Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
206
from Training
100 Brain Modules: Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Theory, Structure, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automaton, Evidence, Career, Career, Culture, Theories, and Design
Modules & Their Respective Powers by
Richard Tabor Greene Master, De Tao Masters Academy, Beijing-Shanghai Professor of Design, Creativity, and Innovation, Grad School of System Design and Management, Keio University, University, Hiyoshi, Japan
Email:
[email protected]
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Page 1
BOOK OF BOOKS by RTGreene First 50 pages of 24 Books
TABLE OF CONTENTS
STEP 1--use links below to download FREE 1450 page PDF file of the first 50+ pages of EACH of Richard’s 24 books below. STEP 2--choose titles below to order, email me at address at bottom of this page, I send PayPal fund request $20/title, you PAY with your Paypal, instantly I send you LINK to book download = 3 min. total --42 models summarized 8 in detail--PAGE 4--86 1. Your Door to Creativity -2. Are You Cre Creativ ative? e? 60 60 Mode Models ls--world’s most comprehensive--PAGE 88-142 3. Are You Cre Creativ ative? e? 128 128 Step Stepss--to becoming creator & creating--PAGE 143-192 4. Getting Real about Creativity in Business--measures tools--PAGE 193-245 5. Your Door to Creativity, Revised --42 --42 general 12 deailed models--PAGE 246-303 6. 72 Innovation Models--a grammar of changes that change history--PAGE 304-367 7. Creativity Leadership Tools--intructors’ manual & student text--PAGE 368-420 8. Creativity Leader --managing --managing creativity of self & other, everywhere--PAG everywhere--PAGE E 421-468 9. Thinking Design--160 approaches, tools, leading design, designs that lead- -PAGE 469-538 10. Designs that Lead, Leaders who Design--an article collection--PAGE 539-594 Educate cated? d?--an empirical science-based definition as 48 capabilities --PAGE 595-657 11. Are You Edu Youu Edu Educa cated ted,, Jap Japan an,, Chin China, a, EU, US USAA--300 capabilities from 5 models--PAGE 658-728 12. Are Yo 13. Manag Managing ing Self--128 Self--128 Dynam Dynamics ics--redoing Plato, Freud, Sartre, Kegan,Zen- -PAGE 728-805 14. Power from Brain Training--exercises for 225 brain modules--PAGE 806-866 15. Knowledge Epitome--200 new face to face tools from revising ancient media--PAGE 867-933 16. Your Door to Culture Power --the --the shared practiced routines model--PAGE 934-989 17. Culture Power --what --what can be done with it, models & articles--PAGE 990-1055 18. Global Quality ---24 approaches, 30 shared aims, quality soft-&-hard-ware- -PAGE 1056-1129 19. Are You Effe Effectiv ctive? e?--100 methods from the world’s top performers--PAGE 1130-1193 Sciencee of Exc Excell ellence ence--54 routes to the top of nearly any field--PAGE 1194-1242 20. A Scienc 21. SuperSelling--tools, methods, cases from 150 best at ALL forms of selling--PAGE 1243-1304 22. Man --3 sources, 3 paradoxes of handling them--PAGE 1305-1370 Managin agingg Compl Complexit exity y --3 23. Taking Place--creative city theory & practice via 288 city-fications--PAGE 1371-1431 24. Innovations in Innovation--& in 29 other creativity sciences--PAGE 1432-1491 All page numbers are PDF not print page numbers. FREE download of this entire book of books via either LINK below: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9XSvwJ-xErSSkoyMGU0azN0eF k
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
The Overall Main Idea of This Book 8000+ eminent people from 41 nations in 63 professions were interviewed interviewed and given 40+ page questionnaires in the Excellence Science Research Project of the University of Chicago, Grad School of Business, under my direction direction as Professor. Professor. We found 54 distinct routes to the top of nearly any field, called Excellence Sciences, in that research and I have written up books on many of those 54. However, However, there there were were key methods and approaches, from many of the 8000 eminent people we met, that “fell through the cracks” somehow. somehow. They were quirky and the wrong wrong size to fit the other Excellence Sciences like educatedness, creativity, innovation, management functions, handling error, handling complexity, complexity, effectiveness, and 47 other routes routes to the top of fields. For a long time my MBA researchers and I had no name for what unified these quirky methods and where where they came from. from. One day three of us, at about the same time, said “brain modules”. We had collected for months, methods of eminent people that that really really were were ways of using and exercising very particular brain modules, being turned up in fMRI research on emotional intelligence, relational intelligence, social intelligence, cognitive intelligence. As we organized organized the methods scientists published in top journals journals results showing that most of our human brain, by volume, developed to handle social conditions. Our present human brain brain size is evolved for handling groups of about about 150 (the socalled “acquaintance “acquaintance group” limit). Some corporations like W. W. J. J. Gore Gore have limited facilities throughout to 200 or less people, out of an intuition that our present human brain becomes incompetent, corrupt, or care-less, when faced with more than 150 persons to relate to. This book is 100 brain modules of of 15 types and and particular particular ways off off exercising each into world top class performance levels, found in our 8000+ research subjects. Not a few readers, approaching this book, will assume it is rather conceptual, cognitive, concerned with thinking, ideas, and the like. That underestimates the mind. All, that is in our lives, comes through and from our minds. This book concerns that all. It is not mentalistic, mentalistic, conceptual, abstract, elite, and all that. that. It is as full as life life itself itself is. Readers will find emotional intelligence, SAT and GRE aptitude, IQ intelligence, social skills, political savvy, and a host of other capabilities dealt with in this book, via exercising the brain capabilities that are are their basis. Eros and sex, victim-hood and responsiresponsibility, power and compassion, humor and strategy--this book concerns life, in its all. This book exercises YOUR brain into world top class levels of performance. I have used this book with generations of students, grad students, and consulting clients. There are hundreds hundreds of Europeans, East Asians, and Americans who have risen ris en to the top of their professions using, in part, the methods (brain modules and exercises) of this book. There is no doubt that the methods herein herein work and work well---they are are proven. They are also a lot harder than the quick and dirty self help literature literature in general. To be honest, if you want an route to success that does not require require much effort, no method will help you, no exercises exercises will work. work. Success that is health, health, comes from effort. This book shows you 225 very particular places to invest that effort. Effort invested in the 100 exercises of this book produce world top class results--that is already proven. proven.
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Page 2
Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Book Contents: 103 Chapters Brain Training for Powers: Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Theory, Structure, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automaton, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design Intellect Powers Mind Power
Brain Power
The Calculative Symbolic Mind versus the Associative Mind
the language module: embeddings: prepositional phrases, relative clauses, complement clauses, plus mixtures
Structure Powers Mind Extensions
Scope Powers
Social Powers
Theory Power
Reflection Power
Happiness Power
the evidency principle of structural writing: are count, name, order, function, shape of point evident at a glance?
everyone a theorist: conscious versus unconscious theories
neural basis of reflection: the self system, mirroring, spindle neurons, meta-representations as consciousness
increasing your happiness set point-meditating on compassion, Davidson research
count, cogniname, tive list order, limit function, shape + hierarchy of contexts of point within larger scope point within larger scope points
the fundamental comprehension tradeoff in structural writing: clarity hurts retention, helps access
adulthood begins at 40: the demystification job; education as unlearn ing
The Male the language Mind versus module: inheritthe Female ance hierarchies of Mind concepts
portabil5 para- access ity sys- graph per tools: sigtem: chapter nalling personal reading file system or access system
a formula for perfect score on SAT, GRE, ACT, TOEFL writing exams
The Engaged Engaged the language Mind versus module: noun the Detached compounding--locMind ative, part-whole, resemblance, artions performed by or on,
personal cognitive friend network
Inputs
personal prose as profesan intersional face: library bushyness in general as interface problem in general; intelligence as index: can points read be used to order thought and action?
The Raw the language personal Input Mind module: mapping file sysversus the conceptual struc- tem Indexed Input tures to syntactic Mind ones and vice versa
Evidence Power
Career Power
Design Dimensions of Social Automata: basic units, abstract neighborhoods, behaviors of units, embedding (neighborhoods in neighborhoods), partial products flow topology, initial conditions, iterative application of behaviors/rules, reflexivity dispersal, performance tuning/pruning, final product emergent or planned
Opinion versus Evidence versus Waiting-for-Evidence: 3 Ways to Live; Evidence versus Faith as Ways to Live; The Powers of Truth; the Powers of Reality; Religion as Human Built Alternate Reality--the anthropology of religion; Folk Thought and Intuition and Their Flaws. The Scientific Method versus Demystifiers: whom can you trust?
a model of components of interesting careers--overview; project--find all the interesting people/ careers/creators in the area around where you work and where you live
the overall social culture indexing model of ten theory components causally related plus fractals for each component
dimensions of difference
we are reflection: the economics of reflection of reflec- happiness--its relation of reflection; tivity for itself inside in itself Kierkegaard, Sartre
Standard Human Meetings as Social Automata: individual repertoire meetings, group shared repertoire meetings, design dimensions entirely missing.
What is evidence based living: EB eating, EB health, EB emotion, EB self change, EB career & work, EB lifestyle, family, hobbies, EB happiness
a model of career nine pow- social virtucomponents--the ers of cul- ality theory hypotheses; ture assignment--find evidence for/against hypotheses in actual career cases; project--getting out your naive questions
five extremes blended
more theories, more diverse theories = live in larger world
reflection is part part of cognition: metacognition, meta-creation, experienceto-document compiling, everyday cognition, theory of other minds, knowldge management Flavell, Nonaka, Scribner, Gottman
the cultural poverty of happiness--other ways realize your goals in ways undreamed of-edly better than your ways, but you do not know that so your entire life misses greatness
Social Automaton Design Process: product (outputs), initial conditions (inputs) behaviors list, neighborhoods, embedding, flow topology, reflexivity system, tuning system, partial product formats, iteration duration, start
finding bridges to research findings, then finding findings themselves; judging researc h studies; combining conflicting research studies
a model of career ten compo- modernizacomponents--the 7 nents of cul- tion theory causal links; ture assignment--find evidence for links in actual career cases; project--the idea of model based questions, questions from library work
repeated visitations
structures discovered via paths across structures
convert readings into theories: sell your readings
reflection is part part of learning: use contexting of facts, reflecting on practice, andragogy, situated learning, peripheral participation, social life of info, social construction of self Dewey, Schon, Lave, Wegner, Brown, vogotsky, Arendy
delusions of happiness: the more illusion, the novelty chase illusion, the pleasure illusion, the I illusion, the being loved “I need to be loved by someone” illusion. the need: is for having someone to love each day, someone whose life is better because you are around daily; the need is not to be loved; there is no magic core inside you--you are constituted by a social dialog not an interior one (college mental illness from interiority illusions of self); marriage has sex illusion (yes sex but no eros)
Social Automaton Types: Sequential Flows versus Parallel Flows; Decomposing Flows versus Composing Flows; Contending versus Blending; Backwards Plans versus Forwards Plans; Fractal Automata Processes; Constraints Centered versus Idea Centered; Cleavage Ignoring versus Cleavage Using; Evidence Based versus Experience Based; Planned Flows versus Puzzle Built Flows; Supportive Edits versus Demolition Edits; One Cycle versus Recycled Proposals
committed provisional relativism--compared to belief, intuition, faith, argument, folk knowledge cultures; scientific commonsense: making moderate mistakes, pluralize theory investments, manage emotion via arts, recapture performance and personal composition
career types--over- definitions view; of culture assignments--find a person having each of the career types presented project--select what to interview people for
shared spaces and idea rooms
Regularity
Outputs
the fundamental comprehension tradeoff: clarity hurts retention, clarity helps access; the 2nd fundamental comprehension tradeoff: narrow specialities making people generally stupid = need for comprehensiveness/ models
reed- access kellog tools: regdiaularization grams; operator/ operand boxes
Originality Powers
Ramachandran Edelman Koch
Social Automaton Power
Culture Power
Theories Power
general empirical computation theory
The “Be” the language cogniMind versus module: topic- tive the “Have” comment = sub- architecMind ject predicate = ture noun (all semantic categories) verb (situations only) = words essential for assertion (verbs) vs. everything else words (nouns)
structural reading diagrams; basis of bias in incompleteness of grasp of author’s structuring of points read not interest scan
access shapes: tools: bridge designed shapes or shape sequences
groun ding theories gives them power
reflection is part part of beauty/art: cue minimization, difference amplification, isolate figural primitives of our perceptual grammar, isolate figural primitives of our emotional grammar Barron Ramachandran
the despair doorway: to insight, to departure from ego sickness, to self growth-something in who you are stops you realizing your best goals
Fixed: product, initial conditions, FREE behaviors list, neighborhoods, embedding, flow topology, reflexivity system, tuning system, partial product formats, iteration duration
personal experiments: vicarious experiments from happenstance observations to surveyed thorough ones; self/ society probe experiments, proxy experiments
career types--what uses of cul- democracy they feel like, why ture theory people choose them; assignment--find what is satisfying in each type; project--select whom to interview
The Explore a consciously cogniMind versus experienced per- tive furthe Exploit cept’s features: niture Mind descriptive (shape size color etc), sense mode-ality, focus on background & tracking (indexical), the feel affects valuation (external vs internal, familiar vs novel, self produced vs non-selfproduced, meaningful vs, nonmeaningful, mattering vs non-mattering)
meaning indexes instead of mention indexes; idea geometry evolution within works, within lifeworks/ minds, within literatures/ domains; measuring quality of reading = make each reading publishable/saleable
retention tools: response strata
argue evidence versus argue belief; evidencebased living; compensate for known mind distortions = scientific commonsense
special reflection types that we can use: epoche, triple loop learning, search conferences, ungratitude meditation, social construction of self meditation, zazen, utopian/disestablishment communities, cabaret Husserl, Argyis, Weisbord, Naikan, Morita, Rinzai, Thoreau, Segel, Green
developing your ani- Fixed: product, initial mality: conditions, behaviors list, neighborhoods, the global standard embedding, FREE flow sexual development topology, reflexivity journey--keeping the system, tuning system, eros path and the partial product formats, relationship(sexual) iteration duration. path separate enough and weaving together enough; tactics like The Game; saving your self from religions and ancient body-fear
personal surveys: meeting the creatives all around you; error studies (own and of others); alternatives surveys; hot area vacations; knowledge holidays; cognitive entertainments, cognitive friend network building
career types--what operations sequences among on cultures types appear; assignment--find people transitioned between types; project--select sequence of what to interview people for
shapes: sequence (inductive, abductive, deductive)
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Design Power
evolving discernment designs
tunable designs
seasonal designs
happiness optima designs
solution cultures use tracking designs
information culture solvecology the- ing ory combinables designs
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Book Contents: 103 Chapters Brain Training for Powers: Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Theory, Structure, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automaton, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design Intellect Powers Mind Power
Brain Power
Structure Powers Mind Extensions
Scope Powers
Social Powers
Theory Power
Reflection Power
Happiness Power
The Conform Conform language mod- cogni- idea fac- retention shapes: Mind versus ule: verb pattern tive toring tools: met- orthogonals the Rebel types: be, stay, stay, go, apparel aphor Mind ext orient, to from, inchoative, perfective, cause-helplet, cause-let, noun types: formal (taxonomic structure, where in hierarchy), constitutive (sense, material, part structure), agentive (origins), telic (it takes part in, purpose)
theories within theories: culture tunings of our personal theories
rigorous reflection types that we can use: protocol analysis in AI, work process modeling in TQC Simon and Ericcson, Cole and Ishikawa
developing your compassion--care of animals, children, the unfortunate, the down trodden;
Fixed: product, initial conditions, behaviors list, FREE neighborhoods, embedding, flow topology, reflexivity system, tuning system, partial product formats, iteration duration
personal solving processes (root: problem, cause, solution, implementation, effect, error finding); idea rooms and phone research events
career rules--over- tools for social netview; culture han- work theory assignment--present dling an incident where someone you interview encountered each rule type; project--generate 45 naive interview questions, cover your wants/interests/confusions
enemy ingestion
The Pour Soi language modMind versus ule: semantic the En Sor fields for abstract Mind constructs: location, possession, properties, scheduling (messenger,money,light,me eting) = be, go, keep
r et et een n titi on on shapes: tools: gradient demystifications
theory power: the powers of abstraction = the power of theory
reflecting to the vacuum power change happiness Lao Tsu-ian lifeset point: medita- micro-cosm day tion on compassion Davidson
Fixed: product, initial conditions, behaviors list, neighborhoods, embedding, flow topology, reflexivity system, FREE tuning system, partial product formats, iteration duration
the Total Quality origins and basis of evidence based living and professions: buddhist leanness, system causation, line centered ideal, emotive transparency, manage by fact, tamperings
career rules--how culture culture traits traits evolutionevolutionyour background ary engiblinds you to reality’s neering rules; theory assignment--find 10 rule violations in your past; project--generate 45 model based interview questions
mass design deployments
retention tools: point geometry extensions
path types: repeated deep drillings (column by column)
example of theory power: Tannen
reflecting to self manage: self managing teams, self organizing workforce, adhocracy, group-in-fusion Trist, Emory, Thorsrud, Hedberg, Sartre, Toffler
zen and liberation from your own mind--mind as worry generating machine, escaping being trapped by your own mind
Sequential versus Parallel; Blending versus Contending; Cleavage Ignoring versus Using
evidence based professions: EB arts, EB management, EB performance, EB policy, EB medicine
career rules--model social pro- space type difference of how the world cesses theory caricatures works; assignment--get perdisguised son with interesting functionalcareer to build model ity designs of how career/world works for you; project--decide knowledge model types
distrib- ground- signal- path types: uted cre- ing ling by repeated ative meta-text full scopes works (row by row)
theory haters and the dangers of unconscious theories
reflecting to cope or recover self (therapy): psychotherapy, object relations therapy, existential psychotherapy Freud, Kohut, Sartre
taking the adulthood task seriously and the evidence based life; trying to grow to adulthood starts at 20 and finishes at 45; successive demystifications
Constraints Centered versus Idea Centered; Planned Flows versus Puzzle built Flows; Supportive Edits versus Demolition Edits
35 degrees of truth by research type; the error of comparing solid research with weak research; why counterexamples do not mean anything in social sciences; statistical and stochastic truths, the nature.
career tools--overview; assignment--apply one of the tools to your present career stage/step; project--select mode of delivery of each question
The Topic visual module: events topics of signal- path types: Mind versus amplify differ- held topics ling by diagonals the Comment ences--figural visual Mind primitives of our cues perceptual gram(color, mar amplified font, etc.)
theory is practical: products, technologies, businesses are theories
reflecting job types: counselor, priest, critic, evaluator, leader, auditor, artist, quality program Wobblies, Wobblies, Foucault, Illych
gaming life and the world--seriousness as the door by which powerful others control you--avoiding seriousness of all sorts at all costs; escaping the monkey game
Designing Social Automata for Specific Product Types: inventions, persuasions, contact events, truth finding, show performing
reading research literatures: reading for research questions asked and results-answers found
career tools--prac- culture tice applying each to types your present career situation; assignment--apply tool to your career situation; project--put questions into 14 question function ordering
computatheory tional soci- blends ality theory population designs
The Distribvisual module: uted Rep Mind recognize patterns versus the by properly groupGramma Neu- ing inputs ron Mind
theorylessness = Dilbert
reflective social roles: parent, mentor, goad, friend, therapist, urban resident Goffman, Berger, Luckmann, Jane Jacobs, Mumford
absurd concentrations--doing what you do so X that it becomes a global center someday
Designing Social Automata for Developing Specific People: calling out from neurosis, challenging shyness, upping productivity, breaking dependencies
reading research literatures: reading for measures, methods and samples used and validity/reliability of results obtained
career tools--power culture source for each tool; power, assignment--apply again another tools to your career situation now; project--separate questions into 3 mini-interviews
informative TRIZ transvideo theory forms
the- reflective demystiory fications: of hidden compo- interests, of gender nents oppression, of social inequality Marx, Illych, Foucault, Goodman, Friedan, Steinman
turning experience into something rather than losing your own life and experience each day-experience is gold
Designing Social Automata for Meeting Performance Constraints: highest quality product output, fastest execution, smallest input human resources, most alternatives
reading research literatures: reading for topics (subfields) versus era matrix, the intellectual history of a field
career topography-- high perfor- structural overview; mance cul- cognition assignment--choose/ ture traits theory create topography aspect this week; project--test final interview form and repair
building complete categorical and causal models
career topography-- m ap ap t oo oo ls ls first two; assignment--find case examples of first two; project--build tools for ding particular questions
i nf nf llu u en en ce ce theory
Inputs
internet to to pi pi ccss identity/ presence/ supplyflows
The Faith language mod- follow- funcMind versus ule: info struc- ers and tions the Evidence ture: focus/ disciples Mind presupposition (what receiver already knows), topic/comment, theme/rheme, old info/new info = topic, common ground, 1st focus, focus The Object emotion module: Mind versus laughter as false the Frame alarm signal = danMind ger without consequence
Regularity
Outputs
personal causes/ signal- path types: everyeffects ling by ordered where links leaps notebook
Social Automaton Power
Evidence Power
Originality Powers Career Power
Culture Power
Theories Power
Design Power
ecosystem founding designs
entertaining designs
dimensions quality glo- theory prothat distin- balization jections guish cul- theory tures convertible designs (chair becomes table etc.)
modality embedment designs (cognitive apparel, movie display jackets)
The Proposivisual module: personal asked/ tional Mind contrast--putting producanswered versus the together what is tion dis- s Analogy Mind never together, cipline putting apart what (what is never apart you can produce every day without exceptions for years)
signal- path types: ling by random table leaps forms
The Declaravisual module: forms/ propositive Mind ver- power of minimal times of tions sus the suggestion escape Procedural Mind
regularizing branch factor: on levels-expanding/compressing points
the point uses model ver- of thesus the ory expression model
reflective eras of history: the enlightenment, heian era, renaissance, current china Jun and Wright, Toffler, Huntington
things that represent you at places and time you are not--the inevitability of creativity; the self as everyone’s first and most important creation
Rotating Bids for Behaviors, Gradually Expanding Neighborhood Sizes
The Domain visual module: self General Mind searching pattern observaversus the in or tracking it in tory Domain Spe- noisy environment cific Mind
regularizing branch factor: across levels-expanding/compressing points
fractal concept model + grounding each box as new form of page replacing prose; instead of processing coded points process as grounding model points = better place to do processing
reflectivity insuffiinsufficiency: ideologs, areas of geography, ethnic subgroups, education levels, personal illness/ defects Oneil, Ortega y Gasset, Kierkegaard, Octovio paz, Todorov
moderate mistakes, doubting crowds/ trends, and avoiding easy ways--seeing beyond your era, its people, and its culture--historic poise in personal lives
5 Step Process Done Forward by One Team, Done Backward by Another Team, Results Blend;
developing research questions: where what you want to know overlaps what the discipline/profession wants to know
career topography-- respond second two; tools assignment--find case examples of 2nd two; project--test final interview with tools, fix tools
sources of delight entreprequality and neurship kansei engitheory neering
thereflectivity dys- mastering orthogoory ver- functions: Hamlet nal disciplines one sus phenom, intellectu- by one; mastering truth alizers, abstraction traditional disciimposers, delusional plines self concepts Freud, Marx, Illych
5 Step Process done Forward by One Team, Done Backward by Another Team, Results Compete;
research questions for theory versus research questions for practice
career dynamics-- recognize overview; tools assignment--diagnose your current career blocks; project--organize interview targets into concentric circles
managing quality globy events balization theory featureless designs
Left Brain visual module: (defenses; symmetry breaking forcing unity) versus Right Brain (realities: discrepancy detector);
reader responses : feelings, doubts, evoked existential questions
respons actions/ e stop- images ping and substituting
regular- adding izing fractal conorder: on cept models levels/ across levels
crossing cultures as theory power
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
genre element stealing self enhancing designs
customer requirements slavery global net node designs
shakkei designs
Page 4
Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Book Contents: 103 Chapters Brain Training for Powers: Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Theory, Structure, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automaton, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design Intellect Powers Mind Power
Brain Power
Structure Powers Mind Extensions
Inputs
Regularity
Outputs
Scope Powers Theory Power
Reflection Power
Social Powers Happiness Power
Social Automaton Power
Evidence Power
Originality Powers Career Power
Culture Power
Theories Power
Design Power
The Convisual module: scious Mind abhorrence of unversus the dis-ambiguated Unconscious objects Mind = MetaRepresentation Mind versus Primary Representation Mind; language as needing/ enabling reporting internal states to others/self = consciousness; modeling others’ minds led to modeling own mind;
lifespan agenda: 20 to 40 leave inherited self, design own self; 40 to 60 exert influence stop dallying/ depending/ 60 to 80
scope: phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph, chapter, book, lifework, literature
regularizing names: on levels/ across levels
multiplying fractal concept models
resolv ing personal/ societal problems using theory, Arendt
media institutionalizing reflection: mass media, mass internet media, nonmass internet media P ostrel, McLuhan
mastering religions, 25 Step Process done by cults, firms, crowds, 5 Neighborhood Teams; commercial influences, consumerisms, ideologies, and genders--you cannot buy/borrow others’ solutions to life-only you make and solve your life, there are no pre-packaged solutions you can get for free; being right is evil, an illusion, and self contradictory
instrument design: survey scales plus item creation, ordering and formatting
career dynamics-- repertoire first two types; tools assignment--find case examples of 1st two; project--deliver interview to outermost circle of targets, then middle circle, then core circle
computer fractality theory
The Protovisual module: type Mind ver- fractality = fractal sus the dimensionality Exemplar Mind
notable person maps/ scheduleto-meetthem
modalities: prose, charts, painting/ picture, speech (image + explain image), program/ procedures, experiences/ movies, conversations/ actionstreams, history/ biography, lives/ careers
regularized fractal concept models
applying fractal concept models to a case = grounding in the case’s details
espou sed versus enacted theories
external force, conconflict, revenge, forms of reflection: clash of civilizations, interests, neighbors, non-linear effects of own/others’ acts Abbott, Boulding, Jervis
the socratic path to happiness--a life of questioning others not telling others
Advancing Behaviors: interaction analysis grounding concepts stratified responses comic frame splits demystifications culture spotting and switches
instrument design: experiment: type selection
career dynamics-- mind operasecond two types; tions on culassignment--find ture case examples of 2nd two; project--improve interview based on outer targets delivery experience
art greatness theory: basic functions of all arts theory
The Infervisual module: ence Mind secret balance/patversus the tern via modality Ecology Mind change
notable structopic tural clue maps/ finding scheduleto-meetthem
fractalizing single structural reading diagrams
imbalance analysis using fractal concept models
cognitive maps: what works around here, etc.
arts institutionalizing reflection: critique of society, extrapolating futures Gadamer, Boulding, Green, Segel
the daily performance of a life-going for you daily academy awards
Advancing Neighborhoods: pairs, trios, quads, quints; last is first; pairs embedded in quads, pairs embedded in trios/ quints
instrument design: experiment: condition protocols/tools
career approaches-- existence overview; operations assignment--assess on culture yourself on career approaches; project--mark transcripts
just-in-time managing theory: 64 core functions
The Low sensory modLevel Implicit ules: metaphor versus the High Level Explicit Mind; Controlled Attention vs. Immediate Representation Mind
compilers: compiling experience into distributed tangible forms
naming: representatio nal
fractalizing multiple structural reading diagrams
paradoxon analysis using fractal concept models
demys tifying theories = finding hidden self interests
religion institutioninstitutionalizing reflection: eternal return, one universal story, global eco evidence emergent, story types Eliade, Campbell, Rappaport
the organizing people life path--making relationships and communities among all your know, connecting
Advancing Reflexivity: all evaluate at end; last neighborhood evaluates all at each iteration; last neighborhood evaluates 1 neighborhood at each iteration
instrument design: experiment: control selection
career approaches-- manage first two types; operations assignment--find on culture case examples of first two; project--build trees
city-fication theory
The Rational versus Irrational Mind (Kahneman etco)
brain module trade-offs: the fundamental comprehension trade-off: clarity increases access hurts retention
hassle namblockers: ing: relaextricational tion from webs of hassle
causal fractal concept models (cause/ effect pairs per box)
history analysis via sequence of imbalances on a fractal concept model
theevents institutionory alizing reflection: combi- visualizations, pernation formance awards, marking time, healing divisions/unions Parsons, Pava
the world uniqueness development life path--adding something absurd never in the world before
Advancing Tuning & instrument testPruning: ing: validity adjust connectedness, tests diversity, initiative distribution, knowledge of whole, weak behaviors, weak neighborhoods
career approaches-- growth 2nd two types; operations assignment--find on culture case examples of 2nd two; project--build causal paths, confirmed
the culture of technologies and business practices theory
The Rule brain module Mind versus trade-offs: the funModel Mind damental story of stories: turning monsters into friends, bes into haves
opti- nammized ing: spaces/ image optimized times
testing fractal concept models: can new item fit 2 categories equally well?
causal chains across fractal concept models become fractal causal models; converting fractal concept models into fractal causal models
nation s, genders, eras, persons, careers, families as theories
training, research, the making a differdisciplines institu- ence life path--lives tionalizing reflec- you transformed tion: how things are, how they might be Popper, Mokyr, Arendt
Advancing Initial Con- instrument testditions: ing: reliability blank slate, good read- tests ings, brainstormed models, surveyed automaton, internet site references, previous automatons (same/dif)
career as creativity-overview; assignment--find 3 people whose careers are now creativity; project--write up beginning research questions
the cultures of business practices and technologies--mapping some examples
paradox theory: 8 domains 128 dimensions
The Cognition Mind versus the MetaCognition Mind
net- namwork of ing: assoenterciative prises
testing fractal concept models: can new item fit noe categories well?
comprehensiveness in the modern world and in its writings; consequences of loss of comprehensiveness
theoeducating instituries as tionalizing reflecsalvation: leaving homes tion = Arendt sequestration, nuclear family illusion,
self invention, career invention, family culture invention, animality invention, self culture invention
Micro Automatons: of 4 sample design: persons; 4 doing 10 per- types and selecson automaton process- tion -what has to change; 4 doing 8 or 12 or more steps, how allocate; 4 tuning/pruning in iterating
career as creativity-1st two types; assignment--find case examples of 1st two; project--write up answer obtained for all research questions
the cultures system operator of individ- effects the- extremes ual persons- ory -mapping discipline some examstretch ples designs
The Gene brain module fit-in/ namMind versus trade-offs: the fun- flout bal- ing: the Environ- damental contra- ance cogency ment Mind diction of insight: the despair doorway
using fractal concept models as frames for action/ analysis
multiple scales in the modern world and in its writings; consequences of loss of scales
rela- philosophy institutional- tionalizing reflecity of tion: theory: Plato, Arendt, behaviorism meaning from eugenics; cognitive meaning from behaviorism faults
city-fication functions--turning rock into urbanity, residence into living
Micro Automatons: of 1 person: doing 10 person automaton process-what has to change; how tune/prune during iterations, what is lost by having few people
analysis: 1) descriptive stats 2) normality tests 3) non-normal distribution types/tests 4) cross-correlation matrices 5) factor analysis
career as creativity-2nd two types; assignment--find ex.s; project--find emergent unplanned results, and organize in table form across interviewees
the cultures of particular places and cities-mapping some examples
The Culture brain module Mind versus trade-offs: the funthe Non-Cul- damental steps of ture Mind creation: subcreations of any creation
using fractal concept models as meaning indexes/ net-interfaces
regularization in modern world and in its writings; consequences of loss of regularization
code policy institutionversus alizing reflection: action tunable systems, factors market creating interventions
a new kind of happiness--the discovery of public happiness, liberation from private lifestyle happinesses
Net Distributed Social Automatons--where is face-to-face-ness missed, why, what does it supply; trial use on local net w/in 1 room
analysis: 1) crosstab 2) T & F tests 3) regression 4) time series data: anova, mancova, arima
project--write up final 200 page book of your learnings/ interviews/questions/ targetbios
the cultures data collecof particu- tion theory lar organizations-mapping some examples
brain module trade-offs: the fundamental paradox of existence: thingization the nonthing, making the non-dependable dependable
your audiences and lifetime audience accumulators
frames explicit/ implicit: scales, alternatives presented/ ignored
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
deep design styling bounce interface designs (table surfaces that inform/configure furniture around)
fractal elaborations hollow designs (the environment of the product redesigned so the product unnecessary)
social computations and automata zazen designs (watching mind in use) art greatness measurement metadesigns
successful global assignments theory
performance design self pro jected art designs self extension empathetic designs
randomizations retro fantasy designs
function updating and cognitive apparel culture fusion designs
Page 5
Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Powers from f rom Brain Training The Overall Plan and Purpose of this Book This is a book of exercises for your brain. The exercises are derived in every case from from documented research in leading academic academic centers, not from popular psychology or commercial consultant work. The book defines a set of core mental capabilities that I introduce to all my students, as preparation preparation for doing great work in grad schools and in the institutions of life outside school. Readers of this book will find themselves unable to easily do most of the exercises in this book. This book requires real real mental growth of its readers. SAT, SAT, GRE, ACE, TOEFL, TOEFL, and other standardized standardized college entrance tests, test for easier and fewer mental skills than than this book presents. This book holds its readers to a higher standard of mental performance than than those standardized tests do. As a result, a side effect effect of reading this book is significant enhancement enhancement of your scores on such standardized college entrance entrance tests. However, this book achieves achieves a lot more than that. It improves your mental performance performance in all dimensions of your life, especially dimensions far beyond those tested for by standardized college entrance tests.
The Overall Contents of this Book This book develops thirteen specific mental powers i n its readers: mind power, language-laughter-art language-laughter-art power, mind extension power, structure power, power, theory power, reflection power, happiness power, power, social automaton power, evidence power, power, career power, culture power, power, theories power, and design power. power. By training your brain in certain ways, by training certain modules in your brain, new capabilities appear that you can use the rest of your life. Mind power is the power of recognizing and using fully each of the 50 different minds we have, within our brains. We have 50 entirely different ways of thinking about things and the world. These 50 are organized organized as 25 pairs of opposite opposite mind types. Most people, most of the time, time, use ten or so of these these fifty mind types; thereby slighting and underutilizing most of what their existing brains are capable of. Mind power comes first in this book because it is so fundamental--recognizing fundamental--recognizing all the ways of thought your brain supports and learning to use them all, choosing the right one for each situation, is fundamental. All else that you do with your brain depends on this fundamental power. Language-Laughter-Art Language-Laughter-Art power is really really about the power of expressive media media of all types in your life. A grammar of motions done with your whole body is dance. A grammar of parallel interpretations developed developed of an incident suddenly collapsed into one of them is comedy. comedy. A grammar of lines, shapes, forms, forms, and their configurations on pages or in spaces is sculpture, painting, and other arts. All language, laughter, laughter, and arts are grammars, grammars, rules of combination, applied to elemental elemental components, so their combinations permit infinitely many things to be felt felt and expressed. The power of rule-ful rule-ful combination unites language, laughter, laughter, and arts. Ten language language capabilities, ten art and comedy comedy capabilities, and five trade-offs among brain modules are presented in this part of the book. Mind extensions power is the power of things outside our brains that make us intelligent. It is not the questions you can answer now, immediately, immediately, that make you useful in the world and intelligent, rather, it is the questions you can answer tomorrow morning, morning, after time consulting your library, friends, friends, the internet, and other tools. Anthropologists, comparing us with other monkey monkey species, find it is the tools outside our brains that make make us intelligent that most distinguish us from other species. Twenty Twenty five such mind extensions are presented in this part of the book. Structure power is the power of inputting structures, put there there by authors or performers, performers, instead of inputting merely merely mentions and scanned contents-of-interest. contents-of-interest. Structuring put on ideas gives them context and scope--when we scan for bits that interest us or fit in our biases instead of discerning the structuring on ideas put there by authors and others, we lose the context and scope of what is said. Bigotry and bias are sustained by partial, partial, incomplete, readings and hearings--where we drop drop out parts not fitting how we wish or insist the world must be. Structure power is inputting the structurings on ideas ideas put on those ideas by writers and speakers, performers performers and leaders, instead of of missing structurings and merely gleaning bits we like or feel comfortable comfortable with. Twenty Twenty five powers from discerning and inputting such idea structures are are covered in this part of the book. Structure power is the power of regularizing regularizing how we write and speak. Truth is--prose--is a terrible interface. interface. It hides count--how many points--names--the names names of points-and ordering principle--how principle--how points are ordered. To find count, names, names, and ordering ordering you have to slowly decode. Most readers miss miss and mis-name, mis-name, and mis-order mis-order points, so their recall is very partial and biased in all the reading reading they do. The fault of this is both they themselves, defending their own ideas from challenge, and and the interface that prose is--hiding its content. Of the many faults in prose as an interface, one one is the irregularity of numbers of points in it. One point will have four subpoints, the next will will have 2, the next will have five, and so on. You would have to remember dozens dozens of numbers just to reproduce the points on one page. Structure power comes comes from writing and speaking in more ordered, regular, regular, fractal forms--so that the number number of points is the same on all levels of a hierarchy and and across all points on the same level, for example. example. Twenty five ways to regularize our inputs and outputs are covered in this part of the book along with the p owers they each provide. Structure power is also found in the outputs we produce. If we, instead of prose, output fractal concept concept model diagrams, people can instantly see the number of points, their names, and the principles ordering them--at them--at a glance without any decoding. Twenty five ways ways to produce such fractal models and use them are covered in this part of the book. All of your expressing and and communicating work becomes becomes more powerful powerful if you master these twenty five ways. Theory power is the power of highly abstract representations that we make of things we see, read, experience, or intend, to permit new kinds of action never seen by us or the world before. Each human carries carries within themselves the ability to suddenly take actions unlike anything prior in their own life or in the life of of humankind as a whole. This power of abstract ideas to lead us to entirely novel forms of thought and action, helps us to make our future not a repetition of the problems and failings of our past. People who shun abstraction and theory, are theorists all their lives in all their thoughts and actions nonetheless, because, they merely, by not consciously developing and using theories, fall back on unconscious use of theories put inside them while growing up some where and time. We are are all theorists, only some of us know the theories that are guiding our thought and actions while others of us do not know or admit the theories guiding us, instead assuming whatever we do “naturally” must be right. Bigotry, the latter is called. Twenty five distinct powers that theory gives to lives are covered in this part of the book. Reflection power is the power to be aware aware of what you are aware of. It is a kind of meta-power: to monitor your mind as it operates. The world outside of each of us is strucstructured with institutions performing various various kinds of reflection work. work. Since any experience experience has emotional, conceptual, associational, remindive, and other components, all reflection is multi-model, at least potentially, potentially, even if not in how it is actually done. Power comes from having tools for doing reflection reflection work that is more complete in both mode and what is noticed than casual or amateur reflecting. reflecting. Twenty Twenty five aspects of reflection are presented in this part of the book. Happiness power comes from a great variety of different different things--that is one thing that makes being happy hard to attain. Life throws all kinds of promised solutions-to-living at people that end end up betraying them. Life throws all kinds of success and temptations at people, that distort lives in painful or dangerous dangerous ways. A lot that appears important and happy, happy, is not so much fun when when actually experienced and and lived. Life is very tricky and that makes attaining happiness tricky. tricky. If you withdraw from nearly nearly all of life, go to the monastery, monastery, and interact only rarely with the outside world, world, happiness becomes easier to obtain, obtain, at a cost of making it irrelevant irrelevant to all but yourself. If you insist on attaining happiness while fully engaged in life, then you have to develop powers capable of transforming and managing all that life throws at you--a much more difficult job than getting happiness via withdrawal. withdrawal. This part of the book presents 25 distinct things people do to be happy while fully engaged in life. The prior 200 mind powers, from early early parts of the book, prepare one for this happiness area--they help give you the power and capability needed to maintain happiness with full engagement. Social Automaton power comes from a layer of organizing missing missing from human teams, teams, groups, and meetings. We all feel free to say anything at anytime in a meeting. Some businesses semi-structure particular meetings, with prior agendas agendas of what gets discussed and done. However, the operations applied applied are generally done by all in the meeting discussing together. together. Also, only a few familiar familiar and not very professional professional (not very powerful) operations operations are done in group meetings. meetings. Social Automata expand and professionalize what mental operations are applied to topics in groups, and they configure who does what operation, when, applied to what partial product, in a flow towards some overall result, more specifically than any meeting. meeting. The result is a much more powerful procedure procedure and much higher quality results from use of the same same people and time as usual meetings. For example a team generates 30 new product product designs, each produced in a five step process, within one hour, then discusses discusses all 30, choosing the best 10 to refine further. In a general semi-structured semi-structured business meeting, the same same team would generate only 4 new designs and discuss them. them. 30 versus 4, 5-step design process versus general general discussion--those are the difference--more difference--more precise powerful powerful procedure and more output per unit time and per person. This is the invention of a new micro-layer of human organization. Evidence power comes when you base your life on evidence, not belief, opinion, or experience. The power of truth is lost in t he modern media era as spin, on media, controls people because truth gets lost amid spin. However, in our personal lives, even even a little living in spin, as opposed to truth, is enough to destroy entire entire lives and families. People die unnecessarily or are injured and have to struggle for the remaining decades of their lives because they skip health research published weekly, every Tuesday, Tuesday, in the New York Times and eat whatever whatever they want. Parents embitter and hurt their children because because they do not know that genetically all small children reject reject new foods, on average, research shows, 22 times, before eating eating them. Children never eat spinach because of mom’s mom’s pushing and explanations--they eat it because because it was put before them 22 times in a row. row. So parents pushing kids to eat healthy things are are hurting family psyches psyches and hindering good good eating habits built genetically genetically into kids. Lack of truth--following truth--following opinion not evidence--ruins lives. What you do not know can kill you or ruin your life. Truth has its power, power, and evidence is immensely immensely more truthful than faith or belief or opinion. Religion was tried as the entire basis for life and civilization 1000 years ago--depressing healthcare and incomes for 800 years to far below Roman Empire levels. It resulted in mass torturing and burning of women, for 500 years, church endorsed, as witches. We have tried faith alone alone and ended up burning our women women based on it. Evidence has competed with faith and opinion and won every battle. At every stage religion told us humans are superior to mere animals, so we wipe out species across the earth, religion told us the earth was the center of the universe, religion told us white men were best, religion tolds us men were superior to women--in every case, evidence, proved religion not only wrong, but immodest, arrogant, arrogant, and a reification of tribal prejudices and bigotries, worshipped and made law. law. Evidence is the power that drives improvements improvements in civilization. Religion opposed all such improvements as sacrileges. Fighting truth, because it does not promote your your interests, is futile--truth always wins, eventually. Spin fails. The world is the way it actually is, as revealed by science, not the way we wish it were, the way we want want it to be. Living in reality not wishes gives one real power. power. Career power comes from exercising exercising those parts of your brain that imagine motives and goals, short and lo ng term. Career building is weaving the short term and the long term. Careers are a kind of art. They are designs. You design your own self, in career building. Career is where you turn your possibilities into actualities, or not. It is so satisfying, when young, to contemplate all the things possible for you and your life that not a few young people become sick--stuck living each day in possibility, actualizing nothing. These unfortunate ones ones end up 40 years years old, having accomplished accomplished nearly nothing--having nothing--having drifted for years years enjoying having lots possible. Finally, at 40 years old, they realize they will not live forever and do not have much time left--possibilities are decreasing for them, especially, since they did not build skills, networks, histories of accomplishment, before before they became 40. Career power comes comes from eight particular dimensions dimensions that all careers have, presented presented in this part of the book in detail. These 8 encompass 128 particular ways of thinking involved in imagining, choosing, and building a career. career. This part of the book is where all the skills from all the other parts of this book come together, focus, and get applied. You building you--careering--is where all that you dream, know, hope, wish, and can do come into reality. Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Page 6
Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Culture is one of those irritating concepts that is flabby, ill-defined, used to mean nearly anything and everything, but that has such tremendous practical power in human affairs and lives that people who ignore it or are not good at it are constantly made fools of by it, l osing wealth, organizations, and lives as a result. Culture has tremendous power though it seems seems evanescent, intangible, and optional. There are nine nine distinct powers of culture presented in this part of the book. A model of ten overall components components of culture is presented that allows readers to use and generate generate those nine powers, when and where where they want. Furthermore, the cultures cultures that particular technologies have, that particular business practices have, have, that particulate people you know have, have, that particular places and and times have, are all explored, explored, using this model of ten components. components. Particular operations on cultures and tools enabling those operations are presented. Theories power differs from from theory power though related to it. Theories power is power from particular theories theories I have chosen, over the years, because because these theories have multiple powerful effects effects on lots of diverse domains. They are all readily appliable in actual actual situations. Indeed, in the 25 25 chapters below actual actual applications of the theories presented are also discussed. You learn not just the theories but how to apply them and what kinds of results results they can be used to produce. To be sure, sure, theory power, presented presented in a prior part of this book, is the general area that the power of particular theories illustrates, so this part of the book is derivative of that p rior part. Design power is the hope of first world people wanting wanting to protect their jobs from low wage billions in China, India, and and the poverty stricken parts of the world. The internet has made it inexpensive to outsource functions to whoever can can do them least expensively. expensively. As organizations discover how to outsource more more and more work and jobs, the only hope of first world highly paid employees and managers is this--developing designs that cannot be matched by people elsewhere, removed, net-only connected, educated differently, ferently, out of touch with daily life feelings and nuances. As more and more daily life gets onto the internet via social networking sites like Myspace and Cyworld, Cyworld, Mixi, and others, even this design bastion against against job loss will erode. Finally, only people expert at design uniqueness that appeals to mass markets, markets, will survive as well paid persons. persons. The net, being global and inexpensive, is making a “long tail effect”, where tiny audiences in one nation, having narrow interests, become huge global audiences across the net. This means great great fortunes and careers careers can be made by serving tiny narrow narrow segments extremely extremely well. Design is key to this. Design is the hope, hope, the only hope, hope, for first world workforces seeking seeking good pay and income income in future years. years. Design power comes comes from particular approaches approaches to design. Since design is, at at its core, creativity, creativity, design approaches come from creativity creativity models, singly or in combination. The 25 chapters below in the design part of this book present distinct design approaches derived derived from models and combinations combinations of models of creativity. creativity. No other design book in the world takes this scientific approach approach of founding design design on creativity models. models. The result is a kind of easy automation of invention, surprise, d iscovery, iscovery, and style flair.
The Brain Connection This book overall presents 375 distinct powers. Each power is based on particular brain modules, circuits, circuits, or capabilities. Each of the 375 chapters of this book includes exercises--that use those brain modules, circuits, and capabilities and further develop them. Part of the power you get comes from merely distinguishing these 375 brain capabilities. Part of the power comes comes from stopping your unconscious automatic automatic ways of using them and instead instead developing new consciously designed ways ways of using them (that repeated practice will turn into new unconscious unconscious routines operating inside you). Part of the power comes comes from sheer exercise--concentrated exercise--concentrated use of these brain brain capabilities. Your brain is the basis of this book and grows from your reading of this book and your doing of its exercises. Be warned, however, however, most of the exercises in this book are terribly difficult--not in the mental arithmetic or IQ sort of way, but in very unusual and distinct ways--reflecting the variety of capabilities our minds are capable of.
power from distinguishing particular brain facilities power from switching unconscious use ways with new consciously chosen ways of using these brain facilities power from repeated exercise of specific brain facilities. In many cases, this book asks you to make use of brain brain facilities you have ignored all your life. In other cases, this book asks you to use particular brain facilities facilities in a new way, a way way different than the way you grew up using. In still other cases, this book asks you to transform use of a particular brain facility from casual and easy norms of use to terribly structured, precise, and intense forms of use.
The Assessment Dimension ??????/
Mind Power More Than One Mind--Fifty Mind Types Types We humans have have more than one mind. We have dozens of minds. We think one way then we think an an entirely different different way, way, about the same situation or topic. Generally, Generally, for every one way we can think something there is a compensating, very different way we can also think it, so that our various minds can be organized and understood as pairs of compensating opposites. Below are twenty five short chapters, each presenting a pair of minds within us all, with one part of each pair comp compensating ensating for weaknesses in the other part of that pair. pair. Compensating use is the real issue here. Most of the time, most of us, us, use a mind type out of unconscious routine and habit. We automatically think a certain situation or topic using a certain mind mind type, perhaps learned in childhood while growing growing up some time and where. where. It turns out these habits of always always handling certain situations and topics using only only one mind type of a pair of related mind types, causes causes us much harm. Often the mind type we habitually habitually choose and use is not appropriate or even safe for the situation or topic at hand. If, instead of unconsciously and automatically choosing a mind type for a sp ecific situation, we consciously observe the habitual mind type we automatically use and instead use the other mind type paired with it, many of the deepest problems of our lives go away. For example, husbands and wives, lovers and the their partners, kids and parents, get into terrible arguments and trouble because of ignoring o ne mind type and relying only on another--the one one they automatically choose choose based on when and and where and how they were raised. Nearly all of these arguments arguments go away away as soon as each party becomes free to choose the mind type appropriate to the circumstances, instead of relying on their old favorite automatically used ones.
Exercising Mind Types Types The twenty five chapters chapters below each each present a pair of mind types. That makes fifty types covered in all. Anyone reading the 25 chapters below below and working through the the exercises provided, will end up with 50 mind t ypes they can deploy consciously, then gradually, more more automatically, whereas whereas now they apply less than 25, perhaps less than 10 mind types. A vast expansion in thought and action, result result and quality of life results when all the mind mind inside you become available available for use in all the circumstances circumstances of your life. Some of the mind types below are particular brain modules. Others are particular modifications of a set of brain modules or modifications modifications of all brain modules. Still others are particular combinations combinations or configurations of sets of brain modules. In spite of these differences, differences, all the fifty minds portrayed below are are in all of us, though unused or underutilized in most of us.
Chapter 1: The Calculative Symbolic Mind versus the Associative Mind Mini-Assessment Below is a small self assessment. assessment. It will introduce you to minds within your brain, that you sometimes use use and sometimes sometimes forget to use or mis-use. mis-use. Answer the questions questions below as easily and quickly and honestly as you can--do not try to guess what is “right” or “best”, because what is best in this case is what represents your actual current ways of thinking and reacting.
Scenario 1: One of your best friends phones you about a problem. He promised to go somewhere with his wife, last night, and completely forgot forgot about it, arriving late, and finding her very very angry, at being forgotten and at not being even called to warn her of his late arrival.
your response: choose the best one of the below choices and circle it a) tell him a similar situation you faced some time ago b) get more information about why he forgot to inform his wife c) try to help him figure out how to calm his wife down d) express sympathy for his present discomfiture
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Page 7
Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design
Scenario 2: What are the first three things you would do to launch a serious improvement in your present neighborhood? 1)__________________________________________________________________ 2)__________________________________________________________________ 3)__________________________________________________________________
Stretch 3: In one minute or less list eighteen phenomena in the world that you can think of that resemble the branching structure that the vegetable broccoli has: a)_____________________________________
j)________________________________________
b)_____________________________________
k)_______________________________________
c)_____________________________________
l)________________________________________
d)_____________________________________
m)_______________________________________
e)_____________________________________
n)________________________________________
f)_____________________________________
o)________________________________________
g)_____________________________________
p)________________________________________
h)_____________________________________
q)________________________________________
i)_____________________________________
r)________________________________________
Stretch 4: How does DNA resemble a computer and what aspects of computing does each aspect of DNA correspond to: 1) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 2) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 3) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 4) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 5) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 6) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 7) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________ 8) DNA’s ______________________________________aspect resembles ___________________________________aspect of computing in this way________________________
Two Minds: Calculative-Symbolic and Associative In the mini-assessment above, scenario scenario 1 reveals whether you respond to the case with your symbolic mind mind or your associative one. Scenario 2 reveals whether you would approach a proposed proposed change symbolically or associatively. associatively. Stretch 3 requires requires you to maximally maximally use your associative abilities. Stretch 4 requires requires you to maximally maximally use your calculative-symbolic thinking capabilities. All of our lives we have this choice--to respond respond calculatively or to respond associatively: this situation requires meeting X conconstraint with Y type of action versus this situation reminds me of Z case years ago and resembles cactus in deserts, for example. Creativity and solving hard problems both require you to maximally use both of these minds. You try one and go as far with it as you possibly can, then you switch to trying the other going with it as far as it goes. Then you switch back to the first type, trying it again till it fails. Then you switch back back to the second type, type, taking it as far as it now will go. Insights comes from this alternating of these two types of mind--calculative and and associative. Just what is your calculative calculative mind? It is using ideas and models that configure ideas, that are already in your mind, to guide what what you seek, see, do, and notice notice in situations. Your calculative mind is conscious use of what you know and can know to solve or handle something. Just what is your associative mind? It is what any one idea or item calls to mind. mind. It is the unconscious unconscious easy automatic automatic things you think of when faced with one thing. It is a kind of random collection of things that you associate associate with the item or topic at present. People think of our calculative calculative mind as deep drilling, using idea “rails” to go far and deep in one direction of thought. People think of our associative mind mind as broad surveying, using all that that has happened to us in our lives to relate extremely different different and diverse contents of our lives to the item at hand. However, However, our calculative mind can just as easily make our thinking broader than it naturally is, if we let ourselves be guided by models models that are extremely comprehensive, comprehensive, broad, and diverse in their contents. The break up of our world into narrow narrow bodies of knowledge and narrow professions associated with them, makes most models narrow too, so using calculative-symbolic thought to get comprehensive is less done today than it needs to be. Similarly, our associative mind can carry us deep deep into a situation when associations are successively made smaller smaller in scale--within that network like shape is a pulsating membrane like my old trampoline, which had a weak spot causing the pulsing to break the surface membrane--maybe this situation will pulse till s omething breaks too, for example. We fail to go deep with associations when we associate on the same size or time scale as our original impetus impetus or topic.
The Brain Hardware Basis of our Symbolic-Calculative Mind The frontal cortex of the brain seems to evolve as we grow up as an arbitrer of other brain areas, making perception, automatic responses, emotions interact before action results. It slows us down but aims us more more precisely and complicatedly. complicatedly. “What should I now do” seems seems to be its function. It considers. If a tiger is attacking us, the frontal cortex is late to react, react, after automatic systems have saved us. On the other hand, the frontal cortex saves us from our unthinking automatic automatic reactions. Representations of what what we know and experience are brought to bean in conscious attention and effort in this part of the brain. We think about things here, in a conscious attention filled sense that is slow and not at all automatic. Interestingly, if the models of our experience or knowledge that we draw on are comprehensive and detailed, we can get more exposure to variation, diversity, and difference from from conscious consideration than from from associative wild connections. Free association that is not model model based can include, and usually does include, less variation than conscious slow application of a comprehensive detailed model.
The Brain Hardware Basis of our Associative Mind All of our brain is associative. Neural nets--networks of neurons, each each connected to, on average, 10,000 10,000 other neurons--do all that our brain does, including all its calculations and manipulations of symbols. Associations should be thought of as neurons doing factor analysis analysis together--the familiar familiar statistical technique of finding variables that vary together and grouping them as if they were one one factor. Statistical software packages packages for recognizing voice and doing computer dictation, like Dragon Dictate, work so well because the brain itself, its nets of neurons, neurons, do the same sorts of statistical analyses. So all the brain’s brain’s hardware supports associative thinking--irrational thinking--irrational links between anything that happened at the same time as, s eemed similar to in any way as, anything else.
Alternating Mind Work Work You can set up the calculative mind via associative work and vice versa, set up the associative mind via calculation work. It works like this--before sleep or a walk write down all the stucknesses preventing progress on an issue. You will find during you walk or after sleep, your unconscious associative mind generates possible solutions for them. Conversely, Conversely, after a long sleep or walk, try and tackle all the really hard parts o f some problem. You will find your calculative mind fixes what your associative mind missed or failed to solve. Insight processes alternate detachment detachment (associative mind mind work) with engagement engagement (calculative mind work).
Errors and Problems Problems from Mis-Use of Either of These Two Two Mind Types Types Quite a few of us, when stressed, or as as we age and get tired of aspects of life, fall into ruts of using just one of these mind types. We never get around to trying the other. other. Perhaps we get skilled at one type and and like the praise of always using it. Whatever the cause, failure failure to alternate types causes failure to solve. It is an error to depend on just just one of these types of mind. mind. It is an error not to alternative alternative calculative mind effort effort with associative mind mind effort. There are kinds of people who, for some reason, end up using only one of these types of of mind all their lives. I knew a woman at Wellesley Wellesley College well enough to try to contact her twenty years later. later. I sent a letter to her through the alumni alumni association and a month later later she wrote back. Amazingly her mind, mind, life, and writing were as incoherent at 40 years of age age as they had been at 20. She was fully using her her associative mind and and had trained her calculative mind to stay stay to the side in all matters. We all know nerds-Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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because they answer even the most humorous and casual questions with serious rationality and depth consideration. They have turned on their calculative minds to the exclusion of their associative minds. minds. The best people we know thoroughly thoroughly use both these mind types, mixing and alternating them as needed.
Metaphor--Associative Mind Joined with Calculative Mind In using metaphors we associate--this associate--this in domain Z is like that in domain W. W. In using metaphor we calculate--A in domain domain Z is like B in domain W in this way M, but not in that way P. P. Metaphors get us to join these two mind types in one effort. We associate associate things in different domains and we map map precisely how such different different things resemble and fail to resemble each other. other. Metaphor joins our calculative with our our associative mind. The three sections below in this chapter deal with using one of these two mind mind types, using the other, and using both together. together. You can develop each type of mind beyond it current functioning and you can practice weaving both types together more effectively to get th ings done.
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Calculative-Symbolic Mind There are lots of types of calculation calculation the mind is capable of. Simple arithmetic, simple logic, games like chess, social maneuvering maneuvering in parties and conversations, conversations, business and other strategy, making plans for each day and week realistic, assessing risks and potentials--are some of the hundreds of calculations our calculative-symbolic mind gets involved with daily. daily. Research in artificial artificial intelligence found a basic planning capability in minds split into forward-reasoning forward-reasoning and backward-reasoning. backward-reasoning. In forward-reasoning we examined present actual circumstances, from the viewpoint of some eventual goal we wish to attain, and we imagine next steps from each present circumstance that take us in the direction of realizing that ultimate goal. In backward reasoning, we take our final goal, imagined as if now actually attained, and we then imagine what what must have been done, just before that situation, to lead to it, and, for each of those preceding steps, we i magine steps that must precede them for them to have eventuated--continuing this till we arrive at present circumstances. Forward-reasoning is conservative as it builds on the present, usually depending on too much in the present, thereby including some bias and weaknesses latent in our present present ways of operating. Backward-reasoning is bold as it ignores ignores the present and thinks us back from future radical goals to intermediate intermediate steps needed to attain them. Entire persons and societies are dominated dominated by one of these at the the cost of seldom or never using the other. other. Japan, for example, example, is a society of forward forward reasoning only, only, with people and groups there shunning backward reasoning reasoning entirely. entirely. The US, for a different different example, is a society of backward backward reasoning, slighting and seldom using forward reasoning. Calculative-symbolic processing, which our mind mind can do, and which we are trained to do, in various ways, in schools, is something machine computers do much better than we do. We can do mental arithmetic, arithmetic, but computers can can do it billions of times faster and and more accurately. accurately. We can do syllogistic logic, but machine machine computers can can handle millions of simultaneous logic statements and calculate what they all mutually rule out and imply, billions of times faster and more more accurately than we. Machine computers are, in a way, extensions of our mind that extend the symbolic-calculative capabilities in our minds. This raises the question--why bother improving the symbolic-calculative symbolic-calculative capabilities of our minds when they will never match what what machine computers already do? The answer is somewhat complicated, and I give it below. The pre-frontal cortex of of our brains is where action circuits, circuits, emotion circuits, attention circuits and and many others converge. converge. The pre-frontal cortex slows and and edits automatic reactions, allowing us to consciously ponder things, as well as enabling some unconscious processing that modifies what automatic systems elsewhere in our brains tend to do. It is the seat of sy mbolic-calculative processing, along with language centers with their syntax module that allows simple th ings to be combined in complex rule-led ways. We can over-ride suggested actions/responses actions/responses from elsewhere in our brain by pondering consciously and semi-consciously what we need and wish to do. All day, every day, day, we over-ride suggestions from elsewhere elsewhere in our brains--this is called “civilization”. Human culture and education give us ideas, alternatives, alternatives, approaches far different different and better than the animal machineries machineries in the rest of our brains. Teenagers, Teenagers, famous for handling crises crises less well than adults, in part because because their calculative-symbolic minds overload overload faster than adult minds do, are, in modern modern societies, raised for years with little contact with adults, adults, so they “rebel”. In more traditional societies, they are never very isolated from adults, and from the use of symbolic-calculative algorithms for pondering situations in ways the child has n ever thought of before. Therefore, they do not “rebel”. Instead, they smoothly evolve into adult ways of pondering situations and delaying or belaying suggestions from elsewhere in their brains. What sort of training of our symbolic-calculative mind is worth doing and what is the benefit of such brain training? Immediately above, the role of our symbolic-calculative symbolic-calculative mind in slowing and editing reaction reaction proposals from elsewhere elsewhere in our brain, was described. described. Judgement you might call this, plus commonsense, plus perspective, plus self restraint and self discipline. You might also call it focus, purpose, strategy. strategy. When we exercise our calculative-symbolic calculative-symbolic mind we improve our judgement, commonsense, commonsense, perspective, self restraint and discipline, discipline, focus, purposiveness, purposiveness, and strategicness. strategicness. Most formal schooling aims for doing this. School and college college systems imbue civilization in us plus routines for saving and improving civilizations. Brain training for our symbolic-calculative mind is what gives us the ability on standardized college college entrance tests to get into the world’s best colleges, which, in turn, turn, opens all the roles and potentials of civilization and its professions to us. College entrance tests differ from from each other but all of them basically have two parts--a language handling handling part and a math handling part. Unfortunately, they do not have an emotion handling part and a social relations handling part. The pre-frontal cortex slows and edits edits suggestions from what we read and hear, hear, from what we estimate and calculate, calculate, from what we feel, feel, and what others exemplify or communicate to us. Colleges, however, however, only test, in their entrance entrance tests, for symbols of math math and language.
The Exercises for Your Calculative-Symbolic Mind Mapping Metaphors--what Metaphors--what resembles what--Select the right answer(s) from sets of three provided 1) bicycles are to spider legs as helicopters helicopters are to X: a) 747s b) railroad engines c) butterflies 2) X is to spilled spilled pudding as Napoleon is is to Russia: a) a fly fly b) ice c) socks 3) TV entertainment entertainment is to the Louvre as X is to the Olympics: Olympics: a) piss b) street street hockey c) playing playing catch 4) revolution is to ancient Rome and the the Soviet Union as X is is to the Iraq War War of 2006 and the Afghanistan Afghanistan War War of 2004: a) a new caliphate b) terrorism c) Vietnam Vietnam 5) tiredness is to to “a bird in the hand is worth worth two in the bush” as as “let sleeping dogs lie” lie” is to X: a) supersaturated situations situations b) revolutionary revolutionary intent c) the butterfly butterfly effect 6) “when in Rome do as the Romans do” is to international trade as X is to rave participants: a) word-of-mouth b) trial by fire c) DJs
Summarizing Text--what is the point--Render the paragraphs below into good single sentence summaries of their main points by selecting the right answer(s) from sets of 4 sentences provided after each paragraph 1) Information is physical. If the universe is all information, then the universe universe has been computing itself from its its beginning. Any computer, computer, say a quantum computer, based based on the same quantum physics rules that govern the actual actual universe, that can simulate simulate the universe’s universe’s information information dynamics, dynamics, literally, literally, becomes the universe. It becomes indistinguishable indistinguishable from from our universe. a) our universe is an information processor; that makes it information and that makes anything that simulates its information dynamics accurately also a universe XX b) information is physical, for example, our universe is both information and obviously physical and any simulation of our universe’s information dynamics becomes our universe in reality, not just in simulation form c) information is physical in that our actual universe computes itself making more information over time and any computer that simulates that becomes our universe, for example any quantum computer simulating that). d) information is physical because our universe is an information processor and any device using the same information rules is indistinguishable from our universe 2) The universities in pre-war Japan were were restricted to children children of elites. After the war, war, GHQ in Tokyo, Tokyo, under MacArthur, MacArthur, ordered hundreds of new universities created, created, so ordinary Japanese children of non-elite families could attend. There were not enough Ph.D.s available to be professors professors of these new universities. universities. As a result, people people not trained in research research became professors professors and they pretended pretended to advise students students while pretending to do research because they they lacked training. training. This became a norm over Japanese universities in in general--pre tend professorial professorial work. Students attending these newly newly formed universities, universities, with with pretend professors professors in them, pretended pretended to study. study. The entire system system became a sham, professors pretending to do research and to advise and students pretending to study. study. This allowed everyone to do as little work work as possible. Since Japanese undergraduate colleges teach teach only for three years with the fourth year taken up entirely entirely by student job job hunting, and since since these universities universities have only pretend pretend teaching and studying studying going on in in them, the entire entire Japanese national population today is is filled with nothing nothing but high school graduates. graduates. There are less than a few thousand adults adults in Japan with an undergraduate undergraduate college education education of any real sort. sort. This is half of what makes daily conversation with adult Japanese so boring; the other half is a tradition of hundreds of years o f military government with with secret police in every town and city looking for hidden wealth wealth to tax. This tradition made food and weather weather the only safe topics topics of casual conversation for hundreds hundreds of years, till this became “the culture” of Japan. Similar such cultures can be found in East Germany under communism communism and Argentina under the Peronist military military dictatorship. dictatorship. These are the two reasons that daily conversation conversation with adult Japanese is so dissatisfying dissatisfying compared compared to such conversing with with adults of other nations. a) new universities were created by command without enough qualified people to be their faculty, so unqualified professors pretending to advise and do research created students who pretended to study, secret police under hundreds of years of military government in Japan drove all topics out of conversing other than weather and food, conversations of adults are boring for these reasons b) the two reasons conversing with adult Japanese is boring are: one, no adult Japanese have undergrad college education as professors and students only pretend, two, hundreds of years of military dictatorship with secret police everywhere made food and weather the traditional topics of conversation XX c) dictatorship had two effects on Japan: one, the dictatorship of foreign occupiers made new universities by command that became pretend in teaching and studying; two, the dictatorship of military governments in Japanese history, made food and weather the only safe topics of conversing d) Japanese history shows that elites end up disempowered by exactly how they disempower the populations they rule: one, elites mandate new universities without good faculty so faculty pretend to teach and students pretend to study till the norm at all universities in Japan, elite and non-elite, is pretend teaching and study; two, elites scare entire populations into talking only about weather and food, using secret police, till the elites themselves end up talking only about food and weather as that is “Japanese” culture.
Finding Non-Fitting Non-Fitting Propositions--write Propositions--write the letter of the sentence that does not fit the overall argument being made 1) a. Some mutations affect affect genes. b. There are levels of selection. c. Some traits cause mutations.X mutations.X d. Good engineering adapts an existing functional functional entity for new purposes rather than inventing a new such entity from scratch. scratch. e. Some traits are adaptive. f. When environments environments change, some neutral traits traits can be found adaptive. adaptive. g. Some mutations affect genes that control other other genes. h. There are levels levels of mutation. mutation. i. Some traits traits are neutral, neither adaptive adaptive nor mal-adaptive. mal-adaptive. j. Some mutations mutations cause selections.X selections.X k. l. Exaptation is using a
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design trait for a different different kind of situation situation than gave rise to it. m. Some mutations mutations affect non-gene elements elements that control control control-genes or genes. genes. n. Traits are selected, selected, not because they are adaptive, but because they are not harmful in current situations. 2) a. More wealth wealth does not equate to more happiness. b. Government policies policies that improve satisfaction satisfaction of customers customers of government policies policies later may lower lower their satisfaction satisfaction now. c. Government policies now pursue goals that do not improve population happiness. d. Governments implement lots lots of policies that lower satisfaction of their customers. e. Gross national well well being is a possible good replacement for for Gross national national product. f. More happiness happiness does not equate to more wealth.X g. Total Total quality quality aimed products, products, processes, and busi nesses at improving improving customer satisfaction. satisfaction. h. More wealth, above above a low basic amount, has has not been found to increase satisfaction or happiness. happiness. i. Governments implement implement lots of policies that do not improve satisfaction satisfaction of their customers. j. Policies that improve satisfaction satisfaction of government customers customers now may hurt such satisfaction later. later. k. Happiness does not increase satisfaction.X l. Governments choosing policies to maximize Gross national satisfaction may be incapable of attaining high such satisfaction in the future. 3) a. Racism is fun. b. Culture research research shows some cultures cultures are worse than others. others. c. White bread is preferred preferred to brown bread. d. Pre-scientific thinking thinking builds logical sequences sequences among ideas unfounded unfounded in evidence. e. No one buys creams creams to darken their their skin. f. Everyone pretends pretends that all cultures cultures are equal. g. White houses are cooler than colored colored houses.X h. History proves the culture of whites is superior to the culture culture of people of color. color. i. The world’s world’s sacred books and bibles bibles all agree that women women are inferior to men. men. j. Hurting people of color and women is is fun. k. Modern society ills ills come from violating violating the rights of men men and whites. l. White is a purer color color than brown or gray or yellow. m. White rice is superior to brown rice. n. Japanese prefer their cars to be white. o. Women Women all over the world buy creams creams to whiten their their skin. p. Inferior races races and genders should be paid less.X q. Examples of pre-scientific or religio-thinking religio-thinking abound.
