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    “There's hostility to lying, and there should be.” — Bob Woodward
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters
cannot be trusted with important matters.”
—
Albert Einstein
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“There's hostility to lying, and there should be.” — Bob Woodward
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters
cannot be trusted with important matters.”
—
Albert Einstein
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As Paul Raven observes: “Science Fiction isn’t dying at all; it’s metastasizing!”
Navigating bad faith and cross-purpose from all corners: Heightened drama, with outcome in doubt, arrives at last, into satisfying climax and neatly summed up denouement, tying up all dangling plot threads and loose ends. But real world ever dissipating dramatic impasse may often better reflect Postmodern anticlimax of Absurd anti-drama and disappointment. Alas indeed, that in life much as in fiction, passive hostility, needless drama, conflict and betrayal, the proverbial rug metaphorically pulled figuratively out from under, are nigh inevitable for living and breathing protagonists such as we, in the ongoing struggle ever rewriting our own story. Indeed, among all other untrustworthy grifters, predators and ne'er-do-wells, beware the false visionary, even with a detailed great idea, who at first will be flattered when others join in, but then ever haughty and jealous even as progress begins. And in the end, preferring all of nothing, to part of something, no less agitated and self-destructive than, in false attribution to Aesop, that fabled scorpion crossing the flowing stream upon upon the frog's back, they will snatch defeat out from the jaws of victory! And it will sting. Just ask that foolish frog, trusting in professed reasonable sense! "Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath." [Solon.] Indeed, eventually, and soon enough, some halfhearted neurotic who has built themselves up as seemingly so indispensable, will stall, procrastinate, drag their feet, instigate and misbehave. Or perhaps even a supposed Angel investor, like some sly lothario, exploitatively keeping the mark perpetually on hold their own options open. Indeed, demanding pure and exclusive fidelity while refusing to commit and continually playing the field. One way or another, the schlemiel ever keeping the schlimazel Waiting for Godot. Wiser likewise to play ones cards close to the vest and cultivate every option. Indeed, in the words of Alain de Botton: “One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.” Therefore, in order to bring about any satisfying resolution, by killjoying all such conniving malignant Narcissists, bullies and compulsive saboteurs, of their controlling Sadistic satisfaction, their narcissistic supply as it is called, intention and contingency planning for such all too common crisis and tribulation, must be expected, deliberated together, and considered well beforehand. Beware: Assholes never play the zero-sum game or embrace reciprocal advantage. Bullies love bullying more than they love honest profit, and cowards undermine even the most golden opportunity. Therefore it remains ever important always to cultivate integrity and righteous expectations, whereby to discern intention and motivation, for good or ill, from another's action and conduct, thereby to pierce any false facade and treacherous ongoing exploitation. And despite all prior emotional investment, never to extend the benefit of the doubt beyond reasonable doubt, and to believe what you see, when others show themselves for who they are. And that is where responsibility, and therefore honor, lies. As George Eliot ponders: “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” Indeed, in the rebuke of Duc de la Rochefoucauld: “It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.” And so, if in doubt, leave the ball in the other's court. Let them make good, should they so choose. But extend yourself no further. Swallow the shame, the panic and disappointment. Investigate. When sympathy is abused, seek wise council. Do not become an enabler. Hold them accountable. Remember that high emotion, neurotic madness and folly so deserving of compassion, are scarcely less dangerous than the most contemptible malice, if not actually worse. Suffice that there often needs to be a shake down that the team must survive and regroup, together undeterred, back to the proverbial drawing board, and begin seeing what can be salvaged in order for resilient serious people to continue unabated. Indeed, the business plan crafted and shaped around whatever touted dazing and seemingly indispensable innovation, talent, expertise or resource, whatever lost investment of hope, may actually be rendered that much all the more solid and realistic and yet still no less ambitious, entirely without whatever such vaunted MacGuffin. Or better still, as contingency planning from the get go. All in a days work, in the agility of brainstorming and creative solution finding! Again: All to be expected, committed to and planned for, from the beginning. In the famous words of George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And indeed, as widely attributed to Alan Lakein: “Failing to plan, is planning to fail.” Beware: For as the saying goes: “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the lyrics.” Alas, however, the worst most malignant untrustworthy yet profoundly understanding false friend may learn that very tune, even the more clear as the proverbial bell. Especially when, by contrast, those who ostensibly seek to warn the mark remain so unkind, deprecating and abusive as so obviously and predictably from any iota of good sense and empathy, so resoundingly to undermine their own credibility. The secret inner lament of the dysfunctional: Why, oh why, cannot my loved ones, sift and ferret out my precious purls of wisdom, out from my torrential abuse! Alas how the self destructively self righteous, ever acting
out are all too often, as they saying goes, never so wrong, as when they are right. Contemptuous bullying “for your own good, dear” only propels the desperate mark, hurt and in shock, all the more into the orbit of the grifter, at least at all well mannered.
After all, there remain five enduring core human motivations for continually trusting the wrong people: To hook the mark, the untrustworthy individual appears as first to offer the understanding one so desperately craves, charismatic validation all one so one craves to believe about oneself, that at long last somebody finally recognizes and appreciates ones talents. Confidence is gained plumbing the depth of the nature of the gaps in one's confidence and self-esteem and all that one so longs to believe about oneself and one's life, all of that precise flattery, exactly one yearns to hear, so one follows them and omits due diligence. Alas, the outcome of trusting the wrong people, when it all goes so terribly wrong, can be most traumatic. Perhaps that at all helps explain how so 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, as conceived, of Do-It-Ourselves entrepreneurship for the rest of us. And all by meeting the need for capable interaction with responsible others. This time for sure!
Inevitable friction: Beware cross-purpose and betrayal! To reiterate, task interdependency refers to circumstances wherein any particular tasks must be accomplished first, and within what time frame, in order for other tasks to even become possible in turn, and then accomplished efficiently on schedule. Therefore participants become responsible to one another. For in entrepreneurship for the rest of us, task interdependency and therefore actually working together, ever remain crucial. Like The Three Musketeers: “All for one, and one for all!” And always, before going any further, pay heed always to the 15 purported signs of actual trustworthiness and creditable Menschlichkeit, remaining ever wary of the 18 Easy Ways to Destroy trust. Then cleave to those who demonstrate the former, while ceasing to depend upon those displaying the latter. Bullying passive hostility, unreliability and betrayal must be expected and prepared for, undefeated and without rancor. In real world drama, there will always be a Mordred or a Judas among us. Don't be discouraged. Only expect them, and just let them disqualify themselves. Then cleave to true friends as the treasure that they can be. Whatever obstacles must be confronted. Issues must be dealt with openly and with maturity. Or else, ways must be found to pick up whatever the slack, without missing a beat. Otherwise, collaboration will fail as participants, discouraged, drift apart. Instead, participant in earnest must commiserate and support one another in crisis. In the words of Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” But in devious cross-purpose, accrues only such abject failure.
To begin with, alas that there remains good reason why so many remain ever cagy and play their connections so close to their vest, as it were. They protect their important relationships. Because sharing a good contact with a bad contact, reflects so poorly, even resulting not only in disappointment with the bad contact, but alienation and loss of the good contact. Worse however, bullies only want to network with other bullies, in order to gang up on whomever the target(s) of bullying. Untrustworthy people will not network with you. Meaning that they won't follow up upon referrals from you, nor will they share their own contacts with whomever the target of bullying and exploitation. They will withhold your contact information from others, and the contact information of others, from you. They are ever toxic and divisive Relational Bullies, who never want to find themselves accountable within any supportive social circle. Bullies together cultivate impunity. Alas, dealing with others who will only let us all down, remains nigh inevitable. For there will always be those who would rather hold onto all of nothing, than share part of something. The pattern is one of passive hostility in the face of task interdependency. First they build up expectations in order to become indispensable, and once others have invested effort, then figuratively pull the proverbial rug metaphorically out from under by weaseling out of even minimally doing their part as promised. Perhaps even after having promised the impossible or the unnecessary. But in coming together and beginning, there must be close cooperation In courting and vetting new prospective participants, good and bad. And so, earnest participants must regroup, draw together and keep together, not drift apart in despair, when the unreliable disappoint us. And then keep trying. For indeed such will be progress toward working together successfully, to try, try, try again.
Therefore, do not despair and cling to hope, when promising beginnings evaporate in the face of passive hostile sabotage from unreliable participants. Only leave the ball in the unreliable other's court, and together move on without them unless they make effort to keep up. That's not what they expect. And once it is, they'll think twice before trying to leave anyone else in the lurch. In trying to obstruct others, they will only exclude themselves. And what fun is that? If necessary, in case of utter non response and non performance, draft formal recognition of undeclared yet effective resignation. Then seek replacement. Alas, indeed beware and take to heart the life lesson of drama: Nigh inevitable conflict, betrayal, uncertainty and suspense so thrilling for drama, remains harrowing in reality. There will always be a steep learning curve. Worse, there is Hard Science, there is Soft Science, and then there is the outright squishy soft, the most desperately imprecise! To wit: The wisdom of Entrepreneurship remains so poorly understood, that even drama seems scientifically rigorous by comparison. Expect the unexpected. And what can go wrong, will. And yes, leave us not succumb to naivety, that includes inevitable betrayal. And the consequence remains prevailing mistrust and distance.
Power accrues from capable interaction with even adequately responsible others, an investment of time, effort and trust. An investment suddenly squandered, when anyone that whatever collaboration has been maneuvered into to depending upon, cannot be counted upon. -All such passive hostility metaphorically pulling the proverbial rug figuratively out from under. Yes, beware cross-purpose! For what is there more frustrating than to find oneself recruited to collaboration in whatever endeavor, by a passive-hostile saboteur then bent only upon distancing themselves? Alas, an experience never so uncommon. Because risk aversive and lazy distance, resentment, mistrust, suspicion and compartmentalization are the very death knell of capable collaboration among equals and timely task interdependency beyond simple self determined individual division of labor. Even amid endless possibility, any hope whatsoever of teamwork and entrepreneurial success in difficult and uncertain endeavor, depends upon a culture of helping requiring that any participant in new venture creation (various business startup), indeed for the rest of us, playing their part that you or I cannot or do not wish to do for ourselves, must therefore be treated as more important than either of us. And that holds no less for any of them towards either of us. There can be no profit in depending upon the undependable. Success and functionality may often turn not only upon networking and freely sharing contacts, already a risk proposition, but even therein and thereby supportively validating one another before the world and making a friendly good impression.
Ostensibly, though different people may want the same things, so we have seen, only some are more serious about it. Some profoundly desire as real change, what others embrace only as mystique in fantasy and denial, thereby ever only making do. Or worse, they actually sabotage. Famously to quote 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.” Alas, provision for such unreasonable people, by such unreasonable people, remains indeed a special narrow niche market, far from the uninspired wastelands of the teeming sheeple.
The Internet has opened up unprecedented new opportunities for togetherness in many ways so different from face-to-face contact, but also an effortless and unaccountably irresponsible self-serving trigger and outlet for insecurity, trepidation, hostility and resistance. In the progress of any group, online or IRL, there must come an initial shake down of who stays the course and who fades back and drops out, who can be counted on and who not, leaving only anyone who was ever truly serious to begin with. And beware, to reiterate, how:the unwitting introduction of a good contact to a bad contact, may often result in the estrangement of the good contact. And that is why, in order to prevent group de-cohesion and dissolution, there must ever remain procedure and protocol in commitment toward recovery and even beginning anew. -figuratively back to the proverbial drawing board. Because eventual entrepreneurial success is well known first to be predicated upon determined and resilient serial failure, rapid trial, error and recovery to begin anew. Specifically, should anyone no matter how expert and having built themselves up as seemingly indispensable, indeed thereby taking a leadership position, figuratively pulls the proverbial rug metaphorically right out from under, by acting Together collaboration cofounder participants must remain brave, undiscouraged, agile, adapt and find another way, even outreach recruiting other more reliable partners in collaboration. Indeed, the offender may even be prevailed upon to help recruit their own replacement, if they just don't want to do their own job. Instead of helpless and stunned dependency, there must be fall back plans in case of such defection, no matter how seemingly catastrophic. Of course, people are free to quit for any reason, good or bad. Anyone simply losing interest must be set free, their obligations written of as a bad debt. Extreme sustained commitment cannot simply be presumed upon. Engaging, or not, into whatever deeper involvement, effort and risk, at each stage in turn, is a serious decision for each individual participant, every time. This will help weed out unrealistic expectations, ulterior agendas and controlling passive hostility beforehand. Furthermore, problems and grievances must be aired and resolved openly as ever arising, in cultures of respect and good will, if at all possible and reasonable. Failing all such effort, there is always another way, even if seemingly howsoever at all less advantageous. Sometimes great ideas must actually be rescued from the possessive talons of their own seemingly most vigorously evangelical proponents, who'd rather keep all of nothing than share part of something, effectively functioning as hunter killers of all opportunity of ever realization of their own cherished vision. Often lunatic ideologues, such megalomaniacs will consistently undermine every effort that they solicit on their own behalf, and they just don't perceive the imposition. It will therefore be more prudent to press some tough question from the beginning. Neither high pressure facile flimflam of hurried hustle and deceptive manipulation, nor passive hostile stalling and foot-dragging proverbially pulling out the figurative rug metaphorically out from under, but responsibly proceeding in true collaboration among equals steadily at our own pace in small reversible steps, business or project planning together, creative solution finding, and capable management team formation, business or project planning together, a steep learning curve creative solution finding, and capable management team formation. Gentle reader, can you be trustworthy and responsible? And will anybody else reciprocate? Am I your unmet friend?
- Again, what is there more frustrating than to find oneself recruited to collaboration in whatever endeavor, by a passive-hostile saboteur then bent only upon distancing themselves? Beware of the leader who has already emotionally deserted the very followers, allies, or partners collaboration whom they so ardently woo. Misrepresentation and ulterior agendas of passive aggression and control, of malignant Narcissism and promises that were simply never intended to be kept, proverbially pulling out the metaphorical rug of promised support and cooperation out from under, will be lethal to any new venture creation (various business startup), unless prepared for in advance to catch us as we fall prey to such pernicious stumbling blocks. Should sweet reason and solicitude fail to open whatever festering problems and grievances to adequate resolution, thus to spoil the fun of passive-hostile sabotage and clear the logjam of recalcitrant foot-dragging, any venture must be flexible to reassign tasks in a timely manner, and to change course however as necessary, forestall exasperated exhaustion, and recover from failure as quickly as possible. When such controlling passive hostility no longer undermines ongoing collaboration among equals, by such Transactional Antithesis the Ulterior Transaction or: headgame will quickly lose all savor, and the offender, discovering that they cannot undermine endeavor for all, may even decide to mend their ways instead of simply finding themselves alone and left, and out not even howsoever by actually being rejected or excluded, but simply by their own inaction and nonparticipation as the others just move on together. Gentle turns away strong.
