Actualization!- Level 7 towards level 8

[AxelHeyst]

Reading through recent comments here I realized I’d been thinking about ‘money is on tap’ wrong for years. I thought the implication was that at WL8 you’re so good at multiple capitals that you can spin up any kind of income generating scheme on short notice if you want without trying very hard. And while that might be true of the skill level implicit at wl8, and might be how a semiERE wl8 operates, that’s not what was meant. What was meant was that all of the activities associated with generating, managing, controlling, etc $$ are so unconsciously competent that to the wl8 individual it just feels like it’s there without effort. (And may appear that way to external observation.) The unconscious competence piece is what I was missing.*

The reason this is powerful is that most people consume a large portion of their cognitive bandwidth dealing either with money or with the consequences of not dealing with money. Achieving unconscious competence unlocks this cognitive bandwidth in ways that ‘just’ FIRE doesn’t because, as bsog pointed out, the FIREd person still has to spend conscious effort and time to deal with it.


*I think unconscious competence at income generation is sort of what I was trying to achieve with my ‘money is purely an incidental yield’ schemes. I now don’t necessarily think that that approach couldn’t work, but I do see that for most people the hit it and quit it traditional approach of accumulate>FIRE is way more slam dunk.

[7Wannabe5]

WL5 - MHC 11 (optimization is the peak of analytical thought)
WL6 - MHC 11.5
WL7 - MHC 12
WL8 - MHC 12.5
WL9 - MHC 13

Yes, I grok the MHC. I have something like an abbreviated form of it clipped to my math tutoring clipboard. I got an A+ in Abstract Algebra, so likely I could touch Level 12 on a good day. What I was weakly attempting to communicate is that I agree with Hanzi's ("The Listening Society") take that other scales such as Emotional Depth should also be considered. IOW, considering it from an overly academic, mathematical perspective is too "dry." Humans are also "juicy." The second painting below is not just more complex; it also conveys more emotional depth.

[xmj]

Yes, I grok the MHC. I have something like an abbreviated form of it clipped to my math tutoring clipboard. I got an A+ in Abstract Algebra, so likely I could touch Level 12 on a good day. What I was weakly attempting to communicate is that I agree with Hanzi's ("The Listening Society") take that other scales such as Emotional Depth should also be considered. IOW, considering it from an overly academic, mathematical perspective is too "dry." Humans are also "juicy." The second painting below is not just more complex; it also conveys more emotional depth.

Someone has to say it: the first image is orderly, more complex through its man-made order, and thus has a deep emotional valence once you think of living there and all this entails.

The second image is just chaotic. Nice, interesting colors and brushes, but still. And people will torture students with it "what did the painter mean by this?"

Reading through recent comments here I realized I’d been thinking about ‘money is on tap’ wrong for years. I thought the implication was that at WL8 you’re so good at multiple capitals that you can spin up any kind of income generating scheme on short notice if you want without trying very hard. And while that might be true of the skill level implicit at wl8, and might be how a semiERE wl8 operates, that’s not what was meant. What was meant was that all of the activities associated with generating, managing, controlling, etc $$ are so unconsciously competent that to the wl8 individual it just feels like it’s there without effort. (And may appear that way to external observation.) The unconscious competence piece is what I was missing.*

The more common meaning of "money is on tap", at least outside this forum, is to have accumulated a pile so large your offspring won't spend it for generations.

[jacob]

The more common meaning of "money is on tap", at least outside this forum, is to have accumulated a pile so large your offspring won't spend it for generations.

I think the same applies here with the caveat that future generations won't increase their spending level above yours. To put a number on it, once SWR% get very low, we usually talk about "how many years saved" instead. My current number is 176x. I could put it in I-bonds at 0% interest and have it last until the year 2200.

However, another aspect of the "tap water"-feeling---perhaps more like a "reservoir"-feeling is the ability to "buy anything you want within reason". This is having enough money that your wants are not limited by whether you can afford it.

[7Wannabe5]

Someone has to say it

Many have already said it for me. Looking at a Thomas Kincade painting is like snorting French Vanilla Coffee Creamer cups up your nose in the Ladies room bathroom stall at an expressway exit Cracker Barrel. Barcelo's work is strong and masterful. My food metaphor will be weak compared to his work, but more like the first swallow of a very good cup of coffee on a brisk morning of a day with both open vista of possibilities and shadowed potentials. I found his description of his process in the interview below quite interesting.

