https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_LYUEVtFpOE
Hello and welcome to Navigating Patterns. What I’d like to go over today is a recap of something I started to cover in the beginning of my channel, which are these models for understanding the world. And this time I want to get at them from a different perspective. Now we’ve done this before. I went over them in a specific order. There are many more slides in the original videos. Right, we have four so far. This is the fifth in the series. And I do want to encourage you to watch them in order and take them seriously because there’s some development in them that I think is crucial for the understanding of what I’m on about. And again, the purpose of these models is to figure out what model you might be using for the world and then to go over how you can enhance that model and how it will help you better understand or intelligence the world. And that is designed to get us to cooperate. But also it’ll help you to understand where other people are, why they’re thinking about things the way they are, and how to get them to a place of better thinking for themselves so that we can all cooperate together. So I want to encourage you to watch those videos in order and take them seriously. Maybe watch them again, even if you’ve watched them once. And once you’ve done all four of them in a recap or review, it’s a good time to come back here and we can go over it again. I’m just going to be covering the last slide in each of those previous videos because I’m assuming a familiarity. So when we went over this earlier, the different models for understanding. And yeah, it is a way for you to understand how you’re thinking about the world, what models you might be using, but also a way for other people, like where are they at relative to me even. And maybe I’m not all the way through it, sort of the last model I propose that I’m proposing is the best model in my set. Not the best model ever or anything like that, but certainly in the set that I’ve proposed. And the purpose is to get yourself to think differently and other people, right? And to be able to engage them in conversation. So if you think about the first model and another way to think about this is what framing are people using. It’s the you know, you versus others that causes othering. It’s very binary manipulation of the world, right? And you can frame everything in terms of me versus the world. You can absolutely do that. Terrible, terrible way to think of the world. Gonna result in a lot of bad things, but people do it all the time. And you want to be able to sort of get them out of that, right? And you don’t want to be stuck there either, because then you really are stuck in an adversarial relationship. And the solution is always politics. And politics is a terrible solution, because it ultimately requires force. So yeah, you don’t want to be stuck there. You want to move people or yourself or other people to at least a connection oriented model if they’re stuck in the political model. And you know, how do we do this? Well, one method is to start thinking about things differently and encouraging other people to do the same, to come up with examples, to ask them questions. And you know, well, look, if you think politics is a solution, and you know, maybe that political party has been in power before, because both political parties have been in power before, and the solution didn’t get implemented. Are you sure that doing that again is going to have a different result? That gets people to think about it a little bit. And maybe it’s not going to change our minds. And that’s okay. But you want them to start thinking, right? You don’t necessarily want to get them to the answer. You just want them to start considering things. And it’s very important not to, you know, make a truth claim or tell them, no, you’re wrong, or anything like that. And you don’t have to, because the goal is just to get people to open up and consider, right? And do this. So John Vervicki calls reciprocal opening, right? Or reciprocal broadening is probably a better, better term. And get them to the connection model. And, you know, that’s a that’s a better ball, right? That’s a that’s one step up from politics, because politics is no good. So let’s just go over the slides here. So we’re starting from the connection model. And that model is the last in the second video I did on this, where what you have is you at the top, right? And then you’ve got people and common good. And those are the core concepts. And what you’re adding to that are perspective, connection and shared frame. And what that enables is for people to understand that they aren’t alone. Because when you’re in the you versus others model, you’re alone. Because you’re not with the others. So adding connection is important. And then adding connection slowly enough to give people an idea for a shared frame, for the perspective, getting others to people, all of these things are important. And you can do that through questioning, through examples. Well, don’t you think that others would like to be treated more as people? You can ask somebody that and they’ll almost unanimously say, well, maybe, maybe they do so grudgingly. But that tells you where they’re at in the head. It helps you to guide them to better ways of thinking on the connection model. And then so next in the in the sequence is participation and co-creation, right? And what we did here was we’ve moved things so that you’re no longer at the top. The you is no longer at the top, right? What’s at the top now is the common good, which is what we want. Right. And then there’s awareness between common good and you. And then what you’re pointing at and what the common good is pointing out and what’s pointing at the common good are humans. So you’ve taken people from others, right? You versus others to people, right? And now they’re humans. And the set of humans is above you. That’s not much above you. And it’s not above the human good. Right. So in other words, majority doesn’t rule. It’s actually a really important conversation to have. And so in addition to perspective, what we’ve added is orientation and we’ve enabled participation and co-creation. And these are all super important concepts. Right. Because what we’re able to do is we’re able to recognize that as a group, we need to move in a good