- And so, indeed, just perhaps, like the Little Red Hen and her brood, we can be heroes!Hence at the risk of anything Utopian in the pejorative of remaining vastly impractical and impossibly ideal, FoolQuest.com advances in solution, because Creativity can and Should be Social, a social engineering vision, if all goes well, of welcome and trustworthy collaboration among equals, serious people, fully engaged in substantive communication, purposeful interaction and creative solution finding in innovative new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us in concurrent synergy with unprecedented ongoing serious collaborative fiction writing, 1) respectful and responsible capable group endeavor on our own terms taking small reversible steps steadily at our own pace in a culture of helping and creative solution finding, 2) indeed reciprocity helpful and ever mindful of task interdependencies, asking of others what no one else asks, and offering in return, what no one else offers, wherein, 3) beyond mere solitary division of labor, effective performance toward success without corporate or institutional authority and support (at least at first), 4) will require value maximization of participating human resource, 5) wherein each participant taking initiative multipotential cross discipline, by calling upon other participants for whatever timely and whole hearted assistance and follow up required, and reciprocating when likewise called upon by any other participant similarly as needed. Such as per the concept of relationship redefined in paradigm shift into new social reality via Intentional community or smaller intentional social circle by social engineering design. All in order as to foster recognition in action, a higher level of social support from one another, a gratifying sense of power and abiding respect. Moreover, pursuant outreach may also well conceivably be cultivated, highly effective in connection to resources and networking better meeting individual social needs. Thus, effectively, reciprocally, each participant taking command in whatever their own specialized capable niche, while reciprocally each remaining subordinate, socially supportive and helpful to one another as detailed. Like the Three Musketeers: “One for all, and all for one!” For in the words of Barbara Sher: “Isolation is the true dream killer, not your attitude.” For to reiterate: Eudemonia, capable relationship, Eros which is liberating union with alien difference, and especially true friendship, will accrue only for serious people, arising as byproduct of full engagement in purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication and never otherwise. Indeed, even quite without peer approval! But perhaps better served innovative social engineering towards more congenial circumstances or situation.
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Beware then. For while any well established corporations and institutions or the like, might possess the resources to survive all manner of self inflicted wounds and endure the drain and recourses to spare for getting the job done at all, this will not hold independently out in the world at large. For any business startup or other new venture in formation from scratch independently, will likely be well nipped in the bud very easily by any and all such blithe folly. And this may be one salient reason why all to often, to quote Olmstead: “After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.” Even given all the virtues of preventative pessimistic caution, all purpose of evasion or withholdance will not merely reduce efficiency or injure morale, but paralyze and then dash any hopeful project that much more quickly and decisively. For no matter advance in connective communication and information technology, the challenge remains to the in depth quality of human interaction with autonomy and respect. There can be no hope of success in untrustworthy manipulative passive hostility at whatever conceivable cross-purpose or conflict of in terests. Beware indeed any such irrational bullying passive hostility and betrayal. To quote Augustine, such "Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.” But Augustine is mistaken: The self-destructive resentment of one remains toxic for all others involved. Indeed, by contrast, even grifters outright at least might be understood in any terms at least of some or other one sided rational advantage. Beware, however, the self-destructive bent upon dragging all others down with them. Alas, either way, so consistently the worst that humanity has to offer, must come as little surprise anymore.Make no mistake: Task interdependency refers to circumstances wherein any particular tasks must be accomplished first, and within what time frame, in order for other tasks to even become possible in turn, and then accomplished efficiently on schedule. In the words of Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” But in devious cross-purpose, accrues only such abject failure. Therefore participants must become responsible to one another. And in entrepreneurship for the rest of us, task interdependency and therefore, beyond mere solitary division of labor, actually working together closely in reciprocal support, ever remains crucial. Like The Three Musketeers: “All for one, and one for all!” Or else, all for naught. But all of this is a great deal to ask, and must never simply be presumed upon.
According to Zig Ziglar
“You will get everything in life that you want if you just
help enough other people get what they want.” Or in the
words of Napoleon Hill “It is literally true that you
can
succeed
best and
quickest by helping others to
succeed.”
Because, after all, to quote George Jacobs:
“Your partners'
success
will enhance, not diminish, your own
success.” But how often is any of this sincere? Or is it most often
merely false cultivation of the greedy and desperate
perception, and thence scam exploitation of
willfully positive wishful thinking? Fraudsters are so often
known to
declare: “You and I
are going to make a lot of money together.” Well, that
would be nice. But
I find
myself in no position to proffer
any such guarantee. Why then, gentle reader, am
I
wasting your time? Just what might
I
be
pandering
to?
And regardless, what can we
actually offer for one another? No rhetorical query, but the very
meaning
of
life.
Any
questions?
Any
objections?
Any
takers?
You
are
all
invited!
Gentle readers, I am counting on
you!
Dare
we
take
action
together?
Let's
talk!
My father liked to say that there are two kinds of people: The knowers and the seekers. The knowers claim possession of whatever true faith inside, while the seekers, ever uncertain, investigate external objective reality more open mindedly. FoolQuest.com is for seekers, for all comers on the true life Hero's Journey. And rational skepticism remains so extremely unpopular in a world so lionizing of demagogues and blowhards. Nevertheless, even sheer incomprehension remains a bright beginning, transparent, and no dire impasse or cause for alarm. Just ask! And insist. Never just go along with anything, only hoping that any of it will only begin to make more sense later on. That's a cult! Anything can be a cult. All manner of dubious "opportunities" will cheerfully take your money, expecting full well with time and distance, for you eventually to become gradually discouraged and finally just give up on whatever their empty bullshit. Or instead, they actually may put you to work laboriously foisting whatever scam they themselves have been sucked into, in turn upon others. To reiterate, task interdependency refers to circumstances wherein any particular tasks must be accomplished first, and within what time frame, in order for other tasks to even become possible in turn, and then accomplished efficiently on schedule. Therefore participants become responsible to one another. Indeed therefore, beware passive hostility of devious cross-purpose and betrayal. For in entrepreneurship for the rest of us, task interdependency and therefore actually working together, ever remain crucial. Like The Three Musketeers: “All for one, and one for all!” Or else, all for naught. Therefore let us together remain ever vigilant lest our cherished dreams be hijacked by knaves and fools, scammers and suckers. Let us remain ever skeptical of unverifiable claims. Because naturally, anyone can become quite frightened and angry about any risk of being deceived and abused. And inevitably all such concerns and preoccupations are ever further enflamed by gossip. There is also gossip that at all accurately informs, by propagating and sharing reputation legitimately distilled from vital experience and caution so disastrous to ignore. But gossip no less often only deceives with manipulative slander. Hence, in the famous admonition of Edgar Allen Poe: “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” Indeed, in the words of Elbert Hubbard: “Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.” Moreover, for dire purpose of Relational Bullying and social isolation of any targeted individual, malicious gossip in order to raise doubt, need not convince, but merely inspire hesitation. All therefore the more so, for good reasons and bad, worries upon the detection of ill intent and madness, inevitably attend upon any evaluation of any offer or solicitation such as any herein. Maybe that is why some people can be so weird and cagey with strangers.
No promises or guarantees are expressed or implied, all herein representing no binding commitments to anyone else. Any specific existent or future contracts and guarantees, commitments whatsoever, are simply not delineated herein, remaining an entirely separate matter. Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, a “safe harbor” may be provided for forward-looking statements, estimates reflecting the best judgment and current expectations and projections concerning future events even outside of our control, and therefore a number of risks and uncertainties that results may differ materially from those suggested by such forward-looking statements. In so far as this document constitutes a prediction or prognosis, such is merely best effort. But this document is not a promise by anyone to anyone else. Only whatever prospect in and of it self may be deemed promising. Such may be hoped.
No less than folly and wishful thinking to begin with, manipulation and coercion examined, reveal desire and value, the truth twisted by the lie. Precisely because, as the saying goes: Appearances are deceiving. In order to become persuasive, fraud must be crafted in any likely story, to resemble some conceivably genuine article. Thus, conversely, everything and anything however true, therefore resembles fraud and raises rational skepticism wherein disbelief remains the necessary default. Indeed, as another saying goes: If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't. For many this already rules out as veritable fairytale, all but the most modest ambition and desire. For others it only means that it can't be quick and easy. That there is always a cost, even if only in hard work. And hard work, even of first of all, only in in time and attention especially in doing what one loves. Not to mention: always, risk. However, beware: Indeed, 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.” Because we live in an overstressed attention economy, attention ever spread so very thin! For to quote Herbert Simon: “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Therefore, nowadays more than ever, in the immortal words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Moreover, in an aloof and indifferent world of impatient and efficiently routine short attention, Totalitarian Interactivity and mind numbing clickbait, at long last fully engaged purposeful interaction and substantive communication, afford most welcoming and congenial investment of time and attention to accrue greatest return in like kind. But beware cross-purpose! And beforehand, together draft contingencies to regroup, after cross-purpose and betrayal make shambles and emotional exhaustion of glowing opportunity. Always, before going any further, pay heed always to the 15 purported signs of actual trustworthiness and creditable Menschlichkeit, and to the 18 Easy Ways to Destroy trust. Then cleave to those who display the former, while cutting loose those display the latter. Do not despair and cling to hope, when promising beginnings disappoint. Only leave the ball in the other's court while exploring evey other option. Indeed beware that there remain distinctly different ways for any tantalizing prospects to turn out howsoever unreliable or untrue: If neither fraud nor folly, still, it may seem that there is always a catch. Or else, everyone would do it! For many, that will be the end of it. And many others, by contrast, simply retreat into denial and pipedream. But can there be any more realistic viable approach? That is the question, always! And therein by far more readily danger than opportunity. "Fake It Till You Make it:" ever remains indeed soul-destroying pipedream. And so, it's not about playing the part or looking the part. Because there is no Appeal to Authority here. I make no claims of expert standing. And conversely, Ad Hominem attacks be dammed! Because truth is speaker independent. All narrative and rhetoric herein transparently turns upon assertions even however at least seemingly outlandish, herein presented in plain sight, that must stand or fall upon their own merits. Here on FoolQuest.com, no one need take my word. Indeed, criticism and controversy are valued and invited, with no imposition of consensus. Other assertions, claims of external objective reality herein, are supported by hyperlinked citations to credible science and journal of record. Again, no one needs to take my word, precisely because just perhaps, I do indeed know what I am talking about. Remaining only one among those aforesaid 15 aspirational signs of trustworthiness and creditable Menschlichkeit. After all, even the unworthy can be knowledgeable in their field of expertise, or at least seem so. Expect more of me. And beware, for all sweet reason surely leaves open every possibility in real life drama, once drawn in, only then of inveiglement into whatever drudgery let alone anything shady. And that happens all the time! Indeed, in any beguilingly harmless first step, may only all too soon find oneself traipsing down the primrose path to ruin and sore travail. Or unwitting recruitment into scamming others. Indeed, networking and forging connections, benevolent or malevolent. Existential Absurdity, futility, real life drama and suffering, all obtain not only from existence within a dangerously indifferent universe, but perhaps even worse, from the hapless folly and cruelty of human nature.
There remain those pesky 15 signs of trustworthiness and creditable Menschlichkeit. And once you can fake those qualities, others will become putty in your hands! I expect that you will naturally want me to care about you. And if only I pretend to, I can then manipulate and exploit you relentlessly. And what’s to stop me? Indeed, what's to stop any evil deceiver? Well, that’s what you must be wondering and dread! And rationally, the thought occurs. Because trust in the face of the unknown, remains inevitably ever perilous. Indeed, beware projection. Because honest folk tend to trust others even unwisely, while the dishonest remain cagy and ever suspicious of others, even unduly. In the words of Solon: “Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.” As if character were any readily known and detectable quantity! Trust and mistrust are respectively optimistic and pessimistic expectations regarding honesty and competence. Alas, there can be no a priori ruling out of future betrayal. Because people nigh universally tend to overestimate their own judgment of character. Which should bring pause. Because judgment of character, ever fallible and so frankly unreliable, remains weighty responsibility and sore travail. And always safer never to chance. However, risk remains inevitable. Risk can only be managed, never eliminated. And as so often said: Never to risk at all ever, remains the worst conceivable risk. Is one then forever doomed only to helpless vulnerability? "Why is finding the perfect career so hard?" Because it will be all too common to find oneself ill prepared, because of narrowing focus prematurely for wont of resources to expend in due research, when instead, your net must be cast wider to discover many and better options towards success. Otherwise, beware the Mysterious Stranger, guide, trickster, false savior of the desperate and cornered in life.
And further beware of all
ostensibly countervailing and excessive pressures that only
make whatever knaves and fools seem reasonable in
comparison.
Why, oh why, can't my loved ones eke out my pearls of
wisdom, from amid my torrential hostility and contempt? After all, my strong emotions remain ever so vivid, so
clear and distinct, therefore it follows inexorably as the
night the day, that my conduct must be redolent,
effulgent with
dharma
and right
action,
consummately wise and kind! Ever such endures as the
secret inner lament of the flagrantly dysfunctional. Alas, just because
they’re such assholes all the time, doesn’t mean that they
are always wrong! But as per the common aphorism,
respect
and trust
ever remains a two way street. And alas therefore, that
wisdom propelled in anger,
disrespect
and contempt, thereby discredits itself. And treating a
fool like a fool, would make such a fool only the greater a
fool and self loathing to boot, ever under any
circumstances, to endure any such purported tough love.
Real life
melodrama
and pointless vicissitude, driving the hapless mark only the
more into the arms of grifting knaves and fools who at least
have any manners.
And that is why controlling
invalidation,
acting In the words of Duc de la Rochefoucauld: “It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.” And again to quote George Eliot: “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” The sensitive and honorable person already ensnared in dystressful exploitation, confusion and even veritable gas lighting from situational uncertainty with mixed signals of red flags smoothed over by plausible reassurance, needs neither deceitful false hope nor pressure and additional abuse, but support and assistance getting to the bottom of knavery and/or folly. Indeed, support and assistance in pressing for performance as promised. Beware however, that there remain deceiving grifters who actually specialize in falsely befriending and victimizing those vulnerable who have only recently been cheated and therefore struggle to recover and move on. As the saying goes: "In life we never lose friends, we only learn who our true friends are!” Indeed to quote John Churton Collins: “In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.”
 Of course, all the
most obvious scams constitute well
known
and understood evil ploy towards self selection by only the most
gullible marks.
Far-Fetched Scams Separate the Gullible from Everyone Else. But there remain also all manner of more
sophisticated snares for more sophisticated prey. Far from
anything that will be mocked by
abusive
Relational
Bullies,
flamers
and trolls!
Manipulation
can be resisted and rejected, but actual deceit must first be
detected. A sophisticated grift may turn upon the most
ordinary reasonable response to a fabricated
situation,
pretense not at all as it seems. Alas all too often, seemingly credible gambits all to often
may be so well
crafted closely to resemble everything reputable, true and pure.
While perfectly legitimate operators must often go to such pains
in authentification of their wares. And within ones even inadequate resources of wisdom and
stress,
eventually one is left decide, to strive for adequate response in
the face of inadequate information. Marks conned by grifters,
are not generally poor decision-makers, but are often
professionals or
successful
business people.
A racket, no matter how reputable, can be any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a myth, scam or fraud, a deceptive domineering practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for whatever benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. As Edward Snowden observes, oppressors who restrict our options, then pretend that we consent. And the inculcation of social skills and skilled incompetence, remains an important aspect of all just such ubiquitous and respectable fraud as in the ongoing failure of conventionality, surely the most pervasive racket and perhaps the oldest and greatest con of all times.
To
reiterate,
the only sound protection from vulnerable isolation before
predators, remains good
friendship.
But scarce
friendship
is what the grifter simulates in false
friendship
only building up to betrayal.
Friendship, the ever elusive connection
desired by all but thwarted and
sublimated
by intimidation and humiliation. With more and more people
coming out in the open to admit shameful
loneliness,
perhaps strategic thinking shall at last be brought to bear.