Detecting Flaws in the Arguments (of Your Self and Other People)--write the letter of the sentence making a flawed argument 1) a. Japan watched Britain brutally brutally impose, by gun-boat force, opium addiction addiction on much of the population of China in the mid-1800s. b. Japan watched the US invade and make a colony of the Philippines. Philippines. c. Japan was terrified terrified of Britain or the US or other European European powers doing the same same with Japan. d. The parts of Japan most most exposed to foreign foreign influence, in Western Japan, overthrew the military government and “restored” the emperor along with a government willing to open the country and copy what made the West militarily powerful and threatening. e. Japan practiced the new military military power it had built by defeating Russia in a war near the turn of the century. f. Both Japan and Germany lacked lacked deep traditions traditions of nation. g. Everyone was, for hundreds of years, raised in and loyal to, a local German German duchy or Japanese “han”. h. No one was was Japanese or German. i. So government in Japan and Germany installed rabid nationalism nationalism and institutions to keep it going. j. Similarly rabid militarization militarization was supported to protect these new unnatural nations from Britain, the US, and other European powers. powers. k. The colonies of the US, US, Britain, and European European nations all over Asia, Asia, were seen by Japan Japan as a threat to Japan. l. Japan could protect herself by invading such Asian colonies colonies of the US, Britain, Britain, and European European nations and liberating liberating their populations from foreign rule. m. Japan was the only only nation in Asia that could militarily militarily challenge Western Western powers in Asia. n. Japan looked down on other Asian nationalities because they were no help to Japan in fending off Western Western militarism and colonization. colonization. o. Japan’s belief in the superiority of of Japanese culture to other other Asian cultures explains explains much of the harshness harshness and brutality of Japanese rule of European colonies colonies in Asia. p. The sense in Japan of the the superiority of Japan’s culture culture to other Asian cultures was was a combination combination of actual accomplishment accomplishment modernizing modernizing with racist worship of Japan’s Japan’s emperor and people as divine compared to others. q. That racism was a kind kind of mirror of European European and US racist portraits portraits of Japanese as round-glasses round-glasses wearing monkeys monkeys in their popular press for decades. r. The Marshal Marshal Islands, under Japanese Japanese rule, were economically self self supporting and alive alive with commerce; commerce; those islands islands under US rule, rule, after Japan’s Japan’s defeat in WWII, WWII, were welfare welfare states, incapable of living on their own. s. Japanese belief in the superiority of their their own culture caused them to rule the Marshal Islands in a better way than the US did later.X later.X t. American sloppiness at implementation implementation of all sorts combined with remnants of European society class systems in US culture caused the US to turn the Marshal Islands into welfare clients after the war. 2) a. All major industrial industrial nations in the the world are controlled, controlled, politically, politically, by a voting imbalance, imbalance, with rural areas having having many more votes per person than urban areas (more (more represen tatives for rural rural areas with few voters than urban areas with with many more voters voters have). b. Current policies of the governments of these nations therefore therefore represent the needs needs of these nations as they were were some decades ago when everyone was in the countryside countryside rather than now when nearly everyone is living in cities. cities. c. This is one reason that world trade talks talks stop because subsidies to farmers in rich nations nations cannot be cut to lift lift poor nations out of poverty by allowing poor nations to export agriculture agriculture goods to rich rich nations. d. Farmers have disdis proportionate political political power in rich nations, nations, so they reject global global trade improvements improvements that include changes changes in agriculture policy. policy. e. Rich nations undergo regular moral revival revival cam paigns where rural values, threatened by urban urban living and the values urbanity urbanity generates, try to to impose rural views views and ways on essentially essentially urban populations. f. Farmers have disproportionate political power so they they reject the dominant values of their nations, at times, and try to protect their own rural values and impose such rural values values on urban urban citizens and situations. g. In all modern democracies, democracies, elites elites recruit uneducated uneducated malleable supporters supporters from some some part of society society to get enough votes to control governments. governments. h. Organized labor and the urban poor were recruited recruited by socialist and populist elites in many nations for many decades. decades. i. People of rigid beliefs, beliefs, religious moralists, moralists, racists racists and political rightists, rightists, were recruited by wealthy wealthy and business elites in many many nations for many many decades. j. Thusly, liberal liberal (progressive) (progressive) governments make compromises compromises to serve labor and the poor while while conserva tive (rightist) (rightist) governments make make compromises to serve serve religions and racists. racists. k. Sometimes liberal liberal governments undermine undermine their efforts efforts to foster equality equality in social groups by not demanding enough of labor labor and the poor. l. Sometimes conservative conservative governments undermine their efforts efforts to foster business business by supporting moral moral ideas that stop development development of vital new sciences and industries. m. When the elites in these coalitions coalitions of elites with masses find the compromises compromises that have to make with their chosen masses in order to have power underunder mine their own interests and long term term power, power, they get demoralized, demoralized, and experience defections defections to the enemy side. side. n. This allows the least least loyal fragment of both elites, those willing to switch, to control control overall elections elections and fates of nations. nations. o. Modern democracies democracies allow something something on the order of less less than 2% of their populations to control governments and policies policies that 98% follow. follow. p. If the vote of rural rural voters was made exactly exactly equal to the vote of urban voters in our modern modern democracies, then the rural, conservative, conservative, belief-rigid portions portions of populations would shrink shrink into political insignificance. q. Elites, the socialist socialist one and the wealth wealth one, would have to to both recruit from from urban voters. r. All of the problems of urban areas in the industrial world world come from lack lack of political representation representation of cities cities compared to countrysides, countrysides, in the way way explained above. Governments are are investing too little little in urban situations situations and too much in rural ones, lacking a future. s. What is the source of this inability of modern democracies to represent actual population population concentrations? t. Ultimately, Ultimately, everything is negotiable except allowing urban voters to to have as many votes per per person as rural voters do. u. Thusly, changes in in votes per person never are made, because policy concessions on other matters, less less central to urban-rural urban-rural power imbalance, are used as bribes to keep keep the imbalance in place. place.
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Associative Mind The resistance to association, the failure or weakness of association, in our minds comes from ruttedness--past paths of thought we have trodden influencing us s o we tend to repeat those past paths too much. This makes our futures futures too much like our pasts. Further ruttedness comes comes from social expectations and pressures pressures on us to follow others, conform, or not irritate others. others. Another resistance to association strength is the split split of the world into narrow disciplines of knowledge and narrow people, in professions associated with each. each. More and more problems of our era comes from cracks between such narrow narrow people and professions. No one is educated in or responsible for the whole whole anymore. Everyone is expert at some some tiny slice and utterly stupid when when dealing with things outside their expert expert slice. How we live, as a whole, also relates to ruttedness ruttedness in our associative minds, in the associations we make with any one thing in our minds. minds. A good example will help. I have an old old friend, that I met in Boston as a college student, who became a photographer in college so he could get beautiful girls to take off their clothes clothes for him. He was amazingly good at this--not the photos but the getting women to disrobe. He had another charm point--he kept introducing me to types of people I never never imagined or met--a female airplane pilot, a former East German spy master selling real estate in Huston, a ballerina with t hree breasts, the World World Chess Champion of 1959, and on and on. There was no rhyme or reason to whom he knew. knew. When, finally, I once asked him directly about his collection of friends, he amazed amazed me with his simple answer. answer. He chose, as friends, only people unlike himself and his friends friends thus far. Most of us choose people like ourselves in traits or interests as as friends; he did the opposite, choosing people unlike himself and unlike his own traits. Here is a way of life that contributes to not acting in a rutted way, way, that keeps associations rich and growing, not narrow and predictable. Our associative mind is based on no one part of the brain but on the hardware on which all parts of the brain are based--networks based--networks of neurons. Billions of billions of neurons each connected, on average to 10,000 other neurons, make make up our brain. A billion units taken in inter-connected groups of 10,000 of a time, makes for an immense space of possible connections--more than the number of atoms in the universe. universe. Our brains are connection connection machines--parts machines--parts of our body specialized specialized for connections. connections. We have so many many connections when we are born that, as we develop, there are periods of our li ves, in which our bodies prune away some of those initial connections, leaving only ones needed thus far in survival. Research has found that memories memories are distributed so one neuron does not represent represent one thought, but memories are also concentrated concentrated so that there often is one neuron central to one thought (the “gramma neuron theory” this is called, having one neuron for something we know like a grandmother). We seem seem to have a sparse matrix of memory associations--with ideas represented in our memories in a span from totally distributed, millions of neurons part of one idea’s memory, to totally concentrated, one neuron for one idea. Making associations is hard work. Whenever we try to imagine lots of things different than each other, other, we quickly run out of automatic automatic answers and have to work hard to think of something different than what is already in our list. However, some people people excel at this sort of associative task, easily listing dozens and dozens of items, quickly, far far more diverse than the few items we list with difficulty.
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Current Hot Idea List as Association Grid--find an implication/relationship/im implication/relationship/image age linking each idea below with each idea in the 16 Ideas as Association Matrix 16 Ideas as Association Matrix Religion = Psychology before Science-be to have: learn to have what we now be; something in who we are blocks attaining our best goals; stages of psyche growth = stages of religious growth;
Creation = Culture Penetration-creativity as penetration of problem cultures, turning piecemealbits into coherent othernesses
Structural Cognition = Idea Operand Expansion-apply mental operations not to 4 to 7 ideas at a time but to 64 to 128 ideas at a time
Consciousness = Representation of Representations--
Factor Analysis = Mind Work--
neural nets build internode weight distributions that of self and other is factor so states of self/ analyzedbecome other can be rules, wider and communicated deeper than rules to others humans build
Lao Tsu = Vacuum Power-doing by not doing; drawing spaces between objects not objects, photo negatives of life
BioFab = Creativity as Sharable Library of Function Components-creativity via opening ideas to a group via enabling cumulative work
Publishing of Readings = Structural Reading Diagrams-decoding prose to reveal latent idea structure/ topology
Prose = Poor Interface-rampant bushyness of inputs causes rampant complexity of search engines, both unnecessary
The Scientist in the Mind = Prefrontal Cortex-integrate all modalities, delay automatic reactions,social consultation, decision
Creation = Automatic and Universal--
Design = Detecting Dimensions of Difference-
the universe created then natural interpolating/ selection that extrapolating created within (new humans that values)/ will create among (new new creatures/ dimensions) minds them
The American Way to Fail = Seeking Authority Overcome/ LiberatedFrom-loss of community/ scripting causes rigid seeking/ holding of absolutes as psychic anchors
The Self Organizing Nature of Fat = Slight Fat Accelerates Fattening-slack mid body = balloon; eat to push food out; food as sex substitute; loss of water; convenience = death
Penetration Campaigns = Media Presence-students interview creators; students do experiments as each class; an event per week attended; collectiveweb site; global email campaign
Create via Finite Elements = Problem Decomposi tion-Simulated annealing, neural nets, cellular systems,
1) loss of performance chance of entire national populations subject to sitting before broadcasts, hence, emotive outbursts of lives felt unrecognized, seeking audiences 2) 99% of what we we buy/consume is unnecessary, unnecessary, an entertainment, entertainment, a result of enslavement by trend/crowd/habit--we trend/crowd/habit--we can live entirely without without it 3) fundamentalism fundamentalism as flight from humans being responsible for themselves--fleeing themselves--fleeing to magic god so humans can avoid guilt over over messes in life and and the world 4) Build your own own matrix of 16 key ideas ideas in your current thoughts/plans thoughts/plans and associate 1 through 3 above with each each of those 16 hot ideas of your own.
Fractal Idea Association Patterns--put the 16 ideas in the Association Matrix above into the fractal format below, then extrapolate from the ordering of those ideas you make to create additional ideas for the blank boxes Instructions: A) group the 16 ideas ideas in the Association Matrix above by similarity, similarity, getting getting four groups of four ideas each (Association (Association by Distance to Trait) B) order the ideas ideas in each of the 4 groups of ideas in an analogous fashion fashion to all groups of four ideas ideas order their component component ideas in a similar similar fashion (Associate (Associate by Analogy) C) order the groups of four ideas using the same overall pattern of ordering as used in each of the four groups of ideas (Associate by Analogy on Second Size Scale) D) put the ideas in in the first four boxes of each set of five in the fractal model model given below (put ideas ideas in 1 thru 4, 6 thru 9, 11 11 thru 14, 16 thru 19 E) extrapolate a fifth idea in each each of the four groups of four ideas ideas (put in boxes 5, 10, 15, 15, 20) (Associate by Order Order Extrapolation) Extrapolation) F) extrapolate a fifth overall group group of (five) ideas, and and name the overall group (Associate by Order Order Extrapolation on Second Second Size Scale) G) populate that fifth new group of ideas with five component ideas (put in boxes 21 thru 25), ordered in a way similar to how all the other groups of five ideas are ordered. (Associate by Order Extrapolation Extrapolation on 2 Size Scales Simultaneously) Simultaneously)
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19
18 20
14
24 17
16
13
23 15
25
12
22 11
21 4 9
8
3 5
10
2
1
7
6
Ordered Association--insert Association--insert the least fitting idea and most fitting idea in the idea sequences below 1) childhood abuse serial killer childhood abuse dictator Germany Hitler France XXX most fitting idea at position XXX:_______________ ________________ least fitting idea at position XXX:_____________ ___________________ __________________ 2) London
food Paris smell America crime Tokyo Tokyo XXX most fitting idea at position XXX:_______________________________ least fitting idea at position XXX:___________________________________________________
3) France
Vietnam Vietnam USA Vietnam Vietnam XXX Iraq most fitting idea at position XXX:_______________________________ least fitting idea at position XXX:___________________________________________________
Idea Bridges--Directionally Bridges--Directionally Constrained Associations--depth--between Associations--depth--between the ideas below freely associate strings of ideas, specifying what the link between each pair is, till an idea bridge is built 1) DNA coating
A_______________________
B ______________________
C______________________
D ____________________
Dracula
Link from DNA coating to A_________________________________________ Link from A to B___________________________________________________ Link from B to C___________________________________________________ Link from C to D___________________________________________________ Link from D to Dracula_____________________________________________ 2) Spaghetti
A_______________________
B ______________________
C______________________
D ____________________
Ghengis Khan
Link from Spaghetti to A_____________________________________________ Link from A to B___________________________________________________ Link from B to C___________________________________________________ Link from C to D___________________________________________________ Link from D to Ghengis Khan________________________________________
Bushy Associating--breadth--with Associating--breadth--within in one minute write all the items specified for each probe below 1) (in one minute) list all situations in history that resemble broccoli:
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design a)___________________________________ a)_______________________ ____________ how ________________________________ ________________________________ b)___________________________________ b)_______________________ ____________ how _________________________________ _________________________________ c) __________________________________ __________________________________ how __________________________________ __________________________________ d) _________________________________ _________________________________ how __________________________________ __________________________________ e)__________________________________ e)_______________________ ___________ how __________________________________ f) _________________________________ _________________________________ how ___________________________________ ___________________________________ g) ________________________________ ________________________________ how ____________________________________ ____________________________________ h) ________________________________ ________________________________ how ____________________________________ ____________________________________ 2) (in one minute) list all situations situations in history that are the opposite of broccoli: broccoli: a)___________________________________ a)_______________________ ____________ how ________________________________ ________________________________ b)___________________________________ b)_______________________ ____________ how _________________________________ _________________________________ c) __________________________________ __________________________________ how __________________________________ __________________________________ d) __________________________________ __________________________________ how __________________________________ __________________________________ e)__________________________________ e)_______________________ ___________ how __________________________________ f) _________________________________ _________________________________ how ___________________________________ ___________________________________ g) ________________________________ ________________________________ how ____________________________________ ____________________________________ h) ________________________________ ________________________________ how ____________________________________ ____________________________________
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Cooperative Use of Both These Mind Types As you can easily imagine our calculative-symbolic mind excels at focus and making a clear path through thickets of ideas and associations; our associative mind excels at spreading us wide and and deep across huge areas of thought and and possible connections among thoughts. These two minds work work oppositely in this way. way. If we want to get something done--our calculative-symbolic mind easily cuts a clear path for us to follo w, our associative mind spreads out our goals, efforts, means till we n o longer know what we are doing or where we are going. If we all our past solutions to a problem have failed us and we need a new type of solution fast--our calculative-symbolic mind mind will all too often build on past solutions and approaches, unable to break out of such habits, our associative mind will suggest entirely new aspects of the problem and entirely new possible components of a solution. Each mind excels at different different types of task. In our own daily lives we have all seen people and groups emphasizing one of these types of mind and missing or slighting the other entirely, much to their own detriment. Nerds, for example, are great at calculative-symbolic thought, programming computers, and the like, but their minds run true and narrow, missing huge surrounding implications and areas of feeling, emotion, emotion, and so on. Some artists, for another example, example, are great at free association and putting unlikely things together, but their minds minds cannot follow any one direction very far. Weaving calculative-symbolic thought with association looks either like generating somethings with association and selecting or focussing on some of them via calculation or getting somewhere with calculation then opening it out and evaluating its worth or direction with associations from diverse viewpoints. Insight processes are such alternations of association association with calculation. Generate-reduce, Generate-reduce, generate-test, disperse-focus, disperse-focus, diverge-converge--this diverge-converge--this feels feels like. Nobody gets insights from using one of these types of mind alone. The illusion that they do comes from the written records generated by calculative-symbolic mind work--equations of physics, drawings of inventors, and the like. No one writes down or draws diagrams of the alternatives alternatives considered, the reveries dreamt, dreamt, the unlikely associations tried--instead they write down the one of each of those actually selected, chosen, used. Written records emphasize calculative-symbolic calculative-symbolic mind work over associative work, hence, they mis-represent how the mind works.
When to Use Each Mind Type--specify Type--specify which mind type is needed at the last step of the procedure procedure sequences below: 1) my goal is to change my way of relating to people, to make it less talkative and pushy and add listening and easy-going-ness to it 2) my first step step is noticing what, in in first moments moments of encountering anyone, sparks sparks my excess talking talking and my pushy-ness 3) my second step is practicing stopping stopping my natural (talkative (talkative or pushy) reaction reaction 4) my third step is working towards exceptionlessness-exceptionlessness--no no encounter on any one day leads leads to my old habitual reactions reactions (talking or pushing) 5) my fifth fifth step is________________________________ is________________________________ is a calculative-symbolic step needed here or an associative step_______________ why____________________________ what sort of such step__________________________ 1) my goal is to figure out what sort of business I can make out of my favorite hobby 2) my first step step is brainstorming all all the ways I could grow grow that hobby into making making money 3) my second step is to select the best such brainstormed ideas ideas and develop them into concrete plans 4) my third step is to _____________________________ _____________________________ is a calculative-symbolic step needed here or an associative step_______________ why____________________________ what sort of such step__________________________ 1) the US war in Iraq was making Iran stronger, stronger, splitting Iraq into pieces the biggest of which will join Iran making it stronger, and recruiting terrorists against the US across the muslim world 2) the US war in Iraq Iraq was assembling terrorists terrorists and enemies enemies of the US in Iraq, Iraq, keeping them from the the US 3) the US war in Iraq Iraq was recruiting citizens citizens of the US to become terrorists terrorists against the US in the the US 4) the US war in Iraq Iraq was taking attention attention and money away from from fighting causes of terrorism and securing securing cities and borders 5) the next step needed needed in the year 2006 was __________________________________ is a calculative-symbolic step needed here or an associative step_______________ why____________________________ what sort of such step__________________________
Lost Love--specify the mind type needed to handle the situations below 1) your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse tells you they have lost interest in you, which mind type is needed before you respond to what they just said mind type ______________________ ______________________ is needed why_____________________________________ why________________________________________ ___ to do what ________________________________________ ________________________________________ 2) your physician tells tells you that you have a life life threatening disease disease but at least a year of life left, which which mind type is needed needed after hearing this news mind type ______________________ ______________________ is needed why_____________________________________ why________________________________________ ___ to do what ________________________________________ ________________________________________ 3) scientists scientists discover the earth is threatened by being hit by an asteroid too big for for nuclear explosives to to break up, even a near miss miss will produce ocean ocean waves hundreds of meters meters high washing inland hundreds of kilometers--perhaps half the earth’s entire population is in danger, which mind type is needed by the UN and people associated with it, like the Security Council mind type ______________________ ______________________ is needed why_____________________________________ why________________________________________ ___ to do what ________________________________________ ________________________________________
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Chapter 2: The Raw Input Mind versus the Indexed Mind Mini-Assessment Below is a small self assessment. assessment. It will introduce you to minds within your brain, that you sometimes use use and sometimes sometimes forget to use or mis-use. mis-use. Answer the questions questions below as easily and quickly and honestly as you can--do not try to guess what is “right” or “best”, because what is best in this case is what represents your actual current ways of thinking and reacting.
Scenario 1: Look at the objects below and su btract the interpretive schemes indicated, writing what you notice (what changes in what you see) after each scheme is consciously suppressed:
look out the open window now nearest to you a) subtract out knowledge that it is a window opening onto a farther away wider space--what do you actually see without that framework? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
b) subtract out knowledge the the sky is gaseous and the ground and trees/objects on it are solid--what do you actually see without those frameworks? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
c) subtract out that you are a human being, an animal, a living being doing this seeing--what do you actually see without those frameworks? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
look at a sleeping pet near you a) subtract out knowledge that the pet is a living being--what do you actually see without that framework? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
b) subtract out knowledge that the pet before you is a solid 3 dimensional object--what do you actually see without that framework? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
listen to a piece of classical music--Beethoven music--Beethoven or Bach or the like a) subtract out knowledge that the sounds coming in your ears were created by human beings--what do you actually hear without that framework? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
b) subtract out knowledge that the sounds coming in your ears came from a certain nation and era and culture--what do you actually hear without that framework? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
touch your present lover, nude, with one of your hands, no talking, no context to your lover, and your eyes closed a) subtract your affection for this person and personal relation to them out--what do your fingers actually feel without those frameworks? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
b) subtract your familiarity with this person’s body, personality, and sexual reactions--what do you actually feel as your fingers move over them without these frames? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
c) subtract your own fears about your body and fear of reactions and sexual complications from your lover, subtract all shame about bodies and sex--what do you feel without those frameworks? change 1: __________________ _________________
change 2: __________________ _______________ change 3: ________________ ___________________
Scenario 2: Answer the following questions as accurately, truthfully, truthfully, without distortion as absolutely possible 1) list four of your to do’s that continually appear on your lists for what to do, but that never quite manage to get done; what property do they all share that causes them to not get done (why do they have lower priority than other things--what common element causes them all to have that lower priority?)? 2) list ten of your best friends in the world; group them into three groups by similarity; what is it that is similar about all the friends in each of those groups? 3) list the first ten objects your eyes see when entering your room at home or your office at work; what ultimate goal or motive or project in your life does each object come from and relate strongly to?
Stretch 3: List nine surprising/disarming sensations you have most recently experienced in your life and beside each list the ultimate reason for and meaning of that sensation surprising/dis arming sensations:
ultimate reason for and meaning of that sensation:
a)_____________________________________
j)________________________________________
b)_____________________________________
k)_______________________________________
c)_____________________________________
l)________________________________________
d)_____________________________________
m)_______________________________________
e)_____________________________________
n)________________________________________
f)_____________________________________
o)________________________________________
g)_____________________________________
p)________________________________________
h)_____________________________________
q)________________________________________
i)_____________________________________
r)________________________________________
Stretch 4: What situation deeply upset or surprised you in the intermediate past and what was the final way you handled it and managed to get emotionally beyond it and happy again? Situation aspects: _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Way you handled and managed to get emotionally beyond each of the above (in above order): _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
How the situation ultimately was not handled by your management and handling and continues now to give your trouble or slip out of your comfortable grasp _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
intelligence as indexing certain arts as indexing removers certain other arts as indexing highteners what is gained and lost with indexing, what is gained and lost with raw inputs
Two Minds: Raw Inputs and Indexed Above, scenario one involves moving your perceptions perceptions from indexed towards raw input. Scenario two involves moving inputs with average indexing indexing into inputs of high levels of indexing. Stretch three involves situations of low indexing (surprises surprise us because because they do not fit existing indexes in our minds) and making them better indexed. Stretch four involves situations of low indexing and putting them in higher indexing treatments, then it invites you towards rawer perception of the situations, undoing your handling and managing interpretive frameworks. frameworks. Stretch four goes both ways towards higher levels of indexing and towards towards lower levels of indexing, that is, rawer inputs. In 2006 research at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that creative people had less latent inhibition allowing more of the actual raw inputs to their minds to be directly accessed and used by them, bypassing the heavy indexing (and hence reducing) reducing) of inputs usual to the mind. Australian researchers found a means means of temporarily hindering functioning of brain regions via external magnetic fields, finding that they could shut down indexing allowing more raw inputs into minds--increasing some kinds of creativity. creativity. The association between raw raw inputs and access to raw raw inputs and creativity is strong, though not for all kinds of creativity. creativity. If creativity is rarity of of performance or product obtained via associations others do not make honed and focussed by calculations and symbolic reasoning others do not make, then exceptional use of both calculative and associationist minds are needed for it. We all, however, though automatically seeing not raw inputs to our senses but highly coherent, interpreted, reduced, indexed indexed versions of them, have a balance. At times we can do, what Edmund Husserl a hundred or more years ago, called “epoche”--shut down our automatic interpreting and indexing of things and see them more raw-ly, if not totally raw-ly. raw-ly. Sex is a good example of this going on. Many people all of their lives perform sex sex in the usual missionary routine positions and progression progression of moves--heavy petting, genital petting, insertion, intercourse, climax, conversation. Only a few people see bodies and and partners and sex beyond these routines--raw-ly routines--raw-ly sensing and respond with exploration of other alternative positions, progressions, touchings, embarrassments, embarrassments, exposures. These developers of more “artistic” sex, achieve achieve the art in their sex play via exposing themselves to raw-er inputs from their partner’s partner’s and their own bodies. Exposure to rawer inputs leads to more more adventuresome sex play and sex inventions. The heavy social fears and pressures on people in intimate sit uations paradoxically force such situations into being more circumscribed, proscribed, inhibited, and suffered through than less intimate and joyful daily encounters. We feel the full weight of what is at risk and get super conservative, traveling only safe well trodden paths, rather rather than run the risk of very intimate and emotional put downs, let downs, and embarrassments. embarrassments. Expand this insight to nearly all areas of life--if similar pressures force us into super conservatism and careful shrinking of inputs to safe types and levels, then all of our work and lives become scripted tightly, circumscribed to repeat past safenesses. What about the other side--what does it cost us to lose indexing of inputs to our minds, and expose ourselves ourselves to raw-er inputs? Mental illness is one such cost. cost. The raw inputs to our senses are overwhelming. We can can see and experience this by observing autistic persons--who have lost much of the indexing that makes inputs coherent and have a meaning and place in our minds. They see all that is there--some, idiot savants is a term for them in the past--are geniuses at drawing because they remember remember absolutely all their eyes see. The problem is--they grasp all they see but understand none of it. Without indexing the import of what they perceive gets lost in accuracy of raw inputs. They can draw but not interpret, see but not understand. Many have to go off-line for many minutes to slowly think their way, consciously, to the meaning meaning and practical import of what they just experienced. Because all of our lives we have been heavily indexing what is input to us, we have no intuitive powerful sense of how overwhelming overwhelming raw inputs to us are. Digital cameras are helpful helpful in this regard--choose raw as your file file format and a camera camera that comfortably took 100 photos now takes 20, with the same memory. memory. Raw inputs are huge, compared to indexed ones. ones. When do we see or sense things in a raw input way with l ess indexing of them--when we are surprised (because the frames we expected to use do not apply), when we encounter something for the first time in our lives (we lack particular frames for it), when we are depressed (we withdraw energy investment in all frames for all occasions), when we encounter things in contexts or cultures unknown to us, when we deliberately subtract out frames we know we commonly use. When do we see or sense things in an heavily indexed way--when we struggle to make so mething meaningful for us, when we get bored by common habitual responses and interpretations, when we wish to break with our selves or pasts, when we s wim in someone else’s culture or framings of things (that makes us struggle to get some sort of orientation or framing even if it is a new inventedon-the-spot one). Cultures new to us, paradoxically, both increase our rawness rawness of inputs and our indexing of them--we see things we would never usually see or we see things in framings unknown to us and that makes us disoriented enough to marshal efforts efforts to “make sense” far beyond what is normal for us in our usual surrounds. Too much much rawness drives us to index building and too much indexing drives us to seek rawness and less indexing. Art, in particular, our sense of beauty, often comes from stripping away indexes leaving raw i nputs. When we know less what we see, hear, feel, smell, and touch, it excites us more, it thrills us.
The Brain Hardware Basis of our Raw Input Mind Our brain composes a smooth unified coherent movie of flows of actions, perceptions, and time that is not what we are actually experiencing, hearing, feeling, and seeing. Majuahana, for example, appears to be a drug that undoes the scene flow operation of our mind, so that we see snapshots of scenes that jerk from one to another, rather than a smooth flow of continuous actions and percepts. The loss of inhibitions from majuahana, may be associated with what in our brains turns snapshots into smooth flows in the movie we consciously experience--social norms and fears may be hidden when our minds turn snapshots, each tagged with our open drives and urges, aggression, sexuality, hunger, and the like, into one smooth smooth flowing movie. The story we present ourselves of where we are, are, what we are observing and doing, may may flow by suppressing the urges tagging each separate separate scene and its possibilities on its own for us. us. Coherency costs us drive fulfillment. Drive chasing costs costs us coherence. coherence. This agrees strongly with old insights about eros and its disruptive nature. Huge amounts of civilization, its laws and traditions, rites rites and rituals, are dedicated to hemming hemming in and “civilizing” eros, channeling it here not there, now not then. Civilization struggles to keep between person things coherent, by stamping out disruptive drives in our bodies and minds and midst. Eros breaks out by breaking breaking what civilizations erect--families, erect--families, marriages, friendships, working relationships. relationships. The present discussion concerns just one level of rawness rawness away from our highly indexed mind. When one level of indexing is removed, we we lose coherence and gain direct access to drives and urges urges that valence situations in our midst. Another layer strips this emotional drive and and urge tagging of situations, leaving leaving us with raw perceptions lacking action and emotional implication. implication. What is this raw layer as mental hardware enables enables it? For vision, we know our eyes jump around all the time, so we see snapshots at different angles and spots, from eye saccides. The smooth flow of us moving through a scene is not what we perceive. It is a movie movie our minds build knitting together lots of of snapshots. For hearing, research research finds our minds knitting individual notes-in-time notes-in-time into flowing melodies and rhythms that are not there in what inputs come to our ears. Melodies and rhythms are not what our ears get as input, they are coherencies coherencies our minds invent when they index what we hear by expectations, learnings, cultures, and the like. Similarly for other senses--touch, senses--touch, for example. example. We do not touch a lover’s lover’s smooth expanse of skin, gradually gradually approaching hairy, moist, exquisitely sensitive areas. That is a coherent story our our minds invent, imposed on snapshot individual feels. Snapshot versus movie captures a good deal of what is really going on here.
The Brain Hardware Basis of our Indexed Mind The cortex of our brain, that folded, crinkled outer surface of it, appears to do two t hings that are one thing--it integrates lots of other areas of the brains, integrating what they all individually suggest, and it delays all sorts of automatic reactions reactions by individual brains circuits and modules. It allows interpersonal communication communication (information) with others to adjust what our own brains decide decide to do about situations, urges, sensations, sensations, percepts and the like. In the context of culture and and others it adjusts how we see and value our experience of the moment. In the context of our long term memory of past situations and experiences and their results, results, it adjusts how we see and value our experience of the moment. That is three areas of integration--across integration--across time (for (for us alone), across across individual animals (our friends and culture), across across modules of the brain. To achieve integration across individual minds, integration across time and brain modules is required. We must achieve communicable coherence to ourselves in order to achieve coherence with others of our species (and other s pecies). Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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We index our raw experience. experience. That means we erect erect huge complex expectations expectations all the time, hypotheses which the world confirms or disconfirms. disconfirms. Indexing is the set of alteralternative expectations we erect at any one incident or time. “This could be a threat of status or possession sort or it could be a playful game part of male bonding” is what this sort of set of expectations feels like. Raw inputs are never felt alone but felt against this backdrop backdrop of alternative possible expectations. Raw inputs are used to choose among possible alternative expectations. “Oh, this is indeed a status threat” threat” this feels like, when we realize that what is before before us is not two other possibles, possibles, a possession threat or playful bonding game, but only the status threat possibility, in my example. Raw inputs are constantly telling us which alternative alternative possibility is “real”. The part of our brain brain that generates expectations, alternative possibles, all the time for all our moments, is our cortex. This happens at many levels. Our vision system has retinas, wherein local areas calculate possible coherent objects before nerves nerves carry signals to visual brain centers, recent research confirms. Possible objects get to our visual centers where more specific possible objects are calculated, till the cortex adds in motives, contexts, culture, reme remembered mbered similar past cases. In the context of the past, drives-urges-goals, other brain module inputs, what is the possible object? The cortex is the context. context. In the context of these possibles we are now seeing X, hearing Y, feeling Z.
Alternating Mind Work Work Alternating from raw raw to indexed inputs is usually automatic. automatic. We normally want only the the indexed versions of things. We seldom if ever want the raw, raw, unindexed version-because it is meaningless to us, because it overwhelms overwhelms us with details to no point. Only if we are artists, artists, or creative people wanting wanting to see beyond our past accumulated accumulated indexes, do we wish to move toward rawer, rawer, less heavily interpreted inputs. There is also the matter of liberation movements, movements, and personal revolts against authority figures, cultures, and entire ways of life. When youth of every age, wish to extricate themselves from how their parents parents see the world, they inevitably see rawer less heavily interpreted inputs. The problem is it is hard to know how many many layers of interpretation to strip off. off. Too few few layers and much revolting revolting produces little difference; too much revolting and much revolting loses vital values and norms, leading to lifestyle errors or errors of judgement. judgement. There is risk in moving to raw inputs--loss of vital civilizational values. There is risk in moving to heavy interpretation--total loss of eros, energy, vitality and hence repetition of the past.
Errors and Problems Problems from Mis-Use of Either of These Two Two Mind Types Types One particular error common among college students is the idea of some deep inner mind inside our heads that we can reach to slough layers of dross from bad relations, childhoods, and the like. Students try to go into their own heads to get to some pure mentality or way of thinking. This is always destructive and an error. error. Our “selves” our “deepest” selves are not deep inside but a broad coalition, an an ever expanding coalition of all our social and mental facilities. facilities. Our best “purest” self is wonderful indexing of pluriform multiple diverse inputs, from within self and mind and from without, the selves of other beings. By cutting down and off, parts of these inputs, to get to some pure mind part, we strip away what makes us a self and become mentally mentally ill. Students, for example, quickly slough indexing in general general and in principle, because of how those indexes are tainted by parents, the past, cultural norms norms and how they frustrate eros and other vital drives inside the students. However, However, with indexing an enemy, enemy, raw drives remain and tear to shreds selves, mentality, relationships, careers, careers, and all else. A general conflagration of the self and world ensues, that destroys the student and possibly people near to him or her. her. Our self is a pluriform diverse diverse coalition of internal modules of of mind and external minds we relate to. Our self is not some pure smaller entity at the core of our our mind. That is an illusion that chooses un-indexed un-indexed mind as “true” “pure” “realer”. Our true mind mind is both--raw inputs well indexed--not indexed--not one alone. The volume of inputs into us is absolutely huge. Research on autism and idiot savants, savants, a subset of autistic people, suggests that entire movies movies (snapshot sequences really) of all we have sensed remain remain inside us, though unavailable for for direct access. What we recall recall and experience is highly indexed versions versions of all that raw da data. ta. Some people, therefore, take a tourist stance towards all of life. The richness of basic animal sensory apparatus is such that simple being around around and viewing the world is enough for them. Meaning, action, and impact impact are unnecessary. unnecessary. These perpetual tourists contribute little to life, for themselves and others. They somehow get caught caught in the sensory richness of the basic basic machine that is all animal life. Raw inputs fascinate fascinate them, with as little indexing as they can get away away with. Other people go through life oppositely. They become enamoured enamoured of the meaning of things, indexing situations more thoroughly that their brain’s brain’s automatic processes processes do. They turn every encounter into philosophies, point of view, view, heroic stories, of the like. Indexing of experience experience becomes a primary output of their minds, mouths, and lives. Either of these distortions--pure distortions--pure raw inputs or pure indexing--reduces life’s life’s richness by losing balance between these two mind types within us.
Intelligence--As the Degree of and Kinds of Indexing of Our Various Various Minds What is intelligence? intelligence? It is indexing, quite a bit of research says. We know vast amounts--finding the right piece in that, in time, when needed, is hard work. work. Only great indexes allow us to find the right piece in enough time to handle situations well. Our ability to use our knowledge, to know that we know something and to find our way, way, in our minds, back to where and what that that something is, depends entirely on how well our experience, experience, thoughts, goals, lives are indexed. The cortex of our brain is a giant index, allowing us to trace back to an event or idea from any of myriad hints--a scent, a remembered bar of music, a slight touch of a certain fabric type, a word or p hrase, the tone of someone’s someone’s voice--any of these slightnesses can take us back to a long lost very precise feeling, feeling, event, or idea. Our mind’s mind’s index is richer in sensory modalities than the indexes of books and documents in file systems and libraries. We have a Dewey decimal system of scents, of feels, feels, of textures, of lighting, and so forth. More than this--greatly intelligent people--people of high intelligence who are also high performers in one or several domains--tend to use each unique event, experience, and idea in their minds as abstract abstract frameworks for contexting and viewing all other unique events, experiences, and and ideas in their minds. They tend to develop repertoires repertoires of abstract frameworks, frameworks, hundreds and thousands of them, to apply to any situation. Each such abstract framework framework allows them to spot spot aspects of a situation no visible using other frameworks. This means the more frameworks a person has and the more diverse they are from each each other, the larger the world that person lives in, the more they spot and react to in any situation. People who thusly deliberately use all distinct contents of their minds as more general abstract framewo frameworks rks to apply to other distinct mental contents, live in larger world and have larger larger experiences and lives than than others. This point will be made again again in a later section of this book, book, in the Theory Power part. Such repertoires of frameworks frameworks are merely indexing that our mind generates generates to “make sense of” experience. experience. That we can deliberately enhance enhance such repertoires, that is, such indexing, means we can make ourselves ourselves rapidly more intelligent than we were. East Asia, not suffering from European European style (and American copied style) social class class systems, tends to see intelligence as malleable, something effort can enhance in this way, while Europe and America tend to repeat a “talent” myth that people are born with a certain amount of intelligence and nothing later can improve it. Recent research has found that belief in the latter is self fulfilling--Westerners fulfilling--Westerners are less able than East Asians at improving their intelligence because, in part, they believe such improving is impossible.
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Raw Input Mind You train your brain for getting you near to raw inputs by undoing layers of indexing known to be put put there by your mind. This feels hard, even impossible at at first, but it gradually, with practice, practice, produces great results. Edmund Husserl, the philosopher a century ago, coined the term “epoche” for learning to see things minus frameworks frameworks and interpretations put into us by growing up in particular eras, nations, cultures, families, and communities. communities. We could consciously subtract our interpretive schema put there by these environments, and learn learn to see, hear, hear, feel, rawer inputs. Phenomenology is the part part of philosophy this effort gave rise to. It was an effort effort to go back to raw raw phenomena as they input to minds, without tainting them with interpretive schema from societies and personalities. There are types of situations, listed above, that get slightly indexed inputs into you before heavy indexing appears--new situations, surprising situations, foreign contexts and cultures, and so on. You can train your brain towards accepting rawness rawness of input by putting yourself into these situations. I, for example, example, live in a language, nation, and culture foreign to me. I have been here for twelve years. I choose one academic subfield, totally unknown to me, every every year, and buy 50 books in it, reading them all in an intense two month summer summer vacation period. I have been doing this this intense reading campaign campaign every year for over 20 years now. now. Both of these--living in Japan Japan instead of my native US and reading in foreign subfields annually--get me beyond beyond my built up meaning generating index machines. Japan constantly presents to me situations my American frameworks do not apply to. New subfields of knowledge continually present to me ideas and situations my existing knowledge mishandles and distorts. I have to open wider my eyes, slow down and shutter my natural reactions, look more intensely at particulars--to see what I am seeing, hear what I am hearing, think what I am thinking, in these foreign to me contexts. This is another avenue to rawness of inputs--putting yourself in foreign situations your interpretive frames frames and machineries do not fit. Thirdly, there there are arts and artworks designed to take you from common common interpretations to raw input recognition. Also there are arts and artworks for the opposite--taking opposite--taking you from rawness of input into heavier, heavier, more meaningful indexing of inputs. You can develop your raw input mind by seeing, buying, displaying, engaging with, and producing such artworks. Socializing with the artists who produce them has similar effects. effects.
Meditate-Explore-Pioneer Dedicate 1 hour per day or one day per week for one of the following, followed by the second of the below, followed by the third: Do zazen meditation meditation by sitting in any posture that is left-right left-right balanced; count breaths without leading/influencing them; them; watch your mind mind generate worries without getting sucked sucked in Go where you never go, talk to people you never associate with, do activities you have never done, read/hear/see/touch/encounter what you never have before Attempt a goal completely completely unlike any you have pursued before; use use abilities you do not have; have; try things you have no no skill at or preparation preparation for After each hour or day, thusly spent, do the following--draw, sing, or write down exactly what you saw, heard, felt, thought
Get into Someone Else’s Culture (and get something arranged, installed, or done there) Go to another nation, or a part of town populated by a particular ethnic group whose ways you do not know and language you do not speak Spend one day looking around, spend the next visit buying and getting daily necessities, spend the next visit trying to attract people to meet, up the involvement degree with each visit Write/draw/sing Write/draw/sing what you notice after each visit
Become an Alien Observer of Your Normal Environs and World Go through one of your days, entirely, as if an alien from another world, seeing all around you as a strange tribe on another world, whose ways do not add up and make sense to you As you encounter encounter each familiar familiar person and scene, function function and place, ask questions a visiting alien anthropologists would ask: why why do these short haired people people fight verbally verbally so much? much? De-familiarize De-familiarize all that you encounter, encounter, subtracting your familiarity familiarity reactions reactions out, and seeing objectively, objectively, the strangeness strangeness and illogicality illogicality of what and why people people act as they do Write Write down what is unobvious, unexplained, illogical, not justified by results and reasons, in all that you observed each session.
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Stratify Responses After a normal encounter of your day, day, take off off 15 minutes to write down down all your reactions, by modality: modality: noticings, noticings, feelings, segmentings, remindings, remindings, associations, associations, frameworks frameworks applied, interpretations interpretations taken, things made more likely for you by the encounter, things made less likely for you by the encounter. Push for all that you noticed, not some; all that you felt, not some; all the segments segments not some; all you were reminded reminded of not some, all the associations associations that came came to mind not some, all all the frameworks you you applied to all this, this, not some; and so on.
The above exercises are also all art exercises. You can add “the method” exercises from Lee Strausberg Strausberg for actors--getting yourself to physically, physically, with your body, act out the entire panoply of motions of a tiger, monkey, monkey, dog, etc. Art tries to open up your latent inhibition mechanism, allowing you to feel and see more rawly than your culture-built personality-sustained “mind” allows in. Getting to experience by getting beyond your experience--is experience--is what this feels feels like. Your experience turns into filters enforced enforced by your prefrontal cortex, that index experience for you--to experience more rawly, you have to go where those filters fail to work or suppress the operation of those filters on normal contents of your days.
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Indexed Mind You train your indexing mind by examining situations for various kinds of value they can have for you. You will find all sorts of automatic value they have or automatic antivalue they have--repulsing you. It is when you go beyond these automatic automatic reactions of having or not having value that you exercise your indexing mind. mind. Automatic indexing is unconscious routine inside you that blinds you in a way, letting you see only parts of the raw inputs into you. If the indexes thusly automated inside you were from childish, biased, limited origins in your family, nation, culture, and background, then as filters they do more harm than good and need updating perhaps. So when you face situations looking for value beyond w hat automatically is there for you, done by automatic routines from prior parts of your l ife, you build new index entries for the situations. We index situations whenever we identify sources sources of value for us in them. Value and indexing are exactly exactly the same operation. Our brains do not not waste time on calculating parts of situations that are value-less to us. Our brains have so much much raw input they struggle to make make sense of it all and therefore therefore anything that rules out lots and lots of inputs as not needing attention now, is highly valued and done by our brains. Our automatic valuing and dis-valuing reactions save our brains much much work but if the frameworks they are based on are old, dated, biased, or incomplete, they may do us more harm than good--our values, thusly built up, may be harmful to us. Tobacco Tobacco is a prime example--a example--a strong value to some people but at great cost cost to their health. Our values are not always always safe for us. It is when we find new values of a situation that we exercise our indexing capabilities. This takes effort--consciously looking for values in the situation beyond what we easily easily automatically spot. For example, in a highly sexually charged charged situation facing a gorgeous member of the opposite sex that we wish wish to attract, to notice patterns on clothing or architecture in the scene with aesthetic value is a non-automatic reaction for most of us. Sex usually overrides aesthetics when in the same scene, unless we push ourselves to look for other, non-automatic, non-automatic, values there. This should give a good feel to readers of what kind of effort is being talked about here. You can not only look for new values, but you can read widely, turning each reading reading into models and frameworks that allow you to find new values in common situations. By plurifying frameworks we multiply multiply what we can distinguish and notice in all situations; by plurifying situations, via adventures and travel, we multiply traits of situations needing a framework to tell us their meaning, meaning, value, import for us. By plurifying frameworks inside us, and situation types we are exposed to, we can exercise exercise our indexing mind.
Exercising Indexing via Regularly Re-Resume-ing Your Life A very important dimension of value is valuing our self. Modern individualist modernit y isolates people and materializ es values till persons and their lives become mere commodities. Modern broadcast industries stripped performance before peers from all lives, turning billions into sitters and viewers, stripping performance and composition out. Explosive anonymity sometimes results--peo ple irrationally lashing out against their feeling of lacking existence. (Buddhism affirms this sense of lack as a virtue--the power that consciousness gives us to step beyond any particular and realize we, before birth, in life, and after death, are the same). It is easy for selves, and senses of self, to dissolve in modernity’s anonymous consuming masses. In this regard, a powerful form of indexing exists. Whenever we build comprehensive resumes of our lives, what we have aimed for, for, what we have accomplished, troubles met and overcome, we re-orient our selves with respect to a model in our minds of what the world wants and needs. Resume writing is an exercise in orienting us, in all our potentials, to our world, in all its potentials. Resume building indexes us to the world and indexes the world to us--showing in a succinct few pages of listed items, what we are capable of based on what we last did, packaged in the context of what the major emerging trends and needs of the world are. We build a short, summarizing versio n of our experience and we package its bits in a short, summarizi ng version of where the world is headed and interested. By writing up resumes every year or two, generating five or ten versions, some short, some elaborate, some headed for ambitious jobs far beyond us, some headed for realistic jobs easily within our reach, we index our selves and our world, better and better. Even when this indexing reveals weakness es and gaps in us, as well as weaknesses and gaps in the world and how it works, it has value. It points us at points of reality that have high leverage. 1) list all formal education you have had, all part-time jobs you have held, all full time jobs you have held, all deeds you have accomplished, all major challenges or difficulties you have overcome, all people you have helped beyond what you were responsible for, and all people who have helped you going a little or more out of their way 2) list all the major interests of the world around you, list all the major trends in the world where it is headed, list emerging new disciplines of knowledge and professions corresponding to them, list the ten highest paying jobs now in the world, list the ten most wonderful to do jobs from your point of view in the world 3) choose an organizing framework for your answers to 1 above--organize by formal position (of education, job, etc.), or organize by deed (headings of your accomplishments with subheadings of institutions where the accomplishment’s instances took place), or organize by interest/topic 4) choose an organizing framework for your answers to 2 above--organize by ambitiousness (put ones easy first, ones hard last or vice versa), organize by fit to you (put like the bests first, and like the leasts last), organize by capability (put match your talents first and not match your talents last) 5) organize all items in 1 above using your chosen framework; organize all items in 2 above using your chosen framework 6) restate your organized version of the items in 1 above, using key ideas and trends in your organized version of 2 above 7) make a one page resume, that is very succinct where all the meaning and reader impact comes from titles you give to jobs, deeds done in jobs, aims or reasons you took or left jobs, of all the contents in 6 above 8) make a three page resume, that is moderately succinct where all the meaning comes both from titles and from short 2 or 3 sentence prose explanations under each title 9) make a ten page resume, that is expansive, elaborating all your experiences and relating them to all the items in 5 above’s organized version of the items under 2 above 10) take your ten page resume and reduce it to a 3 page version, seeing how well it matches the 3 page version you already produced 11) take the 3 page version you just produced in step 10 and reduce it further to make a one page version, comparing it with the 1 page version you already made above in step 7 12) what has your last year of life made you capable of that you were not capable of before, what has the last year of your life made you interested in that you were not interested in before, what has your last year of life made you drop or lose interest in that you used to like, what has your last year of life made you avoid that you never avoided in the past 13) use your answers to 12 to correct your 3 resumes built in steps 9, 10, and 11. 14) put a vivid image of 4 or 5 words maximum in front of every item and every sentence in your three resumes, see the following examples: a) In this job I was hired as an ordinary programmer but invented and held a large workshop event of 400 people that caught the attention of my company’s CEO--add to this sentence the following image: from peon to pope’s protege b) Burroughs Corporation, 1971 to 72, South Chicago District, Banking, Sales, beginning salesman--add to this title the following image: Sold to Chicago Banks $1.3million of Computers The idea is this--people scan resumes before reading them, so if every distinct point/line starts with an image, in brief words, rather than with a title or sentence, the scan will pick up key points fast and easily, causing detailed further reading; if each title and sentence starts without an image, the scan will miss most points and therefore the reader may not read any details of the resume.
Exercising Indexing via Turning Readings into Models and Practicing Model Based Acting One reason people read little that is meaty or hard is their reading does not produce any useful product. Schools trained us to read in order to get ideas inside our heads, but memorizing is hard work and we do not use most of the ideas thusly put into our heads. When each reading produces a useful product, say a model of how to change the world somewhere, and when each such model is actually used by us in situations to get things done, then reading reading becomes fun and worthwhile. The key is turning reading into products and turning products into changed actions and potentials for action. Every reading can give you the means to new value and meaning in yourself and world. That is because every concept directs our attention to aspects of experience we otherwise could not see or react to. Until we get certain concepts we cannot even see such parts of the world. Concepts expand expand the world to us. 1) once a month pick a serious research level graduate book (though avoid textbooks specially simplifie d for students) 2) mark all the main points in each paragraph of each chapter, throughout the entire book 3) type all the main points, in order, in a list--in any serious book you should have at least 200 main points or more from a 400 page book 4) group main sets of adjacent main points that seem to concern the same topic--you should get at least 40 groups out of 200 points listed 5) name those groups of points representationally--that is factor out common themes shared by the points in the group to be named and make what is factored out the name 6) name those groups relationally--that is compare each group to the preceeding and following ones and give it a name that shows that is unique in what it presents 7) reconcile your representational name with your relational name so one new name combines the best of both 8) repeat 4 through 7 above by making groups of those named groups and naming those “ groups of groups” 9) repeat 8 as many times as needed till your get one overall name for the entire book’s contents (nowhere in the above steps should you use names of sections or chapters or the book provided by the book’s writer and publisher--ignore their names and come up with better ones of your own) 10) rewrite lower level names in your hierarchy of names to make each level of names make sense with respect to the names underneath it 11) for each lowest level name in your hierarchy of names just built, identify what tells you about how the world is changing, how you can change, and what you might do to become better or more effective in life or work 12) apply each lowest level name to some situation you are facing or want to soon face--show what part of the case each named theme from the hierarchy of names points to 13) show how relations among named sections imply relations among parts of the case you are applying them to 14) what does the model of names of points from the reading tell you about acting or thinking effectively in your case area
Brain Training for Developing Your Your Cooperative Use of Both These Mind Types When we open ourselves to raw inputs, unindexed by our minds and backgrounds, the first thing we do next, is recognize new insights and feelings, new experiences and ideas gotten by exposing ourselves to such raw inputs. We then index these new contents. There is always this rhythm--opening beyond beyond current indexes, realization of new expeexperience, then finding meaning meaning and implication in that new experience experience by indexing it back to our existing mental models models and ideas. Open-experience-capture Open-experience-capture via indexing--this is the unit that gets repeated again and again by artists, scientists, and other creators.
Info Touring--visit, Touring--visit, experience, debrief, model build, test-visit There is a way of touring, exposing yourself to the foreign and the new, where you turn the rawness exposed by that into models, then visit the following day (or afternoon) to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis generated from interpreting (finding meaning in) the rawness of your first visit (encounter). Info touring turns raw experience into models
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Chapter 3: The Male Mind versus the Female Mind Individual humans are incomplete incomplete and dangerous. The optimal mental functioning of humanity humanity is only obtained from a male-female male-female pair doing the thinking. As long as you insist on an individual human doing the thinking you force suboptimal suboptimal thought and even dangerously flawed thought onto humanity. There are no intelligent individuals only intelligent male-female pairs. Einstein was intelligent because of his brilliant first female partner--that partner--that period gave birth to his fundamental insight, the one he spent decades elaborating and clarifying. This argument--that the unit of optimal thought is t he male-female pair--is the conclusion supported by the preponderance of modern fMRI and other research in brain functioning. That evidence is becoming overwhelming that individual men and women women are fatally flawed as thinkers--they are flawed, however, however, in ways perfectly balanced by each other, with men having flaws that women have a compensating talent for, and women having flaws that men have a compensating talent for. In other words, the optimal thinking brain is a unit of two. If you want to get brilliant, pair up with someone smart smart of the opposite sex and your thinking together will far surpass either of you thinking alone--this is the main conclusion supported by recently accumulated brain science published academic research. The implications of this are enormous. enormous. First, we have to replace all political presidents and prime ministers with pairs--male-female pairs--male-female pairs. Second, we have to replace all CEOs of corporations with male-female male-female pairs. Third, we have to replace all ordinary ordinary leaders, professionals, and professors professors with male-female pairs. It is the intelligence of such pairs that maximizes our chances for brilliance, solution, creativity, and success. success. Trying to make individual males smarter and/or individual females smarter can be done and can succeed somewhat but it is limited by cell and gene level limits in pre-birth males and pre-birth females, that cannot be fully undone or compensated for by environment conditions. What is new about this is we are used to thinking of men and women as as a paired unit for reproductive family purposes, mainly mainly to do with child raising. We are are not used to thinking of pairs of a man with a woman as the basic unit of leadership and of optimal thinking. If neither men nor women can think optimally alone then all of civilization by putting men in charge or putting women in charge has been subjecting human history to suboptimal thought to eons. That is a somewhat exaggerated statement because because powerful men tend to have harems of lovers, and in bed with them, between acrobatic or plebian sex acts, they plumb the reactions of the other sex to things on their mind. Similarly, women of power tend to flirt and otherwise charm their way into conversations with men around them, even making some onto lovers, to pick their brains about things on their minds. History has distorted this by reporting on some one great man, omitting the woman or women who completed completed his thinking ability matrix, or reporting on some one great woman, omitting the men who completed her her thinking ability matrix. Biographies and autobiographies of great creators, creators, for one example, have revealed again and again highly exploitive relationships between between men and women with one getting all the glory while the the other did the core intuitive or other mental mental work. Creators are rather nasty people who exploit others then cut them off for self glorification and limelight hogging. The table below summarizes male female differences differences in this new context of the optimal mind being a male-female pair of minds.
All of History Mistaken: the Optimal Unit of Thought is Heterosexual Pairs, not Lone Individuals Individuals Whether Male or Female
Male Behavioral Trait discrete focal capabilities
Heterosexual Pair Brain Basis
hemispheres more different
discrete capability not connected- more grey less white ness
Balanced Capability
Female Behavioral Trait
Brain Basis
1. general survey plus deep focus
general all-brain mobilization
2. well connected deep capabilities
connectedness not discrete capabil- more white less grey ities
hemispheres more the same
extreme bias to unity/coherence in high associative cortext larger on 3. tolerant tolerant of ambigui ambiguity ty while capabl capablee of forcing forcing decisive decisive action action higher thought left side of brain
more toleranc tolerancee for ambiguous ambiguous realreal- high associative cortext larger on ities in higher thought right side of brain
disc discre rete te foca focall capa capabi bili liti ties es
proc proces esss tas tasks ks usin using g les lesss of of bra brain in 4. general survey plus deep focus and one side only
general all-brain mobilization
process ta tasks us using mo more of of br brain and both sides
reasonless emotions
emotion p ro rocessing stays in 5. can reason about emotions or ignore them amygdala from 6 to 17 years = cannot give reasons for emotions
know reasons for emotions
emotion processing moves up from amygdala to cortext from 6 th 17 = can give reasons for emotions
more more disc discre rete te capa capabi bili liti ties es
bigg bigger er size size bigg bigger er numb number er of neuneu- 6. well connected deep capabilities rons
more in interaction am among ca capabili- more dendrite connections and ties glial infrastructure
sens sense/ e/re reme memb mber er dang danger erss wel welll
laye layerr of deep deep limb limbic ic syst system em alar alarm m 7. reca recall llss dang danger erss and and all all othe otherr extr extrem emee emot emotion ionss well well alert memory
sense/ sense/re reme memb mber er all all emot emotio ions ns well well
laye layerr of deep deep lim limbi bicc syste system m emoemotion memory
orients in space well
slopes and spatial rotations better
orients in language well
word list and text paragraph recall better
fast processing processing of spatial spatial problems problems
inferior inferior parietal parietal lobule lobule bigger bigger = 9. fast fast proc proces essi sing ng of spac spacee and and soci social al rela relati tion onss (la (lang ngua uage ge)) math and Einstein
fast fast proc proces essi sing ng of lang langua uage ge
Broc Brocaa and and Wer Werni nick ckee area areass larg larger er = better language and orgasmic joy from language use
8. orients well in space and social relationships
abstract unity favored over ambig- language processing on left side of 1 0. 0. c an an op op er era te te ab ab st str ac act ly ly or or c on on cr cr et ete ly ly as as ne ne ed ed ed ed uous realities brain
a bs bs tr tr ac act un uni ty ty an and am am bi bi gu gu ou ou s re al ali - language processing on both sides ties balanced of brain (orientals = both sides cuz kanji)
masters dangers
11. masterful in dangerour and in peaceful situations
masters peace
12. sees situations abstractly and concetely
talent for concrete emotive repre- empathy systems sentations
stress increases learning
talent for abstract spatial represen- system systems tations
stress reduces learning
driv drivee for for mati mating ng beha behavi vior orss
preo preopt ptic ic hypo hypoth thal alam amus us lar larger ger = 13. drive to mate and to nurture mating behavior strong
drive for rhythm of mating alter- suprachiasmatic nucleus of hyponating with nurture behaviors thalamus larger = circadian rhythm and reproduction system strong; spherical in men, oval in females
can endure war
less pain sense = needs less mor- 14. sensitive to pain and able to ignore it phine
cannot endure war
more pain sense = needs twice as much morphine
quick focus
rapidly focus on salient item
precise comprehensive survey
rapidly see fine details
orient orientati ation on withou withoutt famili familiari arity ty
naviga navigate te using using abstra abstract ct coord coordina inate te 16. 16. can can ori orien entt in in ent entir irel ely y unk unkno nown wn and and in in fam famili iliar ar surr surrou ound ndss spaces
orie orient ntat ation ion with with fami famili liar arit ity y
navi navita tage ge usin using g con concr cret etee lan landm dmar arks ks
15. precise comprehensive views and fast focussed views
Male Female Discourse Differences (behaviors only) Input/Output
Emotion
Input/Output
talk for status
17. achieves both separation from and unity with others well
talk for exclusion
18. achieves both separation from and unity with others well
talk for inclusion
tell
19. transmits and receives info well
listen
drive for individual distinction
20. a chieves difference and similarity well
feeling as embarras in ing
21. can shun or dwell on feellings
mis-hearing as status threat
22. s ense relation or status threats well
talk for connection
drive to fit in
Emotion
feeling as interesting mis-hearing as relation threat
harshness as sign of respect
23. likes harshness and dislikes harshness
harshness as sings of rejection
backward reasoning
24. ca c an envision and can incrementally improve
forward reasoning
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All of History Mistaken: the Optimal Unit of Thought is Heterosexual Pairs, not Lone Individuals Individuals Whether Male or Female Purpose
Conflict
Purpose
i nf nf o ( mi min d t o m in in d t al al k) k)
2 5. 5. c an an en en ga gag e w ho hol e p er ers on on s o r i de dea s a lo lo ne ne
talk to solve
26. ca can fix morale and situations/problems
talk for empathy
exactitude
27. can be precise and detailed both
detail
persevere to save truth
28. can preserve truth and social relations both
independent
29. can lead and follow well
contest
30. can challenge and support well
relation (person to person talk)
persevere to save face
Conflict
dependent community
argumentative
31. can insist and be deferential as needed
apologetic
contradiction not tolerated
32. can clear up confusions and tolerate them if needed
contradiction tolerated
Do We We All Have Male and Female Brains? Of course not and of course yes, is the answer. answer. Biologically and genetically we do and we do not. Males are born with different brains, at at the cellular and higher levels than females. That is no longer in dispute, scientifically. scientifically. The evidence is overwhelming. overwhelming. Female babies, accidentally given doses doses of male hormones, hormones, at certain times, times, while inside their mothers, end up playing with cars and guns not dolls, for one stark example, even when strenuous environment forces try to get them to prefer dolls. On the other hand evidence is overwhelming that brains are very plastic even into old ol d age. Since nearly all brain research is based on statistical averages we do not know how male-like any female can make her brain, after decades of effort to master both ways of thought, and similarly, we do not know how female-like any male can make his brain, after decades of effort to master both ways of thought. We do know that 4 hours of training suffices to make Japanese brains more Western Western in judgement and thought style, in spite of decades of being immersed in Japanese culture (and vice versa, makes Westerners think Japanese-ly). We do know that males over 50 years of age test out biologically as more feminine and in brain and thought patterns test out as thinking more femininely. femininely. We also know that nearly all improvements in modern male-dominated male-dominated businesses make work processes more feminine, feminine, almost never more masculine. Re-engineering made business processes processes in the 1990s systematically more feminine in a male, technology-tools-toys-for-boys like way. way. The yin-yang image of ancient China captured this reality--a dot of maleness insi de females and vice versa. So we can make our brains more capable of the thought talents of the opposite sex, but research has not shown us yet how much effort this takes and how much progress is possible. We can also pair up--that is run all all our important thoughts by a partner of the opposite sex. If we are a lone president president or CEO, pick up a secretary or lover--male lover--male if we are female, female female if we are male. male. The key is this--the unit of effective thought is not single persons, persons, but male-female pairs. pairs. All presidents, CEOs, and leaders leaders of all sorts need to be these pairs, not lo ne individuals.
Exercising Your Your Male Brain There are a number of ways to exercise your male brain. Some of them are cultural--embedding yourself in male groups, acting more more male than they act, embedding yourself in female groups, saving them with male type contributions, embedding yourself in other or mixed groups and switching from male remark types to female ones, as needed.
Using Your Male Brain There are a number of ways to do this, several mentioned below. All are powerful. 1) put yourself in all male groups and fit in with their way of talk, acting, and thinking 2) put yourself in all male groups and make only feminine contributions of thought, talk, and action 3) put yourself in all female groups and fit in with their way of talk, acting and thinking 4) put yourself in all female groups and make only male contributions of thought, talk, and action 5) put yourself in mixed groups and correct all male statements by editing them with feminine ways and contents 6) put yourself in mixed groups and correct all female statements by editing them with male ways and contents Why is making feminine comments in male only groups, exercis ing your male mind? It is a two part thought procedure--what is natural and what is different than that, and how is that different thing different. As a minority in a group that differs from you, you do not fit in but do not see how your are not fitting in unless you consciously think about it and seriously observe others and yourself and their reactions to your actions. When you make feminine contributions in a male group you are seeing the male natural response and stopping it--that seeing is practicing your male mind.
Super Masculinizing Your Mind Super mental masculinity is revolutionizing groups and tasks using male mind talents and propensities. It is risky because it super-izes liabilities, omiss ions, and flaws of male ways of thinking. It is great mind training, however, because it pushes male into being much more male in thought style as well as pushing females into mastering powerful male propensities. 1) while in any group, build a model of what topic every remark by every one was about and what they said in their remark about its topic 2) group similar adjacent topics and name the topic shared by them 3) make remarks every 20 to 30 remarks by others, that summarize all that has been said, who said it, and what remains to be contributed, inviting talented others (mention their particular talents relevant here) to supply what is needed This is a super-male form of participation--it builds abstract models of what is talked about and what is said about it, and then synthesizes this into a model of what is yet needed, inviting others to supply it. These remarks tend to redirect entire meetings, making the remarker a kind of shadow leader, leader, even when a formal leader up front is present. 1) while in any group listen carefully and write down the best five ideas by others 2) imagine immensely more aggressive versions of what is proposed in those best five ideas by others 3) introduce each super aggressive version in the form of a question or question series, asking others, “what if we” or “would it be worth considering” 4) when people object that the proposal is way too something, wait or nudge others till someone suggests a compromise half as aggressive as your initial proposal 5) argue for your aggressive proposal, in order for the group to prefer the half-aggressive proposal 6) when the group adopts the half-aggressive proposal you have won You can watch feminine behaviors develop in meetings and counter each one. 1) while in any group listen carefully and when you hear feminine response or contribution counter it with a more masculine response or contribution 2) do not insist on your respone just make it and let things flow on 3) as the meeting wraps up, insist on more masculine versions of and wordings of all meeting contents and agreements You can watch meetings and counter masculine contributions with feminine counter ones, hoping to tweak males into countering your counters. 1) while in any group listen carefully and when you hear masculine responses or contributions counter them with feminine ones 2) if others counter you, insist on your feminine response, hoping thereby to tweak them into being more male in response.
Exercising Your Your Female Brain Using Your Male Brain There are a number of ways to do this, several mentioned below. All are powerful. 1) put yourself in all male groups and fit in with their way of talk, acting, and thinking 2) put yourself in all male groups and make only feminine contributions of thought, talk, and action 3) put yourself in all female groups and fit in with their way of talk, acting and thinking 4) put yourself in all female groups and make only male contributions of thought, talk, and action 5) put yourself in mixed groups and correct all male statements by editing them with feminine ways and contents 6) put yourself in mixed groups and correct all female statements by editing them with male ways and contents Why is making feminine comments in male only groups, exercis ing your male mind? It is a two part thought procedure--what is natural and what is different than that, and how is that different thing different. As a minority in a group that differs from you, you do not fit in but do not see how your are not fitting in unless you consciously think about it and seriously observe others and yourself and their reactions to your actions. When you make feminine contributions in a male group you are seeing the male natural response and stopping it--that seeing is practicing your male mind. Why is making male comments in female groups, exercising your female mind? The argument is the same as given immediately above--seeing what is feminine about others’ contributions and imagining male alternatives, forces precise articulating by yourself to yourself about what is male about something and what is female about something. That seeing is practicing your female mind powers.
