Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[UrbanHomesteader]

I've often thought about the difference in attitudes about being on Medicaid vs having a heavily subsidized health insurance plan under ACA. It sort of feels like the ACA subsidy option is viewed a little better socially. However, for many of us, I think being on Medicaid may actually be costing the government less than subsidizing an ACA plan. It's a weird paradox.

[calamityjane]

@UrbanHomesteader, there is some evidence that ACA subsidies are more expensive to the government than Medicaid - https://www.commonwealthfund.org/public ... ustainable (the original article now requires a free subscription to read) - yet I agree there is continued stigma regarding the use of Medicaid, particularly for those who don't "need" it. To my way of thinking, until we get a single payer system in the U.S., Medicaid is probably the best solution.

[Jin+Guice]

You won’t be able to dumpster dive here for instance. The people don’t waste food here (default frugality) and if they did it would be considered rather pathological or even insane.

Inserting Yourself into Waste Streams/ Repair/ Bartering/ Borrowing

The amount of waste we create is staggering. Initial exposure is mind boggling. Some ways to insert yourself in waste streams are: dumpster diving, buy nothing groups, thrift stores and craigslist/ ebay.

Once you get the hang of learning when and where to look for things, the problem becomes taking only what is needed. I don't think the human mind is wired to comprehend a dumpster full of useful things. Both pathological culture and your mind are engineered to imply scarcity. The excitement of finding something that almost meets a need can easily convince you to take too many things that almost fit your lifestyle.

Repair is an extremely useful skill for expanding waste stream possibility frontiers. Very few people know how to repair things and repair people charge a premium. It's often more time consuming and/ or expensive to take something for repair than it is to buy new. Take advantage of this negative feedback loop. Someone who can do basic repairs will be able to get an overwhelming amount of barely broken items from friends and dumpsters.

Thrifting is another waste stream possibility. Thrifting is a good place to start as it utilizes already developed consumer skills. Thrifting eliminates the need to break the taboo of jumping into a dumpster. The ability to discern quality amongst items is important. A thrift store will likely have gotten rid of all defective items and sorted the discards in some way. I look at the price I pay at thrift stores as the price of paying someone to organize the dumpster.

Bartering has recently come back into vogue. Personally I find bartering things to be a niche skill. Bartered items are often newly purchased. If this trend continues to expand this may become a way to access waste streams, as people seek to barter what they do not need and once threw away.

Skill bartering, on the other hand, is underrated. Remove all middle and taxmen when you trade services. Removing money means the problem of value will need to be solved.

Borrowing is another vastly underutilized technique. Most things that we have are not in use most of the time. We could have many fewer things if we could learn to share. However, there are real costs to borrowing. Arranging the pickup, dealing with other people, negotiating and communicating about the terms of the lending. All of these things take time and patience. These skills are worth cultivating. Most things sit unused in lifeless rooms most of the time.

The golden rule of borrowing is to return the item in the same or better condition and at the convenience of the owner. Having the skills or cash to clean/ improve the item and having the skills/ cash to repair the item if it is broken in your possession are paramount!

Another way to tap into borrowing is organizing and running different kinds of libraries. Operating a library will increase access to waste streams, as it will likely be overrun with donations (public libraries sell huge amounts of books on the secondary market and donate huge amounts of books to other outlets).

[Jin+Guice]

Nihilism, Jealousy and Cal Newport: Shouldn’t Part I

The draw of ERE is freedom from. After achieving freedom from, we move to the bigger question of “freedom to?” But wrapped in our freedom from methods and freedom to answers is a trap.

The trap of should.

The freedom we seek is freedom from should. We reject that we should spend our lives working meaningless jobs and pursuing meaningless consumerism. That we should buy the McMansion far from work, friends and family and that we should buy the expensive car to close that gap. That we should tout signs of our wealth as signs of our worth.

But, just as we’ve freed ourselves from the shackles of should, we are seduced by it in a different form. We should save our money. We spend when we shouldn’t. We should eat only lentils. We should learn to build our furniture by hand from driftwood. We should deny ourselves because it’s not ERE enough, not environmentally friendly enough or not anti-someting enough.