Indeed,
Dialectical
collaboration
among
equals
in
brainstorming
toward
creative
solution
finding
for the probotunity at hand, right here on
FoolQuest.com.
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FoolQuest.com strives at recruitment of trustworthy prospective collaboration partners with integrity to accept responsibility for ones actions, enjoying pride in accomplishment, intrinsically self-motivated, risk tolerant, concerned, curious, creative, problem solving, honest and capable of controversy which is the exchange of the most frank and brutal criticism while maintaining undiminished respect for one another, seeking the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile and demanding probortunity at hand, and yearning to take command and control of our lives.
Fearless
stimulation seeking:
Opportunities such as they are, that typical consumers readily respond to,
consist in any
part of the
self achievable and in any other part of supposedly
guaranteed provisions. By contrast, the vast uncertainly of real cooperative
investigation is always daunting.
But in the end, nothing less will ever really
do. A
common twice exceptionality, lifelong deadly social and career learning disability
among gifted underachievers, ongoing products of lifelong asynchronous
development, in even somewhat rebelliously stunned apathetic
bored
and
lonely
deficiency of all such executive function including poor memory and low organizational skills,
in actuality may be entirely
due to severe under
arousal
to such fully active responsiveness as arising only to howsoever
valued
high standards of
social
support
towards the grievously undersupplied
stimulus of true
pleasurable,
engaging and
meaningful
opportunity.
The
fake it until you make it crowd are those desperately calculating would be
popular pricks and cynical
seekers of social and material
success
who openly dismiss any genuine interest
in others as superfluous. They even explicitly exhort the obliteration by
directed mental effort, of all that is
human and genuine, denounced as merely an
obstacle
to cynical social and material success achieved by
robotically faking it
until you make it. All around the world and across the Internet, thus do those
desperately calculating cynical seekers of social and material
success, just
suck up all the air in the room with all their endless shucking and jiving! But
it's really all just a hollow and desperately protracted ritual of defeated
ultra conformism and Narcissistic heteronomy.
So, gentle reader, do not struggle to change your thoughts.
How repugnant! At
any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into
hesitation and silence for fear that to speak
up may reflect poorly, exercise
futility,
bring adverse consequences or even do harm.
And yet, why should you
change your thoughts and emotions? Do your thoughts even require correction?
Why? Are your thoughts insane? Are you a frivolous person? Or just like anybody
else, and just as good and important, don't you have whatever your own perfectly
good reason to be upset? Why live in secret terror or
bullying
and ostracism simply should the cheerful facade ever slip? Don't you want sympathy and understanding when you are
feeling blue? And isn't so cheerfully
lying to
oneself, as
well as irresponsibly ignoring all manner of crucial information, serve as
nothing so much more or less than an introverited barrier
preventing and obstructing the sympathy and understanding of others? And is not
true hope to be found in drawing plans and taking
action to improve one's circumstances? And
to that end, don't you want to reach out for new ideas toward real substantive
help and
cooperation? Best of all, don't you want to have fun together in the
process?
Are you a caring person?
Do complain. Caring people are concerned to
know
of one another's travails. Do
criticize.
If you are aware of whatever danger or adversity, or even of opportunity
slipping away, don't keep it secret. Believe in
the positive power of negative thinking! To quote Friedrich Nietzsche:
“What is happiness? The feeling that power
increases - that resistance is being overcome” And overcoming adversity and
sore
travail
begins by recognizing our plight, with problem statement and analysis, not by
stupidly smiling and ignoring
reality.
The various promoters of and adherents to happy thoughts and sublime apathy are always such a miserable downer! Why? Because that's all they ever want to do, or even to permit others to talk about! It is impossible to do anything or make any other plans, with those damn promoters of happy thoughts and sublime apathy on just about every forum online. I ask: How can we interact and what can we do together, to ameliorate lonely boredom and suffering and reach out for happiness? To begin with, what experiences and stimuli, what social interaction exactly, are we each secretly pining for in such painful loneliness and boredom? How can we make plans to have fun while solving those problems about which we are each so unhappy? But the those damn promoters of happy thoughts and sublime apathy on every forum online say no! We must only talk about turning inward in order to manufacture happiness or quell thought and suffering of the ego and generally just decide to be content. We must never be disagreeable or argumentative or ever dare strive and come to grips and seek to improve our lot, or even actually try to have any fun activity! We must never even discuss such things. That is how the various promoters of and adherents to happy thoughts and sublime apathy are always such a miserable downer! They are actually all just anti-intellectual Reductionist touchy-feely crypto-Nihilists only bent upon oppressive wholesale value destruction. And then inflated confidence and denial from lying to oneself inevitably called into question, elicits dystress as the bubble bursts.
Happy
people talk more seriously
together freely.
Fruitful
dialogue
requires not shared assumptions let alone flagrant
bad faith, but any honest desire to
progress any nearer to truth and sympathy or interest in sharing or at all
comprehending one another's aims and problems, let alone
POV or
situation.
Anything less is fruitless non
engagement, even if short of the actual hostility
of outright
flaming.
That is why FoolQuest.com remains dedicated, first and foremost, instead, to systematic and concerted cultivation of exactly such optimally pleasurable, engaging and meaningful interaction so essential to human flourishing. And what could be better?
Ultimately, growth ensues only by remaining true to oneself, best abetted by others receptive thereto. The kneejerk blithe dismissal of all criticism and dissatisfaction as negativity and low self esteem can only serve only to repress all complaint and hope of innovation for the better, thereby merely preserving oppressive status quo, both collectively and individually.
Rational doubt, after all, is not despair in perverse certainty of whatever the contrary. Only rational skepticism allows every possibility and free speculation to consider the incredible and even take it seriously, exploration even without dogmatic certainty, conviction or effort of faith, all of which are superfluous at very best, and so often by far so much worse.
Even the stifling wretched
ethos of touchy-feely unwanted "sharing" that has propagated from the plethora
of
bogus support groups, has so
heteronymously
glorified
even the most mediocre banal
small talk
into an invasive but privileged and tolerated ritual proselytizing, exactly as
with as with attitudinal
Zen
motivational positivity
and
Behavioral conditioning
in the service of
manipulative would-be Machiavellian
social
success pep rallies, together
all completely sucking the air out of the room, nowadays especially online.
Indeed, far short of paralytic anxiety, simple avoidance and cognitive narrowing or tunnel vision as to constrain ones repertoire of alternative solutions, introverited defensive pessimism only seeks never to raise expectations unduly, in order thereby to consistently reduce disappointment and anticipatory dystress thereof. Whereas the Contrarian realistically prudent cautious optimism of extroverted defensive pessimism is the active caution channeling even the most perpetual anxiety constructively into advance troubleshooting by detecting even catastrophic snares and anticipating even the worst-case scenario of any situation in order thereby to carry out planning so as to minimize losses and damage.
For example, any serious and successful investor, however necessarily risk tolerant, never simply relies upon luck, but adamantly demands the most rigorously prudent and critical extroverited defensive pessimism in formal business plans, therefore crucial to aspiring Entrepreneurship and civics. Even growth in the arts, with nothing else at stake, nevertheless depends entirely upon valuing frank critique.
Experimentally, in good or bad circumstances alike, depressive pessimists demonstrate more realistic judgment and more accurate prediction than optimists, both perform equally well and better the median norm, but neither tend to perform well in attempting to exchange respective coping strategies. Just as the saying goes, it's how you play the game: To the rational disposition, even the good faith attempt at gathering supporting evidence for arguing rationally, and the greater the challenge, nevertheless piques sympathetic curiosity, whereas howsoever even seeming evasion only raises the specter of malignant extrinsic and ulterior motive to dishonesty.
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are delusionally embraced and/or fraudulently proffered. -the wish without the will... |
“Where hopes are unrealistic, fears often become exaggerated; where dreams alone are blueprints, nightmares result.” – Anthony Daniels
Pipedreams
, no less than crank
conspiracy theories,
may even venture into the absurdist
surreal,
depending upon the degree of selfcontradiction and
plot holes. Pipedreams are
half-baked schemes, cognitively disintegrated, insufficiently thought out, ill-conceived, lacking sound
judgment, proportion and good sense, putting the cart before the horse
and going about whatever project in a haphazard fashion, setting up steps out of
order and working in a confused manner. Hence, while traditionally pipedreaming is focused upon
any wild, lofty or ambitious
objective, but just as even the wildest and
loftiest of ambition can be approached seriously and productively, contrawise,
with determined irresponsibility, even the most unambitious, straightforward and
mundane propositions may be readily reduced to utter half-baked pipedream. And
of course there are always scams and rackets
outright.
is not overreach,
but the utter surrender of hope and
diligence before even any mere specter of
overreach.
Pipedreams always run into knots. Pipedreamimg is always a roadblock to success. And any open good faith effort at all to unsnarl pipdrerams, is already the awakening from mere pipedream. The problem is not any lack of prior justification. There is no such thing as prior justification, or need thereof. All hypothesis begins in uncertainty and from unfounded conjecture, subjected only thereafter to critical thinking and follow up investigation. Therefore, in order to assure utter pipedreaming, always think ha ppy thoughts and scorn all criticism, never trifle with details and always put the cart before the horse. There are three levels of half-baked pipedreamimg: First degree pipedreaming of bad ideas is the most straightforward: Never set an agenda, clarify the question, doubt or check whatever premise. Continually stall by falling back upon hand waving: gloss over all real issues and problems with vague explanation and impressive but insubstantial words or actions. Indignantly ignore all objection. Second degree pipdreaming is malagenda, the dishonest skilled incompetence of poorly defined irrelevant obsession with unquestioned arbitrary procedure. But instead, to reduce really good well reasoned proposals to half-baked pipedream nevertheless and nonetheless, third degree pipedreaming requires adamantine irresponsible crimestop in all questions of implementation with fear and loathing towards any pertinent implementation specialists; all much in accord with the disastrous pervasively ingrained taboo upon true and effective values-driven enterprise that so effectively and reciprocally segregates the grasping of relevant principles from the exigency of practical endeavor. Thus, at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm.
Many people seem to whatever degree actually somewhat reluctant to regulate their own lives at all. You can't make plans with them. And this is annoying enough even in ordinary social life, let alone any more serious business. They might have big dreams, utterly unrealistic fantasies or even actually entirely feasible good ideas, so long as they are deluded enough to think that it will all come easy, but lose all interest at the first sign of difficulty, no matter how solvable. Such is the wish without the will. Some are ambivalent, dazed and confused with all of life's pressures and conflicting responsibilities even howsoever foisted upon them manipulatively. Many are hopelessly conflict averse. The worst are just frighteningly helpless and a danger to themselves. Such is the decline in autonomy and the heteronymous reliance upon externally imposed behavioral structure. But there may be worse, even for being only at all any better, the ones one might not see coming, and just give them any chance:
For all their expressed dedication and enthusiasm, prospective collaborators, so far and few between, are all too often so entirely dishonest with themselves, exploiting new contacts, keeping their distance and losing interest once they've picked their brains even in order howsoever to plagiarize, or gotten the mark to do their short term leg work on spec for free. Wrestling with whatever secret social anxieties and misanthropy, they won't help organize or network with the mark, neither following up on leads provided them, nor sharing their contacts in return. This amounts to a passive form of covert relational hostility instead of social inclusion, likewise in order to exploit an isolated target with impunity. Otherwise, other stakeholders might attempt to make the offender answerable. After all, antisocial paranoia or pretexts of confidentiality, are time tested ploys for isolating the mark, and shielding abuse or exploitation, let alone sheer wasteful business mismanagement, all from public scrutiny.
Some pipedreamers might be driven by fantasies of simply dumping their own grandiose schemes and dreams entirely onto anyone else's' shoulders. They might be jealous malignant Narcissistic ungrateful cranks, even undermining and squandering the very work invested by their unwary partners, even on their behalf, even snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory, simply in order to keep all of nothing rather than share part of something. That's what a pipdreaming crank does, no matter how talented or intelligent, when they've latched onto anything promising. Whatever the details, and for all of the melodrama, once they exhaust the supply of marks after still getting nowhere, then after wasting and exhausting everyone's time and good will, they simply vanish, leaving all in shambles.
When a pipedreaming crank becomes enamored of whateer deluded fantasy or half baked notion, they yearn to share and to propagate whatever that silly idea and set the world ablaze in like passion! Alas that so many have even been charismatic enough to pull it off. But worse and just the opposite, when a crank actually latches onto any good idea, they smother and asphyxiate it, even effectively becoming hunter-killers on the Web, annihilating every chance for the realization of whatever their own precious vision. Malignantly Narcissistic and ever yearning for validation by the support of others that only then steadily rises into inner conflict with mounting jealousy against all invited efforts at collaboration, such would be men of destiny effectively become, indeed, hunter-killers on the Web, destroying all they touch and nipping every hope of realization in the very bud. So beware and prepare!
Perhaps worst among pipedreaming malagenas are Moralism and Utopism, being the doctrine that responsibility is impossible save in the lights of perfect (or justified) knowledge of whatever ultimate truth and/or towards whatever ultimate good (to which of course, the ends ever justify the means), responsibility is impossible. Thus by promising the impossible and the unnecessary, do high-minded scoundrels ever evade even the most minimum and ordinary of obligations and pedestrian expectations of minimal responsibility to which private citizens, service providers and public officials are held accountable under democratic civility and the rule of law. -By entirely removing responsibility from foreseeable consequence, into a realm of perfect and pure abstraction. Such mad and dangerous Utopist thinking remains entirely distinct from what is simply Utopian merely in terms of even laudably embracing high ideals or altruistic ambitions entirely without the madness of Utopist ideology.
For happiness, Epicurus espoused freedom, friendship and thought. Indeed: Happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk. Because otherwise, to quote Olmstead: “After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.” And to quote Benjamin Disraeli: "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” Indeed, one feature of serious conversation is agenda. Moving from the abstract and general, to the concrete and particular, characteristics of agenda are questioning open endedness, the practice of criticism and controversy, strategic planning into expanding collaborative action. Agenda is therefore taboo. In any bureaucracy, especially as in any way influenced by or affiliated to what passes for education, if calls to agenda cannot simply be ignored or condemned, they will typically be countered with call for compromise in the name of convention and sensitivity, all amounting to the heteronymous annihilation of all the aforementioned responsible and liberating characteristics of agenda.
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." — Abba Eban
Fake fun is such inane mimesis as wherein two or more individuals strive mightily in somewhat desperate pretence and exhibition of having great fun, often according to social expectations of good cheer, positive attitude and group validation, and quintessentially as in any group of losers, utter tools, messing around, jumping on each other's backs and forced laughing uproariously all the while painfully yearning and casting about for approval in order thereby to realize all such mimesis of happiness in social success. More often than not, anyone conspicuously and ostentatiously whooping it up, just overselling it, is deep down alienated bored silly and working overtime psyching themselves up into having a good time and a positive attitude in order thus to demonstrate peer group validation and thereby gain social approval, and especially, y'know, so's that chicks won't smell the needy desperation! Arguably, we are all typically somewhat guilty of fake fun in making silly expressions and goofy poses for group photos in Existentially Absurd, Ecclesiastically futile recreational social gatherings and outings.
“False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.”