Super Feminizing Your Mind Super mental femininity is revolutionizing groups and tasks using female mind talents and propensities. It is risky because it super-izes liabilities, omissi ons, and flaws of female ways of thinking. It is great mind training, however, because it pushes females into being much more female in thought style as well as pushing males into mastering powerful female propensities. 1) while in any group, build a model of what topic every remark by every one was about and they and other felt about that topic 2) group similar adjacent topics and name the topic shared by them 3) make remarks every 20 to 30 remarks by others, that summarize all that has been felt, who felt it, and what remains to be contributed, inviting emotionally sensitive others (mention their particular sensitivities relevant here) to supply what is needed
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design This is a super-female form of participation--it builds concrete models of what is talked about and what is felt about it, and then synthesizes this into a model of what is yet needed, inviting others to supply it. These remarks tend to redirect entire meetings, making the remarker a kind of shadow leader, leader, even when a formal leader up front is present. 1) while in any group listen carefully and write down the best five ideas by others 2) imagine immensely more sensitive and inclusive versions of what is proposed in those best five ideas by others 3) introduce each super sensitive inclusive version in the form of a question or question series, asking others, “what if we” or “would it be worth considering” 4) when people object that the proposal is way too something, wait or nudge others till someone suggests a compromise half as sensitive and inclusive as your initial proposal 5) argue for your sensitive inclusive proposal, in order for the group to prefer the half-sensitive proposal 6) when the group adopts the half-sensitive proposal you have won You can watch male behaviors develop in meetings and counter each one. 1) while in any group listen carefully and when you hear a male response or contribution counter it with a more feminine response or contribution 2) do not insist on your respone just make it and let things flow on 3) as the meeting wraps up, insist on more feminine versions of and wordings of all meeting contents and agreements You can watch meetings and counter feminine contributions with male counter ones, hoping to tweak females into countering your counters. 1) while in any group listen carefully and when you hear feminine responses or contributions counter them with male ones 2) if others counter you, insist on your male response, hoping thereby to tweak them into being more female in response.
Exercising Your Your Optimal Hetersexual Pair Brain Learning to Become a Pair To think optimally you need every major thought of yours done in dialog with a partner of the opposite sex. This is more than a marriage for marriage partners live separate job lives and careers for the most part. This is a full all-life partner who shares all your thoughts. Lovers are great though the time you can spend with them is hard to arrange. However, lovers chosen for their bodies are not great because they are incapable of grasping what you do professionally and in the most sophisticate d parts of your thinking. 1) List the ten major kinds of thinking you do nearly every week 2) For each of those ten, find a person of the opposite sex you can talk things over with, when and where you do such thinking (by cell phone if necessary) 3) Arrange gifts, charm, reciprocal services or whatever is needed to get these people willing to frequently be consulted by you during each week 4) Once per week, meet these partners of the opposite sex to summarize all your thinking episodes during the week, getting their take on the flaws or adequacies of what you thought. 5) Write down how your thought before consulting them and after consulting them ended up different.
Splitting Your Self and Thought Become the other sex, that is the first part, then split your thinking as the second phase. Become the other sex 1) read up on how the other sex thinks and how their brains differ from yours--there are hundreds of books on this now 2) join one or two groups entirely of the other sex, where you are a minority of one (if possible) 3) split your contributions to those two groups into one week of making only feminine contributions and the next week of making only masculine contributions 4) spot others there making feminine remarks and respond to them one week masculinely and the next week female-ly 5) spot others there making masculine remarks and respond to them one week femininely and the next week male-ly Split your thinking 6) after weeks or months of doing the above practice, go back to your ordinary groups with a difference outlined in the steps below 7) split all contributions and remarks you make by weeks, at first, doing only male contributions one week and only female the next 8) split all contributions and remarks you made instantly, so you make a male version of the contribution and instantly follow that with a female editing of that contribution
Chapter 4: The Engaged Mind versus the Detached Mind Assessing Your Engaged Mind 1) What is the primary thing you are doing today? 2) How are you doing that primary thing? 3) What is the ultimate purpose or aim of doing that primary thing today? 4) What is the ultimate way of implementing or doing fully that aim or purpose? 5) What makes fitting that full implementing or doing of your ultimate aim or purpose into today difficult or inconvenient? 6) How could you modify your day today so as to fully implement your ultimate aim or purpose today? 1) What is the ultimate value your life will have for the world after you die? 2) What is the ultimate value your life has now to those in contact with you? 3) Redesign your day today so as to fully implement both of those values from 1) and 2) above today. 1) How many jobs (work for money), lifework projects (things done/created for love), hobbies (done for fun or relaxation), profession acitivities are you doing this week? 2) What exactly is each such planned activity aiming to create, impact, or effect? 3) What capabilities and traits of you does each such activity generally use and require? 4) How would each activity change were you to do it with all your capabilities and traits instead of usual subsets of them?
Assessing Your Detached Mind 1) What are you expecting and planning to do today? 2) What, of that, must you do today? 3) What situations or person are demanding responses from you today? 4) Which of those responses are necessary to make today? 5) If you were to ignore all duties and habits, social relations and obligations, on you today, and do only something else, not demanded of your by others: a) what would you end up doing? b) what trouble would ensue because you ignored all duties and obligations on you today? c) could all get along without you and your responses today, if nudged a little or given a little warning or context? d) is it not true that you can do nothing at all that you planned or that was expected of you by others today and still live well tomorrow? 1) for an entire day do the following steps 2) every conversation, delay your natural response for 2 seconds, and substitute a better style or attitude of response than your natural habitual one 1) identify all the groups and persons you will meet or interact with today 2) for each of them, what behavior or attitude have they come to expect from you and therefore will demand from you today 3) simply do not in any way provide any of those expected attitudes or behaviors today, for anyone you meet 4) how does this change your day?
There are two separate separate happiness systems in the brain--a brain--a striving system and an arrived arrived system. The striving system is striving that makes us happy so that getting what we strive for gives us only a momentary momentary pause, then we want more than what we just obtained. If you stay entirely within the striving system you get half half of human happiness, the striving half, but you miss entirely the arrival happiness type. The arrived system is “smelling the flowers along the way”. It is series of distinct things that each make us happy--freedom from overt control, health, freedom from environmental noise, sex, general physical and emotional security, and some others, still being researched. If you dwell on any, all, or each of these, you become happy. happy. The striving system overlaps our engaged mind; the arrived system overlaps our detached mind. Therefore these four are often confused: engaged mind, striving mind, detached mind, arrived mind. Our engaged mind is full mobilization of attention and and effort in some direction. We go go outside ourselves into the world actively and eagerly. eagerly. Our detached mind is full observation from emotional emotional and conceptually remote remote vantage points of all of us and all around us. We go outside ourselves and outside our world. Moving to engaged mind involves grasping, reaching reaching out, holding. Moving to detached mind mind is letting go, relinquishing, relinquishing, no longer caring. The archetype of our engaged mind is critical points in an intense sport game or in the solving of a complex complex problem--where more more attention than normal attention is needed. needed. The archetype of our detached detached mind is powerful focus achieved by being immune to crises crises and needs, voices and problems, all around one, clamouring for attention. attention. The archetype is the Buddhist monk sitting cross-legged cross-legged with a slight smile on his lips as chaos reigns all around him. In reality detachment is as much a mobilization mobilization of us and forces in us as engagement is. It is mobilization of “no” capabilities--the ability to not do, to not hear, hear, to not respond, to not meddle. It takes extraordinary attention attention to not attend to what it is normal to attend attend to. Engagement is mobilization of us and forces in us too, but in ways that are obviCopyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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ous to us all so generally recognized. recognized. Our normal state of attention is partial engagement engagement and partial detachment. We can change into full full engagement, full detachment, detachment, and into a blend of full engagement with full detachment. Supreme performances, performances, of all sorts, are the latter--blends of full engagement engagement with full detachment. We move from normal consciousness to full engagement or full detachment because of dysfunctions in us that we notice. If the situation seems much more critical than we are treating it as, we find situational aspects getting out of hand because of our normal and moderate moderate responses. We intensify intensify attention and mobilize reserve forces to spot and handle more going on in the situation. Similarly, Similarly, if the situation itself seems to be being drowned out by happenstance effects of our own actions, so we are more of an actor in the situation than is waranted, then we withdraw, reduce exposure, intervene less, shut down natural responses and initiatives, letting more of the situation itself and of its forces take place, take over, and show themselves. Sexual contact with a new lover is a good place to see these dynamics going on. We find ourselves touching them faster and in more intense places places than they are ready for, in some moments, and withdraw, while, at other times, we find ourselves being timid and conventional in ways letting the i ntensity of fun of the moment drain away, causing us to intensify engagement and risk, moving hands to more intimate places to do more bold things to our lover’s body. Overshooting and undershooting is common in love play. Similarly, Similarly, in financial markets, traders traders find themselves overshooting and undershooting undershooting all the time. see sawing from from too much reacting to too little reacting. reacting. These are all cases of the interplay of our engaged mind with our detached mind. This interplay takes place on multiple size scales. We find ourselves overshooting and undershooting each moment, during intense activities like love making and risk trading, each week in less intense activities like designing and organizing, organizing, each year in still less intense activities like career planning and study for degrees, degrees, and so on. Any one moment is a layering of overshooting relative to one goal and undershooting relative to another goal, and overshooting relative to still other goals, and undershooting relative to still other goals.
What is Your Engaged Mind? We have all had moments when we felt really sharp, intensely us, complete complete there, present in the situation, without a trace of slack or inattention. Strangely some of these moments come while being deliberately deliberately distracted. Music composers, for example, have felt this intense presence to situations while smelling rotten apples they put put in their desks. The smell of rotten apples helped them concentrate in some strange way way by distracting them. them. Caffeine cuts cuts blood flow to the brian by 10% or more in most most people-apparently making people feel sharper sharper and more attentive in doing so. In some way, way, the normal presence of our full brain, with with all its diverse modules, produces less than full engagement. Our engaged mind is our mind with some modules shut down or many modules tuned down in some way (by caffeine’s reduc reduction tion of blood flow, or the distraction of smelling rotten apples). I myself write books and feel sharpest and think most clearly, when, as background noise, I have TV programs programs going on behind me that I hear but do not see. see. I “watch” TV hours per day, day, without seeing any any of it. Somehow having it on behind me me helps me focus. This is our engaged engaged mind. Sports psychology has investigated players players who freeze up, in clutch clutch situations, who “choke”. They find rational planning interferring interferring with intuitive automatic motions and play plans in the body. body. The conscious deliberation of the the mind is not fast and fluid enough for for game situations. When we try to think our way around play situations we get out of timing and lose. Optimal attention and eengagement ngagement in sports play play requires some modules modules of our brain to be shut down or moderated. This is similar to the point above-our engaged mind is not full mobilization of all the modules of our mind, but rather the opposite of that, t he reduction or toning down of many modules of o ur mind.
What is Your Detached Mind If you have ever been on a truly great, for you, vacation, and come across a note in your pocket from work, or gotten an email message from someone at work, you viewed all that world that you left, from a distant, emotionally emotionally amused vantage point. All its importance was gone; all its power was gone. gone. You smiled at the note because it had no power over you. Your vacation had established values that overwhelmed it--that it was supposedly “for”. “for”. You delayed response or decided to never respond to it at all, quite happily. It had no power over you. That was your detached detached mind working. When we go home to parents, years after graduating college, or visit best friends from high school days in our old hometown, we feel like anthropologists visiting primitive tribes. Our old parents and friends and hometown places seem quaint, limited, out of another time and another world, totally removed from our current worries and contexts. This too is our detached mind at work. Our detached mind views things as irrelevant, not threatening, unempowered, unempowered, incapable of getting onto our worry or priority list. We can dispassionately play around with things because they are not heavy, heavy, they do not matter matter much to us. We can be lighthearted. Near death experiences experiences do this to all of normal living to people--making people--making their relationship to wives and kids, jobs and colleagues colleagues lighthearted, detached, detached, appreciative (this could all all be gone in any instant). Instead of worrying about building us and and our future we let go and enjoy and appreciate appreciate the variety and persons in our situations. Near death experiences show us the limits limits of our striving happiness systems. Near death experiences make us wary of certain types of engagement. Studies of people in highly detached detached states of mind, of course, show show nearly complete shut down of their striving happiness system. They give up “being better” than other other people. They enter “being “being better” than their usual states of mind, instead. Instead of being better than other people they are are better than than prior states of consciousness. They, in effect, are switching from the stiving system of happiness to the arrived state of happiness. What they are detached from includes being detached from their own striving happiness system.
Practicing Engagement, Practicing Detachment, Alternating and Balancing Them Both Religious orders, for centuries, developed developed doing what you do, and developed the powers of not doing. Doing what you do, intensifying engagement with it, involves realizing what you are doing and fully getting that aim aim done. It differs from normal engagement engagement as fitting an activity into all the other stuff stuff in our lives. Religious ways of living, as as a whole, tend to be structuring your priorities, time, and life to engage the must fundamental emotions and needs of the world. You do what your life is, by, apparently, apparently, by structuring living, each day, around the most fundamental aims and emotions of life, rather than around happenstance obligations and habits from when and where you grew up and what was customary among your friends. friends. Doing what you do, is similar to living fully who you are--you recognize what an activity activity is all about and optimize realization of that aim rather than optimizing convenience and fitting the activity into your flow of habitual ways of living each day. Similarly, Similarly, religions for eons, have perfected detachment--the powers of not doing. I am not talking about not giving into temptation here (temptation has nothing to do with religion at all, it is a mere matter of keeping promises you make to yourself, basic childish self control). The powers of not doing are immense because so much of who we are and what we do fits us in to crowds, friends, friends, firms, national cultures, cultures, other cultures, gender traditions, traditions, and the like. That makes most of what what we do outside in, our ideas and contents and responses come from the environments around around us, not us. We merely reflect reflect back stuff put into us by when and where we grew up. Religions for eons have warred against us being mere reflectors reflectors of what environments around us put into us while we grew up. The powers of not doing start with stopping reactions natural to us and automatically operating within us. The world’s first forms forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, therapy, were religious practices, probably probably in ancient China or India, of learning learning to not do our natural beliefs and reactions, learning to edit ourselves. This is as simple as delaying reacting to anything by seconds, and delaying reacting to situations by a day or two. I have a boss at EDS who responded to all emails and letters a day later, later, always giving himself 24 hours for losing his immediate emotional emotional response. This completely transformed how he reacted. A threatening letter against him by a vice president to another vice president, that he got a copy of, made him instantly angry the day he received it, but a day later, during the night, he realized the anger of that vice president against him was an asset not a liability. It was an indirect clumsy invitation to talk--so he called the guy to “hear what exactly I had done done that irritated him”. The result of that lunch meeting was they became friends and allies. A threat was transformed transformed into opportunity by delaying reaction by one day. day. The powers of not doing include that. They also include the jujitsu principle of using the force of an aggressor aggressor against himself rather than defeating him with your own force. Religious ways of life ended up combining periods of intense engagement with intense detachment. detachment. We can see monks sweeping streets, caring caring for the poor and forgotten, building buildings that last centuries--each of these are combinations of intense engagement engagement with intense detachment. Sweeping streets is humiliation--detachment humiliation--detachment from striving for rank and status--and it is intense--paying attention attention to mundane parts of life usually never thought about. Building buildings that last centuries is detachment--ignoring detachment--ignoring the cries and priorities of one’s own age and times--and engagement--working for goals hundreds of years till completion, doing something that eons will recognize and respect.
Is Engagement the Same as Detachment, Detachm ent, Are the Two Two Minds the Same? When we engage in something, something, is it a kind of focus? That is, do we engage by shutting down engagement in many things in order order to focus engagement engagement on a few? Or, do we engage by mobilizing more resources, resources, in total, with or without shutting down attention to non-focal aims and situations? If engagement is concentrating concentrating on a few things, necessarily using a few brain brain modules, then engagement engagement is the same as detachment. detachment. We engage in X by detaching detaching from Y and Z. The apparent, that is, experiential difference difference between them, then, is point of view. view. When we “engage” we identify ourselves with what our focal focal concern is, dropping attention to all else. When we detach, we identify ourselves with whatever is non-focal, concentrating on everything except our focal concern. concern. We can see this concretely in meditative practices like zazen--people often count count breaths or repeat a simple simple “mantra” phrase, in their minds. This is equivalent to smelling rotten apples in order to compose compose music. In other words, to the extent that engageengagement is focus, it is the same as detachment, but what one’s attention is directed at differs--in engagement one focusses on one’s aim or focal concern, in detachment one focusses on everything but that aim or focal concern. If, however, engagement engagement is mobilization in ways beyond mere focus, then engagement and detachment may not be the same. In high performances, of artistic, sports, business, scientific or other sorts, there is the danger danger of choking--ruining flexibility and intuitive fast response via labored labored conscious reasoning. “Flow” as Csikszentmihalyi, the creativity researcher termed termed it, gets interrupted and diverted. Something in such high performances performances requires attending to all, even to all possible next states or moves, rather rather than concentrating on any one. It is looking at focal matters and peripheral matters matters equally intensely. intensely. This is engagement engagement as something beyond focus.
The Brain Basis of Engagement and Detachment Minds Engagement is not a particular brain module. It is not particular modifications modifications genetically implanted in many brain modules, as the feminine mind or masculine mind mind is. It is a way of using your various brain brain modules--how you use your brain brain with all its modules of capabilities. Detachment is the same, same, a way of using the population population of brain capabilities in you. Therefore, there are as many types of engagement and detachment as there are unique configurations and combinations of brain modules--millions of them in all. Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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Perceptual Engagement. This is the kind of attentiveness we get when we suddenly hear a noise in the night and wake up in bed to listen intently for whatever is going on. We mobilize sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, not favoring any stimulus type, type, keeping our perceptual perceptual machine open open to whatever inputs appear. Stress hormones hormones and crises in general provoke this sort of engagement of parts of our brains. Idea Engagement. This is the kind of attentiveness we get when we mobilize all we know and have thought against a topic of interest. This can come when, in the midst of writing a passage of a book, we come upon an idea, about which we do not know what we know. We start generating diverse approaches, frameworks, frameworks, contexts, recollections, remindings and the like, about it, to see what it there, related to it, in our minds and past experiences. Here we mobilize knowledge and thoughts within us, associations between thoughts and experiences.
are. We must balance parts of our mind Flow Engagement. This is the pushing of operating, acting, thinking in us just beyond the edge of what our current capabilities are.
and particular capabilities exquisitely, exquisitely, not letting any one element dominate our “dance” of operation. operation. It can be the arm motions of short order cooking--where cooking--where we handle more and more orders expertly expertly without forgetting or failing to prepare and follow up the details of any of them. them. Our motions and actions become a flow coursing coursing through us, with little need for conscious intervention. We dance expertly among competing demands demands and changing circumstances, circumstances, fully mobilizing all our resources and capabilities for this performance.
strangers seeing us doing intercourse with our partner. partner. This is where we revel in being felt up in hotel elevators, elevators, Sexual Engagement. This is where we no longer mind strangers doing foot sex under tablecloths tablecloths at elaborate restaurants. restaurants. This is where sex decorates decorates the entire world for us, leaving romance romance behind and entering extended extended ecstasy land. We want to be identified as pure cunt, as pure thrust. We want exploration of all the openings openings in our bodies. We want to paint the world world with our sexual fluids.
placing it all as a bet, on a present chance. This is where we consume our future, future, placing it all as a bet, on a Risk Engagement. This is where we consume our past, placing present chance. We escape plan and routine, preparation and destiny, by putting all that we are on the line--jumping out of planes, off of bridges, racing fastest around tracks, daring death and daring life. If we survive, the value of living rushes to us embracing us fully, fully, giving us ecstasy from just being still around in the world. investments well, where they will be magnified, magnified, by aspects of their timing and and location, into immense results. It is Leverage Engagement. Engagement. This is the fun of placing investments the satisfaction of correctly guessing how the world and people work and locating investments where forc forces es amplify them greatly We consider ever so many factors and locales, ever so many investment amounts and types, before choosing one, where to place our bet. We shiver at the change of immense returns from such slight initial investments.
Creative Engagement. This is investing in outcomes that may be u npopular now but that will be welcomed by later ages and eventually seen as history changing revolutionary contributions. This is the joy of putting so much of us, outside us, embodied in a creative work, work, that even after we die, those encountering our work will be changed by us, affected affected by us, dialog with us, know us. us. It is gaining immortality by populating the world with works we create. create.
reactions to things. You simply delay reacting, by seconds for your most automatic automatic reacReactive Detachment. This is detaching from your own natural automatic reactions tions, by a day for your basic emotional emotional reactions. By acting later you moderate and change your natural natural reactions and substitute better ones. This is how style develops-develops-from delaying natural reactions. .
Just Say No Detachment. This is learning to inject “no”s into the world that we mean, that we never relinquish, that we insist on, no matter what others say or threaten. Breaking up with lovers sometimes must must take this form--I will no longer see you, talk to you, contact you in any way, way, ever. ever. The beginning of all respect for us, from us and others, is this ability to say no and make it stick. When we learn learn to do this, we exist, to ourselves and and others. Not giving in to social pressures and our needs for approval from others is the beginning of existing for us all. dreams, our best Changing from Being X to Having X Detachment. This is how we grow psychologically throughout life. We learn that we cannot obtain our dreams, goals--something in who we are, are, in our identity, identity, gets in our way. way. Eventually we despair of ever, ever, as us, being able to reach reach our goal. At this point of despair, a door opens, we find there is something we have been depending on for pride, confidence, confidence, support, all our lives, that we we can learn to live without, managing managing it instead of being it. This door allows us, by making what we depend on for emotional support smaller, to free up parts of us, so as to manage them rather than fixedly depend on fixed versions of th em.
Watching Our Minds Generate Worries Detachment. Most forms of sitting meditation, like zazen, involve counting breaths, a mild distractive task to consume our conscious mind. We then watch our mind operate, operate, as it generates generates one worry after another. another. We begin to learn how our mind separates us from all, turns all into worries and endless daily tasks, obscurs the joy and meaning in all, cuts us off from how we actually are that other person over there, just as much as we are ourselves.
purer, Lao Tsu and Chuang Tzu sort. Here you become space not object, background not figure, context not event, Vacuum Power Detachment. This is Taoism of the purer, taste not sight. You use the power of not being and not doing to do things. You draw others you way by not asserting asserting yourself. Cocktail parties can be well run this way--by way--by just standing your ground as the only one in the room not kissing up to power. By not kissing power you gradually become a mystery others have to answer by going up to you at the end and figuring out why you do not play the monkey games of all the rest in the party. than an extrapolation of your past self. It is where you turn Deliberate Self Inconsistency Detachment. This is where you become a burning end of yourself rather than
orthogonal rather than going on in directions previously set for you. It is where you betray betray your own preparation and and investments. It is where you depart depart from your self and past and b ecome something new.
move--reflecting reality back on itself. This is where truths get told--safely told--safely because they are are mere art. art. People can only bear bear truth Art Detachment. This is the mirror move--reflecting
disguised as fiction and history--they history--they can nearly never never face truth full on. on. Art is how truth worms its way into humans and their their minds. It is the detachment of pretending the utterly real is not really real. It is the slight of mind of seeing truth by pretending it is mere art, contrivance, fiction.
The above 14--seven forms of engagement and seven forms of detachment--merely detachment--merely scratch an immense surface. There are millions of forms of engagement mind and detchment mind. Indeed, various mind modules can be specifically shut down during zazen meditation sessions. For example, there is a module that tells us where “we” “we” are, that that is, inside our own bodies. When, in zazen, we we shut down this module, we sense our “self” “self” is floating above us, that is, our body. body. Shutting down each brain module and and then combinations of two at a time, time, three at a time, and so on, on, results in thousands if not millions of forms of detachment detachment available to us. Similarly, there are myriad forms forms of engagement mind on offer. offer.
Exercising Our Engagement Mind Types Exercising Perceptual Engagement 1) Go through any situation you are in, sense by sense, discerning via that sense subtler and subtler nuances and slight changes, feeling what you feel 2) Undo the precedence that sight has among all of our senses, by putting yourself in situations with low sight, forcing you to guide yourself by other senses 3) See what you see, that is, push toward openness to raw inputs, as an earlier chapter of this book presented it 4) Train yourself to see, hear, feel, smell, touch all in a situation and recall those sensations exactly later 5) Push perceptions towards completeness, towards levels of detail, towards whole situation comprehensiveness, towards emotional tone and incipient feel
Exercising Idea Engagement 1) name in your mind the viewpoint causing the beliefs and actions of each person you meet each day 2) name in your mind the viewpoint causing your own attitudes, beliefs, and actions in response to them each day 3) pick unusual frameworks or theories and view your entire day and its transactions via that unusual viewpoint 4) respond to all situations three ways, using greatly diverse frameworks for couching your responses 5) push beyond superficial problems stated, by you and others, to root ones, similarly push for root causes, root solutions, root implementations
Exercising Flow Engagement 1) Include as many simultaneous chores and contacts and activities as you can manage, then add one or two more and stretch till you can barely manage to manage them 2) Take some ordinary thing you do or say and perfect it, make your doing or saying of it beautiful and perfecgt 3) Instead of achieving focus by cutting off peripheral tasks and sights, achieve focus by including peripheral things and multi-tasking among them, intensely focussing first on oone then another then another, timing your attention to each so none gets in the way of the others 4) Add a all day long thought or design project to each of your days, forcing yourself to complete a finished product by the end of the day, and weave doing this throughout all your usual daily activities, refusing to lower quality of usual daily activities or of this new added product project 5) Double your doing of all that you do each day--instead of calling one friend, call two at once, instead of meeting one friend, meet two at once, instead of attending one class, do homework for another class whlle taking notes for a first class, and so on
Exercising Sexual Engagement 1) Blindfold yourself and touch your lover for an hour without intercourse 2) Blindfold yourself and be touched by your lover for an hour without intercourse 3) Arrange sexual play and intercourse in public crowded venues, without being seen entirely 4) Arrange sexual play and intercourse in full view of selected friends 5) Wear sexual toys while going about daily chores and routines, with your lover switching them on and off while you work
Exercising Leverage Engagement 1) Say nothing in all your meetings except one very crafted comprehensive meeting-direction-changing remark about 2/3s of the way through the meeting, summarizing all prior comments and contributions, stating a remaining flaw or issue to be handled, and asking for volunteers with appropriate talents to handle them 2) Astonish people whose role and contribution to life and work around you is nearly entirely overlooked or unnoticed by giving them a highly appropriate present, with candles and cake even when it is not their birthday, just to recognize who they are and how they contribute to others 3) Make a list of bad ideas or behaviors going on around you by others and one by one, on the same day each week, contact those people and undo or recontext them so as to reduce the bad stuff coming from them gradually over time--do not criticize them directly but rather mention side contexts and issues that indirctly highlight the negative effects or ineffectiveness of each bad thing they do or say 4) List all the solving projects and activities going on around you and that you do each week and for each one that is largely wasted effort and ineffective, analyze the root cause being slighted or ignored and redesign work so as to handle this root--then redo your weekly work and deeds to address these root causes till final solutions of problems appear
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design 5) List all the problems people or groups around you face, identify by analysis the most fundamental of these, the one that, if solved, would greatly reduce or help solve many other problems, then implement yourself a solution to that fundamental one or nudge your groups to address it, instead of squandering effort on lesser problems
Exercising Creative Engagement 1) Write one page, per day, every day, without any exceptions whatsoever, of a novel; do not worry about quality; then correct and improve one page a day of it after a first draft of it is finished, then show the result, one page a day, to others getting their suggested improvements which you implement that same day, till this third draft is finished, then publish it 2) Write the entire story of your life as a comedy, then as a tragedy, then as an travel adventure story, then as a myth of fights among demons and gods. 3) Pick some ordinary part of your life each week, and one day a week, un-standardize un-mass-produce it--by desig ning your own clothes to wear that day and making them, by inventing new foods and serving them, by making your own music that day and playing it for others, or the like 4) Take something you do all the time and take it to extremes, design wild and radical versions of it that yet work better than ordinary versions, and after a month or two of such development, present to and sell to your friends this radical version 5) Do the future version of somethings you do ordinary versions of now--for example, instead of taking usual photos, take stereo 3D photos by using two identical cameras; instead of reading ordinary books, digitize your books and read them on eBook devices; instead of talking to individual friends on your cell phone do nothing but conference calls among several friends at once using the same cell phone; instead of talking to individual friends on your cell phone, get more than one cell phone and have your friends talk to each other and you at the same time using two phones at once
There are endless variations. The above exercises exercises are merely merely initial places to start. What is being presented presented is doing what what you do, intensely intensely recoginzing the overall aim and meaning of what you do and redesigning what and how you do it so as to achieve more of that o verall aim and meaning with it.
Exercising the Detachment within Perceptual Engagement 1) When you intensify attention to what you perceive, the bias in favor of vision distorts your sensitivity, so detach from vision’s dominance, allowing equal attention for smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
Exercising the Detachment within Idea Engagement 1) When trying for new ideas or inventions of ideas for a purpose, you are dragged down by what others think and what you worry they will think about your wild new attempted ideas, detach from status and self importance concerns, to free your mind to try ideas beyond the conventional
Exercising the Detachment within Flow Engagement 1) Any one error or crisis among the multiple activities you manage in any flow effort, tempts you to lose balance, concentrate on just one job, and single task rather than juggle and multi-task--find iterative, multi-small-pass ways of dealing with such cropping up crises or errors, rather than having to dedicate full attention or time on just that one area, that is, detach from the emotive need to fully handle the crisis now at once
Exercising the Detachment within Sexual Engagement 1) When you touch someone, stop moving towards bringing them to full satisfaction and orgasm, rather touch them for maximal excitement just short of orgasm, bringing them closer and closer without fulfillment--detach from orgasm as a purpose and emphasize the enjoyment process as your purpose instead
Exercising the Detachment within Leverage Engagement 1) Leverage comes from saying no to easy, convenient, conventional, demanding, obvious, popular forms and places of enagement--it comes from saying no to most of them and choosing only that one place where small inputs produce great outcomes--this is practicing detachment from convenient and popular forms and places to engage
Exercising the Detachment within Creative Engagement 1) Creating, of the craft amateur sort, perfects something till you yourself like it. Creativity of the professional sort, perfects something till it astonish es both you and complete uncontexted strangers to which it is shown. This requires detaching from your own vision of greatness and perfection and establishing a dialog between your own unique tastes and visions and those of important others. Creativity is a dialog between their requirements of astonishment and your own. You fashion what astonishes you so that it also astonishes others. You have to detach both from your own astonishment requirements at times and from theirs at other times.
Exercising Our Detachment Mind Types Exercising Reactive Detachment 1) Delay responding to everything said to you, all of one day, by 2 seconds, substituting for your natural emotion and response, a better more sensitive and sophisticated one 2) Delay responding to every piece of bad news to you, all of one day, by an entire day, responding to each piece of bad news the next day, doing nothing today to respond, watch how our emotions calm down and how your mind naturally finds goodness and benefit within bad news events 3) Figure out what kind of person others say you are and that you deny you are--then fashion, all of one day, responses that are the opposite of your usual ones, new responses that do not jive with what others expect as your flaws and faults and blind spots 4) Ask each person who responds to you in their usual way, to immediately respond differently to you, inviting them beyond their own habits and attitudes and usual compromises 5) When your group or company responds in its usual irresponsible, cowardly, selfish, materialistic, inhuman way to things, challenge it, push your challenge ridiculously far, irritating people up the chain of command, forcing people to acknowledge the irresponbility, cowardliness, selfishness, materialism, and inhumanity of how they usually respond--do this as an experiment one day a week or each month.
Exercising Just-Say-No Detachment 1) Identify some requests from and obligations to others that irritate you and yet that you tolerate or allow to get onto your schedule--then one by one, crush them utterly, going to each peron involved in them and astonishing them with the vehemence and resoluteness of your announcement of absolute refusal to hear about or tolerate any of them any more--annihilate any vestige of hope in others that you will tolerate these requests or obligations anymore 2) Identify one day a week that you will allow yourself to put onto your schedule and agenda some activities or suggestions from other people, then refuse absolutely to do anything of that sort all the other days of each week--practice doing nothing for others most of the week and compressing cooperations with others onto only one day each week 3) Identify parts of your life that are second rate, that hold you back, that are hold-overs from past failings or backgrounds, and kill them off by refusing to participate in them at all, for an entire month. 4) Practicing doing “no”s by choosing, randomly, during each day, a reasonable request from others and refusing utterly to do it, without excuse making or explanation--simpoy saying “I will not do that today” 5) Identify no’s said to you by others and launch a one day campaign to surround them by 10,000 bee stings, getting them to do what they said they would not--try your best to undo their “no” and see what tactics they use to enforce it against your will and your repeated bee stings
Exercising Be to Have Detachment 1) Spot when you are getting argumentative, defensive, or angry because someone attacked your opinions--then agree with their criticism of your opinions and promise to develop better opinions shortly 2) Spot when you are getting argumentative, defensive, or angry because someone attacked your relationships with others--then agree with their criticism of hour relationships, and promise to improve your relating shortly 3) Spot how you automatically support and think best the nation, culture, gender, profession, family, era you were born into--then spend a week or more maintaining to yourself and all others how other nations, cultures, genders, professions, families, and eras were and are now better than your own--insist on the specifics of how each of these are better than your own 4) Spot in each person you meet aspects of their own family, nation, culture, gender, profession, era that they blindly like and support and defend and specifically attack each of these in a direct way whenever you meet them, making them as angry as possible each encounter--later, a week or so later, face to face or by note, tell them it was just an experiment in assessing how flexible and mature the people around you are, by measuring the blindness with which they defend the happenstance whats and wheres of where they grew up--for example, greet someone as “hey, it’s Joe, the southern bigot, sophisticatedly expressing by great indirection his contempt for people of color” 5) Tell other people how particular deep aspects of who they are are getting in the way, blocking, them realizing their fondest dreams--be specific
Exercising Mind Watching Detachment 1) Get Kaplan’s 3 Pillars of Zen or read the zazen instructions in other chapters of this book and practice sitting meditation for forty minutes per day for three months. 2) In all conversations, for a week, watch yourself talking, hear yourself talking, watch your gestures and body language, observe what you miss and mis-respond to in whom you talk to. 3) Observe your effect on people from every encounter during one day, then, the next day, deliver a different you in each encounter, one designed to produce better effects 4) Tell others nothing at all for one week--instead, limit yourself, all week, in every part of every conversation, to just asking questions of others. 5) In groups do not speak as you, but observe yourself in the group and the group’s own demons, consistencies, blind spots, and cultural assumptions--then, instead of making remarks about your ideas and proposals, make remarks noting the group’s state of affairs and present blind spots, asking for help seeing beyond group norms and traditions.
Exercising Vacuum Power Detachment 1) Go to cocktail parties or other group ocassions and talk to no one, meet no one, take no initiatives at all the first half of the time there--speak only to those who approach you. 2) In group settings or meetings where others promote themselves and strutt their stuff, say only very modest things and refuse to promote yourself at all, force others to force you to disclose your thoughts or doings 3) Lull competitors into error by presenting a public face of modest or no accomplishments and much trouble, hiding real progress and accomplishment that you share with powers that be only in private conversation to be kept confidential 4) Invest in a false strategy and work hard towards it overtly, while secretly investing in a counter hidden strategy where, near the end, you suddenly immensely increase investment--let competitors judge you by your overt first initiative and thereby miss your hidden actual initiative 5) Shun all trends, popular technologies, current enthusiasms and instead invest fully in possible new trends that will grow to public recognition more than seven years from now--say absolute no’s to all current trends, technologies, and enthusiasms, reserving all your investment and effort for your baby fields one of which you hope will grow to fame later
Exercising Deliberate Self Inconsistency Detachment 1) List all the major goals in your life, that all your present actions, as observed by others, can be seen headed towards--then imagine goals completely different in nature and direction from all of those and invest heavily in one of those cross-cutting new goals 2) Clear two days a week of all you schedule and usually do there and instead do things there completely out of character and without connection to all your current goals.
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design 3) Split your weekly work into two subweeks--compress all your regular work onto three days instead of their usual five and use the two cleared days to do a second entirely different job. 4) Every other week spend the entire week counteracting all your initiatives and enthusiasms from the previous week. 5) Compete with yourself by every other week applying a different approach and strategy than your usual one to obtain your goals--invest equally in both and see which turns out best.
Exercising Art Detachment 1) Get five or more slide projectors and project a different image from each onto a large wall in your home, arranging the images into an interesting overall composition--then erect a white canvas the size of the wall with projected images, and carefully paint your composite image of five images--use extreme color treatments for each tone and color, each shade and shine--sell the result by passing around photos of it at museum and art exhibition events to people interested in art, till you find a buyer (this does not work if you have talent or practice in painting) 2) Find five experiences of people around you that you care about that are nowhere mentioned in contemporary songs--write song lyrics for each then compose music for each. 3) Find five experiences of yourself that are nowhere mentioned in contemporary music--write song lyrics for each then compose music for each 4) Collect your funniest jokes, your most accute observations, your deepest feelings about what is true compared to lies and self promotions around you, the hurts you and others around you endure from losing the deepest dreams of your life--then compose a 2 minute performance for each, so an 8-minute overall performance of several small arts results; then deliver that 8 minute mini-performance a dozen times in one week to others around you 5) Take a person or part of life that is absolutely filled with lies, exaggeration, and selfishness and write down how it sounds, talks, says things and reverse that into a version of it that is without lies, modest not exaggerated, and selfless not selfish--combine both as antiphonies--into a mini-performance of how-it-is versus how-it-needs-to-be
Exercising the Engagement in Reactive Detachment When you stop your automatic reactions, you do so by forcing delay in reacting onto yourself--by engaging in delay, deliberate creating of silence and space. Experiment with how long a delay you can get away with.
Exercising the Engagement in Just-Say-No Detachment When you say “no” and make it stick--you detach from objections, complaints, negat ive social attitudes about you, possible revenge from others. You engage, actively, in frustrating other people. Practice a calm peaceful way of being utterly relentless in your “no” making--so your calmness drives people crazy crazy
Exercising the Engagement in Be ot Have Detachment When you recognize that something in who you are blocks your obtaining your most valued goals--you detach from loving your self and see what pieces of it you can let go of. You engage in being calm and peaceful based on less social and other supports than you ever have before. Practice living entire weeks without certai n kinds of emotional support or positive feedback on your doings. Learn to keep buoyant moods without such supports.
Exercising the Engagement in Mind Watching Detachment
When you observe your own mind operating, noticing how it generates one worry after another, in an endless negative stream, you detach from letting your own mind run your life--you learn to stop following your own mind and its thoughts, when you judge it necessary. You engage in close observation, in refusing to let your mind direct you. Practice doing what you do not think and do not feel, instead of doing only what you think and feel.
Exercising the Engagement in Vacuum Power Detachment
When you attact others by doing or saying nothing, by being less rather than more, you detach from controlling the content and timing of reactions of others. You engage intensely in refusing your usual presence and promotions. promotions. You engage in withholding. You carve out emptiness and vacuum. Practice minimizing your self to attact things and opportunities by becoming nothing. Let others fill the vacuua you create with their own dreamed of “you”s.
Exercising the Engagement in Deliberate Self Inconsistency Detachment
Wben you deliberately counter your self and its directions and prior investments, you detach from those investments, threateni ng them. You engage in directions entirely at odds with yourself and your past. You fully engage in utterly partial nascent new things. Practice being the opposite of yourself at regular intervals so the real you emerges from a dialect between you and your own created anti-you.
Exercising the Engagement in Art Detachment
When you generate art you distill experience into forms that allow others to have their experiences changed by yours--this detaches you from speaking to the world directly from your body--instead you let created works speak for you. You engage in vesting objects you create with selfness--youness. You distill the essence of you into objects at particular times and places. Practice communicating and influencing more and more via works you create instead of by hour direct presence and speaking. Let works speak for you till you have no voice of your own.
Exercising Our Engagement and Detachment Mind Min d Types Types Together Together Choosing When Engagement and When Detachment Are Needed 1) List all the persons and groups you encounter weekly 2) For each list 3 major goals in their life or work as you observe them 3) Which goal are each of them too detached from, how do you know this? 4) Which goal are each of them too engaged in, how do you know this? 5) What can you do to produce engagement for the goals they are too detached from? When? How? 6) What dcan you do to produce detachment for the goals they are too engaged in? When? How?
Degrees of Engagement and Detachment 1) Design four vacations to go on in each and every year 2) The first vacation is a weekend in length--Friday afternoon till Monday morning--design this to detach you from tiredness and mental/emotional ruts--design appropriate places to go for this effect 3) The second vacation is a half-week in length--four days, either extended weekends or half weekdays/half weekenddays--design this to engage you with a long lost dream, no matter how hopeless you feel about achieving that dream now (for example, vacate by taking sax lessons to master the best blues sax work in history--your hidden dream of being a blues sax man) 4) The third vacation is two weeks in length--design this to detach you from the current overall directions and approaches and priorities of your life--what place and activities can change these aspects of yourself--use them to design the place, schedule and contents of this vacation 5) The fourth vacation is six weeks in length--possibly combining six leave, unpaid leave, and vacation time--design this to engage you in an entirely new you and new life, by choosing a place you can invest in gradually each year, during your six weeks there, meet friends, develop an entirely new personality and form of work.
Chapter 5: The “Be” Mind versus the “Have” Mind Assessing Your Be Mind 1) list your three greatest accomplishments in life thus far 2) list three very large flaws in each of those accomplishments 3) list the three human relationships that are most important to you 4) list three dangerous flaws in the people your relate to in each of those relationships 5) list your own three most important attitudes or opinions 6) list several important situations and contexts in which everything about each of your opinions is wrong, dangerous, or utterly foolish 7) list the three most important projects or purposes now operative in your life 8) list three weaknesses and flaws in each of them 9) when you are attacked or fail badly in something, what salves you, calms you down, reminds you of your own worth and the value of living? 10) what do you defend, do you not allow to keep on being attacked, do you rise up and defend actively when it is attacked? 11) what aspects of you do you almost never defend, never mind when they are attacked, do you freely admit are flawed and partial?
Assessing Your Have Mind 1) what parts of you did you used to be proud of but now you are at best only sometimes proud of 2) what parts of you did you used to defend when they were attacked but now you do not mind having them attacked all the time 3) what parts of others around you do they defend but you do not defend when attacked? 4) what parts of others are sacred and unmodifiable by those around you but you do not mind treating such parts of yourself harshly, carelessly, and freely tinkering with them 5) what serious, or deeply habitual parts of you and how you life have you never modified much? have you modified recently? 6) what excellences within you have you recently improved? 7) what salving presences or things or persons or events, salve others, but fail to calm you down? what calms you down that fails to affect others? 8) what do others around you have to have in order to function well that you never need in order to function well? 9) what exaggerations by you of your powers and accomplishments nag you and haunt you daily that others do not worry about in themselves? 10) what part of your self, your life, your relationships, your emotions, your habits, your reactions, your origins, your destiny do you not tamper with or unashamedly use for other purposes than it was intended for? 11) what part of all that in 10 above can you not be happy without?
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The Transition from Being Something to Having It--the Overall Story of Human Growth If you look at research on human moral development, human personality development, human mentality development, human cognition development, human social psych development, and others, you find transitions between stages, and in all types of human development, the transition between all stages is the same--learning to “have” some part of you or the world that up till then you “were”, that is, that was you, that you identified with before. This means letting go of some part of you that you depended on for confidence, happiness, and power and learning to have those things without it. As we grow, we, who who we are, our identity gets smaller and smaller, and what we manage, manage, and use for various purposes, grows larger and larger. larger. We end up, near the end of our lives being nearly nothing and managing self consciously nearly nearly all that we are. We have exchanged “be”ing things nearly entirely entirely with “having” those things. This is the overall pattern of transitioning between stages in all models of human development and growth.
What is Your Be Mind? Being something means means it is “you”. When people dislike it or or criticize it, they dislike dislike and criticize you, making you angry. angry. One of the stages of adolescence is learning learning not to be your own opinions but to have opinions that you regularly upgrade instead. You can test a person to see if they are adolescent or more adult adult simply by finding some of their favorite opinions and relentlessly attacking those opinions for half an hour or so. If the person gets angry angry,, defensive, and aggressive aggressive against you, they are an adolescent, however old their body happens to be. If they smile and and stay relaxed and virtually agree with all your arguments arguments and criticisms criticisms of their opinions, then they are adult. Being something means depending on it for confidence, happiness, or a sense of personal power, so that anyone criticizing it or not wanting it around is felt as di rectly attacking you-all that you are.
What is Your Have Mind? Having something means it is a part of you that you treat as a mere tool for your present purposes. You use it instead of it using you. You even use it in contexts and for purposes entirely different than its was first developed for. You play around with it, tweak, change, and modify it, freely. You make it do your bidding instead of you doing its bidding. Some students of mine recently observed observed three older graduates of my research research seminar, each each discussing the first ten of their years after graduating graduating from college. My students instantly noticed that the older graduates shared a good trait--they each used their company and job entirely for their own purposes rather than getting sucked into their company’s company’s purposes and contexts. The have mind inside us all, strips capabilities capabilities from the context that they first come to us in, and place them in entirely different, different, diverse other contexts of our own devising, getting out of these capabilities not what they promise us, but what we devise ways of getting out of them.
Practicing Being, Practicing Having, Learning to Transition from Be to Have--the Despair Doorway Principle Growing psychically is tought tough work. work. What happens is this--I find that some of my most important important goals, I cannot achieve. Something blocks me. After much further effort to no effect, I find that something in who I am, blocks me from achieving achieving my most important goals. I cannot as presently constituted, ever achieve achieve my fondest goals. I am going to have to change myself if I am ever going to attain those goals. Only in the despair that I can never attain my fondest goals while still being who I presently am-only in that despair does the door open to psychic growth. Any easier circumstance and and you do not grow at all and ever. Growth is directly proportional to the depth and number of times you have been in despair over yourself. yourself. Growth grows on the fertilizer of absolute despair. despair. No despair, no growth. This is why people stay adolescents adolescents all their lives, with older and older bodies, inhabited by childish minds. They avoided despair, and, and, as a result, they failed to ever grow psychologically. psychologically. Every time you move from one psychological stage to another, who you are becomes smaller, that is, what you depend on for confidence, morale to live, raison d’etre, becomes smaller. smaller. Parts of your self that you used to feed and attend to as “who you are” are now outside of you, as things you consciously use and wield, for purposes you are quite aware of. Where others are controlled by such parts within them, them, you are controlling them. them. You use them differently differently in different contexts to further your purposes, purposes, where others are used by them all the time, limited by them. It is a matter of pieces of your your happenstance background controlling controlling you, operating unconsciously within you, limiting what you like and di slike, do and avoid, hope and avoid.
Is Being the Same as Having, Are the Two Two Minds the Same? I will examine two parts of our selves--our selves--our opinions and our relationship with other persons, here. here. Is being our opinions the same as having having our opinions? Is your experience of someone who is his opinions the same as your experience experience of someone who has his opinions? The answer is obvious. People who are their opinions get angry when when you disagree with them. them. They are offended offended that you disagree with them. If you disagree, disagree, you are both both wrong and bad minded, at fault. fault. Diversity of opinion is evil evil to them. There is right and there is everybody else. Religions train people in this sort of think ing, particularly nomad male warrior religions like the great monotheistic ones--Judaism, Christianity, and and Islam. It is wonderful that these three historic religions continue to find ways to do mass mass killing of each other, other, even in our own era. era. How great a comedian comedian god is-his more ardent followers, prove it, each each century, century, by mass murdering murdering each other! What a wonderful comedy, comedy, composed by god, throughout throughout history. Christianity was wonderful as a correction for flaws in Roman culture--instead of fun and games murdering people in the Colesium, Christianity insisted every individual life was sacred, instead of a dictator, Caesar, Caesar, as emporer of the world, Christianity insisted on a King of Kings, and Emperor of Emperor in the sky, ruling another world that we go to in death. Unfortunately, the Roman Roman Empire has not been around for the most recent 1600 years, yet Christianity still fights it, maintaining the same culture it composed about 350 A.D. in the church councils that decided that Jesus’ body rose from the dead, because some Northern Italian bishops could not get donations from rich guys unless they could promise them that their rich guy bodies would go to heaven, where they could fornicate much as they fornicated fornicated here on earth. A historic group whose culture does not evolve for 1600 years is wonderful, as an intellectual phenomenon, but terrible terrible as a trainer of minds. Christian minds, all too often, are are stubborn, stuck in Roman mindsets mindsets and issues, handling 21st century technologies with randomly chosen passages from old books written for illiterate shephards in dry desert cultures of the ancient middle east. Getting your responses to situations from old books is a complete avoidance avoidance of thought, responsibility, responsibility, and care. It is an effort-saving effort-saving short cut to care and and thought. It lets some book take the wrap for error or bad outcomes. Virtually the entire Nazi hierarchy went to church throughout the war, setting up chapels in each concentration camp, amid the smells of burning millions. Prayer proved its worth in that war. That is why church attendance attendance collapsed in Europe after after World World War War II--people saw saw the most grotesque evil doers praying as sincerely as their victims. victims. Prayer to ancient male male nomadic gods did nothing to stop the mass murder of millions. Indeed, religious training of minds minds to not think but look up how to live in ancient books, prepared the way, way, prepared the passivity that invited Hitler to come to power. Having opinions is as close to evil as people come. Consider the millions of women tortured with cruel metal masks whose points pierced eyeballs and mouths, mouths, before being burned to death, throughout Europe. These were witches, according to the church and and political leaders. Everyone agreed they were witches. That is why they were killed so cruelly. cruelly. The magical nature of their evil made made torture necessary and appropriate, appropriate, it was believed. Only when the wives of kings were accused accused of witchcraft, did political support collapse, suddenly, suddenly, with kings turning against church leaders, to ban witch burning in their kingdoms. It was the opinion of everyone that these millions of women were consorting (fucking) with the devil. Millions of tortured women, their torture endorsed by the church, for hundreds of years--all of it based on opinion. Has anything more evil ever existed--being your opinions turns you into a dire threat to nearly every every other person alive. It means parts of your background background that you never consciously considered or chose, operate inside you causing causing your to fear some things, prefer others things, not because you consider them anything at all, but because such reactions are easy and automatic, placed inside you while a small child growing up. As long as people people are used by such unconscious contents inside them, the people do not use themselves, and do not control themselves. Parts of their background control them instead. Our backgrounds, unfortunately, unfortunately, are filled with all sorts of cultural junk and historic destritus, bias and fear, aggression aggression and obtuseness. Consider your father--go home and and do this experiment--spend 30 minutes tonight attacking one of your father’s favorite opinions. Praise, for example, a far left or far right right politician that he hates. If your father gets gets angry and argues argues emotionally with you--he is his opinions, still an adolescent. If he does not get angry angry but lightheartedly banters about evidence and viewpoints, alternative interpretations and needed further data, then he is an adult. Having opinions is entirely different different in feel and style from from being opinions. A person who has his opinions knows they are partial, local, flawed, and faulty. faulty. He knows that at any moment new research or data may crop crop up that undo what he believes. He knows that he has to have opinions and use them to guide him but he also knows that many of them can be very dangerous and flawed so he must be vigilent. He uses his opinions the way a workman uses a flawed hammar--being careful not to try too much with the tool because it may break break at any moment. moment. A person who has his opinions, opinions, when accused of supporting supporting bad or wrong opinions, readily readily agrees. He is already always keenly keenly aware of the poor and and undependable nature nature of what he believes. When people attack attack his opinions, they are are almost alway right--his opinions are not wonderful, ever. ever. However, when attackers insist that they have much much much better opinions, he doubts it. All opinions are extremely risky, risky, flawed tools, that new research can can make false at any moment. Another test you can make of yourself and others is this--get yourself or someone else to list ten of their major beliefs or opinions about the world and write them down. Then two years later get them to do the same and see how many of such opinions have changed. People whose opinions never change are locked in monotheistic mindsets, protectprotecting the past from from the future. future. They have become become what they believe. They are dangers to self and others. People whose major opinions two years later differ differ from what they were earlier, earlier, are having opinions that change because they they are open to new research results results and data. They constantly revise who they are to fit better what what evidence reveals about reality. So much for opinions. Another stage of psychic development involves learning learning to have social relationships relationships instead of being them. them. If people verbally criticize or attack a friend or family member of yours yours and you get angry and defend them, heatedly, heatedly, then you are your relationships. If people attack your relationships and you do not feel anger but readily admit flaws in the people you relate with and how you relate to them, you are adult, beyond adolescence. There is a stage of psychic development where our pride, our worth, our confidence depends on the quality of people we associate with. We eventually outgrow this, however, as continued association with certain ones holds us back from attaining some of our fondest goals.
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Seven Stages in How People Think: What is Subject in One Stage Becomes Object for Reflection of Next Stages Modified from Robert Kegan’s In Over Our Heads, Harvard Univ. Press, 1994. Name/Objects
Cans/Persons
Cannots/Self
OBJECT THOUGHT
Can recognize objects and persons exist independently of our own sensing of them; can distinguish inner sensation from outer stimulus
Cannot distinguish own perception of object from actual properties of the object; cannot do cause-effect reasoning; cannot recognize that other persons have their own purposes independently of ourselves; cannot see oneself as having impulses that one can control or manage
Perceptions
Demanding need fulfillment
Transient Emotional States
CATEGORY THOUGHT
Unites plural data in the actual under one category; can do causeeffect reasoning; can construct own point of view and see others have different point of view; can regulate own impulses, needs, goals; can delay gratification
Cannot experience “the future” co-present with “the present”, that is implicit as consequences of present actions; Cannot subordinate current category to another for same data or a possible category that is other, hence, has no ability to cr eate long range plans, patterns, or generalizations; cannot reason abstractly or form hypotheses; cannot take own point of view and other’s point of view simultaneously; cannot construct obligations and expectations to maintain mutual interpersonal relations; cannot internally coordinate more than one point of view or need; cannot distinguish one’s needs from oneself; cannot self appreciate “ I have low self esteem”.
Cause-effect
Transactional reciprocity
Enduring Dispositions: Needs, preferences
ABSTRACT THOUGHT
Can reason abstractly, can reason about reasoning; can experience the future as co-present with the present--implicit in what ones commits to in the present; can create hypotheses and test them; can form negative classes; can form personal ideals; can be aware of shared feelings and expectations that take precedence over own feelings and expectations; can internalize another’s point of view; can empathize on internal not transactive level; responsive to socialization without being responsible for it
Cannot systematically produce all possible relations; systematically isolate variables to test hypotheses; cannot construct generalized system regulating interpe rsonal relationships; cannot organize own states or internal phenomena into systematic whole; cannot distinguish self from one’s relationships (cannot see self as author of relations).
A bs bst ra rac ti ti on on s: s: i de de al al s, s, v al alu es es , ge ne ne ra ra lili za za ti tio n, n, h yp yp ot ot he he se se s
M ut ut ua ual it it y: y: ca n in te te rn rn al al iz iz e a no no th th er er ’s ’s po in in t o f v ie ie w
I nn nn er er St at at es es : se se lf lf c on on sc sc io io us usn es es s
RELATIONSHIP THOUGHT
Can be free from any ideas or values in principle; is author of own values and manager of own relationships; can create relation between independent value-generators rather than by sharing values; have separate behaviors of others causing my feeling so they are responsible for behaviors but I am responsible for feelings I get from their behaviors, not them; others are not responsible for how I feel
cannot establish two different power positions within one relationship; cannot own their own work; cannot detect how the institutional settings I am in subtly control my values and life outcomes, limiting my autonomy
organize, evaluate, and create Ideology as Theory of Relationships: organize, ideals and values
Regulate relationships and multiple roles; maintaining boundaries and setting limits in relationships
Self authorship: identity, autonomy, self regulation; a self independent of duties, roles, and relations (having duties not being them)
DIVERSITY THOUGHT THOUGHT (horizontal version of Clear Mind Thought below)
Can be free of any system of values or ideology; can unravel any subtle system of values in institutional settings; can detect how power underlies innocuous seeming hierarchies and procedures around me; can build relations between wholly incompatible systems and cultures
Cannot get different paths and ideologies to work together. Cannot get people to shift to loyalty to two or or more such complete competitive systems. Can see the possible possible theoretical equal validity of different paths and ways but cannot distinguish practical differences in concrete powers and results.
Object permanence of independent elements object: I have nothing.
subject: I am objects.
Within Category Thinking object: I have objects; subject: I am my needs
Cross- Categories Thinking [Traditionalism] object: I have needs; subject: I am my values, I am my relations
System-Complex Thinking [Modernism] object: I have values and relations; subject: I am my commitments; I am my loyalties; others concerns are my concerns
Diverse System Thinking [post modernism] object: I have theories and systems, commitments and loyalties
This stage probably exists only because human life-span have extended from 50 to 75 years of age in the last 50 years.
subject: I am refusal of mystifying some one system or ideology Proc Proced edur ures es for for De-c De-cons onstru truct ctin ing g ideo ideolo logi gies es and and sys system temss
Nego Negoti tiat ating ing the the prov provis isio ional nal erec erectin ting g of of boun bounda dari ries es and and lim limits its in new types of relationships between incompatible systems
Self whose construction is relativized: my whole self is in need of re-invention to relate to selves of other cultures and ge nders; recognize possibility of borrowing styles across gender and culture gaps without unwitting participation in power sources hidden behind gender and culture behaviors;
CLEAR MIND THOUGHT (vertical version of Diversity Thought above)
Can see the unity underneath appearances; can accept each diverse path or way as one of many valid ways towards truth, having its own distortions and virtues; can treat all comers as friends and fellow spirit travelers; can detect the roots of power and ego drives in fundamental human anxieties that people flee from rather than befriend; can befriend such fundamental anxieties myself
Cannot get beyond the fundamental anxieties of human existence: cannot imagine how to redesign humanity now that the power of gene design has been developed by humanity; cannot imagine a new global religion founded in clear “no mind” thought and feeling;
Procedures for Detecting Which Fundamental Anxiety of Existence Underlies Particulars of a Way, Path, Ideology, Gender
Negotiating provisional unities underneath apparently diverse systems and drives
Self whose relativity is relativized: the pluralities and diversity of ways around me is illusion, underneath which is a reality of divine emptiness, shining clear consciousness that fulfills my dreams and releases me from the roots of division, difference, diversity in ego; self who returns energy from head to base of spine, who becomes its bodily mind not its intellectualized mind alone. Self stripped of modernity and Western Western tradition “head” energies and yet stripped also of traditional society refusal of self-negation culture and the open future horizon it continually renews.
GLOBAL ECO THOUGHT
Can see why and how I and others use differences to keep others out, to deny the unity of human clear mind consciousness; can use differences myself as bridges to others not walls
Cannot invent new consciousness to replace global no mind clear consciousness: cannot change consciousness I was born with; cannot invent new partial ways tailored for local conditions and anxieties.
Get differing people to change loyalty from their local from birth systems and consciousnesses to a new global no mind clear consciousness that refuses to use differences as walls and excuses for conflict
Self who has a mission to shift loyalties of others from their local happenstance commitment systems to a new global clear mind commitment that does not use difference as excuse for walling others out or conflict.
Trans-Diversity Thinking [Buddhism as a Philosophy] object: I have demystifications of each of various ideology systems, gender systems, national system subject: I am clear “no mind” consciousness beyond illusions of diversity
From Individual Trans-Diversity to Global Trans-Diversity and TransUnity object: I have clear “no mind” consciousness beyond the illusions of diversity. subject: I am a global movement to stop the using of differences for prejudice, war, self justification, keeping others out; I am using differences as bridges to others instead of walls to keep others out Conflict resolution, difference demystification, tracing difference wall effects and envisioning bridge effects
The Brain Basis of Be and Have Minds The journey from baby to young adult is a journey of greater and greater greater differentiation and distinction. The baby at first thinks it is everything and everthing is it. Gradually, via pain and perceptual surprises the baby deduces deduces that there is lots of stuff outside of it that does things independently of it. Moving each limb is at first confused as the moves are on or off, then up, middle, down, and off, then left, right, up, middle, down, and off, and so on, distinguishing more and more motion aspects. All of our life is this game of further further and further discriminations discriminations and distinctions. This is the brain basis basis of transitioning from being being to having. We distinguish motions by reflecting reflecting on repeated motions and noticing patterns within them we were not aware of before. Gradually we purposefully aim to produce motion patterns thusly noticed. From being those motions, as if they come from us without our conscious mind being involved to having those motions, when and where we want them, via conscious choice and execution of them--this is the same journey, that changes how we relate to other parts of us, besides motions, our opinions, and our social relationships, for example. When something happens from inside us, naturally and without effort, it is “natural” we say and there is a lot of romanticism within individuals and within cultures about such reactions, praising them as better than reasoned, consciously labored reactions. reactions. However, what is thusly “natural” can be horrible and lead to lynchings of disliked or feared ethnic groups, burning of people as witches, and funding wars of liberation against people of inferior inferior gods and religions. What is natural in history has has usually, one day day or another, turned out to be horrible. Thinking, that is, reflecting on patterns in our experience of behaviors, liberates us from such “natural” behaviors and allows us to replace them with consciously chosen better behaviors, that, after much practice and use, become just as easy and automatic and “natural” (and thereby dangerous to our children who unconsciously inherit them). Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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Exercising Our Be and Have Mind Types These two types of mind are so inter-dependent, the be mind being something we must outgrow and transform into a have mind, that exercising each indendently does not have a lot of value. The value is found in spotting be mind remnants within us and practicing transitioning those to have mind states via opening ourselves to real despair. despair.
What Am I?--an Exercise It is useful to examine the contents of our personal identity--what is “us” and therefore, what, if it is attacked, threatens us and makes us defensive. What is “us” is what it is that we depend on for confidence and a sense of personal worth in the world. It is not very hard to track this down. A certain amount of honesty, however, is required. 1) If everything you owned, all clothes, books, computers, homes, finances, and the like, disappeared tonight, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 2) If everyone who knows you and whom you know disappeared magically from the world in an instant, tonight, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 3) If everything you have accomplished thus far in life were for some magical reason forgotten and undiscussable by you and others, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 4) If everything you value and seek in life were for some magical reason forbidden for you to pursue any longer, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 5) If sex were removed forever from your life, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 6) If the rest of your days were spent, entirely, fighting a life-threatening disease, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 7) If happiness were, by a configuration of circumstances, removed from all the rest of your days, how difficult would it be for you to enjoy tomorrow? 8) What about you impresses you, transmitting a sense of worth and value to you about yourself? 9) What about you impresses others, transmitting a sense of the worth and value of yourself to them? 10) What have you done to all the accumulated experiences and built up skills within you, to make who you now are, good and worthwhile? 11) What is the single act in all your life that makes you proudest to be a human being, that proves to your self that you are an entity whose life was worth living? 12) What parts of your family background are no longer parts of who you are and how you operate in and view the world? 13) What parts of your family background are still parts of who you are and how you operate in and view the world? 14) What parts of you have been added to what your family background tended to make of you, to augment or replace parts of you from your background? 15) What situations did you grow up having automatic responses to that now your respond to more slowly, carefully, and more deliberately?
What Have I?--an Exercise It is useful to examine the contents of our personal identity for determining how much of what is “us” is stuff we consciously put there, versus unconsciously imbibed from the various environments we grew up in. It is useful to examine what aspects of our self we manage and use for our purposes compared to aspects that use us for their purposes. 1) What needs do you have that you regularly delay gratification of, for various purposes? 2) What is the longest period in your recent life that you have gone without sexual contact of any sort with other people? 3) What are your most basic values and beliefs--have you changed any of them recently? could you change any of them tomorrow? 4) Who are your closest friends and compagnions in life-- can you function well without any of them? have you changed any of them recently? can you find people just as valuable to replace them tomorrow? 5) Which of your commitments now are you willing to change tomorrow? Which of your commitments now are recently acquired? 6) What diversities in others are you tolerant of and have recently acquired? are you intolerant of and acquired decades ago? 7) What unity beneath all diversities do you practice daily? how? with whom? to what effect? where did it come from in your life experience? 8) How important is existing to you? is your death troubling for you? how happy are you with the end of your existence facing you? 9) What emotional reactions of yours do you regularly override, change, delay, or modify? why? when? 10) What opinions of yours do you regularly edit, reduce, or otherwise modify? why? when? 11) What personal relationships of yours do you regularly change, drop, or otherwise modify? why? when? 12) What diversities in others have you recently changed relationship to, become more tolerant of or become less tolerant of? why? when? 13) What unites you with people whom you hate or disrespect? why? when? 14) What makes death as interesting as life to you? why? when? (Note: like the Dali Lhama says, death is automatic for us all, so staying alive to see how the show of life develops is natural and a responsibility for all living creatures; can we face death happily? we practice this when we learn to be happy depending on nothing at all in life itself, when we base our happiness on compassion with the entire universe, existing and beyond-existing.) 15) What do you use your opinions for? Give an example of how you use your opinions to gain ends you value. 16) What do you use your friends and personal relationships for? Give an example of using a close friendship for something you value. 17) What do you use your tolerance of diversity in others for? Give an example of using such a tolerance for something of value to you. 18) What do you use your compassion beyond all divisions and separations and diversit ies of humankind for? Give an example of using that compassion for some purpose of value to you. 19) What do you use your existence itself, as a whole, for? Give an example of how you are using your entire existence for some purpose of value to you. Seven Stage Transitions I am objects to I have objects I am my needs to I have needs I am my values/beliefs/opinions and relationships to I have values/beliefs/opinions and relationships I am my commitments and loyalties so others concerns are my concerns to I have commitments and loyalties so others concerns are something I manage I am demystifying the commitments of self and other to I have demystifications (as one of several thought modes) of commitments of self and others I am clear “no mind” consciousness beyond diversities of all sorts to I have clear “no mind” consciousness (as one of several ways of being conscious) beyond diversities of all sorts I am existing to I have a (limited term) existence.
Exercising Both Our Mind Types--Be Types--Be with Have We exercise our Be mind whenever we do things automatically, automatically, without thinking, “naturally”. We exercise our Have mind whenever we we stop such naturalness and examne it in detail, reflecting on its parts and effects, where it comes from within us, and whether we should continue i t, imagining what might replace it.
Examples of You Making Psychic Stage Transitions IMPORTANT: give a specific example of how you made each of the psychic transitions bet ween stages listed below, writing 3 or 4 sentences about how you made each transition. . Seven Stage Transitions I am objects to I have objects I am my needs to I have needs I am my values/beliefs/opinions and relationships to I have values/beliefs/opinions and relationships I am my commitments and loyalties so others concerns are my concerns to I have commitments and loyalties so others concerns are something I manage I am demystifying the commitments of self and other to I have demystifications (as one of several thought modes) of commitments of self and others I am clear “no mind” consciousness beyond diversities of all sorts to I have clear “no mind” consciousness (as one of several ways of being conscious) beyond diversities of all sorts I am existing to I have a (limited term) existence.
Chapter 6: The Explore Mind versus the Exploit Mind Assessing Your Explore Mind How many weeks ago was the last time your explored a new interest? How many weeks ago was the last time you visited a place entirely new to you? Who is your most recently acquired friend--how many weeks ago did you first befriend them? What is the ratio of undone things to done things now on your to-do list? How many of the 12 or so people in your primary group of close friends and family, know each other? How many of the 125 to 150 people or so in your secondary group of acquaintances who know you by name and whose names you know, know each other? How many of the 12 in your primary group were not there ten years ago? How many of the 125 to 150 people in your secondary group, your acquaintance group, were not there ten years ago? What, that you dislike or hated for years or decades, have you developed a liking for recently? When something goes wrong, fails to work as planned, do you get angry or interested? How much do you lovingly investigate your problems and errors?
