I've been working over these questions in my head for a few weeks, and I think they're all related:
- What is the Point/Purpose/Goal of ERE?
- How does one construct a WoG? Is the exercise actually useful, or is it more like a metaphor?
- How does one "level up" one's thinking from WL6 to WL7? (Or, more generally, what is one's motivation to apply energy to getting from WL(n) to WL(n+1)?
- Is there such a thing as ERE "dogma"? Or is that not a gross misunderstanding of what this is all about?
- Is ERE at odds with meaning-generating structures such as Catholicism? (an appreciative nod to the discussions in Hristo's journal).
- Conversations happening in the Mastermind group around how to motivate oneself to learn skills that will make one's life better, but one's life is already pretty effing good.
It feels like as the focus of the forum has moved towards the question of moving from ~WL5 to ~WL7, there's been a focus on saying "hey wait a minute, what's the point? Isn't this just achieving WL7 for the sake of achieving WL7? What are these stupid "Wheaton Levels" anyways?"
A small little light bulb went off in my head this morning as I tried to sketch out some L6 reverse fishbones, and a bastardized "web of goals/network diagram", and just looked at what I'd sketched and said "well, duh. This isn't bringing me any insights. What am I missing?"
It occurred to me that what's happening as people are turning their attention to the question of "to WL7, or not to WL7", is a crisis of meaning. People are grasping for the why.
And ERE does not supply that why. By design. ERE is a BYOMS, Bring Your Own Meaning Structure.
Jacob has a Why (something like to live a good life in harmony with the earth), and since he made ERE, that Why is somewhat encoded into ERE. But that doesn't mean that anyone else's Why has to completely overlap explicitly, it just means that if your Why in life is really divergent ("My main Why is to make a lot of money / burn a lot of fossil fuels / exert dominance over other human beings and nature!"), ERE is probably not a good fit for you.
You don't have to have that exact same Why to possess motivation to achieve a howlie lifestyle. But you do need
a Why, and I think it needs to provide sufficient motivation (stoke),
you need to have a clear enough vision in your head of what you want and why you want it, in order to put in the effort to 'level up'.
The very first sentence of the ERE book is "I think of this book first and foremost as a philosophy book about strategy." First sentence, second paragraph: "This book isn't a "how-to" manual to a specific lifestyle, but a "how-to" manual for "how-to" manuals. The intention is for each person to create his own strategy... It's a book that teaches you to become a navigator."
ERE isn't about telling anyone where to go, specifically, it's about teaching people the cognitive tools they need to be able to get themselves to wherever it is they want to go. Each individual needs to supply their own destination, each individual needs to input their own set of gps coordinates.
ERE is
a method for constructing a how-to manual
for achieving one's own unique vision for their ideal lifestyle. It does not supply the unique vision.
I want to become The Wandering Engineer, my own personal vision of an artist/engineer dirtbag who roams the ruins of North America helping people make better walipinis and compost toilets and windmills in exchange for room and board in their eco-refuge villages. I'm using ERE as a methodology to create my own "How to become The Wandering Engineer" manual.
My manual is going to be different than RoamingFrancis' manual, which is entitled "How to become a Contemplative EthnoEcologist."
And likewise both our manuals are going to be different than Jacob's, whose manual is titled "How to Be the Piercer of the Fog".
I have an explanation for why almost no one questions why they should get to WL5, and almost no one critiques WL5's for confusing the map for the territory. The "why" for WL5 is "FIRE!" That's a pretty easy Destination to get on board with. It excites almost everyone's imagination. "Hey, how would you like to not have to work ever again if you don't want to?" Uh, yeah, sign me up, says almost everyone. So the Vision, the Why, required to maintain motivation to achieve it, is not actually super unique - it's quite common.
WL7+ is different.
ERE: "Hey, now that you're on the road to (or already) FI and RE, and think you've attained the pinnacle of The Good Life, how would you like to cut your living expenses in half again, learn systems theory, argue minutia about the mindset differences between Greenfield, Boyle, and Proenneke, and maybe "give up" some more stuff?"
WL5: "Uh. Wait, whytf would I want to do that? That sounds like a lot of work and my life is already pretty dope."
ERE: "Well, I guess for one thing, you'll be even more resilient in the case of catastrophic events like economic collapse, "natural" disaster, or faster-than-we-all-though civilization collapse."
WL5: "Goodness, that sounds doomer as hell, I don't want to think about that / I don't like organizing my life around fear. That's a stupid pursuit!"
I think it's impossible to convince anyone why they would want to become a howlie, because
the vision required to become a howlie must come from within. I think it "clicks" for people who have been wandering around with a vision that you haven't figured out how to realize yet, because your vision happens to require a how-to manual that hasn't been written yet. ERE is the instructions for how to write the how-to manual you need to fulfill your vision.
And so if you have a vision for your life that matches your current reality, if you are currently living your vision or pretty close, "leveling up" is totally pointless.
Another way to phrase it is that I think many (myself included, in my day-to-day engagement with the forum and my own systems) have been confusing the Means and Methods (ERE) with the End (each individual's unique vision for their life).
--
So my takeaway, to relate to the point of this thread of "how to get from WL6 to WL7?", is that that leveling-up process needs to be rooted in a clear vision. And attempting to force the process without a clear vision is likely a waste of time.