— Charles de Montesquieu
The
fairytale
Power of
Positive Thinking
typically
platitudinous
exhortation to delusional
optimism
in
yearning for the
confidence of lost innocence,
sheer bloody-minded
GREEN
LANTERNism, the
barking mad antirational lunatic ideological
prescription to rose colored glasses,
fanaticism,
heteronymously
compliant infantilization, systematic pipedreaming and
the sheer
mimesis
of complete certitude in absence of any such impossibility, confidence and self
esteem as panacea, indeed, sheer determination
and persistence as the infallible solution to all problems and remedy to all failures, constant and
incessant struggle to psych ourselves up and stay the course, even
abandoned entirely
to our own devices, no matter what,
paranormalist desperate hope from a false god of
forced enthusiasm,
all
only really amounts to
lying to
oneself and
living that lie. Lying is
disrespectful
and intrinsically harmful to others and likewise to oneself, even should the lie
remain forever undiscovered. Anyone
may exhort others to be happy, extolling all the good thereof, assuring all and
sundry how achievable at least in theory.
Those
damn motivational speakers can and do
cause
harm.
Indeed,
pandering to overconfident
optimism only risks the inculcation of dangerous illusion with concomitant
painfully debilitating pressures of suppression,
denial and not encouragement at all, but
invalidation.
Indeed, to quote Barbara Sher: “Isolation is the true dream killer, not your
attitude." And in the immortal words of Sigmund Freud:
"That which
is not expressed, is
actedout."
often
via insinuation and suggestion, the very stock and trade of all
Behavioral Modification.
Hence the Freudian injunction against
suggestion, violated a'priori by
Behaviorism.
Denial
in avoidance of truth only
represses
inner
conflict,
distressfully,
and impairs rational decision making. Willpower is a limited temporary short
term resource, for application in self control as
situation
arises. The Moralistic
misapplication of individual willpower over the long term to ongoing
crisis,
more often engenders judgmental bitter envy and resentment than sympathy or any
true
moral
rectitude or goodness.
The self-harm of self-help
Toxic and empty pep talk, and subsequent abandonment to ones own devices
Barbara Sher Debunks Positive Thinking: When it simply doesn't work, surely you must be doing it wrong. Thus you blame yourself!
Rôle-models are personal influences, figures of success that others identify with and warmly turn to in admiration and for an example in order to emulate, for confidence, validation, socialization, cherished values and strategy in hopes of overcoming obstacles. For a rôle may also indicate an emotional state expressed, a motivated goal as ever put forth or function as represented by another, but even as all such may Existentially or manipulatively serve and conceal an ulterior agenda, however downright pathological. And within limits, thinking and frame of mind, psychology and rôle--modeling for good or ill and easier said than done, ever finds external efficacy only insofar as thinking and frame of mind are actually reflected externally, as perceptible by others and/or in action taken. -as even perhaps by the mediation of transformative character growth, but only one way or another into mechanistic causality (and never sheer magical denial). Exactly such reasonable observation and value of rôle--modeling into demeanor, character growth and action, is coherently elaborated upon in The As-If Principle. -Alas all but an overture, bait-and-switch lure, only into more of the same old willful positively snake oil crap, the same inane blatant "Fake It Till You Make it" bad policy of alienated mimesis, dangerous blithe dissemination of pipedreaming bad advice and lies to the unsuspecting, unrealistic unteachable isolating pretense and fool's paradise doomed to failure, all fallaciously assuming to begin with, that we are at all quite simply endowed with conscious command over inner life. We aren't. And rôle--models must be selected with care.
Beware Skilled Incompetence, the consequent dishonestly heteronymous adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thereby manipulatively avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict on any level from controversy and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink teamtraps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree)! Indeed, pipedreaming willful positivity is so often a prevalent force for inaction, even actually hostile towards clearly effective and practical initiative, let alone risk, courage and uncertainty. Alas, heteronymous religion, in every time and whatever form, ever spewing forth the same promises and exhortations, in the demands of faith, has always rejected reality principle, while Moralistically struggling also with pleasure principle. Nowadays, medicated Behaviorist consensus manipulation Nihilistically infiltrates every sphere of life, motivational positivity scorning reality principle while latter day Zen likewise scorns pleasure principle. Indeed, far from any sort of basic survival struggle in active life affirmation, and even without overt religion as such, terror management strategies of Deathism, the pacifying glorification of death, persists in making taboo of Cryonics and even of Radical Life Extension research.
 
Barbara
Ehrenreich,
author of:
BRIGHT-SIDED, has granted interviews both to
Kera Bolonic
for NEW YORK MAGAZINE and
Ben Dickenson for
ELLE
blogged on Jezebel, as well as
numerous
television interviews
[Jon Stewart Daily Show full episode]
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For to the typical motivational speaker and their ilk, every meaningful value is readily sublimated into quick manipulation via empty marketing association and mystique. Any motivation, no matter how genuinely intrinsic, goes unrecognized as end in and of themselves, instead to be be exploited manipulatively, Behaviorally, persuasively sublimated into an extrinsic motivator, twisted, convoluted, sublimated and vastly redirected to any other ends conceivable. As ever, here once again, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer in to compensation for genuine underserved needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique, seldom actually substantiated in whatever goods or services. When a motivational practitioner of whatever stripe claims expertise in human motivation, they neither extend nor proffer any iota of genuine respectful autonomy support to aid and abet individual motive, but rather only connive and contrive by manipulative Behavior Modification, Sophistry, cajolery and blandishment, beyond any reasonable differed gratification, to subvert and obsessively sublimate activity away from the direction of whatever motivation they strive to harness and exploit. -how to transform motivation intrinsic to any one desire, in order to motivate activity entirely extrinsic thereto.
For example: Any soul crushing drudgery as the optimistic first stage tradeoff towards one fine day ever, anything else entirely more pleasurable, meaningful or engaging, any mindless conformity as the vital groundwork for revolution, even dishonesty and talk that is never to the point, indeed, whatever the most oblique path conceivable to close a sale or even to win the heart of one's intended, a standard Romantic trope: -manipulators teaching manipulation, manipulatively.
Dissent is readily quelled by browbeating people in whatever distressful circumstances that it's all because of their negative attitude and to stop complaining and get with the program. But ideological history and current events both teach us that the program of determined positivity in oppressive social control, repeatedly turns out to be a protracted exercise of willful ignorance blindly bound for calamity and inflated collapse. A standard feature in the typical experience of the ever hopeful disciple's cult recruitment, religious or secular, is in the restraint of genially going along with whatever procedure in hopes that things will begin to unfold and make more sense later on. It never does, but, much as with many unsuccessful relationships, soon too much is invested easily to let go and walk away. Instead, one simply slips into the inertia of exhausted despair for which one may even blame oneself. For the ideology can never be flawed, oh, no, no! It's all only a test of our faith to redouble effort in building ever further and grander layers of denial and reaction formation! Snake oil, bah humbug! What can be more shameful and brutally insensitive than to dismiss all human frustration and suffering with ever the same cheery: buck-up and stay positive! Just such fake fun is much the same pitilessly tyrannical advice so blithely proffered to prostitutes: How to be charming and feign pleasure, even amid the most soul crushing degradation.
The age old question persists: Is Zen a religion? Well, certainly along with motivational Behavior Modification, Zen qualifies no less as yet another rancid flavor to Marx's famously proverbial opiate of the sheeple, a force for inaction likewise so often faddishly prescribed to dull Proletarian discontent. Surely all such exhortation to sublime apathy or willful positivity even by means of Behavioral Modification is actually initiated from the controlling parental ego state of Transactional Analysis. Indeed, how callow and self serving to castigate, ostracize and even terminate from gainful employment, those deemed excessively critical or negative. How judgmental they all are against judgmental people! And what poor judgment thereby. Indeed, how cruel and lonely, how bereft of all animal compassion, to deny those who suffer, even dying cancer patients, their fear and anguish, and all in such pigheaded heteronomy to relentlessly willful positivity! Why, in any public discourse as on every online forum, any salient agenda such as any quest whatsoever for happiness by actually seeking to improve one's actual circumstances in order better to fulfill Intrinsic values, or any call to stand to against the debilitating oppression of continual and destructive serial bullying, is regularly quashed and tabooed by immediate puerile soft-flame outcries of Zen Nihilistic value-destruction in blanket invalidaton, admonition instead only to search within for sublime apathy. Bah, humbug!
To be reprimanded for complaining, is the same as the pernicious demand to suffer in silence, and never to bring serious problems to light. And ever such remains the malignant exhortation to willful positivity under the long refuted yet ever populatef
anti-rational magical thinking of the purported power of positive thinking. In the words of Anthony Jay: "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions." To quote Charles F. Kettering: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” The positive power of negative thinking obtains in criticality and the inherent friendliness and utility of honest criticism and fault finding, in the necessity of problem explicit statement towards solution finding, in progress that only comes in ongoing error detection and course correction, and indeed even in pessimistic realism, the name given the tendency of greater predictive accuracy in pessimism and pessimistic expectations, than in the danger of optimistic wishful thinking because of optimism, worst as from Pollyanna malignant optimism. 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. Indeed, 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 objective danger and harm. Any prospect of pleasure divorced from beneficial real value and likewise aversion quelled without regard for real adversity, should raise every alarm. Indeed, those who suffer certainly do not need to be castigated simply for complaining! That is depraved. Manipulation comes as an adjunct to coercion, under whatever rationalizing benign pretext, deceptively disarming resistance. To this end, the manipulator may blithely assert any variety of mitigating Existential Validation, right, authority, or purported benevolent intention: It's for your own good, dear! Nevertheless, to reject all complaint on any lunatic and relentlessly manipulative imperative of willful positivity, amounts the abrogation not only of all empathy and compassion, but even of reality principle to begin with. Indeed, as it turns out, people who suffer do not even want to be reassured so much as they only wish, first of all, to be heard. But obviously, most gratifying to those who suffer, will be capability that anything might actually be done to improve circumstances or situation of suffering. "Science has pretty much established that your circumstances are not very relevant to your happiness." declares Stephen Mills with such blithely nigh solipsistic and unoriginal cocksurety. “He who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.” opines Dr. Samuel Johnson. Bah, humbug! Clearly whatever present circumstances have every bearing upon happiness, indeed whatever issues in the ongoing present, no less so than personality, biography and psychiatric issues from the past.Behold the cruelty and depraved indifference of all such exhortation to willful positivity, often demanding the embrace of misfortune, illness, injury, loss of gainful employment, often demanding the embrace of misfortune, illness, injury, loss of gainful employment, yes even dying and death, all extolled as a journey and a blessing! Terror management strategies of Deathism, the sentimental morbid glorification of death. For whatever desperate solace of fantasy in Deathism and terror management strategies explicitly religious or otherwise, are no longer even arguably harmless. For terror management strategies of Deathism are to the ultimate heroic measures of Cryonics and to vital ongoing research into Radical Life Extension, what Christian Science is to life saving Medicine! But then, if death isn't so bad, what can be wring about murder, especially by persuasion alone and without violence? As Mark Twain: observed, funerals are for the living. Only the bereaved may seek for whatever solace. The only possibility at all of ever actually helping the dead, the only stopgap pending future treatment, remains with Cryonics.
The old joke goes, how after a particularly lengthy, long winded and boring sermon, the benumbed parishioners filed out from the church departing with not so much as a word to the poor lonely preacher. But towards the end of the line the ever hopeful preacher spied one thoughtful churchgoer who always went to the thought and effort to offer some comment at all upon each and every sermon. "Pastor, today your sermon put me in mind of the peace and love of God." The pastor was thrilled! "Nobody has ever said anything like that about my preaching before. Pray tell me why." "Because it hath endured forever."
Motivational speaking is consistently more portentously trivial, empty, dull and predictable than the most excruciatingly wearisome and boring of sermons! Whereas, however, even barring the amusement even of sheer theatrics from the pulpit, an interested study of whatever scripture may still always discover new riches to share. But motivational exhortation remains empty, intrinsically shallow, insulting to the intelligence and ultimately dispiriting. -All Hallelujah for Hallelujah's sake, with no other even purported good news! Indeed, everywhere dominating and subsuming all other conversation whatsoever, relentless Zen conditioned exhortation to Positive Thinking consistently sucks all the air out of the room!
One typically contemptible motivational charlatan actually begins interminably "tickling the ears" by defining something or other that is in actuality merely placebo, and not very concisely, and ever so so earnestly extolling all of its purported magic at at greatest length. Indeed, even sinking to all the tricks of a Fakir, and with every pretense of great profundity despite all seemingly genial light hearted conventional presentation in a tone of prestidigitation as if for purposes of harmless entertainment! Motivational speakers simply are not there to impart information, clearly and efficiently, but in the most flagrant violation of the injunction against suggestion and whatever trust placed in deathly patronizing motivational speakers or materials, to drag things out in order to promote stressfully under stimulated desperation from which persuade by tantalizing manipulative appeals to wishful thinking. For exactly such is the charlatanry of motivational speaking. And how loathsome to be so toyed with! Every time I am exposed to motivational non-content, I only want to climb on stage to beat and throttle the motivational speaker to death with my own bare hands, screaming: "Just come to your fucking point, you pompous braying jackass!" But of course, there is none.
As the saying goes, don't burry your lead! And especially, not on purpose! Any offer of real value should begin with real selling points of whatever is offered and terms thereof, even from line one! -All in order of diminishing importance, without beating about the bush. And all failure to do so, all such empty build up and puffery, is the sure sign of bunkum and mediocrity. Of course, someone merely struggling to express themselves, especially with real new ideas, may readily be forgiven, but never such shark-like caginess over clichéd placebo! No one with any ounce of lucid self respect ever wants to be jacked up and "motivated" by anything beyond good information, real opportunity, favorable circumstances and that pearl of our troubled existence, true honest friendship, and certainly never by any such inane and incessant bogus motivational cheerleading idiocy.
Any
distress in life is
no mere trivial itch, some nuisance to be suppressed or excised, but an alarm to
be heeded! Indeed, in the cutting prose of Kathleen Norris: "When you are
unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be
contented with your lot?" Any variation upon Motivational
Power of
Positive Thinking
is just more of the same exuberantly insulting bait and switch for anything that
really matters. Instead, FoolQuest.con
seeks to recognize and address unhappiness, demanding hope only as from
hardnosed discourse
among equals
in genuine pursuit of viable strategy. Otherwise, what hope can there truly be?
On the other hand, among any other by far more appealing and far more interesting contributions, and just to be fair, theoretical Positive Psychology has achieved some improvement upon traditional cultish Power of Positive Thinking self manipulation by avoiding straining credulity unto the sheer inner conflict of dishonest hypocrisy and taboo that is cognitive dissonance willfully obtuse even unto crimestop.
For among the repertoire of theoretical Positive Psychology feel good exercises, gratitudes, counting one's blessings, implicitly focuses upon selective howsoever at all truthful statements rather than actually lying to oneself outright as exhorted by those damn motivational speakers who do cause harm. So, indeed, it could be worse! (The irony keeps us honest!) Likewise, the feel good repertoire of Positive Psychology also includes "best possible future self" exercises, implicitly constrained from sheer fantasy and delusion by practicality and plausibility. Such much. Because gratitude, like joy and happiness at all, is still reactive to howsoever favorable circumstances and therefore impermanent but renewable experience that can never be possessed. Practice, or ritualistic self inducing of gratitude is still the same old Power of Positive Thinking self manipulative behavioral conditioning and sheer utter denial, all still in violation of the injunction against suggestion.