Assessing Your Exploit Mind How many books are in your work and home offices--how many of them have you actually read? How many of the 12 in your primary group do you now have projects you collaborate with them on? How many of the 125 to 150 in your secondary group do you now have projects you collaborate with them on? How many of the undone items now on your to do list will be eventually done some weeks or months later? What skills and interests that you have, have never been used to produce anything of value to others? What is your greatest skill--what has it produced in your life thus far? What completely different life and you can you actually become in the next 20 years of your life?
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The Explore Mind versus the Exploit Mind At every moment in our lives we have a choice--to learn more or to do something with what we already know. If we learn more, we cannot use what we already know and if we use what we already know, know, we do not immediately learn more. Some people develop a taste for learning, so much so, that they cannot stop and spend their entire lives adding more knowledge. They never get around to doing anything with that accumulated learning. learning. Other people develop a taste for using what they they know. know. They never get around to learning more. Who are these two types of person? Do we know such people? I have a best friend who likes to go to high class, expensive, limited limited access, invitation only parties in the world’s leading hotels. It is fun to wangle wangle an invitation or better yet, entre without an invitation to them, them, he says. He likes finding permeability permeability zones in otherwise restrictive social boundaries and groups--social stomata. stomata. He is really good at that, compared compared to me. At these gatherings are celebrities celebrities at times and CEOs at times. Both of them are fabulously rich so what they actually do most most of their lives is “buying things”. My friend found out, decades decades ago, that you can talk to these people mostly about what they have bought, are buying, or will buy. buy. They are eager and and interested in that--and not too interested in anything anything beyond that. It reminds me of a Laura Nyro song--”on a street street called buy and sell” about the drug trade. Not a few of such celebrities and CEOs are into recreational drugs--sex no longer excites them enough it seems (not all that surprising given all they can talk about is buying and selling). I have worked in corporations enough to respect the joy that playing their games involves but my friend is different. He enjoys the company of such “buy “buy and sell” people. They have well practiced jokes and and stories they wheel out to “entertain” small small coteries that gather around around them, attracted by their fame, their charisma, their dress and other trappings of wealth. You can watch ten or twelve people, thusly assembled around some dandy, spend two hours or more, utterly bored as they exchange well rehearsed rehearsed jokes and stories. This, they call, life and and conversation. I have found similar similar conversations and groupings among leading professors as World Congresses Congresses of Psychology and Quality. I find it anthropologically interesting--an utterly dead format and exchange of meaningless memorized passages that hundreds of priviledged people fill their lives with. My friend calls it a kind of culture of inanity--the inanity needed to get that famous and get that rich guarantee, condemn one, to years of exchanging memorized jokes and stories with others equally empty. You need all the glitter, the marble, the ocean frontage you can muster to not puke away your time in such company, company, my friend insists. This is the culture of your exploit mind, carried to extremes. You spend decades using everything you know and and can do, fully, leveraging it all to the absolute hilt. The result is husk-like, an empty shell shell of wealth and fame. It reminds me me of the 8 inch tall glass of whisky an old MIT friend of mine gave me one Saturday morning morning when I visited him and his wife at their spacious spacious home. He was a famous corporate lawyer and at age 40, a functioning functioning alcoholic. A great portion of his vast wealth was spent on therapies, expenses run up by a succession of bad wives, drug cures for his children. The shell glittered, its contents were missing. Decades ago, I was so happy with the education I got as an undergraduate at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley, and an ecumenical religious order of families, that I decided to do unpaid work for six years to pay the world world back for the education I have have just received. I lived on US $60 a month for the next 6 years after graduating graduating from MIT. MIT. It was not all that sacrificial, in reality. I flew all over North America, a different city city every week, for for two years, raising raising funds. I designed workshop procedures procedures for 80 simultaneous simultaneous workshop groups to use, daily, for 30 consecutive days in a mass workshop event. event. I set up participatory town meetings in 42 cities, social social clubs, and towns of Western Western Japan. I doubled per capita income of Korea’s Korea’s poorest village in a month, by importing backpack size mowers from from Japan. In doing this I worked along side a variety of people, the grandson of a US president, the head of Harvard University’s board of overseers, the largest private foreign investor in Korea, a rightwing nut who built his own insurance empire, the queen of a t ribe of Australian aborigines, the founder of a termite-extermination empire in India, the leading popular singer in Birma 40 years earlier, the CEO of Gulf Oil, a vice president of the Royal Bank of Canada, the head of a local Vice Lords gang in Chicago, the founder of a religious order of Anglicans from an island, Iona, off the coast of Scottland. Scottland. The jobs I did were were so new to me, I was not good at any of them. The people I met met were so new to me, I was not good good at relating to any any of them. The places I worked were so new to me, I was not good at keeping my visas valid in any of them. I had no time to exploit what I knew because I knew very little, in general, and very little about the particulars of my work, and because constant change, reassignment, and exposure to new roles, places, and challenges kept me from using what I had j ust previously done. This is the explore mind carried to extremes--you extremes--you are mess on the outside, though very rich in the inside. You are useless on the outside, though rich and interesting and creative on the inside. Exploit mind people tend to build great outside shells shells of appearance, that are are empty inside. Explore mind people tend to build great great internal contents hidden by boring boring unaccomplished outside shells around them.
The Brain Basis of Your Your Explore Mind Many brain systems, modules, and circuits circuits are biased for new information. They slight or ignore any repeated messages, signals, signals, or information and perk up, when something anomalous, surprising, or new appears. Furthermore, these same same brain parts habituate to inputs--when the same input gets repeatedly encountered, encountered, we lose interest in it and subsequent encounters get less invested attention and energy. energy. Something that fascinated us greatly two weeks ago, bores us two weeks weeks later. This means our our brain hardware hardware tilts us towards exploration, all the time. We are novelty novelty seekers. However, this is not all. Some researchers researchers have insisted we only seek novelty. Our brains, however, are far too large, complicated, complicated, and complex to settle on only one trait in the world that dominates all our lives. Novelty is a bias but not at all the only signal we seek.
The Brain Basis of Your Exploit Mind Our brains, indeed, our very selves, are social. We have mirror “spindle” neurons that specialize in helping helping us copy other primates primates and their behaviors. We have brain systems that see phenonena phenonena outside us as “personal” “personal” and “caused by by persons acting” and “the “the result of intentional action by an entity conscious like us”. us”. This gives rise to witch, ghost, spirit, and God impressions, even when nothing is there. there. There are other brain systems that make make us compete in social hierarchies. hierarchies. We see see other primates, do what they do, and try to do more than they do. We have have other brain systems that make us happy when we “strive” for unattainable or hard to attain goals. Combine these three and you get an animal that wants “to perform”. In modern industrial societies, for the past few hundred hundred years, whole sectors of society have been been given over to “performance culture”culture”-we call that industry or business. Not surprisingly, male male “swinging gland” cultures dominate there. there. There is even a particular ecstasy, ecstasy, a “flow” feeling of operating slightly beyond your past best capabilities, tuning exquisitely sensitively your performance, among among various contending factors, instant by instant. This is the dance of the experienced short order cook, juggling a dozen or more orders without a single wasted hand or foot motion and without forgetting forgetting any part of any order. Our exploit mind is this performance culture set up within our brains in operation.
The Anti-theticality of Explore and Exploit Minds We cannot explore and exploit at the same time, it turns out. Though we can exploit and by later reflecting on that experience learn stuff; though we can explore and by later practicing of moves involved exploit its contents, we cannot cannot do both at the same time. Exploring is a compilation. It is compiling information information in one format into other formats. It is reading situations, representing their parts abstractly, abstractly, and encoding those abstractions in our memories. It files data away under existing categories/frameworks categories/frameworks and it also erects hypothetical hypothetical new categories/frameworks. categories/frameworks. Exploitation is turning ideas inside us into well practiced practiced and honed routines. routines. Exploring observes the world and with some conscious consideration and effort encodes models and ideas from it; exploitation is the reverse, in it we turn ideas already inside us into great performance via well practiced routines. However, merely merely touring some foreign shore teaches us little and decorates our interior rather rather than enriching it. It is better to tour and while touring make significant local contributions to diverse local environments. This is weaving exploration with with patches of exploitation. We can similarly punctuate punctuate long periods of exploitation with little periods of exploration. These mixes might outperform outperform purely expore mind mind or purely exploit mind only periods. periods.
From Explore and Exploit Minds to Explore and Exploit Careers, Lives, Personalities The problem is when people emphasize one of these minds over the other for long periods of time, for periods long enough that they virtually forget about the other mind possibility entirely, never visiting it again. We know such people, as in their later decades of life they are so mis-formed by using only their explore mind or using only their exploit mind, ignoring the other entirely. Why does this happen? We get good at what we practice and if we depend on one of these two mind t ypes for a long stretch we may get good enough at it that using th e other type feels maladroit and weaker. weaker. We go to our strength and this difference grows, creating creating more incentive to use the one type we are now good at. A viscious circle develops till we almost never use the un-attended type of mind. mind. Another word for this is “neurosis”, “neurosis”, the cost that any skill has, for all skills are the result result of focus, and focus focus means some few things are attended to at the cost of not attending to many many others, the cost of having that focus.
Balanced Minds and Careers Some people get the feeling they have been been doing too much exploiting for too long or that they have been doing too much exploring for too long. They say to themselves-”it’s about time I used what I have learned” or “it’s “it’s about time I learned something new and operating beyond my comfort zones”. They seek balanced capabilities in their minds and lives. This balance comes at a cost--shutting down routines you have become good at via much repetition and practice--and it has its own benefits--the more you explore, the more knowledge you have to exploiting; the more you exploit knowledge the more you have an incentive to get further knowledge. knowledge. Exploring builds the basis for exploitation and vice versa, exploitation furnishes motivation for exploration.
Exercising Our Explore and Exploit Minds Types Types Separately, then Together Together Exercising Your Explore Mind, by Itself, via Self Boundary Analysis Your identity, now, is a set of focus points you aim yourself at, read and talk about, and develop in various ways. It is as much what you refuse and cut yourself off from as it is what you seek and embrace. When you exercise your explore explore mind, that means, breaking current boundaries in who you now are. That might even mean doing less exploring if analysis shows who you now are is too explore oriented, at a cost of little exploitation of what you learn from exploring. 1) use your to-do lists for the past several years to develop a list of the 50 points of focus in how you live in these past recent years
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Exercising Your Exploit Mind, by Itself, via Self Analysis You may know enough to influence and do a lot that you actually do not do. You may be capable of far more than you currently aim for or do. You may like living far within your current capabilities so you outshine those nearby or have easy days, most days. It may have been ages ages since you lived at the edge of your capabilities or since you fully used what you are and are are capable of. Of course much of the reason we do less than we are capable of is limitation s of interest--lots of things we are capable of do not interest us--and limitations of time--lots of things we wish to do we never get around to because all the time we have is used up doing things of more interest or importance to us. 1) List your ten best and biggest capabilities. 2) What is each used for now, what does each produce now in your life? 3) Which of them is producing far less than it could? could? Why? 4) Select your 3 least used capabilities and figure out a project or plan for using it far more in the next six months of your life. 5) List ten needs the world has and ten interests the world has, that, in turn, interest you. 6) What concrete project, object, event, publishing, artwork, etc. could you contribute, in the next twelve months to each? 7) Which such possible project appeals enough to you to actually try out doing it?
Exercising Balance Between Your Explore and Your Exploit Mind This is a matter of remembering to exploit what you learn from each exploration you do, and remembering to explore what each act of exploitation of existing knowledge exposes you to. The former is exploriing-via-contribu ting and the latter is using assignments and roles as locales for viewing the world anew. 1) For an entire week, each hour, check whether you are now engaged in exploiting existing knowledge or in exploring to gain new knowledge 2) Whenever you find yourself using your exploit mind, identify what exploration is possible there. 3) Whenver you find yourself using your explore mind, identify what exploitation is possible there. 4) Develop a discipline, during this week long experiment, of using explore to exploit and using exploit to explore.
Chapter 7: The Conform Mind versus the Rebel Mind Assessing Your Conform Mind 1. When was the last time, in weeks from today, that you visited an ethnic neighborhood in your city where the language, food, and culture of people is different than your own? 2. When was the last time, in weeks from today, that you consorted with people much richer and more powerful than you, with comfort and ease? 3. When was the last time, in weeks from today, that you consorted with people much poorer and less educated than you are? 4. How does your behavior change when you must talk business with a woman? List twenty changes. 5. How does your behavior change when you must talk business with an important customer? List twenty changes. 6. When the mood of someone you are meeting turns out to be not great, what adjustments do you make? 7. When the mood of someone you are meeting turns out to be great, what adjustments do you make?
Assessing Your Rebel Mind 1. When was the last time you told a boss or manager you had to correct some flaws in how they treat you and other people. 2. When was the last time you stopped an entire group from doing what it wanted and planned to do, all by yourself, with no one in the group at first supporting you? 3. What assumptions and treatments of you by close friends and family members now, do you plan to gradually change? List twenty. 4. What ultimate destiny and achievement of your entire life have you been thus far too timid to admit and head towards, but that you will, sometime soon use to make a major change in your life and its tactics? 5. What is the thing you most regret about your life thus far? 6. What would outside observers agree is the worst thing about the life you have lived thus far? 7. What disgusts you about your self and your life thus far?
What is Your Conform Mind? We are all monkeys. Science is finding the basis for morality in monkeys, a cost/benefit module of the brain tempered by a “do not hurt other creatures like me” module, module, a socalled “compassion” module. Science has found all sorts of other bases in monkey behavior and brains for what we customarily think of as more sophisticated human-like behaviors. We are all monkeys, in reality. reality. One of those modules that monkeys and humans humans share is a module for submissive behavior, behavior, for “fitting in”. We are are hardwired to perceive what other monkeys monkeys are doing and do like them. Monkey see monkey do. We are are exquisitely sensitive to the requirements requirements for fitting in with whatever any other other group of monkeys is doing. We are hardwired to “learn the ropes” of any group. When we fit in, we suppress our own ideas, initiatives, and leadership. leadership. We suppress our own ego. We forego influencing others, impressing others, others, and instead, fit in. in. There is a definite self self abnegation component component to fitting in. Indeed, “he is like us” is one of the most important important judgements groups groups of monkeys make. If you are “like us” then all sorts of inputs are accepted from you that are ignored if you are judged “not like us”. One of the main pillars of influence and communication communication theory is this “communite first you are like your audience, then communicate communicate your message to them”. Your audience will accept your message readily if they have have previously judged you “like them”.
What is Your Rebel Mind? The rebel mind is the opposite of your your fit in mind. Our rebel mind allows us to, at any time or place or point, utterly disregard what our group expects expects and wants from us. It is assertion of our freedom to determine determine our selves. It is the part of our brains that gets suppressed when when we fit in. It is what puts an end to fitting in. Our rebel brain is a powerful hardwired ability to spot what what groups expect and impose on us, and ignore it. Seeing what is requested and and needed, we choose choose to do something else. That is our rebel mind. Recent research (Yugerlun-To (Yugerlun-Todd) dd) found that facial experssions showing fear that all adults recognize as fear are recognized as fear by only 50% of young teens. Apparently teens enter their teenage years unable to modify emotional reactions by front brain planning and rational understandings as much as adults do. The brains of teenagers had exaggerated emotional area activity activity compared to adults and slight planning/rational activity compared to adults. Teenagers Teenagers learn, apparently, apparently, in their teenage years, how to modulate emotion using plans and reason. These results have not been tested cross-cultures cross-cultures so we may find they represent bad parenting parenting habits endemic in Western Western cultures and nations. East Asian parents, for example, have children much younger than teenagers who score as adults do in recognizing fear as an emotion from facial expressions. East Asians raise their kids from an early age to be socially astute and well well tuned to fitting in to social groups. Much of the rebellion expected of teenagers in the West West is missing in East Asia.
Practicing Conforming, Practicing Rebeling, Alternating and Balancing Them Both Every group you join will want want you to be “in” it, that is, will want you to fit in. People will watch you in the beginning to see if you are are becoming “one of of us” or not. Your first actons, if they are ambiguous or if they combine fitting in with rebellion will turn people off and cause you to be rejected by the group. The group wants you to fit in and wants a consistent message that you recognize the importance of fitting in and make efforts to do so. If the messages they get are mixed, weak, or ambiguous, the members members of the group will question your commitment to “be one of u s”. We all get lots of practice conforming as children growing up where every group we join is new to us and every group tests our ability and will to fit in. Practicing rebellion starts at two years old, the so-called “terrible twos” where where children exercise saying “no”. It is on the basis of this ability to say “no” that kids learn to fit in. The fit in ability is built on a basis of this “say no” ability. The being that joins a group and fits in is a being capable of not doing so or else there there is no meaning to joining. Only if the being is capable of saying no, does that being have and exercise a choice, choice, when they “join”. Joining without choice, without the ability to say no, has no meaning for the group. One of the big turn offs of cults and religious groups throughout history is their subtle tactics tactics to reduce or eliminate the natural two year old’s ability to say no. You find cults keeping people awake 18 hours a day, isolating people for long periods, keeping people under constant surveillance for long periods, and other tactics, all meant to undermine the person’s person’s ability to say no. When people thusly modified “join” a cult, at no point was all of them considering that joining--the tactics of the cult weakened and bypassed the person’s ability to consider things in full. A robust healthy group admits people as members members who are all fully capable capable of opposing the group and its decisions. However, most most group are a bit wimpy, wimpy, lacking confidence, manipulative, and unsure of themselves. They fear members fully fully capable of opposing them once inside. They shun such members, seeking seeking people genetically and otherwise predisposed to submission and fitting in. We all experience this around leaders--how many times have all of us s een leaders who surround themselves with “yes men”. Leaders who surround surround themselves with powerful powerful egos full of disagreement impress us as more “leaderly”. They have the confidence to put put powerful people around them. Leaders who surround themselves with lackeys who praise everything by the leader leader automatically impress us as not “leaderly”.
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Any healthy individual and any healthy group contains only members who rebel rebel at times and who fit in at times. Without both capabilities the group is phony and the individuals are phony. How do you know someone’s fitting in has meaning--because at times they do not fit in and rebel. How do you know someone’s someone’s opposition or rebellion has meaning--because at times they do not rebel, they fit in and work hard to fit in. It is fitting in that gives rebellion is meaning; meaning; it is rebellion that gives fitting in its meaning. Attempts to eliminate one or the other are are attempts to de-humanize and and weaken both individual and group. The Nazi party is a good example. example. Joining came to mean complete complete assent to whatever the “Fuhrer” said, opposition was not allowed and punished by death.
Is Conforming the Same as Rebelling, Are the Two Two Minds the Same? What more specifically specifically do we do when when we fit in? Our fit in brain is exquisitely exquisitely tuned to mirroring--copying mirroring--copying what others around us are doing. We slump our shoulders, weaken our smile, straighten our hair, hair, bend slowly and gracefully, gracefully, and, in short, tailor all that we do and think to fit into what is around us. We copy not single actions alone, but entire styles and intangible atmospheres of those around us. More challengingly we fit into discourse patterns and the status markings and submission behaviors embedded in how people greet and talk with other people. All of this requires noticing all the dimensions of those around us, all their social traits and relationships, and all the tools for marking and carrying on those social relationships--dress, cosmetics, talk, tone of voice, body gesture, boldness, rank submission, and on and on. Rebelling is based on exactly the same sensitivity to what others are are doing and expect, only the reaction is not fitting in to all that but departing from some some or all of that. In rebelling we notice the same things around us with exquisite sensitivity, but we respond to it not by fitting in to it but by differing from it, or opposing parts of it. Rebelling and conforming both use the same machinery for exquisite social sensitivity to others around us. So they are the same mind, in that respect; it is the reaction to that that differs. In fitting in we spot expectations of us and conform to them; in rebelling we spot expectation of us and oppose them. In the first case we have the courage to deny self for other; in the second we have the courage to deny other for self. Both of these are forms of courage. Both fitting in and rebelling require courage.
The Brain Basis of Conforming and Rebelling Minds Their social basis is clear. clear. Take East East Asian nations versus the United States. States. For more than 100 years years Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Taiwan, China have written books about the excess individualism and egocentric style of the West and Westerners. Westerners. Warnings Warnings about local Asian cultures becoming contaminated by the materialism, the individualism, the egocentricity of the West West are still published yearly in all media in the region. East Asians find that Americans lack emotional emotional sensitivity, social caring caring for others, a feeling of responsibility of leaders to care for followers, a sense of social belonging and responsibility of all organizations in society. Americans find that East Asian lack a will or ability to take initiative, a sense of personal responsibility for their own actions, a willingness willingness to break rules and fight visciously to attain a goal. Conforming is weak in America and rebelling is weak in East Asia. Asia. So cultures obviously are one basis basis for conforming and rebelling. But is there a deeper deeper basis, a hardware hardware basis, deep inside our brains? brains? Study of influence and study of sales have converged on the same set of results showing exactly how to spot the conforming machineries machineries of the brain and use them to change people and what they think and do. Research results from from these areas areas are legion. Certain people propagate propagate their own moods moods even without saying saying anything. In experiments a person in mood X sat down beside a stranger for 2 minutes and then left. The person they left behind ended up near the mood of the first person, even though no words were exchanged. Some people broadcast broadcast their mood in an an infectious way. way. Mood is outside in, not inside out--we out--we believe we determine determine our own mood mood but research consistently consistently shows our mood is extremely sensitive to and responsive to influences from outside us, what is around us. Obvious false statements about a room, for example, are agreed with once a peron in a room hears the other 3 people in that room agree with them, however contrary contrary to sense they are. Our drive to fit in overwhelms what our eyes or brains are telling us about what we see before us in these experiments. There are rules like the reciprocity rule--if a company gives up surprisingly something, something, say an utterly useless keychain, we still feel obligated to reciprocate, and and businesses use this guilt at not reciprocating to stimulate sales. By giving surprising small gifts to consumers, companies often get “guilt at not reciprocating” sales from them. Similar rules are the copy emulated ones rule--if Tiger Tiger Woods Woods buys it, and we like him as a golf hero, we buy it too. Most modern marketting is based solidly on the brain machinery in all of us for conforming. See below a discussion of all the Cialdini rules for influence in selling, su mmarized immediately below: reciprocate--do a favor first to indebt people to you consistency--entice people to commit publically to X so they keep to X for maintaining their repute validate--get friends and reference group members of a person doing X then he will follo w (we do what people like us do) liking--be likable and do X, or get people that person A likes to do X, people do what the people they like do authority--find whom A sees as having authority and get him to do X, and A will follow scarcity--make person A think X is rare, special, temporary, or will not any longer be available automaticity--many judgements are made automatically automatically unconsciously without rational judgement, but they can be influenced by the above nonetheless perceptual contrast--expose a person first to a poor version of X then to X and they will see the second X as better than usual articulation--when asking A for X provide a “because” reason rejection then retreat to smaller request--equals percept contrast plus reciprocation principles. The brain basis of all this is a set of modules in the brain that enable and promote us noticing and copying what others around us do and feel. Included in this is sensitivity to rankings and social status and a set of behaviors, behaviors, dominance ones and submission submission ones, we readily fall into. We fall into dominance behaviors when when dealing with those lower in status to us and we fall into submission when encountering those higher in status to us. Nothing, therefore, is more obvious monkey-like monkey-like than all the bowing and scraping grown men in a corporation or business enterprise. I love the body body language by vice presidents of IT in a commercial commercial message on TV with their respective CEOs. The vice presidents, even in a 15 second commercial message, have to fawn with their eyes, their hands, their language use to their CEO, making evident the difference in status between CEO and vice president. That more than 20 such status submission/dominance behaviors behaviors are apparent in a 15 second TV commercial commercial hints at the tens of thousands of such behaviors filling every available business second, minute, hour, and day. day. From the perspective of this brain module set of submission/dominance behaviors, rebellion can be seen as dominance behavior breaking breaking into submission. I rebel when I treat myself as highest in rank, though in the presence of others who are supposed to be higher in rank than I. Rebellion is self promotion of myself myself by me to higher rank. rank. If others support my change change in self status, then a social rebellion ensues, wherein wherein status ranks actually change for me and others. It is worth noting that if we say that the brain modules underneath conforming and rebelling are the modules that manage dominant and submissive monkey behaviors in us, then it is a matter of people relating to people. people. We decide to submit to particular persons, or to rebel against particular persons. Though we may couch couch and think it out in idea terms--we are submitting to particular principles or rebelling against against particular ideas--it is all done in person terms. The ideas and principles are later rationalizations of people we embrace or accept. This has important implications for reason and rational action--if we couch fitting in and rebelling too much in idea terms we make ourselves live in rationalizations of matters really being determined by accepting accepting or rejecting particular persons. We can can depart from reality and end up embracing embracing or rejecting the wrong people as we follow ideas consistently. On the other hand, culture, as a system, has these patterns of idea consistency and principle application that have value and govern human behaviors, in part determining who fits in and does not fit in to various groups. If the monkey person selection level of “basic” that does not make the idea and and reason level merely derivative derivative and without any power power of its own. Both levels operate in parallel, supporting or being being inconsistent with each other. other. What ideas dictate we do may violate what in personal terms we feel we s hould do and vice versa--Romeo and Juliet and their respective families, social forces in conflict with idea forces.
The Paradox of Us Belonging We want to belong to society and groups within it; yet we want to be “us”, distinct from all others, our “selves”. We, We, in truth, want contradictory things--to lose ourselves in others and to retain ourselves against others. others. This creates a basic tension in all our lives--we lives--we join and participate till we feel the danger danger of being swallowed up by belonging, then be rebel and stand against, emphasizing emphasizing our distinctness from groups we have joined. We conform in order to rebel and we rebel in order to conform. conform. The only form of conforming we accept includes rebelling and the only form of rebelling we accept in cludes belonging. The resolution of this paradox is this--it has to be a choice, to belong or not to belong to some some group. There has to be a being capable capable of not belonging who chooses to belong in order for participation to have human meaning and value. A creature who can act on his or her own without us has chosen to join us, the group says to itself, when it appreciates someone “joining” it. Our participation in the group has to keep this tension so we we go along a lot of the time but stand against the group quite a few times. This balance, this blend of conforming and and rebelling, is what participation always is. In those few extreme cases where where participation becomes becomes blind obedience, the individuals forming the group, no longer being choosing creatures, cannot participate as humans. humans. They can participate as as blind automatons, robots, but not as as people. Their “peoplehood” disappeared when they gave away their ability and will to stand against the group as a part of being a member of it. There are no human or authentic groups if the members of them do not regularly stand against them as how they participate in them. You cannot separate conforming conforming and rebellling--together they define define “participation” for humanity.
The Destiny of our Conform and Rebel Minds Why do we have a conform mind? Why do we have a rebel mind? We have a conform mind in order to be social social animals. Evolution favors sociality among animals--groups animals--groups help next generations generations of animals to survive. Our conform mind is based on brain hardware that enables us to copy what other animals do, to infer from observations what goals, feelings, and experiences they are having, to empathize when events happen to them because we feel in our selves what is happening to them. We are experts, born genetic experts, at fitting in to social groups. Why, given that expertness at fitting in, do we have a rebel mind? Why do we naturally not fit in? Why does it come easy easy to us to stand against against groups? We start standing against groups we are are in quite early in life--the “terrible twos”. When we are all two years old we practice saying saying “no” and we like saying it. No doing what mommy mommy asks is fun and feels essential and constructive to us, even at two years old. From then on standing against against groups comes naturally to us. We are born to rebel. Why? The brain hardware basis of rebelling, of standing against others and groups, is all those brain modules involved in giving us an individual identity--the circuits that make us feel like “we” are inside our body, behind our own eyes, the circuits that makes us able to imagine how our own body will feel if and when we do something that we imagine (we anticipate how we will feel and special brain ci rcuits tell us whether we are indeed feeling what we thusly expected to feel, when actually doing the imagined action). Buddhism says all that makes us “us” also makes us suffer, suffer, entirely because because it separates us from others and the universe. We are born joined to all and our ego separates us, with each separation inducing its own particular type of anxiety and worry. worry. Separation, identity, identity, ego, being “us” is the source of all our suffering, buddhism says. It is the Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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death not of us but of our ego that we worry about and mourn. If we identify not with the ego that makes makes us distinct but with the elan, the ecstasy, ecstasy, the beyond beyond selfness of the best moments in our lives, then all those moments moments are ego-loss moments, moments, that free us from the worry attendant attendant to separation. Buddhism is the only religion without a particular god at its center. center. It is an observation about about how the mind works and what causes suffering suffering in life. As such, it is fairly fairly accurate compared compared to other religions, given given that is pretends to less cosmic truth than they pretend to, in the above way. The destiny our conform mind drives us to is losing our selves in others; the destiny our rebel mind drives us to is continual suffering that drives us towards the ecstasies of non-self, beyond self, non-separation, “mu-ge” in Japanese Rinzai zazen. zazen. Below in this chapter I look at a model of influence, identifying the role of our conform and rebel minds in each of the 64 ways of influencing in that model. Influence by conforming and influence by rebelling are not separate types but all types of influence combine conforming to something with rebelling rebelling against something else. There is no influence without both--because both--because we are social. We “influence” others by being seen to be like them, and by being seen to be not like them as well. The first gets our message heard, and and the second makes our message a surprise, that gets attention, and as a novelty is valuable to others. It is worth noting that the model of influence influence below is quite comprehensive comprehensive and expansive compared to usual ones. Usual models of influence influence have a business scale of some some person persuading someone to do something not in that person’s person’s best interests. This is a part of “leadership” “leadership” as getting people to do things the group needs needs but that the person asked may not need need or benefit from. from. Such influencing, if taken as the central central and typical image of influence, is neurotic, dangerous, shallow, shallow, and unproductive. For that form of persuasion is a slight, tiny part of achieving influence overall. The model below presents much more hefty hefty types of influence--one millions of times stronger and more powerful than one person persuading someone someone else to do something not all that pleasant. Since nearly everything in civilization civilization and human experience has some some effect on someone else, nothing does not influence people, in the strict sense. When we try to narrow our use of “influence” to something something smaller and more practical than that, we have to choose how much we wish to leave leave out. The model below looks at huge important important avenues of influence that dwarf dwarf many of the business and leadership leadership literatures versions of influence. Einstein influenced the world, in the 20th century century and beyond, millions of times more more powerfully than Napoleon. He demonstrated how a little obscure new physics knowledge could: put into danger the future existence of all human kind, change the politics and conduct of all large nations forever; could heat the earth without worsening global warming, could usher in a general general intellectual rejection of nation-centric, empire-centric, empire-centric, gender-centric, gender-centric, race-centric race-centric forms of thought and abuse. Discovery, Einstein’s Einstein’s route to influence, is vastly more powerful than war, leadership, and all sorts of more popular forms of influence. The model below puts those customary forms of influence in their proper place.
The Paradox of Influence--Conforming While Rebelling All forms of influence partake in the same paradox. You have to be close to and similar to someone to get heard by them yet you have to surprise them with something novel to get respect for your message message and attention paid to it. To influence influence you have to be close so as to insert something something from afar. afar. Closeness in service to distance, it seems. seems. When we influence someone we conform to them and to our message, what change our influence is aimed at. If we compromise our message too much we get them to change but not where we need. If we compromise our conforming to them too much, much, they reject our message. Our conform mind makes it natural to get close to people. We have all sorts of brain hardware systems that enable us to guess their intent, g uess their feelings, and influence their intent and feelings. feelings. Our rebel mind mind makes it natural natural to change people--to people--to wish them other than they were by wishing the world world other than it is. We have all sorts of brain hardware systems that asset ourselves before the world, the promote our uniqueness. All power begins with negative power. power. We have have no power at all in life and the world till we have the courage to bother other people, to jam up their operations, to block their plans. Only when we exercise negative power do do others notice us, with the beginnings of respect. Respect comes from the fear that we might bother what they wish and do. When we have gotten gotten attention via negative power, power, then assertive power begins. Others learn to consult us before before doing things or else we may jam up what what they plan. They learn to include a few of our items items on their agenda to forestall blockage efforts efforts from us. When this assertion power is established partnering power begins. People learn to include us from the beginning in some new idea developments. developments. Our power comes from those brain systems systems that assert us against the world, from our first assertion of ourselves at two years old, till in teenage years we lack the brain chemicals for trusting others, so we experiment on our own, till our adult years when we submit to others for years in order to eventually replace or overtake them. them. Influence is a perfect balance between our conforming conforming brain and our rebelling brain--both woven into one tapestry. tapestry.
Influence as a Weave of Conforming and Rebelling Processes change interfaces UPDATE
Therefore, below, below, I present a model of influence, in brief, that does not make central face-to-face persuasion, or egoistic leadership strutting its stuff. I define influence using much broader and more abstract dimensions than others have, combining insights from many more diverse literatures than is usual in models of influence. influence. The result result is quite useful for visualizing conforming and rebelling processes that involve influence. Using the model of influence below, readers can see the complex ways rebelling supports conforming and vice versa.
interoperability update substrates
negotiate standards
SOCIAL demondemon- deify demonstrate strate = show
=
object
tipping points
SPIN
ATTENTION
demonify
decenter PLURIFY
trend weaving/ riding
events
There are four personal types of influence in the model: attracting, convincing, portraying, and growing people. Attracting people involves love, enthusiasm, beauty, and leadership. Convincing people involves negotiating, reasoning and argument, changing people’s people’s minds, and strategy. strategy. Portraying involves communicating, telling stories, persuading, and selling. Growing people involves demystifying the world, moving through psychic growth stages, stopping habitual responses, and establishing bridge communities to support new identities, goals, and behaviors.
decon struct
revolutions
demassify
delocalize
INFLUENCE INFLUE NCE TYPES TY PES bridge bridge media eschato-articucon- ideas appeal logic lation global- trarian style local bravery make this world VISIBILITY RARITY persuade disciples divine major PORTRAY INTEGRITY SURROGATES historic agenda present realizadiscovery anticipate sell bridge resist historic tion normality judge- discover ment new as temptation temptations
communicate
tell stories
PERSONAL psychic growth
QUALITY deep base
bridge community beauty ATTRACT
SINCERE
CONVINCE
serving all not self serving
GROW
stop responses
strategy
lead
love
change minds
enthuse
negotiate
reason & argue
creative works
PSYC PS YCHI HIC C
successlessness
capture hidden social longing
demystify
social indexing
de-neuroticize change operation scales PRECISION
fix/use mental flaws reflect/ surface
REALIZE reframe
intensify
transplant across cultures
disciplines
distinguish
recognize patterns
invent solution culture RECONTEXT
change environment
rebalance
The most famous post-war singer in Japan, Misora Hibari, famous for performing 2-hour single person concerts standing on a hip without cartilage at the end of her career, has hundreds of recordings of her work. There are hundreds of recordings of the same songs sung by others. If you compare, song by song, Hibari’s version versus any other singer’s version (I and my students have done this for hundreds of her songs), you find Hibari, primarily differs from the others in that she delivers the message about life that is in the song’s words and rhythm and melody. melody. She delivers the message about life in the song. Every other singer technically executes the mechanics of the music and the words very well, in many cases better than Hibari does, but they do not sing the song’s message and they do not talk about anyone’s anyone’s life experience in the way they deliver the song. It is truly a matter of delivering a message about human experience versus technically making melody, melody, rhythm, and lyrics mechanics. Attracting people starts and ends with love. Hibari loves human experience and loves the song’s capture of pieces of that experience. experience. She loves the experience experience she sings about. Her love of being alive alive infuses each tiniest aspect of each song. Anything you love fully attracts attracts others. They see it in your eyes, eyes, in your attention to detail, in your lack of hurriedness, in your complete surpassing of competitiveness or reward concerns. You become an omphalos omphal os connecting a fallen world world to the divine. Around you becomes a sacred space.
Love is passion that decays but during the passion a partnership of mutual encouragement and dependency emerges to endure far beyond what passion alone could sustain (passion of a sexual nature nature lasts approximately 18 18 months, most research research shows). The partnership types that remain are various. various. Relating is complementing complementing roles: mentorCopyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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disciple, giver-taker, giver-taker, ruler-subject, proposer-voter, proposer-voter, judge-offender, judge-offender, nude toy-viewer player, player, healer-codependent, winner-loser. winner-loser. Relating is means to an end roles: alien race understanding, finding missing piece, appreciating art object, building a home together, building a belief system (religion, p olitics, eco-stuff etc.) together. together. Relating is partnering: journey partners, building partners, partners, cultivation partners, business partners. partners. Relating is scripted roles: personal savior, savior, savior of humanity, humanity, streams of history, history, data analysis, recipe following. Relating is experience: battle, theatre, comedy, comedy, mystery. mystery. We rule in and rule out kinds of appreciation and contribution contribution of and from others. We channel their messages and contributions into channels, channels, media, types we want now now to receive. They do the same same to us. . The crises of love are crises of when one party outgrows the mutually agreed on story they build mutual care and appreciation around. The same story can affect different people differently because because of their differences of background or different ultimate visions of where they and/or life are going.. Love idealized pretends its one story now is the only story valid or possible; love actualized learns to recognize the limited story it now is based on and its possible evolution into other stories. Love idealized insists on playing one story at a time only as the right one; love actualized learns to multi-task among more and more stories that are more and more diverse as fuller relating evolves.. evolves.. Love is where people erect civilization as a kinder gentler environment for living than the world the natural universe has foisted onto us, without choice or alternative. Love is where people treat people more more nicely than universe treats humankind. . Loving self destructively comes from holding too hard or long to one story basis of love, without counting the cost in terms terms of other stories not explored, benefitted from tried, or grown into. When one story is allowed to blot out all others, self and other destruction is assurred. 1. role of conforming in love: conforming to agreed on story of the relationship 2. role of rebelling in love: rebelling to unthinking extension of one initial story or to imposition of one party’s favored one story instead of supporting plural stories.
Closely related to this but different is enthusiasm. enthusiasm. Life wears us all down. There are weeks weeks and years, sometimes, sometimes, thrown away away because the world is so ugly and life is so hard, mean, and short, that we cannot develop energy energy to engage it. When we see someone in total full throttle, with nothing held back, it seems miraculous to us--are they idiots? can they not see all of life’s drawbacks drawbacks and disappointments? what do they think they are accomplishing by dumping their puny life’s life’s full effort so purely into some one result or direction ultimately to be overwhelmed overwhelmed by the end of the earth and the universe?--we universe?--we ask, while watching them. Their production of energy energy without restraint calls into question our own doubtings and withdrawals from life and engagement with it. They make us take a new look at things. Simply viewing another’s another’s enthusiasm changes people and engages us. Enthusiasm is a kind of human technology, technology, with hardware and software machineries machineries inside people that drive and constrain it. People tend in all situations to mimic each other’s bodily expressed moods and reactions. People tend to interact so that their respective emotions converge more and more as the interaction proceeds. proceeds. The bodily package of how an emotion gets expressed can considerably alter the emotion itself, attenuating or exacerbating it, regardless of the reasons for the emotion and the immediate causes of it. Angry people asked to talk their anger anger in an reasonable tone of voice reliably reliably become less angry, angry, for example. Actors mimicking the gestures of a person find they get the emotions of that person from just doing the gestures in many cases. In interactions we identify the otherness of someone, then incorporate that as our feeling, feeling, then monitor our version of their feelings along with our own feelings in parallel, then step back and reflect on differences differences and similarities thusly experienced. Even slight, entirely false images of a person can so bias how someone someone interacts with them that the other person thusly treated becomes becomes like the false image as the interaction goes on. Men who thought they were talking by phone to beautiful sexy women tried so much harder that the women, in turn, changed into more beautiful beautiful sexy, animated responders. responders. The power of sensing another’s emotion but not mimicking it--some people people can sense others’ emotions but keep distance so the emotions of others do not become their their own. This allows great power when harmful emotions emotions are involved. People can be sensitizers (seeking emotions of others), others), repressors (avoiding them) or alexithymic (denying (denying their own and others’ emotions). Minute emotive steps of drawing near or drawing back in another person are matched if we feel the same same way about them or countered if we do not, so that both close in or draw out from each other in synch. The physical cues of emotion are so subtle that an expressive person can by merely merely sitting beside another person for a minute, infect them with whatever mood they had at the time, without any interaction, or words spoken. If people are so sensitive to emotions of others and so given to mimicking and approaching/drawing-back in synch, then people who choose what to feel and confidently project it in situation after situation, in effect recruit others into the same emotional state. They align others around around the emotions they project. Religious and charismatic charismatic leaders project project strong emotions that align thousands and tens of thousands of others around them, often quite irrationally and self destructively. destructively. Emotional alignment is powerful enough enough that it can bypass much rational, rational, reasoning, moral, investment, investment, past relationship experience and content. 1. role of conforming in enthusiasm--mood is outside in, we are influenced by moods around us, we match them, we conform to them 2. role of rebelling in enthusiasm--power from sensing others’ moods but not copying them leads to dominance, we rebel against moods around us and instead lead them ourselves, having other copy our mood
A quadriplegic I knew was asked what kept kept him going, ten years after his accident took away away all mobility and ability to breathe and be by himself. He said “each time I open my eyes, hear, touch, smell, or taste I can’t put it down; s imply perceiving is such a rich experience that I want to keep doing it; add to that the joy of reflecting on experience and conversing with other people, even contributing to their lives, and I have 99% of what life offers still fully available to me each day. Mobility seemed such a big thing to me when I lost it, but I have had years to adjust and I find now that the hundred daily dangers and sufferings it puts me through really do not add up to enough to decrement the joy of living with sensation, sensation, experience, conversation, conversation, and making a contribution to others.” Beauty comes to us free whenever we perceive. Our perceptual “computers “computers in mind” are vastly beyond what machine machine computers can yet do. Add to that the beauty of reflecting, interpreting, and sharing impressions with others, and doing so in such a way that we solve some of their worries or problems, and you have dual layers of beauty--the layer of automatic machineries in mind and the layer of enriching lives with our impressions. The amazing thing about all artists is, however kinky and limited the beauty beauty they pursue, if they pursue it doggedly and thoroughly with all their might for some years, their accumulated accumulated works inevitably open doors in our lives and minds when we encounter encounter them. We think “I “I never would have done that, thought of that, imagined imagined that, but they have develop and elaborated and understood and re-invented all dimensions of it till it takes my breath away even though I do not really understand where it is coming from and where it is going”. Pollack, the avant-guarde artist said “I climb mountains in my mind; other climb mountains outside the mind”. To latch onto onto one amazing small aspect of the world and follow it up for years till it opens all sorts of ideas and new vistas to others is the amazing amazing fate of most artists. Art and beauty are doorways that make our collective world far bigger bigger than it otherwise would be. Art and beauty attract people as doorways to the unknown attract them--what is behind this door--they seem to ask. There are many ways ways to use beauty to influence--Beautify influence--Beautify to Succeed: beautiful people get more attention and promotion promotion within organizations; Beautify to Attract: beautiful things and people attract attention; Beautify to Befuddle Good Judgement: Judgement: beautiful things and people put us in reverie, get us thinking in ideal terms, pulling us beyond practicalities and compromises of reality; Beautify to Order Chaos: beauty sometimes comes from from reveal/imposing patterns across diverse phenomena phenomena that reduce the diversity of what we see and input; Beautify to Distinguish Qualities and Potentials: beauty often comes from making a character character that something has purer, purer, less encumbered, less filtered, less jumbled, less competed with for attention; Beautify to Make Progency or Enjoy Sex: beauty of person and thing seduces the opposite sex into pleasing the pleasure centers of the brain and/or transmitting genetic endowments to other beings; Beautify to Liberate from Convention: Convention: beauty comes also from revealing revealing a convention that we did not realize we were following and within; Beautify to Express Unique Inner Experience: Experience: beauty comes from stylizing shared external external objects, scenes, and interactions so as to express deep internal experience experience and feelings that may otherwise go unrecognized; Beautify to Reveal Boundaries Boundaries within and between Brain Modules: many artworks and designs fascinate us because they work at the limits within and among hardware modules in the brain revealing to our perception and thought how our mind is divided functionally, how those functions work, and limitations in how we think and perceive coming from those hardware modules in our brains; Beautify to Provide Tools that Put us in Moods we Want: beauty can be used to set our moods, overcoming influences from social relationships, personal stress, background memories, and making present environments that make us more imaginative, imaginative, creative, and productive; Beautify to Reveal Mysteries and Hidden Scales: Scales: beauty can come from turning turning the obvious into the unobvious, from getting us to thin k and mentally operate on larger or smaller size scales than we are used to. 1. role of conforming in beauty--faces with the most average features for a population are the most beautiful 2. role of rebelling in beauty--a novelty element is needed to get human attention so forms of beauty must evolve, deposing prior forms, rebel ling in effect against them
Leaders attract people. people. We like to feel we are are going somewhere. We like to hand some of our personal angst and and uncertainty to a person person less worried than we are. We like to bring scary problems to someone who laughs and handles them easily as though they were the utterly ordinary stuff of daily life (the way we brought such stuff to our parents for years). We like to reduce reduce our anxiety and feeling of responsibility by giving up a bit of our freedom to someone “over” “over” us. We like the ability ability to not change ourselves and our world by letting someone else figure out the hard stuff. We like the option of staying safe and small and unchanged by giving the dangerous and growth and transformation stuff to a leader to do for us. And, there are are people who like taking advantage advantage of people, like us, wanting big deeds but without the risk and costs. costs. They know our cowardice for what it is and are only too willing to take advantage of us, to give us what we want--security with accomplishment, ease with profit, victory with little effort. That this can be done only with lies and illusions is just an unfortunate feature of reality. Why do CEOs in some cultures get 400 times the money that ordinary workers get-it is because, in no small part, t he workers consider that cheap--to get accomplishment without personal growth, change, anxiety, and thinking is worth paying someone 400 times what we get paid. There are a dozen approaches to researching leadership, each with a history of more more than 20 years. All of them provide solid evidence that leaderleadership is a psychic bargain--giving up reality for an easier subset of reality created by the leader for us to live in--in return the leader gets the profit of the gap, the gap between the smaller reality we agree to live in and the real real reality the leader alone alone lives in. People automatically become become leaders themselves when and where they refuse anymore this bargain. Leadership attracts because it offers this bargain--a smaller, smaller, easier, easier, less worry-filled, less responsible world in return for obeying a leader who lives in a large, hard, worry-filled, terribly responsible world. That the smaller world offerred us is called “our new work way”, or “the GE way”, or “total quality”, or given other buzzword justifications, is just the same bargain religions from ancient times have offerred--do things the “right” way (live in a smaller world defined by the leader) and Jesus (the leader) will take care of you. There are types of leadership as well as leadership attributes, summarized here--rationality leadership: image projection, relationship development, resource utilization: project images, find and relate to key persons, mobilize resources resources towards goals; leading by mettle: leaders as energy sources, inspiration inspiration sources, story tellers, follower dream elicitors, courageous fighters, pioneering spirits, unflapable when others are down, super-human heroics; emergent leadership: leadership leadership as emergent phenomena created by interactions in a group, with everyone leader of some function or other, and some leaders of those emergent speciality leaders for some purposes not others; thought leadership: finding sources beyond others, finding patterns beyond others, applying patterns faster deeper deeper farther than than others; emotive leadership: leadership: inventing new forms of care, inviting people beyond their self destructive compacencies and comforts, putting people in touch with all of life and its possibilities beyond smaller worlds individuals inhabit; leadership as magic: leaders do things but hide how they do them so their results results surprise us just as results of magicians hiding their means means surprise us; leadership as illusion: the fundamental attribution error causes people to ascribe outcomes to individual leaders when in reality plural factors or luck were involved (leadership is an illu sion based on mental flaws in individuals or cultures); leadership dichotomy = mastery of situation versus mastery mastery of the people in the situation (mission leaders abuse people healed by follow up maintenance leaders); appearance is realilty = people want to feel like they are going somewhere more than they need or allow themselves to be led somewhere; disbelieve self-generated self importance/self correctness myths = allow genba critiques to affect leader actions. 1. role of conforming in leading--people want to feel like they are going somewhere but resist actual movement, people want to give responsibility to someone else 2. role of rebelling in leading--you serve someone else’s interests when led, you have to rebel to recover and actualize your own interests
Convincing people is a form of influence done by negotiation, reasoning and argument, changing minds ecologically, and making strategy. Negotiation consists of offers and counter-offers, counter-offers, moves and counter-moves, counter-moves, proposals and counter-proposals, counter-proposals, but they are just window dressing. The core of negotiation is the creation creation among the negotiators Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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of a solace system of shared experience, experience, shared suffering, and shared shared fate. Eventually the two parties switch loyalty from representing their own organizations organizations to representing each other to their respective organizations. organizations. When this switch of loyalty does does not occur, agreement fails to materialize. materialize. The major problems problems in negotiations among non-pronon-professionals and naive amateurs is frame blindness. Such unprepared people offer offer messages assuming what the message says to them is what the other party hears or reads. reads. Nothing could be further from the truth. The contexts in which a message is crafted, crafted, implied in what is in the messsage, how it is expressed, and what is omitted omitted from it, are a part of the message. Unfortunately such contexts are not transmitted along with the message and also unfortunately the other party has different contexts so what the message says gets interpreted in their, differing, frameworks/contexts. frameworks/contexts. Learning to transmit frameworks along with messages takes time, practice, openness, and great sensitivity to the experience and values of others. It cannot be done till a solace system community community shared by all parties is set up and experienced. Amateurs to negotiation lack lack all of this. Worse Worse still, amateurs try to “persuade” others, as if words, meaning a lot in their own context, mean mean the same in the unseen contexts of the other party and as if you can intimidate and impress others into submission by showing your savvy, power, power, skill, and persistence. 1. role of conforming in negotiation--both parties together generate crises and resolutions till they share more than they differ, equals conforming to their history together 2. role of rebelling in negotiation--refusals of offers is what pulls the other party out of their usual frameworks and unthinking assumptions
Reasoning and argument argument about evidence, are are the touchstones of college graduates. The purpose of college in most most nations is to switch people from trusting trusting and basing life decisions on opinions to trusting and basing life decisions on evidence. evidence. High schools teach reasoning and argument argument about opinions; colleges upgrade upgrade these rhetorical skills to apply to evidence not mere opinion. Indeed, good colleges colleges actively teach teach the dangers of opinion, whether whether religious or political, political, personal or crowd. The tens of thousands of women, burned and tortured by catholics in the Middle Ages in Europe as witches, the millions of Jews forbidden work and f requently killed in Christian Europe for thousands of years as “killers of Christ”, the 65% of Germany’s population killed in religious wars between Reformation and Catholic, Counter-Reformation and Reformation armies, in a 30 year period, the Holocaust of 6 million Jews killed in murder-factories murder-factories of Germany during the Second World War, War, and like incidents in human history richly illust rate the dangers of opinion. When evidence was required of witch-accusers, witch-accusers, the practice of killing witches died quickly. quickly. Had evidence been required, all the theories that justified mass killings would have evaporated, leaving behind in clear view the ulterior motives of the killers. Evidence, developed by scientific methods requiring replication of results by dis-interested parties elsewhere, elsewhere, is our only protection from witch burning, scapegoat scapegoat mass murder, murder, and the like. When we reason and argue argue about opinion--talk radio in the US in the early 21 century--bigots berate other bigots, bigots, no one is influenced. When we require both parties to justify their opinions with evidence, all all fall silent-they are usually not interested in truth, they want something something easier--they want the world world to be “their way” and evidence gets in the way way of that want. Wanting Wanting the world to be other than it is, is the child’s irresponsible irresponsible dream, the basis of mass murder murder throughout history and religious wars. People are influenced by reminding reminding them of the dangers of opinion and demonstrating to them the lack lack of influence that opinions have--then, have--then, thusly humbled, people are ready to investigate evidence. Influencing people is a two-part two-part process here--getting them to lose interest in distorting truth to make life easier for themselves and to exaggerate their own rightness, then getting them to do the hard work of investigating truth using valid replicable methods of research. 1. role of conforming in reasoning and argument--meeting the difficult requirements of evidence is a kind of conformance 2. role of rebelling in reasoning and argument--when evidence is poor, missing, or misused we rebel
Howard Gardner has a broad and deep model of changing minds in general that I summarize here (Gardner, (Gardner, 2004). Changing minds occurs on several size scales--historic, national/organizational, works of science and art, education, interpersonal, interpersonal, and self change. Gandhi changed the minds of the people of India, giving them, literally, the confidence to assert their own ability to govern themselves in spite of decades of British racism. racism. Changing minds also involves different media--ideas, media--ideas, feelings, associations, concepts, stories, theories, and skills. Changing minds involves deploying diverse intelligences in people--symbolic (linguistic, logical-math), performative (music, spatial, bodykinesthetic, categoric-naturalist), personal (interpersonal, intrapersonal, intrapersonal, existential). The core of changing minds is levers for change--reason, research, resonance (connection to audience), representational redescriptions redescriptions (telling the old story inside the new story), resources and rewards, rewards, real world events, resistances. resistances. Changing minds is work on levers directed at audiences of four types--direct appeal versus indirect appeal, diverse versus homogeneous. You speak to large audiences with your entire life lived, you speak to small ones with specific works you design, you speak to heterogeneous audiences with simple stories, you speak to homogeneous audiences with deep expert stories. Use direct change for short visible impacts and indirect indirect change for long historic impacts. Appeal to second born and young turks within fields. Demystify childhood theories of--matter, of--matter, life, mind, human relations--and adult theories. Find tipping points by reading own experience and biographies of others looking for the 80/20 rule, where small input have huge outcomes. 1. role of conforming in mind changing--messages have to fit into the interests, needs, capabilities of their receivers, messages must conform in order to stick 2. role of rebelling in mind changing--the novelty of a message determines how much of our attention it draws, rebellious messages, countering our predictions, interest us
Strategy influences and changes people. We have all had the experience of being affected by someone’s latest tactic, having ignored it completely, then hearing, incidentally, the overall vision and tactical stream, the strategy, strategy, it furthers and is a part of, and and going “oh ho, so that is what is going on”. Our attitude changes when we find a coherent coherent story and powerful goal behind behind apparently mundane actions. actions. We re-look at the mundane mundane tactics before us, now now from the viewpoint of the ultimate goal and approach. approach. Strategy behind actions opens up frameworks, aims, approaches, and styles of engagement that each, individually, can attract and win respect that individual tactical victories can never on their own win. I was playing ping pong with a friend who who has a weird way of hitting, that that I had often in the past commented commented on, when another friend pointed out to me how that weird way of hitting delayed my reaction just long enough for my friend to always win the point. When I saw the tandem--the tandem--the ultimate goal plus the tactic--my tactic--my reaction was different, different, and a lot more respectful, respectful, than when I saw the tactic alone. The tactic alone was but a curiosity curiosity of style. The tactic plus goal was was quite clever and effective. This is the paradigm paradigm for how strategy influences but but there is more. more. Strategy is often often a matter of giving certain looks, drawing attention certain ways, then then doing the opposite, doing something something else This is magician type magic--the magic--the art of indirection, the slight of hand. hand. Leadership often comes comes down to this too--looking one way and doing the opposite, directing attention one pl ace while crucial battles quietly get fought somewhere else. The self destructive nature of all strategy is as follows: if you expend attention and resources watching competitors, you take investment away from doing well what you are out to do, assurring gaps into which competitors will move. Pure strategy self destructs, always. Designed strategies end up fighting emergent emergent ones--assuming that entire organizations must share one strategy simply forces most strategies, actually in play, underground, where they undermine the winning “leader” one overtly cowtowed to. Designed strategies end up entirely different ones when implemented--the revenge on all those p eople, parties, concerns, stakeholders not consulted fully and involved fully in strategizing is to use whatever role from the winning strategy that floats down to them as cover for doing a different strategy and agenda that they were unable to inject into the strategy formulation process. process. Distortive implementations are the cost of elitist, perfunctory strategy design involvement tactics. Organization mission strategies strategies end up seriously eroded by career strategies--if what the organization direction requires of a person or group hinders it s career ambitions seriously, the organization direction will be used as cover for doing a different strategy and agenda. Where designed strategy gives expression to a fusion o f emergent, organization organization mission, and career strategies, its becomes real, powerful, and and valuable. Where it slights, ignores, or fights with with these other three, it becomes becomes “for show” and the laughingstock laughingstock of all who hear ritual uses of it throughthroughout the organization. Strategy is just another word for choice--having choice--having a strategy means choosing some goals not others, some means not others, some some struggles and challenges not others, some growth growth not others. Having a strategy means means having focus, direction, direction, which means letting letting go of myriad attractive attractive possible foci, directions, directions, and goals. Having a strategy feels poorer than having no strategy but it is more real than having no strategy. Cosmetic strategies are frequent (the meaning meaning of any ad, for example, is the reverse of whatever it says)--many people and groups create strategies to look like something they want others to see, often because putting forth an image is a lot easier than putting forth the same concept as a reality or real capability. Organizations and persons looking like X must be carefully distinguished from organizations and persons actually doing X. Strategies cannibalize existing personal and organizational strengths for the sake of better future ones--strategies do not add to repertoires of capabilities but rather replace old items with newer newer ones. They reduce actual actual present proven profitable capability in order order to produce larger larger better future future capability. capability. Hence, present present success is the primary primary preventor, resistor, resistor, obstacle to, and underminer of strategy. Present strengths fight emergent future ones. Strategy influences us via becoming the environments we live and work in--when our peers or competitors are strategic, they move and focus without regard to our immediate reactions. They have anticipated our reactions and need not change their tactics in response. Our identity, who we choose to be, traps us in hackneyed reactions they have have already developed counters for embedded in current tactics they implement. When our attacks do not sway a competitor’s directions, directions, we are facing strategy. strategy. Strategy influences by turning responses responses into non-responses, so we become decoupled from the reactions of other players. We focus and choose, aim for and march, march, putting up “for show” reactions to the reactions of other parties, but actually, actually, because we have strategy, strategy, we have already anticipated all their reactions, and are actually reacting reacting to entirely other things. Strategy allows peers and competitors competitors to become removed from being our environment for long time periods, allowing us to react, instead, to things they miss or slight or are biased against or unprepared for. 1. role of conforming in strategy--conforming to plan ends up in conflict with conforming to emergents from plan implementation, thus a paradoxic role for conforming in strategy 2. role of rebelling in strategy--we live in the gaze of others, strategy conforms to their expectations as a disguise then does something very different, rebels, as tactical surprise.
Portraying things influences people, regardless of the purpose of the portrayal. We portray things by communicating messages, telling stories, persuading people deliberately, and selling. Communication as a word, is so broad and all inclusive, that we have to specialize it here, to make it worth using. Messages get communicated. communicated. Some of those messages may be persuasions, persuasions, messages deliberately crafted crafted to persuade people of particular truths. Others of the messages communicated communicated may not be deliberately crafted crafted to persuade anyone of anything. It is the latter that I emphasize emphasize in this paragraph. paragraph. What determines whether messages influence people or not. Research has shown that people develop local organizations of ideas inside their minds which organizations constitute embedding ideas in layers of context. People resist other organization of the same ideas, that is, the same ideas put into contexts other than those layered in a certain way in their own minds. minds. In fact, when one truth is found wanting or wrong, people fill the “niche” “niche” in their own mind’s layers layers of context by searching out a similar truth to replace it, rather rather than questionning the contexts that one truth supported in the past. Ideas in minds function more as a stable ecosystem than a fluid adaptive mechanism, in many practical ways. Messages that state things, are always generated by someone having particular contexts around those things, that usually go un-expressed in the message. So messages are context context dependent but messages “communicate” “communicate” message statements statements rather than contexts. This means A in context context M makes a message stating Z but B reads the message message in context N, not M, interpreting Z differently. differently. Getting one message sent to mean the same thing to the sender and the recipient takes a lot of sensitivity, sensitivity, world wisdom, and good judgement. Not a lot of messages meet this standard. Communications, then, as single sendings of messages, do not do much, certainly not conveying of ideas. Rather, communication communication as a two-way relationship between parties not before “in communicommunication” with each other, opens a channel for discovering the unexpressed contexts around messages that determine how the sender and receiver differ in context layers around what they express in message message form. Learning the differences differences in context layering of single ideas ideas is what “communication” “communication” means, in any serious serious sense. This learning is necessarily done by making lots of mistakes--sending wording X thinking it obviously means Y but finding that in A’s context it means M, for example. 1. role of conforming in communicating--messages that acknowledge (conform to) differences in the contexts that generated them and that receive them actually achieve communication 2. role of rebelling in communicating--messages that are not expected, that counter expectations, get attention for we are biased for novelty, rebellious messages get attention
Telling stories can be a substitute for influence. I recently attended a World Congress of Psychology Psychology in Beijing, China. On the club floor of the luxury hotel I chose chose to stay at, famous professors gathered at night and pontificated, taking turns telling stories, each of which indirectly (not too indirectly) revealed, incidentally (not too incidentally), how great they had been been in the past and how great they now were. were. This was “communication” in a particularly vapid way. way. That half a dozen otherwise intellectually capable people would choose to talk at night, in informal settings, to people they had jus t met, in this sti lted, egotistic, self-praising way, indicated a culture of delusional emotive poverty among them, them, I felt. Telling stories stories can be a substitute for influence, indeed. Also, we know, know, telling stories means lying directly--saying things that are untrue. That is Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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not what this paragraph is talking about. Rather here the two fundamental fundamental ways we organize knowledge--declarative knowledge--declarative memory and and episodic memory--are being being discussed, concentrating on the latter. We organize perception, experience, experience, learning, other people, procedures of living in story form--do this first, then that happens, then decide either this or that response and do something else, and so forth. Decades ago scholars like Eliade at the University of Chicago and Campbell at Sarah Sarah Lawrence examined all the myths and religions of the world, finding them all subsets of one cosmic story of personal human psychic growth growth through life from birth to death. death. Recently, Recently, half a century later, other scholars have studied movies, novels, and personal renditions of days lived, some finding 20 fundamental stories, others finding 8, that all stories blend or subset from. This recent research research finds that all all stories tell non-linear surprise types that intrude on lives lived according according to linear expectations expectations and principles. Stories are how how linear estimators talk about living in a non-linear world that continually undoes and surprises t hem. Telling stories is how people set contexts contexts around messages. There is a piece piece of rock, existing in the 21st century. century. It is just rock, but people in Scotland tell stories about about it. Because they tell stories about about it governments have stollen it, people have died defending it, people people had died trying to steal it. It is just rock plus stories. That is the power of story. Story can turn an ordinary ordinary rock, provably an ordinary rock, into something people people give their lives for and and against. Stories are are truly terrifyingly terrifyingly powerful. Many years ago a man read my unpublished book on re-engineering and asked if he could translate a chapter into German and publish it in his book on re-engineering. I agreed and it was done. However, all all the sections of my chapter referring to social movement movement tactics of managing new technologies and technical change change were modified greatly and carefully carefully in his translation, because the German people in general have bad memories of social movements, started by their experience of the Nazi “party” which led the “national socialism movement” that took Germany into World War War II. This is a typical case of the context of the sender, me, differing from the context of the recipient, my German friend and his book market. Stories are how he explained explained to me how and why my social movement movement tactics, parts of the chapter, chapter, had to be modified. He told me stories about the German reactions to uniforms, to martial music bands, to rites and rituals of companies and churches--all negative today because of their use by the Nazi party, decades ago. Stories are how we communicate communicate contexts around message contents. contents. Everything we do comes from a story we tell ourselves, ourselves, each day, day, of what our life is about, of why it is worthwhile opening our eyes in the morning, of what this day has that we can look forward to. Stories get us out of bed and put us back into it each day. The concept of truncated story is vital in understanding story power as a source of influence in lives and societies. A universal story exists, some say, say, and all actual stories are subsets of it. As modern media expose people to dozens of such truncated truncated stories all through life, by the time a person is forty years old, they have seen seen nearly all subsets possible, met all universal story elements, and become bored bored by all further stories told them. The only story left is the story of why a particular subset of universal story elements was selected for any one telling of a story. story. A gradual universal build up of desire for new stories, beyond the universal one that that humans have retold for centuries, is rising in civilization as modern media over-use and over-tell over-tell all traditional story elements. A hundred years ago people could go to China, Bali, Arabia for new stories but today that possibility is gone too--their traditions weave in and out of Western and Southern and all others in global cities and media. Setting changes but disappointment in love is disappointment in love, rage at self is rage at self, youthful hubris is youthful hubris--the setting differences entertain no one today today.. We are are civilizationally sated with repeated story elements. One version of the universal story is the insight story--all stories are subsets of the insight process: process: a problem or flaw in life found, engagement engagement alternating with detachment, accumulating failed solution attempts till one despairs of ever getting to a solution using one’s current frameworks, frameworks, break away to expose oneself to entirely new frameworks, till recontextings of problem elements and indexed failed solution attempts reversed into the spec of what eventual solutions must handle reveals, like a punchline of a joke, a sudden new context that itself reveals the entire entire solution, encumbered with noise that must be cleared cleared away. away. Earlier in this article a full 25 step model of the insight process, from research studies of it, was presented. Another version of the universal universal story is the hero’s hero’s journey--in two parts: the outward journey from from insightless comfort to insight, the return journey from insight to improvement of lives. Journey Out steps are: call to adventure (life is dead), refusal of the call (the external enemy is really internal = fear), first threshold (battle, crossing, fall from grace, etc.), journey in the wild (what you are does not work), tests (trying all we know and can do, but it is not enough, new abilities called for), helpers (show us growth is possible), temptress (sex and pleasure are dead ends), magic charm or false wizard (power is dead end), supreme ordeal (face to face with 16 anxieties of existence), elixir theft (proving our grown new abilities work), second threshold (trying out and proving our newly grown abilities); Journey Back steps are: refusal of return (temptation of living in mystical but u seless ecstasy), flight from heaven (new abilities called for in journey home), rescue from within (discovery of new abilities from Journey Out in us that we were not aware of), return struggle for acceptance (innovator’s struggle of fighting enemies of change), third threshold (trying all we can tolerate = facing the ugliness of the world), exlixir benefits renew the world (befriended anxieties used as new powers of us and story. Life role archetypes encountered in the universal story include: unawakened self, herald, false mentors, mentor, minions, threshold guardian, allies, shapeshifter, trickster, trickster, clown, shadow, awakened self, committed self, hero Basic story dynamics include: all the world is fails us = boredom, all we are fails us = call to grow; hope-despair alternation as alternation of engagement and detachment, accumulating failed solution attempts, despair as all we are and know fails us becomes doorway to new framework, new framework allows solution to emerge, possibly from pieces already examined examined and thrown away because because we failed to recognize worth worth in or among them Story packages are: are: setting, characters, plot type, subplots density and interactions, narration type, narration types interactions, calculative residue residue work left for audience imaginative fill in. Story impact types are: I am not alone (others share my most unique and personal and secret experiences/fears/tragedies), there is hope (I have acted more weakly than others facing the same challenges), the valueless if valuable (what I discard, avoid, hate, is my salvation if only I will change attitude), friends are enemies and enemies are friends (what I now believe, want, and associate with is designed to prevent growth and future happiness for me), discovery of my own story (I have been living a story others created for their own purposes and benefits, I can instead invent and lead my my own story). A third version of the universal universal story is the anxieties of existence story. The dimensions of culture culture model earlier in this paper includes 16 anxieties of existence of this third version. Anxieties break out into composed ordinary life, life, disrupting things, then the story evolves as attempts to put the genie back back into the bottle, at first without recognizing its power and source, and only later, reluctantly, by recognizing it as a powerful accurate description of an unavoidable dimension of human existence that must be dealt with daily, or fled from at great cost--emotional cost--emotional impoverishment and crippling emotional fragmentation. fragmentation. A fourth version of the universal story is the stratified responding story. story. Stratified responding is how the mind mind goes through layers of response to anything perceived: perceived: noticings, feelings, patterns, remindings, associations, interpretings, decidings. Stories go through these same stages, fractally, on several embedded size scales. 1. role of conforming in story telling--all stories have the insight process form (conform to it) of alternating engagement and detachment, addressing cost/benefit problems or existential anxiety problems 2. role of rebelling in story telling--the insight process form of all stories includes a person impacted by something so that they cannot continue normal daily life anymore and must venture out beyond culture and custom into unknown lands, rebelling against culture and custom
Persuasion is the deliberate use of communication, messages, stories to get people to do something they otherwise would not do. There are a lot of assignments that are dangerous, boring, and and unattractive in global companies. Managers, in part, part, exist in order order to persuade people to take on on such tasks. They can persuade them in a lot of ways-telling them that their sacrifice in taking this assignment will be remembered by higher managers and they will later in their career be favored for having thusly sacrificed (some people are actually naive enough to believe such stories), telling them that their career thus far has had just a li ttle too much comfort and bliss, ease and access to it, th ey have never really been tested tested yet, so this hard assignment is needed to prove their worth (people (people are naive enough to believe this sort of story too). too). There are lots of ways to persuade. Cialdini made a career career by identifying ways, in business, business, that people influence each other, namely, namely, selling, investing, proposing, advertising, and the like, and researching common common factors among among all of them. He came up with six factors, plus a few possible others, and published a number number of best-selling book book elucidating how he found these factors and and how others could use them to increase ability to influence. influence. His factors are given here: here: reciprocate--do a favor first to indebt people to you consistency--entice people to commit publically to X so they keep to X for maintaining their repute validate--get friends and reference group members of a person doing X then he will follo w (we do what people like us do) liking--be likable and do X, or get people that person A likes to do X, people do what the people they like do authority--find whom A sees as having authority and get him to do X, and A will follow scarcity--make person A think X is rare, special, temporary, or will not any longer be available automaticity--many judgements are made automatically automatically unconsciously without rational judgement, but they can be influenced by the above nonetheless perceptual contrast--expose a person first to a poor version of X then to X and they will see the second X as better than usual articulation--when asking A for X provide a “because” reason rejection then retreat to smaller request--equals percept contrast plus reciprocation principles. 1. role of conforming in persuasion--mood is outside in so we are always adjusting our feelings to what surrounds us, conforming to it 2. role of rebelling in persuasion--when we tire of adjusting to moods around us we change moods for others around us, rebelling till others conform to our own mood
Selling is one of the primary skills of all occupations. There are almost no occupations that do not need and use lots of it. Tragically many people reach reach forty or more years old before discovering this. They have developed tremendous tremendous ideas or capabilities years ago without much to show for it, all all because they lack the intuition of when when and to whom and how to sell ideas, possibilities, projects, and capabilities. capabilities. Selling takes place in a context of financial exchange and markets with competitors. competitors. That makes it different than other forms of influence. Selling is portraying why, relative relative to competitor offerings, at the asked for price, a combination combination of features is best for a combination of customer needs. However, interviews with really expert expert salespersons show something something different. Quite a few salespersons salespersons succeed in selling because because the people they they sell to like having them around. around. They buy their continued visits visits or presence by purchasing purchasing whatever it is they sell. They buy the person using using the product as how to “pay for” the presence of the person. Perhaps most expert salespersons have polished, developed, developed, improved, corrected, corrected, perfected a tremendous charm charm and presence to others (customers). (customers). There is, about the world’s best salespersons, something absolutely mesmerizing, entrancing, that sends chills d own one’s spine as certain haircut moves do--shivers of being served and attended to specifically, specifically, concretely, concretely, minutely by someone else. The customer in such encounters ends up looking hard for some way or excuse to buy the product, just to prolong the trance or get another chance at it from a return visit. Selling is a peculiar intimate mating dance before a stranger, the customer. customer. It is the entrancing of a stranger by well honed moves that, though all involved know they are rehearsed and not spontaneous gestures, strike the stranger intimately, emotionally, making them feel attended to and served in specific and and great detail. The art of selling is not a phrase; it is the literal truth for selling selling is nothing but dance, ritual, trance, and and the tingling afterglow of encounter, of being served. Some salespersons, inside the trance moment of selling, take over the customer’s mind, plans, plans, and life, for a moment, arranging a few things differently, differently, to serve the customer and let him experience experience life differently and possibly better. better. The customer lets the salesperson take them over, the way a ravished ravished girl opens herself to a love-at-first-sight’s love-at-first-sight’s kiss. The intimate shivering attentiveness of it all is so pleasurable and rare, that that it is worth the sometimes excruciating waste of buying the salesperson’s salesperson’s product. You can actually watch a salesperson investigate investigate you, in front of you, face to face, finding your red red flags (to avoid) and your green flags (hot buttons to push), then systematically manipulating you via them, without blocking or stopping, because of the intimate charm with with which it is done. You are letting him work you over, willingly, willingly, hypnotically giving yourself over to his attentions. Selling is ravishment. 1. role of conforming in selling--messages have to stick when selling so they must fit the daily needs, interests, and capabilities of their receivers, they must conform to that 2. role of rebelling in selling--determining who buys requires investigation beyond (rebelling against) common biases and conventions, so super salespersons ignore common biases and instead ask to ascertain very very specific “tells” that are the signature of “he who is likely to buy”
Growth of persons and hence of their their groupings, is something ignored by all the organization organization change and management management improvement books and methods methods published. There is a strange imbalance of everyone wanting to change the world, processes, processes, industries, work ways, without in any way changing any people, especially themselves. There is a Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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related strange imbalance--it is precisely the people who want to most change other people, who want to get other people to change the most, who refuse to change themselves or simply fail, again again and again to enact enact even the simplest changes changes in themselves. This asymmetry of change--wanting change--wanting to change everything except people and wanting to change everyone except yourself--defines yourself--defines a boundary of great phoniness in management, leadership, and the like as practiced by real people in reality. There are four distinct approaches to growing persons. First is demystifying the world, undoing unconscious trust in particular particular social roles and institutions put there in us as we grew up by parents and communities. Second is psychic growth. growth. There is a consistent consistent method of learning that something about who we we are blocks us reaching our goals, despairing despairing of progress as long as we maintain our present identity, identity, cutting off something in our identity we used to depend on greatly, greatly, learning to manage “have” it rather than “be” it. Third is response stopping. This is deliberate campaigns campaigns of identifying automatic automatic responses that “are “are us” and stopping them them before they reach full expression, substituting other responses we prefer or have designed. Finally, there are bridge communities--learning communities--learning that our close family and friends are always the biggest blocks to our personal growth-they have built profitable accommodations accommodations with who we already are and will have to do a lot of emotional emotional work if we change now. now. When we change, we have to find bridge communities who will welcome our new attitudes and behaviors, taking us in just when our p rimary group of friends and family is rejecting our changes. People grow by taking back power over them that they unconsciously automatically give to social roles and institutions outside of them. They learn to automatically give, for example, power over them to physicians, policemen, political leaders, bosses at work, spouses, teachers and the like while growing up as children. Their mothers tell them things like “physicians are people people to help keep you healthy healthy and fix you when you you become sick”. As you grow up, for each of these things things you unconsciously learned, for for each of these powers of yourself that you transfer, unconsciously, to particular roles and institutions as automatic trust and compliance, you encounter a deeply disappointing or disillusioning situation. You discover, for for example, that the physician you chose was was not working to help your health at all, but optimized everything everything so as to pull the most money out of you from you and from health health insurers. Your health got hurt for the sake sake of physician income increases. This kind of disillusioning event happens to everyone-it is what populates and marks the passage passage to adulthood for us all. People who have not, in this way, way, demystified their world, are dangerous. People who have not seen how others who present themselves as sharing an interest with us, or wanting to help us , actually have hidden self interests at odds with our interests, trust as adults, putting life and death amounts of trust into social roles and institutions guaranteed guaranteed to betray that trust eventually. eventually. It is better to be betrayed early early when what gets invested is of less consequence and gravity. gravity. Demystification is a painful painful passage to adulthood but it is absolutely necessary--no demystification, no adult. People demystified may may never thank whatever it is that caused their demystifications, for they may never imagine what continued naive trust might have produced as a huge disaster ten or more years hence when issues of more gravity were at stake. Yet early demystification is a wonderful service for all who would be adults without crippling injuries and psychic traumas. traumas. 1. role of conforming in demystifying the world--you conform to how you were raised and what you unconsciously learned, going over it consciously to spot power you learned as a child to give to others over you without thinking, to spot trust you learned to automatically generate in others, assuming they had your own interests at heart (wrongly and naively) 2. role of rebelling in demystifying the world--you rebel against all the automatic trust inside you that leads you to assume others have your interests at heart when experience tells you they have hidden self interests and manipulate you to optimize their wellbeing not yours.
