https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=gwSMK3BuKd4
Hello there. What I’d like to talk about today is minimum necessary force and why it’s important and why I think not understanding this concept or not embodying this concept in the world, not participating in it, leads to extremism. Now, this may seem like a leap because we tend as humans to do this linear progression in our heads. We just think that things start here and go there in a straight line. And that’s not the world. There are elements of the world that use linear progression to understand, but most of the world that’s not the case. And so when we believe this, we misapprehend the world. First, let’s sort of think about what extremism is. Extremism is a boundary that you can’t cross or you shouldn’t cross. It’s a hard out. It’s a, oh, okay, we’ve reached a limit in what we’re dealing with, whatever that would be. And so you can think of it as the edge of a container, the end of a container, the wall of the container. And you kind of don’t want to be there necessarily because that’s where things get tricky. If you’re out on the edge, literally, you risk falling off the edge or you risk going over the edge or you risk sort of passing through the edge and not realizing it. And then you’re in trouble. And that’s what happens with extremists. Now, what about this minimum necessary force? Well, I think as implied, there’s a necessary force, like forces necessary. Why? To keep you away from the edge. You don’t want to be an extremist. You don’t want to embody extreme ideas all the time. And so there’s a way in which force has to be applied. The question is when and why and where. And I think that setting boundaries or limits or a cost, a graduating cost, right, or a gradual cost that’s graduated up to the extremism is important so that it gets harder and harder to get to the extreme limits. When you start to remove boundaries, right, they’re always there, so that’s part of the extremism. You don’t get a sense for getting close to the boundary is bad. So you don’t want to get too close to the boundary. And it’s not always bad, but maybe it’s mostly bad for most people, right? Again, there’s no linear progression. So most people want to be in the middle, even if you’re, say, of a Buddhist mindset, you want to be in the middle of the stream. You want to be a leaf in the middle of the river, right? So there’s a way in which this minimum necessary force needs to be determined. Like, where’s the point at which you push back on people so that they don’t go to the edge and go past the edge? Because that’s easy to do. And when you don’t do that, when that signal is not there, and I know I talk quite a bit about signals and signaling, when that signal’s not there, when we don’t have the feedback, when there’s no opponent, right, John Vervicki’s opponent processing, when that’s not happening, we have a problem. And that problem is that the cost of getting to the edge is equal to the cost of staying in the middle. And so now we don’t know when we’re in the middle, because who knows where the middle is? First, you’ve got to find the edge. And so you want a sense of minimum necessary force. You want a sense in which, oh, this is too far. Like, oh, I’ve upset somebody, and I didn’t just force them to run off and cry in a corner, but they actually fought back. Like, oh, well, I don’t want to fight. Maybe I don’t mind making them cry in a corner, because I know people like that. But I don’t want them to fight back, because that’s uncomfortable for me. So there’s lots of people who have no problem making other people uncomfortable. But if you make them uncomfortable, they straighten out. So that’s good to be aware of, right, is that there is an idea of minimum necessary force so that you’re not waiting too long, so that you have to exert too much force, because it’s always hard to know. You know, you’re exerting force, even if it’s just objection, right, it doesn’t have to be like physical force, right? It can just be, oh, I didn’t like it when you said that, like you need to apologize, right? Or I saw what you did, and I think you hurt that person’s feelings, and I think you need to deal with that, right? You know, people need that feedback, because without that feedback, they don’t know where the center of the river is. All the Buddhism in the world is not going to help you if you don’t know where the center of the river is, or the center of the stream. Like, you can’t be a leaf in the middle if you don’t know where the middle is. And you can’t determine the middle if it’s equally easy to get to the riverbank as it is to be in the middle, then you won’t know. And the best feedback, the feedback we’re most evolutionarily adjusted to, is negative feedback. And so no negative feedback is the wrong answer, for sure. Peterson talks about this, right? Zero is a funny number. And, you know, there’s conditions where none of something is also not good. And so you need to take the time and have the understanding to figure out what your standard of minimum necessary force is to send a signal to people that what they’re doing is not okay, that they’re headed to the edge of the river, right? To the bank, where they shouldn’t be, because there are dangers there. And look, maybe they should be there. And if they’re willing to pay the price to get there, then maybe you have no choice but to let them go. And you have to deal with that later, maybe or maybe not. Maybe they’ll be fine and they can handle it. I don’t know. But having a sense of making it harder for them is really important. And some of this sort of force is just signals of what’s acceptable and not acceptable behavior. So, for example, if you’re in a power structure, roughly speaking, right, although I don’t like the word power, but if you’re in a cooperative structure that allows you to do things, right, to specialize, you don’t have to worry about everything. You can just focus on the thing you’re good at or good enough at. When you see somebody get fired for not doing their job, that’s a signal to you that maybe there’s a limit and I don’t want to get there, right? I want to stay away from that limit. And look, we’re all a little lazy, so it’s good to know you could be gone tomorrow. So I think that’s really important. And I think that’s a significant way to think about things and engage with them. So that’s what I wanted to point out. Having an idea of minimum necessary force, why I think it’s important. Obviously, I’m not going to solve it. Although, as you know, as always, if you want more talk on this, you can leave a comment below. Let me know, oh, I want more of this or I want more detail on this aspect of minimum necessary force or any other topic I cover. And I will try. I can’t promise, but I’ll try to do a video on it if I can manage it. And, you know, mostly I’m trying to give you ideas to think about, link them to past ideas and that are, you know, explained better on in other videos. And hopefully that makes some connections for you and allows you to act in the world as a person connected to other people, you know, towards the good. And at some point we’ll have to cover, we’ll have to cover determining the good. But I think, you know, one of the first steps is understanding minimum necessary force and understanding that when people don’t get it, they will inevitably stray towards the extremes, whether they stay there or not. It’s not important, but the more people you get going towards the riverbank, the worse things are, right? And the more people that are going to get in more trouble and they could get trapped there. And that’s not good. So I’d rather err on the side of fewer people going to the riverbanks, right? Fewer people getting to the extremes and more people getting good signals about their good and bad behavior, whether that’s through, you know, politeness, enforcing some sort of politeness standards or whether that’s what we’re doing. Or whether that’s through getting rid of the worst of the apples to let them know, like, you know, you got to be careful. Or whether that’s through talking to people, you know, being disagreeable with them. Like, look, what you did was not OK. I didn’t say anything at the time, right? Or speaking up in the moment. All of these things are ways in which you can enact minimum force, right? A minimum necessary force to keep people from straying too far away from maybe where they should be, which roughly speaking is probably the good. And again, hopefully you find this helpful and hopefully it’s something you can ponder and think about carefully what you’re doing or not doing or what you could be doing better. You know, whether or not people need more support, better signals, negative signals about their behavior, which is not to say don’t give them positive signals. You can give them those two, but the negative signals are the ones I think we’re missing the most, especially with minimum necessary force. We’re letting things stray, right? We’re letting things go too long without pushing back. And we need to push back early earlier and more often, I would say. And with that, I’m going to push back on this video and end it here. And thank you for your time and attention.