Yields and Flows - Level 5 towards 6

[jacob]

Can you say: you become to swim in another kind of water when you reach WL 6 ?

If we have to push the metaphor, it is the equivalent of becoming aware of the water for the first time by developing the ability (mental tools and perspectives) to see the water from the outside. More concretely it's developing the ability to question one's values, beliefs, and identity from outside the values, belief, and identity one has been given. It's the ability to see more than one perspective which strangely many people will never mature enough to be able to.

WL5: Has an identity as a consumer, investor, and software engineer. They will insist on ideas like comparative advantage because it's better to focus on being a better engineer and making more money to afford stuff instead of learning how to cook. They are incapable of seeing why their decisions are the way they are from another perspective than their own. From their own POV, they have chosen the most optimized path.

WL6: Wonders if they're meant to serve as a consumer or are only capable of doing the software engineering they've been trained to. Is cooking really so hard that only trained chefs can do it? Do we have to buy everything we consume or can we make stuff ourselves? How do I answer who I am if I can't give you my job title? Who am I without my work?

This transition will be obvious to some and maybe happen as early as adolescence. However, the majority of people never reach a point where they start questioning their OWN assumptions. Instead they live out their entire life never even being aware of the assumptions they underlie everything they value; perhaps only ever questioning other people's assumptions insofar they become aware of them.

Questioning one's diet and experimenting with alternative diets is one aspect of this because diet for many people are a part of their identity. I highlight the skillbuilding because most modern people have very few practical skills outside their job and they have a big part of their identity tied up in their profession.

The [Hegelian] synthesis is that once one knows two different ways or perspectives (thesis and antithesis), it's possible to evaluate one from the other and vice versa. This also unlocks the possibility of a synthesis which provides the foundation for WL7.

[7Wannabe5]

Then unless you've identified with a similarly narrow identity (as supported by your surrounding society) like mother, father, housewife, soccer fan, Christian, ... the comment does not apply.

I am actually a bit puzzled about this because it's as if maybe my pre overlapped my trans a very long time ago. I remember having a conversation with my father when I was in the 5th grade. He asked me what I was going to do when I grew up, and my reply was that I was going to read books. He was generally a fairly mild-mannered centered at Modern man, but he lost his temper a bit and informed me that "reading books" was not an option for making a living, and my unspoken thought was "Hmm...we'll see about that." I was also fairly well established as a generalist by that age, although I wouldn't have had the sophistication to describe myself as such. I knew how to cook, sew, tap dance, construct a lie detector with my electronics kit, grow sunflowers and sell the seeds door-to-door, win a prize for writing a funny story, make a vending machine out of a cardboard box, ride a bike to the store to buy candy, babysit for cash money, and tease a freckle-faced boy until he offended me by suggesting that we might go on a date to McDonalds. I didn't know how to butcher a hog, but I studied the chapter in my copy of the Foxfire series. I had already read almost all the books in the school library, so the librarian took me on a book buying trip with her and let me select some titles for the library from the newly conceived genre of Young Adult Fiction.

My point here being that by this age I already sensed that my generalist purpose(s) were not socially supported. Kind of like a kid who wasn't heterosexual would have a similar sense (during that era for sure.) By the time I was in the 10th grade I had attempted to drop out of school to educate myself in the library, and while I was walking down the sidewalk of a middle-class suburb to the alternative school for drop-outs I was subsequently forced to attend for a couple months, a man in his 30s wearing a nice suit and driving a nice car, pulled over to the side of the road and solicited me for prostitution. One of the teachers at the school for drop-outs also behaved inappropriately. I wrote a letter to the staff critiquing their behavior modification practice, so they asked me if I used drugs, and kicked me out as a misfit when I informed them that I didn't. At that juncture, I had read more books written for adults than the median adult ever reads, and was sophisticated enough to sometimes even wish that I lived in a historical culture that allowed 15 year old females to start living an adult life by marrying a 30 year old man. I was trapped, and I knew I was trapped, so I went back to living the life of a bright, middle-class child who goes to school and aces AP Chemistry, but I maintained an alternative lifestyle in which I hung out with older burn-out girls who dated men who already had jobs, vehicles, and maybe even domiciles. By the time I was 20, I was living in a semi-vegetarian co-operative and reading books like "Homesteading in the City" and had saved up enough money working part-time at a keg store to do nothing but hang out and read and knit and chat for a few months.

So, when I read accounts about intelligent young men just blindly doing what they are socially sanctioned to do until a light strikes them at maybe age 27, I just think that sometimes nerdy females grow up, at least in some ways, much faster, but maybe I'm committing pre-trans fallacy? It's like I've been making up barely acceptable cover-stories for my clear internal intention to do as I first stated at age 11 for so long that I sometimes even confuse myself. Maybe it would seem more straight-forward if I had been a boy who told his father that what he was going to do when he grew up was fish. Then when he grew up he would spend most of his time fishing, but sometimes he would maybe do some tile work or tend bar or make jewelry out of thrift-store silverware and hawk it at the flea market to put some gas in the van that he lived in parked down by the river when he was between women with their own trailer homes. I picture the male fishing 7-on-cusp-of-6 version of me being played by Bill Murray.