Shoulds antidote is nihilism. The belief that no beliefs matter. Nihilism frees us from should. Rather than bemoan the absence of a flawless value system, revel in the realization that any value system can be applied. There is no Grand Should.

Perhaps you do not share my emphatic love of nihilism. Perhaps you have a value system that you believe is the correct one. That’s fine, in fact better than fine, because a value system is necessary. Without one we make no decisions. There is no human life or activity. The only requirement is that our value system is malleable. That it contains wiggle room. That its scholars debate the true meaning of its text. That it is not absolute.

Since there is no absolute value system that determines what should be done, should can only come from one place. It comes from you. And that is great news. Because it means you have the power to change it.



If I announce that I am polyamorous, usually the first question or comment is about jealousy. Most polyamory books contain at least one jealousy chapter. The key to defeating jealousy is focusing radically and unapologetically on our own needs.

Reading polyamory books was my introduction to the needs framework popular in psychotherapy. Having needs met or unmet, particularly when we are not or believe we are not in control, is the basis of most therapy I have received.

Needs are an important part of slaying the should dragon. Needs are an internal guidance system. We can debate endlessly where they come from, but getting “in tune” with our needs helps us towards what needs doing and away from should.



Cal Newport is known as a productivity guru. Dive one layer below the surface and he is a nerdy academic who writes about eliminating distraction. My big Cal Newport takeaway is an experiment:

Show someone the book titled “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. Then show them Cal Newport’s picture in the book. Cal Newport looks like how a guy named Cal Newport would. A slightly nerdy bro. Wait for them to sigh and say “great another book about how to work harder, by some successful white guy.” “Not just any white guy” you’ll inform them, “a white guy in tech.”

This is not what Cal Newport writes about. He writes about doing better and more meaningful work by eliminating distraction. He doesn’t add things, he subtracts them. Cal Newport recognizes the limitations of the human mind. Rather than pile more things into an overloaded mind, eliminate cognitive load.

Cal Newport’s insights are great, but Cal Newport is great because he defies the expectation of Cal Newport. Don’t try harder, try differently.

The lesson of Cal Newport is the lesson of escaping from should. So often we escape the clutches of one should only to run blindly into the arms of another. Don’t try harder, try different. Don’t should.

[Ego]

Since there is no absolute value system that determines what should be done, should can only come from one place. It comes from you. And that is great news. Because it means you have the power to change it.

Those who recently shed their external shoulds frequently adopt the convenient substitute of fixating their attention on the manufacture of problems for themselves. The king of the nihilists was onto something when he said, "Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself."

There are some things that thou shall do, and others that thou shall not do, regardless of personal temperament or degrees of freedom. In my mind, self-harm is high on the list of shall-nots.

[daylen]

Some people struggling with suicide claim that self-harm kept them from the seemingly worse fate of death.

Generally, death doesn't deal in shalls but in wills and ills.

[Jin+Guice]

Pathology, Shame and Ice Cream: Shouldn’t Part II

Every freedom from needs a freedom to. The vacuum created by abandoning should is filled by values and needs.

Freedom from should is freedom from shame. It’s freedom from anxiety. Shame and anxiety drive should. Values and needs do not.


Values are an internal ethical system. They can be self-generated or externally derived. Values are meaningless if they are totally negotiable and prison sentences if they are totally inflexible. Initially value systems often come from the culture we live in. If we live in a pathological culture, it generates a pathological value system.

Should is a value system imposter. It comes from false external values or outdated internal values. If we think we think we “should” do something, sound the alarm. Is this coming from our value system? Did we do something out of alignment with your values? Why? If so, don’t be ashamed! Does our value system need updating? Are we living in accordance with our values? Why not? Are they unrealistic? Is there an internal block or habit that needs to be removed?

In addition to a value system, we have needs. Needs are self-determined, but not by the conscious self. They are what is necessary to survive and thrive. When a need is unmet there is a consequence. We are most familiar and comfortable with physiological needs. The consequence of not meeting a physiological need is death. We are uncomfortable with and often do not discuss psychological needs. The consequence of not meeting a psychological need is emotional response. The names for these responses are anger, sadness, depression and anxiety. Extreme psychological depletion leads to addiction and other extreme responses.

