Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[Jean]

@7 i'm getting the impression that you escalated from mentioning polyamori in all your posts to mentionning your fetish in all your posts.. I'm not sure that you are aware of it.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jean:

It took me a minute to figure out what you were referring to, because although I do have a bit of a commonplace female fetish, I haven't mentioned in any of my recent posts on this thread. And, I suppose liking muscular arms could be regarded as a fetish although extremely commonplace, but I think I mention that fairly consistently in my posts. OTOH, if you are referring to my mention of hawt immigrant men in my last two posts, that is not because it is a fetish, but because I am currently back knocking boots with my second "husband" who happens to be muscular and Iranian-American immigrant, and I usually end up babbling semi-consciously in alignment with whatever books I am currently reading and other current events in my life, inclusive also of recent events in the U.S. which are putting immigrants in the spotlight. Generally, I'm pretty much an equal-opportunity generalist/explorer type when it comes to ethnic heritage of my partners.

Although, it is true that the feel of a man's arm muscles does vary a bit with skin thickness which does vary a bit with both ethnicity and age. For example, an old Ginger guy of British/Irish heritage will most likely have the thinnest skin, so his muscles will feel more isolated, kind of like rocks in a brook when I grab on to them in rude Level Red regressive objectification mode and/or attempt to trance out on them in towards Level Turquoise mode in which the brook might become the river representing masculine energy, while the arm muscles are the rocks I am holding on to so I don't get swept away. Although, of course, getting swept away is kind of the point of the exercise if you are in your feminine energy, and really the greatest difficulty in achieving a state of transcendence during sex if you are a heterosexual woman is usually that your partners are so likely to not comprehend sexual metaphors (sigh.)

ETA: Upon second read, I did notice that I also revealed that I find Harry Styles somewhat attractive, which is somewhat shockingly towards cradle-robbing on my part. I also found Benson Boone kind of sexy in the slinky blue bodysuit he wore for his highly acrobatic Grammy's performance. I think the 70s moustache and colorful clothing look kind of takes me back to my youth.

[suomalainen]

@7, I think what @jean is trying to say is that he would be the first subscriber if you started nerderotica.com (domain available!). Alternatively, he may be jealous of you, and the thought that your fetish isn't "smelly swiss dilettante" is disturbing his sensitive nature.

[7Wannabe5]

@suo:

Swiss men are under-represented in erotic fiction for the American female audience. Likely because most common associations would be "banker" or "goat herder." OTOH, there are a bazillion books featuring Scottish men. I think this is in good part due to the fact that there are even more women who fetishize male legs than male arms. When my Smart car blew up on the side of the highway last week, the young tow truck driver was wearing a uniform that looked like a normal tow truck driver uniform on the top, but it had a matching knee-length pleated skirt on the bottom. When I said "I like your skirt.", he replied, "I call it a kilt." These Gen Z kids crack me up, because we chatted for a bit, and he otherwise seemed like your typical working-class Midwest guy who is really into motorcycles. I felt bad for referring to his "kilt" as a "skirt", so I told him that my BF also has one that he wears around the house. This is true, but his "kilts" look exactly like deconstructed boxer shorts, and he likes them because easy apparel to manage after losing the use of right hand in motorcycle accident. Anyways, you definitely have to have pretty muscular legs to pull of this look successfully, and I still have the scar on my leg from the time I made the mistake of riding on a motorcycle wearing a skirt, so best to stick with the pants for that hobby. I have now also cheerfully updated my Bayesian expectation of witnessing the leggings and codpiece look coming back into male fashion before my death. Although, I still rate it well below likelihood of major glacier fail.