You got to feel for Thomas Kinkade: The self-proclaimed Painter of Light spent his career facing accusations that he was a hack whose paintings were more suited for a Walmart bin than a museum. Critics have denigrated his charming, bucolic artworks as sugar-drenched, unpleasantly artificial, and something "normal" people should recoil from. When he died last year of an alcohol-and-Valium overdose, the Washington Post pointed out that many considered his work the "epitome of mediocre art."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... s-kinkade]

Miquel Barceló, born in Mallorca, is one of the world’s foremost painters. His work feels as free and inspirational today as it was in the ’80s, when he became one of the leading figures of the postmodern return to painting.

OLIVIER ZAHM — What do you mean?
MIQUEL BARCELÓ — All painting comes from clay. That’s something Picasso and Miró discovered, and I was lucky enough to discover it at a slightly less advanced age than they did. The fingers of the painter in the clay at Chauvet. The wall there was covered with a sort of very fine layer of clay: lime. The artists drew with charcoal, burnt bones, and the ends of burnt sticks — especially bones: bone char. That instantly gave them a magnificent black. But before they did that, an artist made an owl with his finger, just drawing it. I calculated; I did it; I redid it several times, and I managed to do it in nine seconds. I think that’s how long it took to draw that owl. It’s a gesture: two dots for the eyes, the beak, a sort of M for the wings, and then the two parallel lines, which he perhaps made several times with his hands, and the two pointed ears. Nine seconds. I tried filming myself with a camera. The first time, I did it in 10 or 11 seconds, the second time in nine, then eight, and then a little faster each time. But I think the artist did it in nine seconds. And it’s magnificent. And with that we have ceramics becoming painting. Then he adds manganese and starts to do the sfumato — the light and the dark — and it’s all there already. He works the content and the form. He works the outside, what lies behind the animal, and the animal itself, in a series of movements.

https://purple.fr/magazine/fw-2015-issu ... barcelo-2/

[black_son_of_gray]

There are a number of art references in this thread, which I think that is very appropriate. Because I think it might provide a different, valuable perspective (and perhaps some common vocabulary in further discussion), I’d like to reframe what others have said above through the lens of storytelling.

ERE as Storytelling

[All quotes with page numbers are from Alice LaPlante’s “The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing"]

Writing always exists on two levels:

• What happens in the world of the senses (plot, storyline, words spoken)
• What is really going on (emotional and intellectual subtext) (p 509)

Take the story of “Of Mice and Men”, for example. What happens is that two itinerant farmhands arrive at a new farm and after a series of misunderstandings between various characters, only one of them is left standing by the end. (I’m trying not to spoil it too much) But what happens in the story isn’t really what the story is about. The story is about loneliness, commitment to others, dreams of a better life, and so on. It’s a bit difficult to explain it exactly, and everyone will have a slightly different take on what it means, but few readers would come away from it saying that it didn’t mean anything at all.

I think there are a lot of parallels between ERE and the ERE Wheaton Levels and the art and craft of storytelling.

Let’s think for a second about skill acquisition as a writer. We start with ABC’s (or equivalent in your native language), then work up to words, then sentences. At each step, more complexity and sophistication. Sentences can be basic. But they can also be quite complex creatures, rambling on and on, articulating considerably more nuanced ideas and expressions—the kinds of things that require careful construction in order to make sense. And then of course, these sentences get ordered into paragraphs and paragraphs into sections, etc. Naturally, most people have decent grasp of the basics, but as you increase in skills, you find fewer and fewer people who are truly in command (similar to Wheaton Levels). How many people walking down the street can write a really, truly, well thought-out and beautifully rendered piece of writing?

But!--and this is a very important but—the skill of our writing is not the same as “what are we trying to say?” What happens in a story is not the same as what the story is about.

Writers of popular works (both fiction and nonfiction) tend to do well on the concrete side of things: they bounce their characters around from New York to London to Paris and in and out of restaurants and beds and whatnot, but somehow it doesn’t add up to much emotionally. At the other end of the spectrum you have well-meaning beginning writers whose prose is filled with intense emotions and insightful moments of clarity, or epiphanies, but which lack the concrete to make it real. It is only when we marry the two that we get truly compelling fiction and creative non-fiction. (p113)

I see the parallel to ERE here as something like this: The earlier ERE Wheaton Levels focus on the development of skills in the same way that a person learns how words and sentences and paragraphs work. When you get to the later levels, the problem fundamentally shifts away from “how do I say that? (technical)” to “what do I want to say? (meaning)”.