[jacob]

I am actually a bit puzzled about this because it's as if maybe my pre overlapped my trans a very long time ago. I remember having a conversation with my father when I was in the 5th grade. He asked me what I was going to do when I grew up, and my reply was that I was going to read books. He was generally a fairly mild-mannered centered at Modern man, but he lost his temper a bit and informed me that "reading books" was not an option for making a living, and my unspoken thought was "Hmm...we'll see about that." [...]

The lens of specialist vs generalist is not what I'm talking about. However, I do think this example illustrates the conflicting perspectives as they pertain to ego stages. I'd still recommend getting your hands on either Cook-Greuter's or Loevinger's books for the full details. Overall, though, the simplest possible differentiation is

impulsive->conformist->conscientious->autonomous

The impulsive stage is best summarized as "I do what I want". Basically, "it's all about me". For example, in the 5th grade, I wanted to be a "spaceman" because I thought NASA and Starwars were cool. Typically, during one's teenage years (perhaps earlier for girls than boys?), there is pressure to "fit in" with a social tribe. This is the conformist stage where belonging to a group and doing what the group wants is more important than "I do what I want". That is, whereas I previously wanted to be a "spaceman", I now want to be a "hacker" because I hang out with the nerds who has agreed that "hacking" is cool even if nobody knows how to hack. Many people stick to the conformist stage for life easily adopting the beliefs and opinions of whoever "they're with". The "you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with" describes the conformist mind.

The stage after that is the conscientious stage. Rather than trying to fit in and please the group following along wherever the group goes, the conscientious mind is deliberate and dutiful to concepts beyond fitting in with the immediate group. It sets goals and follows plans under its own discipline. The conscientious mind will control its "impulses" and will not conform to a group doing something it considers immoral, for example. The conscientious mind is essentially the one telling you that "reading books is not an option for making a living". According to the conscientious mind "making a living" is crucial duty, moreso than being a good friend or having fun.

The conscientious stage is the end-point of typical modern education that aims to make good citizens who can independent choose and enact plans and follow the laws. It also marks the end-point of the socalled conventional stage as in "adheres to the conventions". The impulsive stage is pre-conventional. The pre/trans-fallacy here would be in confusing the pre-conventional "I do what I want" with the post-conventional "I replace/improve previous conventions with my own". The impulsive mind is not yet aware of what the conventions are. The autonomous mind sees the conventions for what they are, question them, and find better conventions.

The individualizing pluralist-aware mind is the beginning of the post-conventional stage and the beginning of the autonomous stage. In terms of perspectives, this is also the beginning for the "conscious part" of "conscious incompetence" where the competence is about the rules and duties that the conscientious mind unawaringly assumed or absorbed.

(A good way to "test" where someone is is to see how they argue if they did something bad and now face the consequences. The impulsive mind might apologize but they're only sorry they got caught. The conformist mind will argue that it's not fair that the consequences happened to them because unlike those other people, they consider themselves to be "good people". The conscientious mind will own their mistake and try to do better in the future. The autonomous mind will engage in much soul-searching to find out what led them to make the mistake in the first place, alternatively they will convincingly argue why whatever they did is only bad from a certain perspective. E.g. the conscientious mind will argue that retiring at 30 is bad because it fails the "duty to work" but the autonomous mind will argue that the duty to work is subsumed by the higher duty to pay for oneself and that being FI covers that and therefore not working is not breaking that higher duty.)

Add: One might draw a parallel to art. Many people "in the middle" can't tell the difference between the artistic output of a 6yo or an AI program and an artist. However, other artists can. The difference is that the former is effectively random and founded in nothing, whereas actual art is a critique or a comment on previous art. However, in order to critique something one has to understand what one comments on. Simple disagreement (from one's own perspective) or insisting on being different is not enough. The difference between the impulsive person and the autonomous person is similar.

[oldbeyond]

Another example might be style/fashion, where you might break ”the rules” because you know them well or riff off classic outfits/styles/subcultures. Conscientious would have a ”book” (classic mens fashion, some subculture etc) and be horrified by heretics. Impulsive would be more like a child wanting to wear shorts when it’s freezing or a ballerina dress on a hike.

I guess WL6 is a quest to discover what is good. Both finding your own values in the shadow of those that convention deems to be right, and seeing what actual goods various products and services really provide to you. So it is a journey into yourself as well as into the deeper nature of the outer world.