direction. That doesn’t mean moving in the direction the group wants to move. It means moving in a direction that is a common good. And the commonality doesn’t supersede the good. And they’re together. And that’s why humans are underneath the common good. They’re not driving it. It’s driving them. The aims, as denoted by the arrows in the slide, are important in this case. And having that orientation is important. And so how do you know somebody isn’t putting the common good above themselves, which would be the difference between the previous slide, right? And this slide. So the way to tell that is to is when you’re talking to them, find out how they’re talking about things. If they’re making a statement that unequivocally free health care is good for everyone, that’s not a common good. It’s only a common good if most people think that it’s good for them, or there’s some other measure where it’s good. And you can do that with a number of issues. You can you can ask them things like, do you think taxes are good? Right? And what what this does is, well, you know, we don’t want to tax everybody, but we do want to tax some people, right? Okay. And you’re breaking them open. Again, you’re trying to get that reciprocal broadening going so that they can recognize that there’s more detail here that they’re missing. And that maybe their opinions of these things are a opinions and B, maybe not common good. Maybe there’s something other than common good. Maybe they’re self serving, because people are self serving without realizing it all the time. It doesn’t make them bad people. It just means that this is what we as people do. We get self serving, and we’re self serving. That happens. So it’s good to note these things. And then that orientation is important, because you have to get yourself down beneath the majority and the majority beneath the good. And then of course, this isn’t complete. Right? We moved from there to the end slide here with aims, intent, and reverence. And I think all of that’s really important, right? And what we’ve done is we’ve transmuted humans into community. So humans by themselves, as like individuals, doesn’t cut it, making them community does. Right? And then we’ve changed the common good to a higher aim. So this is closer to an idea, which is, you know, concurrent with the Greek ideas. And, you know, some of the ancient other other philosophers, ancient philosophers, modern philosophers, ideals can be important. And then we have reverence for that higher frame, right? For that, sorry, higher aim within the frame, right? There’s a there’s an aim that’s higher than us. We have reverence for it. And then there’s co creation through participation, very important stuff, and co creation through intent. So the participation is in community. And the community points at a higher aim, which is the intent. And that way, we’re all you’re aimed in the direction of the community, the communities aimed outside of itself, because a community that’s aimed within itself, it’s pointed within itself as self referencing, that’s probably going to degenerate into a cult or an ideology. But if it has a higher aim outside of itself, then you’ve got better odds that the community is doing something good. And I’m not trying to state that community should have like all higher aims or all ideals held up, right? A community can be a community of people that live together. And their goal is to live together in harmony. That’s an ideal living together in harmony. And it’s just for them because they’re local and they can walk to each other’s houses or drive easily to each other’s houses or they all have something in common like they all have kids that makes for a good community. And having that higher aim is important. So it’s not just for like, the purpose of the community, it’s for a higher purpose, like helping one another, right? That’s a higher purpose, not referencing the community itself. And this enables right relation. And right relation is that reverence, that participation and that intent. And once you get oriented with that, I’m claiming that that’s a much better model. And that’ll help you to survive in all kinds of conditions because having community is having support, right? When you have community, you have scaffolding and you have people to lean on. And people can lean on you, you know, and we all go low and we all go high. And if we mitigate that by doing it with each other, that’s great. Now, how do you know if someone’s got an aim at the common good or if they’re actually have reverence for a higher aim? So they’ll appeal to the common good directly. Most people think so they’re still stuck in the previous model, right? Most people think now they’re making an appeal to common good. Maybe that’s not wrong, but it’s not this. Whatever it is, wherever my slide is. So that’s the problem is that it has to be towards the higher aim. It has to be towards the ideals, right? And once they’re in that direction, and maybe they don’t know what that direction is, but if they can couch themselves in a community because they recognize they’re part of humans, right? Then they can have that higher aim and they can make it happen. A lot of these things are not happening because they’re very small groups. The number of people that think that, for example, we need to reduce electricity usage to zero is not a non-zero number. It’s kind of a significant number, but it’s probably tens of thousands of people and that’s not enough to make anything happen, fortunately for us, because I kind of like my electricity. I assume you do too, otherwise you wouldn’t be watching this video or you wouldn’t be able to. And people will play all kinds of tricks to get around what they really believe, right? But a lot of things reduce to their core beliefs of, no, no, we just need to all suffer more or something in a necessary fashion because they’re revering the earth above a higher ideal, right? The earth is not an ideal. Protecting the earth might be an ideal, but we can’t protect the earth from the consumption that the earth does to itself, right? Like the earth will degrade by itself whether we’re here or not and not using the materials of the earth to forward ourselves in time past the point where the earth is going to be useful for us, whether we use it or not, doesn’t seem like a very efficacious way to continue. So having an ideal and