I think storytelling is a great lens here because it helps explain some of the muddy overlap between these problems. Things like what @J+G brings up (paraphrasing): “but why can’t a person work on both (technical and meaning) at the same time? The answer that seems to arise is something like: you can(!), and in fact, some of us have been working at the problem of meaning for a very, very long time...well before working at the technical skills. The rub is that working on the meaning part without the skill foundation is just less effective. (Not necessarily completely ineffective, just less so)

That is, you can think of it like a 2x2 grid of technical vs. meaning (these axes could be named a lot of things, but bear with me for the moment), with four different resulting storytellers:

Unskilled at rendering what happens, unskilled at meaning
Unskilled at rendering what happens, skilled at meaning
Skilled at rendering what happens, unskilled at meaning
Skilled at rendering what happens, skilled at meaning

I’ve listed these in order (ineffective to effective) of storytelling end result as judged in the real world by readers. The middle two are the most interesting to pay attention to.

One of the problems beginning writers have is that they start out with the abstract, or the general. They want to write about love. Or family life. Or war. Or divorce. They start above the fray, rather than in it. To paraphrase O’Connor, they want to forget that we are made of dust. And things, as a result, never get off the proverbial ground.
Let’s look at some examples of the difference between the specific and the general/abstract:
General / Abstract: She was sad.
Specific: She sat in her favorite rocking chair in her room, knitting a gray scarf and weeping into the unfinished woolen stitches.
General / Abstract: My father hated noise.
Specific: The neighbors became accustomed to my father throwing open the windows of our living room and dumping a bucket of cold water on the neighborhood children who were playing too loudly near the front porch.
General / Abstract: She had a drinking problem.
Specific: Three times a week she opened a bottle of white wine, not even chilled, and drank it from a coffee cup until it was dry. She brought the cup into the bathroom and would continue sipping even as she brushed her teeth. (p109)

The problem is analogous to the painter who is filled with emotions and ideas that they want to express, but lacks the technical ability to make the brush/colors do what they want. So the best that they can render on canvas is a crude frowny face. That said, I don’t want to downplay the meaning development that is going on in such a painter—that is very real and very important, and might begin very early. But without the ability to render it, it remains incomplete in some way. I do think there is some progress happening, though, and that might manifest later on by not being the limiting factor when other, more technical hurdles are eventually overcome. Imagine a developing storyteller who has an amazing story that has been brewing in their head for a long, long time, every nook and cranny of it explored, every rock turned over…when they finally develop the skill set to be able to vividly render that story, what is to stop them?

The flip side is the case where a storyteller is very good technically (they have an amazing vocabulary, construct lively and vivid sentences, are quite convincing with their use of language), but simply don’t have any story within them to tell. Not to themselves, and not to others. Maybe they get stuck somewhere in the murky inner realm, and can never end up crafting a story that moves beyond ‘entertaining’ to being ‘meaningful’ or ‘moving’ or ‘powerful’. They have nothing to guide them beyond socially-prescribed motivations or superficial pleasures. This is a major problem, probably very common, and maybe even more difficult to solve than the 'artistic soul' in need of better technical skills. For some, they've already long since dealt with 'meaning' in their lives. For some, they'll get there in time. Some aren't ever going to get there, whether they try earnestly or not. ERE isn't going to provide meaning--it isn't that kind of philosophy. I have, at times, banged my head against the walls of these forums, not fully understanding/recognizing that simple fact (and Jacob has rather patiently pointed out that maybe I should stop giving myself a concussion).

It’s an apparent contradiction, and there is nothing more common than for a beginning writing student to say, “I want the reader to identify with the story by imagining the first car he or she ever owned, so I’m not going to describe this car in detail.” No. It’s one of the mysteries of writing that in order to evoke a universal reaction or emotion you must use the tools of specificity. (116)

The devil is indeed in the details. And in all the little choices that a storyteller makes in order to convey both what happens and what it means. It’s so damn personal, and there are as many ways to tell a genuinely good story as there are storytellers. The thing about ERE is that each level can be described using abstract/general/theoretical language...in a way, it kind of has to be, but at the same time, it cannot be implemented generally or theoretically. You can’t put your money in “exponential growth”, but you can put it in a specific CD product at a specific bank offering a specific rate. You can’t create “system”, but you can use the wastewater from your downstairs shower to water raised beds #2 and #3 where you grow the lettuce in your back yard. It is important to point out, though, that the specifics do look reeeeeally similar at the earlier levels, e.g. details of a CD product or bank account or SP500 index fund. They look so similar that it is easy to just generalize them. But at later levels, all the details of a system start to look veeery specific and one-off indeed.

