Heaven on Earth

With every choice and decision, the human mind continually projects ongoing narrative simulations of anticipated outcomes from whatever conceivable course of action to take. Desire, flights of fantasy and the Pleasure Principle then, by criticality and process of elimination, constrained and shaped by the Reality Principle and ongoing investigation into more feasible options in creative solution finding. All that is and thence all that can be. And all from the outside real world whence ensues all perceptual input into the subjective phenomena: Inner life experience consisting in ongoing cognitive simulation and affective evaluation indeed of of one's world itself, of immediate objective external reality.

And as signified in the very portmanteau: ‘probortunity’ as derived from the two words: ‘problem’ and ‘opportunity,’ nothing less than golden opportunity remains inherent within the most urgent problems. Indeed, the more dire, the more propitious: As case in point, any prospect of resolution of whatever dystressful shortage into any conceivable euphoric abundance.

Indeed, Heaven remains an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience: The pleasant watery oasis deep into the desiccating parched desert, a celebratory vibrant explosion of color and joy into a sad and drab world, the haven of respect in a bastion of ever more oppressive contempt. And Heaven on Earth would consist in any thriving association wherein all manner of individual needs are routinely available, accessible and fulfilled, right before ones eyes, rather than remaining forever frustrated and deprived.

In ‘The Conquest Of Happiness’ Chapter 1: ‘What makes people unhappy?’ Bertrand Russell writes: “The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other.” But perhaps Russell is too quick to dismiss as mere fixation, whatever one's favored, most valued and cherished kind of unmet satisfaction. Instead, there might be therein an important insight and self-knowledge of all which one craves most dearly.

Alas then as has ever come to pass, how so many people deep down feel one way or another deprived of some or other very personal, specific and favorite but all too scarce, infrequent and sorely missed social and intellectual trigger in reliable elicitation of most treasured peak life experience. Or indeed, even so little as an intelligent conversation!

Most broadly then, for combating loneliness and boredom, social needs to be met depend first upon security safe from fear; but then include power, achievement, attention, meaning, value, connection, community, but all hopefully without undue intrusion upon privacy and self. However, most optimally, in any spirit of true friendship with humanity, remaining free from the malignancy of undue peer pressure and conditionality, all must pivot seductively, with no strings attached, upon the inviting and beguiling arousal of social and intellectual stimulus appetites.

In any better alternative then, to all learned helplessness into prevailing sanctimony of lowered expectations, turd polishing and exhortation to Zen futility, then simply giving up and making do: Can individually unique various satisfactions be duly investigated and diligently categorized? And can they then be deliberately introduced into whatever social environment, intentionally instigated and triggered? Indeed, all so, in accordance with design thinking actually into the social engineering of more optimally gratifying social and intellectual stimulus struggle, intrinsic fulfillment, authentic wellbeing and Eudemonia... That is the question!

Because, believe it or not, as fully expounded anon in accordance with ancient wisdom of the greatest sages of old as rediscovered in bleeding edge happiness science, evolutionary neuroscience, and the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology: No one can remain unfulfilled, bored, lonely and alienated, when so pleasurably and meaningfully engaged, optimally and reciprocally in such eustress as manifest ebulliently together in creative tension of brainstorming and solution finding in close collaboration among equals. Indeed, why not open to all, ongoing, more regularly and frequently?

Because thus, in the alleviation of all such profound dissatisfaction, would ensue purposeful and real difference in all our lives of such hitherto frustrated creativity. Indeed therein and thereby, nothing less than a most vigorous pursuit of human flourishing and the best way of life, indeed undertaken via fully engaged Socratic Dialectical Literary and entrepreneurial close collaboration among equals.

And all even to test the very bold conjecture at hand, intentional, experimentally repeatable and reproducible at will, of entirely mad bleeding edge happiness science in such fervent rediscovery of ancient wisdom from the greatest sages of old. To wit: That completely honest, hard nosed and fully engaged Socratic Dialectical feasibility study, analytic yet strategic, as herein right here and now invited for all comers, all interested parties, upon precisely all such agenda of creativity, ambition and daunting challenge, nevertheless will already begin lifting spirits together in true creativity and the will to power. 

And all even entirely without irritation of cognitive dissonance as resultant from any of the usual ever untrustworthy dishonestly manipulative socialization, indoctrination, brainwash, callow Behaviorist motivational grift and false hope, of typically inane pep talks, so heartbreakingly insulting to the intelligence.

Because that Moloch must be denied! For the only thing to sacrifice, must be sacrifice itself. And the only prod that should ever spur one on, should be whatever howsoever worthy endeavor and experience thereof, all in and of itself. 

And all to be undertaken as replete with analytic yet strategic social engineering design thinking regarding whatever conceivably more optimally gratifying social and intellectual stimulus struggle, intrinsic fulfillment, authentic wellbeing and Eudemonia. Because all nourishing and sustaining joy together in the doing immediately, must long precede any deferred gratification of extrinsic reward.

Indeed, not to get ahead of ourselves. Because, to reiterate, there shall ever remain far to go, much to say and much to do, and a steep leaning curve besides, long before the timorous sheer effrontery of ever pressing anybody in their right minds, to risk and invest! Indeed, perhaps even ever in due course of resilient serial failure and quick recovery, at long last, ever, if ever, to arrive at success.

But better understanding, let alone more optimal and innovative social engineering, of the human condition, must first proceed from the very meaning of life itself more broadly, let alone any aspects of of the human condition specifically. And to wit, as in accordance with the Arousal Theory of Motivation, the expression: “stimulus struggle” endures as the name coined by anthropologist Desmond Morris in ‘the human zoo’ October 1, 1969, for the ongoing and perpetual striving of all living things, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment...

— then by extension herein, more species specific, social and intellectual stimulus struggle more particularly, remains the unique ongoing and perpetual striving of every aware human psyche, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of social and intellectual stimulation and arousal from whatever immediate social environment. And thus to modify subjective experience, thereby altering consciousness itself.

And all because in accordance with evolutionary neuroscience and the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology, of how competition for fitness within our species, drove not merely the advance of society and culture, but hideously inbred evolution of ever more engorged human cerebrality. Both far beyond any initial needs and challenges of environmental adaptation and any true peril of survival increasingly mitigated with human success and comfort. And all thereby cultivating various new uniquely human intrinsic needs and stimulus appetites, all so key to authentic wellbeing and human flourishing, yet all too often and prevailingly so vastly and debilitatingly underserved.

Alas then how under so many seductive guises of ideology (from anciently clichéd Zen Mystical sublime apathy in nonattachment, to the trending latest word in malignant Behavior Modification into Fascist rapture, and even the smug would-be Machiavellian but covertly Masochistic indolence of (Anti)Social Media culture), only the same oppressor of so many faces, cajoles us all never so shamefully to feel, think or complain and rock the boat. And that is why, in those most famous words of Henry David Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of [precisely such] quiet desperation.” Indeed, to quote Russell Brand: “Society is collapsing and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they re mentally ill is that they re living in a system that's not designed to suit the human spirit.”

And all therein probortunity at hand. To reiterate, the very portmanteau: ‘probortunity’ signifying opportunity as inherent to problems, the more dire, the more propitious. For indeed, human intelligence as differentiated from other life forms, becomes enlivened collectively in close communication and collaboration in creative problem solving or, better still, creative solution finding and even collaborative brainstorming; all beginning in the unique individual capacity for scenario planning, speculative fiction's better grounded cousin. Therefore, Look for the Solution within the Problem! Thus of telling stories and working out plans, individually or together even as herein extolled, intentionally and perpetually, the overarching outreach and agenda of FoolQuest.com

 

Defining our terms:

What are stimuli?

In order better to understand and appreciate the key concept of stimulus struggle, it might first be at all helpful to clearly understand what are stimuli and it what sense the very word is even used. For specialized usage herein is as borrowed from published behavioral experimentation with laboratory mice.

To begin with, stimuli, unless subliminal, are consciously perceived. And yet, a stimulus as hereon most narrowly defined, is quite different from the content of sensation most broadly.A stimulus that hardly stimulates, that provides so little stimulation, is not much of a stimulus. Moreover, to begin with, a stimulus most narrowly, is not merely any perception or information, even however Empirical. For example, good food tempts all the senses. Marketing and advertising employ no end of stimuli associated with food. But the experience of peeling potatoes might somewhat fail to arouse, one way or the other, very much more than boredom and irritation.

Moreover, an explanation is not a stimulus. Hence, the directions to the cafeteria, even as provided on a floor plan posted for all to see, and useful information as that might be, might not in and of themselves be all that stimulating at all. However the colors used on the signage might be either soothing pastels or vibrant fluorescent hues. And what applies to stimulation in general, applies no less to social and intellectual stimulation, in that likewise, not every Empirical input or information is necessarily all that that stimulating.

A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, perhaps in violation of expectations, even thence eliciting quick appraisal and triggering response, negative or positive. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. Stimuli may be anything perceived and experienced, however reference to stimuli is generally meant in the sense more of visceral arousal rather than merely cognitive input and information. Indeed the sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different.

Stimulus struggle, what every living thing is doing all the time, is no more or less than the perpetual striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. And this includes every crucial social stimulus provided by anyone triggering and eliciting response from anyone else within the same social environment or situation, a process so desperately undermined and subverted under heteronomy in the perpetual rat race out in the endless emotional wastelands of the social minefield.   

Arguably, stimuli are the most fundamental meaning of life! To begin with, by definition, tautologically, in the mere literal sense of meaning and linguistic denotation, any definition of life, biologically, as a complex system, must one way or another consider the function of stimulation triggers and arousal. Moreover, in any deeper sense of meaning and value, in any relevant figurative or poetical sense of ever being truly alive, arousal by stimuli likewise figures prominently. Otherwise one may complain of feeling dead inside. Though many crave exactly such release into sublime apathy, however qualified and ambivalent,  from life and suffering but without the greater extreme of actual suicide. All such Mystical self-abnegation remains so inherently misanthropic, even decried as cowardly, because by nature we are all sensation seekers. And as Sir Isaac Newton said, the way to to master nature is to serve her. - meeting needs, not thwarting them...

A dog in the park, perhaps coming up and wagging his tail, is a stimulus featuring in the surrounding environment, but a dog appearing and begging only when you yourself begin eating your sandwich, constitutes a response from the surrounding environment. And the present exercise concerns elicitation of innate positive response from the individual, not conditional strokes of inductive  behavioral reinforcement of any desired new conditioned behavior. Ongoing stimulus struggle entails that we spend our lives struggling to elicit desired response. It's nice when instead, all too rarely, whatever little gratification comes unconditionally. Also, it's far simpler to program or design stimuli featuring within the environment, than to orchestrate responses laying in wait to be triggered by the subject. Not to get ahead of ourselves.

And because we are social beings, all of this applies no less for social stimuli in specific, than for stimuli in general. Not to mention intellectual stimulation. There are many complex aspects of social interaction, but at the most fundamental and obvious level, social interaction remains the exchange of social stimuli and response. The most rudimentary stimulus appetite is event hunger, the craving for interesting events. Hence the most rudimentary social stimulus appetite would be social event hunger, a craving for stimulating occurrences of social interaction.  

Because of the relentless infiltration amoral and Moralistic misanthropic stealth Behaviorism ever so respectably insinuating itself into every field of scientific inquiry, formal education and walk of life, indeed because of the pernicious fallacious view of Social Psychology as merely an application of Behaviorism, social stimuli may be blithely treated as identical with social prompts. Not so! A social stimulus featuring or situated within a social environment, is a manifest concrete entity (as opposed to an abstraction) producing social stimulation eliciting universal innate social response that are the subject of intrinsic social stimulus appetites.  - as opposed to varying  behaviorally conditioned  social cues prompting in turn, extrinsic elicitation of conditional strokes...

Social prompts are only intelligible at all as shaped by and subtext of social expectations to be met by approved behaviors in elicitation of conditional strokes within extrinsic reward and punishment systems. Hence response varies between cultural milieu, individual personality, experience and behavioral conditioning. Whereas response to implementable effective stimuli, yes, very much including social stimuli, is innate and thus possibly gratifying in its own right. Behavioral conditioning only aims at the inculcation of compulsive compliance and inhibition, but liberating impulsive responses triggered by (social) stimuli correlate with (social) stimulus appetites, the most rudimentary of intrinsic needs, values and motivation.