If we follow a value system that does not meet our needs, we will suffer the consequences of the unmet need. Our culture is pathological because it is at odds with both our environment and our needs. Our cultural value system is at odds with its environment and our needs.

As we become adults we develop our own value system. Needs are a reality check on that value system. This is why late adolescence and early adulthood are a time for experimentation. We begin to discover our value system and test it against our needs. As we experiment and age, we align our value system with our needs.

When talking about needs, we must also talk about wants. A want is something that we don’t need, yet still feel a pull towards. Unfulfilled wants do not have as strong consequences as needs. Unfulfilled wants may still fill us with a sense of intense longing. Wants can come from several places. A want can be an early warning signal that a need is in danger of not being met. A want can signal tension between two needs.

Wants get us into trouble when we are unaware of our unmet needs and seek to meet them through pathological means.

No one needs ice cream. Yet we want it. At the physiological level is a tension between our need to have healthy bodies and our need to consume calories to survive. Ice cream is a cruel trick of our environment, hijacking our body's need for calories which causes it to crave sugar, causing a momentary override of our health need by our caloric need. The moment lasts just long enough to consume 4 pints.

And yet this physiological focus misses the pleasure and the pain of ice cream. In a culture as sensuously, emotionally, socially and intellectually deprived as our own, ice cream offers a rare reprieve. One of our few shameful indulgences which, prostrated as it may be, is still permissible in public. Sold nearly everywhere things are sold. Ice cream is not valuable to us for its calories. It is valuable to us for its temperature on a hot summer day. It’s texture. The feel of it on our tongues and in our mouths. The smells and cheerfulness of an ice cream parlor. The memories of eating ice cream with our friends, family and loved ones. For a few minutes we escape the aesthetically bland world we’ve created for ourselves into a carefully crafted cone. Sugar is the sales pitch. The true payoff is sensuality, aesthetics and escapism.

If we seek to escape the cold clutches of ice cream addiction, not because we should, but because it clashes with our values, we not only seek to escape from an environment which has been cleverly engineered to exploit our physiology, but from a world which leaves us psychologically empty in many ways. Our physiology doesn’t want the 4th pint. Our sadness, loneliness, stress and alienation do.

ERE is a value system. Rather than let ERE become the new should, ask yourself if it’s a value system you’d like to adopt. Assuming it is, ask yourself if it meets your needs. If ERE or parts of ERE do not meet your needs, it will become the new should, a new source of shame. Shaming ourselves for every dollar spent is not a desirable outcome. Asking what needs those dollars are fulfilling and why we spend if it’s out of alignment with our values is.

[Jin+Guice]

Value Systems, Needs, WoG and Pathological Society

I think it’s at this stage where purpose/values and stoke have to serve as your guidance mechanism. There’s an infinite number of ways you could go about things, as you approach combining things into a system, the number of potential relationships between skills and yields just goes astronomical. Hence why the effort to actually map a WoG is now seeming to me an effort in futility (the attempt was illuminating, but the lesson there was learning how futile the effort would be to actually try to pull off).

...

I mentioned stoke again. In system dynamics terms, I think purpose is the set point, stoke is the feedback. Maybe some skill makes sense from a Purpose/Values perspective and it all lines up, but when you start doing it it just sucks, you hate it, it is NOT your jam. That’s useful info - maybe you should abandon that thing back to L5, or grit your teeth and get it up over some barrier but then put it on cruise control or something, but it’s obviously not a good fit for something you do day in and out.

As one starts to ascends past WL5, it becomes clear that a sorting mechanism is necessary. What the post above calls “vision” I’m calling a value system. What it calls “stoke,” I’m *kind of* calling needs.

ERE is a value system. It’s Jacob’s value system. Presumably we are on this forum because we share that value system. WL1-5 provides “freedom-from.” I assert it provides “freedom-from” basic needs, in the sense that they are easily met.

It is unlikely that we share Jacob’s exact value system. ERE is brilliantly designed to be flexible enough to include multiple value systems. Unless one shares exactly Jacob’s goals, ERE will not provide an exact value system or vision or “freedom-to.”

I argued in the previous post that if one’s value system is not aligned with their needs, there will be tension. In some ways, maturing is fine-tuning a value system to one’s needs and vice versa.