[Jean]

I remember getting wild sex with a 19yo girl after showing up at a party with a tablesheet worn as a kilt.
Main advantage is that it double as a mating surface.
She was probably turned on by my calves.
My legs are very sexy, i can wear leggings amd still be extremely masculine.
Edit: maybe i should be more direct. You give very specific detail about your sex life all over your posts, so there is no escaping them. It probably the same thing that led someone to tell me she was unconfortable with my old pp.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jean:

Yes, I do over-share, but I was actually mostly using sexual reference in my posts on this thread in the same manner Ken Wilber uses them in "Boomeritis." The humans attending the Meditation Retreat Center in the Woods represent the perhaps somewhat effete elites at Level Green desiring Level Turquoise, and the minimum wage worker teenagers having sex on the machines spinning the guest's dirty laundry represent those still capable of crude lust at the juncture of Level Red/Blue. Sexual energy is essential to discussion of growth along the spiral or integral levels, because the energy corrects towards either "feminine" or "masculine" with each upward twist. David Deida is a well-known Level Turquoise guru, and he pretty much only writes about sexual relationships. So, basically, what I was sort of half-humorously, half-grouchily suggesting was that maybe these male gurus invented these different levels as a way to maintain enough status to get laid even though are old and they spend their time just hanging around doing yoga.

[Bicycle7]

Edit/Correction: The blindspot of an INFJ is Te which is what drives succinct explanations and/or logical coherence. Case in point: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality could probably have been a bit ... shorter.

I'm an INFJ and have been thinking about the Te blindspot lately. I'd like to think I'm succinct, maybe to a fault? What do you mean by logical coherence, because I would associate that with Ti?

The way I've been thinking of my Te blindspot is my inability to operationalize any type of project, basically getting stuff done, figuring out next steps and then actually doing it. Like Te is the "getting things done" function.

[jacob]

The way I've been thinking of my Te blindspot is my inability to operationalize any type of project, basically getting stuff done, figuring out next steps and then actually doing it. Like Te is the "getting things done" function.

Your explanation is more accurate than mine. Being a writer/theoretical researcher biased me towards thinking of Te as the mechanism that translates ideas (Ni) into words and equations in a logical and succinct way. However, thinking of Te as "operations" is more general.

Also "blindspot" is a bit misleading. It's not that the function isn't "seen" but rather that it isn't heard because it's drowned out/overridden by the 2nd and 3rd functions. For INTJ it's "Te and Fi" ganging up on poor "Fe". Sure, "how some people might feel about it" should be taken into account but not if it interferes with "getting the right things done".

[7Wannabe5]

The way I think about my Fi blind-spot is that I assign it the spirit animal of The Bunny with juvenile feminine energy. However, I think of The Bunny as more towards being "ganged up on" by all of my first three functions Ne, Ti, Fe. My primary Ne is assigned the spirit animal of The Monkey with juvenile masculine energy, so the way I visualize it is that The Monkey shoves The Bunny into her back-pack when she wants to have an adventure, with tacit approval from Ti, the Snowy Owl (adult masculine energy) and Fe, The Deer/Cow (adult feminine energy), as long as "not illogical" and "somehow in alignment with social harmony." Humans with Fi higher in their stack sometimes seem like The Prince or Princess with the Pea to me, because they are overly sensitive about minor matters, so this can result in dysfunctional gender flip when I am in relationship with "artsy" Level Green men. I actually probably also assign some of my 4th position (Baby in the Backseat) Si to The Bunny, because I also think of her as being "dumb" like a Bunny or a Baby. A lot of the work I did in therapy in my late 30s was towards giving The Bunny more of a voice and a physiological persona. For example, having Fi in my blind-spot means that it is difficult for me to recognize and verbalize something like "You hurt my feelings" rather than "You made me eat two bowls of ice cream." This is why I see Jin+Guice (similar type as me) as doing similar work at a similar age, although within the construct of ERE.

The way Te shows up as my "critical parent" in 6th position is very obvious in the marginalia of my To Do lists. Kind of like I am constantly hitting myself with symbolic emphasizers. Somebody once asked me why I had doodled breasts on my To Do list, because I actually frequently draw what is supposed to be two wide open eyes next to most critical items on my list as a "Look at this!!!" nudge towards alertness. If I had to assign a spirit animal to my Te, I think it would maybe be like an obnoxious herding dog that periodically butts me with its head and barks assertively, because either it wants a walk or the house is on fire. Personified it would be like a drill-sergeant Dad that startles you by smacking you on the back of the head and barking out an order while you are relaxed reading a book and eating a bowl of ice cream. This is towards why I sometimes have difficulty sharing house-space with humans with primary Te. I tell them that if they want to add items to my To Do list they should just write me a note, but they are often compelled to continue barking in the moment, which is why I think it is often better if they remain somehow employed outside of the home, perhaps on a naval vessel, and/or own a large property that requires constant chopping of wood, etc. I don't know why anybody would want to be married to somebody with primary Te, it would be like being forever 24/7 employed at a McDonald's with an assistant manager who makes you sanitize the baseboards when there are no customers in line.