In animal studies, social stimuli no differently than stimuli in general, may be introduced experimentally under controlled conditions, into the environment of the test subject. But in the context of human interaction, for some reason the term 'social stimuli' is all too often blithely employed interchangeably in denotation of social cues that are learned, or more precisely, behaviorally conditioned. What sly and devious propaganda of Nihilistic value destruction and heteronomy! Intellectual stimulation from the social environment remains ever paramount to all endeavor of FoolQuest.com And because we are conscious, what applies to stimulation in general, applies no less to social and intellectual stimulation, in that likewise, not every Empirical input or information is necessarily all that stimulating. Hence, then, the dire risk of even actually harmfully persistent  boredom and loneliness. After all, the engaging and invigorating trigger of intellectual stimulation ever remains an intrinsic need, even neurologically. Intellectual stimulation opens the way for the enthusiastic autonomy of egalitarian close collaborative creative solution finding and thereby liberation from hierarchical heteronomy. Intellectual stimulation Is an intrinsic human need. Intellectual stimulation differs psychologically with individual character, and will therefore defy precise definition. Intellectual stimulation engages thought and imagination to challenge ambitious capability to insightfully identify and find creative solutions to problems. And yet intellectual stimulus deprivation remains pandemic. Clearly, either the system is broken, or else individual failure and confusion can actually be intentional, even deliberately brutal boring Absurd and irrelevant Zen surreal by design, brainwash to break the will, indeed as it has been since antiquity.

A hallmark of the compliant and complacent conservative character or personality is the the boundless capacity to endure boredom. And in the annals of formal education as readily observed in so many other social institutions such as religion, politics and employment among others,  the tradition is recorded even most anciently in Plato's Academy, of deliberately and calculatingly quashing the very intellectual freedom and Dialectical intellectual stimulation so cherished by and fatal to Plato's beloved but impractical mentor Socrates, via the deliberate infliction of boredom in order so diligently to weed out innovators by contrast so often characterized by boredom proneness, and of novelty that ever threatens change. For many are the sages of old in fervent embrace of the value of social stability at any cost, the maintenance of sheer conservative inertia even in the most arbitrary status quo. -And therefore concerning themselves in all gravity with the contrivance of reliable production process and systematic filters of endlessly bland mediocrity enduring to this day, bureaucratically screening out deficiency and excellence alike and entirely without distinction. Indeed such remains the function of peer review in academic publication, and worse, of the FDA in the approval of medicines. No snake oil and no breakthroughs either. For in every context and walk of life, such is heteronomy and the dread of all temptation into nonconformity replete with any possibility ever of Socratic Wisdom in acknowledgement of ignorance and uncertainty, with ongoing error detection and correction in the name of progress day by day.

 

 

What is social and intellectual stimulus struggle?

As in accordance with the Arousal Theory of motivation, all living beings are perpetually engaged in stimulus struggle, which is the name coined by anthropologist Desmond Morris in 'the human zoo' October 1 1969, for the perpetual striving of all living things, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. And by extension, social and intellectual stimulus struggle herein denotes the perpetual striving of every human psyche, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of most optimal reciprocally engaged social and intellectual stimulation and arousal from the immediate social environment. Indeed, everything that we do is in order to modify subjective experience thereby altering consciousness itself. All hence, as herein proposed, the social engineering of social and intellectual stimulus struggle would contrive the deliberate introduction of specific social stimuli and social interaction, into the immediate social environment, in order better to optimize social and intellectual stimulus struggle.

And as, still in accordance with the Arousal Theory of Motivation, according to anthropologist Desmond Morris in 'the human zoo' October 1 1969, in order to meet the all consuming challenges of survival in the wild, constantly foraging for resources and opportunity in order to survive, all opportunistic species including Homo Sapiens, have evolved to become intensely exploratory, with “a biologically built-in demand for a high stimulus input from his environment. In a zoo (or a city) it is clearly these opportunist species that will suffer most from the artificiality of the situation. Even if they are provided with perfected balanced diets and are immaculately sheltered and protected, they will become bored and listless and eventually neurotic. But opportunist animals do not give up easily. They react to the unpleasant situation with remarkable ingenuity.” But what about human ingenuity?

FoolQuest.com serves as the website of design thinking in the social engineering of intentionally more optimal social and intellectual stimulus struggle.

To reiterate, stimulus struggle, what every living thing is doing all the time, is no more or less than the perpetual striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. And this includes every crucial social stimuli provided by anyone triggering, arousing and eliciting response from anyone else within the same social environment or situation, a process so desperately undermined and subverted by heteronomy in the perpetual rat race out in the endless emotional wastelands of the social minefield. In any alternative, what then are the most promising options in the social engineering of any fundamentally better situation, the social engineering of more optimal social and even intellectual stimulus struggle? How can individuals more happily interact? Exactly how might change be effected, so happily overcoming resistance and inertia? And what precisely is the bearing of creativity? These are no idle question, but the ever daunting outreach of FoolQuest.com! Everyone is different. Perhaps somehow neither fiction writing nor new venture creation (various business startup) appeal. Fear not however. I might not have what you want, but dare we seek for it together?

Boredom after all, is an acute lack of excitement and often accrues from the dire mismatch of intrinsic motivation and relevantly pleasurable activity to unique individual value, given any dearth of adequately engaging alternatives often for want of authentic autonomy supportive respect and often in response to pressure. Stimulus struggle then is the struggle against boredom, and social stimulus struggle is the struggle against loneliness consisting of any deficiency or discrepancy between ones own desired versus actually achieved or at all available, quality of social interaction, stimulation, arousal and communication.

The design thinking in the social engineering of more optimal social and intellectual stimulus struggle, is one way to frame the challenge of actually tailoring social environment to the intrinsic needs of each individual. Discourse pursuant to the social engineering of optimal social stimulus struggle in answer to the agenda by design/agenda of design challenge, is preliminary to the FoolQuest.com design exercise, a specific procedure towards identification of individually unique pleasurable triggers and indicators of value, those rare and fleeting experiences of fulfillment in fully engaged pleasurably heightened sensation of meaning, and how maximally to incorporate exactly such very particular stimuli featuring into a social environment.  Indeed, quantitatively and qualitatively optimal investment and exchange of time and attention together that we all so crave, in synergy so crucial to authentic well being.

Many  struggle simply to avoid unpleasantness. And that is a sore travail. But others actually enjoy and embrace struggle, engaging with the disruptive and uncomfortable as meaningful growth opportunity and even the great blessing of Positive Disintegration. Struggle engenders focus and reflection. “To whom much is given, much is required.”  Luke 12:48 NKJV. But if only we shall rise to the unique and vital challenge of sapient consciousness and the human condition, of intentional purposeful interaction and intentional substantive communication, of intentional creative solution finding and collaboration, then stimulus struggle so-called, as at rare optimum may become easy and delightful, not dire struggle at all, then is 'struggle' the correct word? Answer: To be Existentially honest, yes, sometimes, indeed all too often, it is. A brief word, however, in defense of true struggle:

Not only pleasurable engagement, but sometimes even ongoing engagement in struggle, difficulty and discomfort, can be a blessing, frequently remaining needful and invigorating for growth, both of character individually and of meaningful relationships. For such is life. But that remains no excuse for coercion and abuse supposedly in order to build character, as in formal education among other needlessly destructive ordeals. Not to digress. By contrast, all too infrequent gratifying high points of optimal stimulus struggle, so named, can be effortless and spontaneous, far from struggle at all. Gratifying high points of optimal stimulus struggle, struggle so called, shape and express personal values of arête, experience of excellence in life. Stimulus struggle, struggle indeed, thereby motivated, thence escalates under such heightened expectations that inspire progress.

Human happiness greatly hinges upon the efficacy of stimulus struggle, particularly of social and intellectual stimulus struggle. First of all, pleasurable wellbeing is attained during more optimal stimulus struggle, particularly social stimulus struggle. Secondly, it may be that more optimal social stimulus struggle remains the true key to life, after all! More optimal social stimulus struggle heightens performance, sustained cooperation and results. More optimal stimulus struggle might also be more sociable and intelligent. Better sustained and more optimal social and intellectual stimulus struggle is also more gratifying and operant for making connection, forging and nurturing relationships, even friendship. But more optimal social and intellectual stimulus struggle in the gratification of fundamental incident hunger, is more specific, focused, experiential and observable than more broadly any objective of the better meeting of needs. All therefore, better understanding of social stimulus appetites remains ever crucial.

In the words of Simone Weil: “The malheureux need nothing else in this world but men capable of paying attention to them. The capability to pay attention to the malheureux is something very rare, very difficult; it's almost a miracle. Almost all those who think they have this capacity, don't. Warmth, the heart's reaching out, pity, all these are not sufficient. [...] Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” And in the words of Barbara Sher: “Isolation is the true dream killer, not your attitude.” Indeed, inattention, indifference and distance, are already invalidating, let alone more overt invalidation, denigration and abuse particularly as of pandemic serial bullying. Whereas, validation may come in the form of sympathy and understanding, indeed as expressed in agreement, approval or indeed amplification upon anything another says. However, as the saying goes: Actions speak louder than words because, as the saying goes: “Effort is the best indicator of interest.” The very term 'probortunity,' of course, has been coined as a portmanteau of the two words: 'problem' and 'opportunity,' in order to press home the point that problems present opportunities. And the probortunity at hand here on FoolQuest.com consists in the challenge of best filling the gap, meeting underserved need, via creative solution finding in design thinking social engineering of more optimal social stimulus struggle, most especially and particularly collaboration among equals, the most generously validating exchange of effort and interest indeed speaking louder than so often facile verbal positive strokes, let alone the malignant conditionality of dysfunctional codependent co-validation. Creativity can and Should be Social. Collaboration in fiction writing and new venture creation (various business startup) may serve as powerful Dialectical tools toward subversive and disruptively innovative solution finding in the social engineering of more optimal stimulus struggle, even tailor made to the individual. Gentle reader, what are your own frustrated life satisfactions and corresponding underserved stimulus appetites?

There are two possible contexts wherein to frame the very concept of all important attachments such as love and friendship. Most obviously, friendship is a relationship over time, but love and friendship are also understood an immediate experience. Perhaps the latter peak experience may be found conducive to more optimal cultivation of the former over time, indeed more so than mere random and incidental propinquity alone.

To reiterate: Heaven remains an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. In 'The Conquest Of Happiness' 'Chapter 1: What makes people unhappy?' Bertrand Russell writes: “The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other,” But perhaps Russell is too quick to dismiss as mere fixation, whatever one's favored, most valued and cherished kind of unmet satisfaction. Instead, there might be here an important self-knowledge of what one craves most dearly. Can such various satisfactions be investigated, categorized and then intentionally instigated and triggered?

Towards social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine cheating by just scripting actors in order to produce the intended experience, superficially, or similarly, programming non player characters in a videogame simulation. Then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that actors will not be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction that may ever conceivably be scripted, may conceivably be elicited by whatever situation, more organically. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments to satisfy hither to deprived and personally valued satisfactions in life, after triggering the corresponding immediate stimuli and appetites.

A possible step-by-step design procedure is elaborated in further detail in the design exercise section. 

We all form each our own vivid picture of fulfillment in what we want our lives to be and to experience, and particularly in the imagination of an ideal and better engaged social circle, the better to connect to vital resources and meet personal needs, tangible and intangible, all crucial to experiencing optimal fulfillment in authentic well being and human thriving. The  social engineering feasibility study at hand, remains precisely how, in what way or manner and by what strategy of means, step-by-step process or procedure, to optimize social stimulus struggle via the implementation of whatever more gratifying and effective modes of social interaction, after all else has failed, that which has actually been yearned for all along, perhaps achieved by the purposeful introduction of key social stimuli into the social environment, even doing so intentionally and at will.

To reiterate, a dog in the park, perhaps coming up and wagging his tail, is a stimulus featuring in the surrounding environment, an unconditional stroke, whereas a dog appearing and begging only when you yourself begin eating your sandwich, constitutes a response to the correct trigger, from the surrounding environment. a conditional stroke. However, the present exercise concerns elicitation of innate positive response from the individual,  not conditional strokes of inductive  behavioral reinforcement of any desired new conditioned behavior. The proverbial shoe is figuratively crafted to fit the metaphorical foot. The foot need not be cut to fit the shoe. Ongoing stimulus struggle entails that we spend our lives struggling to elicit desired response. It's nice when instead, all too rarely, even whatever small gratification ever comes unconditionally, featuring within the surrounding environment, readily available, standing in plain sight. Also, it's far simpler to program or design stimuli plainly featuring within the environment, than to orchestrate conditional strokes, obscure responses hiding  in wait to be triggered by the subject.