A note on terminology:

I am bad at strict definitions. My definitions aren’t strict, they are approximate, they are vibes.

Value System: A value system is roughly a purpose. At the top level, It’s a guiding north star. It’s a mission statement and a system that supports that purpose.

Need: In the ERE book Jacob argues that there is no difference between “needs” and “wants,” particularly when it comes to economic goods. I’m using “need” here in the therapy sense. Needs are self-generated and therefore can change over time. The needs I am talking about are not strictly… needs.

For the model I’m loosely defining, needs act from the bottom up. Value system acts from the top down. Envision Maslow’s Hierarchy. A value system sits at the top, above “self-actualization” and flows downward. Needs sit at the bottom, below “physiological needs” and flow upwards.

I think examining needs, value systems and the tension between them can help people find “freedom-to.” They can assist people who are choosing which WL6 yields and flows to pursue and how to organize these into a WL7 system. I’m currently at WL6 starting to look towards WL7, so I am actively seeking these answers.

The ERE method is eliminating the most expensive things first. ERE is about gaining financial freedom by decreasing consumption, so this system makes sense from that perspective. Alternatively,examine needs. Examine how they are met through the consumer economy provided by pathological culture. Examine what pathological culture tells you about these needs. Examine your value system. Examine how it aligns with meeting your needs. Attempt to build resilient ways to meet these needs that do not depend on pathological culture and/ or allow you to free yourself from pathological culture.

How to determine needs though? There are many ways. Some ideas: Order of Expense (from the ERE book); Maslow’s Hierarchy; a spatial model (inspired by permaculture).

Being in the WL6 frame of mind, I think it’s interesting to examine how different forms of capital can be used to meet needs. Looking at different forms of capital and asking how each form could be used to meet each need leads to some novel answers, ideas and solutions.

I think it’s important to ask how pathological culture’s value system encourages us to meet our needs. What are the default options we are provided with and pushed towards?

Finally, I think it is interesting to think about how needs were met in different historical eras. In particular pre-human, pre-agriculture, pre-industrialization and pre-electricity. Ubiquitous computer, internet and cell phone use are other possible historical infelction points.

In the next several posts, I’ll examine needs, how they interact with pathological culture/ plato’s cave and different ideas for meeting them.

[grundomatic]

All this ice cream, values, and shame talk...are you writing just to me!?!

In all seriousness, your past two posts (as well as ego's post) have been especially helpful for me to see how someone else sees values, needs, and addressing the tension that arises with misalignment. Thank you.

[dizzy]

Just started reading your journal...you had me at Sun Ra (whose Arkestra I've had the opportunity to share the stage with with twice! Marshall Allen = 99 going on infinity!)
Enjoying the ride, keep on keepin on!

[Jin+Guice]

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow proposed his hierarchy of human needs in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” I’m using his 8 tiered hierarchy as a rough guide to human needs, examining how pathological culture relates to our needs and thinking about alternative methods to fulfill them.

The 8 levels of the hierarchy are:

Transcendence
Self-Actualization
Aesthetics
Cognitive
Esteem
Love and Belonging
Safety
Physiological


The top four are “growth” needs or needs that we aspire towards, while the bottom four are “deficiency” needs or needs we wither without.

Emotional and social needs are listed as “deficiency” needs or needs we wither without. In my experience, this is not culturally acknowledged. School focuses on how important a “job” is. We learn that without the sacred job, we will be unable to meet our physiological and safety needs. We are also told that if chosen correctly, a job will meet our self-actualization needs and perhaps touch a few of the other higher order needs as well. However, rarely are our emotional, social, cognitive or aesthetic needs even mentioned. These needs are not culturally valued.

Given that we are not trained to meet these needs and that their importance is rarely culturally acknowledged, is it any wonder that we have seen such an increase in psychological diseases? Pathological culture tells us the solution to this is to numb ourselves with psychotropic drugs, illegal drugs and alcohol. But maybe the answer is to gain some emotional intelligence, strengthen our social ties, engage our minds, beautify our worlds and determine and pursue our purpose?