Psychic growth was modeled by researchers researchers by various stage models. models. In the late 20th century a few researchers researchers got irritated by all the various stage models and their superficial differences from each other. other. They examined them all together looking for common patterns, and most of all, for a common mechanism of psychic growth--a common experience causing one to move move from one stage to the next “higher” (more (more adult) one. What they found was despair as the doorway doorway to growth, only when something about who a person is, blocks an important goal that person wants to accomplish, again and again, till that person despairs of every attaining that goal as who they now are--only then does a person have the chance chance to grow psychically. psychically. At that point of despair, of giving up on all that they they “are” in their present identity form, form, the loosen hold on what they emotionally depend on in their identity. They experiment with sloughing first one part of their identity that they have up to now always depended on for emotive support, and then another, till they find a part, that when sloughed, opens the way to solving the blockage towards that goal that put them into despair. despair. With a new identity, identity, minus that one part, they can reach their goal. Instead of “being” that one part sloughed, they now “have” it, that is, manage it, from a distance as if it were outside of them emotionally. emotionally. Take fathers. If you listen to your father tonight and take any of his opinions opinions and suddenly thoroughly attack it, what what is his response? If he defends his idea idea and gets angry that you attacked it, he “is” “is” his ideas--you attack his ideas you attack his “self”. People generally out grow grow this stage in teenage years. They learn to have ideas, ideas, that, if data shows them doubtful, they drop in favor of more likely to be true ideas, supported by better evidence. If you attack their ideas, they wonder wonder about whether you are right or not, rather than attacking you back. This process--goal attainment repeatedly blocked blocked by part of who you are, despair over all that you are blocking your goal, goal, loosening loyalty to all that you are, trial sloughing of first one then another part of your identity, finding a part that when sloughed opens the way to goal attainment, learning to have, that is, manage that part rather than be that part--is how each stage of psychic growth is entered and left. Since the doorway to psychic growth is despair, this feels negative negative too. People continually brought to despair over who they are do not, on the face face of it, seem to be happy. happy. This is wrong, however. however. People brought to this sort of of despair again and again are among among the very happiest people people alive, research research shows. They depend on so much much less than the rest of us for their happiness, managing so many parts of life that that others unconsciously depend on and get heatedly defensive about. There are so many many situations and remarks that do not not bother them but bother the rest of us, that they walk through the world calmly insouciantly while we worry and defend. defend. Nevertheless, cities that acceleraccelerate such psychic growth do it by accelerating too, despair. People inexperienced in or unaware of the later stages of psychic growth may take such despair as a bad thing, fear it and flee it, and fear fear citylife because of it. They err but it is easy to understand their mistake. 1. role of conforming in personal growth--we grow by learning to fit in to more and more parts of the world 2. role of rebelling in personal growth--we grow by learning that fitting in to parts of the world dissatisfies, is not enough, so we learn to rebel, to make the world conform to us.
Response stopping is a primary activity of people who grow. grow. You cannot, in fact, grow as a person in any dimension without response stopping. We are all experts at all sorts of procedures we learned and automated automated while growing up, that, serve us badly when outside the contexts of childhood and where and when we grew grew up. Nothing is more laughably tragic than seeing a forty or more year old body inhabited by a teenage mentality or set of habits and skills, yet this is common. Response stopping is when a perperson gets frustrated and angry enough, at all the automatic habits inside them, that they watch themselves in certain situations like a hawk, and pounce on the first signs of a response type they have that they hate and want to extirpate. They stop the response early, early, and slow down responding, and switch to a new response that they prefer. prefer. At first this feels entirely artificial and is done slowly and haltingly, but just a few days of practice suffices to turn this whole process--response monitoring, response provoking situation noticing, response nascents noticed, response stopped, response slowed, new response selected, new response executed--into something itself smooth and automatic. People grow by switching responses responses after noticing and stopping responses responses they no longer like in themselves. themselves. This avenue to personal growth, starts with hating a response typical of you. Again this is a negative emotion, essential at the start of personal growth--no growth--no hatred for one of your habitual responses, responses, no personal growth. Cities that promote this hatred of your habitual responses, help you immensely by getting more growth out of you faster, but it feels negative. 1. role of conforming in response stopping--we notice and catch our own conformings in response stopping 2. role of rebelling in response stopping--we stop our conforming responses and substitute novel responses, rebelling against our own past habits, in response stopping
Bridge communities are essential because the primary resistors of all forms of personal growth are our friends and family family,, called our “primary group”. They have the most intimate and most in number relationships built up with us and have the most investment, therefore, to lose if we change who we are and how we are. All self change, therefore, entails huge loneliness as our primary group abandons us or attacks us for trying to change. Bridge communities are the people who save us at such times by welcoming the new self we have chosen and and are building. They offer us companionship, engagement, engagement, collaboration, intimacy, intimacy, and emotional emotional support just as our primary group takes all these things away. away. We switch from our primary group group to our specially found and selected bridge community community whenever we change personally personally in a big way. No bridge community found, no lasting lasting personal change. Again, personal growth comes only when those closest to us get get really angry, angry, disappointed, or hostile to us. No resistance from them, no search for a bridge community, community, no social support for our new new behaviors or attitudes, no change. Cities that accelerate personal growth expose expose us to more troubling times with our primary group. That feels negative but is positive in overall outcome. Psychopaths have reduced what they emotionally depend on to zero, they “have” all that they are and “be” nothing at all. This allows them to ruthlessly pretend to be whatever other gullible people expect while manipulating others till they are destroyed, destroyed, for the sake of the psychopath’s psychopath’s wants, however trivial. Psychopaths are the end point of psychic growth as defined above, it would seem. seem. In societies that accelerate the above defined defined type of psychic growth, quite a few psychopaths are are produced, so much so, that entire cultures of management end up optimized for and around them--psychopaths are more attracted to them and more successful in them than mentally healthy people. Other societies add an ingrediant to the above psychic growth process--what Confucius called “li”, translated as “benevolence” in English, or what Buddhists called “compassion” in English. As a person grows psychically, psychically, learning that one after another part of what he depended depended on as his identity is an illusion, the removal of that illusion, reveals “benevolence” and “compassion”. “compassion”. That is what is left as egotism, concern with self, selfishness, selfishness, the continual worries generated by our minds, minds, the continual categories generated by our thoughts are sloughed as “in the way” of our goals, as as we grow psychically. psychically. In Western Western cultures, as what is emotionally depended depended on shrinks, switching “be” things to “have” things, all that is revealed is a smaller identity of things we emotionally depend on. In Eastern cultures, as what is emotionally depended depended on shrinks, switching “be” things to “have” things, what is revealed is benevolence to all life and compassion for all living things. Without the Eastern Eastern tradition, psychic growth tends, natunaturally, in the West, West, toward psychopathology. psychopathology. To not be encumbered by emotionally defended defended parts of a big self, without direct direct humbling experience of the the fellowwonderfulness of all life and the obligation to give expression to your own good will to all live in everything you be and are, a powerful, abstract, cut off ghost results, not a full person. Most of the people I know have experienced in the give and take, the to and fro of intense city living, the regular appearance of psychopaths as parents, kids, teachers, bosses, and other roles in society. Cities expose people to huge repertoires of values, traditions, cultures, experiences, challenges, challenges, questions, frameworks--that frameworks--that again and again make tiny one’s own views, views, origins, aims, and present present self and circumstances. We are like pebbles on a beach beach eroded a bit as each wave wave washes over us, getting smaller smaller and smoother, till we are almost almost nothing at all. Without the escape from “being “being our thoughts” and “being the ‘I’ that is behind our eyes” we fail to directly encounter compassion compassion and benevolence. Cities erode people into psychopathology psychopathology unless they can escape escape from being their thoughts and being the ego behind their eyes. If they do the latter, latter, compassion and benevolence fill the void created by eroding what we depend depend on and trust as our “self”. Western societies worship “intelligence” and “cleverness” “cleverness” and “brilliance” of mind so much that they prevent sloughing “being our thoughts” and “being the ‘I’ that is behind our eyes”, thereby, preventing preventing compassion and benevolence filling the void as our self shrinks. At some point, to grow into a healthy being, you have to grow beyond beyond your own culture and its traditions about about what a self is. You have to escape the way your own entire civilization and tradition has taken a part of consciousness and life to be all of consciousness and and life. Self development inevitably is growing beyond all that your own culture and civilization and tradition offer. 1. role of conforming in bridge communities--we choose a community new to us, people supporting a new version of us that we just invented, we conform to that new community 2. role of rebelling in bridge communities--we rebel against our old community of friend and family who resist us making fundamental changes in our selves
Mental influence includes precision of thought, recontexting thought, social extensions of mind, and form formss of realization and reflection. We influence people and systems when we make thought precise, change change the contexts around thoughts, socially extend our minds, and realize realize things by careful reflection on our mental mental experiences. These mental forms of influence have been largely ignored in research on personal influence, because, I believe, some people find it hard to imagine that merely mental or th ought content things could greatly influence people, systems, situations, and outcomes. outcomes. Napoleon at Waterloo Waterloo nearly won, but the ground was soft, making his cannon shots sink not bounce, his right hand man was exhausted from all the death and destruction of French armies experienced in his retreat from Russia, there was a slight rise behind which BritCopyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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ish troops were safe from Napoleon’s artillery, Napoleon’s Napoleon’s opponent commander, Wellington, Wellington, was operationally very tested and competent and more than capable of fi nding a slight advantage and using it to route Napoleon’s Napoleon’s overall effort. Napoleon knew all these things, in the sense of having having mentioned them to others and having others discuss them with him. However, he did not know them in other senses. He did not know them altogether; he did not see them interacting; he did did not see them massing massing up enough to become larger than his personal adaptability in battle. One of them was physical, soft ground; another was psychic, an discouraged commander; commander; a third was physical, the slight rise protecting the British; a fourth was biographical, an opposing commander of tested tested operational excellence. In the early campaigns that had so impressed Europe Europe with France’s might, things were simpler, simpler, less multi-dimensional, in particular battles. Traditional European training and traditions was up against non-traditional updated French innovations in warfare. warfare. Napoleon coordinated his assets assets to maximize discouragement discouragement in his enemies. enemies. The detailed carefulness carefulness of Napoleon’s Napoleon’s training of himself and his troops executed his psychic strategies perfectly. perfectly. As time wore on, however, however, Napoleon the proven hero, the mythic figure, figure, conducted battles, with less detail and less care. As a result soft ground, a tired commander, commander, a little rise in land, and an excellent opportunist combined to defeat defeat him. Had Napoleon thought of each dimension--physical, dimension--physical, psychic, biographical--and maintained maintained the detailed care of his first battles--victory would have been his. However, he could not think multi-dimensionally, multi-dimensionally, in the end, and he could not think in detail in the end, and he could not care for detail in the end. He failure was at least a failure of thought. Failures of thought determine determine world history; that that is one reason to pay serious attention to mental sources of influence. Precision influences. It does this four ways. Distinctions when when made, made, influence. influence. Patterns when recognized, recognized, influence. changes, influence happens. When disciplines are intensified, in amount, timing, location, energy energy per unit, influence occurs.
When the size size scale on which people operate
Particular distinctions have great power and ability to influence. When France and the US separated church from state, in their respective constitutions, they were making a distinction. This distinction forced government out of the lives of citizens citizens in myriad ways that government had intervened intervened when religious groups had state power (from (from shutting down stores on Sundays, and Fridays, and Saturdays, Saturdays, to whipping women publically for premarital sex). As government intervention based on moral beliefs beliefs of a dominant religious group shrank, the void was filled by private competition among religious groups, none of whom had access to government power to promote their particular beliefs. When religious groups thusly competed via private power contests, each religion had to show some evidence that its beliefs actually worked, when when put into practice. This was a heavy burden since many religions religions were formed precisely to avoid testing beliefs with with experiments and evidence. The people wanting religion wanted it, in part, so they could avoid experiments and testing ideas for validity and reliability. People wanted certainty in an uncertain uncertain world. People wanted absolute absolute power not partial human power. People wanted eternal eternal virtue, “they the elected” elected” and eternal punishment for those who lived differently differently “the devil filled infidels”. People without power and influence influence wanted pure unadulterated rightness--God guaranteed superiority above all other people, forever. forever. Without government power, power, religious groups had to persuade rather than command, influence rather rather than dominate, compete rather rather than monopolize. They could not assume their own truthfulness but had to observe it, demonstrate it, prove it, in competition with other religious groups. The simple distinction between church church and state, ended up vastly eroding eroding religions overall, as one after after another of them failed to be be able to provide evidence, experiment, experiment, and proof of the truthfulness, validity, validity, and reliability of their ideas. Some religious groups long to return to government government power behind religion, for such power would allow them to determine and control, run and influence things without having to first prove their ideas were true, valid, and reliable. Hannah Arendt made a distinction between liberty and freedom. Liberty, freedom freedom from, and freedom, freedom for, for, were used by her to explain the entirely different outcomes of the American, French, French, and Russian revolutions, to explain the difference between between power and violence, to explain how evil could could be entirely banal. Liberty was people departing from past practices practices into a no man’s man’s land between the no longer and the not yet. yet. Freedom was such liberated people people together making and keeping keeping promises to one another, till, entirely new social social institutions emerged from their interactions, beyond beyond anything they had initially intended or planned. Freedom was an event that emerged emerged from liberated people cooperating; liberty was a departure from the past without a future to go to. All three revolutions achieved liberty, via a war of liberation, however, however, freedom, though it emerged in the French and and Russian revolutions, was crushed by forces wanting central control in the name of poverty poverty and oppression. Only in the American revolution case, she said, did liberty lead to freedom that was not crushed in the name of ending poverty, in part because only in the American case, was there less poverty to begin with--land being huge and and plentiful and not controlled by aristocrats. aristocrats. Single distinctions can have huge influence influence on both action and and thought. 1. role of conforming in making distinctions--making a new distinction is not conforming to anything outside us, it is, if conforming at all, following our new ways of seeing reality 2. role of rebelling in making distinctions--when we make a distinction, we rebel against how others cut up the world, we distinguish what they do not
Pattern recognition is not easy. easy. Patterns can be there for thousands of years but be missed by everyone. Patterns usually appear amid amid much clutter and noise, so spotting them involves distinguishing noise from figure, image from clutter, clutter, shape from junk. Creators, for example, not infrequently are people who see what others see but but are able to detect patterns in it that are hidden by noise for all other observers. observers. In the history of science seeing the pattern in the orbit orbit of planets around our sun took thousands of years, with some pattern being seen and hundreds of years elapsing before profounder profounder patterns being seen. Seeing the orbits themselves was solved early--it was seeing pattern pattern in those confusingly shaped orbits that was difficult difficult and took so long. Family therapy is a field where experts walk into a family having trouble trouble and by spotting patterns instantly reorient everyone and rapidly rapidly produce solutions. This does not automatically or always always happen but it happens frequently enough enough to serve as a demonstration demonstration of the power of pattern recognition to fundamentally fundamentally improve lives rapidly. rapidly. Such a family therapist at at the University of Michigan, that I observed observed working (through one way glass in a gradgraduate class) exposed within an hour life-long patterns of talking and judging others, coming from how the parents of the family-in-trouble had been themselves parented, asking the parents “where did this way of talking come from?” “how long have you been talking talking this way?” “when you see X how do you typically respond?” “what you say about how you respond differs from what what you see in this videotape of your actual responses today--how exactly?” exactly?” The father was trapped, trapped, thusly, into admitting that his behavior was hidden by his images of his behavior, not expressed by it or captured by it. His words hid from himself what he did, though other members of the family saw the gap with crystal clarity. clarity. Recognizing patterns in who and what you are and do can take decades--the decades--the noise of your own motives for hiding, avoiding growth, avoiding truth and the like can be so great. Just as family members lie to themselves about themselves, themselves, hiding patterns in obfuscating idealizations, distortions, and outright lies, so cities and industries can use talk to hide not express, avoid not confront, coast coast not grow. Recognizing patterns in your own behavior as as an institution is as hard for groups as it is for individuals. Route 128 around Boston failed in competing with Silicon Valley, Valley, California California around Stanford but denied this for decades, hence, hence, prolonged its inferiority. It took overwhelming evidence before the “obvious” pattern differences differences in their behavior were acknowledged within route 128 firms. Organizations outside, however, however, had seen the pattern differences for decades. decades. East coast business culture--suits not T-shirts, T-shirts, elite managers not egalitarian egalitarian “in the same cubicles as everyone else” managers, managers, general management management educations from MBAs not technical educations, “money is everything” not “product is everything”, business model innovations not technology innovations, punish employees who move or share info versus l earn from employees who move and share info--condemned equal investments in route 128 firms to producing much less than such investments in Silicon Valley Valley firms. Once such patterns got recognized huge changes in route 128 culture started up, with large constituencies seeing that culture change was no longer just optional. Admitting that something in your identity, who you are, blocks blocks achieving your goals, should be familiar to readers of this article--it is just psychic growth dynamics appearing in group form. Important patterns, sometimes, sometimes, cannot be recognized at all till personal or group identity changes in fundamental fundamental “psychic growth” ways. 1. role of conforming in pattern recognition--the enemy of pattern recognizing is preconceived ideas and unconscious filtering, we must NOT conform to see patterns 2. role of rebelling in pattern recognition--we project what we already know too automatically so seeing patterns requires keeping options open, rebelling against our own tendencies to see only what we already know or expect
Much of scientific and technology progress comes from changing the scales at which we observe and operate. Nanotechnology is the most direct and obvious example but DNA is just as good an example, as is our finding of ways to shift nucleons inside atomic nuclei the way we earlier shifted electronic around atomic nuclei so we could harness the power that drives stars for human ends (like blowing up the entire human populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). In each case, we took operations we knew and applied them or strong analogs of them to larger or small size scales. We do not usually talk about or realize it but innovation in human systems, psychic systems, and social arrangements also often come from applying applying familiar operators to smaller or larger larger size scales. Modern tools are continually making the doing of this easier--the easier--the internet has globalized many a local business, making it cheap and convenient convenient to ship abroad instead of only to local markets, for one obvious example. example. An immensely important part of this point, that operations applied to different different scales influence things--is things--is complexity tampering. This is an analog with statistical tampering, tampering, made famous by by the total quality guru, Dr. Deming, Deming, in the late 20th century. He showed how managers, ignorant of the statistical nature of variations in work process outcomes, took all variations to be caused by bad humans, so they blamed blamed and punished workers, thereby making making the variations much much worse. worse. That they did this for centuries without change change indicates how insulated from measurement measurement of the results of their “managerial actions” they institutionally insist on being. He showed that approximately 85% of the variation in work process outcomes came from how the work processes were designed (by managers) not how they were executed by workers, and the Japanese, by following Deming’s dicta precisely, demonstrated the power of his insights to destroy competitor industries around the world (for example, Toyota’s virtually inevitable vanquishing of General Motors in the early 21st century). Statistical tampering was intervention intervention in work processes without knowledge of the statistical statistical nature of variations there. Complexity tampering is similar, similar, it is intervention in work processes without knowledge of how th e cause of problems seen and needing to be fixed is usually at a smaller scale, caused by myriad interactions of small scale basic units in the system, not caused caused by anything at the size level at which the problem itself appears. Managers, by intervening intervening on the size scale level level at which problems appear, merely merely move the same free energy around from one problematic problematic appearance to another, never never getting rid of the free energy in the system. If, instead, managers operate to solve a problem at the one or two l evels smaller size scale where interacting populations of units cause things, the problems go away entirely along with the free energy in the system that causes causes them. In many cases, problems cannot be solved solved at all at the size scale scale upon which they appear to humans. Urban housing is a great example, presented earlier in this paper. paper. All sorts of anti-crime, community policing, video surveillance, events and investigations failed to save huge housing developments-they were actions on the same size scale where where the problems of crime and poverty and anomie appeared appeared among residents. Instead, redesign of housing projects into a format of a few town houses surrounded by parks, lawns, local convenience shops, and community service agencies--de-massifying the housing arrangements--by creating interactions and bonds among residents solved problems that overwhelmed people in giant high rises. It was the lack of bonds between residents that was the causative level, not the lack of policing, which was a response response at the level at which the problem problem appeared, not at the level level that caused it. This is one important example of of how changing size scale influences systems greatly, nearly everywhere in society. 1. role of conforming in changing of scales--on the new scale, quite normal functions are applied, which, if not conforming, is at least, not a radical difference 2. role of rebelling in changing of scales--the change in changing scales, is working at far larger or smaller scales than others, rebelling against default views and ways
Latent in how people live and work daily, are all sorts of personal and cultural assumptions about how much of something to do, how fast to d o something, what quality of outcome satisfies, and what sorts of things to do. These remained unexamined assumptions, often often lifelong for most people. For example, there is a cognitive list limit--if limit--if you go to a culture and ask people what they are planning to do this weekend, or what is good about some movie they saw, or like questions on any topic at all, there is a typical number of items they mention in responding. In Germany that number is 7.1 items, items, in Japan it is 5.5, in the USA it is 3.0. 3.0. This “cognitive list limit” represents represents the level of detail required by habits in daily life of that culture. Similarly there is a social index index level, measuring how many many of the top five needs, interests, and capabilities you accurately accurately know of your primary group (close friends and family) of about 15 people (worldwide average) and of your acquaintance group of 150 people (worldwide average). average). In Germany it is 54% for primary groups and 2% for acquaintance groups, in Japan it is 11% for primary groups and 9% for a cquaintance groups, in the USA it is 11% for primary groups and 7% for acquaintance groups. There are a great number of such measures measures that differ among cultural groups, among generations, among among families, among professions, and between experts and novices novices in various fields. Each measures a discipline of of living or working in daily life. A major, extremely power form of influence, involves changing these disciplines. Since almost no one measures them and since almost no one has consciously thought about them, much much less manipulated them, this is a competition-less activity--no one does this most of the time in most of world history. history. We can, however, however, find entire civilization-changing small groups, who did did this sort of thing-changed these basic parameter disciplines of their civilization and as a result their civilization changed fundamentally. fundamentally. The Benedictines, among dozens of Catholic monastic Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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orders, changed the relation between work and and food that was common for thousands of years up through the end of the Roman empire. empire. They said “no work no food” for all members of their order, order, thereby inventing the “job” as we came to know it all over the world today in cultures not at all related to Christianity. By in the abstract, in general, and in principle eliminating the possibility of getting food without work, work, they undermined class systems everywhere. everywhere. It took over 1500 years but the Benedictines Benedictines set in motion the change in daily discipline that ended up causing causing the Labour Party in Britain in the early 21st century century to eliminate their own House of Lords Lords in Parliament. Changing any of the fundamental fundamental disciplines of daily living and work work has civilization-wide implications. This is influence writ very large indeed. Just one quite other example, is needed here, to drive the practicality of this point home. Mao Tse Tung, Tung, the head of China’s communist communist revolution, configured his army as a demonstration social experiment in new egalitarian classless relations among Chinese, so that enemy soldi ers were invited to switch sides and experience what liberation from serving China’s traditional upper classes felt like in terms of better better food, pride, work roles, and self respect. His army won battle battle after battle not by fighting but by by demonstrating a lifestyle lifestyle difference. Here basic disciplines of daily living were invented that attracted away a six thousand year tradition, and replaced it with what Karl Marx had imagined as England’s future--a classless society. Though the communist party rapidly took over the traditional upper class role, so much of that upper class role discipline was destroyed in Mao’s army experiments in organizing people, that even a remnant upper class, in communist party guise, ended up built on disciplines far more egalitarian than China’s six thousand year history to date. 1. role of conforming in intensifying disciplines--the normal way of doing the task is preserved in part, though aspects of it may be distorted or intensified in various ways 2. role of rebelling in intensifying disciplines--if you do it do it well, is the attitude here, as something very quotidian is exploded in influence by being done more intensely or in utterly simple new ways that do not fit or conform to all that is around, and that therefore, challenge lots of surroundings to eventually change too in conformance to this one change.
Precision as making key distinctions, recognizing patterns, changing scales of operating, and intensifying disciplines is a major route to influence ignored by all the salesman like commercial face to face forms of influence study. Yet changes in precision often are far more powerful and last far longer than even the most robust person to person persuasion sessions. You see, constantly in the contemporary world, particular particular in businesses, leaders adept at face face to face influence who, by ignoring or being incapable of precision forms of influencing, accomplish accomplish tiny fractions of what great great leaders in similar positions in history accomplished. accomplished. They may look impressive to those forced by monkey like male power hierarchy hierarchy inside their own firm to obedience, but in historical terms, they look wimpy. wimpy. At the close of this article I present a method, method, the Solution Culture method, I invented many years years ago. It involves reversing a failure culture to obtain a solution one, then applying that to invent both a new way of work and a new product of work. work. The new way way of work can involve, depending depending on the particular particular contents of the solution culture, new disciplines such as those discussed discussed above. In such cases it is capable of huge changes in destiny and outcome, far beyond most other methods of leading or innovating that I have come across. Since inventing my own form of that I have come, again and again, across quite similar methods used by others. It is likely that such methods are merely adaptations to the intensities of modern city living, hence, they get invented and re-invented again and again all over modern global city distributions. Recontexting amounts to seeing seeing something from a different framework framework or putting something something into a different context. context. It is remarkable remarkable how this changes things. First we have to deal with magic, leadership, comedy, and insight as examples of achieving influence by applying this principle. In magic, gestures set a context that allows careful observers to nearly always miss how an effect is produced. Seeing an effect with no apparent apparent possible way to produce it, surprises, and produces the delight peculiar to watching magic. Leadership is similar--seeing similar--seeing effects achieved achieved with no apparent means means of achieving them, surprises and impresses us. Leaders work quite hard hard to hide their means, means, much harder than non-professionals non-professionals who have never researched leadership leadership cases would ever suspect. A great deal of the aura of leaders comes comes from hiding the means to achieving their effects. effects. Finally, in comedy comedy a context is carefully set up, that, in an instant, with the punch-line, is switched with an entirely entirely different context, releasing releasing an explosion of new mental connections. connections. This is exactly the same phenomenon phenomenon as insight processes in creativity--you work and work and work, accumulating accumulating failures, till enough failure has accumulated that they collectively constitute an inverse-specification of what traits eventual eventual solutions must share. One final mite of accumulated failure failure then suffices to tip the system into another context context entirely, where the solution, rather than having to be found, found, appears whole and complete complete for inspection. In magic, leadership, comedy, comedy, and insight forms of influence, one context is set up to hide another or in order to suddenly switch to another. another. This is influence by recontexting. Changing environments is a way to recontext recontext all that is inside of a person or project or group. Put a person, project, or group in a new new environment and all of all of them gets recontexted. This can easily expose parts of the person, of the project of the group never seen before. Some environments environments are easy to change and some some are hard, hard, some changes in any particular environment environment are easy to make, others others are hard. Media, events, policies can all be set up so that long series of contents having new themes themes or styles appear, changing, in effect, effect, the environment around all sorts of things. There is a fractal aspect of this in that things occur in layers of progressively larger and larger larger scale environments, and things themselves are environments also layered on smaller and smaller scales. Sometimes themes on one layer layer can be either scaled up to higher larger levels or scaled down to more detailed detailed smaller layers. For example in career career building CEOs typically announce a number number of vital changes their organizations must make in the next year or two, with very little response from the large organizations organizations they head. CEOs are usually very supportive of people and projects on smaller smaller scales of the overall organization that completely embody the changes changes recommended by the CEO. Recognition and increased scope or responsibility responsibility and additional resources typically flow to such exceptionally obedient-to-announced-needed-dir obedient-to-announced-needed-directions ections projects and and their leaders. leaders. This can propel propel careers forward. In this case case it is not that environments environments are being changed so much as higher size scale environments are being fractally applied t o lower size scales within an organization. 1. role of conforming in changing environments--people adapt to, that is conform to, whatever they perceive as environments they are in 2. role of rebelling in changing environments--the decision to envelop part of the world in environments new to it can be done in order to conform to some perceived environment or environment aspect or to deny or bypass such environment aspect.
Rebalancing is very very interesting as a way way of influencing a situation. Family therapists, mentioned mentioned in an earlier example above, are a good example example of this too. They march into families caught in years of terrible human relationships and sometimes in hours or days effect positive changes utterly beyond what anyone in the family has ever been able to achieve. Often such therapists do this by rebalancing rebalancing ways of speaking or acting among people in the family. family. The key to such rebalancing rebalancing is having a very abstract abstract model of all the alternatives in a situation on which to plot the ones now present and used by particular families or family members. By directing attention to never before seen or considered alternatives, the therapist can open up horrible cycles cycles and tangles of recrimination and re-recrimination, re-recrimination, revenge and re-revenge. Failing business corporations also are commonly saved by rebalancers--leaders rebalancers--leaders who specialize in saving failing firms. These leaders usually have highly abstract models of essential business dynamdynamics which they use in a diagnostic process to plot what is being done and and what is being forgotten, ignored, or destroyed destroyed in how a business now functions. By directing attention, resources, or rewards rewards to missing or overlooked dynamics, entire businesses often often are rapidly saved. Gerstner, who came came from a tobacco company company to save IBM at the end of the 20th century, century, surprised the world by forbidding overheads and PowerPoint PowerPoint slide presentations among top level managers managers in IBM. The culture of egoistic “I am better than you” presentations among managers was preventing preventing people from meeting, talking to, and influencing other people in management. By insisting that people talk to each other instead of “present” to each other, Gerstner got dialog and relationship buil ding going after decades of talks and p eople going past each other like boats in the night. Rebalancing requires detailed highly abstract abstract models of all essential dynamics in a situation. Such models, whether explicit or unconsciously gradually built up over years of “experience”, enable diagnosis and rebalancing rebalancing activities of two sorts: emphasizing missing or slighted dynamics, and withdrawing emphasis emphasis on overbearing or dominant dynamics. 1. role of conforming in rebalancing--one rebalances based on a more comprehensive model of a part of reality than others have, one conforms to all of reality not just part in this way 2. role of rebelling in rebalancing--one rebels to the feedbacks in the local system that sustain people in counterproductive actions and reactions, one breaks the hold of these feedback loops, cycles, links sets of habits, co-dependent relationships
Societies, individuals, and and groups have only certain types of things that they are willing to call “a solution” for many of of their biggest and most important problems. Also, they always have such problems that have resisted generations of solution attempts. There is a causal connection between what culturally is allowed to be called “a solution” and having one’s most important problems problems generation after generation never solved. Each culture, whether of individual, profession, gender, gender, era, or nation, has certain problems it wants unconsciously never to solve. In the US it is public schools--seventy years years ago the best public schools spent 100 times per per student what the poorest spent, seventy years later today, today, the best schools spend 100 times times per student what the poorest spend--no change at all, with dozens and dozens of “solutions” fully implemented. implemented. In Japan it is central totalitarian control by elite university grads, who offer “reforms” for over 100 years without ever decreasing by even 1% their total control over all local decisions all over Japan--moving a bus stop 20 meters south in Hokkaido took 3 meters of filled in documents and 2 years of lobbying in Tokyo according to the Hokkaido Prefectural Governor, Governor, who became Prime Minister, Minister, Hosokawa. Every person, society, society, and group has such recrudescent problems for which it is willing only to offer solutions guaranteed to perpetuate perpetuate the problem. problem. Such failure cultures cultures can be easily spotted and characterized, characterized, using modern “dimensions “dimensions of cultures” models. By characterizing characterizing such cultures of failure in great detail, reversing all those culture dimension attributes, and applying that reversed “solution culture” to invent a new way of work and product of work, overall historic solutions that work can be devised. Such solutions tend, however, to be revolutionary, revolutionary, challenging challenging deeply held psychic equations and lying-to-oneself endemic throughout a group or personality. personality. The uncomfortable truths that surface when such solution cultures are are invented and applied can greatly multiply the power and attention and influence of such solutions, far beyond the actual recrudescent problem being solved. 1. role of conforming in inventing solution cultures--in building a model of the failure culture at present one conforms to it, maps in thoroughly, articulated it in detail 2. role of rebelling in inventing solution cultures--in reversing all the attributes of that failure culture, to get a solution culture, one rebels, trusting the opposite of current self imposed realities
A major avenue of influence in our age of globalization is g lobalization itself--taking sets of business practices, non-profit practices, service practices and transplanting them around the world in all sorts of cultures very different from the cultures that first developed them. Reading differences is required for this work and failure to read differences causes many globalization efforts efforts to fail badly. Spectacularly EuroDisney has continued continued to fail as a business year after year, year, on a financial basis, all because differences differences between Disney culture, the culture of the product itself, California culture, the culture of origin that Disney culture arose in, and French culture, the target culture, were not measured, plotted, used, respected, and dealt with. Similarly, Lincoln Electric took its famous piecework piecework pay system around the world world in a globalization effort only to be “surprised” when, in certain European nations, lawsuits proved that its piecework system was against the business laws there, forcing extremely heavy financial losses on the company that eroded worker bonus pay greatly, greatly, though workers had had no part in deciding on global expansions. Management, in effect, effect, ruined worker pay with ill advised, culturally lazy globalization experiments that did not read differences differences seriously at all. The number of famous examples is in the millions, filling the pages of tens of thousands of books and magazines yearly. yearly. This is one of the most common ways ways to fail that we know. know. Transplanting across across cultures is a powerful form of influence. influence. First, think of Toyota in Kentucky, Kentucky, in the USA. The expectations were that the Confucian, Shinto, conformist conformist Japanese culture of business would clash and fail in Kentucky, Kentucky, but it thrived instead. Second, exactly the aspects of American culture that everyone expected to be most irritated by Toyota Toyota systems of management, seemed instead to work well--people expected, for example, that the intense every five seconds specification of body and arm positions for assembly line jobs would cause rebellion among American employees, tired of how Japanese require continual continual improvement in performance, performance, to robot-like levels of perfection, one mistake per ten million actions and the like “6 sigma”. sigma”. Instead, 6 sigma became, eventually, eventually, and American American standard. In other words, clear culture conflicts sometimes sometimes kill a transplant, but in other circumstances instead of killing the transplant they revolutionize the entire host culture they are transplanted to. Some transplanted cultural dimensions not only conflict but end up defeating the corresponding corresponding local cultural setting they conflict with. Within some some transplants are are correctives of lackings in the entire local culture being being transplanted to. This is historic influence hidden within entirely particular transplant projects. Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design 1. role of conforming in transplanting practices across cultures--by paying detailed attention to differences of support and hinderance in origin and application target environments one conforms thoroughly to reality, what is actually there and different 2. role of rebelling in transplanting practices across cultures--in doing this one rebels against blind imposition of one’s own ways and assumptions on either origin or target culture
Recontexting something by changing its environment, rebalancing it, delineating the failure culture it is part of, or transplanting it to a new environment or culture, produces major league influence, far beyond beyond what mere face-to-face face-to-face personal networking can do, in most cases. There are multipliers built into environments, abstract abstract dynamics ignored for eons but suddenly recognized, assumptions about what “solves”, and the cultures we all grow up using without being aware of their contents and alternatives to those contents. These multipliers can take single small actions and change millions of of people’s lives in short order with them. These multipliers can take one project and change entire legal systems and cultures with it. Surrogates are influencing by getting other things to speak for you, to represent you when and where you are not. Influence by surrogates is a two stage affair--first affair--first you have to directly influence something highly--a disciple, a network of acquaintances, a creative work you created, a field of knowledge you added something highly valued to--then those accomplishments, in a second second stage, influence others for you, on on an on-going basis. This is powerful and highly efficient efficient as a way to influence but it has a cost--powercost--powerful direct initial influence up front, of things that later multiply such already already done successful influence. You influence X highly and X then influences others for for generations after you are gone or not around. Social indexing is not only a measure measure but a surrogate for influence purposes. When particular social indexing levels levels of particular portions of particular particular social networks are increased, the repercussion, the influence, is tremendous. Increasing the social indexing levels among a workgroup, firm, network, family, family, or other group usually revolutionizes existing social social relationships among among them. People expose extremely partial partial portions of themselves inside particular relationships. When more of themselves is visible, some relationships drop off and others become become possible. The person seen changes when social social indexing levels change--we see needs, needs, interests, and/or capabilities we did not see before. There is more there to see and respond to. This can put strain strain in the relationship if nothing in the see-er see-er matches these additional dimensions of the seen person. person. When social indexing levels rise in a portion of a particular group, it is hard to predict what changes changes will result. However, since habitual traditional levels of social indexing throughout societies are very low, typically between five and fifteen per cent, any group whose social indexing level is set significantly above that, feels very unique, and interacts with an intensity, intensity, detail, and thoroughness likely to be life-changing for those involved. Leaders and would-be leaders leaders who master how to raise social indexing levels among large groups, typically achieve levels of “high performance” built via the additional dimensions of each person “seen” by all others in the network. They in effect manage more of each person by getting more of each person known a nd used by others nearby or acquainted with them. Such groups are more intense, interact more richly, involve more intrinsic motivations of their people, and have to handle more diversity (because exposing more of the needs, interests, and capabilities of each person means each person adds more diversity, overall, to the group--much conformity in normal organizations comes from tacit tacit agreement to not delve into the top five needs, interests, and capabilities of each person, settling for a couple of the top five, for each person, instead). Once you have upped the social indexing level among a group of people, that has a force of its own that becomes a surrogate for the influence you exerted to up the social indexing level. The upped level stands in for you, influencing for you, in the two stage way explained earlier in this paragraph. 1. role of conforming in social indexing--one pays detailed attention to other people, mapping their interests, needs, capabilities in social indexing, conforming to reality in them 2. role of rebelling in social indexing--one rebels against assumptions about others, and against invalid generalization, treating others as anonymous replicas of each other
Perhaps the primary reason people become enchanted enough with creativity to go through the pains and struggles of creating is the way creative works, once completed and offerred up to the world at large, stand in for their creators, representing them at times and places the creators themselves cannot be present at. Think of a painter whose works are displayed on two hundred walls of prominent people all over the world’s world’s leading cities. The painter spent some hours or days days with each painting, but the painting, once created, can communicate communicate the painter’s intents and imagination contents for eons thereafter, thereafter, all over the planet. This is multiplication writ large--huge influence attained from single acts of creation. creation. Creativity is the primary surrogate form of influence influence in the world along with disciples disciples (dealt with in the next paragraph below). Creative works, however, differ differ in how much much of a creator they they represent and communicate. communicate. Compare Alexander Alexander the Great and Napoleon Napoleon with Picasso and Shakespeare. The great political-military heros of the historic past are in the history books but we know little about them as persons, and as time goes by a male hormone enamourment with killing undermines long term respect for them. Napoleon may eventually be more known for setting up the Grandes Ecoles college system than for inventing mass murder regimes expand expanded ed by Hitler and Stalin. Picasso touches us more intimately but his works are viewed in contexts that never existed in his own time, making what is seen less revolutionary all the time and entirely different in meaning meaning than anything Picasso imagined, eventually. eventually. Shakespeare, however, however, communicates communicates far more of himself than Picasso, Picasso, and in a form more capable of setting its own contexts of interpretation, interpretation, though it too suffers from evolution of context beyond anything anything Shakespeare meant. Gene technology will probably change the human brain and body so much in the coming two hundred years, with death practically eliminated from human worry, worry, that Shakespeare’s me meanings anings will seem quaint to eight armed humans who never die then. then. In influence terms, however, however, the military mass killers turn history more than the great great works of literature in important ways, but the great works of art last longer and convey more of a person’s personhood than mass killing leadership. 1. role of conforming in creating creative works--creativity requires a certain ten year period of learning the basics of one’s chosen field, mastery of the past becomes the base of going beyond that past 2. role of rebelling in creating creative works-- too much mastery of the past diminishes creativity, so one needs enough exposure to past works to go beyond them, not so much exposure that one’s imagination and goals diminish in conformance to past forms; it helps to rebel against the entire history and approach of a field, in order to creatively add to it
Disciples along with creative works are the major major avenues of influence by surrogate. Great people almost automatically create create schools of thought or communes of followers, followers, or understudies who succeed them and expand the influence of what what they do and think. For some people influence via via disciples is a consciously done tactic; for others it haphappens without any planning or intent on their own part. Either way, disciples stand in for a person and conduct influence as a second stage, after after the disciple is influenced himself enough to become such a thing, a disciple. disciple. It is possible to create the appearance of leadership and influence by creating creating shallow kinds of followers and disciples, who become the only evidence of influence of such people. In such cases, only the disciples are evidence evidence of leadership and influence influence and the content of their influence influence is only a kind of workshop of the person they are disciple of. Religious cults and political political crackpots throughout history produce such such pseudo-influence--cults pseudo-influence--cults of self worship. worship. This is not true influence but deliberate erecting erecting of the appearance of it. True influence is disciples who who actually influence others with content far far beyond “how great the person they are the disciple of is”. 1. role of conforming in disciples--disciples are like human form creative works that one creates, they are produced by one and conform to one’s ideas and ways 2. role of rebelling in disciples--disciples are risks, if you make them you risk their life’s direction and value for ideas you share with them, together you rebel against some past reality or ways
Discovery would not naturally seem seem to be influence by surrogate. What is the surrogate? It is not the actual truth discovered--that discovered--that is creation not influence by surrogate. The surrogate is the changes changes in the field produced produced by the truth discovered. discovered. Some truths, when discovered, merely merely confirm an existing existing paradigm. Other truths, when discovered, discovered, raise questions about an existing paradigm. Still other truths, when discovered, become the last straw, straw, magically changing everyone’s everyone’s mind and causing one traditional paradigm to collapse and be replaced either by a competing one or by a chaos of no-good-present-substitute-available. no-good-present-substitute-available. When discovery succeeds as influencing by surrogate, the changes it makes in a field become influence of the truth discovered--changes in agenda, in respect, in methods, in funding, in career outcomes, in popular themes, in editor publishing agendas. As our world is not just scientific discovery but a world where people do not admit error and mistake (except in fiction, art, comedy, and history) there is always influence by discovering the dirty lit tle truth that famous, huge, important, or self righteous people hide--the evangelist preacher with solid gold dog houses, the evangelist preacher with kinky sex bought from local prostitutes in the back seat of one of his mercades limousines, the right wing politician whose initial wealth all came from government grants not “self made man” capitalist enterprise, and the like. We revel revel in debunking the proud and self righteous and di scovery is a primary form of influence for doing that--finding the human among the pompous self exaggerations and unbelievable arrogance of people, leaders, and preachers. 1. role of conforming in discovery--one conforms to the problematicness generater within the initial problem one faces--why is this hard, what prevents progress?--one does not conform to how the problem presents itself or is framed by others, that is generally rebelled against, in discovery processes 2. role of rebelling in discovery--what one discovers reveals the lacking, the poverty, of what people used to believe before the discovery, this is rebellion against false fronts, exaggerated values, and progress-delaying loyalties to ease known truths
Whether it is networks knowing more about their members, creative works, disciples and followers, or revealed truths of science of scandal, influence by surrogate is powerful and omnipresent in our world. We change a network, invent something, enthrall people, or find out something hidden, and the results results of that then influence far after we have moved onto other things. Political elections, in modern democracies, democracies, are not infrequently won by the intelligence agencies of particular political parties, part part of whose work is discovery of scandal, error, error, violation, crime, crime, and the like in opponents. That is influence--someone wins an an election that would have lost, had not something something dirty been found about their opponent. Political elections recently recently have been more and more more won by social social indexing increases among followers of a candidate or philosophy. Influence by surrogate comes when cities allow fertile ideas to take the form of network changes, changes, creativity, disciples, or discovered truths. Cities that seethe with movements, schools, trends, waves of ideas, investigative reporting, and the like are open open to influence by surrogate. Cities that fear or lack these, shut down chances to influence by surrogate. surrogate. Reflecting and realizing are ways ways of influencing. Leaders and organizations organizations consistently underestimate this form of influence and hence hence develop traditions of avoiding reflection and shutting down realizations. People want momentum going their way and ideas want momentum momentum going their way. way. Reflection and realization realization often stop such momentum by pointing out how the feeling of “momentum” is being bought by ignoring systematically important consequences and implications, or reactions and evidence of slighted parties. What is there to reflect reflect on and realize: mental flaws, neurosis--the neurosis--the costs of our talents, omitted omitted frameworks and contexts, and omitted depths depths beneath surfaces. Chris Argyis at Harvard University University built a career career exposing single loop learning that never never became double loop learning. People “learned” by assimilating what happens to their favored viewpoints and value sets, but resisted changing viewpoints and value sets, no matter how much evidence from what happened contradicted existing viewpoints and value sets. People resist reflection and realizing because it all too often requires self change--sloughing well loved favored personal biases and ways of dealing with the world. It is far easier to make excuses for discrepant discrepant data, and keep on going as one has always done, done, hoping a quick promotion will get you out of hot spots before you or others realize that you lack effective ways to deal with most of reality. Influence from realizing mental mental flaws comes two ways: by recognizing them when others do not, and by using them as found in others (who do not realize they have them). Knowing your own mental flaws is a form of influence; it allows you t compensate for your own tendencies to err. err. Dealing with people who do this or responding to the plans and impacts of such people has a characteristic characteristic feel to it. Just as you realize they lack something, they do something that counters that lacking--in other words, words, when you discover their vulnerabilities it is not before they already respond to their own vulnerabilities. vulnerabilities. A person tends to over-invest over-invest in failing lines of action, so you anticipate their next step being another over-investment in the same failing direction, just as their next step instead turns out to be a complete retreat from that line of action and investment in a different line of attack. attack. Just when you were relishing relishing taking advantage of their weakness weakness they compensate for for their own weakness in their own actions. This is the discouraging thing about competing with such people--they people--they respond to their own weaknesses weaknesses approximately as well and fast fast as you do. Though they have weaknesses weaknesses it is hard to take any Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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advantage from them. Knowing the mental flaws of others is a form of influence. influence. When a series of successes by others discourage discourage you and others competing with them, you do not get discouraged. You can anticipate the weaknesses weaknesses such successes will inevitably multiply and expand. You wait for the exposed weaknesses and take advantage advantage of them, while others notice only the successes, getting discouraged. There are cognitive mental flaws, well published by Kahnemann and Tversky Tversky and others, but there are also emotional mental flaws, not not so recently published about. Ancient Greek tragedies and the plots of all stories and novels deal with these well well known human emotional flaws-hubris, anxiety, defensiveness, defensiveness, male hormone aggressiveness, female hormone gossip, and many others. Great influence comes from seeing such emotional mental flaws in self and others. Certain studies of leadership found that only leaders willing and able to give up leadership to key followers who compensate for their own weaknesses, survive (Grint, 2002). A leader is not an individual, but a tandem of a person plus different groups around him who compensate for his cognitive or emotive weaknesses weaknesses from time to time, taking over leadership leadership from him. More than that, more recent recent research has found that only groups groups actually do leadership, with different different members of the group group leading different functions they are good at. One person may be up front front enacting and announcing things publically, publically, but actual determinations, determinations, plans, decisions and the like are always done by groups, all of the members of which are leaders, each specializing in the leading of a few topics t hey are best at, relative to other members of the group or what challenges face the group. group. This role of compensating for mental mental flaws in deploying leadership only to groups not to individuals cuts against well known biases biases of certain cultures for seeing leadership only something done by lo ne heroic individuals. Just what mental flaws are there to be used for influence--a partial list with short explanations follows in this paragraph. Using/Compensating for Perceptual (Framework) Illusions: modules in our mind that operate separately enough that reason and evidence do not affect they way they distort reality in how they make us perceive it = there may be other such modules in ou r mind that do the same for argument, belief, relationships, emotions, and so on. Using/Compensating for Probability Illusions: uniformity = randomness illusion, short sequence frequency = long sequence frequency illusion, subjective utility flattens out not follows objective utility, we risk to avoid loss we conserve to gain profits, framing illusion = different frame cause computing different baselines so different preferences, segregation effect = we take too many problems as presented without global search, typicals are seen as frequents so we judge conjuncted conditions as more likely that their individual components (typicality overrides base rates in population), we judge more likely X is librarian than farmer if description of nerd given ignoring base rate of more farmers by far than librarians (we do know more, the base rate, but ignore it), we computer frequencies higher for a cause than an effect of a relationship (21% false pos. test, 1 in 100 base rate, probability sick is? most say 8 0% or so, bayes theorem shows its is 8%), we pay more for total elimination of a risk than reduction by same amount of the risk = certainty illusion, the disjunction ill usion = we act when an outcome is possible but not when it or another equal but different is possible (uncertainty cancels action). Using/Compensating for Rational Illusions: overconfidence in own answers, illusory correlations (magical thinking = we explain supposed positive causal relations), we think we could have predicted things that really did happen, anchoring (prior exposure biases answers), we confound easier to imagine and more emotionally impactive with more frequent, reducing to zero has more value for us than equivalent reductions from 2 in 10 to 1 in 10, plausible but fictitious stories that end in an effect get more and more belief link by link though compounding such link probabilities reduces final probability. Using/Compensating for Emotive Illusions: self awareness of feelings, awareness awareness of feelings in others; expressing own feelings situationally appropriately, eliciting situationally appropriate expression of feelings of others; delay gratification/control impulse in self and others; separate action contents from feeling reactions in self and others; understanding unspoken frames coloring/biasing own perceptions and others. Using/Compensating for Crowd Illusions: [belonging] identity illusion--seek group that accepts me as I am, group seek people willing to deny their own identity; involvement illusion--must detach well to involve fully, must involve fully to have reason to detach and reflect; individuality illusion--withold self to test group but that causes heroic self making groups worth witholding from; boundary illusion-boundaries create possibility by eliminating possibilities; disclosure illusion--I will disclose myself if you disclose yourself first; [engaging] trust illusion--trust is created by sharing fears (we need trust in order to trust); intimacy illusion--precondition for other awareness is self awareness; regression illusion--go to the past to recover the present hindered by groups wanting progress only not regress; [speaking] authority illusion--resistance key t o acceptance of authority (authority is accepting the resistance), we create own power by empowering others; dependency illusion--being independent in a group requires accepting one’s dependency in the group; creativity illusion--creating is done via destroying; courage illusion--self doubt and self questionning are prerequisites of courage and self assertion; [context] individual ID is t he groups we belong, any group is continual negotiating within/among us of the representations of the groups that we “are”; [intergroup] scarcity illusion--resources given to other seen as taken from self not given from self; perception illusion--differences that form basis of any group also threaten and isolate the group; power illusion--when power among groups is unequal the lesser power group sees itself as utterly powerless; . Using/Compensating for Culture Illusions: the message meaning illusion--we think it means in their frames what it means in our, unconscious unadmitted, frames; frames; the co-acting support illusion--we think that they act with us implies agreement with what and how we act; the culture uniformity illusion--we talk/think about cultures as if all their members thought and acted the same ways; the culture changelessness illusion--we talk/think about cultures as if they today are identical to they, 30 years ago, and they tomorrow; the they-realize illusion--we assume the other culture knows its othernesses from us; the choice illusion--we assume we have to choose our own way or their other way instead of blending wit h thought and effort. Using/Compensating for Interface Limitations: the skilled performance illusion--we think because we are masters of prose that it is not a terrible medium for communicating and we are not cognitively sloppy when using it perfectly; the search illusion--we fix bushy inputs and choice spaces by elaborate search functions rather than functions to input less bushy things; the one representation illusion--we give directions via operations to perform (street turns for example) and leave out by distance and direction from here and leave out paths of landmarks; the perfected single medium illusion--we think Nobel prize quality in one medium makes simultaneous transmission in parallel other media/channels unnecessary; ; Using/Compensating for Existential meaning for others, rather than making meaning for having having goals at all against futility of all life; the Limitations: the meaning illusion--we assume having any goals at all has meaning performance illusion--we outdo others or allow others to outdo others and us as if achievements in society can hide us from the futility of all life; the self as central illu sion-we judge all around with us as the baseline of “normal” ignoring the arbitrary identities we inherited without choice at birth (male, Canadian, lawyer parent, etc.); the couldnot-predict excuse--we excuse ourselves from responsibility for unforeseen consequences of our acts; . Using/Compensating for Cognitive Limitations: the single single idea illusion--we apply mental procedures to single ideas instead of ordered patterns of i deas; the single framework illusion--we apply one viewpoint to a case rather than exploring dozens and justifying which of them we select and apply; the experimentrics illusion--we present our choices as right rather than admit many if not most are probes meant to reveal situation aspects as responses; . Using/Compensating for Neurosis: the normal self illusion--we judge all others using our selves as the base line line for defining “normal”; the omitted costs of talent--we increasingly see our our talents as pure positives, ignoring the stuff we ignored while developing developing them by focussing; the all-situation-arenails illusion--we have a hammar hammar and suddenly all situations look like nails; . Using/Compensating for Intuition Limitations: memory construction illusion--we invent memories out of self consistency drive; misreading ourselves illusion--we often do not know why we do things; mispredicting feeling--we badly mis-guess intensity and duration and impacts of emotions we feel; behavior midpredicting illusion--we badly mispredict our own reactions and behavior steps; hindsight bias illusion--we say we knew or guessed things that in reality utterly puzzled/confused us at the time; self inflation illusion--we use our selves as baseline for normal far too often; fundamental attribution error--we attribute errors of others to their character and errors of ourselves to situations faced; confirmation bias illusion--our drive for self consistency and positive self regard causes us to continue utterly false beliefs; framing illusion--we produce different answers to same questions when frame/representation is changed; illusory corelations-we see causal connections where none exist 1. role of conforming in fixing and using mental flaws--in both fixing and using such flaws one conforms by mapping exactly what flaw is there, used how, compensating for its effects in fixing or making use of the vulnerabilities and errors it creates when used by others in using 2. role of rebelling in fixing and using mental flaws--the fix applied to a flaw is a rebellion against the flaw itself, the using of vulnerabilities and errors the flaw generates when done by others is, while not rebellion, expansion of the harm of the flaw and directing it towards attainment of your own ends; while thusly using the errors of another does not sound like a “nice” thing to do, if those others are harmful or selfish people, undoing their goals by using their own mental flaws against them, is a net overall positive to society
All talents developed by persons or groups come from focus, which which means other talents were deliberately not developed in favor of of developing one. Thus a person ends up great at doing X but bad at A, B, C, D, E as a result of concentration concentration on X. What makes this powerful is our tendency to forget forget the imbalance of concentration, attention, attention, and practice that produced produced our talents. We exercise them masterfully forgetting forgetting that they represent a greater repertoire of skills we forwent forwent developing. We exercise talents forforgetting the cost of developing them. them. This makes us neurotic--we exercise exercise capabilities without without acknowledging the weaknesses they entail. Organizations, for for example, who work for decades to perfect their reputations and accomplishments for sales and marketing, constantly do things to improve their manufacturing and product design that do not work well. They get puzzled puzzled by why nothing seems to work in catching catching their manufacturing manufacturing up with global competitors. It is obvious to outsiders--they have have developed a culture of emphasizing and valuing marketing marketing and sales and are consistent world leaders at that. People do not join their organization to become become manufacturing and design leaders, they join to become marketing and sales leaders. leaders. They, as an organization organization have a cost of their talent for sales and marketing--their identity attracts only people interested in that. They, as an organization, organization, are incapable of attracting the best manufacturing and design design people. As a result they end end up trying with second best manufacturing and design people all sorts of recent recent methods and techniques with moderate results not capable capable of propelling them into top tier performance. De-neuroticizing them would involve new leadership admitting the cost of their talent and negotiating a necessary decrement in their sales and marketing repute as the cost for upping their manufacturing and design repute. You cannot emphasize being world best at X and think you can add add on also being world best best at Y, Y, Z, and W. W. That is neurotic thinking. It is, however, however, common thought. Leaders perpetually perpetually deny that they think neurotically. neurotically. Their insistence on being world world best at all things is just good ambition, ambition, they say. say. However, actual results always show the same thing, organizations and persons that try to be world best at all things, delude themselves themselves into failing at all things. Neurotic thinking is neurotic, not accurate, useful, or powerful. 1. role of conforming in de- neuroticizing--talents draw our attention their way, making us, and the talented ones, both miss what capabilities were not developed because of the focus and effort needed to develop the talent--we conform to a map of all possible human capabilities when spotting what particular talents cause a person to lack 2. role of rebelling in de-neuroticizing--the dependency a person develops when loving the praise and acclaim exercising their own talents produces, so having a great tool by gradual steps becomes being only the exercise of that great tool, that dependency is broken, rebelled against in de-neuroticizing
Reframing things means applying contexts to them that they were not developed in and that have never been applied to them before. Communication is message plus package that translates contents of the message from the frames of the sender sender to the frames of the receiver. receiver. Without good such packaging, packaging, messages fail fail to communicate at all. Messages without such packaging, do not reframe their contents from frames of their sender to frames of their receiver. As a result what their sender imagined them to mean is not what their receivers “get” as their meaning (since such receivers receivers interpret the message contents using frames different different than those used by those creating the message). Influence by reflecting and realizing often consists of realizing there are other frameworks and interpretations of a message or event or action. We get get terribly angry, for example, at something someone says, till a good friend or spouse tells us there is another frame for interpreting it--”he was not trying to put you down--for example “he was presenting you modestly in front of the customers customers so they would be later impressed at you skill skill and polish”. Most of us have many times found found these alternate frames to be true. By bringing up such alternate frames, by reframing events, our closest friends have saved us from major errors again and again. Older, more more experienced people develop the habit of testing their emotional reactions with such friends, again again and again, seeking out such alternate possible interpretations. interpretations. Encounters with other cultures and ways of operatoperating depends on reframing. When we first encounter other ways of doing and thinking things, they do not make much sense to us--their flaws flaws are huge, obvious, and fatal. It is hard to believe that serious people ever supported them. However, that is largely because we cannot see the contexts in which such messages are interpreted in the other culture. We lack the packagings packagings around each event, act, message, message, statement. So we hear the literal word meaning meaning but miss all the interpretations and shadings of meaning. We react disappointed to the tiny fraction fraction of the message contents that that one gets when ignorant of all the contexts contexts around the message in the environment of its sender. sender. Culture effectiveness begins when we stop interpreting messages and actions without awareness of the layers of context around them. We learn learn to seek out such layers for every message we receive, and, inevitably, as we receive the layers of context, one after another, the message’s message’s “meaning” changes utterly before our eyes, again and again, in ways we never would have imagined without the contexts contexts provided. Reframing in our daily lives again and again turns turns fear into friendship, anger into agreement, agreement, confusion into comfort. Reframing is a powerful powerful source of influence. 1. role of conforming in reframing--we conform to the layers of context around the one generating messages, seeing unspoken contributions to message meaning from each unrealized but active context in reframing 2. role of rebelling in reframing--we rebel against automatic unthinking imposing of our own contexts around messages received and sent when reframing.
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Surfacing meaning means means delving deep into a set of contexts for what something means. It means getting at deep strata of the meaning, meaning, not being satisfied with surface meanings. Getting deep requires exchanging exchanging superficial frames for profounder profounder frames. frames. What, exactly, exactly, are “profounder” “profounder” frames? frames? “deeper” frames? It is a matter of what each frame is capable capable of revealing. Concrete frames frames are easy to see, find, and and apply but they do not reveal much because they are are not general, not abstract. Abstract frames are hard to see, find, and apply but the benefit of using them is the numerous aspects of what they are applied to that they reveal. Being more abstract, they can enable us to see aspects completely invisible to more concrete concrete local viewpoints. For example, a large large city neighborhood development project was failing because residents were resisting all revisions in property developer plans and vice versa. versa. Application of Hannah Arendt’s Arendt’s very abstract model of social change processes--liberty processes--liberty,, freedom, historic dream, dream, and conserving novelty, allowed leaders to see that un-liberated ones were trying out the freedom activities activities of collaborative invention of the utterly new. Since most of those thusly collaborating had not achieved any sort of real emotional detachment from present arrangements, they were not putting much passion, emotion, and vision into designing and imagining alternative arrangements. arrangements. The program could only be saved by getting neighborhood residents and property property developers detached emotionally emotionally from present arrangements more. more. That was done by a tour, paid for by the project, project, that sent neighborhood residents residents to model similar such projects in a dozen other cities. The toured representatives, upon return, no longer respected or wanted any part of present arrangements--they had all seen alternatives ways of living far more interesting and attractive to them elsewhere, among the projects visited. This simple tactic created the emotional detachment from present present arrangements that allowed residents and developers to rapidly agree on substantial changes. All this came only after a very abstract framework framework on social change was applied, applied, allowing diagnosis of a rather abstract cause of the project’s project’s problems--lack of liberation among those attempting the work of “freedom”, “freedom”, in Arendt’s Arendt’s framework. This is an example of delving deep via abstract reframing, not ordinary reframing. 1. role of conforming in reflecting/surfacing--you conform to the huge variety of viewpoints, theories, frameworks from the diversity of the world and the scope of its tremendous variety of types of knowledge in reflecting and surfacing work 2. role of rebelling in reflecting/surfacing--you rebel against the contexts and frameworks with which some issue or phenomenon is presented to you, refusing to conform just to them to the exclusion of dozens of other frames that could be applied to the issue or phenomenon.