Stimuli featuring or situated within a (social) environment, may be said to take the first move, rather than coming in response as does a conditional stroke. Social stimuli featuring or situated within a social environment, initiate simply by being blatant and unavoidable within said social environment. A stimulus is a trigger for whatever response. As a feature within an environment, a stimulus, unlike a conditional stroke, does not itself need to be activated or triggered: It only needs to be anything at all concrete and glaringly obvious enough to be experienced, so as to as to gratify some or other stimulus appetite, triggering innate response with no prior behavioral conditioning. Even moving shadows in vaguely human form may be features within a social environment, that are also social stimuli triggering some response. Real events in which the any of latter may be involved, are the outside source of stimulation experienced. Social stimuli here refer specifically to the objects of immediate term events experienced, however one might categorize them. piquing any manner of intrinsic appetite which is an impulse, as distinct from compulsive or behaviorally conditioned social cues or prompts of extrinsic reward and punishment triggering or eliciting skilled correct operant versus howsoever incorrect or inept inoperant response. Any appetite systematically and continually gratified may conceivably yield its corresponding life satisfaction. But approval seeking only accrues emptiness, irrelevance and alienation from just being controlled. Behaviorally conditioned social cues or prompts are extortion and conditionality, whereas social stimuli triggering innate response, are unconditional stroke, engaging temptation free and clear, even a pure gift, gratification with no other objective except for intrinsically motivating good and wellbeing.

 

Taking the design approach to intentional activity: Can happiness be created or socially engineered?

              “Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing.”  —  Brian Tracy

A situation analysis, problem statement, simple forecast of human needs, and the above straightforward proposal for happiness in the greatest effort you'll ever love: This is a solid pitch targeted directly to the all to often so frustrated and underserved deepest of human needs, as best as we currently understand them.

The  social engineering feasibility study at hand, remains precisely how, in what way or manner and by what strategy of means, step-by-step process or procedure, to optimize social stimulus struggle via the implementation of whatever more gratifying and effective modes of social interaction, after all else has failed, that which has actually been yearned for all along, perhaps achieved by the purposeful introduction of key social stimuli into the social environment, even doing so intentionally and at will.

It remains so disheartening  how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont not only of the wherewithal, the channels and the means, but often of the sheer imagination. The average person, inexperienced of anything more vibrant and meaningful, has become blithely jaded and accustomed to a profound social, emotional and intellectual deprivation in which so many of us find ourselves imprisoned. Effort and struggle may be all quickly dismissed and condemned as mere hardship, intolerable frustration and Existential futility. But there can also be the true life human drama of progress and satisfaction, growth, self-definition and discovery, perhaps even success. Besides, exactly what are the alternatives? Many extol a choice only between acceptance and despair, merely flavors of the same intimidation. Indeed, in the famous words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” And to quote Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” FoolQuest.com endures in persistent outreach toward the formation of just such a core group of unreasonable people applying ourselves even to the most daunting problems besetting us.

Just for example, in the Virtual Reality of a video game for children, it will be simple enough to program, so that all of the non-player characters will all respond by dancing in joyous approval, whenever the player successfully ties their shoes. But one might never need to tie ones shoes. What if, only given the option, one wears only loafers or buckle shoes? Then all such extrinsic rewards and contrivance of Behavioral Modification will have gone to waste! Moreover, such conditional strokes might be more difficult to achieve in reality, especially in any intentional situation instead of cheating and just using actors instructed in whatever desired responses. However, placing by design, among social stimuli featuring in an intentional social environment, even a single dancer throwing Frisbees pleasurably engaging passersby into playing catch, would be far more straightforward. And it just might raise a smile. True, human needs are often for desired kinds of responsiveness. Nevertheless instead it may be more practical simply to take initiative, to feature by design whatever social stimuli within an intentional social environment, than to by whatever means to socially engineer desired even complex responses.

Innate intrinsic impulses and appetites may be elicited or stimulated no less readily than behaviorally conditioned responses can be triggered. Why then are social stimuli generally assumed to consist of social cues, meaning sly subtext of conformity and heteronymous coercion? after all, social stimuli can be, quite to the contrary, permissive or gratifying. As shall be seen, they can even be uniquely individual, and perhaps even intentionally so tailored, implemented and tested. When the surrounding physical and psychological environment features cues howsoever associated or connected by whatever contrivance, to whatever set target objectives, the subject may thereby be directed towards whatever those objectives, by whatever open, simple and clear instructions, or else as by whatever at all more sinister advertising or propaganda manipulation and coercion. For such is subjugation under Behavior Modification having no other criteria save for compliance that will be deemed adaptive. And that is like cutting the foot to fit the shoe! It then falls to "unreasonable people"  with the audacity instead to help change our world for the better. To wit: The present social engineering design challenge in the optimization of social stimulus struggle will be to investigate, design and then feature and empower in a surrounding environment, whatever might be discovered actually missing and yearned for, and not any cunning Existential bait-and-switch of manipulative sublimation or coercion. To provide social stimuli and outlets correspondent to motivating intrinsic appetites, without extrinsic reward or punishment. Liberation, freedom, after all, is power, meaning opportunity to act upon and gratify individual desires.

"Motivation-Reaction Units" as dubbed by Dwight Swain, are micro level scene structure, wherein something happened and then someone reacts, stimulus followed by response. And the concept applies no less in real life drama and World-Building. Stimuli prominently feature in an environment, whereas responses are hidden, waiting, for good or ill, to be triggered. We all yearn for an environment responsive to our needs, but plot oriented featuring stimuli are by far simpler to design and to script, implement and direct, than character driven response. Indeed, stimuli featuring in the surrounding environment effectively engage the individual subject, without waiting to be triggered. Hence, for the sake of simplicity and reliability, featuring stimuli will be the focus herein, rather than responsiveness. It is intended that individuals suitably triggered and stimulated, with more readily engage one another more responsively. (Take that any way you like!)

Alienation: When strangers first come into contact, we so desperately strive to conceal our uncertainty and insecurity, keep a game face, and skillfully negotiate the social minefield according to prevailing expectations. How oppressive, Absurdly cagey and demeaning! Make no mistake: If life as we lead it, is ever at all like unto some sort of Existential prison, then we, you and I, are the escape committee! And so, what if instead, in any spirit of democracy in action, one where explicitly consulted about how best to interact, and the crafting of any guiding purposeful agenda? It will be crucial not only to reject the status quo that has failed so many, but to know what we want and to follow through strategically on whatever desired paradigm shift. But even thusly strategizing from scratch evokes a demand for high risk tolerance, even with no initial tangible investment or sacrifice the way that better established, supported and more respectable, conventional and more clearly behaviorally structured approaches such as school, employment or organized religion generally do, let alone that which is called: recreation.

But all increasingly dubious guarantees aside, the key even in doing as we are expected, still turns out to be not really in painting by numbers, so to speak, but in somehow or other turning to one another. And there's the rub. Because in this, so many of us are simply abandoned to our  own devices, to glean from subtext, take the hint, and pay heed to our intended  rôle models, the most heteronymously inauthentic and eager to please, and emulate their fraudulent sycophancy in the cult of socialization and social skills. But can such ever actually be the reliable life success system that we've all heard so much about? Or can we imagine better? Indeed, what might be your own vision at all, of a more ideal social environment to best meet our various needs of social interaction, by purposeful design? And why ever not? But precisely how would it all work? I'm interested in consulting with you, gentle reader, and I'm asking your opinion. Whatever nebulous powers that be never will.

Unhappiness is typically associated with job dissatisfaction, not particularly liking the locale in which one abides, crass materialistic consumer compensation neurosis, loneliness, wandering focus of brooding in lack of active engagement, long commutes and financial worries. Whereas, entrepreneurial partnership by design, strives at optimal work satisfaction, meaningful optimal reciprocal engagement and value maximization, in full benefit of remote collaboration, under flexible schedule at our own pace. And the hope of making it big nourishes the eventual possibility of long term financial peace of mind.

The cutting edge of Psychological research lately finds itself ever more in closest concurrence with wisdom of the sages of old rediscovered, regarding the very nature of authentic wellbeing that is innately the target of most relevant intrinsic motivation, alas so enshrouded in taboo. For Freud, exaltation from any creative motive, no matter how ostensibly Platonic in sublimated expression or outlet, is called: Eros. Or, if one prefers, Eudemonia anciently names that authentic well being as arising through ones best in active pursuit of excellence living as one's best, or: arête. Hence the grand ambition and prime agenda of FoolQuest.com is engagement with one another in the often heady autonomy aspired to in what it is to be entrepreneurial according to the definition of Bolton, WK and Thompson, JL (2000) ‘Entrepreneurs: Talent, Temperament, Technique’, Elsevier: “a person who habitually creates and innovates to build something of recognized value around perceived opportunities”.

It has long  been observed how gifted students amongst their own true gifted peers, suddenly and mysteriously no longer require the great and dubious boon of socialization! In short, perhaps in whatever social context, it might be not only better and wiser, but arguably perhaps even healthier and more natural, actually to study and emulate gifted interaction, then deliberately taken as the new model for an intentional social functionality amongst community of equal peers, in order thereby to improve and enrich life and autonomy support for everyone, than endlessly conniving and bullying to make such a shining great favor of such relentlessly flagrant conditionality and peer pressure "providing structure" aimed only at dumbing down and heteronymizing our best and brightest, all in order to glorify mediocrity.

All manner of celebrated creative entrepreneurial solution finding problem solving groups emerge every day, discovering and hammering out innovative solutions to the challenges of our day and beyond, with unflagging progress towards implementation. Why can't that be us, you and me, gentle reader, together with any others? It can be. Let's! It begins merely with the perseverance of a core group that is at all serious, working steadily to better understand and then to fill the gaps, step by step. And again, the first byproducts will include elevated mood, improved public image making and more effective outreach and networking to cement social connection, and all simply from steadily ongoing discussion and research, even further recruitment as need emerges, all at our own pace, without oversensitivity or passive aggression.

Creative people are perpetually dissatisfied, faliblist, critical, curios, flexible, imaginative, experimental, boredom prone, problem-friendly with the unexpected, therefore enjoying the eustress and sustainable euphoria of creative tension, forthcoming, playful and expressive, hard working and persistent, optimistically and enthusiastically embrace challenge, value their ideas without becoming wedded to them, any first idea being, after all, merely the starting point in the process of fleshing out cross-connections towards challenging assumptions and reframing, ambitiously pushing the envelope and taking fresh and different perspective towards testing great ideas arising to compete in the market place of ideas. For most of all, creative people recognize environments and cultures of respect that reciprocally optimally foster creativity.

“Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.”  

 

— 'Conversation with a Pacifist' by George Orwell 

 

It's not just singles who suffer, left out: The affiliation, however genial, of neighborhood parents with little else in common, is often fallow ground for any deeper connection. And matching couples, demands compatibility by a factor of four. Alas that we have fallen prey to an heteronymous dependency upon the stifling behaviorally structured environments of school and employment, to provide propinquity for forging close and enduring friendships: convenient proximity, repeated unplanned interaction, and a setting for unguarded moments to confide in one another. Hence clichéd social advice typically centers upon recourse to even more arbitrary behavioral structure, such as facilitated by hanging out at the same bars, discos or gyms etc., interminably, or joining and subordinating oneself to various clubs or undertaking the drudgery of volunteer work. But in the alternative, reliance upon spontaneity alone, is futile without actual disposition to spontaneity. For autonomous intrinsically motivated interaction to provide the same and actually better social opportunity, the participants must be responsible and indeed intrinsically motivated to continually reengage one another of their own accord, and to network and exchange social support, all even without behavioral structure of schedule or propinquity for regular chance reencounter. Exactly such scarce initiative, the lost social skill set of autonomy fallen so out of fashion and into such disrepair, is especially crucial, reciprocally, for sustaining any forward momentum, interpersonally. Too long domesticated, then without any routine provided us, we degenerate into such passive, confused and mistrustful sheeple adrift! But more meaningful shared sought for outcome, a genuine purpose rather than mere heteronomy to arbitrary group cohesion, is well known to engage participants in closer attachment.