Which brings us to Levels 6-7-8-9, where the skills revolve around meaning-making. (I might be off a level...feel free to correct me. Tentatively, I’d argue that storytelling Level 6 might be something like masterfully rendering a rather standard story (e.g. a canonical love story) that is technically and emotionally solid. Level 7 might be masterfully rendering a story that comes from you. Level 8 would be a good graphic novel--different media working together in tandem, different artists coming together to tell a shared story that they both help render. Anyone want to take a stab at Level 9? If the answer is crowdsourced Harry Potter fanfiction, my head is going to explode )

What makes a story meaningful to you? What story do you want to tell? Do you have the skills to render it, both technically and meaningfully?

In addition to @jacob’s observation that there simply aren’t a lot of examples, I’d go further and argue that it is going to be extremely difficult to generalize among/between the examples that do crop up. It’s like reading a great book and then figuring out, “What makes this a good story?” One needs to know about what is meaningful to oneself, what is meaningful to others, and be able to understand and work with those meanings from a vantage point outside of them. [I am aware that I have just made an argument for the incessant personality typing and "color coding" on the forum, even though it still annoys me ]

Anyway, I hope this helps. Correct me where I'm wrong.

[mountainFrugal]

@bsog
I like this framing because storytelling is both an individual skill to develop that follows the CCCCCC of skill development AND can be used at the meaning making levels to look back on the storyteller to help find meaning.

How does one get better at telling their own story? The storyteller can rise to the level of telling a great story that is both technically and meaningfully conveyed through the written word, or through the combination of words and pictures in the graphic novel example. For the meaning making in one's life it is also about crafting a personally meaningful narrative. It does not have to be shared in the same way as a storyteller, but we are all storytellers in our own ways. If pressed we can write about and attempt to communicate our internal state and manifest it in the world. However, words are not the only way as you mention with the fully realized painter. The same presumably is true with a fully realized diesel mechanic. Indeed part of the journey (perhaps the ultimate goal?) for you as the character in your own story is to find that combination of skills, meaning, and be able to communicate that to another living being.

How wonderful the world would be if we could fully understand one another because everyone at every moment was fully expressing themselves at an appropriate level for the local physical and social environment given their interests, background, goals, hopes, dreams, etc. ? The social environment is taken into account because one needs to have a model of the audiences view of the world, you as the individual, and how best to communicate that through words, gestures, dance, concepts, mark making, etc. In short, expressing yourself through Art with a capital A (broadly defined). If you were doing so by also interacting with others at the same level perhaps this is what WL9+ is?

The devil is indeed in the details. And in all the little choices that a storyteller makes in order to convey both what happens and what it means. It’s so damn personal, and there are as many ways to tell a genuinely good story as there are storytellers. The thing about ERE is that each level can be described using abstract/general/theoretical language...in a way, it kind of has to be, but at the same time, it cannot be implemented generally or theoretically.

And part of telling a really good story to someone is understanding where they are at and leaving just enough open for the other person to map what you are saying to their own experience without leaving too much open (like the first car example). The details of some novel lynchpin to your system of personal development is likely the most compelling thing about a personal story, but at the same time it only works for that individual at that time. It is not generalized because it is a customized one off. The generalized part is all the other parts of being a human. Thinking, doing, feeling, etc.

In the end (storytelling, ERE, or both) we all have to do the hard work!

[black_son_of_gray]

@mF

Thanks you for your thoughts!

For the meaning making in one's life it is also about crafting a personally meaningful narrative. It does not have to be shared in the same way as a storyteller, but we are all storytellers in our own ways.

Yeah, I think any artistic endeavor works here (and I have ranted about art's importance elsewhere). I figured it was just easiest to map these thoughts onto the art of storytelling because it is pretty much universally experienced by people (everyone is constantly hearing/telling stories vs. say being a musician or a painter, etc.), so the vocabulary is hopefully more accessible.

The social environment is taken into account because one needs to have a model of the audiences view of the world, you as the individual, and how best to communicate that through words, gestures, dance, concepts, mark making, etc. In short, expressing yourself through Art with a capital A (broadly defined). If you were doing so by also interacting with others at the same level perhaps this is what WL9+ is?

Great point about 'audiences'. In the process of generating art, the artist is the first audience! The first draft is for the storyteller's eyes and ears alone. But ultimately the story is (usually) meant to be shared.