[7Wannabe5]

I would say that most "masterful" teachers (cognitive growth facilitators) of young humans do either consciously or semi-consciously recognize that the bottom four needs must be somehow met before learning will take place. For simplest instance, it is the case that some disadvantaged children, even in realm as affluent as the U.S., will come to school hungry, so must be fed before they are well able to concentrate on adding fractions. Other situations (so many it's actually hard to keep track sometimes) I have personally encountered in the classroom which impeded a child's ability to learn would be 5th grader who found his mother dead from overdose, 2nd grader who had her head shoved down into the crotch of a 5th grader on the school bus, family of 5 living in an SUV, 4th grader whose younger (9 year old) brother had been placed in juvenile detention facility and worried that he might be next, 8th graders being lined up to have gang symbols placed on their Covid masks, etc, etc, etc.

So, although I absolutely agree with what you are saying on one level, on another level it is kind of elitist to not acknowledge how access to any kind of a decent job might help some humans in our society.

[Jin+Guice]

@7: I think some individuals in our society recognize social and emotional needs.

I meant more that school, which in theory is tasked with preparing us for adulthood, spends all of its time on training us for job skills, under the premise that this is necessary for us to meet our physiological needs. It gives us no training on how to meet our social or emotional needs. The curriculum doesn't even suggest these needs exist. I don't think this is the fault of teachers or administrators or even school itself, it is merely a reflection of pathological society. We are trained to do what society says is important. The message is, social and emotional needs are not important so we will not train you to meet them.

In my experience this is also reinforced at home. A lot of time and focus is spent on "getting a good job," while relatively little is spent on emotional or social skills. This will vary widely since it is less standardized. Still, "my parents helped me prepare for my future" usually means they helped with college selection and student loan forms, not preparation to meet emotional or social needs.

Where I am going with all this is, as a society, we are massively over-capitilized in meeting physiological needs and massively under-capitilized in meeting emotional and social needs.

So, although I absolutely agree with what you are saying on one level, on another level it is kind of elitist to not acknowledge how access to any kind of a decent job might help some humans in our society.

Yes, but how does this relate to what I'm saying? I'm not suggesting that jobs should be eliminated or that we shouldn't be trained for jobs at all. All else equal, it is rare that someone isn't better off with more money or a "better job" (which may consequently also meet emotional and social needs better than a "bad job" or no job). I'm suggesting that emotional and social needs are woefully neglected in our society.

[jacob]

I meant more that school, which in theory is tasked with preparing us for adulthood, spends all of its time on training us for job skills, under the premise that this is necessary for us to meet our physiological needs. It gives us no training on how to meet our social or emotional needs. The curriculum doesn't even suggest these needs exist. I don't think this is the fault of teachers or administrators or even school itself, it is merely a reflection of pathological society. We are trained to do what society says is important. The message is, social and emotional needs are not important so we will not train you to meet them.

Not all school systems. In my rather Green school system, much time was spent on "group work". Unfortunately, no instruction was given in how to go about it or even that it was surreptitiously intended to develop people's social skills and ability to work with others instead of just working for the teacher. I can only presume that the teachers/system expected the students to pick these skills up by osmosis.

In practice, group work basically meant screwing around and accomplishing nothing as a team. People would then go home and finish their part of the project individually and all contributions would be stapled together the next morning.

I think a more successful form of socialization was that each class of 15-20 students were generally kept together from grades 1-9 and then again from 10-12. This is unlike the US system where the "class" involves 150+ students that don't necessarily follow each in the same class rooms all the time. As a result, you'd get to know your class of 15-20 people rather well over the years ... whereas contact with the other classes was somewhat uncommon. As such there was sociocentric push as opposed to an egocentric one. OTOH, it was a bit like growing up in a tiny village. You mostly saw the same 15-20 people every day for 10 years.

In contrast the university system was much closer to the US system. People were kept together for the freshman year, but it quickly became individualistic after that.

[zbigi]

I think a more successful form of socialization was that each class of 15-20 students were generally kept together from grades 1-9 and then again from 10-12. This is unlike the US system where the "class" involves 150+ students that don't necessarily follow each in the same class rooms all the time. As a result, you'd get to know your class of 15-20 people rather well over the years ... whereas contact with the other classes was somewhat uncommon. As such there was sociocentric push as opposed to an egocentric one. OTOH, it was a bit like growing up in a tiny village. You mostly saw the same 15-20 people every day for 10 years.