Being that engagement is the beginning of the state or condition of attachment which is an ongoing, remembered or anticipated and even yearned for state of engagement, hence according to Self-Determination Theory, secure attachment is characterized by attention and responsiveness to one another's needs when turning toward one another to obtain comfort and care. Indeed, prime features of autonomy include initiative being: the forward looking vision and motivation of enterprise and determination that affords any capacity to begin proactively, or to follow through energetically, with a plan or task, together with the need for meaningful engagement fending off boredom and loneliness. Heteronomy, the ever cagey and calcuating enemy of autonomy, is also the active enemy of engagement and attachment, of transparent agenda, of open passion and interest of every kind. Therefore, bullying which is heteronymous, stifles initiative. Indeed, the social skill sets of heteronomy and autonomy are so entirely different. Heteronymous social skills correlate to the guardedness and control of heteronomy in the first place, and not any unmet needs of the individual. And yet the exhortations to sublimation persist, of the former as the means to the latter. Indeed, that often seems the only game in town!

 

 

Introduction to the FoolQuest.com design exercise

          Solution Finding: down to brass tacks

Find herein an introduction to the  FoolQuest.com design exercise extolling a proposed innovative and pioneering new subversive social engineering design process beginning by the investigation of unique individual triggers, arousal and stimulus appetites, so often frustrated and underserved intrinsic social needs so essential to authentic wellbeing. Indeed, whatever most preferred personal interaction, relationship and communication individually most highly valued and that therefore best elevate individual emotional state. Nothing less than individually tailored optimization of social and intellectual stimulus struggle, and thereby the veritable orchestration of your happiness! Any questions? Any objections? Any takers? You are all invited! Gentle reader, I am counting on you! Dare we together take action? As observed of capable and happy people, let's talk more seriously!

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? Please: Let's all just stop going with the flow like drift wood! -Or worse, stagnating when the currents and eddies of life pass us by. Let's at least try to move with a purpose. Nor let us each any longer stand alone stunned and bewildered, Abandoned each and all to our own devices. Rather, quite simply, instead of making the aimless learned helplessness of interminably futile and unhappy small talk, let us begin together by engagement in sustained discussion, discussion with purpose, on purpose according to an agenda. - In the words of Henri-Louis Bergson to think like a man of action and act like a man of thought. That might not be what the cool kids are seen doing, but fuck'm anyhow! It remains so disheartening  how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

• The Top 10 Things People Want In Life But Can’t Seem To Get  - “I can't get no... ”

The question of social engineering and sociopolitical significance in TRIZ, may prompt, as proposed in a design exercise, an investigation of "ideal" or optimal social conditions and their possible attainability through inventive solution finding and implementation in social engineering much in principle as with mechanical engineering, instead of charting the course ideologically, let alone then blindly staying the course into the inefficiency and failure typical of headlong unchecked massive government social initiatives, or worse, into the brutality and horror visited upon the masses in the name of Utopist social engineering.

Social institutions are the formal and informal systems of stable, established or standardized rules or patterns of behavior, mediating interaction and communication, interlocking social rôles and expectations in the complex integral overall construction and stable function of society. Social institutions include the family, education, religion, organizations and economic and political institutions, also laws, customs and even norms, values and sensibilities. Some institutions are more widespread than others, at any given time, even according to whatever the need.

As Karl Popper observed, the engineering of social progress may often depend upon the forging of lasting institutions. But the institutions forged under Utopism partake in all the excesses thereof. Indeed, in the forging of whatever sort of new social institutions, it might make better feasible and prudent sense, as herein proposed, to begin on some more economical immediate and fairly intimate scale, locally, rather than any needlessly impractical and precarious grand social plan as so often characteristic of Utopism; and also with at all more moderate demands upon participants, than the blindly zealous open ended cult dedication typical of Utopist ideology. Indeed, far from virtuous sacrifice and arduous self abnegation ever in striving towards whatever ultimate nigh transcendental aspiration, some or other conceivable "ideal" or optimal human interaction as herein proposed, ought to be even immediately fulfilling: meaningful, engaging, pleasurable and not to mention productive, all in the here and now, notwithstanding any worthy objective for the future.

Begin then, like Socrates, by asking yourself what matters most: When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? We all routinely head online for research into all manner of individual personal and collective societal needs, taking action as citizens and consumers. Isn't it high time to apply similar due diligence in all that is actually most intrinsic to wellbeing? It remains so disheartening  how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. First of all, loneliness, boredom and unfulfillment are conditions of deprivation, all arising from unmet and underserved intrinsic social stimulus hungers. Moreover, seeing as how appropriate, adequate and respectful social support, is well understood to be among the foremost predictors for success, therefore the prevailing scarcity, unavailability, inadequacy and unsuitability of social support such as exists or is at all readily accessible, remains perhaps the foremost among ubiquitous recipes for failure in general. In the words of Arthur H. Vandenberg: “It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.” Further more, to combat pandemic bullying that so exacerbates every problem, it will be crucial to reach out and systematically break vulnerable isolation and the neglect that so tempts all manner of predation and exploitation. All hence, what is herein propose to do differently is to focus upon better understanding said unmet and underserved intrinsic social stimulus hungers, and only then strategizing in feasibility study, how best instead to bring about their fulfillment, even by such unreasonable measures as tailor designed intentional interpersonal interaction, more responsive to our needs. Indeed, heteronymously reasonable adaptation in order simply to fit in and make do, has been and even by design, so difficult, futile, unwelcoming and unsatisfactory, so dystressfull, boring, lonely and unfulfilling, even when successful on its own cretin superficial terms. Perhaps that sacred cow among prevailing ideologies which may be called: the cult of socialization, should at long last be called to task for its dystressfull limitations and failures and abandoned in favor of any better alternatives. Moreover, as to any alternative, beyond merely abstract consideration and solutions only in principle, must ensue deliberation upon practical specifics in detail of real world implementation. After all, social stimuli trigger or elicit corresponding social response in a veritable cascade of karmic causality in confluence of suitable conditions for corresponding likely outcomes in turn, for good or ill.

All hence the design exercise that follows, proceeds by systematically breaking down the present complex solution finding effort into a series of steps in sequence of more focused questions. Each question in turn must be answered in context from any number of possible answers to the previous open ended question. Each objective is only means to larger objectives that must first be defined. All strategy and feasibility study must consider task interdependencies, meaning the the efficient planning, analysis and execution of tasks necessarily scheduled in succession, because each in turn becomes possible only first by completion of prior tasks.

So imagine sitting in during a meeting (or lurking on an online message posting forum) and being invited to join in, as the participants begin by discussing intrinsic human social stimulus hungers, beginning first of all, by seeking to better understand the range of these intrinsic human social stimulus hungers. Any of the participants might then chose one such intrinsic human social stimulus hunger as particularly interesting or pivotal to attaining the others. Then they move on in feasibility study, to explore strategies, evolving as each begins modification of one another's ideas, in imagining what sort of social interaction could actually be contrived, tailor made, towards fulfillment of intrinsic human social stimulus hungers. Common grounds and complementary needs are sought for. Next they move on to define the extensive research and planning in detail, to make any of this more feasible and realistic. Eventually, they even advance towards drafting an action  agenda.

Gentle reader, you may even have now have stumbled into exactly such deliberation, and your thoughts are earnestly invited. Creative and happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk, deliberating Dialectically in controversy,  the exchange of welcome criticism, with capable civility as autonomous equals in optimal reciprocal engagement. The following are suggestions toward a protocol for collaboration in social engineering via Applied Positive Psychology, from development through to execution, of new Eudemonistic proposals in detail and beyond, as often socially expected, mere cursory general discussion of the issues at very best. Alas such prevailing anti-intellectualism and bullying, that anything so weighty and demanding as analytical thinking, feasibility study and and strategic planning is actually so taboo. The toxic and sanctioned perpetual ordeal of socialization, such dystressfully pressuring extrinsic motivation ever in cultivation and evaluation of all important social dexterity, remain such a sacred cow, never challenged in very principle, for all the questions continually begged in their very universal practice by which indeed they are so blithely sanctified. Therefore agreeability and keeping conversation light are so emphatically extolled as the primrose path to popularity and social acceptance for the sheeple. Notwithstanding and all the same, let us instead strive to be more inventive, subversive and disruptively innovative, genuine, better engaged, and unafraid of hard work only so long as it remains fulfilling.

 

A design exercise in the social engineering optimization of stimulus struggle The steps involved in the design thinking process are as follows: First, study and more fully understand whatever probortunity at hand; second, explore a wide range of possible solutions; third, iterate extensively through prototyping and testing; and finally, implementation. Of course, in life, testing and implementation are often one and the same. Can design thinking be applied to social engineering? What, isn't it already? Indeed. what little of design thinking is not already actually social engineering? After all, the machines typically created via design thinking, need to be used by people together. Moreover, design thinking need not be restricted to mechanical solutions. What follows shall be a design exercise in the social engineering optimization of stimulus struggle.

The invitation to open an subversive and disruptively innovative close collaboration in social engineering for optimizing social and intellectual stimulus struggle, is utterly unique to FoolQuest.com, at least according to the search engines. Even if human needs remain irreducible to basic stimulation, to stimuli, particularly social stimuli, nevertheless such may still serve as trigger and fulcrum to leverage and open the way for all manner of greater results. Readers are herein invited to further more particular and personal analysis, planning and action together, in a step-by-step procedure and process. Personally favored satisfactions are intrinsically motivated and valued. Whatever such satisfactions, being needs gratified rather than frustrated, are comprised of stimulus-response patterns repeated over time, social stimuli of whatever category discovered correspondent with whichever satisfaction, all enfolding in the context of more optimal social stimulus struggle, unconditionally transcending the ideological bankruptcy of coercive and manipulative mendacity of Behavior Modification. A standard simple example of a social stimulus featured within the test environment, in experiments with laboratory mice, is the distracting silhouette of another mouse. But for some reason peer conditioning is the only manner of social stimulus considered in any human context. Why must this be so? What about human shaped silhouettes? Just for example: Would not real or manufactured backlit shadows spilling out from indoors onto the street outside, of people milling about amid the roar of the crowd, or dancing to music, constitute a notably dramatic and evocative human social stimulus? What other ever most sophisticated stimuli are conceivable and for what ever more particular response? What arousal in gratification to what curial and underserved satisfaction? It may be anything common and prevailing, or else something extremely particular and tailored to any specific individual.

The social engineering of optimal stimulus struggle: Stimulus-Response occurs in Motivation Reaction Units. A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. The sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different. Can the process by which any said stimulus arises or comes about and garners response in an ongoing social stimulus situation within the social environment or milieu (in the course of what is known as stimulus struggle) be rendered reproducible at will? Is it possible to social engineer better optimization of social stimulus struggle? The concept of intrinsic motivation may be more salient to understanding human nature, but social stimulus appetite may turn out to be useful in the analysis, categorization and reproduction of immediate gratifying events of stimulation. The applicable categories of social stimuli improved in quality and frequency, may better contribute to greater experience of fulfillment of hither to underserved and frustrated satisfactions over the longer term in life. 

All manner of strokes are the units of recognition in Transactional Analysis. But positive strokes as such are ruled out in the present exercise, because recognition comes in response, not as an initiating stimulus featured in the social environment. Indeed, conditional strokes are recognition in response to the contribution made in what one does, as in a job well done. And unconditional strokes coming in recognition for who one is, may require the context of acquaintance and relationship, beyond just whatever social environment or situation alone. Needs and values most generally, important as they are, remain broad and not specific, nebulous in terms of any scenario. And conditional strokes are always a great struggle, psychologically and logistically so complicated, in order to deliberately institute in any social context, in setting the scene, or by the crafting of lasting social institutions. 

Therefore instead, the fulcrum of social engineering of optimal social stimulus struggle herein, are to be social stimuli featured within the social environment, unavoidably and unconditionally so that the subject need only yield to temptation, and react with no strings attached; a true gift, a seduction to be devoutly consummated! Social stimuli featuring or situated in the social environment, so as to trigger or elicit response and thereby initiate whatever valued mode of interaction, rather than waiting and only coming conditionally only triggered in response to a desired correct behavior. "Motivation-Reaction Units" as dubbed by Dwight Swain, are micro level scene structure, wherein something happened and then someone reacts, stimulus followed by response. And the concept applies no less in real life drama and World-Building. Stimuli prominently feature in an environment, whereas responses are hidden, waiting, for good or ill, to be triggered. We all yearn for an environment responsive to our needs, but plot oriented featuring stimuli are by far simpler to design and to script, implement and direct, than character driven response. Indeed, stimuli featuring in the surrounding environment effectively engage the individual subject, without waiting to be triggered. Hence, for the sake of simplicity and reliability, featuring stimuli will be the focus herein, rather than responsiveness. It is intended that individuals suitably triggered and stimulated, with more readily engage one another more responsively. (Take that any way you like!)