The feel-good collection of insulting self manipulations called: happiness interventions, are activities of autosuggestion and affirmation, at all any more benign than standard behavioral conditioning and willful positive thinking, in that happiness interventions contain any grain of truth in order forestall the outright inner conflict of sheer denial. Hence the so called: happiness interventions fall short of earnest pursuit of deeper meaning and value. That is why Positive Psychology has so often and so readily been so perverited into the most oppressive willful positive Behavior Modification.
The difference is too much of a fine point, and not enough of the values that Positive Psychology fails to adequately and consistently cleave to. The happiness interventions are still too much of a pep rally for self honesty and attention to others, let alone compassion for the appropriateness of grief, as applicable. And to make matters worse, Positive Psychology borrows liberally from the Zen, a notorious doctrine of self abnegation. Happiness interventions are "reasonable" and adaptive to circumstance, instead of authentic will to power and freedom even howsoever "unreasonably" demanding substantive change. That is why ultimately, happiness interventions are only dubious sublimation and softcore denial, just more of the same silly autosuggestion.
Alas however, there is precious little to salvage from Positive Thinking, even in whatever moderation. For precisely what sort of Positive Thinking is NOT one way or another denial based? Positive Psychology interventions only improve upon the self deceiving delusional behavioral suggestion of willful positive thinking, in that the suggestions, counting ones blessings, are better and more reasonably selected so as not to so blatantly affront sheer credulity and thereby only giving rise to cognitive dissonance. But even such more moderate approach, still violates the Psychotherapeutic injunction against suggestion. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is receptive to the patient's own unvarnished feelings, happy or unhappy. Critiquing depressive thought patterns or: "mental behaviors" is still just Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. After all, it takes such little effort of faith to believe that London is located in England or that two and three equal five. Indeed, even without smuggling in via whatever proverbial back door, any from the entire dishonest gamut of pacifying propaganda indoctrination, religion and crank ideology, conditioned forced cheer, sublime apathy and resolution of contentment in make do, nevertheless the very pertinence of any and all manner of self improvement as often extolled as the path to every success, still obviously depends upon whatever specific circumstances as they relate to whatever particular unmet needs and genuinely motivating values.
Positive Psychology at least differs from Behaviorism, in that Applied Positive Psychology even in quest of improved performance, aims at even at all meaningful elicitation of peak experiences of enjoyment rather than in rejection of the psyche, mere subject compliance often by suppression of inner conflict. And yet in application of metrics and whatever hedonic calculus to any observable fluctuations in transitory pleasure in order thereby to gain an average over time thus to assay happiness longitudinally, something is still lost in translation thereby still quite missing the point, because often Zen influenced researches in theoretical Positive Psychology, hence not entirely unlike Behaviorism, may arrive at implicit invalidaton even of intrinsic motivation, desires, values and ambitions indeed as no more than mistaken hypotheses of resultant happiness, in other words: snares of illusion, the maya. -and all from the cutting edge observation that life is often different from expectations!
Again, returning to sheer unadulterated motivational malarkey, a standard feature of the experience of the ever hopeful disciple's cult recruitment, is in the restraint of genially going along with whatever procedure in hopes that things will begin to unfold and make more sense later on. It never does, but, much as with many unsuccessful relationships, soon too much is invested easily to let go and walk away. Instead, one simply slips into the inertia of exhausted despair for which one may even blame oneself.
Don't do commissioned sales work or recruitment unless you are already good at it, and think twice before actually paying for the privilege!
A racket is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as tacitly accepted or endured by the majority, but deception, coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. A racket, after all, is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a scam or fraud, a deceptive practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. Get with the program: The program never fails. You fail the program! The masses will always comply in ever greater effort and diligence jumping through hoops and fighting amongst ourselves for scraps, believing and rationalizing just about anything, all in order to obtain whatever artificial scarcity and bait-and-switch, no matter how plainly contrived. Indeed, there are many such rackets, in every social context from religion, Zen, what passes for education, whatever is fashionable in diagnosis and treatment, particularly Behaviorism in whatever Sophomorically trendy new guise, and, of course, there are always those seedy network marketing pyramid scams and the like, ever vying for respectability. But one might as well trust in a compass with no needle, as buy into all manner of online courses, books and dubious business opportunities accumulating in our SPAM folders, always promising that much touted roadmap [sic] to success. Of course, any "roadmap" [sic] here is metaphorical, but for what? I can only warn you, gentle reader, what such a roadmap [sic] is definitely not: The promised "roadmap" [sic] is never any serious or serviceable mentorship support from inception to accomplishment of everything as promised, nor even so much as any real usable business plan explicitly laying bare, first of all, whatever quantifiable pertinent assumptions in detail as howsoever supported by the data and research, along with any sort of cost and revenue projection and scalable spreadsheets, both monetarily and in man-hours, let alone any inventory of whatever required or expected background knowledge and skills sets presumed or else fairly steep and more often than not unsupported learning curves, often sales related though not necessarily (of course they swear that anyone can do it! and even with the greatest of ease!), let alone requisite aptitude and temperament to whatever the nature, sensation and savor of primary activities en tailed, the pros and cons of whatever to expect, whatever doomed and awful drudgery experienced that was supposed to be so easy and reliable! Thus all being advertised as veritably turnkey cut and dry and reliable, becomes a complexly open ended test of faith!
Alas, there are always gaping holes behind all the vague evasive flimflam, leading only to frustration, defeat and betrayal. And at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. They'll pea on your leg and tell you it's raining. At best any of these overhyped books, courses and other so called opportunities, if not actually deceptive, might offer any very general information of any use to someone already with extensive background, experience or personal research or extensive sales record and client base, as however applicable. Which still makes the broad based marketing of such blithely over-valuated information, with no other caveat or qualification save for the standard admonition to unflagging hope and persistence, indeed vaguely dishonest. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer into compensation for genuine underserved needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique, seldom actually all that well substantiated in whatever goods or services. And even here, these charlatans find the temerity to fault their pupils. For such exactly is the shameless peddling of false hope, taking advantage of epidemic alienation! Naturally, the unhappy are more easily manipulated because, readily, the unhappy individual is well motivated to seek consolation and relief from the pain thereof. -to feel better, to be consoled, to be reaffirmed, to feel whole and complete. It remains, however, that masses of people are simply forsaken to our own devices, unable to find whatever it is we really need in so many arenas of life.
Whereas real serious business plans, by all due diligence and healthy skepticism, help more cost effectively to eliminate the unfeasible and unsuitable, prompting thereby metaphorical return to the proverbial drawing board instead of exhortation to the unwary to jump right in unprepared and wear themselves out to no avail. Beware, those SPAMMERS only sell vague and dubious hope whilst swearing, always, by the same old motivational dogged determination, in order to blame the mark as some sort of a quitter, undermining self-worth. Indeed, whosoever takes heart and gives whatever much touted roadmap [sic] to success any honest effort to fathom key details so craftily omitted, has only fallen for an extensive diversionary tactic until the refund period will have elapsed. So if you must find out for yourself, then be sure to mind your calendar!
In Transactional Analysis, strokes are the units of interpersonal recognition that everyone hungers for. But there are healthy positive and unhealthy negative strokes, conditionally or unconditionally. Transactional Analysis strives at correcting unhealthy patterns. However, whereas Transactional Analysis at all like Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, strives for insight, Existential honesty and growth, the ever devious "we’re only trying to help you" headgame of bogus support groups, all for our own good of course, is simply mindless Behavior Modification offering conditional acceptance in exchange for positive strokes however kneejerk and insincere, to the disapproving exclusion of all else.
Please stop sharing! "Sharing" only means venting to get something off ones chest, with an expectation of sympathy and validation, but to the exclusion of all substance. How painfully facile, superficial and insincere! Sharing remains faceless and clueless. "Sharing" means never analyze or criticize, because that might lead to strategy and even real help from new friends! So please stop "sharing!" Let's expect better.
A racket is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a scam or fraud, a deceptive practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. One old racket is artificial scarcity: The masses will always comply in ever greater effort and diligence jumping through hoops and fighting amongst ourselves for scraps, believing and rationalizing just about anything, all in order to obtain whatever artificial scarcity and bait-and-switch, no matter how plainly contrived.
There can be no economy without scarcity, incidental and unavoidable or artificial and very much avoidable. Again, artificial scarcity is a racket. And two such related rackets are dubbed: The sex economy and the stroke economy:
In Transactional Analysis, strokes are defined as transactional units of recognition, needed for physical as well as psychological survival. Positive strokes cost nothing, and can be freely given. Alas, positive strokes are inhibited both psychologically and socially by the inner Critical Parent ego state (superego), ever remaining in pervasive scarcity because of the stroke economy, a set of rules that seeks to interfere with the free exchange of positive strokes; the asking, giving, and accepting of strokes that are wanted and rejecting those that are not wanted. Strokes can be positive or negative. Stroke scarcity heightens stroke hunger, in turn stimulating stroke-seeking behavior. Even negative strokes are preferred to stroke starvation. People naturally prefer positive strokes but will consistently seek and accept negative strokes when they are stroke hungry and positive strokes are not available. Ulterior Transactions or: headgames are social behaviors that generate mostly negative strokes becoming the principal source of strokes for many people. The most effective intervention for people who play such headgames may be to nurture and help them regain their healthy capacity to love, by teaching them how to give, ask for and accept strokes.
But instead, in the travesty which is the ethos of the bogus support group, Behavior Modification is covertly deployed simply to superficially reprogram the directives of the inner Critical Parent ego state (superego), both socially and psychologically. Thus scarcity is only heightened all the more.
Like all such willful positivity, the bogus support group serves up a depressingly profound invalidation and deprivation of anything even remotely genuine. It's alright to be needy, but best to be so vulnerable only in safety. Therefore us ever remains crucial to identify who is trustworthy. There's no way around it: All swords are double edged. Virtually any gift of personality, intellect and character that anyone has to offer for the benefit others, is also likewise an advantage that can be taken unduly of others. Therefore, in order to make the world safe, there are those who seek power out of fanatical determination to throw out the proverbial baby with the bath metaphorical water by coercively reducing all communication and relationship to the blandly safe and idiotic Bubba-Gump level of sheer ersatz Harrison Bergeron mediocrity, a world where feelings and ideas alike, much less intimacy, disclosure, controversy, criticism and strategic planning, are all anathema. A soothing and sedate world without challenge, heated debate, gadflies and odd couples: A monologic world wherein no one can even hear themselves think, no one really listens to themselves, much less anyone else speaking, and in which only similar people associate strictly for taking turns blurting out empty and superficially chatty updates in order then to exchange marshmallow insincere sympathy and encouragement, a morass of soothing helplessness even unto death! -An endless group validation exercise, a perpetual pep rally, the network marketing fools paradise. But fulfilling interpersonal connection is a factor of engagement in substantive conversation and/or meaningful endeavor. Indeed, "sharing" in this context seems to mean taking turns in monologue, and actually seemingly precludes even any sort of conversation at all, much less deeper analysis, the value of criticism, the practice of controversy and problem solving, let alone much connection. "Sharing" in short, is so distant, lonely and stupid.
To reiterate: Please stop sharing! "Sharing" only means venting to get something off ones chest, with an expectation of sympathy and validation, but to the exclusion of all substance. How painfully facile, superficial and insincere! Sharing remains faceless and clueless. "Sharing" means never analyze or criticize, because that might lead to strategy and even real help from new friends! So please stop "sharing!" Let's expect better. Online or onsite, support groups and the like exist for the exchange of consensual validation and the exploitation thereof for pacifying behavioral conditioning. This was not always so, nor is it always so even today: Passing beyond the shopworn rituals of addiction recovery groups and the like, specialized support groups first made their notable debut onto the social landscape offering each their own body of specialized understanding, arising, initially at least, to meet an all too keen need for consensual validation among those whatever unique circumstances, situations and tribulations, finding themselves so very lonely, isolated and misunderstood. How poignant, for example, that a woman having suffered miscarriage, bottled up with grief and despair, finds a circle of other women in similar circumstances actually displaying keenly intense interest in every detail of her tragedy so awkward a subject anywhere else. But now even howsoever unique perspective and POV or point of view, has all seemingly gone by the wayside, co-opted to darker purpose, and those nauseating generic support groups and their insidiously deplorable ethos have proliferated even deeper into the mainstream, ubiquitous, generic, destructively dishonest and heteronymous. And therein the point comes where action or in this case: sheer inaction, speaks louder than any empty and sterile blandishment. The very concept of the support group as we now know it, despite all forced buoyancy, in truth is profoundly defeatist, a ritual of stifling and asphyxiating minimal life support of the emotions, cruel enforcement of active and systematic neglect, a Reductionist and Nihilistic value destruction lowering the bar as far as it will go in desperate conditioned alienation, a cynically zombified robotic and insincere minimally demanding attempt at the radical simplification of social interaction, oppression propagating amongst the oppressed.
The periodic scheduled reciprocal exchange of empty bogus motivational speaking is what has manifest in the ritualistic degeneration of the support group, perhaps predicated, also, upon any conceivable exchange of Constructivist Listening, thereby quite ruling out any salient techniques of Active Reading or Effective Active Listening, Constructivist listening being a process of passively allowing a person to talk without being interrupted, with nary ever a care regarding Miscommunication Competence or Conversational Adequacy, indeed wherein listeners neither overtly respond nor interpret at all, neither to paraphrase, analyze, proffer advice nor seek to relate via personal stories, all because people are simply held to be capable of solving their own problems by thinking aloud. -All very much in accord with Nihilistic value-destruction as implicit to the Solipsistic Zen position upon dialogue, namely Wittgensteinean paralysis.
Except that it is not entirely clear that the support group succeeds to provide even the introverted exchange of Constructivist Listening! Among the aphorisms of the noted and most esteemed stuffy prig Dr. Samuel Johnson is numbered the following dreary advice: "That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments." But even the most stringent oppressively polite dinner table conversation walking on eggshells and scrupulously avoiding taboo topics and controversy, is indeed at least any sort of interchange, however perfunctory. Whereas, in the support group, each takes the floor in turn to inflict themselves upon the others who must then together resound with sympathy and approval. Thus is any genuine prospect of spontaneity and psychological visibility suffocated and replaced by the monstrous changing of mindless adherence to heteronymously manufactured impersonal social roles. Heteronomy and the impersonal behavioral structured social roles of bogus support groups have rigidly institutionalized and also popularized their sad, sad travesty of autonomy, friendship and psychological visibility. Indeed, such support groups are just depressing and truly heart breaking to watch, generally a waste of time. The support group is where people go in order top learn how to patronize one another, thereby accruing tremendous savings in manhours of paid professional patronization. Such support groups are non-encounter groups, a robotic ritualistic mockery in travesty of of any true and vital human interaction, group therapy without the therapy: Bubba/Gump bland and safe dullardly unthreatening incessant and monotonously desultory prattle, the patronizing grade school special needs metered and tine carded so named structured program or lesson here applied to social dexterity such as entirely to rule out all possible need or sheer possibility of social dexterity never mind genuine interpersonal sensitivity or tact, indeed "providing structure," utterly predictable positive and negative reinforcement, so as completely to rule out and utterly invalidate everything except small talk with even robotically bogus sympathy and encouragement on cue instead of real human involvement or even sheer ordinary interest and curiosity, in brief, bogus support group marshmallow throwing (blithe dispensation and exchange of patronizingly and actually invalidatingly insincere positive strokes or sweet nothings in order reciprocally to pacify hesitation and discontent, a sickly sweet brush off), as positive Behavioral conditioning towards the institutionalization of docile heteronymous denial, ideological promulgation and lip service to false emotion pandering to Narcissistic hypersensitive anti-critical bias, anomie and consequent addiction to authoritative routine, semi-skilled incompetence: committee politics for the rest of us, reciprocal fair-weather friends on demand and well-wishers nowhere to be seen in a clinch. But certainly no support or even genuine interest, only the most utter distillation of empty conditionality:
For such infantilizing bogus support groups certainly including also the willful positivity cheerleading of those networking groups for the freshly unemployed, pretend all rainbows, sunshine and wellsprings of human compassion, but they are corrupt, opiate, futile, poisonous and conditional upon the learned helplessness and estranged emotional distance of their stunned and alienated participants barred from any true sharing of passions, honest criticism and substantive exchange or attachment, and most anathema at all, strategy and real assistance to one another or for themselves, or even so much as actual encounter or real group therapy. Friendship with another withdrawing into the embrace of willful positivity typically becomes ever more painful with excruciating platitude and often mounting hostility towards all suffering and "negativity." And reciprocally, even the offer of sympathy, even condolences in bereavement, all go wasted and unheeded from behind the adamantine barrier of forced good cheer. And an hour in room full of such futility is sheer soul crushing Existential Hell!