Same here in Poland, and I suspect throught most of Europe. It feels so much better than the US system, where people are basically thrown into an alienated dog-eat-dog environment (where others will barely notice you if you don't fight for their attention somehow) since they're 7 years old.
Come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me if it was behind high American extroversion levels - people had to "sell" themselves socially to strangers since they were little, and it became a habit (and they became good at it). Also, it might be the reason behind the common American pattern of loose friendships (something we'd probably call acquaintances in Europe) vs having just a couple of decades-long friends, that is common in many European countries.

[7Wannabe5]

The curriculum doesn't even suggest these needs exist. I don't think this is the fault of teachers or administrators or even school itself, it is merely a reflection of pathological society. We are trained to do what society says is important. The message is, social and emotional needs are not important so we will not train you to meet them.

As Jacob noted, it really depends on the school/realm. On the other end of the spectrum, I have taught/tutored in many different districts which are more Level Red/Blue than Level Orange. In the sort of affluent suburb where you and I grew up, it is assumed for the most part that children have already been socialized to a good extent of Level Blue at home and/or pre-school. And, these days, it is practically universal practice that students and teachers circle up and co-create a classroom social contract (early Level Green training) in the first weeks of school. However, in situations where at least a solid minority of the students are either recently immigrated from war-torn village in Yemen or likely to say "F*ck you b*tch" and throw a chair at age 5, a great deal of the school day is likely to be devoted to socializing the children up towards the bare acceptable median.

So, for instance, if I am circled up with a small group of highly disadvantaged 10 year olds who are not yet competent enough in basic math to make change, and the question "Why is it important to learn math?" is put to the group, and one child answers, "So I can get a good job when I grow up and buy a Lamborghini", it is not my tendency to lecture him on either possible effect on climate change or the sad unlikelihood that he will achieve his Super-Orange goal. I just want him to maybe be able to manage to convert units of measure while working on whatever jalopy or bicycle he ends up owning.

I'm suggesting that emotional and social needs are woefully neglected in our society.

Yes, this is because our largely Level Orange culture values dysfunctional forms of Power (Adult Masculine Energy) and Freedom (Juvenile Masculine Energy) over either more functional forms of Power and Freedom or Responsibility/Care (Adult Feminine Energy) and Aesthetics/Vulnerability (Juvenile Feminine Energy.) However, it is always the case that even when highly functional Freedom and Responsibility are in direct opposition/cross-quadrants. So, for instance, if you have done the work (fulfilled your duty at Blue) to accumulate and effectively boundary enough money (Power)that all your time is now Free to play video games or read chick-lit, you may still find yourself somewhat stuck with Level Green sense of ....not duty, not guilt, not shame...maybe just realization that "do no harm" at the level of individual or household (if you can even achieve that!!!) is unlikely to be "good" enough. So, why not plan for something like 45 degree angle vector through Individualist/Communitarian functioning from the get-go? My modest proposal for those who are inherently ill-disposed towards anything resembling volunteer-social-work is that they save up maybe 50% more money so that they can financially support somebody else who is well-disposed towards volunteer-social-work, but poorly-disposed-towards earning money. IOW, a much more flexible, non-gender-locked version of the 1950s model in which many women were freed up to do social work in their community after their youngest children were school-age or grown. I've always found it semi-humorous that the problems many of the young members of this forum have figuring out what to do with their time post-retirement are extremely similar to those faced by educated, middle-age, middle-class women/housewives-with-children-past-infancy in the mid-20th century, but I am just old enough to remember this era prior to most women joining the work-force, so I was able to break-it-down towards my Lentil Baby lifestyle design. I would note for the record that I am "switchy" enough that I would be perfectly willing to enact this model with gender roles reversed IFF there existed an attractive man in my dating pool who was cheerfully willing to ride shotgun in the lifestyle likely to be provided by my Adult Masculine energy. I kind of tried it once with this cute semi-alcoholic unemployed mechanical-engineer/bassist who was 14 years younger than me, but it only lasted about 3 weeks until he sobered up enough to do some comparative-advantage calculations

Also, it might be the reason behind the common American pattern of loose friendships (something we'd probably call acquaintances in Europe) vs having just a couple of decades-long friends, that is common in many European countries.