1. When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? Heaven is an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. In 'The Conquest Of Happiness' 'Chapter 1: What makes people unhappy?' Bertrand Russell writes: "The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other." But perhaps Russell is too quick to dismiss as mere fixation, whatever one's favored, most valued and cherished kind of unmet satisfaction. Instead, there might be here an important personal Axiology, relevant self-knowledge of what one craves most dearly. Can such various satisfactions be investigated and categorized, then engineered?   

 

Begin by choosing and categorizing a denied, scarce and therefore prized and frustrated satisfaction of your own. What is the corresponding social stimulus appetite? The crucial difference between a satisfaction as conceived by Russell, and a stimulus appetite or hunger, is that a satisfaction, provided or deprived, takes place even over a life time, whereas a stimulus is an immediate event. Stimulus appetites or hungers are not only intrinsic and innate, but by such token, impulsive. And so: What specific category of social stimulus as we might discover, gentle reader, are for you personally gratifying to whatever aforesaid underserved and frustrated satisfaction? How, in the past, has this kind of stimulus, by whatever happenstance, ever arisen or come about as a feature of whichever social environment or milieu, in the course of what is known as stimulus struggle? And finally, how might whatever discovered category of beneficial social stimulus conceivably be reproduced at will in future?

 

Whereas Sigmund Freud theorized that Pleasure Principle, the natural impulsive drive for pleasure seeking,  must be held in check by Reality Principle, caution arising from objectivity, passably good judgment of reality and foreseeable consequences, rather, as G. E. Moore contends, pleasure, to begin with, simply is not an end in and of itself. And it bears mention how the same principle applies no less for optimism, peace of mind or any other congenial mental state or emotional condition. Rather, as G. E. Moore contends, pleasure, not to mention optimism, peace of mind or any other howsoever uplifting mental state or emotional condition, is only a relevant second order indicator of value. And likewise, negative emotion of aversion at all remaining relevant, indicates prophylactic value in prevention or avoidance of howsoever dangerous or deleterious circumstances. Pleasure seeking, so called, is understood by G. E. Moore rather as striving for objectively real beneficial value, merely recognized via subjective anticipation and experience of pleasure. And likewise aversion is but a subjective warning to avoid anything deemed howsoever detrimental. Any prospect of pleasure divorced from beneficial real value and likewise aversion quelled without regard for real adversity, should raise every alarm. However, herein, social stimulus appetite corresponding to frustrated life satisfaction, are likewise expected indeed to remain value loaded and immensely relevant.

 

In Social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine by means of capable drama, "cheating" by just scripting actors in order to produce the intended experience, superficially, much as one might program non player characters in any videogame simulation. Of course, such fraud would remain divorced from relevant value and utility. Therefore then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that no deceit would any longer be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction such as first may ever conceivably be scripted and faked in mere simulation by actors, may conceivably next instead actually be elicited in earnest by whatever socially engineered situation. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments to satisfy hitherto deprived and personally valued and relevant satisfactions in life. 

 

2. Stimulus hunger or stimulus appetite is the natural and universal craving for stimulation in general. This includes especially social stimuli in specific. Stimulus appetite most generally, let alone social stimulus appetite specifically, is more specific than intrinsic motivation generally. Can the various stimulus appetites be investigated and categorized?

 

Spoiler alert! Gentle readers, unmet friends: You may prefer to skip the following examples for now, and instead see what you can each and/or together come up with by yourselves, anything entirely different and uninfluenced.

 

Candidate frustrated stimulus appetites, real life dramatic core motivating life satisfactions and corresponding proposed intentional social environments include:

Creative solution finding and brainstorming in collaboration among equals, deprivation whereof as to be addressed by the project as proposed: Creativity can and Should be Social, on the one hand, of power, capability and freedom towards success through applied creativity, innovative new venture creation (variuos business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us, interstitial concurrent synergy, on the other hand, with ongoing unprecidented serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming, art for its own joy.  

    

Vastly neglected play and playfulness, as to be triggered and cultivated at the imagined theme venue and playspace for all ages: Planet Frolic TM

 

Breakthrough Social Technology: Panacea to a fundamental need, interpersonal perfectly matched compatibility and thereby better relationships and social embedment as to be provided for by means of automated Sociometry.

 

Or even at long last, reversal of the fatal pandemic degenerative condition known only as: aging, thus the eradication of natural death. Hence practical physical immortality called: Emortality, finally in resolution of debilitating mortal terror, "worm at the core of the human condition.".

 

Or indeed, gentle reader, what will be the remedy to your own greatest deprived life satisfaction, and signified by what neglected stimulus appetite?

 

3. To reiterate, a stimulus as most narrowly defined, is quite different from the content of sensation most broadly. A stimulus most narrowly, is not merely any perception or information, even however Empirical. For example, good food tempts all the senses. Marketing and advertising employ no end of stimuli associated with food. But the experience of peeling potatoes might somewhat fail to arouse, one way or the other, very much more than boredom and irritation. And the directions to the cafeteria, useful information as that might be, might not by themselves be all that stimulating at all. A stimulus arouses visceral response, especially appetites and aversions, and most especially appetites for further stimulation. We are all intrinsically motivated by appetites for social stimuli and interaction, and suffer in any deprivation thereof. We are all driven by such intrinsic social appetites, often frustrated and underserved. stimulus struggle is the perpetual striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the environment. And this includes every crucial social stimulus provided by anyone triggering and eliciting response from anyone else within the same social environment or situation, a process so desperately undermined and subverted under heteronomy in the perpetual rat race out in the endless emotional wastelands of the social minefield.

A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. Stimuli may be anything perceived and experienced, however reference to stimuli is generally meant in the sense more of visceral arousal rather than merely cognitive input and information. Indeed the sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different. This applies no less for social stimuli in specific, than for stimuli in general. The most rudimentary stimulus appetite is event hunger, the craving for interesting events. Hence the most rudimentary social stimulus appetite would be social event hunger, a craving for stimulating occurrences of social interaction. There are many complex aspects of social interaction, but at the most fundamental and obvious level, social interaction remains the exchange of social stimuli and response.

4. All living beings are perpetually engaged in stimulus struggle, which, as in accordance with the Arousal Theory of Motivation, is the name coined by anthropologist Desmond Morris for the perpetual striving of all living things in what we are all doing in every conscious waking moment, being the effort to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the environment. Everything we do is in order to modify subjective experience thereby altering consciousness itself. Stimulus struggle is the perpetual striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal state from the environment. This applies especially to social stimuli in specific, in the same way as to stimuli in general. Hence: social stimulus struggle. Human happiness hinges upon the efficacy of stimulus struggle, particularly of social stimulus struggle, in the attainment and maintenance of optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal state from the (social) environment, which is the opposite of boredom (and loneliness).

5. Social engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors as desired in whatever target population great or small, from vast nation states to far smaller working groups and social circles. Social engineering may conceivably focus upon any different aspects of the human condition in society, with any range of objectives. In Social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine cheating by just scripting actors in order to produce the intended experience, superficially. Then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that actors will not be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction that may ever conceivably be scripted may be elicited by whatever situation. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments to satisfy hither to deprived and personally valued satisfactions in life.

 

A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. The sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different. Circumstances and situations of wellbeing are recognizable by their correlation with optimal kind and degree of arousal. We are all intrinsically motivated by appetites for social stimuli and interaction, and suffer in any deprivation thereof. We are all driven by such intrinsic social appetites, often frustrated and underserved. Stimulus struggle is the perpetual striving to regulate, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. And this includes every crucial social stimulus provided by anyone triggering or eliciting response from anyone else within the same social environment. Stimulus appetite begins with incident hunger, the curiosity for momentary interesting experiences, the monads or "atoms" of any stimulus-response exchange of social interaction that is the object of social stimulus appetite in social stimulus struggle so often vastly underserved. Frustrated yearnings in social stimulus struggle may be categorized by corresponding incident hungers and kinds of events of social interaction, in Motivation Reaction Units of stimulus-response exchange, being the "molecules" as it where, of social interaction. The objective is to zero in on some discrete category of stimulus event, elementary yet pivotal towards some conceivable steady stream of interaction correlating with any unique individual life satisfaction, so often frustrated.

 

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? My own happy times, in retrospect all that meaningful or not, have been the most highly entertaining, have been times of optimal stimulus struggle and arousal state. As to the assignment of meaning, perhaps that correlates with Axiological particulars as to the nature of whatever intrinsic motivations fulfilled via the specific stimulus appetites gratified.

 

Among other things, human happiness greatly hinges upon the success of stimulus struggle, particularly of social stimulus struggle. First of all, pleasurable wellbeing is attained during optimal stimulus struggle, particularly social stimulus struggle. Secondly, it may be that more optimal social stimulus struggle remains the true key to life, after all! More optimal social stimulus struggle heightens performance, sustained cooperation and results. More optimal social stimulus struggle is more sociable. Better sustained and more optimal social stimulus struggle is more optimal also for making connection, forging and nurturing relationships and friendship. But more optimal social stimulus struggle is more specific, focused, experiential and observable than more broadly any objective of the better meeting of needs. So understanding social stimulus appetites is important.

 

Scarcity of any particular such gratification is what often defines personally valued life satisfactions. What's yours, gentle reader? And in these terms please, these parameters, because better identifying and understanding the structure of what we want, then may better facilitate recollection and investigation of patterns and causality of howsoever favorable occurrences, and even of reproduction at will by subversive and disruptively innovative social engineering design strategies toward reshaping and enriching the social environment in order to increase and improve any hitherto scarce life satisfaction opportunities.  

 

A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. The sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different. A social stimulus is such as occurring in the context of interaction between people. Stimulus struggle is the ongoing striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal, including social stimulation and engagement, from the environment, for staving off boredom and loneliness. We are all motivated by appetites for social stimuli and interaction, and suffer in any deprivation thereof.

 

I can't get no -- sa-tis-fac-tion! For subversive and disruptively innovative solution finding, Look for the Solution within the Problem: What are we doing all the time? We are  perpetually engaged in stimulus struggle. The problem is unfulfillment: boredom and loneliness, which are best understood in terms of frustrated stimulus struggle. And the solution is fulfillment, which is stimulus struggle triumphant in gratification. The ongoing interaction constituting an ideal society, Heaven on Earth, would be a veritable engine of satisfaction. Such is our objective of design and social engineering.

 

Transactional Analysis already deals in improvement and even optimization of the interpersonal exchange of social stimuli, of reciprocal social stimulus struggle. The therapeutic modality of Transactional Analysis seeks to remedy pathological Ulterior transactions or: headgames. And escaping or avoiding the snares and headgames of heteronomy in particular, is a matter of distinct concern in any quest for autonomy. But Transactional Analysis deals not only in the pathology of headgames replete with all manner of control and emotional blackmail or extortion. Indeed, Transactional Analysis is not only a Psychopathology but also a Positive Psychology in so far as that Transactional Analysis not only catalogues and treats headgames, but also investigate and cultivates healthy fulfilling Transaction of social stimulus exchange. Transactional Analysis is a pathology, but an implicit Applied Positive Transactional Analysis promotes forthright and desirable Transaction regardless of pathology. 

 

But just how Axiologically comprehensive is Transactional Analysis? The problem of social engineering optimization of the interpersonal exchange of social stimuli, of reciprocal social stimulus struggle, is is irreducible merely to the classification of strokes (verbal or nonverbal, conditional in response to deeds, or unconditional and even unbidden, positive "warm and fuzzy" or negative "prickly") as in Transactional Analysis, much less the Behaviorally simplistic travesty of bogus support groups. There are also Dabrowski's Five Overexcitabilities and their correspondent stimulus appetites, some of them social, just for another example by no means any more comprehensive. The exchange of social stimuli as with stimulus response most generally, may seen as comprising Motivation Reaction Units, the smallest components of cause and effect or action and reaction in the dramatic scene, even in real life drama.