No, I simply do not crave consensual validation. Funny how they don't rush to validate my choice! -let alone to respect my wishes. What, are they withdrawing their approval? Talk about conditionality! But I am within my rights. Or perhaps the truth is just the opposite, that my standard of consensual validation is higher. It has been observed hoe some people demand for validation, not only agreement, but amplification. You have to agree even more strongly and emphatically, you actually have to top them! Well, perhaps I am even worse: I will only feel validated and respected by actual cooperation and assistance that I cannot get and so keenly need to make anything of my life. But even strategic conversation of any kind, is actually topic out of bounds, harshly enforced, in typical support groups, online or onsite, that exist only to protect the status quo, to stubbornly condition and pacify participants with crocodile tears and empty marshmallow expressions of sympathy. And the ethos is pervasive. But action speaks more loudly than hypocrisy.
Now forming new support group
for emotional scars dealt by the disorienting and traumatic support group
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you can always count on confront mounting peer pressure into ostracism if
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or seek real help! Attend in person in order to exchange vapid
small talk, insincere sympathy
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"providing structure" for robotic and patronizing affect flattened
recipients of Behavior
Modification. At any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. Therefore, anyone appreciates knowing where one stands. But such contrived arbitrary robotic ritualistic meaningless stance as in the stultifying support group etiquette providing structure, is nowhere, taking no real stance at all. Indeed, in the words of Gian Vincenzo Gravina, speaking of true loneliness and boredom: "A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." And the support group etiquette of aimless useless desultory sharing increasingly dominates informal discourse. It is destroying America!
Small talk is safe because there is no risk, no real self disclosure. There is also often little risk involved in reporting the circumstances, actions and even the ideas of others. All of which accounts for approximately 90% of conversation amongst the lonely. But the Nihilistically attachment disordered amoral a'priori dismissal in very principle, of consciousness and meaning whatsoever, all in favor, instead, of mindless mimesis and travesty that is behavioral structure, intentionally arrested development stifling of all genuine spontaneity, all quasi-legislated under tabooistic bullying mass exhortation to phony support group etiquette, permanently arrested in small talk and idle chit chat, plus "sharing" as a craven Orwellian euphemism for reciprocal constructivist listening in uncritical bland agreeability, is no remedy for loneliness, but guaranteed perpetuation thereof.
Aside, for good or ill, from networking within whatever fateful social embedment, there remain whatever readily available alienating and lonely avenues of futile outreach that truly only exist for all such socially institutionalized ulterior agendas and rackets. In particular, heteronomy and the impersonal behavioral structured social roles of bogus support groups have rigidly institutionalized and also popularized their sad, sad travesty of autonomy, friendship and psychological visibility. In the alternative, for autonomy, transparent and open ended deliberation upon agenda explores direction in defining voluntary collaboration and participation in whatever discourse or relationship, thereby filling the gap left in the rejection of heteronymous leadership or convention.
At least the affection when I pet a dog must be at all genuine, because dogs can tell! It's really not that heteronymous persons, deep down, really can't detect flagrant insincerity, but rather that as social approval seekers, they often actually prefer blatant insincerity. Insecure people with extreme interpersonal trust issues are often well known instead often, via retreat into utter fantasy, to seek perceived security in sheer conditionality. Only genuine personal contact actually needs to be at all sincere. Indeed the last thing precisely such bogus and damnable simplistic know-it-all sanctimony could ever motivate pursuit whereof, would be actually to cultivate improved and more perceptive Emotional Intelligence and thereby to risk transparency, criticism and the disillusioning exposure of sheer human fallibility that might even engender any iota of actual humane sympathy.
Perish forbid, by no means, however, ever to disparage all praise, encouragement or kindness on very principle. As above, these are specific and particular toxic social circumstances: Support groups are where patronizing Behaviorist care givers dump their charges to learn how to be patronizing towards one another and help perpetuate systematized heteronomy. -A deplorable ethos that has propagated even into the main stream of other dealings to infect all manner of common private and public discourse, ruling out all other value, even that of therapy. Alas, nothing useful or stimulating ever comes from people once they start "sharing." Any real issues, much less so much as any attempt at actual problem solving towards viable and empowering strategic solutions, are all strictly topic out of bounds and even grounds for summary ostracism, according the bogus, helpless, heartless, ever cloying and treacly support group etiquette! Support Groups are just more conditionality, another place not to fit in, for anyone with even so much as an iota of individual personal autonomy.
Indeed, I for one, harbor no desire whatsoever for the uncomfortably forced and impropriate familiarity of any anonymous exchange of icky "positive strokes" or creepy co-validation. Surely any substantive communication whatsoever remains by far preferable. That is why I have consistently requested even of strangers making contact online, please just to state their purpose directly without beating about the bush, indeed, in the name of mercy, please! just to come right to the point. This is because I reject any implication that simply because relationship is of essence and fundamental human needs are in principle fairly simple and universal, therefore the sharing of ideas which make us uniquely individual and interesting with actually anything genuinely to relate to, let alone of sensitive personal exposure, is simply unimportant because such will only reveal disagreement and thereby promote disharmonious acrimony. Thus, all interest, excitement and tension (eustress and distress alike) at all between human beings is diffused and eliminated, permanently. Indeed, precisely such limitation is deliberately and systematically cultivated as a desirable relationship value! Unbelievable.
In truth, however, even as much as we may all be alike as human beings, different people can and do differently perceive their needs as fulfillable by human interaction, very differently. So, why can't I myself, for example, simply make plain that I, for one, actively so dislike such destructively and artificially constrained and painfully banal small talk, let alone all that fulsome marshmallow throwing? And why is anything like that so often so difficult for some people, not only laypeople but even clinicians or social workers, to respect?
Much as the following may come as a surprise, considering how freely, for examples, medical and computing advice are shared and exchanged on all manner of forums and user groups, online support groups in particular, especially those for the abused and exploited often actually enforce rules against sharing details of circumstances, analyzing problems and attempting to help or advise one another, even if explicitly and urgently so requested! All such outreach is anathema and quashed systematically. The rationale given may be that local real world assistance cannot be replaced online, therefore really getting down to cases is actually considered dangerous! Attempting to solve problems amounts to offering advice, and offering advice may even be equated with claiming the false authority of some sort of fake guru! This suggests an inspiration by heteronymous extreme liability phobia. For exactly thus do such patronizing and pacifying online support groups actually serve to stifle substantive alliance, strategy and uprising. Further abuse and re-traumatization are not uncommon. More over, if strategy let alone action are so taboo, little surprise then, should mere pathological co-validation instead ensue under the guise of recovery!
Variants of what are for all intents and purposes support groups for would-be writers likewise ruling out any substantive feedback of genuine critique, are a weighty vexation to any serious aspiring writer. Such is prevailing malagenda of joint authorship in fiction writing online.
Applicability, compatibility and comparison between lifestyle reciprocal peer coaching and the FoolQuest.com Master Plan
- One way or another, paradigm shift in subversion of heteronomy to hierarchical dominance, indeed escape from oppression of whatever consensus rightthink, remains as ever, so rare and precious. A fun and popular method for creative solution finding, brainstorming, like science itself, begins from unfiltered unfounded conjecture. Therefore criticism and critical judgment, especially as howsoever coming apriori, may be only briefly suspended, but never permanently quashed or forbidden. This is a fine point, abrogation whereof leading to no end of folly, strife and oppression precisely whereof as intended in order to suppress and avoid. And no way actually at long last realistically to interact or even ever to take action in collaboration among equals. After all, the forging of attachments of true friendship in autonomy, arises entirely as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication and believe it or not, never otherwise. Accept no substitutes! And no one else need approve.
But f irst of all, before evaluation of, let alone undertaking, the FoolQuest.com Master Plan, let us perhaps first consider, maybe even as a strategic first stage or bridge towards formation of a (pre-)incubator, joining or forming even free of charge online, anything the likes of a life style coaching group for reciprocal peer coaching, sometimes called: a Success Team. Because, just perhaps gentle reader, all you want after all, is not any consultant for hire, but some real world contact, even an actual prospective business partner or maybe just a good friend. My bio.Remaining quite distinct and aside from conventional and often bogus emotional support , a life style reciprocal peer coaching group, as claimed, remains such as wherein the participants engage reciprocally in peer coaching, and actually coach one another. Typically, or so said, group members tend to enjoy brainstorming one another's problems, and may even find creative solution finding together highly productive. Also included, such staples of coaching may include the familiar exercises in team building and goal setting, for whatever any of that may be worth, along with crucial networking and resource sharing, perhaps not unlike a Mastermind Group, but even at all more intensively and intimately. The FoolQuest.com Master Plan heralds indeed a revolution in team building. But not to get ahead of ourselves.Typical peer coaching groups often remain specialized to whatever even well established institutional social context or endeavor, such as corporate employment or formal education, or even, and here's a surprise: sports and athletics. All as distinct from life style coaching, actually to take focus most broadly from whatever the concerns of individual participants leading their own lives. Indeed, Success Teams, as they are sometimes called, may be touted as offering the benefits of a social circle of serious people. And what could be more tantalizing as sales pitch in each our ongoing struggles throughout the lives we live? Indeed, as conceived, in highly unique lifestyle aspiration, the FoolQuest.com Master Plan, similarly cultivates benefits of a social circle of serious people for whom, after all, in the beautiful words of the late Success Team guru of such celebrated memory, Barbara Sher: “Isolation is the true dream killer, not your attitude.” Alas however, with all due gravitas to every complicated assessment of interpersonal compatibility, in our shamefully sick sad and all too mediocre real world, indeed ones attitude often either garners approval and inclusion or else even mealy-mouthed resentment and exclusion. And so, in sad truth, even the Relational Bullying threat of isolation, remains most pervasive among dream killers. And so, the figure of Diogenes, searching high and low for anyone else on the level, remains as ever relatable, no less in sussing out glorified peer groups than as to judging individual prospects, one at a time.
The misguided struggle with doubt and controversy
This
above all:
to thine ownself be
true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Cognitive dissonance even unto crimestop, is the emotionally suppressed inner conflict of hypocrisy, Existential bad faith, irresponsible and often resentful decidophobia, all as manifest in dialogue as: Antiprocess. At any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. Anyone manipulated into cognitive dissonance has immediately deep down already sensed bullying the dishonest malice in that somehow one knew not to dare question to closely. In the process of cognitive dissonance intimidation is instantly covered up by buying into the rationalization. In the evocation of cognitive dissonance, sudden humiliating and threatening element of intimidating surprise is accompanied by convenient rationalization so as to instantly tempt the sheer reflex face saving denial.
“The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.” — Germaine De Stael
Even however seemingly stubborn or stupid in persistently missing the point, Antiprocess is a cycle of the psychological defense mechanism or filter for avoidance of cognitive dissonance in preprocessing threatening or unsettling information subconsciously but not consciously, indeed, actively evading conscious processing, lying to oneself in order to evade responsibility. Antiprocess commonly manifests in selective self reinforcement, illogic, vigilantly dense half aware lame rebuttals and evasive non sequitur stock responses including poorly analyzed counter examples in flawed support all thereof. Indeed, such complete surrender of honest integrity and the good faith mechanism of ordinary sensemaking, observably undermines narrative reconstruction of events towards plausibility.
And despite all mechanisms and stratagems of denial whereby
inner
conflicted
troubling issues in
reality are ever suppressed from aware
consciousness,
distress
with attendant symptoms and dysfunction progressively emerges, even
crisis
of
powerful disorganizing and disruptive emotional experiences, arising
situations
and reactions thereto, for which there are no obvious or ordinary explanations. One way or
another, to quote Freud: "That which not expressed is
actedout."
And resolution of
inner
conflict
in order to relieve
distress
and even to improve conduct and performance, morally,
socially or just practical and pragmatically, howsoever impaired or
obstructed despite despite all consciously stated intention and desire to the
contrary, largely depends upon
dramatic
conscious emergence, acceptance, confrontation and resolution at all, of
inner
conflict. Cherished freedom, responsibility and freely given obligation,
is the font of drama in real life, or otherwise when absent, farce, worse,
tragedy.
Even in unhappiness, in
growth born
of regret, life and compassion can be redeemed in sheer
Existential disgust,
giving rise to open and
honest integrity and good faith. Sartre deemed the Freudian unconscious
paradoxical, but in truth we are always only partially aware of ourselves and
our
actions. Psychodynamically and
Phenomenologically, reflection is distinct from
consciousness at all.
Whereas, hypocrisy is the dishonest if ever self deluded mere pretence, expression and display of beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards, an essential feature thereof, bad faith (mauvaise conscience) is escapist pretence in denial of the fundamental truth that we are all ever changing, free and responsible for what we are, what we become, and what we do. In the words of Andre Gide: “The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” One of the tenets of Eudemonism is that one may rationally choose to live by one's ideals or principles. Hypocrisy, the disparity between ones principles and actual motivated conduct, stands as a challenge to Eudemonism and Enlightenment Rationalism. Hypocrisy, like it's opposite integrity, is generally considered an aspect of character. Ultimately, growth ensues only by remaining true to oneself, best abetted by others receptive thereto. And the artifice of conduct in bad faith, inflexible disavowal evading even the heaviest and most impossible responsibility let alone sweating the small stuff, by simply ignoring whatever freedom even amongst only costly bad choices to take action, means the troublingly coping mechanism of inauthentic self-objectification by hiding behind and finally sinking into the inner conflicted ambivalent open ended delaying tactics of suppressing from consciousness other than only certain aspects of identity and circumstances, thereby playing a rôle- of reactive passivity to situation, as in Sartre's examples of the coquette who plays stupid before her companion's sexual advances by continuing obliviously to engage only in and even enjoy, say, abstract Philosophical conversation, while neither accepting nor rebuffing her suitor, and the resentfully supercilious headwaiter who neither rebels against nor wholeheartedly submits to his servitude to condescending patrons. -Not to mention the Nazi war criminal protesting: "I was only following orders!" thereby embracing only his obedient rôle- as a soldier in abnegation of the rest of his human and humane conscious identity, no matter how costly and/or ultimately ineffectual disobedience might have been. When stuck with untenable alternatives, one can nevertheless own ones own free choices, such as they may be. Blaming others for circumstances is different for blaming others for your own behavior or even blaming yourself. In the words of William Hazlitt: “He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.” If you can't save holocaust victims on the spot, or failed in the crunch, a least you can still plot to assassinate and overthrow Hitler later on, as indeed was attempted and failed. But not when you as well are wretchedly implicated and making excuses. Indeed, precisely such impotent bad faith of guilt and denial was inculcated on a mass scale by Nazi oppression, propaganda and deeply heteronymous wholesale systematic manipulation. After all, bad faith selective self abnegation and reaction formation are also malignant key elements of Zen, Behavioral Conditioning, willful positivity and perhaps even sublimation, along with the Ulterior Transactions or: headgames as are the study of Existentialist inspired Transactional Analysis.