We can influence the world by gett ing realization to happen using reflection work, by reframing things from diverse perspectives, each frame revealing different aspects of a situation, by acknowledging the costs of present talents and abilities, and by seeing mental flaws at work in our selves or others and using them or compensating for them. Influence by getting realization to occur happens happens whenever diversity in a city impacts people. When diversity is segregated away, away, it does not interact and influence people. People do not realize things. Social forms of influence include attention gathering, plurifying approaches, updating substrates and connections among plural things, and spinning meaning actively from preferred frameworks. frameworks. We are used to thinking about social forms forms of influence. Conformity is a common enemy enemy we all grapple with, with, produced as a social form form of influence-forcing people to not be, do, and think differently differently than each other. other. Indeed, in cities and organizations, there there is a problem of every proposal, idea, idea, and initiative being worn down by having to be exposed to too many uncontexted opinions too fast. Instant criticism and misunderstanding erode ideas ideas into nothing making entire cities and corporations uncreative. Anyone who has worked worked in modern businesses businesses has directly experienced experienced the harm of too many chiefs and not enough indians. Everyone wants to evaluate evaluate and lead and comment on every idea around, till no one is willing to become a target of such ill-tempered amateur freeform contempt and mockery--ideas wilt or get proposed outside to smaller organizations that do not ruin them by over-exposure, over-criticism, over-criticism, and over-evaluation by over-committees. Babies need some private dark spaces away from limelight and criticism in which to grow till they are mature enough to defend themselves. To put baby ideas out into the open for casual targeting targeting by anyone feeling nasty, is to kill all new ideas, not just a few. Modern organization decidedly do not control this aspect of themselves and they drive creativity underground underground entirely, with very very few exceptions. The US drug companies are are perhaps the world’s world’s biggest example--huge research research and development budgets with with almost nothing at all in innovation terms to show for it (many “new” drugs for the last fifteen years have been minor one-molecule tinkerings with old ones to get around generic competitors after patents expire). The research and development development hallways of major major US drug companies are are perhaps the single most creativity-less creativity-less places on the planet planet in the early 21st century, century, as a result of a simple human tendency over-notice, over-notice, over-gossip, over-evaluate. If active hiding of baby ideas is not undertaken, undertaken, they die. Social forms of influence have, in gengeneral, this sort of bad reputation. Attracting attention is very nearly the primary form of influence in the modern industrial world. It is quite common for criminals and people who have done great harm to others to use the visibility from their crimes and trials to become stock brokers, TV personalities, and the like. Strippers become members members of parliament in Italy, wrestlers wrestlers become governor in progressive states states of the US like Minnesota. Visibility is one of the primary forms of influence in the modern media-drenched media-drenched world. world. In large organizations organizations as well, such as global corporations, visibility is a primary form of influence. influence. There are four primary ways ways to attain visibility and the influence it enables: events, revolutions, huge outcome changes from tiny system inputs (tipping points), and riding and weaving trends that others create. People are using cell phones to create instant five minute demonstrations--suddenly hundreds of people converge on some shop or park to demonstrate for five minutes about something absurd, then all disappear. disappear. This is experimenting experimenting with new event event types enabled by modern technologies. technologies. Similarly, Similarly, companies are opening shops for one month only in major city downtowns, with long lines of people making news for the company company every day for 30 days in a row. row. People are experimenting experimenting with how to put nearly every function, process, and department of work into event form. Mass workshop events wherein 80 simultaneous workshop groups do workshop procedures designed by people world best as 80 different processes, produce in ten days, 16 working venture businesses, for example, with all legalities, staffing, hiring, equipping, initial product designs finished in the ten days. Events are where masses of people gather to do something in instants that otherwise would take processes by a few staff days or months or years to do-and the event form of doing attracts attracts attention that the process form cannot cannot attract. Entire stores have become events--setting up in key locations for limited weeks weeks then moving to another city--event retail establishments! More than one venture business was created via once a month 2-day or so long events gathering people from a dozen dozen companies to man a part-time venture firm till its first sales enabled more permanent permanent workforce arrangements--event arrangements--event workforces and ventures! All this is “event as gathering”. There is, however, another form of event. Events can be “gatherings” but they also can be “surprises” or “new ideas”. The latter type of event is an idea that quickly becomes a gathering of people, the first type of event. This is two stage influence--creating influence--creating an idea that gathers gathers people then using the visibility gathered gathered by that event to influence. influence. A new dress design can can be “an event”, a new book can be one, any new idea or approach can be “an event” that becomes, later literally, an event, a gathering which gathering gathers visibility. 1. role of conforming in events--what is conformed to are the requirements for getting visibility and attention--critical mass gathered in short term event form 2. role of rebelling in events--once attention is gathered, there must be somethiing novel worthy of it, to hold it, that requires rebelling against norms and expectations, throwing up something entirely new in your event.
Revolutions influence people and are caused by influence exerted on people. Social movements and revolts can be considered attempted revolutions for our purposes here. These are two stage types of influence--some forms of influence create revolt, social movement actions, or revolutionary collapse of regimes--then, those things, the revolt, movement, or collapse influence influence people by themselves. The forms of influence creating the intermediate intermediate forms that influence via visibility and mass attention attention gathering can be quite different. Communist regimes were so enamored of secret police and fearful of freedom of speech because all of them were created by small handfuls of students and intellectuals having private discussions together in coffee coffee shops. The origins of the regimes themselves were were so slight yet with such enormous powers attained so easily easily by them that they, once the established power in society, society, feared any fifty intellectuals discussing anywhere would overthrow them similarly. similarly. Add a few psychopath leaders of communist parties organized internally as dictatorships (“democratic centrism” centrism” they still call it in Japan and elsewhere) and you have secret police as the main tool of governing. Of course, ironically, the main accelerant accelerant of social social revolution is, secret secret police regimes. regimes. Fear makes what is feared feared reality. reality. The Russian revolution, revolution, stillborn by Lenin finally emerged under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Yeltsin, stillborn again by Jeffrey Sacks and Harvard economists. Fear of counter-revolution produced a counter-revolution, the end of the Soviet Union--ironic! True revolutions are quite rare--most rare--most revolutions end up stillborn, as founders, in paranoia, fight each other as “betrayers” of the revolution. The fight that liberated people, instead of giving way to invention of the utterly new in history by cooperating liberated ones making and keeping promises among each other, keeps going on as founder paranoia (from the ease with which the old regime was was made to fall) expands. True revolutions, like the American American one, lead to invention and establishment as an enduring enduring thing in history, utterly new forms of government or of something else. Failed revolutions, like the French and Russian ones, have spontaneous self organizing emergence emergence of self governing councils, like the American colonies’ 1776 action committees, that are stamped out by those who fought to liberate everyone from the old regime, now liberating everyone from what is new in the revolution, and imposing a new group as “old regime” regime” in new guise. The Tzar’s autocracy replaced replaced by Lenin’s dictatorship dictatorship replaced by Yeltsin’s oligarchs replaced by Putin’s Putin’s post-modern dictatorship. In true revolutions the war of liberation ends and gives way to cooperating liberated ones inventing utterly new institutions and protecting them from old powers, establishing them in history, changing the hopes and destinies of people far away. 1. role of conforming in revolutions--those who fight to liberate themselves and others from old regimes, conform to a history of the old regime ignoring messages and proposals and attempted changes--the history of rejection of moderate change justifies a war of liberation and generates people angry enough to fight it 2. role of rebelling in revolutions--people rebel from the change resistance of an old regime as much as from the old regimes traits themselves, it is not its flaws that are intolerable, but its inability or unwillingness to gradually get rid of those flaws, one by one.
Tipping points are, are, by definition, immensely immensely influential. A systems with many many things interacting non-linearly non-linearly are non-linear systems. Such systems have mysterious properties. One such property is how a number of similar inputs produce similar outputs till one such input, in no way different than hosts of already already used others, produces huge sudden entire system change. change. Inability to predict which of many many identical inputs will have hugely different different output effects makes makes people fear non-linearity non-linearity in life and work. Tipping points, where similar inputs produce entirely different different outputs of a system, are influential but hard to find. The purpose of undergraduate education education is three-fold: to teach students to reason by comparing evidence not opinions; two, to teach students where tipping points are in social and psychological systems common to all of life, so students can direct energy and inputs where slight inputs have huge powerful effects; and three, to teach students structural cognition, that is, how to apply common mental operations not to sets or 2 or 3 ideas at a time but to highly ordered sets of 50 to 100 ideas at a time. That most colleges fail, demonstrably, demonstrably, to teach any of these three to most of their students, simply illustrates what lack of competition competition does to a producer, producer, in this case, a producer of education. education. Most students graduate from college completely unaware of even one tipping point in psyche or society. They spend entire lives inputting where inputs are guaranteed to have little or no effect (not (not to mention counter effects). 1. role of conforming in tipping points--large systems have hundreds of places where important variables intersect, which of them are tipping points, is very hard to guess or determine, so mapping the variables and their inter-dependencies in a complex system is the conforming involved in using tipping points 2. role of rebelling in tipping points--strangely the actions needed when at a tipping point can be so normal and slight that nearly no rebelling is needed at them to overthrow or completely transform a large scale system--non-linear growth effects from slight actions at the tipping point amplify it millions of times into whole system scale changes.
Trend weaving and riding is a way to influence people whose attention is already provided by whatever you weave or ride. By latching onto something already popular, you can get attention and visibility, visibility, allowing easy influence. Many companies making products for youth cultures pay youth informants informants to tell them latest “crazes” “crazes” and “raves” and “people styles”. They then advertise these new trends with their own products, making making the association that their products are as new and pioneering pioneering as the crazes and raves included in the ads are. This is attention-by-association. Scientists writing for the world’s world’s most prestigious prestigious journals do exactly the same thing--frame thing--frame current research research Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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to make it appear connected to or elaborative of themes favored by key journal editors, upping their chances for publication. Men and women dating do the same--perfect particular “in” looks known to cause the opposite sex to swoon. This is dressing in visibility attracting attracting content. I have my own personal version version of this--sports material material formal suits decorated with $60,000 Japanese wedding kimono material. People everywhere I go come up to me wanting an explanation of my suit--I give them a business card and/ or brochure on my corporate training business along with a calling card for my clothing and product design business. 1. role of conforming in trend weaving and riding--you conform to some existing trend, spot it, parasite upon it, find symbiotic products to mesh with it, be carried along by it 2. role of rebelling in trend weaving and riding--your rider, upon the trend, may end up revolutionizing expectations and experiences of people receiving it wrapped in the trend
Influencing by attracting attention happens by: holding events (or seeding them via new ideas), growing social movements and revolutions, tipping systems in entirely different directions at key “whistle” points, and and riding already visible trends to borrow visibility power from them Why does sheer attention change things? It is, in modern industrial societies, a kind of money, a medium of exchange--your fame as a criminal who did bad things but dresses well and talks charmingly on TV, can produce book sales, which can produce TV interviews, which can produce mini-series or radio program hosting jobs, which can promote books and interview other young criminals of good style. In large modern societies and organizations organizations visibility is the essential career building material. No matter what your worth and accomplishments, if they cannot attract serious attention from many hierarchy levels up, nothing will save you from years and decades of inconsequential quotidian “promotions” ending in a gold watch just before major diseases take you. If you think carefully about about what is common to events, events, social movements, tipping points in systems, and visibility borrowing borrowing from trends, it is eruption, eruption, surprise, do the not expected. Influencing by attracting attention happens when things break the monotony, monotony, the routines, the unconscious unconscious automatic streaming by of life’s life’s moments. Social influence also comes comes from plurifying singular things--getting and using alternatives where others others have “one right way”. Consider the Gap clothing store in the USA. It sells a certain street look of cheap fabrics cut in cheap ways. ways. In much of East Asia, Europe, Latin and South America, America, and Canada, this “look” is ugly and explained away away as “a way for Americans to dress down to avoid crime perhaps”. Mass retailers sell the world’s ugliest cloth, plus a few bangles, at the world’s most ridiculously jacked up prices--$100 jeans, pre-worn and and dirtied with holes. Mass produced people buy such clothes as the uniformity of their minds, controlled controlled by central media, is best expressed by identical clothing to tens of millions of others. There is the continual joke of “rebellious” youth, in gangs, all rebelling by wearing wearing identical “rebellious” clothes. Their rigid conformity within their gang exactly mirroring mirroring the rigid conformity in society at large large they “rebel” against. Social influence comes from from plurifying by de-mass-ifying, dedelocalizing, de-centering, de-centering, and de-constructing. de-constructing. In each of these a conformity, conformity, standard, dictated thing, agreed on meaning meaning is dropped in favor of alternatives. alternatives. Why should moving from “one right way” to alternatives powerfully influence people? Plurification is a major avenue of change and and influence, in a graduated series of ways. First, by not doing the one right way but something else, plurifying, you make visible the conformity dimension that perhaps perhaps people did not notice before. Second, by not doing the one right way, way, you implicitly attack all conforming conforming ones--their way is not satisfying you. Third, by not doing the one right way, way, you practice the courage of being noticed, the courage of attracting attracting attention. Fourth, by not doing the one right way you attract people tired, bored, oppressed oppressed by the one right way. Fifth, by not doing the one right way you suggest, indirectly, indirectly, that other alternatives, different different than the alternative you chose, are possible. Sixth, by not doing the one right way you often provoke defensive, over-reactions by the great herd of conformists you just left--their public defensiveness causes their “one right way” to become even less attractive, it loses st atus instantly. In these six ways, pretty often in this sp ecific order, plurification in any domain ruins for quite some time the ability of the one right way to satisfy not only those who rebel against it but tho se who refuse to rebel--they lose satisfaction, status, and ability to not think about alternatives. Things that in the past never had to be discussed, now have to be discussed with automatic agreement agreement of the past, foregone. De-mass-ifying is a result of massifying. As global standard products and services, images and programs beam around the globe into every society, society, this comes initially as variety of choice and lifestyle invading private spaces in offices and homes. As governments and religions tell populations, often using police to beat nonconformists, that life is one way or should be only one way, home radios, CDs, TVs, cell phones, and the like show all sorts of alternatives many of which have obvious superiority t o how one’s own society and parents (and government) thinks and operates. operates. Mass production and broadcasting broadcasting invades communities worldwide worldwide as diversity invading. However, this is not all that happens. After local certainties and power hierarchies are are relativized by invading global images and options, belief in absolute authority and traditions crumbles--there is simply too much that one tradition tradition has never considered, tried tried out, or thought of before. You cannot but the ‘one way is right” genie back in the bottle. Lives that were planned out and dictated by elders and traditions are taken back by their youthful owners who now have a new important agenda item--exploring alternative ways before deciding how to live. This agenda item undermines undermines regimes and insecure insecure dictators everywhere, everywhere, whether religious or secular. Exploration is incompatible with traditions traditions that never learned about, respected, respected, or investigated alternatives any any time in its past development. It is also incompatible with invading global standards standards and production styles-Americans eat the same thing all the time and I like many foods not American ones only, local Iranians say, say, for example. People inevitably discover in the very first steps of exploration, that many local ideas are superior and healthier than imported global standards ones (American fast food worldwide is the food equivalent of tobacco not a few peoples end up saying). Ignorant traditions are the norm, insular, insular, bigoted, and condemning others that have never been met or explored before. Mass media expose the ignorance at the heart of all local traditions. This is tremendous influence writ large in resulting social movements, revolutions, revolutions, and secularization of exactly those societies most dictatorially religious. 1. role of conforming in de-massifying--you conform to essential human needs, undoing specialization and centralization and monopoly, restoring functions to all communities and families and persons, that now are specialized in elite centers (for generating wealth for a few who “broadcast”) 2. role of rebelling in de-massifying--the large, elite, drug-addicted centers, New York, Hollywood that have turned the world into fat sitters by monopolizing composing and performance, stripping it from ordinary communities and lives, is rebelled against in de-massifying, as people prefer their own composing and performance, however, amateur to the sitting and obesity of consuming central broadcast products.
De-local-izing is something that de-mass-ifying accomplishes. Localities and their contents become become a location for exploring exploring not a set of answers to follow. Your locality tells you what you grew up to believe believe not what you chose to believe. believe. People begin serious exploring of alternatives to the selves that that they have grown up with--put into them by environments they did not choose but were born born into. Identities paid for by huge government budgets spent spent on school system propaganda, selling the local local nation to the local population (perhaps so they will not leave and will pay taxes), get sloughed emotionally as local people sense they have been sold an identity the government had ulterior motives for promoting. It is less obvious, suddenly, suddenly, that “being Japanese” or “being French” is really really the best thing to be. Perhaps a bit of exploring of alternative identities might make things clearer. clearer. Perhaps looking at identity components not pushed aggressively aggressively onto small children by insecure governments governments would help. De-local-lizing is a first step in becoming an educated educated person. Whenever someone suddenly treats all he has been raised raised to be as suspect, needing needing alternatives to it, he is starting the journey of becoming an educated person, a person whose contents, whose self, is self determined, self designed, not imbibed from massive propaganda regimes in public school systems and local mass media. The revenge and loneliness imposed on people who de-localize by by people around them in their locality is caused by envy and insecurity--if one person investigates alternatives to being “male” or “Japanese” “Japanese” or “an architect” it makes the unquestionning unquestionning decision of all others around him suspect and wimpy-looking. It raises questions about the intelligence and ardor of others. Thus, de-local-ization by one person has influence of the six sorts mentioned above above whenever plurification arises. 1. role of conforming in de-localizing--our locale, where we live, becomes, inevitably and always, a dictator, unconsciously operating inside us, limited our views, choices, alternatives--globalization is obliterating local certainties and ways, values and practices, de-localizing us by getting us to see alternatives ways that appear interesting--it is our own interests we conform to in de-localizing, we see something from elsewhere in the globe, or buy it, and find it better than local ways and offerings 2. role of rebelling in de-localizing--we rebel against assumptions that local ways are best, and all the defensive maneuvering of local bigwigs threatened when global things are found to be better and more interesting than local things.
De-centering is a powerful powerful form of influence. Males, some researchers researchers point out, tend toward hierarchy, hierarchy, with extremely uneven distribution of resources. resources. Male-styled societies tend to put key resources in the center and and at the tops of hierarchies in the center. center. Hollywood is centralized entertainment; entertainment; TV broadcasting is centralized program selecselection; in every industry a few huge huge firms dominate production, reducing choice. The economic drive is for profit--optimized when a few identical things can be be sold to everyone. Mass means profit and wealth; custom design means means loss and poverty. Consider music as a typical case. The music industry, world-wide, is highly centralized, with the vast majority of music sold made by rich elites sharing nearly no experience with the people they sell to. As a result nearly all music is targeted at teenage lovers and nearly all songs are about teenage teenage love. There are no songs at all about middle middle aged women taking care care of their husband’s husband’s mother after her stroke. There are no songs at all all about a woman caring for two teenage children after after their father’s business goes broke driving him into flight into the arms of a sexy twenty year old. There are no songs at all about a twenty five year old suddenly realizing he chose the wrong career, career, company, company, college, life path. Most of human experience is entirely unsung because most most humans do not buy most of the CDs recorded--teenage recorded--teenage lovers do so most songs focus on their limited limited (and quite boring) experiences. The appeal of classical musics musics of all traditions is their lack of mindless teenage words expressing mindless teenage teenage thoughts. The Grammy Awards Awards each year have nothing to do with music--there is no music there at at all-only industrial product, being given awards, awards, not for merit, but to promote sales. sales. The flip side of this is a huge cost of having having most of experience and most lives going unsung. The arts that in traditional tribal societies allowed everyone in a village to perform in front of others and express his or her experience, are centralized, rationalized, and optimized for profit-generation. profit-generation. Art and performance performance are thereby stripped stripped from hundreds of of millions of lives for the sake sake of profits at a center. center. De-centering is the overcoming overcoming of all this. It is the invention of local music music expressing the experiences experiences of real people’s people’s lives, not rich elite lives at the center. center. It is art replacing “talent”. “talent”. De-centering saves lives, enlivens communities, turns turns people on, brings communities to life. Mass produced central music is just product, from beginning to end, designed to make someone rich, not to save a life. The wonderful irony of our world is the drug-filled suicidal excesses of most of those art-less “artists” at the center--they love their work so much they kill themselves by the dozen every year, quickly or slowly, slowly, with drugs and excess. The artlessness of their music comes from the artlessness of their lives and the artlessness they cause in the lives of of tens of millions of others. Undoing this is shocking--simply showing up without a profit motive dominating you, shocks. 1. role of conforming in de-centering--mass media created centers monopolizing functions like performing, composing, publishing, news reporting--all of which dumbed down to sell more widely, lowering the elan, value, outlook, and quality of life and people everywhere, de-centering conforms to ordinary human need for functions now monopolized in centers, restoring those functions to all parts and persons in society, stripping the excuse of “professionalism” as a cover for central wealth accumulation 2. role of rebelling in de-centering--what is rebelled against in de-centering is stripping functions from everyone and monopolizing them in centers of great wealth and drug addiction.
Meaning comes comes pre-packaged pre-packaged to us. Interpretations bombard us. Proper frameworks frameworks are imposed imposed in unsubtle ways in organizations organizations and cities. De-constructing means means removing the packaged forms of meaning, meaning, thinking up interpretations that have not bombarded us, using improper frameworks disliked disliked by local organizations and cities. Deconstructing means inventing inventing meaning instead of buying or borrowing it pre-made, pre-constructed, pre-constructed, by others. This is very influential influential and practical. Consider an employee employee in a large business organization who de-constructs de-constructs the functions of his company’s company’s personnel department as they pertain to him. He observes that his own value on the external labor market is much larger than his value on his firm’s firm’s internal labor market. He observes numerous tactics by which the personnel department department of his firm keeps employees like him from experimenting experimenting with their external labor market value. He sees the overall mission of the personnel personnel department in his firm as preventing preventing employees from discovering their external labor market market value and getting them to instead accept they much much lower value in the company’s company’s internal labor market. This is de-constructing the meaning of his job and his personnel department. Cities of all sorts, tend to promote such de-constructing de-constructing of meaning. City living invites comparison and comparison comparison exposes machineries designed to lessen or prevent comparison. 1. role of conforming in de-constructing--you trace out in detail hidden self interests as they distort “services” for you so that those services use you for the interests of someone else in a hididen way--you make all this evident, visible, and therefore changeable, you conform to this trail of distorting hidden self interests at work in the built up practices
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Plurifying meaning via de-constructing it, plurifying composition and performance by de-centering them, plurifying alternatives explored by de-localizing, and plurifying alternatives via de-massifying are social forms of influence. They all influence by relativizing central powerful assumed things, by suggesting and using alternatives to single right ways, by adding an exploration exploration agenda item onto lives hitherto fore fore merely following one right way. They open out life with options, paths, paths, and different places places to explore. They reveal the ignorance, bigotry, bigotry, and defensiveness defensiveness of traditions, values, leaders, community community mores. They start people out on the lifelong journey journey of becoming educated people--people whose ideas cannot be predicted from where and when they grew up. Updating is an increasingly important way to influence. influence. The world gets gets divided into up-to-date up-to-date entities, pioneering pioneering entities, and and out-of-date entities. Updating is continually needed as more and more global innovations sweep the world. The way you did a particular function last year is now uncompetitive because two new better ways to do it have now appeared. The measures of performance performance you used last year are now suicidal as as new means of doing things now allow much more performance of different different sorts, which need entirely new measures for them. them. Updating is a burden in modern living because it is not something you can do and forget--every forget--every year or two you have to seriously do it all over again. Updating is not just a matter of latest computer systems and and software, but also a matter of ideas and styles, styles, values and methods. Mental contents have to be updated just as regularly as hardware systems. What has to be updated--substrates with which functions are done, standards of performance, performance, interfaces among systems, and inter-operability among among diverse systems. As each system gets updated, you also have to relink it to other systems, that is, keep it inter-operable inter-operable with other systems. systems. All of these--substrates, standards, interfaces, and inter-operability inter-operability have both a physical sys tem and a mental contents dimension. Substrates, social materials for doing work functions (like how tasks are organized by teams) and technical materials for doing work functions (like software that coordinates document flows across the internet) and intellectual materials for doing mental work functions (like complexity theory constructs in the late 20th century), continually are developed worldwide. As you ignore them others do not ignore them. them. As you pioneer use of them, others others may copy your example or, or, feeling pressure pressure from it, update too to not fall behind. Re-engineering was a word that referred to re-doing re-doing all the software in the world on the basis of cross-department and cross-organization work process flows made famous by total quality philosophy and methods. It evolved into being the general updating of assumptions about what work work was to be done as well as updating the social and technical materials for doing work functions. Updating substrates here, then, could be called “re-engineering” of a particularly general sort, going beyond software systems as what needs updating. The influence exerted by such updating of substrates, including idea substrates as waves of i ntellectual movements pass over society, society, is pluriform: --falling behind competitor competitor capabilities till I update --pioneering new capabilities capabilities that competitors will feel pressure pressure from --using newly developed easier easier ways to do existing functions --using newly developed better better ways to do existing functions --doing new functions I was was unable to do before at all. 1. role of conforming in update substrates--you conform to whatever the new substrate is like and requires, you observe all traits of the new substrate and map them over traits of the old substrate it is replacing, noting how such trait differences will stretch or shrink, functions done upon the substrate as basis 2. role of rebelling in update substrates--rebelling is done by switching from a familiar, already-mastered substrate to an entirely new one, you rebel against past performance mastery knowing mastery of past things tempts you into holding onto them fatally too long.
Negotiating standards is a form of influence. influence. It changes competitive grounds from functions users do not benefit from to functions functions users care greatly about. We do not care how our computer operating operating system handles fonts, for example, example, but we care a great deal about how our word word processor allows us to choose fonts we want. By negotiating standards on operating system handling of fonts, we move the ground of competition competition to how word processors enable users to choose and position fonts. The latter means a lot to users, the former is something they do not want to know about and pay attention to. Negotiating standards removes fights and competitions over things neither party party cares much about. It adjusts disagreements to grounds where where something people really value is at stake. It ups the quality and outcome value of conversations and disagreements. disagreements. It gets people to disagree over things worth having diverse positions on. Cities are rife with disagreements over things neither party cares cares about. Influence via negotiating standards ups the quality of conversation through cities by focussing talk on what matters to people. Consider bioinformatics and tissue engineering, system biology, and evolutionary engineering, new biology engineering disciplines ramping up seriously in the early 21st century. Biofab as an analog to semiconductor fabrication, is hindered because people are inventing DNA, RNA, protein forms of new machines and devices, for nanotech mechanics or info signal processing processing or the like. Since those forms are not standard, standard, dozens of slightly different versions of each machine exist, wasting wasting resources on reinventing wheels. If standard libraries of functioning devices and parts are are developed, then all researchers can, can, instead of re-inventing what someone else somewhere somewhere else already did, contribute only devices and functions entirely new to the entire library, vastly vastly speeding up and making more comprehensive overall library usefulness. Then biofab can be as fast, cheap, reliable, and fast improving as semiconductor fabrication has been the l ast 50 years. 1. role of conforming in negotiating standards--you conform to a place--repository--and a process--registering inventions with the repository, in negotiating standards 2. role of rebelling in negotiating standards--you rebel in the form of only doing inventions after consulting what the repository summarizes as what has already been invented, making your new invention truly new and not a repeat of something already registered with the respository.
Changing interfaces can have major influence on society. society. It can change who communicates with with whom. It can make entire parts of society suddenly suddenly understood by other parts. It can test good intentions by suddenly suddenly making action on those intentions easy easy and possible (and often, also, visible). Inventing new interfaces can can put parts of society into contact that never were in contact before. before. It can greatly lower lower costs of communication communication and coordination. It can make whole categories of action and organizing organizing easy to do, reliable, and and something more people people do more frequently. frequently. It can change the overall balance among activities, interests, contacts, and cooperations cooperations in a society. society. I was present when Milwaukee, decades ago, funded funded yearly parades along seven major avenues from from suburbs into downtown, for the first time. Adjacent neighborhoods who had never known each other were were impressed by the various groups, activities, activities, and cultures represented in those parades parades marching through their their own neighborhood. Here, annual parades, changed awareness awareness of huge portions of the city of the diversity around them. Milwaukee people became fundamentally fundamentally more interested in themselves themselves as a result of “seeing” themselves in marching marching group form in these parades. The parades were a new interface interface between physically and socially separate separate neighborhoods. The influence this had on Milwaukee was profound. Though a few years later the parades lost their funding as conservatives conservatives took over city government, the genie had already already been let out of the bag and a series of inter-neighborhood borough-council meetings were set up, where two wards of the city united their governing councils for joint sessions, planning policies between their two wards. wards. This was, according to the people involved, a direct direct result of tens of thousands of people watching those parades. parades. 1. role of conforming in changing interfaces--an invented new interface conforms to the operations on the operands that people wish to modify or use, it fosters the operations on the operations people actually use or wish to use, instead of existing interfaces that enable operations not now wanted on operands not now used. 2. role of rebelling in changing interfaces--new interfaces rebel against old interfaces and their good supports for operations now no longer all that important or wanted.
Inter-operability is re-doing re-doing the links among systems as as they individually get updated. As one system gets updated, updated, its old connections to related related or neighboring systems no longer work, and have to be updated to. Such updating of links from any one recently updated system to its environs is called updating inter-operability inter-operability.. When inter-operability among city systems is not maintained, you get enclaves of great performance that chafe and irritate everything everything around the enclave. Eventually enough enemies build up to shut down the progressive enclave. Inter-operability updating updating is the necessary necessary cost you have to pay for updating local systems. Only if you also also update links to surrounding systems, do those surrounding systems benefit from and appreciate positively your new capabilities. 1. role of conforming in interoperability--you conform to the updates in the environment of one system, that is, changes in the other systems that are its environment 2. role of rebelling in interoperability--you rebel against interactions with existing systems that ignore updates to those systems, new functions added to them and the like.
Social influence by updating systems produces continually changing capabilities, focus on what matters by standardizing what does not, new connections among part and people, and redone links of any new capability to all the old capabilities around around it. These make society become more more and more capable over time and more and more inter-linked inter-linked so all parts benefit when one part develops better capability. capability. When ideas are updated, standardized on, interfaced interfaced differently, differently, and kept inter-operable, thinking in one field or part of society better influences and is understood by by other parts. The thinking done in one place benefits thinking in many other other places somewhat somewhat later. When ideas are not not updated, standardized on, and so on, they balkanize, staying powerful in enclaves, producing envy or resentment, that hinders ever implementing them. Spin is deliberate lying by leaders or organizations--the way corporations never take responsibility for their mistakes and the way politicians never take responsibility for their mistakes. Modern political parties in some nations have have developed official official policies and departments departments in charge charge of lying. The word “spin” “spin” refers to interpreting facts in one’s own favor, favor, but lying is what this is, whenever whenever the positive interpretation interpretation is known by those making it to be false. That is most of the time, in reality. A husband comes home with someone’s someone’s lipstick on his collar--he spins this to his wife as casual casual contact at a party. party. It is lying, pure and simple, simple, though we call it “spin”. “spin”. Institutionalized liars, and lying, are facts of life, if unattractive ones. The educational level of entire national populations in the industrial world is so low that detecting lies from leaders of government and business is iffy, only sometimes done. Spin thrives among uneducated populations, given to bigoted search for only new information that supports how t hey want the world to be. Spin thrives on and sustains bigotry that kills entire cities, cities, societies, and civilizations. civilizations. Spin is, in this sense, evil. Many healthy societies shun shun and eject people who “spin”. They do not tolerate such behavior. behavior. Other societies have entrenched bigoted factions factions who compete by escalating spin, till all that is said all the time is lies. Nothing is more tragic than watching this from abroad, abroad, seeing such deluded bigots exchange exchange spin with each other. other. One thinks of a kind of inverse Sufi mysticism mysticism with spinning ideas producing entire populations unbalanced and incapable of going in any coherent direction (that is based in reality, because because no one in them can see reality amid the spin). Nevertheless, spinning (that is, systematic deliberate lying) is a form of influence and is powerful wherever populations are uneducated (however much they have learned). You spin something when you demonstrate its powers, that is, show what it can do. I know X can do Z but I go beyond that and “show” how X can do Z. This is positive spin of positive content. You spin something when you demonstrate your objections to something. I know X has has weakness Z but I go beyond that and “show” how X’s weakness weakness Z actually hurts particular people. You show what something cannot do. This is positive spin of negative content. content. You spin when you demonify opposing opposing ideas or groups. groups. This is negative spin of neutral content. You spin when you deify agreeing agreeing ideas or groups. This is negative spin of neutral neutral content. Spin can be confused, intellectually, intellectually, with reframing. In communicating there is a package around the message that evokes evokes frames in the receiver allowing the receiver to make interpretations interpretations of the message similar to those interpretations made by the sender. sender. Without such packages, packages, receivers interpret messages messages using different frames than senders, so they “get” different different meanings Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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from the words of the message. message. Reframing a message message in its package so the message and contexts which give it meaning both both get transmitted to receivers is just responsible responsible communicating and negotiating. negotiating. Spin means deliberately putting putting frames in that make a swine look like a horse. The frame is not for the purpose of preserving preserving the meaning but of hiding the meaning and substituting a better looking meaning. meaning. Reframing is defined defined as contexts that are honestly put in in place to help preserve meaning. meaning. Spin is done to change true meaning by making it look like something else. Demonstration, the showing of something new or some some new capabillity, capabillity, to get it on people’s agendas agendas is one of the most common actions in industry and government. government. Every new technique or technology gets demonstrated, often tens of thousands of times in many different ways and venues. It is a primary form of influence--we demonstrate that something works, that something is possible, that something has bad end end results, that something has unexpected side-effects. side-effects. Demonstrating is a form of teaching--only teaching--only it is a demonstration way of of teaching, not verbal formulas or math formulas. formulas. It is showing inputs, and the outputs they produce under some circumstances. circumstances. Sometimes we demdemonstrate things to ourselves, taking vague intuitions and nuances, slight ideas in our minds, and demonstrating to ourselves that they work or do not work b y trying them out, before ourselves. Demonstrations are often a tactic within an overall spin campaign--in that case, the d emonstrations are partial, deliberately partial, so as to reveal only that part of reality that fits the “spin” decided on earlier. 1. role of conforming in show-demonstration--you conform to your audience’s skepticism and its sources, designing your demonstration to overcome audience skepticism and bias. 2. role of rebelling in show-demonstration--a demonstration induces it audience to rebel against their own doubt and dis-belief
Demonstrations, the gathering of people to object to something, are a major form of influence, whether done by a group or done by one person alone to a boss or partner or leader. leader. This is a combination of showing yourself, bringing yourself along to meet meet someone and bringing up an objection to something something that someone is doing. Wars Wars have been started and stopped by such demonstrations. Leading British generals in World World War II II wrote biographies before they died saying their main contribution to Britain’s Britain’s war effort was, daily, stopping dumb dangerous ideas from Winston Churchhill, who, apparently, spent much of the war filled with alcohol, proposing bad ideas like his earlier Gallipolie invasion in the first World World War. War. Here one to one demonstrating prevented Britain from from losing a war. It is clear that this is a form of influence, one of the most powerful in history as well as in personal relations. 1. role of conforming in protest-demonstrations--you conform to what messages need to be like in order to change the attitudes or practices of your audience 2. role of rebelling in protest-demonstrations--you rebel against what you audience feels, thinks, proposes, or does
Demonifying someone or something is a form of influence. influence. This involves removing the contingencies contingencies and case particulars that qualify qualify a particular harm, harm, and generalizing, coming up with some abstract principle that makes the thing, in the case, harmful much more generally than just in the case it was first noticed in. You can see people doing this when they map a particular in a specific case case to some ideological principle--showing that the case specific specific is an instance of a quite general harm. People are highly susceptible to this sort of generalization, because people want want rules that are always unambiguously true. They love hearing that something is clear, clear, always true, powerful, and without ambiguity or provisions. provisions. People long for clear untrammelled untrammelled unobstructed truths unlike real truths in our complicated world. People long for a world simpler than our real world. So demonifying a person, a case, or an idea, idea, is always popular--people leap up in joy when you say that something is not just locally here harmful harmful but everywhere everytime harmful! harmful! However, their joy does not make the demonification demonification true--it only makes it popular. popular. Much harm is done by demonifying demonifying people and things, ideas and practices. Local conditions and contingencies are forgotten forgotten and slight local harms are exaggerated far beyond beyond their real effects. Nevertheless, demonifying can easily easily be done and it is a powerful, if evil, for of influence, much like “spinning” a sit uation is. 1. role of conforming in demonifying--in demonifying something we make it bigger, longer, clearer, less complicated, and more general than it really is, we turn it into an instance of a quite general harm, we conform to the human tendency to wish for a world simpler, more black and white, less ambiguous than reality really is 2. role of rebelling in demonifying--in demonifying we rebel against the complicatedness and vagueness, ambiguity and inter-relatedness of reality, making things generally harmful that are actually only harmful in particular circumstances, that are complex and hard to define.
Deifying is the opposite of demonifying. We generalize, losing local provisos and conditions, contingencies and nuances. We make something quite generally beneficial beneficial when in reality it is beneficial only w hen hard to find and define complex sets of other conditions are true. Again, this is popular, though inaccurate, because people want a world of black and white that is simpler than reality really is. 1. role of conforming in deifying--in deifying we conform to the human mental flaw causing humans to wish for a world simpler and less nuanced than our real world actually is 2. role of rebelling in deifying--in deifying we rebel against the complicatedness and contingencies of reality
Quality is a form of influence. So much of modern life is done with brand new sloppily done things, often presented as a service but actually done only to make money for a small group of people, that people are astounded by quality when they encounter it. Quality seems to come from another world. It astonishes us. Quality expands our hope. It expands our vision and ambition. ambition. It takes us out of our habitual self self concern and selfishness. selfishness. Instead of shrinking from an an ugly world back into our self, self, quality attracts us by making the world a beautiful beautiful hopeful place again. Quality is the core, the essential essential core, of civilizations. Civilizations that lose their quality die ugly long deaths, deaths, ruining the lives of billions for hundreds of years. Quality is of four sorts--visibility (clarity), rarity, sincerity, and integrity. integrity. Clarity by itself is a form of influence. One form of it is articulation--being articulation--being able to state meanings meanings precisely. precisely. It is the power of making things clear. clear. This has remarkable power in group settings. The one person who can hear the subtleties in each faction’s positions positions and capture them them all in a compromise, controls controls the group. All sides sigh with satisfaction when they hear that person’s person’s summary of what is at stake and how it might be solved. The precision of capture of positions of each faction faction and the precision of meshing and balancing them with points by other factions allows all to relax, knowing their contributions and views will not be distorted or summarized into vapid generalities. Clarity is power. power. The level of articulateness articulateness in business, in particular, particular, is so poor, poor, that anyone with mastery mastery of a language can excel easily, easily, these days. There is usually no one around who can compete in clarity terms. In politics the power of clarity involves not just precision of idea expression but cogency and vividness of imagery. imagery. The person who can be exact exact and vivid at the same time, wins the election. Few are up to this linguistically. linguistically. The few who are become prime ministers or the like. 1. role of conforming in articulation--in articulation you fashion language so when inserted into the other contexts of other people is “means” what you intend to convey, perhaps an accurate desciption of some bit of reality--you make language conform to what it must say to certain contexts in other minds in order to “mean” what you intend and you intend it to “mean” an accurate and complete description of some part of the world; that is two kinds of simultenaous conformance. 2. role of rebelling in articulation--in articulation you remove the latent, incipient, ambiguous, vague, indistinct, implicit, hidden nature of some part of reality and bring it brightly into full human discourse by converting all apparent traits of it into words--you remove the privacy, in a way, of phenomena, making them in an instant social.
Media appeal is a form of influence. This is the power of being clear after after media have done their best to distort you. You have to input to a distorting warped process process guessing accurately what inputs, after after transformation by such warpings, warpings, will convey what you finally wanted wanted to convey. convey. Some people are rather good at this. They master the distorting mechanisms and tendencies of each medium and experiment around with various distortions of inputs till they find o nes that compensate for how the medium itself distorts contents. Thereafter, Thereafter, they say absurd things normally or normal normal things absurdly, watching watching calmly as distorting media change that that into wonderful final transmitted results. Once you know reporters seek slime, scuzz, fault, exaggeration and are bored to death by validity, truth, honesty and the like, you jazz up messages to appeal to th eir reportorial faults, pleasing them and tricking them into reporting your honesty, validity, truths, and the like. It takes quite some talent to pull this off. off. It is like making making up drawings for a distorting mirror that, after distortion, will end up presenting the Mona Lisa. President John Kennedy of the USA, decades ago, was was a master of charming the media, distracting it from its own distractions a nd distortions, so that his own message got through amplified by enthusiasm from an enthused range of media. 1. role of conforming in media appeal--you conform to traits messages must have in order to stick to other minds, they have to fit into human needs, daily routines, capabilities, and so on; you also make messages attract media attention by appealing to the vulgar, base, greeds that drive media and direct its attention 2. role of rebelling in media appeal--you rebel from nuance, complexity, sophistication , accuracy, and proper judgement and weighting of issues; media will not respond to accuracy and truth; you package things so media gobble them up, perhaps choking on a hard truth or two hidden inside. Consider Greenpeace members , chaining themselves up the height of a giant redwood tree (photogenic enough to get free TV coverage) or anti-fur demonstrators, organizing dozens of completely naked women writing with their nude bodies anti-fur messages seen from bridges and buildings above (photogenic enough to get free TV coverage).
Getting the major agenda’s of others recognized and realized realized in what you yourself do, is a form of influence. Top leaders leaders try to nudge nations and large organizations in some coherent direction of change, and watch as momentum momentum and inertia causes lots of effort to dissipate into no change at all. They are extremely grateful for anyone, wherever wherever places in the organization, who realizes what they requested and actually actually implement some or all of it in a local project. Typically Typically they hear about such things, visit them personally, and and lavish extra resources and rewards and visibility on them. By spotting who in your society or organization has major major agenda items being largely ignored, ignored, and realizing those agenda items in your own work and locale, you can propel yourself to whole society or organization attention, via personal intervention of top l eaders with your work. 1. role of conforming in embodying the major agendas of others--you conform, of course, to what the other party judges to be best or most important, you implement their agenda 2. role of rebelling in embodying the major agendas of others--you rebel against the tendency of everyone, you, and those around you, to usually ignore the agendas of others and pursue only your own agenda
Eschatologic style is influence from linking your your work and agenda with the ultimate anxieties anxieties and hopes of human beings everywhere. everywhere. You harness the engines of anxiety underneath all human human existence in your favor. Eschatologic styles are packagings of ideas or efforts that make make enthralling stories that that others want to watch. watch. You package your effort, for example, as David against Goliath, or the man who came back from the dead, or the spoiler wreaking revenge on an enemy who slighted him in earlier years. These primal urges and fears inside all of us, drive us all, in ways that usually are unconscious. When someone, to the contrary, contrary, consciously invokes them and uses them, it fascinates onlookers. Eschatologic styles ask a lot of people, people, moving past practical to ultimate ultimate questions of existence. existence. For many people most of the time these are unwelcome expansions. For some people, however, however, tired of the everyday smallness of life, such styles are welcome. welcome. 1. role of conforming in eschatalogic style--people with worthless daily lives are seeking expansion, glory, purposes beyond life and world, they seek the other world in this world, the seek the end of this world, they seek the coming of a new divine order of being, why? because they have a lousy location and role in this one real world we all share; in setting up an eschatalogic style, you conform to the desire of such marginal ones for something beyond reality, something beyond the mess they have made of their lives 2. role of rebelling in eschatalogic style--in setting up eschatalogic style you rebel against daily life, this world, and reality--pretending to something worth more and beyond them all.
Clarity via articulation, media media appeal, embodying others’ agendas, agendas, and eschatologic style may may seem a strange kind of clarity. clarity. Articulation is verbal clarity, clarity, that is simple enough. Media appeal is clarity of result based based on deliberately designed designed input distortions to a distorting process. How, however, is embodying others’ agendas, a form form of clarity? It is the clarity of what the the top of an organization organization says being done by other other parts of the organization. organization. It is word connected connected with deed, top connected connected with middle or Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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bottom. finally eschatologic style style is what sort of clarity? It is the clarity clarity of the things that humans most most worry and concern concern themselves about, even if unconsciously, unconsciously, connected to the things people do and talk about everyday. everyday. It is the rational connected connected to the emotive, the surface surface connected to the deeps. Cities that lack these sorts of clarity clarity are chaotic, confused, and incapable incapable of coordinated large scale action. action. Cities that have these sorts of clarity are coherent, coherent, transparent, and capable capable of large scale long term coordinated action--actions that add up to something, that go somewhere. Rarity is a form form of influence by quality. quality. The quality of being rare attracts interest interest and respect. There is usually a difficulty to it that is hard to copy or match. match. Four kinds of rarity have particular influence--bridging ideas, ones that connect disparate fields or other ideas; bridging scales, ones that connect different size scales; bridging time scales, ones that connect past with future with present; and the bravery of being contrarian, connecting the obvious with the very unobvious, the popular with the very unpopular. Rare idea combinations, rare rare scale combinations, rare time combinations, rare combination of opposites or opponents influence influence us. They surprise, that is, attract attention. They connect connect diverse realms. They overcome overcome resistance and naturalness, tradition and contemporary habits. They are hard to copy, copy, reproduce, reproduce, or go beyond. They earn respect by their unlikeliness, the courage they require, the opposition they elicit, the effort they demand. Bridge ideas traverse differing differing realms. The farther apart the realms, the rarer rarer the bridge, and the more surprise and attention it attracts. Bridge ideas also encourage further communication across across differing realms of thought. They invite methods methods from one discipline to be applied to ideas or cases in another. another. They invite theories theories in one to be applied to explain phenomena phenomena in the other. other. Bridge ideas influence the world by putting separate separate realms of knowledge into contact. contact. They often become become the basis of invention of new disciplines--bioinformatics, mechanotronics, robot cognition, biologic computing. 1. role of conforming in bridging ideas--bridge ideas show that ideas in one domain are the same as ideas in another domain, or they show how ideas in one domain can be used in or applied to ideas in another domain, bridging ideas conforms to both domains, establishing relations among parts of them 2. role of rebelling in bridging ideas--the rebellion in this is taking things thought to be different and showing them to be the same
Bridging scales connect connect different size scales. The global and the local, the small and and the large, the fast and the slow, slow, the hard and and the easy are included. Science often progresses via pioneering understanding understanding of smaller scale phenomena phenomena and larger scale phenomena. What is rarer still is connecting very very large scale phenomena phenomena with very small scale phenomena. This is the inter-level problem problem in social and physical science. Interactions on a smaller scale “cause” “cause” patterns emergent on a larger scale. scale. Constraints on larger pattern behavior on the larger scale in turn, constrain smaller scale interactions. Cascading this across three or more levels is very rare indeed, though critical to practical activity in our actual world. Cities are, for example, ten level or more social systems, with cascading cascading constraints up and down these levels. Unfortunately professional investigation, research, and thinking about cities stops at linking phenomena phenomena on one scale to each other or to those on one level up or down. down. Almost no professional thinking about cities deals with three or more levels. When, rarely, rarely, such thinking or planning is done, its influence influence is enormous. For one thing, complexity tampering, tampering, as defined earlier in this paper, is avoided--actions are devised for causative levels below where problems appear. 1. role of conforming in bridging global-local scales--local diverse, dispersed forces can be collected or focussed on a more global scale level to achieve huge effects, conversely, global forces can be given a means to impact or be caught by local institutions changing localities--in both the conformity is of things on one scale to things on another that they can influence without overwhelming 2. role of rebelling in bridging global-local scales--when scales are bridged the rebellion is putting in play, on a different scale, forces from one scale.
Bridging time scales is influential as well. The short term and the long term are very very different in appearance appearance to human systems, especially careers careers and leaders. You can nearly always reach short term goals at a cost of making the attainment of long term goals impossible. This means the present can nearly be optimized by stealing from the future. Since the future, for people, and other animals, is not born yet, they cannot object, vote, or argue. This convenience continually tempts tempts people into disaster. disaster. Small stealings from the future, found easy, lead to huge stealings, until others, losing confidence in the entire future of your city or society, withdraw all investment, leaving contemporary markets and sales and lifestyles lifestyles in shambles, merely because because others anticipate future troubles not yet arrived. arrived. Investment markets are are the one place in society where stealing from the future is noticed and quantified and appropriate actions, in terms of bond rates, interest rates, and stock prices, taken. Binding to various pasts also is done in the form of recalling people to former ways lost in modernization or in the various supposed “sins” of the contemporary world. 1. role of conforming in bridging history and the present--what is conformed to is a supposed future or past, an image one has of them (usually quite false or distorted or idealized) 2. role of rebelling in bridging history and the present--what is rebelled against is aspects of the present that one seeks an excuse to deny, stop, leave, or change.
It takes bravery to buck buck the crowd. crowd. It takes bravery bravery to stick out. It takes bravery bravery to go against the flow. Being contrarian has immense influence in two distinct ways. First, as a demonstration of bravery it increases increases visibility and respect for the person doing it. Second, by violating obvious agreement agreement and enthusiasms of most others, it raises doubts about both the bravery of others and their wisdom. It undermines crowd and trend phenomena emotionally in large ways not at first quantifiable and seen obviously. If a few more buck the trend and join initial contrarians, the entire present can split i nto factions. 1. role of conforming in contraryian bravery--you conform to some ideal, idea, alternative, vision very different than the contemporary world 2. role of rebelling in contraryian bravery--you rebel against things as they are, powers that be, norms and assumptions, contemporary arrangements.
Being rare, sticking out, via bridge ideas, bridge size scales, bridge time scales, and being contrarian, is influencing by the quality of the l ikeliness of one’s actions and ideas. By doing what is unlikely, not natural, not easy, not obvious you erode certainty and naive enthusiasm everywhere in society, causing obvious successes and good projects to receive second looks and doubtful questions. You protect people and the world from human tendencies to enthuse too much. much. Sincerity in a cynical world is for for fools, they say, say, but in the real world, it has has lots of influence. influence. For one things its rarity makes it impressive. For another its lack of hidden agendas, ulterior motives, and tactical feignts, feignts, gives it a clarity of message that communicates powerfully. powerfully. Sincerity simplifies the world of motives, the world of messages, messages, the world of meanings meanings and intent. Sincerity comes from from operating beyond the social rank and status and and greed concerns of of most of the world. world. It comes from not pursuing success, not opportunistically latching onto the next available superficial theme, not serving primarily yourself, not ignoring social longing for simple honest service that does not boost anyone’s career career prospects. Sincerity comes from aiming aiming to assist others, without larger profits for one’s self. People not pursuing everywhere and all the time their own success, have great influence and power The main rewards and levers by which others control people suddenly lose all their power. power. This makes sincere sincere people more independent and free free to speak and maneuver. maneuver. In large corporations, corporations, for example, example, there are two kinds of managers: independently wealthy kids of rich families, who compete ruthlessly and amorally because they do not need income from their present job; and hard working middle class kids who need income and hedge their own ideas and boldness when competing. competing. The latter regularly lose to the former for lack of boldness. boldness. If, however, however, the middle class ones never never from the beginning care about career success and are willing to put everything on th e line, boldly, again and again, for ideas or opportunities they consider interesting, they can immensely succeed in spite of not trying to succeed. Their immunity to threats, rewards, rewards, incentives, gossip, backbiting, backbiting, boss irritation, job evaluations gives them a scope of maneuver that dwarfs what all but a few independently wealthy managers are willing to try. 1. role of conforming in successlessness--you conform to your own ideas about how and why to live in successlessness, you ignore social norms of “success” 2. role of rebelling in successlessness--you rebel against social norms of what is successful, you invent your own personal new norms and follow those instead.
Operating on a deep base base is rare in our world. The temptation of opportunism is everywhere everywhere all the time. Few have, whatever whatever it takes, to watch even even small opportunities pass them by, one after another, waiting for something really deep and profound to latch on to. I am reminded of two academic researchers--Kahneman and Tversky--who did years of experiments on the basis basis of economics, rational utility utility theory. They accumulated lots of proof that people cannot act act rationally even when they want want to. They did a rare thing, instead of publishing each experiment as soon as it was done, they held back, did lots of other experiments, and anticipated objections, doing experiments to handle each likely objection. After some years, they published results, results, then, when economists tried to mock and drum beat them out of existence, they quickly quickly fired back by publishing exact experiments, completed completed years earlier, demolishing demolishing exactly the counter-argument counter-argument of each mocker and drum beater. beater. The result was humiliation and that made people chary of attacking such such well prepared opponents. In a world of publish or perish these two scholars scholars were not opportunists, maximizing maximizing numbers of publishings. As a results, fifteen years later, later, they won a Nobel Prize for Economics Economics (Tversky had died so Kahneman won won it on their behalf). This is a great example of operating operating on a deep base in a world given to opportunism. This form of sincerity is influential enough to win Nobel Prizes Prizes for people. 1. role of conforming in operating on a deep base--you conform to historic, ontologic, philosophic, and other demanding viewpoints far beyond the scale and concerns of your own time and peers, you operate on longer time scales, deeper quality scales, broader purpose scales than is normal or popular or recognized 2. role of rebelling in operating on a deep base--you rebel against all the habits of shallowness and compromising for convenience around you in peers and society in general.
People who do not serve themselves primarily primarily are scary. scary. This is because most of the incentives, rewards, and and threats of our world apply assuming we are self self interested. Gandhi, when fighting for the dignit y and self government of India, again and again frustrated British attempts to bribe, jail, co-opt, and o therwise incent him to drop the d ignity and freedom thing and love the British as they should be loved. Martin Luther King, secretly taped by the FBI, investigated for communist communist affiliations because he he objected to racism and vote denial to blacks, blacks, by working for something historic, beyond himself, made his own faults of adultery adultery and egotism, irrelevant irrelevant He latched onto an injustice so wide and deep that hundreds of millions of people, reading about his non-violent approach, from afar, afar, became emotionally enmeshed enmeshed in the success of his mission. He made an entire nation and world change its mind about treatment of minorities, taking literally not their bibles but their constitutions and bills of rights. He erased the hypocrisy of the founding fathers of the US, their tolerance tolerance of racism and slavery. He was unstoppable because because he was sincere. He could only be bribed bribed with something historic--the freefreedom of his people people and the actual full implementation of the the US constitution and its bill of rights. Sincere people tend to be dangerous dangerous in this way. way. Their influence can can last hundreds and thousands of years. 1. role of conforming in serving all not self--you conform to the needs of those other than you and your friends and peers 2. role of rebelling in serving all not self--you rebel against your own needs and your habits of putting your own interests first.
Some traditions have concepts of benevolence--a duty from seniors to juniors--and others have concepts of compassion--a fundamental unity of all living things that is the happiest idea in all of life. Recent research has has found that people expert in these traditions really are capable capable of levels of happiness in daily life far beyond most people in the world, and people in just about all other traditions. People who are are sincere in the way of not serving serving primarily themselves, themselves, exercise exercise compassion and benevolence. They attract others via the unusual levels of happiness this brings to their lives “I have been to the mountain top”. Their own daily lives become works of art--demonstrating art--demonstrating levels of care and happiness unavailable to the self concerned, the successful, and and the greedy. They make big houses and cars laughably laughably small because they have a kind of happiness, on a personal experience level and a brain involvement level, more powerful and “happier” than anything big houses, high status, and big cars (filled with trophy wives) can provide. They demonstrate a happiness available to anyone equally sincere, sincere, that cocaine cannot match, that wealth cannot cannot compete with, that surpasses “understanding”. They open the biggest door of all. Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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People who are sincere sometimes are also people people who notice immense untapped longing in masses of society, society, not dealt with or used. Martin Luther King noticed this not only about blacks, discriminated against and segregated and prevented from voting, but also about whites, living for hundreds of years with a constitution and bill of rights that hypocritically was not applied to all citizens. The longing of the white majority to not be hypocrites and the longing of blacks blacks to be treated as real citizens were both latent, latent, largely untapped, till Martin Luther King found a process, process, a style, a mode of operating that harnessed harnessed these two longings in hundreds of millions of people. As soon as these longings were harnessed, opposition opposition became futile. Laws changed. changed. Einstein tapped such longing in late 18th 18th century physicists. A book in 1882 had had laid out out half a dozen major flaws with Newton’s view of the universe, including flaws with the idea of absolute time. Einstein, spurned of a job by every university because of letters his academic advisor wrote against him, driven in no small part by revenge, published in one year three academic papers that completely mapped and coherently expressed the untapped longing in physicists everywhere for a post-Newton updated conceptualization conceptualization of their field. Once Einstein gave all hope that such a re-conceptualization re-conceptualization was at hand, no one could stop him, though some tried for ten or so years, till a 1919 astronomy experiment showed light from a star being bent by gravity of a star it passed by, something Einstein had predicted with his simple equations. Whole fields can change, entire bodies of knowledge can can die and be replaced, with this type of influence by sincerity. sincerity. 1. role of conforming in capturing hidden social longing--you conform to critiques and doubts, frustrations and disagreements that are not influencing a field or that leaders and publishers ignore or slight or denigrate 2. role of rebelling in capturing hidden social longing-- you rebel against authorized paradigms and prevailing viewpoints.
Sincerity by working for things beyond success, by sh unning opportunism and shallow victories, by serving others not one’s self, by tapping hidden longing in society, has tremendous influence, if on nothing else, on history itself. Very few of the names of people in the 20th century will be remembered in the 30th century but we can be fairly confident that several of the few names remembered then will be names of unusually sincere people who tapped huge masses of longing, like Einstein and Gandhi. Integrity is a form of quality that has tremendous influence. influence. It is rare, and hard to do. It resists all the normal rewards rewards and incentives of the world. It irritates leaders leaders and powers that be, because because it goes its own way, way, making them appear appear powerless. It starts with ignoring normality, normality, treating it as a temptation. temptation. It evolves into leaving the world of of normality, going far beyond its loyalties, frameworks, concerns, methods, and incentives, then, miraculously, for someone having escaped, returning to revise those normal world: loyalties, frameworks, concerns, methods, and incentives. We can understand rare people people who rise above where where they were born, but but it is harder to understand such people who, having succeeded on larger scales, return return to fix and mess with revising the locality they succeeded in rising above. Getting their hands dirty after so much work escaping local dirt, impresses us as integrity. Integrity develops further further into learning to operate operate at higher standards standards than all those those around you. Without reward reward and obvious benefit, indeed, with much much trouble for one’s one’s effort, people with with integrity insist on their own higher standards of performance. Finally, integrity integrity involves anticipating the judgement of history on present present eras, frameworks, frameworks, deeds, deeds, systems, people, people, approaches--the approaches--the whole shebang. shebang. People with integrity step gingerly, gingerly, choosing where where to go and what to do tetchily, thinking through what each step means from the world hundreds of years hence. hence. “What are we assuming is important or okay that humanity humanity will judge, years hence, superficial or evil?” people with integrity wonder. People who treat normal ways as temptations, temptations, not good things to do, surprise and irritate. irritate. They also influence us. It is one thing to avoid avoid some parts of normality; normality; it is quite something else to avoid all of normality as a temptation. temptation. People with integrity treat the normal as something condemned, condemned, dangerous, evil, evil, distorted, treacherous. They want nothing to do with it. This gives them influence. It changes standards and expectations among among observers. Jack Welch, Welch, the Ph.D. chemist chemist who revised GE from a conglomerate into a bank that was not legally a bank (and not taxed as a bank), that fixed broken companies then sold them at a profit, treated normality in GE as in principle condemned, below minimal standards of work, doomed. He spent a few years going all over the corporation applying more stringent measures of success, by which most of GE was questionable on a business basis. Once the normal was totally suspect and questioned questioned by all, all over the company, company, it was somewhat easier to suggest suggest particular drastic changes. 1. role of conforming in treating normality as temptation--you conform to higher criteria of excellence than you era, nation, gender, schooling, peers, leaders, and social norms accept and promote, you operate beyond and above present accepted normal criteria of excellence 2. role of rebelling in treating normality as temptation--you rebel against the common accepted promoted criteria of excellence of peers, era, schooling, leaders, and society.
People with integrity are always people who have left normality normality behind personally and for years operated beyond it. Their integrity gets demonstrated when they return, getting dirt on their hands, by fixing broken parts parts of this world they have already left successfully. They return and fix things. GE, to continue the Welch example, could could have ended up split into a normal junk part, part, entirely sold off to others, others, and a valuable, saved part, revised by Welch’s Welch’s associates. associates. Some of this did happen. However, much much more than this happened. Welsh changed the idea from the conglomerate idea to the bank that buys and sells companies after fixing them idea, a special bank, legally a conglomerconglomerate, hence, taxed much less than actual banks. This “other world”ly idea evolved and invited Welch to get his hands dirty, turning GE the conglomerate conglomerate into GE the bank that bought, fixed, then sold companies (at low tax rates compared compared to actual banks). This new image was his return from jouneying beyond GE the conglomerate. He came back back to GE, revising it utterly into a non-bank bank. In doing so he made several several thousand managers managers rich. He has, therefore, therefore, a lot lot of fans. 1. role of conforming in discovering new temptations--you conform to an alternative view or possible framework beyond normality and you come back and conform to the practical necessities of actually influencing and implementing something new in this world--that is two things conformed to, an ideal beyond and the nitty gritty of implementing something beyond in reality 2. role of rebelling in discovering new temptations--you rebel against normal frameworks and visions and you rebel against sloppy casual implementation
Getting one’s hands dirty by returning to fix the dirty world one succeeded in leaving, in imagination terms, is hard because dealing with all that dirt tempts one int o lowering standards. “This is good enough: enough: this will do” one one is tempted daily to say. say. Integrity in such circumstances is inventing higher standards standards then maintaining maintaining them completely, completely, not compromising with failing realities. This integrity influences many. many. They are tempted, tempted, again and again, again, daily, daily, to lower standards except when they are around around someone higher in rank who maintains the same high standards day in and day out. 1. role of conforming in making this world divine via inventing higher standards--you conform to standards beyond those of the contemporary world and its norms 2. role of rebelling in making this world divine via inventing higher standards--you rebel against standards common in those around you and in current arrangements and regimes
Finally integrity as a form of influence by quality, influences by performing before the unborn as your audience, not the living. People who do what history will judge wise puzzle and again again and again surprise the living. They come up with standards no one living could imagine. They try for things no one living needs. They imagine perforperformance no one living would bother imagining. They get criteria, viewpoints, evaluation criteria criteria not from the living, not from competitors, competitors, but from projections of what history, history, later, will evaluate evaluate highly. What will future generations generations think if I do this?--they ask daily. daily. 1. role of conforming in performing before the unborn--you conform to history’s views and evaluations of your present era and place, guessing them 2. role of rebelling in performing before the unborn--you rebel against living to please those now alive around you, ignoring them in order to please those yet unborn.
Integrity is hard to do. It is therefore therefore rare and surprising. It attracts attention. attention. It spawns myriad myriad innovations, in the gap between between normal standards and the the historic standards integrity works with. Cities with quality quality of this sort--integrity--pulse with with imaginations far far beyond competitor cities. They strive for destinations other cities have not yet dreamed of. They inspire not just attract attention. attention. They make make life worth living.