 

Which social stimuli are most important and most scarce in recollection and observation of your own experience, gentle reader? Let us then undertake identification and analysis of crucially underserved intrinsically motivating innate social stimulus appetites of the individual, so crucial because selection among various underserved individual innate social stimulus appetites, provides key focus and context for the investigation of optimally gratifying conditions even in principle. Pleasurable and meaningful memorable individual peek experiences of fulfillment, of optimized stimulus struggle, trigger or elicit in the mind, values of Eudemonia, of whatever is imagined to be best in life, happiness and even of how one might best prefer to be treated by other people. Therefore recollection of those all too rare high points of experience, opportune and desirable occurrences and circumstances of optimal gratification, is very important. For such desirable conditions once better interpreted and understood, may possibly ever be more plentifully reproduced, deliberately. And only thus from sound strategy must then follow any logistics for implementation, ever taking concrete action. Begin then, like Socrates, by asking yourself what matters most: We all routinely head online for research into all manner of individual personal and collective societal needs, taking action as citizens and consumers. Isn't it high time to apply similar due diligence in all that is actually most intrinsic to wellbeing?

 

1 Know thyself: A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. In the present usage, a stimulus must be more than any experience or Empirical sensory input whatsoever. Indeed, a stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. The sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different. But a stimulus that any less dramatically stimulates, is just not much of a stimulus. And stimulus struggle is the perpetual striving to regulate, to engage and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal, from the environment, for staving off boredom. And social Stimulus struggle is the ongoing striving to regulate, to engage and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of social stimulation and arousal, from the social environment,  loneliness.

 

My own happy times, in retrospect all that meaningful or not, have been the most highly entertaining, have been times of optimal stimulus struggle and arousal state. As to the assignment of meaning, perhaps that correlates with Axiological particulars as to the nature of whatever intrinsic motivations gratified via the specific stimulus appetites gratified.

 

Circumstances and situations of wellbeing are signified and made recognizable by their correlation with optimal kind and degree of arousal. We are all intrinsically motivated by appetites for social stimuli and interaction, and suffer in any deprivation thereof. We are all driven by such intrinsic social appetites, often frustrated and underserved. There are no extrinsic reward systems that can ever fill that void. And the first step in preparation towards meeting said needs must be to express them instead of bottling them up forever unexplored. In those most famous words of Socrates: "An unexamined life is not fit to be lived by a human being." Uniquely specific controlling desires, triggering or eliciting all of the urgency and focus of stimulus struggle, are the elements of individually characteristic motivation; all manner of essential drives worthy to to ponder, discover and better understand.

 

Any two or more people who can discuss any and all question of what even makes anything at all interesting or not, how so and why, actually begin to overcome boredom. And if only questions abstractly of the dimensions of loneliness, and also of situation, of concrete circumstances of loneliness, are at all deemed interesting enough to include in discourse, then low and behold, such articulate expression and discovery of loneliness, in any measure may even begin to alleviate said loneliness. Nevertheless, let no salve of bogus support group "sharing" ever suffice to pacify us. Rather, let fearless deliberation only whet the appetite for rigorous feasibility study and strategic planning towards action in close collaboration and even true friendship.

 

So take time and think. Never let urgency press you into rash decisions. Even without any other or further gratification, the very engagement in struggle, just the outlet at all in and of itself, may at all be observed to help stave off the passive and helpless suffering of painful need and deprivation. Among aspects of such struggle, desire in its own right can even be pleasurable. Indeed, desire may inspire solitary intellectual exploration that is also uplifting, or better still, Dialectics together, purposeful and substantive, which therefore begins breaking loneliness. As per Maslow, when the most practicalities of basic survival needs and even comfort have been met, their may at last be resources and attention to spare upon any quest for meaning. At such juncture, perhaps among the strongest controlling desires will always be from among whatever intrinsic social stimulus hungers for human interaction. The questions at hand, of Positive Psychology and authentic wellbeing, should begin to elicit individual values, wishes and vision of Eudemonia, of the best that life can offer, interpersonally, towards interaction of optimal social stimulation.

 

Beginning in logically leading Dialectic:

 

Would you perhaps agree that in stimulus struggle, we are all driven by intrinsic social needs, motivating stimulus appetites, often frustrated and underserved? Might  you agree, further, that such intrinsic social needs are appetites for whatever most preferred personal interaction, relationship and communication individually that is therefore most highly valued? Would you further agree that precisely such individually preferred and most highly valued personal interaction, relationship and communication are therefore significantly instrumental in the elevation of individual emotional state? Would you agree that there are no extrinsic reward systems that can compensate and ever fill that void of deprivation and frustration? Would you agree that robust gratification of intrinsic social stimulus appetites is instrumental to authentic wellbeing? Would you then agree that an interesting and productive first step in preparation towards better fulfillment of individual frustrated and underserved intrinsic social appetites, might be simply to express and to define such all too often frustrated stimulus appetites and needs more specifically? But breaking away from point by point howsoever reasoned and therefore expected responses in logically leading Dialectic and instead into surprising open ended Dialectic, what if actually one at all disagrees? Answer: Then whatever else, FoolQuest.com might not appeal as suitable for you personally, gentle gentle reader.

If however, all the above is agreed, then in summation: We are all driven by intrinsic social needs, stimulus appetites, so often frustrated and underserved. And there are no extrinsic reward systems that can compensate and ever fill that void. Therefore the  first step in preparation towards meeting individual frustrated and underserved intrinsic social needs, so essential to authentic wellbeing, will be simply to express and to define such all too often frustrated stimulus hungers more specifically, for whatever most preferred personal interaction, relationship and communication individually most highly valued and that therefore best elevate individual emotional state.

 

Indeed, of course, as the saying goes, life is the journey, and not just whatever destination or achievement. And yet, Heaven is an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. In In 'The Conquest Of Happiness' 'Chapter 1: What makes people unhappy?' Bertrand Russell writes: "The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other" But perhaps Russell is too quick to dismiss as mere fixation, whatever one's favored, most valued and cherished kind of unmet satisfaction. Instead, there might be here an important personal Axiology, relevant self-knowledge of what one craves most dearly. Can such various satisfactions be investigated and categorized and then enineered?

 

Who says that even the most unique and particular individually treasured desire or satisfaction must by that token alone, be something completely esoteric and at best symbolic, sublimation and advertising mystique entirely irrelevant to every other howsoever more cogent and legitimate consideration? Quite the contrary, whatever unique yearning as even to inspire unusual and profound meaningful personal understanding, is often entirely relevant and crucial to all else in life. Knowing what one wants is nothing to be so blithely invalidated under whatever heteronomy. Perhaps before jumping to such dismissive posture or conclusions, further Axiological exploration may be in order after all:   

 

How well can we ever hope to understand ourselves? Who are you really, and what do you want most? Those two questions remain most broad. The investigation of any and all favorable circumstances, actual or hypothetical, is to understand and recognize opportunity as arising. In the case at hand, together to cultivate an expert knowledge and understanding regarding each our own needs and desires, the appetites driving stimulus struggle which is the ongoing striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation, including social stimulation, from the environment: What are any of these human needs and desires? Can they even be identified? Or must our deepest truest most Intrinsic motivations remain unknown and forever mysterious? Which from among any broadest range of social stimuli, appetites or satisfactions generally, narrowed down to anything more specific, calls out for selection as as any especially interesting focus? Which appeals to you, gentle reader? Which is your own longed for favorite but chronically deprived satisfaction? The question invites any range of conceivable answers. Select from among any favorite momentary social stimulus appetites and corresponding satisfactions even however starved and deprived over time in life, and then extrapolate:

When in the imagination, one yearns for some or other most particular satisfaction and whatever corresponding specific social stimulus appetite, that singular glittering value looming so large, comes to assume all of the luster of the very key to life, expected then to unlock every other path to fulfillment in turn, like dominos falling in a row. Can any particular desire or stimulus sought for from the social environment, truly become the key to life or turning point, in any sort of upward spiral or virtuous cycle, the way one might imagine and passionately yearn for it so to be? Or are all such notions no more than irredeemable pipedream and hand waving? To be most ambitious: Which, if any, of the various intrinsically needed social stimuli in particular, best and most responsively trigger or elicit or systematically catalyze others in turn? Indeed, which, if any such needs in particular, might then be deemed most pivotal, suggesting promise as fulcrum to leverage satisfaction of the others in turn? In individual experience and processing of human interaction, which social stimulus appetites among others, when pursued and gratified, might help liberate the interaction of social stimulus struggle, individually and collectively, into any constructive trajectory towards more overall fulfillment? And how might any such a process ever possibly unfold? Just name any specific social stimulus of which there may be an individual appetite momentarily or ling term satisfaction over time: What might result in any localized milieu or social environment wherein whatever chosen particular variety of social stimuli are to be more adequately exchanged?

 

Indeed, such tantalizing probortunity (problem solving opportunity) might tend to present in expanding Gestalt of multiple and varied factors in complex interrelationships comprising a greater whole irreducible merely to any sum of whatever its components. Indeed, real outcomes often result from anything more the likes of karma and confluence of circumstances, than neatly in accordance with plot, sequence and the linearity characteristic of human cognition. How then if at all, might any desired result ever be hoped to actually fall into place? Or is it all just too complicated? Undaunted, human beings have weighed whatever options and decided upon our various preferences via scenario planning however inadequately anticipating alternative possible future outcomes from past experience in the world with one another and of our own motivated reactions thereto, since the very dawning of awareness of action, reaction, cause and effect comprising Motivation Reaction Units of Social Transaction among other events as they fit into any greater and longer picture, and even of duration being: the experienced passage of time itself.

 

To wit: What happens in following through even from sheer flights of fantasy into any more rigorous thought experiment and plausibility in imagining, choosing and trying out different conceivable desires and social stimuli, singularly or in combination, for their hypothetical cascade of effects? Or contrariwise, what happens by instead beginning from whatever imagined desired results, conditions or happy ending, of optimized stimulus struggle, and imagining either whatever fortunate events or any deliberate social engineering process, all in reverse, winding back the clock and working backwards towards whatever their conceivable inciting events, happenstantial or deliberate? And either way, what if any cogent Empirical observation of life might then be marshaled in evidentiary support? After all, in recollection people often do cite quite specific factors behind turning points experienced.

 

To reiterate: Towards social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine cheating by just scripting actors like non player characters in a videogame simulation, in order thus to produce the intended experience, superficially. Then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that actors will not be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction that may ever conceivably be scripted may be elicited by whatever situation, more organically. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments first to arouse neglected stimulus appetites, and thence begin to satisfy hither to deprived and personally valued satisfactions in life. A possible step-by-step design procedure is elaborated in further detail in this design exercise. 

 

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? Simplistic heteronomy to conformism, in craven manipulative exploitation of insecure helpless panic in the face of uncertainty, and in blithe anti-intellectual glorification of an unexamined life as the only straight and narrow path to belonging, assures us that everything we will ever truely need has already been provided for, worry free and without a second thought. Would this were ever actually  so! Alas however, that in actuality heteronomy only functions to traumatize, atrophy and undermine all competence, mentality and opportunity for intrinsically fulfilling interaction characteristic of autonomy, obstructing intrinsically fulfilling interaction in life by producing a frustrating and debilitating social minefield with all manner of impossible and discouraging hoops to jump through. And democracy only protects and guarantees freedom of the rugged pursuit of happiness, even howsoever abandoned entirely to ones own devices. But beyond only the most theoretical freedom and the pursuit of happiness only in sheer abstract principle, the Capability Approach is an imperative to better equip and more congenially facilitate real freedom in any practical sense, howsoever as the individual has reason to see fit, towards whatever they may deem important to do or to become in the striving for intrinsically fulfilling interaction in life. And some contribution towards better facilitation of this very quest is broadly the objective for the present design exercise, a unique inquiry in Positive Psychology and strategic application towards the attainment of human flourishing by close collaboration reaching out to one another for the tools we need. And it all begins from thought experiment in the social engineering of optimized social stimulus struggle.

 

2.The next challenge is most generally as to how to put whatever we can have learned above, into practice: Because of all such all too often frustrated and underserved intrinsic social needs even as scrutinized just previously, we all therefore understand how any more suitable social environment or context for meeting said needs, indeed conceivably even at all more systematically, more readily and easily triggers, elicits and brings out ones best, when lonely determination and struggle long fail and the imposition of behavioral structure only exacerbates dystress. The point is to begin by even imagining anything better, even just for its own joy. -But also towards the maximization of every benefit, productively. Let's give it a try together!

 

Therefore, the proposed next step will be engagement in convivial free exchange and close collaboration among equals, coming together in thought experiment: Thought experiment wherein each will imagine and begin designing an intentional social environment, situation or setting, optimally tailored for meeting ones own frustrated and underserved impulse hungers of intrinsic social needs. Then let us together pose questions and search for any common ground, compatibility for conceivable synthesis into a concept meeting shared or complementary needs, deliberately.