understanding how to balance those values is important. Being in larger communities is important. Larger communities can get stuff done at larger scales. You’re going to be part of multiple communities and that’s good. And sure, small communities get things done at small scales and actually that’s good enough for most of the things you need. Most of the things you need are small scale things. Larger communities, larger scale things. That’s just the way the world works. There’s no real way around it. But it can be done. So the good news is this is doable. You just need larger communities. You need to be in right relation. But you can be once you have a model where you begin to get an appreciation for these things. And if you notice somebody talking about humans or majority or, you know, oh, well, everybody believes this is good. Then you know to move them from participation and co-creation into aims, intent and reverence. And that way they can take their proper place, right, in that system, in that way of of seeing things and doing things. And the problem is when you encounter people or even for yourself, you can’t just move through these things quickly. You have to take time to absorb them, to take them seriously, to wrestle with the ideas and own them, to bounce up against them and find your own pace. Or if you’re helping somebody find their pace, because people just can’t jump into things and get to the end result. And so those are some things to consider. You know, when you’re on this journey with with other humans, right, with with the communities is how can you facilitate individuals who are trapped in an in a you versus everybody else model, right? You versus others. It’s a bad model. We got to get people out of that thinking. It’s also tribal thinking. It’s not that tribalism is a terrible model, but it’s not a great model. And the more we talk about tribalism, the more people will believe we’re tribal creatures. But I don’t think that’s a good way to think about people. I think a better way to think about people is that we are creatures of having a higher aim at pointing at an ideal, at having reverence with each other in community for higher ideals. And none of the people who are stuck in the political framing and the political narrative are stupid or wrong or incompetent. What they are is incomplete. They have an incomplete understanding of the world. They’re holding on to a simplistic model because it gives them answers. And those answers don’t involve them doing anything. The problem with that is that if you’re not able to do anything, you get frustrated and resentful when things don’t happen the way you think they should. And that’s why it’s important to get people out of the you versus others first. Like that’s really important. And you can always focus on, look, I’m trying to be better. You should try to be better. What can you do to be better? Right. Because if I’m better and you’re better, it’s better. It doesn’t matter how much better. It matters that it is better. And that’s the thing to focus on. It’s a small, local, proximal goal. I get better every day. You get better every day. At least we’re getting better every day. Maybe it’s not enough, but maybe it is. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s the best you can do. And I’ll settle for doing the best I can do every time. So what do you focus on? To get people out of the you others model, you focus on connection. Don’t you want to have connection with people? Don’t you want to have connection to a common good? Sure. And then you focus on participation and co-creation. Like forget about connection, man. We can actually participate together. That’s kind of fun. We learn new things, right? We have an awareness for what’s what a common good might look like. We can co-create that common good with other humans. Good stuff. Right. And then you’re focusing on aims, intent and reverence, right? The higher aim, that whole concept of ideals, the community, right? The fact that community, healthy communities aim towards ideals, co-creation through participation, co-creation through intent. These are all big deals. And at every stage, you can always appeal with a why. You can say, why do you not want to use politics for things? Because you don’t have connection to people. You’re not relating to people. You’re relating to politics or a political party or political ideology or political statement or a political identity. Wouldn’t you rather have connection, relations with people instead of just othering creatures? Right? Wouldn’t you rather get that appreciation? Doesn’t having an appreciation for the fact that others are actually people who are actually humans who you can actually co-create with in community, doesn’t that enable compassion? Look, these models are more complicated than the models you’re using now, most likely, or the models they’re using now, at least in some sense. And that complication is difficult. People don’t want more complicated models. They really don’t. It’s hard. But I’ll tell you, these models are easier than what they have to jump through to make their simple models work in the real world. They don’t know that. And it takes a while to get there. So in the short term, it’s more work. But if they want to engender and enable more compassion, they need more appreciation. And that will enable the relations with people, with other humans, right, with communities. And that’s what to appeal to. Don’t other people, people, people, then human them, then participate with them, right? Then get in communities and then co-create. That’s the way that you make yourself better. That’s the way that other people make themselves better. And by getting together as humans in communities with higher ideals, higher aims, that’s the way we make the world better. Maybe it’s not enough, but maybe it is. And with that, as always, I’d like to thank you very much. I hope you found this helpful. I hope it helps you and I hope it helps you to help others. And if it doesn’t, if you’re not able to help them, at least you’re able to see where they’re at and maybe it’ll help you to understand them better, have an appreciation for them as people, as humans like you. And maybe it’ll enable some compassion in you for them. And then maybe, maybe with a little time and attention, we can all make ourselves better and make the world a better place.