[Bicycle7]

@jacob:

Thanks for expanding on it, that makes sense.

It's interesting to think about it more as being drowned out than as a blindspot, for instance, sometimes I can imagine delegating a task to someone (Te), although it passes through such a heavy Fe filter that often I drop the idea of telling someone what to do, unless I really feel like it'll impact other people and then I'll try to organize people.

My preferred way of relating is so much more centered around the flow of connection, making people feel comfortable, that I'm dreadful at orchestrating people projects.

I get to relate to the NTPs on the forum with respect to Ti and Fe and the NTJs with Ni.

[Jin+Guice]

I somewhat disagree on the basis that both old people and adolescents often "don't care what people think"

I don't think that anyone truly does not care what anyone else thinks. My explanation of this is the subject of the next several posts.

@Ego: It still seems like you're arguing that the solution to higher complexity value meme problems is moving to lower complexity value meme problems? While this does technically solve the problems, I'm not sure it's a desirable or available option?

i do think the fact that lower complexity value memes fail to have higher level complexity value meme problems is interesting, insofar as examining discrepancies could help us uncover possible novel solutions for



As far as the idealizing the past argument is going... y'all are missing my point. The argument has gone so far off the tracks that I don't know how to respond from the context of what I'm trying to say.

Possible point of interest: If I'm understanding everyone correctly, several people are taking the position that simpler (=lower value meme) societies are less desirable than higher value meme societies. If I understand him correctly, @Ego is taking the position that simpler (=lower value meme) conditions are perhaps necessary to solve the problems of modernity (though using examples of present day societies that have either not reached sufficient complexity to become modern or have collapsed from modern to a simpler state due to catastrophe). Perhaps this would be an interesting debate (assuming I am accurately representing both sides)?

For my own purposes, I find it interesting that modernity seems to have created problems that less complex societies did not suffer from and I wonder if examining the ways in which less complex societies functioned could give us some clue as to how to solve these problems (without returning to less complex conditions).

the vast majority of people can not, will not, or do not self-examine to the extent where they can actually discern their true needs.

This is fucking wild though! I totally agree with you from inside the modern value meme. We can come up with a bunch of complicated explanations for why we don't know our own needs, indeed this entire series is in large part attempting to answer this question. But I think focusing on complicated explanations misses the simpler point that it is odd that we don't just know our own needs.

This is the very point I feel I'm having a very hard time communicating: Contextualized in modernity it makes a lot of sense that we wouldn't know our own needs and that knowing these needs requires a lot of work, mental and emotional fortitude and introspection. Decontextualized from modernity, it's very weird.

The problem of decontextualizing is that in order to solve problems within the modern value meme, it needs to be recontextualized in the modern value meme. This is why I think Maslow is interesting, because he attempts to contextualize needs from within the modern value meme. As far as I can tell he more or less nailed it and this work lead him to notice that there is a rare yet persistent type of person who transcends their own needs to actualize, which he agrees is very difficult (under the modern value meme from within which he observes).

The questions he doesn't ask are why we need a breakthrough psychologist to know our own needs in the first place and why so many people act in ways that don't meet their needs, resulting in few actualizers.

[Jin+Guice]

Toward a Theory of Status and Esteem Needs

Needs beyond the physiological present interesting challenges. If these needs are not strictly necessary for biological survival, where do they come from?
 
For the purpose of this series I'm using the word "need" to mean anything that drives human action. Every action we take exists to fulfill some underlying "need."

Physiological needs are easy to observe since they objectively keep people alive. These needs are communicated to us through internal physical sensation such as thirst, hunger, pain or tiredness. Modernity has made fulfilling these physiological needs easy for those who experience its fruits.
Because of this I believe the higher level needs are those that drive most action for people living under the modern value meme (and above).