 

The social engineering question to the current agenda: Picture and describe: To the extent that they are understood, how can whatever known favorable circumstances best be cultivated and even duplicated at will? How best might individuals such as ourselves together design, construct and deliberately orchestrate any way of life more conducive to all that we are all missing so? -Perhaps even some "ideal" or optimal tailor made intentional milieu (social environment) for explicit purpose of any such better responsive and optimally fulfilling interaction..

 

Towards social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine cheating by just scripting actors like non player characters in videogame simulation, in order thereby to produce the intended experience, superficially. Then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that actors will not be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction that may ever conceivably be scripted may be elicited by whatever situation, more organically. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments to arouse neglected stimulus appetites and begin to satisfy hither to deprived and personally valued satisfactions in life. A possible step-by-step design procedure is elaborated in further detail in this design exercise.

 

3. If all goes well, with any specific vision of "ideal" or optimal conditions in best fulfillment of intrinsic social stimulus hungers, now at last coming into focus, general strategic questions of implementation may follow, for planning to begin in earnest. Then we might even finally begin at all knowing what to do, even somewhat generally. One thing should remain clear: Even however distantly and impersonally, far ranging influence out into the world at large is often crucial for access to vital resources and connections. But intrinsic social stimulus hungers, so often frustrated and underserved, are not addressed indirectly across however many degrees of separation in the great chain of acquaintanceship. Rather intrinsic social stimulus hungers are gratified via engagement in direct interpersonal interaction, an event more readily occurring in the social context of attachment and relationships, often fostered by participation in proximate immediate social circles most local to one's own person.

 

All such typically arise by circumstance and propinquity, conceived even somewhat haphazardly. But occasionally working groups among any other intentional and purposeful collectives, are even thoughtfully crafted, tailor made, devised, recruited and organized intentionally, events are planned, and interaction even cultivated if not actually orchestrated. And to such ends as ever required or desired, from the previous numbered step, we might even dare hope to glean a better and more rounded picture or scenario of all whereof we are so deprived and missing so. Let us examine the nature and substance whereof, in whatever conceivable "ideal" or optimal conditions, situation or circumstances in any detail, ranging from the most intimate and immediate to the most broadly sweeping conditions in society. Wishing alone however, will change nothing, but just leaping into action without deliberation, is often counterproductive, running headlong into problems that should have been better anticipated and thought through beforehand as how best to accomplish any task and achieve its objective.

 

Hence, the optimistically projected next social engineering questions to the current agenda, the nuts and bolts, then must concern pertinent needs assessment to the endeavor at hand

 

By what implementation strategy best to bring about and then to sustain whatever such "ideal" or optimal conditions in best fulfillment of intrinsic social stimulus hungers?

 

What comes first? Can it reasonably be assumed that aforesaid strategic implementation must begin most locally proximate to one's own person, indeed precisely as herein proposed, towards the forging of some intentional community: immediate intentional social circle or group of concerted deliberation and close collaboration? Or else, by what alternative strategy and for what reason at all otherwise? Indeed, as ever applicable and desirable: By what expansion and outreach, how best to organize and network however more widely out into society at large? And to what further end?

 

And by what Epistemological Methodology of research, due diligence and uncompromising feasibility study, might viable answers for all the above best be discovered and then developed in order ever to be acted upon and carried out most effectively?

 

4. If all continues to go well, an action  agenda for actually getting things done, must eventually be forged and ratified. Systematic concerted effort at ongoing research, every due diligence and continued feasibility study, will all be necessary, pursuant to further more detailed planning of specific strategic implementation, with cost, effort, difficulty and benefit projections. As tangible objectives emerge, responsibilities must be delegated and interdependent tasks devised, assigned and scheduled.

 

Gentle reader, jot down any thoughts of your own and share then. I, for one, am quite interested. Because all of the above is no solitary work sheet exercise as are ubiquitous, but something more rare, an agenda for a Dialectic of strategy and feasibility study into action. So let's talk it over, together. And you might just discover that this is what actually helps, where the usual has been ineffectual and consistently fails. Care to try?

Join in! Post publicly to the in order to help draw others into the conversation, or elsefor anything too private. Talking about FoolQuest.com anywhere else online instead, will help promotion, but then please be sure to post a backlink thereto from the here.

 

Beware malagenda! To quote Ernest Hemingway: "Never confuse movement with action." Indeed, as Thomas Carlyle said: “Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight." A true cogent and crucial action  agenda, beyond mere commotion and busy work, must be intentionally purposeful. And the purpose at hand is nothing less momentous than the satisfaction of intrinsic social needs, so key to wellbeing. And intrinsic social needs are met in social context. But not every social context satisfies. And for many people, satisfactory social context is often nowhere to be found. How then can satisfactory social context be engineered from scratch? -A process and support system for collaboration among equals, that will be not only feasible and operant, but congenial in its own right..

 

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? Seeking answer to that question might be guided by first striving to analyze and identify underserved and frustrated intrinsic social needs. So, gentle reader: What are you missing so? Alas, exhortations to follow your bliss, are mostly lip service ringing hollow. Picturing life as we might wish it to be, we are then inevitably left to ones own devices in a world where the compliant making do are many, and the free thinking are lonely. For all but a handful of the most capable and resilient, the result is often confusion, frustration, inertia and inadequacy. This is a systematic waste of talent. It does not work because it cannot work, and this is by design. Only actual collaboration among equals, so unheard of, so taboo, can even begin building the missing web of support to afford the realistic wherewithal, transparently, to even begin doing things any differently. And it is to this end that the preceding sequentially numbered agenda points, questions and tasks, are proffered as the Dialectical core agenda of FoolQuest.com embracing the challenge of Eudemonia, for discussion and ratification, particularly towards feasibility study of different proposed possible strategies towards implementation.

 

In any productive and congenial Socratic Method, all such superficially plausible but intentionally deceptive and confusing fallacious and specious reasoning and equivocation and perhaps most especially: deliberately ambiguous and presumptively damaging linguistically leading questions such as are deliberately ambiguous so that any answer can be twisted against the one who gives it, are all well out of bounds.

 

The Dialectic of Socrates legitimately follows two modes, either logically leading questions in sequence, arguing and double-checking to discover error or disagreement, point by point, in rational polemical persuasion towards an intended conclusion, or else open ended questioning with no preset destination, in free exploration bringing all into question. Leading question may veer off into open ended question at any time, because of an unexpected answer or counter question. The scrutiny by leading question begins by taking any coherent step by step argument, and questioning each point, indeed rephrasing each point as an even rhetorical question. Whereas open ended questioning proceeds by raising any question, and then further questioning each answer or response in turn, in order to expose just how much we take for granted and how little we actually know. This is enlightenment by refutation. Socratic Wisdom is any grasp of the scope of ones own ignorance.

 

This method of inquiry is renowned as the dialectical method: the asking of a series of interlocking and progressive logically leading questions. Step by step, by framing every each reasoned argumentative point not as an assertion, but in the form of a question seeking assent, then from forthcoming reply it will be possible for the interlocutor better to discern if the other party clearly follows or agrees. Error detection is also served along with ongoing miscommunication repair and clarification of disagreement. Also, by every inevitable deviation from script, open ended exploration ensues.

 

Begin then, like Socrates, by asking yourself what matters most: We all routinely head online for research into all manner of individual personal and collective societal needs, taking action as citizens and consumers. Isn't it high time to apply similar due diligence in all that is actually most intrinsic to wellbeing?

 

The preceding social engineering design exercise challenges perspicacity and triggers imagination open Dialectic in order to elicit surprising new answers and strategies. Indeed, the four agenda points of the design exercise while leading in a raft of guiding assumptions and direction, are still open ended in solicitation and cultivation of hitherto entirely undreamt of possibilities. And yet they are also contrived to pave the way, in leading Dialectical prelude, to existing proposals here on FoolQuest.com, especially Creativity Should be Social, conceived as an umbrella for much else. 

So: Why aren't the preceding numbered steps of intentional social environment obvious and common practice?

Answer: Because the Sheeple so willingly perceive the spectacle presented us all at face value, so blithely accepting that we are all here primarily for competent service within our rôles towards the established grand designs of heteronomy, each and all abandoned to our own devices and taking no autonomous initiative individually in personal lives lead, and never rising up together. Because we are at every turn, systematically and heteronymously propagandized into believing that cooperation is a function of subordination, all for our own good of course, and therefore quite impossible among equals. And that therefore, open resistance is futile because one way or another, autonomy must ever remain secret and solitary. Because we are misguided into priorities not our own and to the expense of intrinsic social needs and compatibility. Because social contract is perceived as something that we simply are born into, not an evolving understanding to be reached between one another in life as it is lead by us each. Because therefore we take the blame individually instead of collectively taking responsibility. It is so easy to miss the obvious because we are discouraged by subtext taboo, first of all from questioning authority or convention via thoughtful analysis and research, or secondly, by taking practical action, and most of all, especially from any autonomous and capable integration thereof. Because the entire malignant malaise of our lives as mapped out for us, is so manipulatively contrived as rationalization and obfuscation diversionary from the truth of ubiquitous norms of skilled incompetence and learned helplessness of heteronomy.

 

In the words of George Orwell: “The main motive for 'nonattachment' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual is hard work.” And indeed, is there anything more arduous and less playful than social life, nowadays? And as shall be seen, all, paradoxically, from such depressive dread of seriousness and focus. And as Mark R. J. Lavoie said: “Life dies inside a person when there are no others willing to befriend him.”

 

In truth, crimestop, the bored and uninterested inhibition or taboo barring entry into salient discussion upon matters of obvious concern, can be inspired less by bad faith so much as by simple despair and sense of futility. And only to look around us, there is indeed much to despair and no end of futility. But there may also still be hope. FoolQuest.com seeks the barest beginning in rising to the challenge that lies before us in life. Therefore, in the words of Henri-Louis Bergson: "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought!" 

 

Again, Spoiler alert! Gentle readers, unmet friends: You may prefer to skip the following examples for now, and instead see what you can each and/or together come up with by yourselves, anything entirely different and uninfluenced.

 

 

What then emerges as most sound and worthy personal investment of precious time and attention?

What and how much might one personally invest, simply in order to achieve better gratifying and more fulfilling human connection? And what would one not? And how to work out  more optimal investment strategy? Increase all such interaction as to enhance value, and decrease such as remains only wasteful or actually detrimental. To begin with, quite simply, people could just be a lot more friendly! If only we dared! If only we knew whom to trust.

To reiterate: Eudemonia and autonomy, best in life, remains the meaningful and wise investment of individual time, attention and even creativity, into optimal reciprocal engagement, straightforward helpful and free flowing non-zero-sum Transaction that consistently accrues the pleasurable highest return in like kind: Specifically, value maximization in time, effort, attention and even creativity, for everyone involved and with highest signal to noise ratio. Indeed, the very opposite of boredom and loneliness. Hence the most sound investment of precious attention in one another.

But how? In answer, to quote Dr. Matthias Mehl: [In experimental Empirical observation of happy people] “...substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people." Indeed as Socrates so famously declares: “An unexamined life is not worth the living for a human being.” Because capable human relationship, especially true friendship, indeed meaning in the very deepest sense, psychological visibility, Eudemonia, optimal reciprocal engagement, all these and so much more, arise as byproduct indeed of authentic attention, of often tabooed and sometimes emotionally risky purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication. And categorically, never otherwise. Accept no substitutes!

This holds true as manifest and self-evident. And all because of certain lamentable hallmarks definitional of the cult of socialization and mortal terror so vested therein. All  such panic and mendacity remaining as they do, nigh tautologically antithetical to the genuine close involvement ever essential of autonomy, values and true friendship. And these agonizingly inattentive petty small minded evils include: heteronomy, futility, meaningless mediocrity, craven social skills and hierarchically predictive social cognition, ever facile calculating sycophancy of emotionally distant simple minded popularity and social success. Ever such persists as the inrush only filling the void so hatefully bereft of tabooed purpose and substance. Plain dysfunction obfuscated by unquestioned social expectation under the spell of dull witted propaganda. All in a milieu of prevailing anti-intellectualism (hostility and mistrust towards intellect, intellectuals, intellectualism, and deprecation of culture whatsoever) but perhaps more precisely designated as: anti-intraception (a discomfort or opposition in very principle, toward the subjective, the imaginative, the tender minded). Nattering and folly all whereof, or so we must resolve, that those who matter pay no mind, and those who do mind, don't matter.

