/speaking tour.

I was trying to point to the temperamental differences between the sort of person who would enjoy focusing on systems and their interactions, and the sort of person who wants a book/speaking tour.

That the systems thinker is going to develop one set of interests and skills, and the communicator will develop a different set. And neither needs nor strongly benefits from the other's set.

So rather than trying to train communicators to systems thinking, or systems thinkers to communicate better; allowing systems thinkers to focus on creating an environment that can be *experienced* by the communicator leaps this gap.

In this way, the communicator can learn using her natural tool set. (I don't get frustrated trying to explain inane details she has no interest in, her eyes don't glaze over as she sits thru those same explanations.)

@jacob,

Do you see how the above relates to ERE2, or ERE city, or the other ways of communicating ERE? When systems thinking is used to develop an environment, rather than fit within an existing one, new possibilities open up.



I've been a follower, I've been a leader. I've watched shit burn to the ground and I've intervened and saved the day. I know why simple things don't get done. And it astounds me when complicated issues get resolved. It's remarkable when it occurs because it's uncommon. And there is always manipulation involved.
My experience is similar to yours.

But what you would sum up as human nature, I would describe as the output of all our current and past knowledge and institutions. I've never met a natural human, and have no real understanding of what human nature could be. Everyone I ever met went thru the same or parallel institutions. Everyone interfaces thru the same markets. Everyone reacts to the same news.

But I'm trying to point out that all our institutions from kindergarten and scouts, to nation-states and academia, are the survivors of co-evolutionary processes. Processes that happened in an environment of comparatively high communication/coordination costs.

But those costs have changed over the last century, and fell off a cliff in the last 20 years. Note the past tense. Already changed. These costs have changed. We cannot change them back. We went from manual printing presses to Twitter, and we are still using modified organizational structures from the Iron Age.

My culture tells me I live in the Information Age. That technology changed, and "Look how profitably we have fit the tech changes to our existing institutions. All done. Now everyone please return to your desks, and get back to work. TPS reports don't write themselves..."

Whereas I look at the same situation, and see how our institutions are failing in the new environment. They are flailing/failing in an environment very different from their native environment of high communications costs.

Like saltwater fish in fresh water, the same super efficient designs aren't performing as well as we could hope in this new environment. It doesn't really matter how stable a shark design is, or how long it has lasted, when the environment it evolved for is no longer available.

What we need, are kidneys. Kidneys would allow saltwater fish to flourish in freshwater. Kidneys would allow fresh water fish to flourish in an environment free of saltwater predators. What would the "information kidney" look like?

I contend that the environment has already changed, and we have not yet changed to adapt to this new environment. That the most powerful/valuable object in the world of 2023 is the adaptation that would better fit this new world of nearly free communication and coordination. Either the kidney to adapt previously successful organizational structures to near free communication, or new designs that can thrive in the new environment.

Oddly, nobody seems to be looking for new designs or better kidney substitutes. :roll:
I don't really know if you are trying to provide answers or find them.
Nothing so simple, I'm afraid. Answers implies someone has conceived of the questions, and worked them out. I'm interested in the questions my culture doesn't ask.

I seem to have caused confusion by trying to engage at the level of the questions. Jacob wanted to engage at the noosphere level, and thought generalists were needed. So I provided the connections to culturally known points of reference, that to my knowledge didn't exist. (I didn't provide influence or jobs, but I contend they aren't useful in this context.)

Others wanted to fit what I'm saying within their existing frameworks, and that didn't work very well.

Maybe the above clears things up some?

Anyway, this discussion is over my head to be honest.
I've been reading your writing for years. I don't think this is true.

You just read RJTP I-III. What did you get out of it? You just built your house, how does what I said apply to what you just did?

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Riggerjack wrote:I was trying to point to the temperamental differences between the sort of person who would enjoy focusing on systems and their interactions, and the sort of person who wants a book/speaking tour.
Gotcha. I didn't grok this was where you were going, because as an eNTP, I am somebody who is pretty comfortable with both of these options. Like if I was on some kind of tech team, I would be happier spending half of the day at computer and half of the day explaining/promoting the tech to other people vs doing both activities all day long.

I like the idea of creating environments that "naturally" work for a variety of people. I initially got into my interest in permaculture and pattern language of architechture by way of the psychology of ornamental garden design. If you want humans to feel relaxed and optimistic, put them in an environment where they have something solid at their back and a clear view to something attractive in front of them. Etc. etc. etc. The more positive "patterns" such as this that you can bring into awareness in an environmental (space use)or lifestyle (time use) design, the greater you can make the ratio of utility to expense.

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Re: 4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

Post by jacob »

Riggerjack wrote:
Sun Feb 12, 2023 9:23 am
Do you see how the above relates to ERE2, or ERE city, or the other ways of communicating ERE? When systems thinking is used to develop an environment, rather than fit within an existing one, new possibilities open up.
It's easy/fun enough to imagine utopias. However, there still needs to be a plan to go from "here" to "there". In general, what keeps people from enacting their vision is not so much the inability to imagine it as it is to build it in practice under current constraints while getting other people to along if vision includes more than the individual having it.

Since we're still asking rhetorical questions, do you see how most people resist almost all change because they need to fit it within the framework of their current system which is usually some variation of "need to pay the bills, spouse not interested, don't want to look weird, the children still deserves a normal life, need to do it as a community, happy to follow but not to lead,... right down to ideological concerns and refusing to move before some pet peeve is solved first"?

This is why it is necessary to fit [the transition to] the new environment into the existing framework lest we create yet another talking fest where everybody agrees what a great idea something is and not much else ever happens.

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