But is the above entirely fair? Is it fair on the one hand to take the worst case, Nazis! and at the same time disparage such of the most picayune examples as the silly coquette on loftiest principle? A rebuttal of sorts from Chivalry:
“When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.” (Sartre 45:1989). “There is no reality except in action…man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else then the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.” (Sartre 37-38:1947). Sartre's perhaps moralistic hard line on responsibility, his concept of radical freedom is Sartre's best rejoinder to Postmodern Nihilistic value destruction. But is Sartre's radical freedom really any more authentic than Stoical inner happiness? After all, even Sartre found himself depressed or: forlorn, in facing life with no excuse or anyone or anything else to blame. Indeed then again, in actually, perhaps he was simply frustrated by real obstacles and situational constraints that render freedom abstract, impractical, moot and thereby illusory. And after all, not only are excessively burdensome responsibilities naturally resented, but an excessive sense of responsibility likewise expresses hubris and leads to resentment of ones own relative impotence. Radical self-honest in confrontation with relative impotence is all fine and good, but as according to the capability approach, for real freedom beyond the merely theoretical and frankly academic and moot, what we all really need is still power and the opportunity such that dissatisfaction can ever motivate change for the better. And the will to power beginning from imagination and conjecture flourishes best neither in impotent grand isolation nor in conditionality and bad faith, but finding outlet in uplifting expression and exchange towards strategy and action. Let the single most frustrated human yearning in the face of tragedy and literally the most difficult challenge conceivable, namely: the prospect of retrograde time travel, serve as illustration of one salient truth: Not merely Philosophical or tactical but actual strategic discourse in unfettered and focused exploration of situational opportunity and constraint, is the one clearest true meaningful freedom, alas all to often disavowed and abrogated in the bad faith denial and quiet despair of timid heteronomy.
Existentially, what then is freedom, indeed for whom is freedom? The dramatic scene breaks down into Motivation-Reaction Units: Immediate reactions are often reflexive, but then conscious deliberation ensues upon what action to take next. Or does it? Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood or recognized in hindsight. Indeed, do we consider our options and consciously take action, or do our actions simply come upon us as we react to situation, and only then rationalize afterward? People often make their most important decisions with their heart but only then rationalize intellectually. Motivations and goals as ever set forth thereby, meaning as only created in the mind, interpretation, values, moral sympathies and empathies included, so often ambivalent, are not willfully intended in free agency but received and imprinted in receptivity as we discover ourselves subject all thereto. Most dramatically, relationship, the impression made by characters upon one another, often dawns upon the individual in emotional response to events unfolding. Only then is action undertaken, consistently with characterization, often giving rise to conflict and Setting The scene.
Problem Solving and Justification are reciprocal functions, and one must be shaped to rationalize the other, with integrity or else into hypocrisy. When there arises a discrepancy between the feelings and activity of a character, tension mounts all the more, the greater the obstacles to resolution of whatever ambivalence and conflict.
No question is too stupid to be asked and no answer is too wise to be given. True brainstorming depends upon the cultivation of responsibility by encouraging openness without picayune anxiety over conflict or controversy. Because:
IN THE END, technique can't substitute for courage, assertiveness even to simply refuse to take a silent hint instead of just reflexive knee-jerk backing down to even the very slightest and most subtle subtext of taboo and intimidation of cowardly bullying and Anti-Critical Bias.
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Especially under relative conditions of captivity, the phenomenon of manipulation is best defined as undue advantage from trickery via the exploitation of affective innate and conditioned triggers or "push buttons" to undermine and overwhelm, even barrage, resistance, better judgment, authentic good faith and autonomy of the target, via subtext of emotional incentive and disincentive. –As distinct from open coercion alone or substantive disinformation, lies. Typically, the manipulator obfuscates the nature of their coercion exercised, along with whatever self-serving advantage thereof, and seeks to disarm legitimate resistance or doubt.
For example, such insult as condescension that after all comes of love can be less painful than insult that comes without it, or more so, or equally so, as the case may be: but be that as it may, it is, in any case significantly more harmful. This is because insult provokes anger and hostility, but hostility towards people who even sincerely profess to love you and act on your own best interest is curbed and turned inwards, internalized, and experienced as self-hostility, namely guilt. Such deceptive appeals undermining the target’s credulity and defenses even whilst actually exercising coercion constitute often likewise internalized flagrantly manipulative behavior, conscious or unconscious.
Self censorship may occur because of intimidation, deference to authority or experience, sheer insecurity, or simply in the face of more vocal and confident participants. And just such group domination can contribute to the problem of social loafing and even dangerous bystander apathy when participants disengage from the process, transferring responsibility and counting upon others to pick up the slack.
Social loafing is less likely the better motivated, especially given any stimulation, interest or meaning to the task either intrinsically, value for it's own sake, or socially, or given whatever stake in the outcome. Individual accountability, particularly by exposure to ongoing evaluation by teammates, is most often cited as the antidote to social loafing. Or, just the opposite, encouragement and the elimination or reduction of pressure and intimidation may be key.
Alas, all the more corrosive, the disingenuous, hypocritical and manipulative strategy ostensibly against intimidation and oversensitivity is often the codling of insecurity by actively punishing assertiveness and excellence and demanding bland agreeability, typical exhortations to heteronomy for the sake of social success.
Among the many dimensions of alienation including powerlessness, meaningless Nihilism, normlessness (anomie), social isolation, cultural estrangement and self-estrangement amid an increasingly surreal incomprehensibly hostile environment or situation, the twisted ostensible motivation of Masochistically feigned mercy is no honest excuse for the adaptively sycophantic appeasement of faceless abusers of power, that in no way resembles genuine sympathetic compassion for individuals one can actually relate to, a legitimate and redeeming purpose, nor likewise even sound rationality. In the aftermath of Zen futile Nihilistic value destruction, skills of amoral social intelligence quickly become little more than the foulest mockery and perversion of meaningful and genuine humane sensitivity and wisdom.
Indeed, Beware Skilled Incompetence, the consequent dishonestly heteronymous adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thereby manipulatively avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict on any level from controversy and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink teamtraps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree)!
[PowerPoints] Reference the Abilene Paradox among other witness-inhibiting factors of bystander apathy also Revisiting the Abilene Paradox, dealing with how people can together agree to go along on any ill advised course of action that few of them actually prefer, out of miscommunication and indecisive behavior, when the need to act together, to perceive themselves and to be seen as cohesive, and the deadly common misconceptions regarding criticism override rather than encourage the need for investigation and expression to explicitly question and clarify group assumptions, desires, opinions, sympathies and even obvious knowledge, and what it takes to begin to break such a dysfunctional cycle.
Free markets, the very bulwark of democracy, are driven by individual vested interest and frequently undermined by more powerful howsoever monopolistic or protectionist vested interest. Despite or because of this, in all things, the dynamic and flexible social engineering principles, personal autonomy, good sportsmanship and responsible values of rational democratic progress are systematic doubt, hope in the honest embrace of fallibility and tolerance for uncertainty, substantive discourse, debate of disputes, criticism without punishment and no insult taken, free inquiry into problems openly and publicly without fear of punishment, indeed, imagination, open unfounded speculation about different case scenarios pursuant to any number of varied and different proposed measures, without need of conforming or in any way limiting said speculations to any accepted quasi-official position.
The very
values and aptitudes ever fostered in brainstorming and also fiction writing!And all pursuant to experiment, trial and error, the vital opportunity for all manner of ongoing reevaluation and revision, open ended correction of mistakes and improvement at all levels, piecemeal, without bloodshed, violence or even strife as such.
In Reactionary societies and groups, especially the more Progressive the guise, and actually the less so at least where whatever the Reactionary agenda may at least be out in the open, good sportsmanship, controversy without acrimony, is all dismissed as impossible, Utopian, too perfect for real people. And yet, controversy even however heated and close to the bone and yet without acrimony, does occur, as may be confirmed Empirically, by observation.
But is just such success ever entirely consistent, even among people of the utmost good faith? Probably not. After all, no one is perfect. And yet there will be greater ratio of success in striving openly than by actually enforcing the lowest standard, an accommodation made to seem realistic under the pretext of touchy-feely sensitivity to vulnerable emotion, which then becomes dishonest repressive extortion by a bunch of conniving whiners and bullies for all others to conform.
Indeed, beyond simple Empathic Failure, underestimation of situational factors often engenders Fundamental Attribution Error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect), motivating, in turn, such blanket rationalizations as the Hostile Attribution Bias typical of the reactive victim type bully, and, in specific, Anti-Critical Bias, Ad Hominem Abusive and dishonest peer pressuring emotional extortion against controversy expressed in the perceived right never to be challenged in any views or statements whatsoever, as a quite frankly loony hyper-fragile imperative of personal comfort.
Indeed, in the immortal words of Aba Eban, "Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals."
Plans will simply never be subject to reevaluation or revision, as call for reevaluation and revision is distinctly and deliberately ruled out under the ongoing verification process of the formal consensus decision procedure.
Indeed, let us all serenely cherish together, the following Orwellian nugget:
Although every individual must consent to a decision before it is adopted, if there are any objections, it is not the choice of the individual alone to determine if an objection prevents the proposal from being adopted. Every objection or concern must first be presented before the group and either resolved or validated. A valid objection is one in keeping with all previous decisions of the group and based upon the commonly-held principles or foundation adopted by the group. The objection must not only address the concerns of the individual, but it must also be in the best interest of the group as a whole. If the objection is not based upon the foundation, or is in contradiction with a prior decision, it is not valid for the group, and therefore, out of order.
Oh, doubleplusgood! War is peace Freedom is slavery Ignorance is strength
Note how all prior decisions are proverbially writ in stone and signed in blood, in member commitment with no latitude for dissidence, error detection and correction or change from any prior resolution. Indeed, similar slippery and reasonable sounding language, lip service for individuality and controversy as a celebrated democratic value, is all too often similarly qualified into the menacing oblivion of predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree).
Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong." At any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm, particularly by means of any slippery expanded definition of violence into bullying whatsoever, but of such cunning manipulative ambiguity as to appeal to the love of freedom while actually guilt-tripping all and sundry into agreeable passive helpless bystander apathy.
But wait: Rather, as a better alternative instead, to preserve integrity, quite surprisingly and subversive after the initial subterfuge of their rhetoric, Butler and Rothstein actually strive that inclusion and cooperation, along with creativity and efficiency techniques, psychological group dynamics and all manner of other fine ideas, most advantageously be integrated as adjunct to the hopefully meaningful, valuable and ultimately productive conflict and controversy of democratic adversarial systems rather whole sale replacement or needlessly repressive sublimation thereof, which is always only insipid and dangerous.
What is important and all to often illusive is simply fair play. After all, the guarantee of the legitimacy of any cooperation is still the freedom of the opposition to actively and vocally dissent.
Indeed, ever if consensus be truly so prized, Butler and Rothstein propose to force consensus via rigid committee procedures whereby any dissenter whosever, is actually empowered to quite completely obstruct progress and force declaration of a block, much like unto a filibuster but without all the hard work and test of endurance, until substantive resolution or compromise is finally negotiated! Indeed, exactly such procedures may be crucial in any affiliation otherwise vulnerable to schism and disintegration from dissent, unless consensus is achieved and maintained. The problem, remains however, that not all good objections are knowable before hand. So shutting the door after achieving resolution, remains a bad idea. Dissidence is not merely inconvenient strife, but crucial and valuable to democracy.
-As it turns out, all actually polar opposite from Phil Bartle's highly disrespectful Inductivist hypocrisy of dropping ideas quietly ostensibly full of the very milk of human kindness and in order to spare people's feelings, but, truth to tell, allowing dissenters to save face and unpleasantness by being silenced of their voices, in exchange for the craven concealment of controversy.
All such slippery stone walling noncooperation peer pressure as Phil Bartle's highly disrespectful Inductivist hypocrisy of dropping ideas quietly ostensibly in order to spare people's feelings is nothing but a sly manipulative exercise in bullying and a perversion of the intent of true brainstorming. The sly sanctimonious repressiveness folly of non confrontationalism sabotages the free clash of creativity and investigation, castigating dissidence even in principle, and crushing all democratic values.
Indeed, often not only interim criticism but cross-talk at all! 'Cross-talk,' of course, is a term derived from radio communications wherein simultaneous usage of the same frequency causes interference for others, slippery propagandistically redeployed here into likewise somewhat pejoratively usage denoting whatever ongoing private discussion and planning amongst the participants during whatever proceedings. And when so-called cross-talk, actually meaning possible dissidence, is thus actively discouraged as wasteful digression rather than a logistical imperative of real input and participation, then this policy probably will not apply to or likewise equally prohibit private consultation amongst the leaders and facilitators to keep things running smoothly and on target.
Dialectically, even leading questions ought to be honestly and rhetorically transparent. The ugly secret is that a "facilitator" may already have "the answer", and via however covertly leading questions, invites a roomful of people to express their ideas only then to try to manipulate the responses to fit an existing covert agenda. Indeed, agreement through facilitated group discussion, seeking mutual understanding on a given subject, is often actually achieved via arrival at a predetermined outcome through mediated or facilitated dialogue, often by ignoring, obstructing, ruling out, labeling, impugning, intimidating, ridiculing, or simply ignoring any form of dissent. In short, by sly bullying tactics.
Randall B. Dunham, Ph.D has even coined an appealing name that has come into use in denoting just such sinister engineering of social "proof" and thence consent via Consensus and Facilitation chicanery, The Delphi Technique [diagram].
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However, we all remain no less
indebted to her for the opportunity learn how
CliqueBusters TM
might best prepare to diffuse
and disrupt devious consensus
manipulation!
Consensus manipulation is bait-and-switch, a deceptive fraudulent con game of Behavior Modification. But no bait-and-switch is ever effective and achieved unless and until finally accepted and embraced by the mark. And typically, this will be achieved by whatever contrivance of manipulation and coercion or pressure. Consensus manipulation is the process by which the individual having taken the bait of promised input into proposed collaborative effort, instead gradually is finessed and comes to own and internalize whatever ulterior agenda all along, of the unscrupulous and/or simply misguided people in control. Consensus manipulation is a bitter betrayal.
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| Decision Making | |
In Delphi decision groups, a series of questionnaires may be sent to selected respondents (Delphi group) who might never meet face-to-face, inputting only by email or snail mail. Members of the groups may be selected because the are experts or possess relevant information.
Though in n the meantime, the technique has also been adapted to public meetings, according to Lynn M. Stuter.