I think there is a lot of relevance to ERE here. Indeed, isn't ERE a form of art? 'Lifestyle as Art'? There are plenty of concepts and techniques to master at the earlier levels that ultimately allow the artist to fully realize the expression of how they want to live/spend their lives...The first draft of any ERE system is for the creator of that system. Absolutely. The EREr works on making sure that the system they have created is what they want to express. When I write a story, I'm surely going to read over and edit early drafts before sending it out into the world. Of course, there certainly are writers who just want to write for themselves. They want to get what is in their heads down on paper. They enjoy (or are compelled) the process of writing for its own sake. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But! Most writers, from the very beginning, have in their minds that they eventually want to share their story with others. In an ERE sense, what this means is that, for many, the answer to the question "to what end?" will include, at least in some way, others.

"One of the reasons I pursue ERE is to be able to spend more quality time with my kids"
"One of the reasons I pursue ERE is to minimize environmental damage for humanity in the future"
"One of the reasons I pursue ERE is to be able to tell my horrible boss to shove it without financial ruin"
"One of the reasons I pursue ERE is to light the path for others"

These are all aspects of "telling the ERE story" to an audience beyond ourselves. Now, who that audience is and why, well that is a whole 'nother can of worms. I leave that to the artist.

In the end (storytelling, ERE, or both) we all have to do the hard work!

Yup. TANSTAAFL.

[Western Red Cedar]

Which brings us to Levels 6-7-8-9, where the skills revolve around meaning-making. (I might be off a level...feel free to correct me. Tentatively, I’d argue that storytelling Level 6 might be something like masterfully rendering a rather standard story (e.g. a canonical love story) that is technically and emotionally solid. Level 7 might be masterfully rendering a story that comes from you. Level 8 would be a good graphic novel--different media working together in tandem, different artists coming together to tell a shared story that they both help render. Anyone want to take a stab at Level 9? If the answer is crowdsourced Harry Potter fanfiction, my head is going to explode )

Maybe another way to think about Level 8 is the ability to weave different genres or literary styles together to produce something meaningful, personal and unique? A little of the canonical love story, historical fiction, maybe some science fiction or dystopian collapse, a little magical realism? Basically creating an amalgam of literary styles in pursuit of a more interesting and readable product. I think it is also worth thinking about film and video when discussing storytelling, and the ability to elicit emotional responses with quality writing, acting and cinematography.

The flip side is the case where a storyteller is very good technically (they have an amazing vocabulary, construct lively and vivid sentences, are quite convincing with their use of language), but simply don’t have any story within them to tell. Not to themselves, and not to others. Maybe they get stuck somewhere in the murky inner realm, and can never end up crafting a story that moves beyond ‘entertaining’ to being ‘meaningful’ or ‘moving’ or ‘powerful’. They have nothing to guide them beyond socially-prescribed motivations or superficial pleasures. This is a major problem, probably very common, and maybe even more difficult to solve than the 'artistic soul' in need of better technical skills. For some, they've already long since dealt with 'meaning' in their lives. For some, they'll get there in time. Some aren't ever going to get there, whether they try earnestly or not. ERE isn't going to provide meaning--it isn't that kind of philosophy. I have, at times, banged my head against the walls of these forums, not fully understanding/recognizing that simple fact (and Jacob has rather patiently pointed out that maybe I should stop giving myself a concussion).

To riff on this a little more, it reminds me of some of the discussions of theory vs. action on the forum. Technical ability (theory) is extremely valuable in developing as a writer. But oftentimes young writers need to get out and live life (action) before they actually have something to say. Action opens up perspectives that are difficult to develop in a library. The appropriate balance is an individual decision.

[black_son_of_gray]

Maybe another way to think about Level 8 is the ability to weave different genres or literary styles together to produce something meaningful, personal and unique?

Yeah, I think I might have been off by a level in my above description. The reason I went off in the direction that I did for later levels (i.e. increasingly collaborative, multi-media, etc.) was that I suppose that is my take on ERE 2.0.

Also, I agree with the theory vs. practice see-sawing that tends to happen. Each rocking of back and forth opens up the doors to a new perspective on the other.

[7Wannabe5]

It seems to me that the highest (known) level in the creation of literature would be when you actually have to invent a new technique or expand human language in order to adequately convey your meaning.

As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags- onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.

- "White Noise" - Don DeLillo (1985)

There simply aren't enough semi-colons available to convey the "too much" of affluent American society. The multiplicities of distractions for our attention, even a decade prior to the take-off of the internet.

[Sclass]

Chenda said this about Thomas Kincaid in another thread.

His paintings are so sickly they give your eyes diabetes. But he was a very astute businessman, I'll give him that.

[mountainFrugal]

Eye diabetes will eventually be back in style. haha. I really like that phrase. While I disagree with the aesthetic and general content of most of his work, Kincaid was a great technical painter.