Yes, this is why I chose to raise my own children in a small town in a rural county (Blue) , but within commuting distance of a Green/Yellow university-city. My kids still have close friends from their early childhood as well as those usually obtained at university. I would say my own upbringing in Level Orange affluent suburbia in the 70s/80s was less problematic due to forcing extroversion than it was due to forcing conspicuous consumption. It was literally the case that at my huge campus highly-rated high school, you could match any given 15 year old girl to the subdivision where she lived, and her household income to $10,000 increment, by which label she had on her blue jeans.

[Jin+Guice]

I'm still not sure what I'm getting at is being understood.

I didn't intend to emphasize school. My thesis statement in the post is something like "pathological culture's value system does not emphasize social or emotional needs. It in fact barely acknowledges they exist. As I was raised in this culture, I was surprised to find them listed as basic deficiency needs." It's not "school should have a more social or emotional focus." Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't. That idea isn't central to my thesis. Perhaps it would have been more prescient to say "we don't emphasize the importance of social or emotional needs or well-being during childhood, as we train the next generation of people how to live."

Emphasizing social needs would be emphasizing that the quality and depth of ones friendships are as important to leading a good life as the quality and depth of ones bank account. And that developing ones emotional intelligence and knowledge of their own and other's emotional states is as important to meeting our basic needs as is developing ones career.

@7: I feel like your life is full of old grouchy men who don't recognize their social or emotional needs, but instead continue to pursue material wealth in its place. No better catch phrase for this than "I wish I could find a nice woman with whom I could discuss the stock market with over dinner."


Where I'm going with all of this in a VERY long winded way is that as we, as ERE individuals, pursue our freedom-from work and out of the cave of pathological consumer society, a stop along the way of self-actualizing our purpose and transcending ourselves, may be attending to our woefully neglected emotional and social needs.

[Ego]

"pathological culture's value system does not emphasize social or emotional needs. It in fact barely acknowledges they exist. As I was raised in this culture, I was surprised to find them listed as basic deficiency needs."

Create problems > Medicalize solutions > Profit

Epidemic of loneliness. Social anxiety disorder. The Psychopathology of social isolation.

Pathological culture encourages us to seek treatments rather than make friends.

[7Wannabe5]

I feel like your life is full of old grouchy men who don't recognize their social or emotional needs, but instead continue to pursue material wealth in its place.

No, most of the men I date are more extroverted than me and more accurately described as being concerned with Getting-Things-Done!! in general than pursuing material wealth in particular. They know how to be warm and charming, but they just can't seem to stop themselves from getting into fights. For instance, I was describing to my sister how one of them will fairly frequently sit down with me at a restaurant, look at the menu or notice something in the room, and say 'We're not eating here." and then abruptly get up to leave. One time he did this 3X in a row! He told me that the very tough size 4* Ukrainian woman he was in relationship with after we broke up called him an "idiot" for doing this, whereas I call it "grouchy", but that's one of the main reasons both of us dumped him. My sister asked me why I didn't just stay put at the restaurant and say something like "Do what you like. I am going to eat here." and the honest answer is that it simply never occurred to me as an option, although after she mentioned it I can see that it might have been a good method towards establishing boundary.

*Obviously, the fact that he felt compelled to tell me that she was a size 4 is another reason why his behavior is absolutely intolerable.

Anyways, I do agree with your core thesis. Since we seem to like to quantify everything on this forum, here is a quiz that can help ascertain current level of social functioning. I scored tip-top for my social condition, so much better than my Burpees score!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... -quiz.html

[jacob]

The 8 levels of the hierarchy are:

Transcendence
Self-Actualization
Aesthetics
Cognitive
Esteem
Love and Belonging
Safety
Physiological

I'm wondering how strong or conditional that hierarchy/pyramid really is. Also whether it describes the average human or whether there are temperamental differences. No argument that different cultures or even work spaces provide these variables in different amounts. I'm just not convinced that the ranking holds for all people given how easy it is to find exceptions.