Under autonomy, there may be less resistance to change as such, than resistance to being changed by coercion and manipulation. Everyone compares themselves to others, whatever ones own situation to that of others, even merely as any sort of a bench mark. But who might best serve as the most salutary subject for such comparison? Precisely whom might one most productively compare oneself with?

Rôle modeling happy people?So much easier said than done!By contrast with average ordinary nebbish mopes the likes of I and thou, Empirically, cutting edge experimental observation reveals that trustworthy and respectful happy people whom we would all do so very well to emulate, if only we knew how somehow to function that much more capably. But can even these happy people themselves explain it?

   

Perhaps. For as John Cleese expounds: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.” Indeed happy people have been Empirically discovered to talk more seriously and thrive in autonomy, prosper and succeed. Individual, opinionated, together Dialectically engaging in creative endeavor, prioritizing all that brings them greatest happiness. And as according to painstaking objective experimental measurement, all with significantly less small talk. Clearly. such happy people are indeed canny investors of time and attention together. Subversive tantalization all thereby, of true paradigm shift perhaps one day even going viral:

Because everything as above that has been learned about the doings of such happy people, so flagrantly flies in the face of prevailing common wisdom in expectations towards chameleonic braindead superficial popularity and social success. Clearly, popularity and social success are actually so profoundly bored, lonely, alienated and unfulfilled, even when behaviorally operant on their own cretin terms. Indeed, by and large, psychotherapists see two kinds of patients: Those who remain unhappy because they just don't fit in, and those who are so unhappy because of the ego dystonic price that they must pay in order to fit in. All so onerously that they must attend to, and all so dear that they must foreswear.

Therefore, to quote W. W. Jacobs: “Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it.” For as Terry Pratchett ads: “You never know who will be listening.” Or in the words of Yasmin Mogahed: “Be careful about wanting what others have. There is always a price. Perhaps God didn’t give it to you, because He knew you wouldn’t be able to pay it.” Indeed as Laurie Halse Anderson cautions: “There's always a catch.” Moreover, as Colin Cunningham further cautions: “Be even more careful what you work for because you will get it even more quickly.” And make no mistake, indeed superficial harmony remains alienating Ecclesiastical vanity and sore travail! And so, to continue in quest of better and less dire investment of time and attention, instead more congenial towards authentic wellbeing:

In organization and implementation, collective endeavors of intentional community, or indeed initially any more modestly, intentional social circles or groups, can be socially engineered, organized and designed even into paradigm shift, so as to foster whatever most desired interaction between participants, perhaps one day even going viral. That is, first of all, as we have just seen, in so far as such cherished values will be known and decided. Alas, all too often mythologized and blithely assumed. Thence a tragic history of dogmatic lunatic ideology, doctrine, faith, dedicatedly persistent error and colossal failure. And indeed there's the rub! And ubiquitously desperate truism of social success and popularity be damned.

   

For in such prevailing ignorance of ever mysterious Eudemonia and the inestimable fine fortune and right action of those aforementioned happy people, such remains the calamity, as Socrates so famously declares, of the unexamined life, not worth the living for a human being. Because even the barest due diligence at systematic doubt, criticality, research and thinking things through, makes every difference on so many levels. Indeed, as it turns out, and believe it or not, in accordance indeed with such ancient wisdom from the greatest sages of old, all as rediscovered by bleeding edge happiness science, thinking converges upon one salient point: And to Hell with all knee-jerk heteronomy to the cult of socialization! For as it turns out, most heady and best in life, may well be such vibrant autonomy as uniquely expressed in Dialectic of collaborative brainstorming among equals towards creative solution finding. Actually, its a blast! And surely the more so, embracing the values of drama, endless possibility and disruptive innovation. Thus in particular application to new venture creation (various business startup) undertaken concurrently with highly original serious collaborative fiction writing. All as according to hypothesis and social engineering proposal herein advanced to the agenda. Any takers?

 

Hypothesis of greatest probortunity

Why do we serve one another so poorly, if we don't like it? Why in such Absurd Existential futility must we cast about for connection in the great wide world, when here we are, I and thou? To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication are intentional and can't be faked by going through the motions or by any counterfeit of conditional strokes, because purposeful interaction and substantive communication are intrinsically motivated by meaningfully engaged attention. Because we live in such a tightly strained attention economy. And hence, the probortunity at hand: The problem most dire, therefore presenting the opportunity most propitious. And thank you, gentler reader. Because now more than ever, in the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

People may hunger for sympathetic supportive community and even guidance. But not all such is the same, and often amounts to very little and pointless. Therefore, for anything different and better than what we have already known, let us then together test the very hypothesis that even full engagement in analytic yet strategic deliberation together as proposed herein, will already begin to lift thriving spirits. Because Eudemonia and autonomy, best in life, remains the meaningful and wise investment of individual time, attention and even creativity, into optimal reciprocal engagement, straightforward helpful and free flowing non-zero-sum Transaction that consistently accrues the pleasurable highest return in like kind: Specifically, value maximization in time, effort, attention and even creativity, for everyone involved and with highest signal to noise ratio. Indeed, the very opposite of boredom and loneliness. Hence the most sound investment of precious attention in one another. A true paradigm shift perhaps one day even going viral.  And because moreover, philosophical pure creativity of story telling expands the mind, while subversive innovation, which is applied creativity of disruptive entrepreneurial new venture creation (various business startup), directly complicates and advances the sprawling plot of real life drama throughout our world. But even all such heady exaltation alone, private inner freedom and adventure of lofty original thought, soon pales to emptiness, with no one with whom to share the adventure of implementation in reality, embarkation upon the all too uncertain real life Hero's Journey, forging true friendship in endless possibility of attempting anything really cool together.

   

But whereas fiction writing, remaining entirely hypothetical and imaginary, only needs to seem valid (plausible and logically consistency to premise, an Epistemological Methodological criteria of critical preference in Scientific Method), innovation, plan of action or futuring scenario, bridging abstract principle (generally why) and concrete application (specifically how), in deliberation analytic yet strategic, all further turn upon rigorous feasibility study in Empirical objective reality. Because validity alone, defined as logical inner self consistency of proposition, can never become transitive to truth, truth being defined by Sir Karl Popper as correspondence to reality in assertions. And as G. E. Moore contends: “You can't get an 'is' from an 'ought.'” And yet, it remains a sly trope of manipulative and deceptive propaganda, to fob of evocative illustration and rationalization, as though evidentiary as practical demonstration. But as Lau Tzu observes, beautiful but pernicious lies and myths become more persuasive than ugly truth. Nevertheless, even if vivid narrative depiction seems to make appealing sense, it still might not actually be so. Pollyanna willful positivity be damned! Pleasure Principle and wishful thinking must be governed by Reality Principle. And after critical preference, comes reality testing, indeed planning and feasibility study.

    

Because well before any prayer of responsible Capitalization, outreach in any such a vibrant project proposal must inspire and help recruit a varied range of trustworthy capable talent, knowledge and skill sets, in mutual respect, to join in and participate on spec and all from scratch. Yes, even from the most embryonic first concept inception or: "kitchen table" stage or phase, through management team formation, business or project planning and feasibility study, indeed if all goes well, through Capitalization and all the way to successful implementation and expansion. To be followed by whatever dénouement of exit strategy ever as applicable. A steep learning curve together. Thus genuine autonomy in meeting ones needs for the dignity of capable interaction with even adequately responsible others and thereby together changing our story. Hence entrepreneurial serial failure, trial and error unto success. All perseverant bold and unreconciled before even the most Postmodern Existential Absurdity.

The cult charlatanry of Pollyanna willful positivity and thin skinned Anti-Critical Bias, are by no means constrained to aspiring entrepreneurship and life coaching. Indeed, precisely such willful malignant optimism remains of course the magical mainstay of all religion. But especially online, there exist also what amount to bogus support groups of unflagging encouragement for fiction writers, a travesty wherein salient critique is vehemently deplored and actively discouraged, indeed even actually forbidden and penalized. Ever` strident malagenda: Utter denial, both too serious and yet, not serious enough. Fortunately, there are also many fine serious fiction writers' groups, wherein those aforementioned serious albeit ever self-reliant and solitary writers ever so studiously break isolation in order indeed to exchange critique and advance their venerable art, the discipline of the writing craft. But while there has been an impressive flowering online, of even encyclopedic collaborative World Building, shared setting and background for individual fiction writing, otherwise there appear to be precious few if any communities for hitherto unprecedented serious collaborative fiction writing actually as such. No open ongoing genuine and intensive writer's bull session online as herein proposed anon, let alone likewise any brainstorming the more ambitious and directly consequential. Only those insular co-validating ninnies who have together afflicted collaborative fiction writing with such a poor reputation among those aforementioned notoriously solitary and self-reliant serious fiction writers. And serious people generally, will only find ourselves one way or another, all the more isolated amid membership of those thin skinned wishy-washy conformist consensus communities, granfalloons of the unserious, the cult of socialization, no matter whatever shared interest or in any field of endeavor. Thus does resistance so readily become helpless, so eagerly co-opted by culture of oppression, dull witless dishonesty, cruelty and weakness.

The possibilities remain endless! Concurrently with highly original serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming, entrepreneurship for the rest of us as envisaged and proposed herein, the outreach agenda of new venture creation (various business startup) and (pre) incubation, pertains to the heady ambitious and complex multitask interdependent interdisciplinary process of developing and transforming whatever new idea, innovation or technology, into a business of whatever kind (profit or nonprofit, traditional, Social Entrepreneurship or even just perhaps grassroots politics and activism), indeed even at long last, filling the yawning gap in support for entrepreneurship for the rest of us neophytes and wannabes at our own pace, that can even conceivably succeed, and therefore just might ever possibly attract trustworthy capable talent, let along ever investment of Venture Capital.

For to quote Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”  Indeed, not just the wish, but the will, in deliberation analytic yet strategic all in accordance with ancient wisdom of the greatest sages of old as rediscovered in bleeding edge happiness science, FoolQuest.com stands in staunch advocacy of authentic wellbeing as to be purposefully brought about via interstitial social engineering design. Actually as pursuant to overarching agenda of considered and intentional human interaction. Indeed, of peak experience achievable via open Dialectical collaboration among equals in brainstorming toward creative solution finding. And thus

Eudemonia of optimal social and intellectual stimulus struggle.

   

For as John Cleese expounds: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.” Indeed, by very nature, creativity by far exceeds any merely solitary individual trait or characteristic. First of all, there is no investigation so concrete as to become penetrable without abstraction and creativity. All science begins with unjustified hypothesis, sheer unfounded conjecture, only then subject to critical preference, let alone then Empirical reality testing. But more to the point, creativity, playful, pleasurably engaged and meaningful creativity as epitomized in collaborative brainstorming and solution finding, ever persists as uniquely gregarious and intelligent human motivating social and intellectual stimulus appetite of hideous inbred mutation, engorged human cerebrality. (All as consequent in ‘The Survival of the Sickest.’ Not to digress.)

    

Because, as in accordance with the Arousal Theory of Motivation, all living beings are perpetually engaged in stimulus struggle, which is the ongoing striving of all living things, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. Indeed, quantitatively and qualitatively optimal investment and exchange of time and attention together that we all so crave, in synergy so crucial to authentic well being. And as propounded in the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology in concurrence with evolutionary neuroscience, no human being can remain so woebegone, powerless, frustrated, unfulfilled, bored, lonely and alienated when (alas as all so routinely and systematically oppressed and therefore far too  infrequently) so pleasurably and meaningfully engaged among equals; indeed, optimally and reciprocally so ebulliently together sharing eustress and sustainable euphoria of creative tension in brainstorming towards creative solution finding forging true friendship attempting anything really cool together.

      

Because: Pleasure + engagement + meaning = intrinsic fulfillment.

    

Imagine then therein, a new social contract and social order, a fundamental paradigm shift in such flagrant subversion of hierarchy into as collaboration among equals in brainstorming and solution finding as the ongoing default, and whatever kind of responsible authority, even however ad hoc, the special case, a fall back position reserved for and resorted to only as and when the need whereof ever actually arising. Thus an end to routine status quo of hierarchical dominance, that allows so poignantly and fondly remembered collaboration under low hierarchical distance (near equality) in creative solution finding, only ever at all, temporarily and all too  infrequently, when deemed absolutely necessary to transient crisis or opportunity. Or workshops and such that end with no continuity or follow up. What is needed the instead, is new and lasting and ongoing institution and paradigm shift, perhaps even such as herein delineated.