Esteem and social needs are tricky. The craving and satiation mechanism are complex, communicated through our emotions and hidden in our secret desires, subconscious and shadow worlds. 

I think esteem and social mechanisms feedback into each other. I think the main feedback mechanisms can be captured with feedback between mimetic desire and identity as well as feedback between status and esteem.

I'll explore these feedback mechanisms and how they shape our social and esteem needs in the next two posts.

[Lemur]

Humans throughout most of their existence were primarily concerned with survival and when all their needs were met, they likely spent the rest of that time socializing, laying about, and conserving energy for the next hunt, forage, or potential move due to the seasons or threat from other human tribes. Only in recent times, have we secured most of our survival needs due to agriculture and modern economies. There might have not been too much time to deal with boredom or thinking about one's own death subconsciously. For these humans, most of these existential questions were answered in a SD: Beige & Purple context.

Our survival needs are so incredibly secure that we're out of practice in dealing with real stress and anxiety, to a point where it presents an arrival of new needs - much more psychologically based. The brain's fight or flight response was crafted over hundreds of thousands of years to deal with human tribe invasions, lions, bears, etc..but now it instead deals with new "threats" such as driving, public speaking, making your mortgage payment, paying the bills, keeping up with tons of social rules and norms, etc. On the other hand, we've much more time on our hands to introspect and be creative. Boredom in this case can be a good thing because it allows creativity to flourish when it isn't numbed out. Its one reason why after survival needs were secured, the human population has exploded - along with technology, modern medicine, access to instant clean water, and everything else we've that we sometimes can take for granted.

In any case, we can argue or not whether the former or latter is more preferable. Perhaps that has been beaten to death anyway. If modernity works for you, one can create a good life. On the other hand, if modernity does not work for you, one can fall susceptible to being a prisoner of their own mind for various reasons.

Where I was going with this...

If these needs are not strictly necessary for biological survival, where do they come from?

This sentence is a little bit of a tongue twister but I think these questions might come from questions that historical humans had confidently answered (and perhaps they didn't even question much because they didn't have time to be bored and introspect..or they just died young) in their SD: Beige & Purple times. Now these questions are opened up once again. These questions include everything dealing with the existential: what is my purpose, what is the meaning of life, what is the point of life...now that we've our needs met, these existential anxieties are brought to the surface. And beneath it all is this underlying, subconsious force, or maybe even very real realization that you too will die one day.

Terror management theory (TMT) is both a social and evolutionary psychology theory originally proposed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski[1] and codified in their book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015). It proposes that a basic psychological conflict results from having a self-preservation instinct while realizing that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, which is managed through escapism and cultural beliefs that counter biological reality with more significant and enduring forms of meaning and value—basically countering the personal insignificance represented by death with the significance provided by symbolic culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

I read that book a few years ago and it is an interesting theory. One of those few books that I've read that I can't unread now. Anyway, so I speculate these questions come up the surface due to terror management and that humans deal with these questions (the existential) by simply trying not to think about it or just living their scripts so they don't think about it at all. This is actually useful because it would be hard to live life having to think about your own mortality 24/7. For humans in historical times, death was always around the corner and it was just the way of things due to the numerous threats, diseases, and food insecurities. No one expected to live up to very old ages. "Life after death" had clear answers.

But the modern human has their survival needs secured so they get the privilege to grapple with these questions for much longer time frames. And regarding esteem needs, the historical human may have had that solved easily from strong social bonds through kinship. So humans try again to build self-esteem and solve these questions through....conquering (Red), religion & nationalism (Blue), logical reasonings / being the best that you can be (Orange), finding a community and causes to believe in (Green), or solving complex problems...gaining all the knowledge to think independently (Yellow) and beyond.

I think TMT provides a good answer. Basically these questions might come from the subconsious fear of death and they are brought to the surface because we've more time to think about them - and the "answer", or at least form of escape so you don't have to think about it, depends on what perspective and worldview you live in via vMeme.