Knowing what you value means you know what to pursue. Knowing what provides it means that you can go right to the source, instead of placing a bid and hoping the market will provide. That might mean growing and building things, but it might also mean connecting with the right person, doing research or regulating your emotions.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:
Gotcha. I think we are mostly on the same page now.

The conscientious mind will control its "impulses" and will not conform to a group doing something it considers immoral, for example. The conscientious mind is essentially the one telling you that "reading books is not an option for making a living". According to the conscientious mind "making a living" is crucial duty, moreso than being a good friend or having fun.

Yes, and INTJs are inherently highly conscientious and ENTPs are inherently more impulsive and approximately average level conscientious. So, I would posit that as either type proceeds forward in development, ENTPs will retain more access to inner-child-piling-up-blocks-to-reach-the-cookie-jar while INTJs may retain more access to inner-clock-puncher to the extent that they may work on clocks as a hobby even when they no longer have need to punch a clock

If I flip to the Enneagram model, types 5,6, and 7 all occupy the Head Triad with Fear as core emotion. Type 5 fears the outer world and their own capacity to cope with it. Type 6 turns to the outside world to find a source of security. Type 7 distracts themselves from experiencing fear in inner world. Therefore, as a 7 on the cusp of 6, my essential strategy throughout development will also be inherently somewhat different from that of Type 5 which tends towards "withdraw and stockpile" rather than "look on the bright side, find a buddy or two, and invent something on the fly." I would suggest that since all of these personality types still exist in the population of humans, varying strategies were likely effective in varying circumstances, although I would also notice when jumping to yet another model, that Level Yellow-Systems is almost tailor made for INTJ type, whereas ENTP was maybe a better fit for the simpler polymath generalist era of Benjamin Franklin. Dunno.

My edge of 6 and/or my feminine core/training and/or the fact that I'm only moderately more T than F, and/or my particular life experience, offers me more options yet also loads me down with greater social responsibilities beyond believing that "making a living is crucial duty." Conscientious me would think more along the lines of "I can do whatever I want as long as I also in some manner chip in my fair share towards taking care of "the babies." (widely imagined)" So, for instance, I have no scruples about mooching financial support off a grouchy old poly-partner while making $15/hr teaching disadvantaged children, but I would feel twinges of conscience if I was just lounging about reading pulp fiction while munching on candy. Similarly, if I was engaged in a permaculture project attempting to follow the rule-of-thumb that every permaculture project requires at least 3 adult participants, I wouldn't feel compelled to provide my fair share in the form of cash only, although if I was the least generally skilled permaculturist, I would be okay with being the one who brings home the specialist-skill bacon needed for an extremely skint/scavenger project. For example, there is no way any house-husband being financially supported by me wouldn't be out dumpster diving, foraging, chopping wood, darning my work stockings, building planters to my specifications, fermenting lentil tofu, etc. etc.( infinite regress of tasks an eNTP can brainstorm in an instant) on a regular basis. Chop-chop! Any volunteers out there?

IOW, I would bring something forward that was more communal in free contract and less concerned with fully covering future me with capital investments. I do worry about future generations bearing climate change to the extent that now that I am largely recovered from acute Crohn's disease, I have once again reduced my expenses well below fair share of footprint. I also care about all the young members of the current living generation who are already living in post-apocalyptic situations to the extent that I don't want to waste another minute supporting the bloated growth of any variation on Glengarry Glenn Ross. I very much respect the fact that you are supporting the growth of the somewhat older members of the younger generation by providing this forum and other resources as well as looking to the fate of all the unborn likely to suffocate in wet bulb humidity or starve in refugee camps. I comprehend that directly interacting with dirty illiterate poorly behaved 6 year olds in the present is not every type's cup of tea. I hope you are having fun with your video games. I am having fun too!

the autonomous mind will argue that the duty to work is subsumed by the higher duty to pay for oneself and that being FI covers that and therefore not working is not breaking that higher duty.

Yes, this is why I mentioned deciding to educate myself in the library when I was in the 10th grade. My thought was that the "higher duty" was to educate myself, not mandatory attendence of school. I wasn't rebelling for the sake of rebelling or because my friends were doing it (they weren't.) And, I still believe that although free public education should be provided, school attendence should be optional for anybody who has already proven herself capable of being left alone to babysit others, prepare a meal, and fluidly read at NYT level of comprehension, provided that she is also given a chart outlining an approach to higher math concepts. Competency based emancipation now!

[Sclass]

So, for instance, I have no scruples about mooching financial support off a grouchy old poly partner

Grouchy gets a lot of hits in the search tool.

[7Wannabe5]

@SClass:

Gotcha. Will break out my thesaurus and/or assume G.O.M. will suffice.

[Western Red Cedar]

My favorite is curmudgeonly, but crotchety, crabby, cranky or cantankerous aren't bad either. I don't know how many more three letter acronyms the forum can handle