64 Types of Influence Understood as a Combination of Conforming Mind with Rebelling Mind Work
64 Influence Types
Role of Comforming
Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Role of Rebelling
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64 Types of Influence Understood as a Combination of Conforming Mind with Rebelling Mind Work men who take on the values of their wives have marriages that last and live longer; you conform to the other culture that you spouse is; what other culture in your spouse frustrates you so you must master it?
male thinking combined with female outperforms either alone so conform/rebel balance needed; you reject imposing your culture unthinkingly on your spouse; what projection of your culture onto your spouse are you guilty of, how can you stop doing that?
influence by having enthusiasm; mood is outside in: we absorb moods from those around us; what do you notice influenced by observing someone about those around you that causes you to pick up the mood that they have? else’s enthusiasm
dominant ones set moods that others around them copy; what do others absorb from you when they end up copying or being influenced by the mood you introduce when you come near them?
influence by being beautiful or gen- most beautiful faces are average for their populations; what is different about how erating beauty; influenced by some- others treat you and how you treat yourself when you “dress up” and make one else’s beauty or beautiful yourself “beautiful”? product
we reject, for a moment, the ultimate destiny of all living things, being eroded away by the harshness of life and this world; what is the way others treat you and the way you treat yourself when you dress down or dress casually?
lead
influence by leading others in some people want to feel like they are heading somewhere but resist actual movement; directions; influenced by someone what is the joy of the feeling of “I am being led by someone”? what is the ache of pointing out a direction for you to the feeling of “I am being led nowhere”? go in
latent dissatisfaction with a leader leads to rebels who become competing leaders; what is the humiliation and frustration of “being led by someone”? what does being led by someone cost you--what harm does it always do to you? what provokes you into leading others?
negotiate
influence by building shared experience between hostile groups; influenced by interacting with hostiles till you share experience with them
the process must build shared crises/experiences both parties recognize and conform to; how do you react differently to pushy requests from a woman and from a man? why? what feelings do negotiation crises generate and how do they form the basis of getting out of your own framework and priorities so you become free to compromise during a negotiation?
each party rebels against terms of the other, creating crises both resolve = gradual accumulation of shared values, views, and experience; what bad feelings of abuse and mistreatment do you get from people negotiating with you offering proposals that ignore your needs and interests? how does your reacting to such such feelings hurt or help further negotiation? how do they hurt or help you attaining a good negotiated outcome?
reason and
influence by overcoming ideas of others; influenced by having better outside ideas replace your own favored ideas
conforming to well formed argument rules is not enough, arguments must use evidence sincerely without exaggeration and other faults; why do reasoning and arguing usually not influence you you much? what particular weaknesses in them cause them to fail to influence you? what strengths in them sometimes cause them to persuade you?
inadequate premises supporting disliked conclusions have to be surfaced, fought over, and changed; what are the most common distortions of evidence, principle, and truth found in the way others present points, and argue points, to you? what are such things for how you present points and argue points to others?
influence by exposing people to repeated failure at their fondest goals; influenced by repeated failures putting you into despair about reaching your goals as who you now are
minds change when despair opens them--if we repeatedly fail to attain our fondest goals because of something inside us, we despair, thereby getting the energy to redo intimate parts of our selves; what that is outside of you do you conform to when changing your mind? what do you change relationship to when changing your mind? what makes you resist till the last possible moment changing your your mind on things?
we rebel at the long sequence of repeated failures that raises the question of whether something deep in us prevents solution; what that is inside you do you rebel against when changing your mind? what is the last straw thing, its traits, that cause it, but not similar things before it, to overcome finally whatever it is that prevents you changing your mind about something?
influence by doing present tasks to prepare for future wanted next tasks; influenced by being guided to do present tasks so that the results prepare for doing greater next tasks
doing present tasks with a view to thereby preparing for future tasks is the most elemental form of strategy, it is conforming to futures when doing presents; what future role or position or situation do you aspire to and conform to by how you do each part of your present role/position/situation?
we rebel against present priorities and contexts when acting strategically; we refuse to work entirely within the context of present needs; what present voices, needs, roles, situations do you ignore or not respond to in order to do present things to support wanted future roles and opportunities?
influence by wrapping messages so have intended meaning when inserted in different contexts; influenced by messages speaking to contexts operative in you
we wrap message in packages that handle the differences in context between sender and receive of the messge, we conform to contexts in the receiver; what kinds of context in particular other people that you know, cause each of them to respond to the same message as if it “meant” something entirely different? when in your life have you observed this actually happening? when have you received a message obviously crafted to appeal to layers of context in you that others do not have?
we reject depending on the literal message itself to “communicate” its meaning--meaning is a combine of literal message with contexts; when do you fail to package messages f or contexts in others so your message gets mis-interpreted, and does not mean for others what it meant for you? when has this actually happened happened to you? to others you know?
influence by crafting stories that appeal to cost-benefit and anxiety of existence modules of our brains; influenced by images that move us via cost-benefit calculations and empathy
we conform to the elements in the universal story, truncating it to make our shorter stories; what story types do people tell to you to get you to do what they want done? what story types do you tell to others to get them to do what you want? which story types work best for you? for others? why? what do cost-benefit stories conform to? what do existential anxiety stories conform conform to?
we appeal to multiple brain systems, both the cost-benefit system using cost-benefit stories and the empathy system, using anxiety of living stories; we reject stories that ignore brain systems they must appeal to; what stories have gotten you to override your own cost-benefits in order to do something? what stories ahve gotten you to override your own anxiety of living in order to do something? what sttories have you used to get particular others to override their own cost-benefits in order to do something you requested? to override their own anxiety of living in order to do something you requested?
influence by using social machines we conform to our social nature and the social nature of others when we persuade, in brains tilting us to fit in; influ- using brain machineries inside us all that make us greatly influenced by what others around us do; for each of Cialdini’s modes of persuasion, what brain machinery enced by our social surroundings inside each of us does it appeal to and use to “persuade”?
we reject the heading and inertia/momentum of others when we persuade them, for we redirect their direction of motion, pulling them out of where they were headings and directing them anew, elsewhere; what dread of “being wrong” or “taking responsibility for others” causes you to avoid persuading others in many instances?
love
t enthuse c a r beauty t t a
e argue c n i change v minds n o c
strategy
communi l cate a n o s r tell stories e p y a
r t r o p persuade
influence by loving part of this world; be influenced by seeing someone’s great love for part of this world
sell
influence by setting up a trance in customers of being attended to; influenced by minute attentions converging on us that entrance us
great salespersons put buyers into a trance of being attended to, so that they buy the trance, paying for the product to continue the trance; sellers conform to everyone’s unstated ideals of being noticed and treated well by others; when has a salesperson put you into such a trance of of “being attended to”? how does this ressemble being given a great haircut? what particular treatments put you into such a trance?
great salespersons reject standard socially accepted labels on persons, in favor of deep intuitions of what kinds of people are most ready to buy--they recognize “ready-to-buys” that others miss because misled by general social expectations, biases, and bigotries; what common types of people do you avoid selling anything at all to? why? what signatures, identifying patterns, do willing buyers have that are missing from nonlikely buyers?
demystify
influence by undoing gifts of power over us made to roles while growing up; influenced by seeing how others saying they have our interests at heart really have hidden self interest so they use us
people re-live their pasts when they de-mystify, spotting parts of the world they unconsciously learned to trust automatically and spotting alternatives they were never exposed to while growing up; how did each part of how and where you grew up make you smaller? what exactly did it prevent you experiencing as alternatives, as opportunities, as capabilities?
people reject the power over them that they give to certain roles and institutions in society--the physician is no longer automatically trusted to have our health in aim, we suspect he wants to up his income, for example; what people and/or institutions have presented themselves to you as having your interests at heart when you found they actually used you for their own hidden interests and profits? profits? when did you learn to consistenly reject your own trust in someone for this reason?
psychic growth
influence by getting others to have what they now are; influenced by others getting you to have what you used to depend on being for confidence
people grow by exposing themselves to the despair that something in who they are blocks them obtaining the fondest goals; what do you now depend on for pride, confidence to live, and status among other people? what do you get defensive about when it is criticized, attacked, found at fault? what despair about your self and life do you continually avoid but always return to find (conform to)?
people grow by rejecting the illusion that their life results can change drastically while they themselves refuse to change intimate parts of themselves--expecting changed results without making changes in inputs is madness; what external progress and changes do you aspire to without endorsing sufficient changes inside you to make them really possible?
influence by changing how you respond to situations; influenced by seeing someone around you change how they respond
people get new responses by becoming observers of themselves, editing out automatic instant reactions, delaying reaction a second or two; when have you delayed reacting and caught reactions inside you that you dislike, stopping them from getting into public reality? when have you examined yourself for hours and days in a row in order to catch and stop certain reactions you no longer wish to come from you?
people get new responses by noticing, stopping, and replacing their old, familiar, easy, automatic response to situations and replacing it with a consciously chosen better type of response; what old responses, familiar to you and habitual from you, do you no longer have because you killed them off somehow? what responses habitual to you now dissatisfy you and are in need of elimination? what responses habitual to you now dissatisfy others around you and are in need of elimination but you resist doing so?
influence by inserting yourself in environments that support new roles in you; influenced by new environments around you
people conform to their bridge community as a new environment that supports their new responses to situations and new identities; when have you associated suddenly with entirely new types or sets of people, perhaps changing where you relax or work and who you associate associate with? why did you do this? w hen have you entered a community entirely new to you long enough that you realized you can build a new identity, a new you, and these newcomers to you will accept it as the real “you”?
people reject their primary group of close friends and family, recognizing them as the strongest opponent of them making personal changes; when have you tried to make changes in yourself and found close friends and family resisting, not helping you to make those changes? what changes do you now need to make that your your closest friends and family members would likely resist? why?
wstop o responses r g bridge community
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64 Types of Influence Understood as a Combination of Conforming Mind with Rebelling Mind Work distinguish
n recognize o patterns i s i c e change r operation p scales
influence by making distinctions when we notice anomalies, paradoxes, circular concepts and definitions, by conformothers miss; influenced by distinc- ing to what does not fit or work in them we may end up making distinctions new to thought and humankind; what do others accept as okay that you find flawed, sustions you yourself did not invent picious, anomalous? what do others treat as one simple thing that you find complex and chan ging?
when we invent distinctions new to human thought we reject habitual and traditional categories, and ways of treating things; what distinctions that your parents and society make have nearly no meaning or importance for you? why? what do you distinguish that your friends treat as one obvious thing?
we sense, perhaps only incipiently inchoately or intuitively, disperate things are related, that they form a pattern, hidden by much noise or confusion; we conform to our perceptual machinery’s unconscious abilities in doing so; how does speed of noticing and decision cause you to miss emerging partially there phenomena? what makes spotting patterns difficult?
we reject noise, chaos, distraction, and too ordinary and familiar projections from our own unconscious minds and prior experience, when we recognize a new pattern; what permits one person to spot a nascent partially formed pattern while another misses it? what breadth and depth of exposure to a variety variety of fields and frameworks fosters spotting unusual patterns?
influence by operating on larger/ we apply customary and familiar operations to new sizes of thing when we change smaller scales; influenced by scales--conforming to operators and changing scale of operands; what scale is the actions on larger/smaller scales problem or issue appearing in and does that distract you and others from causes or other effects operating on different, smaller or larger, size scales?
we reject customary operands, sizes of things to affect with the operators we know, with the functions we usually carry out; what size scales do your peers and mentors operate on? why? what phenomena on smaller scales might interest or cause things? what phenomena on larger sccales might interest or cause things?
influence by spotting emergent patterns amid much noise; influenced by having emergent patterns pointed out to you
intensify disciplines
influence by intensified doing of we maintain customary functions or operators when we intensify disciplines; what we reject usual time schedules, rates, scales of operation; what caused you to work your ordinary functions; influenced by are the ten actions you do every day in your work--how can you do each five present ways and at your present pace? where did that come come from? what other functions done more intensively times as fast? twice as accurately? with triple the quality of outcome? ways and paces have you now grown up experiencing for such work?
change environment
influence by putting a new environ- we are creatures built to notice and conform to whatever environments we recognize ment around yourself or others; ourselves as in; how hard is it to change an environment compared to how hard influenced by a new environment it is to change an intimate part of your self? which is harder? why? can that be put around you changed? how?
when we change environments we can more easily change ourselves--by changing environments, we reject our old selves, knowing the new challenges in what is around us will call for new contents in us, changing us; what emotions, situations, or other conditions cause you to change yourself by changing changing environments? what changes have you not made because you were not willing to go quite that far?
influence by spotting all dynamics and which are over emphasized or slighted; influenced by having your own over-emphases or slightings noticed by others
we conform to comprehensive maps of all possible operators, dynamics, functions, and the like when we rebalance, noticing what dynamics are missing, strong, weak, growing, decreasing; what are the realms of life and work and relating to people that you know enough about and enough variety about that you can spot local imbalances, overemphases, slightings?
we reject current imbalances among dynamics on our maps, when we rebalance, we spot weak dynamics to perhaps make stronger and strong or dominant ones to perhaps weaken to achieve goals and changes we seek; what are the realms of life and work where you simply do not know enough dynamics and enough versions and varieties of them to spot any imbalances? how can you expand your repertoire there?
influence by reversing the culture that produces failures; influenced by embodying a culture opposite to the one producing your problems
we conform to the traits of the new solution culture; what is hard about imagining and implementing a new culture inside an old established one? what is hard about implementing such a new culture inside our own heads and actions when we lack outside support for doing so? what tends to get in our way?
we reverse the traits of the failure culture; what prevents us seeing separate failings of a group or situation as connected by an underlying underlying unified culture? what prevents us admitting how all the problems of our own group come from from little daily failings but from the deepest beliefs and motives of the group and its members?
influence by modifying practices for differences between origin and target cultures; influenced by practices modified for differences in origin and target cultures
we conform to hinderances in the target not in the source, enablers in the target not in the source, hinderances in the source not in the target, and enablers in the source not in the target when transplanting across cultures; what is different between the origin and target cultures that demands modifying a practice being transplanted between them?
we reject imposing the same solutions to the target culture that worked well with the source culture; what causes other people to take a practice from one culture and, without modifications, try to implement it in another? another? why do they repeatedly make this mistake? why do you make this mistake? when? to what result?
influence by recognizing needs, interests, capabilities of acquaintances; influenced by others spotting your own needs, interests, capabilities
we conform to the details specifications of the needs, capabilities, and interests of great? how others; are our usual levels of understanding others terrible or great? would we really determine that validly? what level of knowing of another do we settle for? why? where did that habit come from?
we reject the general vague image of “others” we habitually employ, not really knowing much about their needs, interests, and capabilities; why in daily life do we settle for dealing with people while knowing hardly any of their needs, interests, and capabilities? why are we so casually certain that we do know most of their needs, interests, and capabilities? where does that illusion come from? what sustains it?
influence by making creations that we conform to speaking to the world via works we create rather than directly through impact others; influenced by the our mouths--our works speak for us; why have you thus far in your life not creative works that others produce impacted the world primarily through creative works that you create? what excuses do you use to explain explain that to yourself? when have you experienced a creation you made speaking to the world for you while you were not around? what impact did it have on others that you eventually heard of?
we reject direct personal generation of impact in favor of surrogates--creative works--that impact others for us; what causes a person to stop direct influence and instead choose to influence by fashioning creative works, which works to the influencing for them? what causes people to never make that move? have you made that move or not? why or why not? what urged you on or got in your way when doing so?
t rebalance x e t n o invent c solution e culture r
transplant across cultures
c i social h indexing c y s s creative p e works
t a g o disciples r r u s
influence by collecting around you disciples that further your work; influenced by the disciples who followed the ways of some great person
we conform to the appeal our ideas have for others; what shyness or denial causes we reject hoarding access to our best thoughts and potentials; what do we reject when you to delay or reject accepting disciples who wish to follow or elaborate ideas we accept disciples? disciples? in ourselves? in the world? what do we embrace when we you have pioneered? how does the weight of having responsibility for someone accept disciples? in ourselveds? in the world? in the disciples? else’s work, time, and career weigh on you? hinder you accepting disciples?
discovery
influence by discovering new we conform to what data and disciplined observation and rejection of bias and cusknowledge; influenced by the new tomary categories reveal to us; when have you experienced truth, by itself, withknowledge thusly uncovered out overt respect, breaking through all the powers of the world and politics and smashing everything resisting it, winning all? when have you witnessed truth ignored for ages by people without apparent harm?
we reject partial fitting customary and conventional concepts, categories, interpretations and the like, we reject assimilating the new, the anomalous to what we already know; why do people overlook the power of discovery to influence us and the world and all? what do discoverers rebel against? against? what must they overcome, in themselves? in the world?
fix/use mental flaws
influence by using known mental flaws or fixing them; influence by actions not diminished by built in human mental flaws
we conform to our actual flawed mental capabilities rather than using some illusory, presumed-to-be perfect ideal ones; what are all the flaws built in, hardwired, into our brains that we cannot escape though we can compensate for? why do we all trust our own thinking so much? to what do we attribute our failings to other than to flaws in our thought? why? are we right at all when we do that?
we reject our customary assumption that ordinary humans thinking as they ordinarily do will arrive at what is true, safe, and optimal; what teaches us to trust our own thinking as we grow up? why are we not taught specific flaws in our thought and how to compensate for them? who do we know who denies our our thought has flaws inspite of overwhelming scientific evidence? why do such people do that?
de-neuroticize
influence by compensating for the inabilities created by creating some particular abilities; influenced by strengths in areas slighted in order to develop one’s main talents
we conform to all those things we did not become competent, even minimally at, due to the focus that produced our talents; what is the ocean of capabilities you never developed and will never have time to develop due to the shortness of the human lifespan? what directions has your life missed and not gone in because of the directions it has gone in?
we reject depending on our talents and acting as if they had no costs; we reject the ignorance of all the capabilities we did not develop due to our talents; what weaknesses do you have that you never think about or admit because your strengths so occupy your mind and time? which of those weaknesses are harming you though you do nothing about them?
influence by framing situations unusually or plurally; influenced by frameworks that reveal aspect missed in situations from other frameworks
we conform to the immense variety of concepts and viewpoints and abstractions we have not tried before or that are not customary to those we normally associate with; when frames change, what parts of the world we see change--what new frames got inside you that allowed you suddenly to see things in people and situations that you never noticed before? what were those new aspects noticed?
we reject customary, automatic, agreed on, socially acceptable frames, concepts, abstractions; what are the frames for some common situations that you grew up with but have now consciously become dissatisfied with and gotten rid of?
influence by making latent, unexpressed things evident and visible; influenced by hidden intimate things having been made evident
we conform to our knowledge of the human tendency to hide flaws, real motives, selfish motivations, lapses in trust and relationship--we see humans as the flawed, lying, tricky creatures that they are; when have you denied or pretended that a personal failing of yours was not really a full failing? why do you avoid admitting your own failings? failings? why do others do that too? what is the harm in everyone doing this?
we reject illusions that people are trustworthy, honest, generally decent beings who can be taken as they present themselves; what areas of the world freely tell the truth about how flawed and faulty things human are? are? what areas of the world almost never honestly admit how flawed and faulty things human are? what institutions and persons continually hide the reality of human flaw and failing from themselves and others? wh y? at what cost? cost?
e z i l reframe a e r reflect/surface
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64 Types of Influence Understood as a Combination of Conforming Mind with Rebelling Mind Work events
influence by doing things with we conform to the constant human nee d for attention and novelty; we conform t o the events not processes or depart- power of certain critical masses to influence; what that you do in increments and ments; influenced by the visibility small pieces, if done by many in large visible events would have more impact? and attention and intensity of event doing of functions
we reject gradual, invisible, slow, partial, step-by-step processes and methods; we reject doing more and revealing less; we reject the safety of invisibility; what do you do over long stretches of time alone that if done in a few hours or days by many people cooperating in tightly scripted workshops would have more value and impact?
revolu-
influence by releasing latent frustrations in sudden actions; influenced by having others spot your latent frustrations and offer you an active way out
we conform to all the unexpressed, un-acted-on, hidden frustrations and latent energies of a group; what has been building up in you or those around you or in the firm or field you work in that has not been admitted, expressed, acted upon? what single event might release that pent up energy?
we reject all the excuses and hopes for fixing things via small, gradual, easy, safe, actions of low risk; what frustration, injustices, or distortions have gone on and one and no one stops or does anything anything about them? why are people not acting to deal with them? what causes them to avoid action?
influence by spotting where slight inputs have whole system change outcomes; influenced by people acting at tipping points so as to change entire systems
we conform to the unequality of terrain, whether conceptual or social or emotional or physical--in some places small inputs have huge repercussions, in others, huge inputs have no repercussions; when and where have you seen ordinary inputs suddenly have extraordinary outcomes? how does action change when people know know tipping points are around somewhere?
we reject the expectation that similar inputs will have similar consequences, that bigger inputs will have bigger consequences; we reject linearity and linear system assumptions; where do we develop the expectation that similar inputs will produce similar outcomes? where do we first encounter exceptions to that?
trend weaving/ riding
influence by riding a trend, getting exposure to your idea via someone else’s trend; influenced by something else on a trend you participate in, riding on it that comes to your attention
we conform to the enthusiams others have already developed even if we disagree with them or do not personally share them, we use them as waves to ride; there are two questions--what trends can you get something now to ride on and what connects well enough to the trend to ride on it, get carried by its force?
we reject being inside, supporters of existing trends, instead using them for our own purposes; what trends now going on or starting up could connect with and carry you own inventions or productions? what trends are you caught up personally in that you could instead use?
demassify
influence by plurifying what is produced and who produces it; influenced by variety and local initiative producing things for you
we conform to entire populations enslaved into sitting and watching, restoring composing, performance, and other functions stripped from them by immensely rich drug addicts in entertainment, media, education, policy centers; what have you composed and performed for friends and nearby others or internet others in the last five years? why not more? what hinders your your composing? your performing?
we reject the consumer, sitter, watcher, spectator life generated for us by mass media and mass industries, refusing to be passive fat sitters, insisting on more active and creative roles in life for us; how much of your daily times does mass media occupy--radio, TV, newspapers, and their internet offshoots? what evidence that they all dumb down down content and edit away uniqueness is there? what conversation partners that you have are more interesting than any broadcast program?
delocalize
influence by replacing local ways with better ones from elsewhere in the globe; influenced by global ways brought into your locality to replace local ways of questionable value and quality
we conform to all the alternatives found globally for local ways and the probability that many of them will be superior to each of our local, favorite ways; what ways from elsewhere in the globe are superior to each of your ways of doing each thing that you do? why? how? why do you you resist exposure to global superior ways to your own ways? why do you deny that other ways even can be superior to your ways? why do you defend your own ways so strongly?
we reject the assumption from growing up that our ways are best or even average and safe; when we grew up and master our own culture and group’s ways, what does out mom say when we succeed? succeed? when we fail? how does “being a good boy/girl” get linked with “doing things our own culture’s way”? what evidence is there that your own culture’s ways are best in the world? what evidence is there that your own culture’s ways not only are are not best but could not possibly be best? what ways are we talking about here? how many such ways are there?
influence by deploying the doing of things from elite centers to plural local areas; influenced by plural diverse locals doing what elite central monopolists used to do
we conform to the power of variety and simultaneous parallel separate centers of initiative to outperform any central controlled single effort; when and where have you experienced variety producing better outcomes than homogeneity? when have you experienced many people, each contributing differently, outperforming one or a few people producing?
we reject the eliteness, worshipfulness, thrall, glitter of centers, celebrities, and elites, that by concentrating and monopolizing functions impoverish oridnary lives, stripping entire functions from them; how has your society impoverished your life physically, emotionally, cognitively, cognitively, mentally while enriching monopolies and elites? what causes the products of elite centers to be dumbed down and made vulgar?
deconstruct
influence by not assuming built up meanings but reconstructing them from first principles yourself; influenced by undoing traditional meanings and modern redoing of them without assumptions/biases of the past
we conform to our tools and ability to invent all m eanings again from basic principles rather than using meanings pre-packaged for us by others; what makes reinventing chains of meaning and interpretation worth the effort and therefore competitive with merely borrowing meanings as already constituted in society around you? why is it worth the effort of reconstituting meanings around you? what profits do you get by doing so?
we reject conventional agreed on meanings and interpretations for things, insisting on building chains of meaning ourselves afresh, rejecting how they historically built up by the work of others; what conventional meanings and interpretations have, during your life thus far, eventually appeared false, dangerous, or otherwise untrustworthy? what meanings that nearly everyone around around you accepts do you find doubtful and not safe or efficacious now? why?
update substrates
influence by changing quotidian, everywhere substrates; influenced by changes in substrates that support many parts of life unconsciously
we conform to the most basic, the simplest, the most elemental, most over-looked quotidian supports for things as guiding and limiting in many ways, obvious and unobvious, options and alternatives for us; what substrates does your daily life and work depend on--which are changing, which are utterly stable, which may change in the near future? which substrates of your life need to change but are not? why?
we reject maintaining substrates as they now are, keeping to them and keeping them the same; what are the substrates your economic life and activity depend on? your political life and activity activity depend on? your cultural life and activity depend on? your social change life and activity depend on? what various aspects and institutions and roles of your life come from each substrate that you mentioned?
negotiate standards
influence by getting opponents to share such intense experience that they develop care for and trust of each other; influenced by shared crises solved together unifying persons beyond oppositions
we conform to the need for shared experience before people can trust each other; why do we care more and better for people we share experience with than we care for strangers? is this good or bad? how do strangers become people we end up caring about? what are the steps in that process?
we reject the idea that “good deals” and logically appealing exchanges of positions and proposals will ever develop trust and fellow feeling bases of cooperating; why can you maintain professional and business relationships with people without caring much about them and their fate? what makes professional and and business relationships shallow and uncaring? is that a good thing? is it changing? how? why?
influence by inventing/installing new interfaces between realms; influenced by installation of new interfaces among parties
we conform to functions between two realms we want to work better than current interfaces between the realms permit; what interfaces in your life now frustrate you greatly? what functions are hard to do with them? what functions do they enable well? what changes in them would support the functions now hard to do with them?
we reject present interfaces and their biases making some function easy to do and other hard to do; what functions do you want to do well but present interfaces block or make difficult to do well? what changes on interface ushered in new functions that you did a lot of because the new interface made doing them easy? what functions dropped out of your life or work because new interfaces made doing them harder? how? why?
interoperability
influence by getting formerly separate systems linked; influenced by linkages between formerly separate systems
we conform to kinds of inter-action and inter-relation we want to go on between two separate systems; what two systems in your life are entirely separate but they could usefully interact? why are they separate thus far? what could connect them usefully? how?
we reject the separateness of the systems themselves, the lack of interactions between them; what functions do you end up repeating again and again in different contexts because different systems do not cooperate with each other and exchange information? what sequences of places or steps do you go through because functions you do require handling several different systems? why do these systems not already already connect with and cooperate with each other?
demonstrate = show
influence by demonstrations that an idea works; influenced by “seeing is believing” demonstrations that an idea works
we conform to the skepticism in ordinary people about whether something will work; why do people have to “see it in order to believe it”? what makes people skeptical? what is the power power that such “seeing” has? where does that power come from in the human brain?
we reject hinderances to our actions caused by the doubts and unbelief of other people; when does personal persuasion get so burdensome to do that we switch to doing demonstrations? what is the alternative to doing demonstrations? are the alternaalternatives as good as doing demonstrations? why or why not?
demonstrate = protest
influence by objecting to and demonstrating against an idea; influenced by demonstrations against an idea
we conform to our intuition that our outrage is not isolated, there are others as outraged as we; when in your life did you protest instead of letting some objectionable action continue un-interrupted? what caused you to risk public exposure via demonstrating against that something? where did the bravery for that reaction come from in you? if you have never demonstrated against against something, why? is there nothing you care enough about to bother other people when they do nothing?
we reject the option of inaction, more waiting, hoping that things will get better without dangerous and sick? when is inaction healthy us doing anything; when is inaction dangerous and necessary? how has the way you grew up tilted you towards easily doing nothing? easily taking action? since all power begins with negative power, power, the power to block someone’s else’s doings, when have you practiced negative power by blocking plans of others around you? if you have never blocked the plans of others around you, why? what makes you unwilling to block them? what do you fear or avoid in in doing so?
demonify
influence by dropping mention of something’s good points; influenced by exaggerated mention of only the bad points of something
we conform to the tendency of people to exaggerate, to fear the unknown, to think the worst of other people; when have you deliberately left out mention of the good points of a person or position or idea? did the one-sided-ness of your work help or hinder achieving your goals then? how? why?
we reject moderate, nuanced, balanced perspectives and evaluations; when have you experienced you yourself responding more to clearly unbalanced stories than to balanced fair ones? what in you and others makes rabid unbalanced appeals attractive?
deify
influence by dropping mention of something’s bad points; influenced by exaggerated mention of only the good points of something
we conform to the tendency of people to exaggerate, to apotheisize, to worship, to turn others into demi-gods and celebrities; when you you deliberately left out mention of the weak points of a person or or position or idea? did the one-sided-ness of your work help or hinder achieving your goals then? how? why?
we reject the mixed, realistic, moderate reality of things; when have you experienced you yourself responding more to clearly unbalanced stories than to balanced nuanced fair ones? why do you and others respond more more to clearly unbalanced, unfair, partial, biased versions and stories of things?
n tions o i t n tipping e points t t a
y f i r u decenter l p
l a i c o s
e t a d change p interfaces u
n i p s
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64 Types of Influence Understood as a Combination of Conforming Mind with Rebelling Mind Work articulation
influence by articulating what is barely realized vagues; influenced by clear distinct expressions of realities barely realized
we conform to nuances and complexities in some reality by making words that correspond exactly, getting minds to follow complicated contours and nuances of some reality; when have you experienced the power of great articulation to introduce and prepare you well for the nuances of some complex reality?
media
influence by drawing attention of mass media; influenced by mass media presentations
we conform to the power of mass media in our era and its distortions of truth; what we reject the anonymity of media-less existence; how do you come to the attention of catches the attention of mass media? what fails to catch that attention? what national mass market media? can you produce that is visual enough and strange enough to get TV coverage?
influence by using your own initiatives to realize bigwig agenda items; influenced by bigwig endorsements as your works implement their visions and directions
we conform to someone else’s major agenda; what are the agendas, the hot goals, we reject pushing something forward justified by only our agenda; what is our personal of the major powers you live and work among? which of their priorities can you agenda of projects and initiatives we want to invent and do ourselves? does out perfurther via your own work or invented projects? projects? what would insure that your sonal agenda overlap the agendas of the powers that be around us? work would come to their attention?
influence by linking practical tasks now to ultimate human emotions and concerns; influenced by energies released into practical tasks from ultimate human layers/concerns
we conform to the ultimate anxieties of people about existence itself; what deep we reject quotidian normality of things, instead linking them to ultimates; what major anxieties underneath all living are there? which of those anxieties are particular anxieties of living are those around you ignoring ignoring or oblivious to? what deep drives people and groups around you ignoring, ignoring, fearful of, or affected by? how can you and energies of living are suppressed or avoided by those around around you? why? tell?
bridge ideas
influence by idea that join entirely separate other ideas; influenced by an idea that joins otherwise separate ideas
we conform to both the buddhist intuition that all is really one and to our pattern matching experiences that apparently separate things often have hidden links and dependencies; what is a fertile realm of ideas that is generating lots of new ideas one or more of which you might be able to apply in another less fertile domain? what is that other less fertile domain of idea? what bridge idea between the fertile and infertile domains might links their idea contents? how?
bridge global-local
influence by showing unity of functions across large and small size scales; influenced by spotting the same functions operating on different size scales
we conform to the unity of needs a nd functions--all of them operate on all size scales; we rebel against differences of scale becoming differences of function, need, and opporwhat operations do you perform customarily at work but not at larger or tunity; what smaller scales than customary to work on at work are there and which smaller size scales? what are those larger and smaller scales than you you work on of your work functions if applied there might have interesting results? what larger at work? why have you and work ignored or slighted them? scales are there and which functions if applied there might have similar interesting results?
influence by showing new things repeat history; influenced by demonstration that new things are prefigured by similar things in history
we conform to the particular prefigurements of present arrangements in all our pasts; how is the past, from 100 years years ago, very much like today? how is it different? how is the past, from 50 years ago, very very much like today? how is it different? what entirely new functions in living/working have appeared in the last 100 years? 200 years? 500 years?
we rebel against trend based claims of present uniqueness or present epitome; what forces from the past are blocked because not recognized recognized today? what forces from today are blocked because not seen operative in past past eras? what is treated as utterly unique today that is, in fact, not unique but found throughout history? why is it treated as unique when it really is not?
contrarian bravery
influence by standing against what is common, popular, easy to do; influenced by someone resisting what is easy and popular
we conform to the essence of truth--its power not in apparency but in its connection to reality with the overwhelming power that reality has relative to human images, hopes, and dreams; when have you seen truth overcome persistent denials of it? when have you seen truth overcome persistent lies and distortions of it by powerful wealth or political forces? when have you seen one person representing truth overcome an entire society dedicated to lies and distortions of truth?
we rebel against what is popular, current, trendy, easy, comfortable, liked by our peers; what truths are forces in your present day distorting, lying about, running away from, avoiding, denying? why? what investments and forces today are are building themselves against important truths and therefore likely to suffer reversals in the future?
successlessness
influence by rejecting normal and popular criteria of success; influenced by someone defining success differently than society and media do
we conform to our own unique values and therefore our unique definitions of succes; what are the most important values for you in your life? are they the same values that the society around you worships and rewards? how are they different? why are they different? why are they not different?
we rebel against general values and mass media shallow vulgar images of “success” that decay into drug addict celebrity in an instant; what evidence do you have that the values of the people and society around you are vulgar, shallow, materialist, and weaker, less attractive, than most other values in history and humankind?
deepbase
influence by doing things fully and we conform to the transiency of life itself by rooting our selves in the deepest layers profoundly instead of quickly and of humanity and thought, creation and historic contribution; what are deep people shallowly; influenced by deep doing you know of or have met, who have surprisingly deep bases supporting their of things by others work or values? what are shallow ones you know who have surprisingly shallow work or values? how are the lives of these two types different?
we rebel against appearing to have and be more than we really are, we rebel against our era’s shallowness and the shallowness of mass media people who pander to and promote appearance over real accomplishment; what causes the people and groups around you to satisfy themselves with mere appearances rather than deep accomplishment? what is vulgar and debased in your values, your group’s values, and how you were raised?
influence by doing things to serve others rather than oneself; influenced by someone doing things for others not himself
we conform to our common humanity with others; why did you spend most of your time growing up serving only yourself? why did growing up not automatically connect you practically to your common humanity with others around the globe?
we rebel against our apparent separateness from others; how has attention given to others hurt you? how has attention to you hurt others? what groups around the world do you never think about and never do anything to assist? what groups do you plan to spend your entire life ignoring and not contributing to? why?
capture hidden social longing
influence by capturing longing that goes unrealized and unexpressed; influenced by someone realizing and expressing hidden longings in people
we conform to the unexpressed, fragile nuanced unbearable fears and hopes of mankind; what are unexpressed longings in all the group you commonly work with and belong to? which of those unexpressed longings are growing growing larger? what frustrations in such groups are growing larger? when will they be large enough to result in action?
we rebel against the common shallow vulgar mass-media induced sex, violence, drugs, and celebrity--all done for money in the end; what aspects of you and your feelings and needs do mass media miss entirely, doing nothing to inspire or inform you?
resist normality as temptation
influence by taking normality as we conform to our own higher standards of performance; when have you lived or too flawed to support; influenced worked at higher standards of performance than those around you? what reacby someone who rejects normality tion did you, as a result, get from them? was it worth the effort to do so? and normal ways as too flawed to trust and do
we rebel against the standards of performance of whatever place, people, and group we are in; what group have you been in that had higher standards of performance than you had? what group have you been in that had lowers lowers standards of performance than you had?
discover
influence by continually improving one’s already high standards; influenced by someone whose standards this year are tougher than they were last year
we conform to our own real ability and opportunity to improve our already high standards, stretching beyond “being better” to “being the best we can be”; when have you steadily improved performance already beyond all those around you? what motivated you to do so? what results did you get?
we rebel against complacent staying at standards initially higher than others but that erode if we do not invest in improving them continually; when have you stopped improving in some domain after reaching a performance level above those in the groups around you? why?
influence by working to make this world totally fulfilling and vastly improved; influenced by someone valuing this flawed world so much they work hard to improve it in ultimate directions
we conform to the wonders we can actually inject and experience in this world; when have you stopped letting shyness, uncertainty, and hassle stop you from trying for your fondest dreams in this world before you die? what dreams have you had but never realized thus far in your life? why?
we rebel against holding back from this world in the hope that some other easier world will await us where we can do better; what excuses do you use when you do not leave conventional living and working for bolder more visionary goals and potentials for your life in this world? what is the fondest goal and dream you have for your life and can you happily live life without ever trying to realize it practically?
influence by serving people not yet we conform to what will be popular and appreciated 100, 200, 500 years from now, born; influence by people perform- using it to inform our lives and ways and goals; what can you produce that people ing before an audience not yet born 100, 200, and 500 years from now will benefit from and appreciate?
we rebel against making contributions only those presently living can appreciate and experience; if you died tomorrow morning, what contributions to all the people around you and mankind will you have left behind as the final value your life had on earth?
y appeal t i l major i agenda b realization i s i v eschatologic style
y t i r historic a present r bridge
y t i l a u q
e r e c n serving all i serving s not self
y new temp t i tations r g make this e world t n divine i anticipate historic judgement
we reject expecting others to fill in the details themselves; when in your work and life do you find poor articulation by others hindering your success? poor articulation by you hindering your work? what particular efforts are needed to make articulation “good”? what makes bad articulation bad?
we rebel against the apparent separateness of ideas and realms and categories; what realms of ideas are apparently entirely separate separate in our world today? what realms of ideas used to be entirely separate some time ago but are not united by particular bridge ideas? what bridge ideas at first linked them up? how? to what benefit?
Exercising Our Conform Mind Type Type The Conformity of Social Revolutions--Conformin Revolutions--Conforming g to Frustrations not Present Institutional Arrangements Hannah Arendt, a scholar of democracy, studied revolutions--the Ameri can, French, and Russian revolutions. She built a model of liberation from past practices, liberated ones making promises to each other till utterly new institutions emerged from their interactions along with a new public form of happiness (she called all this “freedom”), historic dreams unleashed by their freedom-based inventions that changed the dreams and destinies of people elsewhere, and conserving the new stuff from forces of the past that try to assimilate the novelty away. In all this social revolution process there is conformity- -conforming to latent unexpressed frustrations in a population of people. Where the institutions and powers of society ignore and continue to ignore these latent incipient forces, someone lights the spark that ignites whole society change, using build up unexpressed frustrations as fuel. 1. What are your deepest present frustrations? List 3. 2. What are the deepest present frustrations of a group you belong to? List 3. 3. What are the deepest present frustrations of the nation your belong to? List 3. 4. Who is responding to those frustrations in any way? 5. Are the 9 frustrations listed above growing or stationary at present? 6. What would be necessary that is not now present, to turn any of those frustrations into revolutionary change--major change of entire persons or lifestyles or groups or systems in society? 7. What expression and response to any of those 9 frustrations above could you devise that might, powered by the force of those frustrations, produce major surprising change?
The Conformity of Welfare Systems, Religious Orders, and Caring Parents Fully scripted lives are available in societies like Sweden and in most religious orders. In fully scripted societies people lead fully scriped lives. That means each person, if they just get up each day day and “go with the flow” flow” around them, them, will be reasonably reasonably cared for. for. After each activity activity is a next one with social social forces channelling channelling people people from one activity activity to the next, all their lives. Without hard effort everyone is cared for. This leads to a kind of demandingness of people, w ho demand being cared for, and to a certain loss of initiative taking--since care appears without effort automatically why try hard for anything? In these fully scripted societies, our conform mind dominates our rebel mind and social sanctions try to eradicate or reduce our rebel mind to as small a role in society as possible. Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, rebels against good vali d, needed care because he finds valid good quality care, stultifying--he prefers freedom to direct himself to being well cared for by steerage by others. 1. Choose someone you know and talk to them enough to identify all the really hard decisions they face in the next year. 2. For each of those decision pro-actively initiate with them a consideration process with you, helping them to lay out what each decision involves and what alternatives look best. 3. In this way actively make each of these decisions they face easier for them to face--how do they react to you doing this? why? 1. Find a well done care system for people that is working well. 2. Find a need ignored by the system that does not quite fit its present ways and criteria.
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The Conformity of Fitting into Groups We are all monkeys. We are fitted with special brain systems for perceiving and handling social relations and social information. Therefore, we have an amazing ability to join social groups and fit in--learning their “ropes” quickly. Certain leaders, some CEO s for example, are examples of this seen in action--we can observe them “working” a party, finding cliques and subgroups and injecting themselves into them, feeling out who is who and what is what, then engaging them about issues they care about. Some people see and live in an environment of social mountains and valleys, events and processes, tha t the rest of us barely see. Exercising your “fit in” muscles is a great way to awaken you to abilities, there in your brain systems, that you, up till now, have barely used and developed. 1. Make a list of ten groups of people higher than you in social rank that are nearby and hold events nearby. 2. Make a list of ten groups of different professions than you that are nearby and hold events nearby. 3. Make a list of ten groups of different language, nation, and culture than you that are neaby and that hold events nearby. 4. From those 30 groups, pick two and attend regularly, once a week or once a month, an event or two that they hold nearby. 5. At each such event, choose in the first 20 minutes, three people to learn a lot about by asking people about them and by meeting them and engaging them in talk. 6. Contact all those people before the next event, asking them about who to meet at that next event, getting their introductions and information. 7. Draw up maps of the habits, customs, special termi nology, shared group history of this group and subgroups of people within it. Use this info when talking with people. 8. Continue till you have met everyone attending these events.
Exercising Our Rebel Mind Type Type The Rebellion within Social Revolutions--Last Straw Effects and Moving from Latent Frustration to Action We as individual persons do not have social revolutions happening all around us to study and participate in. Therefore we have to apply social revolution dynamics to smaller scales then entire nations and societies, in order to see such dynamics at work. Within individual mind s, whenever we learn something, we go through Arendt’s social revolution steps--liberation from an old idea, flopping around with others trying out new replacement ideas, historic dream as others see our new idea and are attracted to it, conserving novelty as we have to fight to protect our new idea from past interpretations and built up forces of the past, in us and others. The rebellion within social revoluti on is in the act of liberation that starts things. Frustrations build up and build up till one slight ordinary further frustration becomes the last straw, causing disproportionate response. 1. List ten groups you are in. 2. List ten personal relationships you are in and value highly. 3. In each of those 20 relationships, list one frustration that is slowly building up and building up without being expressed, recognized, or dealt with in any useful way. 4. Choose one of those 20 frustrations building up and attempt to become the last straw by strongly reacting to the latest installment of that frustration yourself, suggesting particular actions, and mobilizing others to care and respond to it, rather than everyone overlooking it as in the past. 5. What response does your larger-than-usual response draw from others? why?
Responsibility Responsibility for the Fate of Other People--a Block to Rebellion Mind Most of us are not so expert at running our own lives that we feel confident leading the lives of others. Yet, most of us also experience most of our leaders as venal incompetents, barely able to do anything other than enrich themselves. Which is it--leaders are better at running lives, theirs and others, than we are or they are inferior to us at running their lives and others? In truth, there is a barrier to rebellion in our personal fear of making ourselves, by rebelling, responsible for decisions and consequ ences that others get by following or supporting our own act of rebellion. That responsibility is a heavy load and not a few of us avoid rebelling rebelling against bad situations because of fear of becoming responsible for other people’s fates and consequences. 1. Identify twenty areas of your work and life where latent frustrations are building up or where bad practices are continuing inspite of most of the people involved realizing that those practice do not work well. 2. For each of those 20, if you rebelled, refused to permit continued frustration or bad practice, and acted to stop that build up of frustration and continuation of bad practice, what consequences would you become responsible for? 3. How would your act of rebellion, for each of the 20 rebellions above, affect the fate of some other people involved in those situations? How does changing their fate make you feel? 4. Does responsibility for the fate of others act to stop you rebelling or not in the above 20 situations? How do you know?
Exercising Both Our Mind Types--Conform Types--Conform with Rebel Influence is a major part of all lives. We are influenced daily and we influence daily--usually unconsciously, sometimes quite consciously. Influence balances use of our conform mind with use of our rebel mind. Too much rebelling and no one listens to us; too much conforming and everyone listens to us but we are saying what they already believe. The trick, in influence, is to get people feeling close to us, trusting us, while we tell them strange new challenging things that make them change.
Using the Influence Table Above Above, earlier in this chapter, a table of 64 different forms of influence was presented, with conform mind and rebel mind parts of each form of influence specified in it. 1. Answer all the questions in that table, after identifying an incident, for each of the 64 types of influence, when you influenced someone using that particular form of influence.
Brain Power This part of the book goes module by module around the brain, looking at particular capabilities that make us smart coming from each module visited. Most of the modules cannot be said to be of one modality not another. An example will help. The first module of 25 presented in this sort sort of book--embeddedness--started book--embeddedness--started as a motion planning module, helping our shoulder direct movement as our waste directs movement, as our wrist directs moveme movement nt in order to attain holding some particular object. Planning wrist motions within shoulder motions with in upper body leaning forward motions, as a kind of embedding of smaller motions within larger, got generalized to language where we embed small clauses within larger larger within still larger larger ones. So is embedding embedding a motion module or a language one? Obviously it is both. both. Similarly, Similarly, other modules modules presented below in this part, though introduced primarily as language or visual perception modules, have other lives and uses, for other functions, usually o nes considered less directly as parts of intelligence. Most of us never realize all the sophisticated little calculations calculations and processes going on in our everyday brain brain actions. This part of the book will unveil 25 terribly complex calcalculation types done all the time everyday by the brain. It is an impressive array of calculations, most of which cannot now be done by even even the most powerful machine computers that we have. What changes once you focus in on particular particular modules in the brain and the powerful calculation calculation types they enable? First, you stand in awe of how your own own mind works. Second, you exercise each each capability, deliberately running it to its fullest to see all that it can do. Third, you deploy it more fully in your own daily life and work. work. Fourth, you combine it more often and better with other similar modules doing different different calculations at amazing speeds and accuracies. accuracies. This gives you power--brain power. power.
Chapter 8 The Brain Power of Embedding (Language Module) Inside of the lifework of an an author are individual books. Inside those books books are chapters. chapters. Inside each chapter are are subsections. Inside each subsection are paragraphs. Inside each paragraph paragraph are sentences. Inside each sentence sentence are clauses. clauses. Inside each clause clause are phrases. The phrases are interpreted with respect respect to the clause it is in, and clauses clauses preceding and following it. The clauses are interpreted with respect to the sentences they are in and the preceding preceding and following sentences. sentences. The sentences are interpreted with respect to the paragraphs they are are in and the ones preceding and and following. The paragraphs are interpreted with respect to the subsections they are are in and the ones preceding and following. The subsections are interpreted interpreted with respect to the chapters they are in and the ones preceding and following. The chapters are are interpreted with respect respect to the books they are in and the ones preceding and following. The books are interpreted with respect to the lifework they are in and lifeworks lifeworks preceding and following that one. This is one example of embedding. Language itself if filled with embedding types. Within clauses are other clauses, clauses, within prepositional phrases are other prepositional phrases, and mixtures mixtures of them both exist. The miracle of human language compared to parrot or chimpanzee chimpanzee language is the ability to embed. Whereas parrots and chimpanzees chimpanzees can compose sentences, sentences, the ones they compose are without without embedding so they look and and feel very simple compared to human human ones. It is embedding that gives human sentences their humanity. humanity. Indeed, people love the complicatedness of reference reference they can achieve with language. Even people lacking all wealth and high social status can, simply by mastering the language they were born with, compose thoughts and expressions as complicated as anyone has in human history. Researchers of everyday everyday cognition, for example, found milkmen, milkmen, without formal education, doing extremely difficult combinatorial calculations, when they figured out the minimum number of bottles of milk to move among cases, to cause each case to become one customer’s customer’s complete order for the day’s day’s deliveries. Similarly, Similarly, some neighborhood slangs involve sentences more complex complex than a lot of politician speeches. Where does this embedding ability come from in history and in biology and in the brain? Research thinks these days that it is a generalization, an exaptation of an embedding ability first developed for limb motion control, reaching. When we reach for an object, we simultaneously simultaneously move our upper body on the waste, our shoulder on our spine, our elbow, our our wrist, our fingers, adjusting all with respect to each other in real time. This is not a hard calculation because we memorize memorize lots of familiar motions and do most of the motion from memory, memory, adapting stored “reachings” of our past, a little, for present situations. Within the large motion motion of tilting our upper body forward on the waste joint, is a smaller tilting of our right shoulder forward on our spine axis, and within that is a motion of our upper arm forward on around our shoulder joint, and within that is a Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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motion of our lower arm on our our elbow joint, and so on. Each smaller scale motion takes takes place within the context of a larger larger scale motion, just as each each language component takes place within larger scale language components--words within phrases, phrases, phrases within clauses, clauses within sentences, and and so on. Our embedding ability, ability, developed by evolution for obvious reasons to let us move quickly and precisely--avoiding sabre tooth tigers perhaps--got used by an entirely different purpose and context, in language. The bird on the tongue of the doll from the mouth of the monster in the window of the cabin on the pole in our backyard is beautiful, beautiful, but not alive. This is a sentence of prepositional phrases, each phrase in the context of a larger scale object represented represented by a subsequent phrase. We can feel the scene evolve from tiny figures to larger scale scale ones, till we get final clues to overall sizes of things at the end, when something familiar in size is mentioned--the mentioned--the backyard that the pole is in. The bird on the tongue of the doll from the mouth of the monster in the window of the cabin on the pole in our p ainting of the backyard--is the same embedding except “backyard” has become “painting of the backyard” making the overall sizes of things a bit less clear. clear. The bird on the tongue of the doll from the mouth of the monster in the window of the cabin on the pole in the backyard of the mouse--is the same embedding but with the final sizes of everything fixed by a mouse reference instead of a human backyard reference, changing everything in the sentence to a smaller overall size at the end of the sequence of prepositional phrases. This illustrates how the larger size scales scales form the context that determines important properties of all the smaller scale items embedded embedded within them. In this case the actual size of objects is not clear till the final context is set in the sequence of prepositional phrases. One of the best ways to experience embedding is to go to the way people wrote and spoke hundreds of years ago: It was not without some considerable trepidati on that he moved his hand up, the gnarled fingers curled into a fist, ready to, in another moment or two, with a knock on the door before him, shatter not just the unseemly silence of this night--all of nature’s creatures absent or for some unknown reason silent in the vicinity of this house and he--but also the silence that up to this not yet arrived moment had been his life, a meandering cascade of squandered energy and flows, dissipated by each discrete trouble and blockage in his way, till all that remained was a kind of slow moving, algae infested swamp of fetid self, incapable of any but the most tepid oozes. Whether she knew her reaction and feigned not knowing it or knew it not but feigned a reaction she did not have, even she herself would have been hard-pressed to know, but one thing she did know, with a conviction that ran straight through her tiny frame like an iron pole around which the rest of her trembled and swung, was he must not know the truth--even if she herself did not know it as well, for, if anything, life had had time to teach her this--that truth was not to be trusted and broke as much as it mended, hurt as much as it healed, and, in like so many good, highly recommended things, the wise course was to involve oneself with the good, the right, and the true as gingerly as possible, with just enough dusting of them to seem virtuous but not enough contamination by them, to be damned forever.
We do not write this way today--why? Why did they enjoy such complicated, convoluted sentences sentences a hundred years ago? I do not have a definitive answer. answer. Colloquial speech was a social class marking for hundreds of years. The upper classes spoke in a special formal version of a language language or a special language altogether. altogether. In Europe, for over 1000 years, the upper classes spoke in formal speech highly influenced by Latin, the global language of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church, Church, for one example. Colloquial speech was a marker of lower classes and professions. Formal, upper class speech was almost almost like speech making. Both England and France, in the 1700s, went through a period of the upper classes perfecting conversation--in England, with witticisms of the Oscar Wilde sort, and in France, with philosophic and literary references and excellence of abstraction. The result was full use of the embedding capabilities of languages, languages, at a certain cost in emotion emotion and spontaneity. spontaneity. The upper class persons who did this, experienced themselves themselves as exercising exercising their minds’ foremost capabilities when conversing in these witty highly highly abstract ways. They knew they were exercising exercising their brains. brains. They reveled in being able to fully extend, exercise, and and use facilities their brains gave them for complexity of thought and expression. Some people exercised their bodies; these people exercised their minds. We modern day people have lost lost a bit of this “exercising the mind” tradition, reducing reducing language into a purely functional purpose of getting things done.
Uses of Embedding Meaning in sentences, paragraphs, and the like is a matter of following references, in the surface codes of the language, to what is now being talked about and what is now being said about it--topic and comment on that topic. topic. We revel in being able to keep keep track of what what references refer refer to, as language language meanders and winds its way. way. Pronouns have to be dis-ambiguated, linguists say. say. Also “a” and “the” the markers markers of whether a topic is newly introduced or already introduced, have have to be paid special attention. When the language words themselves are ambiguous in what they refer to we have to use our commonsense knowledge of the real situation to infer what a particular word is referring to--it cannot be X because Xs do not eat, and it cannot be Y because Ys do not wear clothes, so it must be Z , for example. At times people deliberately set up pieces of language with dual or triple competing possible meanings, using the ability of language to be ambiguous ambiguous as a tool of expression. Jokes, for example, set up an expectation expectation of what a situation is, using language, that works well till the punch line reveals an entirely different expectation of what is being talked about that works equally well but was never thought of, causing laughter as interpretations explosively switch--a that was before interpreted one way now is, in an instant, interpreted a different way. way. A man walks down a hotel hallway towards his room for the night, hearing passionate noises between a man and woman behind one of the doors he passes. He pauses to hear a voice behind the door say “push, harder, harder, harder, oooohhh, push more, more, do it, do it hard, now, now” Getting excited by the voice he leans a bit closer and hits the door, which, not being locked, swings open to reveal a man and a woman together together jumping on top of a large suitcase, brimming with clothes, refusing refusing to shut. This joke is cues to sex switched in an instant into cues for over-stuffed suitcases. Fundamentally language is a linear linear sequence of symbols. As we read or listen we form models models in our minds of what the language stream stream of symbols is referring to. Since language is linear, linear, sequential, it cannot instantly instantly present dozens of aspects aspects of anything. It must string them out, dealing with one after after another. another. Good users of language realize that it is inefficient at describing situations, that our eyes, ears, and other senses tend to experience all parts of instantly in parallel. They use hints and cues in the words they choose and the ordering of their topics, so as to s uggest aspects of the situation being described that they cannot fully portray yet, because they have not written/spoken enough words to do so. The fundamental game of language is: to optimize use of the tools of language language to convey more information than than a linear stream of symbols symbols is naturally capable of conveying. We are are always trying to convey a dozen things at once, forced by language, to convey them one after the other--so other--so we optimize hinting, cue-ing, suggesting, innuendo, so each bit of language hints at things to be said exactly exactly later on in a sentence or paragraph. paragraph. The fundamental game of language is optimizing use of a linear symbol symbol stream to simultaneously, simultaneously, non-linearly, convey convey lots of information at once. We are are trying to do a non-linear communication task using a linear tool. Language achieves as much optimal conveying conveying of lots of information as it can in part using embedding. Embedding allows a first stated thing to be the context of a second stated thing, which, in turn, is the context context of a third stated thing. So attributes of the first thing stated influence and constrain parts of the second second things stated, and all of that influences and constrains parts of a third thin g stated. Considering generally bad condition of the economy in general, and the sole responsibility for the household role of women in modern family life, my mother’s response that she was not wasting money on Bob’s videogame habit made good rational sense, though it created large emotional conflicts with Bob.
We are constantly telling others others to view X action in the context of A, and B conditions. People do not see situations. They miss seeing some situations entirely and for for others they see only parts of them. We become aware of this whenever we are in the presence of other people--who see situations we ignore, and who see in situations aspects we never notice. When people get together the most naive mistake they they can make is assume others are seeing what they see and and others are recognizing as situations what they are thusly recognizing. A lot of the work of language is getting people to see the same same contexts around things--so meanings and responses responses of self and other can be understood. When I see a situation my way only, only, the other person’s responses responses seem bad or exaggerated or otherwise at fault. fault. When I adjust my vision to incorporate parts of the situation the other person values and notices that I do not, and entire situations the other sees and cares about that I ignore, then I can understand what the other person’s responses mean. We each see a different world and and language is a way to build common models based on combining what several of us see and value. Language constantly expands our vision and the world we live in and respond to as well as expanding the responses to it we become capable of. Embedding helps us two ways then: 1) use a linear tool to convey something non-linear, namely, many simultaneous aspects of something that we perceive at once. 2) establish a common model combining differences in what is seen and valued among people.
Embedding allows us to wrap an idea or reaction reaction in packages that show what frameworks frameworks and points of view generate our ideas ideas and reactions. Embedding is wrapping events/ actions in contexts/interpretive-schema. If you were raised this way, way, and if you have a present crisis of this particular nature, then a reaction reaction by her like X would naturally be seen as monstrous, not normal or helpful--is an example of what goes on in a sentence such as the following: “to complain about her own hurt was monstrous, given John’s history of childhood abuse and his being bullied by people in the five minutes before before they met”. One problem with language and and with us, is, we often, all all of us, fail to realize the contexts we wrap actions and events within. We label and categorize them so quickly and automatically, automatically, sorting them here and there, without effort or thought, that we do not realize the contexts contexts we habitually apply to things. This can become argument, argument, conflict, conflict, even murder, murder, when others challenge challenge contexts we are not aware we are are using. We deny them because we did not consciously choose or recognize them, that is because we also deny how much of our thought and behavior comes from automatic routines put inside us while growing up some particular when and where--routines we never consciously consciously chose and that may not be so nice. We do not know our own selves till late in life, if at all. Compare the following two sentences: 1) The figures that Harry gave John before Harry left to negotiate with the visiting Japanese whom Bill forced Harry to meet, turned out to be unreliable. 2) The figures were unreliable.
In the first sentence, we have possible excuses, reasons for Harry giving unreliable figures. Harry had been forced into something something and was meeting people of a foreign foreign nationality--two sources of stress. In the second sentence, we have no no excuses, reasons, or explanations, just the bare bare fact that the numbers were unreliable. Language is continually being used to answer questions--who, when, where, where, what, why, why, how, how, how much, how long. It is all reasons, excuses, excuses, lies, entertainments, entertainments, and explanations. explanations. Somebody gave unreliable numbers--who did, why did they do it? Much of language is explaining the world to our selves and others. The embeddings of parts of language in larger larger scale parts mirrors the embedding of actions and events in larger scale actions and events, the contexts of life. We embed embed in words because life embeds events within events, actions within actions. That brings us to planning as another fundamental embedding domain, extrapolated extrapolated from motion planning and language planning. Just as we embed phrases in clauses, and upper arm motions within shoulder motions, we embed car car and hotel arrangements within air travel arrangements. arrangements. Human purpose and intent is structured as embeddings embeddings within other embeddings. All that we do is as rife with embeddings as all that we say and all the arm motions we make are. Note, old people, it is commonly noted, tend towards the second sentence above as a st yle of expression--dropping contexts, making everything an apodeictic judgement without appeal--I see the world X way, way, that is the way it is. Tiring of the game of combining my way of seeing seeing the world with your and others’ ways amounts to getting tired of Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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being human. Nothing it true without context. Everything has points of view. view. None of us see the world the same same way. way. It is easy easy to get tired of this, but it makes makes us less human to do so.
The Math of Embedding Fractal growth is a process that turns slight differences in initial conditions into major features of the final pattern that result from that growth. Fractal growth amplifies slight differences in initial initial conditions. A bump in an otherwise straight straight line, for instance, ends ends up as a huge protuberance, protuberance, like the trunk trunk of a tree in shape. More growth takes place place where more growth growth has happened before--thus a rich get richer process process amplifies initial differences. differences. Embedding is the same pattern pattern appearing on different different size scales; fractal growth also is the same pattern appearing on different size scales. We have have a trunk with branches off of it; we have a branch with twigs off of it, we have a twig with leaf stems off of it; we have a leaf center vein, with smaller veins branching off of it--this trunk and branch configuration is repeated on smaller and smaller size scales in any tree and many plants. plants. Fractal growth gives gives rise to this sort of shape. The embedding we find in human language, human motion planning, human human ordinary dailylife planning, is the result of a fractal fractal growth process. Instead of flowing waters giving rise to fractal patterns in river deltas, or plant growth giving rise to trunk and branch networks in trees, we have main purposes or means with branching enabling component actions. Embedding comes from the fractal growth growth of human purposes, whether given linguistic, action, or to-do-list form.
Exercising Embedding Since language is fundamentally: 1) using a linear tool to convey something non-linear, namely, many simultaneous aspects of something that we perceive at once, 2) establishing a common model combining differences in what is seen and valued among people,
we can exercise embedding by trying to convey many simultaneous simultaneous aspects of something using the tools that linear language gives us. This forces us to develop lots of clever embeddings to get a much of the situation conveyed before lots of words have to be used in sequence. Similarly, Similarly, we exercise embedding whenever whenever we coalesce the differing interpretations and viewpoints giving rise to such interpretations from several several people, nominally, experiencing a common event. This forces us to embed one reaction in the contexts that make it make sense relative to other contexts.
Giving Directions--a way to exercise embedding 1) describe in words how to get from the nearest limited access high speed highway to your own house a) do this again in twenty fewer words b) do this again three ways 1. direct people by landmarks to head for not particular streets 2. direct people by compass headings not particular streets 3. direct people by areas/neighborhoods not streets and not compass headings and not landmarks to head for c) give the three direction sets immediately above to strangers coming to your home and see which set works best--why? d) for the set of directions found to work best with strangers, identify what attributes embedding in language must have, to communicate effectively, locations. Why does each attribute of the embedding work so as to make the directions more effective for people who receive it?
Describe in Words the most beautiful place your regularly visit or view 1) write down your description in 500 words, approximately 2) examine that description and answer the following: a) what size scale in the scene did you describe first, middle, last--why? b) did you describe from details to larger structures or vice versa, from larger structures to details within them--why? c) what was embedded in what, in your description--why?
Describe the Overall State of the Civilized World Today--in 500 words or less 1) write down your description in 500 words 2) examine that description and answer the following: a) what size scale in the scene did you describe first, middle, last--why? b) did you describe from details to larger structures or vice versa, from larger structures to details within them--why? c) what was embedded in what, in your description--why?
Write a Plan of Steps that Will Transform You from What You Now Are into Being an Opera Singer within 15 Years 1) write a 25 step plan that realistically would allow you to move from whatever you are now into being a well paid Opera Singer within 15 years 2) what is embedded in what in that plan? 3) how many steps appear on each size scale--largest size scale, middle size scale, smallest size scale--in your plan? 4) what similar process of thought got repeated on each size scale of your plan?
Another major ways to exercise embedding is to write long complex yet entirely understandable sentences as people did one hundred or more years ago.
Write 100 Word Sentences instead of your Usual Length Ones 1) take something you have to write and write it using long complicated elegant sentences of the style of 100 or more years ago, instead of modern brief short ones 2) make each sentence not lose its readers, as they read it, so get the embeddings right so they help people maintain what is being talked about 3) what sort of embedding rules make such sentences communicate clearly without confusion, though long and complex? why?
Write 500 Word Introductory Descriptions of Particular Persons You Know or Characters in Fictions You Compose 1) some novels, when a new character enters or is introduced, give you an entire biography in short 500 word form, at their introduction Example: Then a woman entered--I say “woman” because of two bumps on her chest under the military uniform, abov e the polished boots, under the hard enamel hat, with one chest bump covered with little colored insignia, of the sort that we associate with the superfluous rewards given to all soldiers who survive battles, as if something more than survival was needed as an incentive--stepping gracelessly to the middle of the room, apologizing to none of the several people she bumped along the way, grabbing her champaign glass as if it would misfire is handled gingerly, head erect, swivelling around a neck thickened by muscle, not realizing that this small performance, demonstrated what a decade of playing alone as a fatherless girl, a following decade “being bad” to punish her mother for making her fatherless, and a last decade turning bad to good without losing any of the violence she felt, by killing enemies of her state, produced. 2) take someone you know and write a “character intro” of the above sort of them, compressing their entire biography into a small paragraph, of one sentence. 3) when you perfect writing 500 words such one sentence intros, expand to writing 1000 words ones, without confusing your readers
The Benefits of Exercising Embedding First, there are the benefits benefits of operating on both larger size scales and smaller smaller size scales than others do. When you practice embedding embedding a lot, you perfect putting medium scale items contexted by larger larger scale items, and you perfect putting medium medium scale items, well elaborated by smaller smaller scale specifics. At first you stick close to medium scale, but after practice, you find yourself incorporating incorporating larger scale contexts and including smaller levels levels of detail. Finally this becomes an ability to encompass more than than others while at the same time being more specific, applied, and detailed than others. Instead of trading off generality for specificity as other do, you perfect simultaneous generality and s pecificity. Second, turning simultaneous many things perceived or many things imagined all at once into linear streams of symbols in speech and writing, goes on all the time in our daily lives. If we practice embedding, then we get get better at sequencing symbols so that early symbols context later ones, minimizing minimizing wait time to get to main points in a scene, situation, or imaginary world we are are describing. Practice embedding leads to mastery mastery of sequencing embeddings for not not losing readers/hearers and for maintaining maintaining their willingness to wait for subsequence details of a scene described. Third, consider the following:
The bird on the tongue of the doll from the mouth of the monster in the window of the cabin on the pole in our backyard is beautiful, but not alive There is a beautiful, but non-living bird in the far left corner of our backyard, where a pole, topped by a cabin, has a window with a protruding monster from whose mouth a tongue sticks out upon which sits the bird.
The first version is purely prepositions. The second mixes prepositions and relative clauses “where “where a...” a...” “from “from whose...” whose...” “upon which...” which...” You can embed prepositional prepositional phrases within prepositional phrases and relative clauses within other relative clauses, and you can mix them, embedding prepositional phrases within relative clauses and vice versa, embedding relative clauses clauses within prepositional phrases. When you mix embeddings of different different kinds of expression, you make sequences of embedding shallower and easier to keep track track of in the mind. So mixtures outperform pure sequences of things of only one type. Practicing embedding embedding teaches you optimal optimal mixes to use, making making it easier for to transmit many parallel impressions in a quick, sh ort sequences of linear language or other symbols.
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Chapter 9 The Language Module: Mapping Syntax to Semantics Syntax, the ordering of words in sentences, is how we speak and how we write. It is a terrible interface from the viewpoint of what we have learned in recent decades decades about designing good interfaces that optimize users doing functions they wish to get done and minimizing things like errors, learning costs, and confusion. When syntax someone is throwing at us, by voice or writing, does not work, we respond with some version or other of “what’s your point?” or “why are you telling me this?”. Getting the “point” of something means the code, that is syntax, has has conveyed “a meaning” to a mind, your own. Moving from a meaning in one person’s person’s mind to a meaning entering my my mind from that other person’s syntax is complicated. There appear to be one or more brain modules that support this movement from syntax to meaning, from words to point. Computer people, trying to design systems to enhance human coordination, interaction, and communication, researched all the basic functions of any message--to forbid, encourage, invite, correct, clarify, clarify, or ask for any such functions from others. They made special pre-formed message types for each each function that they found, and build software to transmit such messages messages and whether appropriate responses to them had had been done or committed to. The result was a rigid procrustean system that users hated. Apparently real people in real messages were used to doing hosts of functions at the same time with the same message via all sorts of contexts and nuances, hints, and sly innuendos. People “feel out” out” both themselves and others via highly hint-ful, indirect, indirect, inchoate, partial partial conveying of meaning. meaning. They hint at something indirectly to get a feel feel for whether the other person will receive it well or b low up angrily, for example. When you are a system you make forces people to be direct and clear all the time, much of the meaning and points of language disappear. disappear. Its usefulness is greatly greatly diminished. Language is a tool of nuance and meaning meaning is both direct and indirect, admittable and unadmitted, welcome and possibly unwelcome. unwelcome. Communication is a kind of strip show where fully clothed clothed ideas are normal, partially clothed clothed ideas are normal, and fully fully naked ideas are rare. There are social, emotional, personal, psychologic reasons that syntax does not clearly clearly convey meanings--that is one of language’s language’s functions, functions, to “not” convey meaning clearly. One puzzle in mapping syntax to semantics, is we do not know what we say and and write. Great writers have reported writing what they they write three times: first, to find out what they think about a topic; second, to put those thoughts into some good order and pattern; pattern; third, to convey both the points and and the pattern they are in at once. Our initial speech and writing are always surprises to us--we us--we did not know we thought that till we said or wrote it. We learn what we think by reviewing reviewing what we just said and wrote. wrote. Usually we find that our statement was twisted or partial in some ways, so we want to re-speak or re-write, in order to put our ideas into a more clear, less confusing pattern or ordering. Even when that is done by re-speaking or re-writing, re-writing, to get a good order, we have another problem. The ideas are in a good order but but we have not conveyed that order well. That leads to a third speaking or writing of the ideas, this one to express well well the good ordering of the ideas our second second speaking or writing produced. produced. Syntax does not mean a lot, loses it point, to us and others, in part, because knowing what we think (our points), and organizing our thoughts (getting a well arranged model of how each our thoughts relates to others), and expressing that organization of our thoughts, are separate, successive successive operations of our minds. Nearly all of our talk and writing is spewing forth ideas in no particular order to make a point that gradually gradually emerges while we talk or write. write. Meaning of what we speak and write is emergent emergent for us, and for for those hearing or reading it. Meaning is emergent. emergent. We do not convey our point to others, via syntax codes, in part, because we do not not really know ourselves what our point is. We know this is true because we often go to someone else and talk to them in order to “get “get clear” what we think about something. “I’ll talk it over with June, because she always helps me realize what I am saying and doing”--for example. I once taught computer programming, in Japan, in the basement of a huge corporation, with two students taking individual lessons--a head of research with 11 years experience living in the US and a head of sales with no years of experience living outside of Japan. Japan. The fluent in English head of research was hard to teach teach and to talk to. He talked so well and so much, I never knew what what his point was. I kept having to ask ask him--why he was telling me things. The head of sales sales was easy to teach teach and talk to. He had so little English that he made perfectly clear, clear, always, how many points he was making, making, what the name of each point was, and what what order the points were in. I always knew whether I had understood all his points because he told me how many many points he was making, what they names were, were, and what order they were in. Fluency of syntax is not fluency of communication. We can can distinguish, then, speaking in order to convey what we think from speaking in order to discover what we think. Most of us do the latter, only, only, all day and life long. Only a few people do the former--form complete sets of related thoughts in their minds in well ordered ways, then express those thoughts in the context of that careful ordering. Syntax is a code optimized optimized for people who speak in order to discover what what they themselves and others others thing. It is not a code optimized for people who know know what they think already and are ready to convey that well and completely to others. Here I want to introduce a word--model. word--model. When we know what we want to say, say, we have a model of what to say. say. A model is any set of ideas in careful careful inter-relation to each other. When we know the ideas to include and how each of them relates to the others, and have have organized them so that pattern of inter-relations inter-relations is highly evident and visible, then we have a model to convey. Without such a model, we generate generate a stream of syntax having a stream of ideas in it, with what all those words add up to vague both to us and to those we speak them to. That is speaking to discover what we think on an issue. Such idea models as discussed are the link from syntax to semantics, from words to meaning, from statements statements to points. Once we know the idea models we wish to convey, we can work to express both the patterning among its ideas and the ideas in the contexts given them by that patterning. Without knowing all that, we can only speak in order to discover our own thinking on a topic.