[Jean]

I'm very not convinced.
I have a very strong conservation instinct. Maybe not very strong relative to other humans, i don't know. But I'm not letting stuff kill me without trying to make it less likely. I have observed my behavior severam times in dangerous situations.
But on the other hand, i feel no dread about the prospect of dying at all, and i also don't care about sudden death cause once the factor i can work on have been reduced.

[Lemur]

I'm not 100% sure either Jean but I can tell you my thought process. I thought of an animal...like squirrel, or maybe a chipmunk, hell even a Lemur hehe. What do most all non-human animals do? They run purely off braincode. Eat, sleep, urinate, defecate, reproduce, build shelter sometimes, maybe groom themselves, etc. All purely instinct. Individualism rarely ever exists except maybe in an Octopus (fascinating creatures).

Now humans run off some braincode as well (System 1). We see this in babies. But it doesn't take long for the brain to develop before a human can acquire language and system 2 thinking. System 2 thinking is slower and deliberate and outside of base survival and instincts. Because we've both of these systems, we're also much like animals where we're predictable in some ways, but we're much more complex in a lot of ways too. Unlike animals (maybe exception with Elephants or Dolphins?), homosapiens are differentiated because we can contemplate mortality and when we see others die, we've various rituals and rationalities to deal with that. Those rituals and explanations and how we react to death is very likely shaped by our environment, personal life philosophy, values, and culture (and why I connected spiral dynamic colors to showcase the various examples).

So when J&G asks the question "if these needs [needs beyond the physiological] are not strictly necessary for biological survival, where do they come from?", I first conclude that these are questions that only us humans deal with. And if that is true, then what is the only thing we'll have in common? We're very much aware that we die one day. Now not all humans are afraid of death. And the conscious awareness of death may not even alter your behavior whatsoever. My Grandfather in his last few years welcomed it. Stoics learn to be at peace with it. Other religions, cultures, etc. have their answers as well. However, TMT suggests that this stuff sits mostly in the subconscious and acts as an underlying force...and that drives the psychological needs of self-esteem, well-being, mental health, autonomy, love and belonging. My first post suggested that the psychological needs were not much of a priority for historical humans because survival took priority and system 1 thinking was more dominant. So the best I can provide is this soft science, and a connection between Daniel Kahneman, TMT and SD, in my attempt to answer J&G's question directly.

[7Wannabe5]

There is an extension to the Enneagram which associates Survival/Fear of Death directly with a Primarily Individualistic/Solo perspective. However, this model also suggests that the Sexual/Dyad and Social/Tribe perspectives can be just as primary. IOW, adjunct to your personality type, you can be more or less core concerned with Life/Love/Meaning. For example, when you are literally alone, you may come to feel anxious, lonely, or kooky, but you may also feel these negative emotions while in a dyad or group. The only terror you can/must combat as an individual is the fear of your individual survival. To the extent that you are also or more engaged in fearing loss/lack of love and/or meaning, you are necessarily not in an entirely individualistic or Solo perspective. ERE, obviously, is largely a philosophy/framework/strategy-for-creating-strategies from a Solo/Survival perspective. However, it is often the case with this model that where you are looking (your perspective) is not where your boots are actually planted. For example, "The Fountainhead" is a romantic (dyad focused) novel about Individualism.

If you imagine living your entire life primarily as a member of a sports team which has to win more games than it loses to survive, your individual fear of death (not personally making a basket 3 games in a row) would be subsumed to the group survival dynamic. Even in our highly individualistic society we see this come into play under serious threat of war, when the majority might band together with group survival perspective, more concerned with the "meaning" of being an American than individual goal-scape, absent ironical observation that Individualism is the American Way.

What do you fear more, dying as an individual or being alive after everybody you love has died and/or all your life's work and narrative has been destroyed or rendered meaningless within social context?

[Lemur]

@7Wannabe5

Despite being high on introversion, the latter of course is a much worse outcome...the world as my playground would get boring and meaningless rather quickly without those I shared bonds with.

Even in our highly individualistic society we see this come into play under serious threat of war, when the majority might band together with group survival perspective, more concerned with the "meaning" of being an American than individual goal-scape, absent ironical observation that Individualism is the American Way.

Interesting that you brought this up because it immediately reminded me of one of the examples that Sheldon Solomon used in his book "Worm at the Core" to try to prove out some aspects of TMT, specifically experiments regarding Mortality Salience (MS).

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -politics/

SOLOMON: Yes, we think so. In his 1998 book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker, based on Max Weber’s study of charismatic leadership, proposed that in times of crisis, when fears of death are aroused, people are more likely to embrace leaders who provide psychological security by making their citizens feel like they are valued contributors to a great mission to eradicate evil.

To test this hypothesis, we had participants read campaign statements purportedly written by three gubernatorial candidates after a MS [mortality salience] or control induction. The candidates varied in leadership style: charismatic, task-oriented and relationship-oriented. For example, the charismatic leader stated: “You are not just an ordinary citizen, you are part of a special state and a special nation . . . .” The task-oriented leader stated: “I can accomplish all the goals that I set out to do. I am very careful in laying out a detailed blueprint of what needs to be done so that there is no ambiguity.” The relationship-oriented leader stated: “I encourage all citizens to take an active role in improving their state. I know that each individual can make a difference . . . .” Participants then selected the candidate they would vote for. In the control condition, only four of 95 participants voted for the charismatic candidate, with the rest of the votes split evenly between the task and relationship oriented leaders. However, following MS, there was almost an 800 percent increase in votes for the charismatic leader; votes for the task-oriented leader were unaffected, but the relationship-oriented leader’s votes significantly declined.

This result led us to wonder if President George W. Bush’s tremendous popularity following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center resulted in part from the dramatic and ongoing reminder of death and vulnerability caused by the events of 9/11.

There is also this older post of Ego's I remembered that showed that during World War II, during the times where the Nazis were conducting bombing raids on London, the British people reportedly found themselves overall having less personal psychological issues (psychosis, anxieties, depressions) as they banded together for the common cause of survival. Though this might be a transitory state and completely ignoring the post-war psychological effects, I can't be so sure because it is possible that a deep banding together experience like that could even have positive effects in the long-run (unless of course you get PTSD).

In any case, if I actually Google J&G's question of where these psychological needs come from, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes up first actually. I am aware of the pyramid, but haven't actually read any of his work. So I have a gut feeling there is a blindspot or gap in the way I am thinking of this topic altogether. Interested to see where J&G takes these next 2 posts on this.

[Ego]

If I understand him correctly, @Ego is taking the position that simpler (=lower value meme) conditions are perhaps necessary to solve the problems of modernity (though using examples of present day societies that have either not reached sufficient complexity to become modern or have collapsed from modern to a simpler state due to catastrophe).

The temptation to think of this as a journey to an end state - self-actualization - is strong. Humans love the feeling of accomplishment and create artificial finish lines because the alternative is too vague. In reality we are constantly doing maintenance on the foundations that help to support who we are at this moment and who we are becoming. Maybe foundation isn't the best word, because we are talking about a living, growing, evolving, degrading and regenerating organism in an environment that is itself ever changing, but hierarchies are gonna hierarchy.

The important point is that the ability to do maintenance on lower levels is to some degree use-it-or-lose-it. The joy of a wise old self-actualized person is derived, in part, from the act of maintaining their lower level needs in the same way that a gardener finds pleasure in nurturing the soil to grow delicious vegetables.

There is also this older post of Ego's I remembered that showed that during World War II, during the times where the Nazis were conducting bombing raids on London, the British people reportedly found themselves overall having less personal psychological issues (psychosis, anxieties, depressions) as they banded together for the common cause of survival. Though this might be a transitory state and completely ignoring the post-war psychological effects, I can't be so sure because it is possible that a deep banding together experience like that could even have positive effects in the long-run (unless of course you get PTSD).

The broader point here is that banding together outside of war is certainly possible and the effect it has on the maintenance of lower level wellbeing is indisputable. Thinking of it as a solved problem is a problem. One must tend the soil.

[jacob]

I've noticed that once people no longer having to worry about food, security (or money), they change their focus into one---at most two---of the following: "people", "events/places", or "ideas" with much less interest in the other ones. This categorization is eminently stable and people rarely change. You can also see this effect in the journals.

[7Wannabe5]

Would improving your VO2 max be an internal event focus?