Translating Idea Models in Mind into Syntax in Speech or Text Communication is done two ways, ways, to find what our own idea models models are, and to communicate communicate those models once we know them. Most of the time we communicate communicate to do both of these at the same time, having no idea model, that is, not knowing really what we think about some topic, we speak or write to discover our own thinking’s content, while hoping that others will get some point or meaning from what we say. say. The results are rather poor--we poor--we communicate unarranged unarranged points, of indefinite number and and name, to people who hear different numbers of points that the number we “communicate” with different names than we gave or hinted at, without any idea what principle orders those points. We we say is indefinite and what other hear is indefinite; what we write is indefinite and what others read is indefinite. If instead of this slpppy tradition, we implement triple saying/writing--composing once to discover what we think, composing a second time to put those thoughts into good pattern and ordering, and composing a third time to express effectively both the po ints and their patterning to others--then we have idea models (counted, named, ordered) in mind that we express to others. What is it like to have an idea model model in mind to communicate to others? others? It is like that sales manager I mentioned in my example example above, whose syntax has lots of meta-statemeta-statements in it, that do not communicate points of ocntent, but instead communicate patterning of ideas--how many, with what names, names, in what order. So we get meta-statements mixed with regular statements, the latter communicating particular points, the former communicating their count, names, principle or ordering, and relationships to each other. Such meta-statements meta-statements are called “signalling” statements statements in linguistics research. We signal to others, readers or hearers, what is coming--its coming--its count, names, and ordering. We also add how the points in that patterning relate to each other, not in syntax terms but in semantics terms--how the idea relate in the i dea model in our minds that we are communicating. We can automate triple composition if we practice for enough weeks and months. We can can learn to express first to ourselves inside our own minds, to discover what we think. All of us have already experienced doing th is in impressive meetings we participate in, where we carefully listen to what others say and compose our own response statements for many minutes before saying them. them. We can learn to organize and pattern what we say, before before actually saying it, in the same way. All of us have already done this in impressive meetings we attend. We can learn to express not just our points but two overall patterns they are in--in an idea model model in our mind, that relates point to point, and in another derived pattern as we stream out expressing such related points in speech or writing. We can learn to express both the idea model and the expression model we use to communicate that idea model. In casual everyday conversing we can learn to automate triple triple composition too. This is a matter of practice and applying the skills we already developed for impressive meetings to everyday encounters. This is a matter matter of brain training.
The Uses of Linking Syntax to Semantics Via Idea Models My example of the research director versus the sales manager, above, shows the difference in outcome achieved when we automate triple composing in ou r speech and writing. People go away from encountering us with a count of how many points we made, names of each point that they remember, and what what principle ordered the points, in how we expressed them and in how the points relate to each each other in the causal model of them inside our minds. It is a matter of always getting across all that you intend to communicate versus not even knowing what you intend to communicate and almost almost never communicating all you intend, as a result. It is a matter of communicating or uttering lots of words that fail to communicate. Another experiment I made in my own life involved teaching myself myself public speaking. The way I chose to do this was applying six times a year to speak at conferences, not far from my home, that had people people who passed aroun d questionnaires at the end of each speaker’s speaker’s session, getting audience evaluations of it. I used audience advice to me-what they liked and disliked about me and my ideas and my expressing expressing of ideas--by following exactly that advice. In three years I moved from from the worst rated speaker at each session to the top rated speaker. After that, I spread out to other conferences, competing with Henry Kissinger, John Seely Brown, Herber Herbertt Simon, Bono the rock star, Tom Malone, Lester Thurow, and other luminaries, vastly more famous than I, and outscoring them all, every time, in audience evaluations. None of the other speakers communicated both points and pattern. None of the other speakers tripled tripled composed before speaking. Only I expressed both patterns among among ideas in my idea model and pattern used to communicate them. Only I triple composed composed before speaking. I knew what I wanted to say, what organization it was in, and how to express express that organization organization well. This led to being the best rated speaker at dozens of conferences conferences in a row. row. I finally stopped competing--victory was too automatic and and assurred to hold my interest. I moved on to other challenges. More recently I have written nine large large books, each structurally written, that is, having a definite well ordered structure structure of points to be conveyed. My books are unusual in that each chapter has the same subheadings as all other chapters, within any given book. This makes what is diverse among chapters chapters clearer by making what is the same same among them clearer clearer as well. It highlights both diversity and homogeneity, making both of them clearer to readers. readers. Old patterns of writing, writing, that we were taught in schools, Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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emphasized making one sentence look different than the next, making one chapter organized differently than others, and changing terms for an idea in successive sentences and paragraphs for “variety”. That variety makes ideas that are the same appear appear different, preventing preventing readers from counting, naming, and ordering ordering points presented, accurately. rately. It hides the idea model from the reader. reader. It prevents effective effective communication. By structuring my books uniformly, I make count, count, name, and order apparent to readers, at a glance.
An Example Idea Model Translated into Syntax It is best to have a diagram presenting an idea model and look at the issues involved in conveying what the diagram easily presents simultaneously, into streams of coded words in syntax. The diagram below presents an idea model--that model--that there are two brain systems for happiness, a stay stay system and a strive system, and the implications that has for humans achieving happiness, the paradox that within the stay system is the strive system, and the need to balance these two brains sources of happiness if were are to be maximally happy. happy. Now, let’s let’s try to express the idea model, including the relations among ideas in it, using linear sequences of symbols, that is, syntax.
A. There are two brain systems for happiness, a stay system that signals to maintain the present state, and a strive system that signals to leave the present state. When we strive, and, eventually, eventually, achieve victory, victory, we enter the stay system only to immediately leave it for more striving. When we stay in a happy situation eventually we strive for stimulation or change, entering the strive happiness system. This paradox of leaving stay happiness states for striving ones and leaving strive happiness states for staying ones, means that we have to balance these two sources of happiness in the brain in order to be maximally happy. happy. We have to achieve staying in security, health, compagnionship, purposelessness, and striving, but striving, a state of being that makes us happy, causes us to leave security, health, compagnionship, and purposelessness, all of which make us happy, behind.
TWIN BRAIN SYSTEMS FOR HAPPINESS THE STAY SYSTEM
THE STRIVE SYSTEM
security health compagnionship & sex purposelessness striving
a challenging goal = stay happiness overcoming difficulties eventual victory = stay happiness defeating others expanding goals
signal: maintain this state
signal: leave this state
B. There are two brain happiness systems, a stay system telling us to maintain present states, and a strive system telling us to leave present Paradox: a strive system embedded in a stay system. states. The stay system has five components components one of which is striving-striving makes us happy happy in the stay system. system. The strive system has five Happiness = balance maintained between two discomponents, two of which are stay happinesses--the goal we seek and tinct sources of happiness in the brain the feeling of stay happiness we get in victory. victory. A stay happiness system one of whose components is striving creates a paradox; a striving happiness system two of the components of which are stay happiness states creates a paradox. These two systems, each with the other embedded, embedded, are unstable, hence, we have to consciously balance balance our participation in both in order to be maximally happy. Which of the two syntax version of the idea model--A model--A or B--best expresses expresses the relations of ideas ideas in the model? Why? Most people judge the second, second, B, the best, because it preserves the order of points in the diagram, because it connects each level in the diagram causally with the next level, and because it maintains the symmetry, equality, between the two systems--their mutual causation of each other. The assymetry of the two--that the stay system does not have striving as a goal but as one component while t he strive system has the stay system as a goal as well as an endpoint actually sometimes sometimes achieved--is captured in both paragraphs. paragraphs. This is subtle but decisive--the diagram makes instantly clear a symmetry and assymmetry assymmetry between the two systems of happiness--they are equal in some respect and unequal unequal in one respect. Language, all to easily, slops slops over, sloshes over, over, slips over this, being incomplete and imprecise, where diagrams are instantly precise and inclusive. If we could talk and write only in diagram form, communication would greatly improve.
The Brain Basis of Linking Syntax to Semantics Via Idea Models There is a lot of evidence that w e have mental models in our brain that we operate on, instead of operating on logical propositions that, taken as a group, capture the features of a mental model. model. However, mental models are a broader, more inclusive, category than idea models as use used d above. Idea models are are a tiny subset of all mental mental models. Idea models are the packages, packages, often habitual, that we utter thoughts in. All of us have experienced “not having finished what we intended intended to say”. We all have experienced “you did not get my point”. We all experience daily daily “that is only part of what I said”. We have packages of ideas we try to transmit transmit and get frustrated when someone or something interrupts our transmission of such an idea package, or insists on “getting” or “hearing” only part of it. Those packages of ideas are what I call “idea models” in this chapter. chapter. A certain number of ideas, highly inter-related to each other, so that understanding any one is hard or less valuable than understanding all of them together, constitutes an idea model. It is idea models we usually try to express express not single ideas. Hence, count of points, names of points, and principle of ordering of points, are are all important distinct things to be communicated in any any message. If single ideas were the normal, usual content of communication, communication, count, names, and ordering principles would not need need to be communicated. Brain imaging machines light up different parts of the brain when we are are stay happy and when we are strive happy. We can even watch strive happiness give way to stay happiness when victory is obtained. We can even watch stay happiness give way way to strive happiness when we get bored from from lack of stimulation in a stay happiness state and choose striving as a stay happiness mode. Brain imaging also lights up different different parts of the brain when we we think a thought and when we express it in syntax, whether through speaking or writing. If we ignore, for present purposes, brain regions that light up for motor control of speaking muscles versus writing muscless, different brain regions light up when we think of what to say and when we say it, via some communication modality. We cannot yet image the brain in enough detail to distinguish regions corresponding to particular ideas, but we can distunguish certain idea types--those having limbic system involvements because heavily invested with emotion. If, in a conversation, a person refers to or mentions a past sexual encounter that was thrilling, then brain imaging devices will show different regions lit up than mention of less emotional ideas involves. Having a thought and expressing it are distinct brain systems. We would hypothesize that future more refined brain imaging systems will show that expressings that convey entire idea models (triple composing as above mentioned in this chapter) differ from expressings that convey parts of idea models (ordinary sloppy expressing to find what we think, for example).
Exercising Linking Syntax to Semantics Via Idea Models Delaying Speaking, Reacting, Writing The fundamental exercise is one we all have already done, thousands of times--delaying what we say till we know what we want to say. We do this in important meetings when we do not want to make a fool of ourselves by what we say before others. Instead of speaking out ideas when they pop into our minds, we delay speaking, gathering several related things to say, making a coherent model of them all in our minds, before making one remark that expresses them all. The steps by which we do this, though repeated by us many times, may surprise us when we examine them. We may not have realized what we were doing when delaying expression all those times in the past. 1) Every time you speak with someone, rather than making any response or remark yourself, ask them to expatiate on what they just requested or said to you, ask them to continue talking, elaborating on what they said or requested, or clarifying it 2) Ask them, then, a number of questions, about what they said, rather than stating anything positive yourself. 3) Finally, pause and count the number of points you have accumulated that you wish to say, decide a best-order to put them in, put them in that order, decide good names of your points now that they are in that order, create a good meta-statement, telling someone the structure of the points that will follow, then make a remark. Repeat this in every conversational encounter for several hours each day, till, by such practice, you develop the habit of not responding to isolated remarks, but eliciting more from others, then gathering several of your imagined responses into one overall coherent well named and ordered structure, then communicate that structure of points as ell as the individual points in it to others.
Reflecting and Expressing Count, Names, Ordering A good way to join syntax with points (meaning, semantics) via idea models is by reflecting back to others, the count of what they said, the names of points they said, and the principle by which they ordered the points they said (probably unconsciously). They will not know these things themselves. They will be surprised to hear the count, names, and ordering they gave to points, said back to them by you. What they just said to you will be a surprise to them. 1) when someone talks to you, carefully listen for the name of each point they are making, keeping count of how many points are being made, and watching what principle orders the points 2) rather than responding with your own points, first, respond with announcement “let me summarize, Joe, what I just heard you say to me...” and give back the number of points you heard, their names, and the principle ordering them 3) repeat this for all conversations during one or two hours of practice each day This will make you, naturally, evolve towards clear realization of the count, names, and order of your own points. Other people will usually not be aware of the count, names, and ordering of what they say. We can surprise and help them, improve communication with them, by summ arizing what they have told us, in such a way, that we express back to them the number of points they made, the names of those points, the principle ordering those points, and the causal relations among those points. Developing such summarizing as a personal habit gradually gets others to be more careful and thorough, more structured and complete, when communicating wit h us. We show them a model, show them what we expect, show them what they actually said, in ways more clear than they are used to. We use synax to communicate idea models not just single randomly occuring ideas.
Expressing Causal Relations Most people, including you yourself, generate statements with no particular clear causal relations among ideas you say. Rather, causal relations emerge or are implied by what you say, though you may not realize that yourself. There are two orderings of points we make possible, though we usually make both at the same time, mixing and confusing
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Powers from Brain Training--Mind, Language-Art, Mind Extensions, Structure, Theory, Reflection, Happiness, Social Automata, Evidence, Career, Culture, Theories, & Design them--presentati on order, in our idea model, and causal order, in our idea model. In addition, their is expression order--the order we express idea model contents in. So we convert a presentation ordering of ideas in an idea model, how ideas happen to be arranged in it in our minds, into an expression model of linear language symbols in syntax form, and we convert a causal ordering of ideas in an idea model, how ideas cause each other as our minds imagine it, into an expression model of lienar language symbols in syntax form. If we do both of these conversions at once, mixing results, people who hear or read us get confused. 1) express what you think about each of a list of common topics you often end up talking about with others, in the form of small paragraphs of initial thoughts you usually genearte on those topics--here, choose ten common such topics you often end up talking about with others a) self introduction of yourself to others b) self introduction of your background to others c) description of your current interests and work d) description of your current avocations and hobbies e) what you enjoy and like about your daily life at present f) what irritates and frustrates you in your daily life at present g) who are your best friends and what do you like about having them as friends h) what worries you about the direction your institution and your world are heading in i) what new capabilities from science and technology are you looking forward to buying or using in the near future j) what member of the opposite opposite sex currently currently attracts attracts your attention attention and why. why. 2) for each of these generate in writing a short paragraph of ten sentences or so that you often end up saying to others about these topics 3) draw a diagram of the idea model latent within each such paragraph, showing number of ideas, their names,and what principle orders them 4) separate all ideas, in each set, into inputs and outcomes 5) among input ideas, separate them by inputs that create other inputs as outcomes and inputs that directly generate outcomes in your separate outcomes list 6) among outcome ideas, separate them by outcomes that generate other outcomes there in that same list, and ones that are directly generates by inputs in your input list 7) draw clear causal paths among inputs to other inputs to outcomes and final outcomes--where each link is one idea causing another idea as outcome 8) where two or more ideas cause the same outcome or intermediate idea, draw paths accordingly 9) coalesce different such path diagrams where they overlap, that is, where one idea is found in two or more causal paths 10) draw a final diagram of all causal paths using good layout to make clear what ideas cause what other ideas which in turn cause what other ideas as outcomes, for as many links as needed 11) write a paragraph for each set of causal diagrams, expressing the overall flows of causation and the ideas within those flows 12) compare your paragraphs just written in 11 above with the paragraphs you wrote in step 2 above--what is different and why? what is better and wh
Chapter 10 The Language Module: Inheritance One of the impressive parts of thought and mind is concepts. Concepts are made more more efficient for thought by the way they have sub-concepts sub-concepts under them. If I tell you Fred is a potatoe, you get negative vibes from from that association because potatoes potatoes are not animate thinking intelligent beings and Fred Fred is a name used with people. The concepts we categorize something under under tell us lots of things, just using one word. In other words, single concepts concepts can not only tell us a lot of things about one entity but convey those things about any entity using that concept as its category. When I say “I am a Republican” in the US, people immediately know a lot of things--likes to make rich people richer, likes to replace science and and medicine with bible beliefs and cures, likes to make oil buddies rich in Texas by killing unimportant foreigners. The sub-concepts under a concept inherit the attributes of that super-concept. This makes thinking efficient. efficient. We use inheritance in every sentence and every thought thought we think. It is omnipresent omnipresent and thought as we know it would cease were inheritance to stop. “This is a kind of car” we say, pointing at an object, and everyone knows knows to expect four or so wheels, seats, engine, roads for it to run on, and lots of other attributes (cup holders, radio, etc.). That statement “this is a car” has power from two sources--from sources--from “this is a...” telling us an object is under, is a kind of some other object, and from “car” a concept that unites a very particular set of attributes. Inheritance gives power to concepts; concepts give power to inheritance. Concepts unit traits under one word and inheritance deploys those sets of traits to lots of other concepts that are sub-concepts sub-concepts of a concept. Labels and stereotypes are instances instances of this twin power of concepts with inheritance. When we say something is a something else, Joe is a Democrat, for example, example, we lose uniquenesses of the something and instead substitute traits of the the something else. This is efficient, but data is lost whenever it is done. We can get tired of labeling X as Y, Y, something as something else, for this reason, because it tends to make lots of th ings appear to be just one thing, over-simplifying reality, sometimes dangerously doing so. Stereotypes, when we apply them to others impress us with their efficiency, but when others apply them to us, they make us angry--I am lots more and lots different that what you are saying--we insist. We can improve this, preserving s ome efficiency and gaining some uniqueness by combining labels--this is an antique car, Joe is a conservative democrat, the US car industry is a phoenix inside a decaying albatross. By combining two labels, often with contradictory contents, we get more complex descriptions of things that yet are highly efficient. This is idea blending, metaphor mixing, mixing, and the like. The problem is mapping exactly exactly what parts of the first concept still apply and what what parts of the second still apply and what to do where the traits of the first idea and the traits of the second conflict, who wins?
Mapping Idea Blends and Concept Inheritances Inherita nces As people become well educated one of the skills they develop is a skill of mapping metaphors and concept inheritances when they hear hear or read them. They go beyond the quick efficiency of communicating traits in them and examine what exactly is being said. If that is an antique car, what traits of modern cars as still found there and what traits no longer in cars are found there--we ask outselves. In other words, combined labels and combined concepts generate generate questions for us to answer rather than conveying simply sets of traits joined together. together. Educated people hear and read read these questions raised when concepts and labels labels mix, rather than hearing and reading reading just joined traits of the two. Uneducated people, to the contrary, take blends of ideas, labels, and concepts as “obvious” and do not investigate which traits of idea one combine with which of idea two. They assume the traits of both are obvious and that the way they combine is o bvious.
The Skills of Not Inheriting Traits from Concepts Compare the following arguments: A. Viewed sociologically, the population of the United States in the early 21st century appears to be “Bowling Alone” as the book says, with deeply attenuated community feelings and weakend community structures. Viewed economically, it appears to be split into an upper layer of multi-millionaire elites who invest little and care nothing for millions of families without parents, healthcare, and jobs at the bottom of society. Viewed biologically, it appears to be a population of gigantic asses, large behinds, with waves of blubber above and below them, on spindly legs. Viewed politically, it appears to be a population in flight from reality and science into emotion and religion. Overall, the US appears to be a tired civilization well on its way to death and decline, with its ways of work and living crushing its own people under more and more physical and emotional unhealth. B. The vitality and power of the US has never been greater than it appears in the early 21st century. The economy has grown well even with giant trade and budget deficits, people spend even as their home equity drops 10% in ten years, overall. The ability of the US to kill foreigners without crimping lifestyles and personal happiness has never been greater. greater. People are comforted so well by believing in various gods that they increasingly do not mind giving all their money to milionaires and political dynasty families and replacing science with faith-based healing. Hating homosexuals and other deviants from Biblical standards of conduct provides daily joy to most Americans, plus a feeling of personal moral superiority that no money can buy. All in all the US is becoming, step by step, more heavenly, as time goes on.
The overall image of A is “America is tired”; the overall overall image of B is “America “America is heavenly”. The overall image of B is explicitly not “tired”. The overall image of A is explicitly not “heavenly. “heavenly. Where A sees “tiredness” B sees vitality. Where B sees “heavenliness” A sees “joy “joy in murdering murdering foreigners”. Which is best? Which is right? The issue is we all have overarching images images of things like our family, family, our mate, our selves, our nation, our job, our boss, our economy. economy. A person whose overall image of of the US is “tiredness” thinks and does considerably different things than a person whose overall image of the US is “heavenly”. Just so, we do and think differently based on what our overall top-level image is of various important parts of our lives. Other concepts we have and use tend to inherit their traits from these dominant dominant top-level images. When we consider changing top level images, we realize how, at first, we categorize lots of concepts under these top level images, but later on, when challenges or doubts to the top level images occur, we change tactics tactics and use low level items under them as evidence that they, the top level concepts, are “true” “true” or “right”. This is cognitively dishonest. Inheritance means we simplify thought by categorizing categorizing ideas as A is an example of America’s America’s heavenliness or an example of America’s America’s tiredness. If we later say, say, A proves America is heavenly heavenly or tired, we are turning efficiency efficiency into truth--a false false process. Here labels can create create trouble in thinking that is very hard to discern discern and fix. Here labels become mental prisons. The solution is educatedness in the form of mapping the extent to which an image is true of concepts under it that inherit its traits, and in the form of not so casually using inheritance of traits for overall high level images. Educated people tend to have plural diverse conflicting views--the US is heavenly in some respects, the US is tired in some respects, the US is mundane in some respects. and and others. Each has areas of truth, areas of falsehood, and areas areas of irrelevance. Careful mapping is required to denote areas of validity to images and areas of invalidity, and real data to confirm or deny hypothesized validity or invalidity is requried. Only science can decide such issues, ultimately, real real stantistically careful research. The cesspool of opinion slowly shrinks, decade by decade, decade, as societies pay for scientific research research to test easy opinions and enthusiastic claims, claims, anyone can easily make. Witches were a real threat threat for a thousand years in Europe, resulting in millions of tortured and burned women, who, we now, know know,, were all innocent, the victims victims of beliefs and opinions, the victims of images. images. Images kill.
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Exercising Concept Inheritance Exercising concept inheritance as we usually do it is unnecessary--we rehearse rehearse it in every sentence and thought. However, being aware aware of the harms of concept inheritance, in particular, of the cost in lost data and uniqueness when we label an item as a “kind of” something, does need practice. Also mapping the extent of validity of dominating top level images needs practice. These two--accounting for the costs of images in lost uniquenes and mapping mapping the extent of their validity--are traits that educated people develop slowly by much conscious effort.
Accounting for the Costs of Dominating Images in Our Life and Thought 1. Find out what some of your own dominating images are, by answering the questions below: a) a good father is___________________________________________and does____________________________________________ b) a good mother is__________________________________________and does____________________________________________ c) a good leader is __________________________________________and does_____________________________________________ d) a good person of your nationality is______________________________________and does_________________________________________ e) the fundamental problem in your personal life is________________________________________and causes________________________________ f) the fundamental problem in your nation is__________________________________________and causes_________________________________ g) the most important thing in order to live a good life is_____________________________________________________________ h) a good national economy has____________________________________________and does______________________________________ i) the world situation now most needs_________________________________________________because_____________________________________ 2. Which of the above images organizes lots of other images and domains of life for you---find that out by seeing which of the above images are ones you commonly use to judge other people and situations by--choose at least 3 of the above as dominating images for you, that you categorize lots of other concepts under as examples or parts of them a) dominating image 1:__________________________________________________ b) dominating image 2:__________________________________________________ c) dominating image 3:__________________________________________________ 3) For each dominating image list four other concepts in diverse domains that you categorize under it and that you see as exemplars of it:
3 Dominating Images and 4 Subconcepts for Each of Them subconcept 1:
subconcept 2:
subconcept 3:
subconcept 4:
dominating image 1: dominating image 2: dominating image 3: 4) For each subconcept under a dominating image, what uniqueness of the subconcept is omitted in categorizing it under that dominating image:
One Cost--Lost or Slighted Unique Content--for Each of 4 Subconcepts Under Each of 3 Dominating Images subconcept 1:
subconcept 2:
subconcept 3:
subconcept 4:
dominating image 1: dominating image 2: dominating image 3: 5) Which of the nine costs of categorizing concepts under dominating images above is the most dangerous to you and probably misleads you the most into bad thought or action?
Combining Opposite Images 1) Review your answers to step 3 above--the concepts under each of your 3 dominating images 2) For each dominating image (each of your 3 of them) add another image that counteracts weaknesses of that dominating image. 3) Now, write one sentence for each of the 4 subconcepts under each of your 3 dominating images showing how adding that counter-image changes the content of each subconcept.
Chapter 11 The Language Module: Noun Compounding German is the epitome of this mental facility--the verzingenzongenuberunteruntzonkverpfuffenza verzingenzongenuberunteruntzonkverpfuffenzakheit. kheit. Germans love nouns--if they had their way language would only be nouns and we would do away with verbs entirely. entirely. Indeed many Germans Germans put verbs at the ends of sentences in order to forget them. them. What is the profound profound cognitive drive causing Germans and the German German language to stack on elements to make fantastically long and complicated complicated nouns? What does this appeal to in the mind? Where does the drive for this come from and go to? That is one door onto the topic of this chapter--noun compounding. Naming is a profound part of cognition and good naming is quite rare. A great name has two conflicting dimensions--a vertical dimension of representing representing what is common to the components subsumed under the name--a horizontal horizontal dimension of what things on an equal plane with the name are different from it. A great name captures all that is shared by component elements elements and distinguishes well all of them from other things on the same rough level level of meaning. These are the representational representational and relational aspects of naming, respectively. respectively. Good names are representationally representationally complete and relationally accurate. Nouns are what verbs operate on. Nouns are what result from operations operations performed on other nouns. If we extrude the features of a face through some sort of filtering shape, we get a “face extrusion”. extrusion”. Face is a noun as is face extrusion, while extruding is the verbal verbal operation applied in this case. The drive for nouns is the drive to name name the world. We name name what gets operated on and we name what results from such operations. We can name the operations themselves turning extruding into extrusion. Consider a woman whose sexual appeal beams out from the legs under her very short skirt, from the tight curve of shirt over breast, and a face that radiates sensual health and life appreciation and humor. We can name her--a sexual bombshell, a cherry bomb, barely held-in-check concupisence, concupisence, dressed eros, man slayer, visual ball crusher, crusher, honey trap, groin spinach, carrot lubricant. lubricant. The history of language is replete with names for this phenomenon. phenomenon. Suppose we approach this woman woman and discover she is entirely uneducated and talks like a truck driver, spitting frequently, frequently, and, because of a rough childhood, she hates most men and the idea of sexual union with them. We can name her--bitter fruit, sour fig, a dysjunction of biologic with social class, a bio-social class dysjunct. dysjunct. A bio-social class mysdysjunct (the “mys” from hating mankind). mankind). We love coming up with nouns that, in the fewest number of works, suffice to recall a complex and deeply felt p henomenon. There are novelists who have played around with this noun compounding facility of the human mind. Henry James, for an American example, example, was wont to introduce characters with single noun phrases encapsulating ten or more year long periods of their lives--”John, caring as much for his wife as a life spent being uncared for himself could now permit, swung her around the room off his arm as the best of ornaments for party or life, the glittering glidin g shattered chandelier of his dreams”, or another ”as he entered the room, nose first, like the prow of a proud ship, cutting through the vulgar conversations and inebriated ins ights around him--he, the nose-leader of each room he entered, the pride-prow of each conversation, the premier premier exemplar of proper style and etiquette, made this event both more nasal and less heady”. heady”. Here a single vivid image appears and reappears in the guise of different but equivalent noun phrases. Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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A Look at Noun Compounding The second word (or last) is the category to which the compound belongs--a housecat is a kind of cat not a kind of house, for example, but exceptions include pickpocket, a kind of person not a kind of pocket. Examine the list below of noun compounds in English: skyrocket--a toy type of rocket housecat--cat that lives in a particular house or a non-wild cat toystore--a store specializing in selling one type of product market price--a price set by market forces price earnings ratio--a ratio of two particular numbers gross national product--a large scale of produced amount block grants--a medium scale of financial grants garbageman--a person whose job handles a particular object type wheelchair--a chair designed for moving not just sitting sunvisor--a visor against sunshine windshield--a shield against wind windbreaker--a shield against wind circuitbraker--a device for eliminating the flows in a circuit organization restructuring--a re-organization of organizations business process re-engineering--a second engineering of a kind of process total quality control--control of a particular scope of quality law breaker--the breaker of a particular kind of thing, laws whale of a tale--large exaggeration of reality story.
Consider the following sentences: A. the wife beating denier husband Joe--denies beating someone the wife beater denying husband Joe--denies a person who beats someone the beater of wives husband Joe--a type of husband who beats wives B. the stop gap measure depending boss Joe--a boss who depends on stop gap measures the stop gap measure dependant boss Joe--a boss who depends on stop gap measures the stop gap measure dependency having boss Joe--a boss who depends on stop gap measures C. the recently involved in a car accident loser of his last political election due for retirement head of our political party Joe the car accident victim recent election loser retirement bound head of our political party Joe D. the Jane hating asker of inconvenient questions yesterday replacement for Jane as boss Joe the Jane hater recent inconvenient question asker Jane replacement as boss Joe.
We can have a great number of relations between nouns in compounds as seen above: something in something else (housecat), something part of something else (wheelchair, a chair made of wheels), something ressembles something else (whale of a tale), action performed performed on something (windbreaker, breaking breaking wind), and many others. We can compose entire sentences sentences as noun phrases, though it is hard to keep verbs out out of the list. The B set above tries to avoid verbs but fails, ultimately. ultimately. Similarly, Similarly, C tries to avoid verbs and succeeds succeeds except for “due”. “due”. D is a sentence without verbs expressed entirely entirely in noun compounds. The set A above shows how slight changes from noun to verb can shift entirely the most obvious meaning of a phrase (changing “beating” to “beater” changes who beats entirely in the most common reading of the phrase in this example).
The Mental Training of Noun Compounding The skill involved is not getting others lost in the compound. compound. One tactic commonly used used is making compounds of other well known compounds as subunits. subunits. By concatenating already known compound units, we can can help others to not get lost in a longer noun compound. The profit in making long complex complex noun compounds is simplifying the verbal phrase that makes the core of any sentence. If the noun compound does the heavy lifting work of being adequately general and specific, the verbal phrase part can be very simple and dramatic--”a dramatic--”a neighbor-bating weed-tolerating weed-tolerating belly-exposing beer can scatterer scatterer blob moved into our block last last week”. All the interest and work is in the noun compound, so the overall sentence structure is simple and dramatic. Another tactic is concatenating simple noun phrases whose meanings link or gradually form the basis for subsequent such phrases, for example: “the former alcoholic compassionate conservative salesman president Cheney puppet mental incompetent religious bigot person named Bush is the most unfortunate President that the United States has ever had” or “the tall New Englander arrogant elegant social snob tin ear foot mouthed opponent of Bush in the election is the most unfortunate, for the United States and world destiny, contender for President of the United States that it has ever had in its history”. There are numerous other forms of sub-structure within long noun compound phrases that help people not get lost in them--pairs of opposites, counter-vailing pairs (praise and blame, positive and negative, past and future), sequences of larger scale, scale, sequences of more recent items, and so on. All these substructures help people to not get lost in long noun compound phrases.
The Brain Basis of Noun Compounding Noun compounding appears to be p roto-language, a base near-monkey level of language, underneath all human language and more primitive than verb compounding syntax such as embedding of relative clauses presented in an earlier chapter above. above. Even young children do complex noun compound building operations easily and without confusion from early ages. Since it is the linear sequence of meanings meanings that builds up, rather than some abstract syntactical relations relations as in full sentence syntax, not much structural and organizational complexity complexity is involved. Memory and strong sensitivity to context are are enough for most people to figure figure out what a particular particular noun compound is referring referring to. Noun compounds have a remarkable similarity similarity to visual scene descriptions and and giving directions. “The red nose on the clown, swinging from from the trapeze, hung below the cabin, in the red tree, next to the three green bushes, on the hillside in back of the river scene is shaped as noses in the Middle East are shaped”. shaped”. Each small scale item is located near objects in larger and larger larger portions of the overall scene. This is very much like how single noun compounds are treated in long phrases of noun compounds. There is a further dimension to noun compounding--naming. Naming what is the point of any passage you hear or read, speak or write, is hard work and not often done well. Naming points precisely is a rare skill, so much so, that undergraduate literature and philosophy majors were always the best students in my University of Chicago MBA classes, never undergraduate undergraduate business or economics majors. majors. The latter were incapable of naming naming points at all, leaving them useless when people disagreed disagreed or when subtle distinctions were needed. The former could hear fine distinctions and distinguish and untangle points of view and unstated frameworks frameworks latent in how ideas got expressed or worded. The parts of the brain that enable us to name points are close to and related to the parts that allow us to do noun compounding. Finding the point and naming it are two highly inter-related processes. We hypothesize a point is “here” in some surface text extent, and while we do that we hypothesize what that point it, comparing the wording of that name of the point in our mind with the naming of the point as found in the surface text. It is common to discern points without good clear surface text names. We often form names in our mind that are more precise, focussed, and memorable memorable than the prolix ambiguous passages that contain the point we are naming. Surface text often does not not name its point contents. In job interviews, for example, example, some people teach teach a method of answering answering each question with a wellnamed cogent image, then giving a sentence or two explaining what what that short image means. “What did you learn intellectually in those courses?” courses?” “Quantitative methods and criteria for evaluating research studeis, in a word, the methods including T and F tests, cross-tab, factor, and regression analysis, the criteria for evaluating including sample quality, research research instrument non-bias, prior prior validity and reliability studies for scales used, and several others.” This is close to naming your point before giving it, in text. Written text rarely does this, except in extremely boring to read manuals and textbooks. Since two of the primary components of any name--representational accuracy, the name captures what is shared by points it subsumes, relational accuracy, the name distinguishes a point from ones preceeding it and succeeding it on the same scale--require that a name capture vertical and horizontal relations with nearby passages and contexts around the name, good names names are “good” if they capture and express the place place of an idea in the various contexts around it. Names that miss context aspects mislead mislead us. There is a general theoretical problem, however. however. Brains are neutal nets and do something equivalent to factor analysis on all inputs, spotting things that co-occur, co-occur, even if entirely different in meaning or feature or sensation. So a smell of beans might index, unite, and retrieve the memory of a particular moment moment in a date with one’s high school girlfriend, an artificial chemical made by one’s thesis advisor in the lab at college, and the fourth inning of the Yankee’s Yankee’s being beaten by Boston in baseball one year in the 1990s. This means everything that happens to us is indexed in myriad diverse idea, sensory, purpose, emotion, emotion, and other ways. A good name, in this context, has to be good in many or all of these diverse dimensions. So conceptual clarity and logical consistency mislead us, in a name, for a name must be good in all sorts of associations associations and indexing arrangements that are not conceptual and not logical and not consistent. What humans in language to ourselves and between each other demand demand in logic and clarity of concept is much less than the richness of association and indexing in the brain. Good names in the former need qualities a great deal different different than good names in the latter. latter.
Exercising the Brain’s Brain’s Concatenation Means for Handling Noun Compounds Compo unds Turning Sentences into Names of the Main Points This is hard to do as stated and harder if one requires that the names produced by compound nouns, not verbal phrases. 1) Name the main point of each sentence below then change that name to be in the form of a compound noun a) Nations, roughly, correspond to language groups--languages are so hard to learn, even in childhood and harder to learn as an adult, making nations vastly more important than they really are--they are important because we are all born stuck with the language that roughly defines their boundaries. b) Creative work spills over to family arrangements, and to sexual practices, and to hobbies and networks of acquaintance, indeed, it is hard to contain creativity in one part of life, once it develops, so people creative in one respect tend to become creative in all at some point. c) When I first left the US after 28 years there, I was fed up with living in one nation only, and thinking with the biases and viewpoints of one nation only, for I had never freely chosen the nation I was born into and never for one second believed that I happened to be born into the best nation, regardless of all the casual patroitisms and bigotries around me by self praising fatuous others.
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Change the Compound Nouns Below So As to Change Their Meaning as Indicated 1) Grime layered puss-filled streets slither stench entombed through blighted neighborhood policy failure devastation zones. overall compound noun.
Eliminate “slither” the verb to make one long
2) The bank branch brought all social clubs and classes of people from the neighborhood into one monthly food fest financial training neigbhbor meeting event, where, to the bank’s horror, horror, demogogues quickly gave speeches and started political demonstra tions making local government officials into enemies of the bank overnight. Turn this entire sentence into a single noun phrase that is subject of a simple verbal sentence.
Describe the Substructure in Each Compound Noun Below 1) worn denim tight ass low slung wide belt metal stud design fashion jeans 2) rocket straight lofted brows clench fisted facial muscles braided worry darting eyes told one and all that he was not well and all was not well here today 3) the continued investment in failing lines of action characteristic of male leaders of all sorts 4) the twentieth century combinatorial explosion of interweaving flows of info, idea, person, money, and venture building that spawned Silicon Valley
Imvent Compound Nouns for Each Meaning/Situation Below 1) the disappointment one feels when a social situation gets busted up again by an well known bad habit one has that one thought years ago he had outgrown and tamed 2) the fear of cosmic uselessness of one’s era and life one gets as one gets older and older, retiring from jobs and responsibilities, without anything at all about one or one’s accomplishments that future ages of people will want to know or remember.
Chapter 12 The Language Module: Topic-Comment, Subject-Predicate Noun (all semantic categories)-Verb categories)-Verb (situations only), only ), Words for Assertion (verbs)-Words for Everything Else John went to the door and opened it, finding Mary, Mary, in a terrible emotional state, crying out for help. Mary’s terrible terrible emotional distress, expressed in a cry for help, to John, the opener of the door before before her, was was apparent. These two sentences say virtually virtually the same thing. In the former, former, a normal verb structure structure is used. In the latter the closing verb is there only as a formal requirement of English grammar, grammar, that all sentences have a verb in their main clause. The feel of the former is a sequence of actions resulting in a final closing state of feeling and affairs. The feel of the latter is situating in details an emotional state that starts starts the expression. The former uncovers uncovers a feeling using a set of actions that “cause” its apparency. apparency. The latter situates a feeling feeling in an event. Something happens to a person in the former; former; something happens to a feeling in the latter. The former is actor-person actor-person based; the latter is feeling-state based. based. The former is “about” persons; the latter latter is about feeling. The topic of the former is persons, persons, the comment is what they do and feel as a result of doing; the topic of th e latter is a feeling state, the comment is where and how that state exists in the real world. Topic and comment--that comment--that is the topic of this chapter of this book.
Are Topic Topic and Comment the Same Sam e as Operand and Operator? When people design databases for computers computers they have to imagine operands, and all the operations that users may want to apply to such operands. operands. For example, they imagine someone’s someone’s name and address and then they imagine all t he operations one might want to perform on a lis t of people’s names and addresses--alphabetize addresses--alphabetize the list, select all t he “a”s in the list, select one name from each letter of the list, order the list by some criterion other than alphabetic order, access addresses within a certain distance of a point, access addresses within a certain certain fee cost of shipping from a point, order addresses by street number or zip code, code, and so on. When we read or hear the the topic of a sentence, we imagine all the possible operations that might be applied to it by the coming rest of th e sentence. Japanese, for example, allows us to mark the topic of a sentence as separate from the subject, and we can therefore, have an entire sentence (subject-verb-object triplet) as the comment about any particular subject “As for John, people in his profession rarely are bold”. We are all trained to write without much if any overt attention being paid by teachers or us to topics and comments as part of language structure. As a result, it is very hard to keep track of the topic flow in ordinary prose prose as you and I generate it. What is topic and what what is comment are not clearly marked marked in text. The lack of clarity clarity of expression becomes a lack of clarity clarity of thought. Since we cannot see easily easily and quickly what treatments we have have already given to a particular topic, the treatments topics get tend to be piecemeal and partial, incomplete and unbalanced. We apply three treatments treatments to a topic but forget to apply a fourth because we were unaware of the three already applied, because their names appear nowhere clearly clearly marked in the text. Changes of topic occur all the time, for happenstance reasons, confusing the flow and structure of a thought expressed in text. It is a mess, overall. overall.
Meetings--Topics Meetings--Topics and Treatments Treatments of Them Ordinary conversations and meetings suffer from from similar flaws. The agenda of a meeting gives the topics of the meeting, at least on a large scale. The treatments given such topics, however, all too often are things like general general discussion or individual reports in sequence. Other than these two, few more sophisticated or interesting treatments treatments of topics get done in most meetings. meetings. A few groups add treatments treatments like votes, or free form offerings of comments, but innovation usually stops there. It is a pitiful spectacle. Typical Typical meetings apply as treatments given to topics one ten thousandth the operations applied to the same topics by individuals or by pairs of friends talking together. Meetings, for some unknown reason, seem to tacitly forbid most ways of treating treating most topics. One explanation for this, is that meetings meetings are hijacked by monkey dynamics dynamics from the Bananaland nature of workplaces, workplaces, swinging glands culture from males. Meetings end up being used for power displays by top monkeys, so getting work done in them is beside the point.
Completeness as a Cognitive Virtue If people aware of the partiality and sloppiness of usual treatment selection for topics introduced in conversation, speech, writing, and the like are involved in them, they keep track, even counting, treatments per topic, returning to earlier topics to complete the treatments given to them, before the conversation, speech, writing, and so on are over. People with this sort of awareness are cognitive structural--they attend to and contribute to structures of topics and treatments of topics, not just going with t he flow of whatever is next mentioned. What do such structural cognitive cognitive persons obtain by their efforts? efforts? As mentioned briefly earlier, earlier, one thing they accomplish is completing a comprehensive comprehensive sequence of treatments of a topic. Instead of giving to a topic the first one or two treatments that come to mind to self and other, they search out and apply all t hinkable types of treatment that the topic needs. This is a treatment repertoire completeness property to structurally structurally cognitive people. For each topic they offer offer a push to cover all all relevant types of treatment. The result is conversing or writing for comprehensive comprehensive covereage rather rather than conversing or writing for quick and and ready agreement. agreement. What does comprehensiveness comprehensiveness of treatment treatment of topics do for lives and people? people? For one thing it pushes treatments beyond bias, bias, personal background, and crowd trends. It balances perspectives perspectives and outlooks, actively compensating compensating for whatever is easy easy and “natural” among a set of people discussing or writing something. The viewpoint of rich folks is balanced by the viewpoint of poor ones, the viewpoint viewpoint of abstract frameworks is balanced by the particularities of concrete frameworks, and so on.
Computers Trying to Understand Text Artificial intelligence researchers for decades have tried to build computer systems that “read”. They quickly found that computers lacking commonsense, decades of being brought up by parents, and formal formal schooling, were stupid and had not enough knowledge to know know what words and sentences were “about”. In other words, computers could not find and keep track of what was being talked about. about. Only types of talk and text that are rigid, inflexible, boring, and unified unified by dealing with only one viewpoint and purpose--making airline reservations, reporting computer problems, and so on--can be “understood” even partially by computers, thus far. The opacity of prose, its h iding of what its topics were and what treatments were being given to each of them, was made apparent by these artificial intelligence researchers. They found it very hard work to get computers to calculate the topic of particular clauses, sentences, parag paragraphs, raphs, chapter sections, and so on. Finding treatments given to such hard to find topics was even more difficult for computers. The variety of treatments requires requires the full complement of human human purposes, sneakinesses, subterfuges, subterfuges, tactics, dissimilations, simulations, posturings, comedy, tragedy, tragedy, aspirations, and the like. Computers lacking these human aspects have a hard time caring about things and caring, painting what you hear or read with how it affects one’s one’s vital hopes and functions, is an essential kind of thinking needed for making decisions and directing attention appropriately. appropriately. Computer lack care. care. Not only this but many of the people studying and teaching in computer computer science departments departments and many of the people building and selling selling computers in industry, like the machines they handle, lack emotion and lack the ability to wisely judge and invest, because their decision making is crippled by too little and too weak emoting.
Some Links to Naming and Noun Compounding In noun compounding, government terms such as “The “The world nuclear disarmament conference conference subcommittee meeting on Tuesday Tuesday is cancelled” were discussed. discussed. Consider:
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The sequence of nouns procedes to smaller and smaller scales of things all the way to the end for the second series above, but the first series suddenly stops branching to smaller scale things and instead makes them the specification of “discourse types” a very broad large scale category. So such sequences can mix scale directions in one sequence. If we add: “the existence of....” to the front of both phrases, we get the equivalent to a sentence made by adding “is” to the end of each sequence or “exists” to the end. In other words, noun compound compound sequences can be equivalent to sentences with a “be” “be” verb or its equivalent. equivalent. This can expand to other types of verbs as well. If we add “the donation of...” to the front of both sentences, then then an equivalent to a sentence ending in “is given” results. It is hard to see what value a verb adds overall to all the specification of meaning from just compounding nouns in this way. Types of disourse of documents from meetings of subcommittees of conferences on disarmament of nuclear arm of the world exist. Discourse types which include subcommittee meeting documents produced by world nuclear disarmament conferences exist.
The two examples above merely replace noun compounding with preposition phrase compounding and relative clause compounding respectively, to no particular advantage or benefit. The mind, indeed, faces a dilemma in generating prose--to capture a meaning in a name, or to capture it in a network of interdependent clauses. There is some evidence that capturing a meaning in a name is harder work than capturing it in a network of interdependent clauses so people do the latter first and only when facing the need to repeat su ch complex network expressions force themselves to come up with a name. Noun phrases, that is, noun compounding is a hard won compression compression of meanings that may have started as networks of interdependent clauses. So sentences put names of things into contexts with verbs linking meanings, till these new units are themselves given names so that they as units can be linked.
The Brain Basis of Topic and Comment, Noun and Verb, Subject and Predicate, Operand and Operator Consider all that you already already experienced and and know. Consider what you consciously consciously remember about about that. When any new topic comes comes before you, you, to your attention, you name that topic and in naming it associate it with something something you already know or experience. You context it and index it in effect. What is this about?--this question is really really asking, where in my stored experiences experiences and ideas do I connect and store this new item. Naming or finding the topic--what something is about--is a contexting/locating contexting/locating process, connecting it to what you already know. The topic in a statement is thi s locating of where to associate it, put it, in your mind’s storehouse of experiences and ideas; the comment is what to put in that location. Consider this example: “John gets angry whenever whenever his wife looks approvingly at at another man”. man”. The topic of this sentence is John, as far as grammar determines it, however, a particular person hearing this statement could name the topic of it “anger” and file it away under types of anger producing situation. I knew Saul Bellow the Nobel novelist and he was was constanlty filing away everyday everyday chance events events and encounters under topics very different different than I used. Where I heard a comment about John, he heard a comment comment about type of anger. anger. Grammar is an input to topic but not determinative of it. If I care about John I may default to John John as the topic of the sentence example; but if I care more about anger I may consider the sentence “about” anger. A lot of research has gone on into human memory, memory, where idea and experiences experiences are stored in the brain and how. At first semantic nets were proposed proposed with links between ideas, corresponding to links between between words used to express express them. This was found inadequate. inadequate. Next, non-representational memory in neural neural nets was proposed, with the storage location for each idea and word word smeared out over numerous numerous locations with no one location corresponding to one idea like “grandma”. “grandma”. There was no “grandma” “grandma” neuron, where one idea like “grandmother” was stored in this proposal. Recent research, however, however, has found single neurons for p articular celebrities like “Michael Jackson”, perhaps because they are used as categories themselves themselves for lots of other sub-ideas. This has shifted us to proposal like the sparse matrix proposal, where memories for particular ideas ideas are sometimes widely distributed and sometimes quite localized, with degree of distribution/localization dependent on whether the idea is used as a category or not. Further proposals no doubt will be forthcoming as brain mapping is a haltin g new science using crude instruments at present. In the brain representation view, view, topics are locations, and comments, what to put there, and often, what to put there is links to other topics, like web pages link to other web pages. So comments often are linkings of one location to another in ideas or experiences already stored in the brain--”John is bad” “New York City’s City’s budget in in trouble” and similar topic-comment topic-comment pairs reveal such linkings. “John is ungepotchkeyed” is an example for many people of an assertion that does not link to known words and ideas, but the mind stores it nonetheless, perhaps creating a subgoal of finding out what “ungepotchkeyed” means. Seeing topic as location in all you know and comment as what new stuff is being placed at that l ocation, affects how we handle topic and comment in all we do. Most of us have the habit of gradually discovering our own topics during the streaming streaming of our own generation generation of text, speech, and conversation. conversation. Our topic emerges emerges from that flow. flow. We discover what we think while generating language expressions. When we become conscious of the brain function of topic and comment, it gives us the possibility of communicating enormously enormously more effectively. effectively. Compare the following: “I want to convey my displeasure with two actions you have recently taken--one, .....; two, .....” “Bill, why did you list four meals on your expense form for what was a half day trip?”
The first expression presents, in grammar, grammar, displeasure as as the topic of the entire paragraph of sentences sentences coming up. The second expression presents, in grammar, grammar, an anomaly anomaly in actions by Bill as the topic of subsequent sentences. In the first, the people are invited to discuss displeasure of someone; in the latter, the people are invited to discuss the actions of someone. If the first is used, the two people discuss how justified the displeasure is and what to do about it; if the latter is used, the two people discuss a particular action’s details. What happens in real life is most people use the latter method, starting up a topic that is concrete and local, as if the context and interpretation of that concrete topic is free and not yet decided (when in reality minds are already already made up about that concretion). This frustrates because it invites people to justify something that is already judged and condemned. If you approach someone in order to learn learn details of some incident the latter is appropriate as topic; if you approach approach someone in order to adjust their future behavior to respond to displeasure you have with their past behavior, the latter is appropriate as a topic. People who want to talk to someone about changing how they behave constantly instead choose topics that get them conversing conversing about and justifying or arguing about details of some incident, incident, instead. Understanding where in your brain you wish to locate a comment, helps make communication effective.
The Joys of Topic Change and Treating Treating Topics One of the things we humans enjoy about our use of language is the playing playing around with it we can do while still communicating effectively. effectively. We can make wild changes of topic and treatment and still follow and get others to follow our trail of meaning. Consider the following passage: From the viewpoint of frogs, bacteria are the main show and humans are a temporary flash in the pan like dynasaurs ended up being. From the viewpoint of other primates, the great apes, various species of monkeys, humans are a disease, two-legged bacteria killing everywhere. From the viewpoint of monotheistic religions of humans, all living things are tools to be used for crass human purposes. From the viewpoint of viewpoints there are so many of them that one can endlessly complicate any topic till everyone loses interest in it. From the viewpoint of action-orient ed persons, viewpoints are a cost of doing language, an obstacle in the way of getting orders heard and executed. People without a viewpoint are merely people ignorant of their viewpoint, probably because they assume how they were born makes them better than all others, so what is “natural” to them must be “great” to all inferior others. The trouble with viewpoints is there are so many of them and one seems to get nowhere by accumulatin g lots of them. The trouble of few or no viewpoints is unconscious viewpoints then become assumed and imposed, as biased narrow, perhaps, murderous ways of handling parts of life and persons. The door did not feel the hand on it, pushing ever so gently, so the door did not suspect what would soon eventuate as a result of its being thusly gently pushed. The floor did not know a sudden female weight would collapse upon it, as the door opened. The room did not know lives were about to intersect in a painful way within its walls. The entire natural world was not paying attention as two human creatures entered the room, surprising the female third one already inside the room. Life and the earth went on, the universe expanded by lightyears more, blackholes aggregated and stars went out, all unconcerned and unaffected by Penelope”s collapse, and the collapse of her dreams and efforts, as the door opened, unaware it was pushed, unprepared for its consequences.
The above passages have very strange points of view yet remain largely coherent to us. The topic of each sentence leaps around strangely. We can follow leaps to very strange positions and views, with ease. Language can take us to very unusual places in thought and emotion. There is a joy in using language this way--staying coherent coherent to self and others while maximally leaping and associating strangely, using langauge facilities at their extremes.
Exercising Topic Topic and Comment, Noun and Verb Verb There a are lot of things you can do with topic and comment, operator and operand, noun and verb, subject and predicate, including games, extremes, mysteries, art, and all of them exercise important parts of the brain. Topic, noun, subject, operand all exercise locations in your brain’s storage of prior experience and ideas; comment, verb, predicate, and operator. It should be kept in mind, here, that structural cognition--structural inputs, structure regularization, and structural outputs--constitute three other parts of this book. Structural cognition involves techniques for finding and expressing topics and structured structured patterns of topics in what you speak, hear, hear, write, and read. So some of the ways of exercising topic and comment are given much more thorough and detailed treatment in those parts of this book, compared to the relatively brief treatment they are given in the exercises below.
Speaking Models--Knowing Topics Before You Speak Most of the time we speak and write in order to discover the topics we have. In the flow of words we see our topics emerge before us. This is similar to writing three times, once to find what you think, once again to organize it, and a third time to express that organization to some particular audience effectively. For one hour each day, for three days in a row, with a friend observing you, do the following: 1) delay responding to what others say, for a few seconds, and plan a sequence of three points to make or four, in a certain clear ordering, and express that sequence in that ordering instead of just responding naturally 2) when listening to what someone else says, after every 3 or 4 points that they make, interrupt briefly and summarize the 3 or 4 points you hear and their evident ordering, to make sure you understood clearly and completely what they were saying to you. Answer the folowing questions after your 3 day experiment in structured speaking and hearing: a) how did doing this feel? b) how did this change how others spoke to you? c) how did this change how you spoke to others?
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Hide the Topic--Hearing as Mystery Story It is fun the approach an ordinary topic from so many unusual viewpoints and approaches that the listener is amazed if they can follow you train of logic and keep clear what your topic is. This is a lot of work for listeners but it also, by surprising and challenging them, helps them keep long term recall of your points. Do the following for one half hour per day for 3 days in a row with a friend observing you. 1) identify in your mind the topic you wish to state next in a conversation 2) identify a context completely unrelated to that topic and find something in that unusual context that corresponds analogically to your topic 3) start talking in that unrelated context at the analogy point 4) as the listener starts to get your point, change to another unrelated context and repeat the same analogical statement on your topic from that viewpoint 5) as your listener starts to get your point, change to another unrelated context and repeat. Answer the following questions after your 3 day experiment: a) how did doing this feel? b) how did this change how others spoke to you? c) how did this change how you spoke to others? d) what were the costs of doing this? e) what were the benefits of doing this? f) for someone who operated this way all day every day for years, what ultimate change in destiny for them would result? how? why?
Chapter 13 The Percept Module: Descript, Descript , Tracking, Tracking, Affect Affec t Value Value When we perceive something it has features we are aware of, and it has it-ness that it maintains as our point of view, and hence, as the backgrounds it gets perceived against, change, and, finally, finally, it has value to us indicated by how we feel about it--internal or external external to us, novel or familiar, meaningful meaningful or meaningless, mattering mattering or irrelevant. The percept machine in all of us is more more powerful than any computer. computer. Generations of scientists have tried to get computers, computers, even massive networks networks of them, to recognize human faces reliably, reliably, to recognize spoken words reliably, to recognize points in what people say reliably, with progress but little success. Instead we have systems that work in highly limited domains of talk and behavior, behavior, and fail fail miserably outside those bounds. It is a “hard” computing task task that natural selection devised solutions for for eons ago, now encoded in our own genes. genes. We are born with genes that direct our bodies to develop develop perceptual machineries machineries of enormous power. power. Simply walking around in this world and perceiving all that is in it, is a lot of fun and can make life worth living. Not a few artists and photographers photographers have lived this truth. It is useful to realize that anything we perceive, by any sense, sense, has descript, tracking, and affect affect valuation dimensions. Everything we perceive has traits, unity and identify of sorts, and feelings that indicate to us how to basically react to it (as a threat, as an eventual opportunity, opportunity, as an entertainment, etc.). Why is this useful?
Perceiving What We Perceive Artists are people who perceive perceive what they perceive. perceive. They appreciate this wonderful wonderful perception machinery inside all of us, where the rest of us take it for granted. The descript part of perception is what most of us realize and know--particular know--particular traits a sound has, a sight has, a touch has. Most of us slight or miss the tracking aspect of perception. This is a sophisticated and continual problem solving process that that our minds go through to keep seeing, keep hearing, hearing, keep reaching, etc. Babies, newly born, experience experience the world around them as a chaotic chaotic mess, their brains are hard hard wired to seek co-relations among, patterns patterns in. Neural systems do calculations calculations that resemble the statistical analysis called factor analysis (or principle component component analysis)--looking for what changes changes when any one other change occurs--what occurs--what changes co-occur. co-occur. Our brains do immense such calculations as we keep seeing “John” as he walks towards us across the hall, up the escalator, and through the store entrance, for example. This is the tracking aspect of perception. A third aspect is also missed missed by most of us--affect us--affect valuation made of all we perceive. What we see is not not raw stuff later later “judged” meaningful or meaningless, mattering or irrelevant, but rather we see “meaningful red shapes there” or “meaningful “meaningful irrelevant red shapes there”. We “see” “see” the traits of what is perceived and those traits include importance, us-ness, relevance, relevance, and other dimensions dimensions of value and matteringness. This is the affect affect valuation of all perception. Artists by attending with care care to the immensities of problem solving in tracking, and the immensities of relating of affect valuing in each perception, open us to seeing better what we see, hearing better what we hear, and the like.
All of Thought is Perception The basic problem problem of perception perception is recognizing that this changes when that changes. Neural net systems do this computation. It ressembles factor factor analysis (also principle component analysis), a common statistics technique that examines lots of factors and finds some of them that change together, so that 50 potential variables, actually turn out to be 10, that do not change when each other changes. The other 40 variables all track changes on one or more of the ten so closely that they add virtually no value or information. Babies face this problem--all is changing it at at first seems. Only gradually do they pick out faces to track as backgrounds against the faces faces change and as as the faces themselves change in different lighting and weather conditions. But it is not just perception that grows from, depends on, and comes from tracking what changes with what. All of thought, all that our minds do, come from this associating of changes i n A with changes in B. The basis problem of planning is recognizing, anticipatorily, anticipatorily, what changes with what. In particular planning requires judging what realistically can get done by real real persons in real situations and judging what the consequences of particular actions are--being aware of non-linear effects that can turn slight initial conditions i nto huge eventual outcome differences. Judging what realistically can get done requires designating the dessiderata of any one action--if Joe is to persuade Bill to do X within one or two conversations, then I need to fund Joe’s initial situations well so as to impress Bill, and other conditions. For one change to take place, what other changes have to be installed at the same time or earlier, this amounts to. This planning situation has been broken down int o forward reasoning--based on where we are now and where we want eventually to arrive, what steps do current situations permit, and backward reasoning--based on what outcome we finally want produced, what has to have been produced just prior to that, and what has to have been produced produced just prior to that, till we arrive arrive at where we presently presently are. All of these are sets of changes changes that have to take place place together. together. Co-occurrence is fundamental to planning and all thought. If all thought is perception then getting perception right, and therefore, perceiving our perceiving, can enhance all our mental life.
Career Building as Perception Careers are signal through noise. All basic career situations are the same--signal to noise ratios. The issue is getting any consistent signal through the chaos of changes, distractions, and noise in modern living. Psychopaths make good managers, especially in Anglo cultures, because they have automatic focus--other people are not alive for them, they are just tools for selfish selfish personal purposes. This allows psychopaths to focus on goals, goals, undistracted by the needs needs and issues of people around around them. Not a few psychopaths bosses rise in hierarchies because they focus lots better than others--looking caring caring and concerned while ruthlessly abusing everyone to “get ahead”. All career building starts with this one insig ht--that career building is the problem of establishing a signal amid much noise. Another way of phrasing this signal to noise basic situation to all career career situations is this--the visibility issue. The important thing is how to get seen, how to become become visible to the movers and shakers of this world. People with a flare for promotion, the ridiculous, the sublime, the astonishing, or even there merely merely noisy, get attention that others miss. This is a version of the bigger bigger problem of getting signal seen seen amid much noise. Visibility is the visual dimension dimension of this larger problem of all careering. careering. So building your career is a matter of getting perceived by others as a clear signal amid the clutter of competing noises from others and their career moves. Career building is perception in this respect--you build your career career by making yourself perceived perceived by others. Career building is also perception in another another sense. You have to perceive what others around you are seek to see, in order to become visible to them. You have to perceive what they wish to perceive in order to appear before them as what they were seeking for around them.
Personal Relations as Perception Friendship and lover relationships are based on continual exchanges of private information about oneself. This is a carefully managed exchange process so that no one party gets ahead or behind disclosures by the other party. party. After you reveal new aspects of you to me, I reveal reveal to you new aspects of me. This exchange of intimacy is based on increasing trust and such increases in trust come from long sequences of matched exchanges. If I get the idea that you are reliable about reciprocating any trust or private information I give you, I let down my guard a little more and trust you a bit more. As such exchanging, relating to others can be seen to be a perception process: one, perceiving that someone is revealing private information to us to test whether we can be trusted, and two, perceiving what we have hidden from another person thus far in relating to them. Obtuse persons miss that the other party is revealing revealing something requiring trust to be thusly revealed. Obtuse persons do not realize that they hid a lot lot from others and do not recognize what they thusly hide.
Creativity as Perception There are many models of creation as some kind of dislocation of the perceptual processes in our minds. Some of us view the world in a photographic negative sort of way, seeing the spaces between objects not the objects, seeing seeing what something lacks, not what it has, seeing what does not work rather rather than what works. With perception thusly distorted they spend time on anomalies, mysteries, conundrums, conundrums, and the like, while the rest of us spend time satisfying ourselves and others with things that work well. This is but one perceptual model of creating. There are many others. For another example of such models consider artists, who, as I stated at the start of this chapter, perceive perceive what Copyright 2006 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
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they perceive. They create because because they notice what we all fail to notice when we notice things. They un-normalize views and viewing; they de-mystify de-mystify view and viewing; they get beyond norms, habits, and cultures of viewing.
Effectiveness as Perception One of the world’s wonderful performance types is the leader or CEO who walks through an organization and a day later mandates twelve changes in it, that, even weeks later, release lots of pent up energy energy and stalled initiative, propelling hundreds of people toward goals goals they were not approaching well at all all before. De-constipators of organizations, organizations, these leaders have been called. Not a few of these leaders, in books published under their names, have stated baldly--”I see what others see, I know what others know, but what I do that others do not do, is I trust completely what I see and I act on it with confidence where others self-doubt, dilly-dally, consult endlessly and in general, avoid responsibility for calling reality what appears before them as reality”. In other words, facing reality, seeing it and naming what you see accurately, accurately, however embarrassing or politically inexpedient, or inept it may be, has power, great power, and as organizations increase in size, they become huge noise environments so that any initiative gets merely absorbed in their noise and lost as signals. Leaders perceive signals amid organization organization noise, signals amid individual personality noise, and act on what they see. One of the best managers I ever had walked into organizations in this way and n amed names, of realities encountered, acting a day or two later, powerfully in reaction to what he encountered. He made a habit of doing this at at least one day a week, and and was working on doing doing it daily, daily, when I knew him. When I talked with him about this, the few times this subject came up between us, he admitted that his reading of situations was highly limited and partial, but that the needs of the world were so many and so deep that tackling even a very few of them well, each day and week, made one powerful and effective. Most people are overwhelmed into inaction, fear, and flight by the noise their environments are.
Globality (Global Effectiveness) as Perception There is this idea of diversity as a good thing and this idea of cultural pride and arrogance as major causes of terrorism and war. war. The multi-culturalism issue is about how to be two or more cultures at once--how to be culture culture A within a nation of culture C, for example. The Dutch at first let everyone believe and do according according to their local customs, even when this meant meant relatives killing women for pre-marital sex, even even when this meant genital mutilation mutilation of young girls. This “all cultures are equal equal and deserve respect” attitude, often called cultural relativism, failed--it justified horrors merely merely because they were habits somewhere. But if you rejected such relativism, you had to understand, discriminate among practices of some foreign culture, and make judgements judgements about which practices were permitted and which were rejected and outlawed. It was so vastly easier to let everyone do their own thing that all the work of understanding, discriminating, and judging did not appeal to anyone. Living multi-culturally requires an overall increase in everyone’s everyone’s understanding work, discriminating discriminating work (often verbal), verbal), and judgement work work (usually social and political). political). Multi-cultural living is hugely more work than single culture living. Are entire nations up to this sort of increase in work load for their entire populations? Globality relates to this strongly. We are Westerners Westerners and very effective in the West but we want to be globally effective, not merely effective in some places where we grew up or were were educated. Similarly other “we”s “we”s are Easterners and though we are effective in the East we want to be globally effective. effective. What does being globally effective require of us? It requires inventing a new self, self, one that can operate effectively effectively in two entirely different different environments. This takes more than a decade decade to accomplish for any one individual. In particular being a child under age 12 in two societies does not seem to help much. You have to learn how to be effective in the two different different environments and children by definition and in actual reality are not effective in any of the societies th ey inhabit. Becoming globally effective effective instead of just locally effective in one’s one’s birth culture, requires perceiving the stages of penetrating penetrating any one culture that you are in. It requires perceiving where you over-react and under-react, under-react, what you have rightly given up on and wrongly given up on, and a thousand similar distinctions. It requires perceiving all your faults, errors, failures, failures, and flaws in the new culture, not as happenstance, random injuries but as a gradually unfolding coherent coherent other system of value and being. It requires acquiring “the insight”, the sudden flash, where a thousand distinct, unconnected failures suddenly become coherent and make sense--explained by a gradually acquired coherent emotional and cognitive model of “what works here” and “how people are here”.
Solving, Culture Penetration, Insight as Perception Indeed, all solving activity is pure perception. perception. A penetrating of new cultures is such such a solving process. And, all solving and culture penetration processes processes are insight processes, where we accumulate failures and by gradually categorizing them and learning from them what eventual solutions must be like, prepare the way for an overall coherent large-scale “insight” of an entire entire solution suddenly clearly appearing before us. Solving, culture penetration, and insight are all perception processes of taking tidbits and learning to perceive the whole they are hints to ward.
The Perception Matrix One tool, that makes seeing most thought as perception of one sort or another, powerful, is a matrix of the above areas of life--career building, personal relations, effectiveness, globality, solving-culture-penetration-insight--as solving-culture-penetration-insight--as one dimension wit h descript, tracking, and affect valuation as the other dimension of the matrix.
The Perception Matrix Lif Life Dim Dimeensio nsion: n:
Perc Perceeive ive Wha What: t:
Desc escript ript---tr trai aits ts perc erceive eived d
Trackin ckingg---bac backgr kground oundss aga against inst whic which h iden identi ti-fied
Affect Valuation--emotional Valuation--emotional values telling you relevance and importance
care career er buil buildi ding ng
sign signal al thru thru nois noisee (vi (vissibility)
what traits do career moves that get generally noticed have?
what competes for others’ attention with your deeds/accomplishments
what can you produce that will tell others’ emotions that meaning and importance are here
perso persona nall rela relati ting ng
intim intimac acy y of disc disclolosures and mutuality of exchanges
what traits do intimate disclosures and deliberate matching disclosures have
what fears about yourself and weaknesses of yourself you hide from yourself tense you up and make you too obtuse to notice trusting d isclosures from others and hence expectations of matching disclosures from you
what can you disclose that tells the others emotionally that meaning and importance are here
effecti ve ven es ess
s ee ee re realit y fo r wh at at it it is, unprettyfied
what traits does reality have beyond human druthers and illusions (what illusions are common to all humans, specific genders, particular social roles, etc.?)
what are all the fears and weaknesses and neuroses of persons that cause them to somewhat deliberately distort reality into something they can appear competent to handle (how do people reduce reality to subworlds where they can feel and appear great)
what ugly aspects of people and life can you develop meaning and importance for, inspite of their distastefulness, so you recognize them and respect their powers to determine what works and what fails
globality
stages of penetration of any culture
what are the stages of penetrating cultures and which stage are you now in
what are all the child-like fears and failures, of you in the foreign culture, that cause overemotion and over-reaction so you fail to notice subtle cues to right action
what frameworks and viewpoints inside you, from your birth culture, are highly irritated by or overly pleased by parts of the new culture, and what frameworks and viewpoints outside you in the new culture are slighted by you because not matches for the former, how can you make these latter ones emotionally meaningful and important to you
solving
the despair doorway of giving up all you now know
what part, of all you now know, gives you the hope that, prevents solution, by blocking the despair that is the doorway allowing you to think of solution approaches beyond all that you now know
what confidences and trusts in all you know prevent you going beyond it to look for solution approaches
how can you make absolute despair at anything you already know being adequate to reach a solution a meaningful and relevant stage in solving rather than something to be avoided (what maps of all you know might speed you to the despair that is doorway to success)
culture penetration
what whole all the misfitting pieces constitute
what unifies and makes coherent all the various failures and errors you make in the foreign environment
what immediate contexts in which a failure or problem is presented blind you to more abstract and general contexts that are needed to make sense of what you face
what more general frameworks and viewpoints for the other culture make each bit meaningful and relevant though in your own frames and views it is not
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