Steps include:
The success of this process is thought to depend upon the member's expertise and communication skill. Also, each response may require adequate time for reflection and analysis, that asynchronous communication allows. The major merits touted for the Delphi process include:
The Delphi Technique is a prioritization process devised for obtaining the consensus opinion of a group of experts involving a series of surveys, typically conducted anonymously, providing repeated measurement and controlled feedback among participants. The Delphi Technique is intended for use should ever there be insufficient objective information for decision making. Indeed, some studies, however disputable, have claimed that Delphi, applicable in a relatively inexpensive and timely method, can be substantially more accurate than individual experts and meeting face to face in traditional groups, because of how the Delphi Technique takes advantage of multiple "expert" views and mitigates obstacles and pitfalls the likes of predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree), undue influence and individual bias. Indeed, the Delphi Technique has even been described as cyclic process employing disagreement, yes the failure or refusal of consensus, as a trigger for deeper analysis.
But
as with any other technique, some applications will be better than others and
the Delphi Technique can be gravely misused, especially as
manipulatively
exploiting the very
predisposition to
heteronymous
Cohesion-Norms
of
Groupthink
team traps
of Stockholm Syndrome,
all such undue influence that the Delphi Technique was
originally conceived to mitigate but now instead
manipulatively redeployed in service of exactly whatever
the very bias of
unscrupulous facilitators.
Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders,
are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored
under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the
contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot
be "made-wrong."
Typically, feedback from the Delphi Technique is presented as a simple
statistical summary of the group response, usually comprising a mean or median
value, such as the average ‘group’ estimate of the date by when an event is
forecast to occur. But a more questionable utilization of the Delphi Technique
is as to actually making not only recommendations instead of estimates or
predictions, but the imposition of binding
policy, application
rather than evaluation.
Occasionally, additional information may also be provided, such as arguments
from individuals whose judgments fall outside certain pre-specified limits or to
explain extreme positions. And even the most extreme positions may begin to
moderate with reciprocal feedback. Indeed, convergence, reduced variance is
typical. The question remains, however, whether from actual consensus of from the very pressure
to conformity the Delphi Technique strives to avoid? After all, enduring
minority opinions and disagreement with group aggregates can even remain noted
as part of the results, the opinions solicited, no harm and no foul. And true
enduring consensus and reduction of disagreement are even measurable by polling
post group responses and then compared to result with other procedures that may
even turn out to achieve higher enduring consensus than the Delphi Technique,
after all. The Delphi technique, then, gathers and cultivates longitudinal data
on the distinction and transition between initial impressions and considered
opinion.
But exactly what relation, if any, has the endurance or legitimacy of
consensus with improved accuracy of judgments, the enhanced reliability, if
any, of predictions or estimates obtained convergence or mean results ever
obtained by the Delphi Technique? Indeed, any such
success as might arise may
be attributed even unexplained, to the phenomena of
error covariance,
the fabled wisdom of crowds.
Heteronymous
Populism in distortion of all cherished
values
of genuine faliblist democracy that openly thrives upon doubt, dissent and
criticism, often features
instead the idea that we must abstain from
making any decision except by unanimous consent and the idea that the consensus
must not be challenged and the idea that the consensus is the body of beliefs
shared by all.
Indeed, the implicit problem is in the unspoken yearning for consensus,
being the absence of disagreement and thereby freedom from nagging
doubt,
as
certitude surrogate. And for pernicious misapplication of the Delphi
Technique towards unperturbed consensus as a substitute for simple majority
rule in decision making or policy, as pursuant to open
controversy and subject to ongoing
error correction, there can be no alternative but sly
ostracism,
And exactly such
covert relational hostility, no matter how the truth be
denied, evaded or glossed over,
manipulatively exploiting the very
predisposition to
heteronymous
Cohesion-Norms
of
Groupthink
team traps
of Stockholm Syndrome,
all undue influence that Delphi was
originally conceived to mitigate, but now
manipulatively redeployed in service of whatever
the very bias of unscrupulous
facilitators.
Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders,
are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored
under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the
contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot
be "made-wrong." Thus at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and
cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise
futility,
bring adverse consequences or even do harm.
Delphi Technique feedback as intended comprises the opinions and judgments of all group members and not just the most vocal. But the worst abuse is in consensus decision making at the expense of vocal dissidence, the suppression and concealment of controversy. At the end of the polling of participants (i.e., after several rounds of questionnaire iteration), a statistical average (mean/median) of the panelists’ estimates on the final round is generated and recorded as representational of group judgment. The evaluative or predictive conclusion may thus be seen as an equal weighting of the members of a staticized group, but not a recommendation much less application to collective action or policy, except as abused for oppressive and devious consensus manipulation.
The Delphi Technique was created as a tool of decision making in arriving at assessments and forecasts from among all conceivable possibilities, somewhat as if resolving the outcome of quantum indeterminacy, rather than truth seeking and coming to conclusions even remotely at all about reality. -Leaving wide open the sinister distortion from ordinary vernacular denotation of the very term 'decision making' as signifying the decision of subsequent course of action, indeed, as opposed to indecision, paralysis and inaction, returning yet again, to the question of whether doubt and dissent are worthy of embrace as beneficial not only to seeking truth just to satisfy curiosity, but also as crucial to sound and informed action, or merely to be scorned as an unfortunate inconvenience of imperfection to be transcended by the force of conviction and properly indoctrinated unity, in ever agreeing to decisions at all.
Rational conduct of imperfect human beings is impossible without openness to criticism. The practice of criticism reflective of the attitude of criticality, after all, so essential to creative tension, is the process of weeding out from among the options for fitness, by the process of
controversy, by the Dialectical process of attacking and defending competing ideas, advice and opinions openly. After all, the secret to any good writing is good editing. But it is important to reject and avoid flaming and Ad Hominem personal attacks including the impugning of motives, and generally never to take personal offense at criticism of ideas, free choice and output, even during a heated argument or controversy. But this nothing more than good sportsmanship and the rejection of prevailing Anti-Critical Bias. https://www.science.org/content/article/joy-criticismComplaining is unjustly maligned. There can be no solution finding without problem statement, i.e., criticism, complaint. Why, just imagine doctors, lawyers, scientists and philosophers, rather than rationally debating whatever disagreement of opinion, instead resorting to abuse until sinking into rancor and hostility. This would constitute a thin-skinned scene of needless high drama or else such utter farce straight out of the all too prophetic movie: 'Idiocracy,' indeed the rule of idiots! Alas, for all too many, such remains so blithely accepted as the social norm in human interaction. And that may explain no end of poor decision making. But we can do better together, even simply by wanting to. And all with no defiance of human nature, but only of toxic and mistrustful antirational socialization. Indeed, as a point of good sportsmanship, it bears mention that criticism, no less than ideas, suggestions and advice, may also be the more cogent and better debatable given clear explanation and specific reference to whatever particular object or point of criticism, and details of the reasoning leading to whatever conclusion or assessment, initially and/or as questions may arise. Because reaction or response without any specificity or clear reasoning given to understand and hence agree, disagree or comment at all, neither initially nor upon request, may only be confusing, and worse, conceal aggravating ulterior agendas, tiresome bait into witless worthless whining flame war.
And this remains an important point of conduct and moderation, because bullying cannot be acceptable. And there remains far better alternative to whatever oppressive and destructive popular Anti-Critical Bias and misconceptions regarding discourse and
criticism such as inspire the dishonest concealment of controversy.Sensitivity, indeed hypersensitivity, to criticism, must never be accommodated at any expense to free criticism and the Dialectical practice of controversy. Because the alternative to free criticism and controversy, well exceeding any dharmic right
action and noble bounds of compassionate artfully gentle tact, remains no more than even obsessively Anti-Critical and hypocritical superficial harmony endlessly simmering with oppression, coercion and manipulation. All to often, even the most rational of skeptical criticism is taken as hostile and therefore received with hostility instead of being properly appreciated for the genuine interest and valuable service provided. But criticism is inherently friendly, an expression of abiding esteem. In the practice of controversy, criticism must seek to engage honestly with the expressed thoughts of its opponent. Otherwise, what passes for criticism only becomes irrelevant. Therefore, in the wise words of Benjamin Hardy: “Don't seek praise, seek criticism.” And try to take things in whatever spirit as intended.We are all taught to be agreeable and keep conversation light and bland, in order never to stand out and thus to become accepted and popular. And yet the bleeding edge of science, in rediscovery of the wisdom of the sages of old, finds salient reason to flout taboo by recommending the exact opposite: Happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk, deliberating Dialectically in controversy, with civility as autonomous equals!
Everything proposed here on FoolQuest.com entirely depends first upon imaginative free exchange and criticality. Otherwise, there can be no hope even to begin.
The reason controversy
is so often conventionally despised and
Dialectic eviscerated, curtailed or at least
compromised, is because of strife with ubiquitous opposition thereto. Therefore,
instead finding ways to contend with the various
actingout
of
Anti-Critical Bias is crucial. There are many reasons why open
ended
speculation and new ideas are suppressed from conversation, including the
security of the familiar and the
heteronymous
demand for the illusion of firm foundations. But new ideas must be fostered and
set free to sand the test of fitness in
controversy.
People are different. For which we should be duly thankful. When people agree, there
is nothing to say or discuss.
Controversy,
which is the free exchange of
criticism,
is the only serious, open,
honest
but respectful and civil form of conversation
possible between people who disagree. The avoidance thereof is perhaps the
single central problem in society:
heteronomy. As we have seen, only the
egalitarianism of creative problem solving and free inquiry transcends the
hierarchical unhappiness of the
sheeple.
And just as argumentative
controversy
remains the analytic mode of exchange in case of disagreement, likewise,
Miscommunication Competence
is the analytic Meta-Conversational framework of exchange in case of
incomprehension, often reciprocal. Disagreement and incomprehension being
the normal circumstance, even
relationship howsoever,
trust
and tolerance at
all, all as opposed to heteronymous
expectations of identity or oneness, are entirely contingent upon just such
difference or perspective.
Therefore, the
Promethean crucial first step is to foster, maintain and
preserve, gregarious open ended free exchange in creative problem solving, fee
inquiry and of
controversy
which is the exchange of
criticism.
There is no substitute. Nothing less, nothing else, will ever do. -No joyless
social minefield or obstacle course, nothing more
behavioral structured, timid, conventional
or non confrontational. Everything else has failed. It does not work because it
cannot work. Not without the Promethean crucial first step to foster, maintain
and preserve, gregarious open ended free exchange in creative problem solving
and of controversy
which is the exchange of
criticism,
being the only open
honest
but respectful and civil form of communication
between people who disagree, meaning: everyone, because we are all so different.
“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Nausea’
Nietzsche dismisses the reasoning criticism of Socrates, one lacking after all in more overt power, as persuasion and as such merely another exercise of the will to power seeking to overcome others. Well then, if I am to be overcome, then let me be overcome by sound reasoning and good evidence! Assail me then with rational expression and accurate information! Defeat me with valuable help in better decision making! It's not a zero sum ego game. The loser of in controversy, who learns, wins more than the winner, who only shares. Nietzsche forgets that there is also love and power to uplift and do good, even recognition therein and good sportsmanship in the crucible of truth. If such be decadence, then hooray for decadence!
Alas, the truth about all too many people who say that they do not to like to argue, is that what they actually don't like, is honest fair play. Therefore, do learn to argue. People are different. For which we should be thankful. When people agree, there is nothing to say or discuss. Controversy, which is the free exchange of criticism, is the only serious, open, honest but respectful and civil form of conversation possible between people who disagree. The avoidance thereof is perhaps the single central problem in society: heteronomy. As we have seen, only the egalitarianism of creative problem solving and free inquiry transcends the hierarchical unhappiness of the sheeple. Therefore, the Promethean crucial first step is to foster, maintain and preserve, gregarious open ended free exchange in creative problem solving, fee inquiry and of controversy which is the exchange of criticism. There is no substitute. Nothing less, nothing else, will ever do.
Just as argumentative controversy remains the analytic mode of exchange in case of disagreement, likewise, Miscommunication Competence is the analytic Meta-Conversational framework of exchange in case of incomprehension, often reciprocal. Disagreement and incomprehension being the normal circumstance, even relationship howsoever, trust and tolerance at all, all as opposed to heteronymous expectations of identity or oneness, are entirely contingent upon just such difference or perspective.
Often in polemics (which may be perceived as the more rational, open and honest component of counterpropaganda), which is to say, with the aim of influence or persuasion, argument is any course of reasoning in statement or assertion put forth aimed at demonstrating truth (correspondence to reality in assertions), or falsehood, particularly as engaged in controversy, dispute, especially a public one, a disagreement in logically or Ontologically conflicting or contradictory opinions over which parties are actively arguing against each other.
And argumentative controversy is the open and rigorous exchange of criticism integral all thereto.
All to often, even the most rational of skeptical criticism is taken as hostile and therefore received with hostility instead of being properly appreciated for the abiding interest and service provided. But true criticism is inherently friendly, an expression of esteem. In the practice of controversy, criticism must seek to engage honestly with the expressed thoughts of its opponent. Otherwise, what passes for criticism only becomes irrelevant.
The hypothesis of Evolutionary Epistemology is the ready observation how, just as scientific breakthrough actually consists in the pointed refutation of previously accepted hypotheses, democratic open societies, by nurturing doubt as crucial to the value of controversy, and thereby engaging investigative and experimental scrutiny to challenge assumptions, the adversarial process of healthy cognitive conflict and meaningful controversy, from substantive, important, meaningful issue-related difference of opinion, may lead to the fruitful resolution thereof, by corroboration, refutation, and synthesis, achieving and improving learning, discovery, creativity, problem solving, strategic decision making and hence, genuine productivity and real progress, even growth with less needless drama. Losing an argument profits in learning, much the same as does refutation of an hypothesis. Alas, just as observably, especially among those burdened with difficulty distinguishing cognitive disagreements from personal assaults, particularly the reactive victim type bully, cognitive conflict, even the most purely issue-related differences of opinion or controversy, often spark the real life drama of affective conflict focused and directed personally, fostering suspicion and hostility, hence cynicism, distrust, and avoidance or obstruction, thereby preventing open communication and cognitive reintegration.
One simple solution to the disruption of affective conflict, a reliable cure borne of ordinary maturity, is procedural agreement to focus upon cognitive conflict actually to the exclusion of whatever affective conflict otherwise thereby engendered. Such maturity is achieved, likewise, by the benefit of the doubt, by reasonable uncertain hesitation to lash out, instead seeking to take even disagreement in whatever spirit intended, so long as trust is vindicated and there turns out not to be any intentional hostility or threat, after all, only disagreement and controversy to the point. Alas, affective conflict unresolved may melodramatically motivate rejection of the very value of doubt or even of the very desirability of maturity and tolerance at all, thus Nihilistically disrupting and obstructing cognitive conflict resolution, learning and growth. And so, maturity, tolerance and even Evolutionary Epistemology and progress at all, may be effectively rejected in anger and suspicion.
Alas, the alternative is typically the obfuscation and rationalization of cliquish bullying and Stockholm Syndrome that is consensus manipulation via synthesis achieved through intimidation and agreeability.
Indeed, Beware of Skilled Incompetence, the consequent adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thus avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome!
Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."
Controversy is no less than the crux of scientific quest for truth and the very soul of democracy, and I, for one, dread life without it!
The visibility and transparency of controversy is always extremely important because controversies often express the richness and depth of a topic, drawing out insight and ingenuity beyond the deadly bland and superficial and forestalling premature consensus, the superficial convergence of beliefs and values before the underlying differences can emerge. For such is the blind straightjacket of homogeneity, the loss of perspective under which superior alternatives become inconceivable and hence are to be ignored. Indeed, that is exactly why an able chairperson or facilitator, or in fiction some manner of appropriate supporting character, actually works to help keep minority views alive. -Exactly in order to forestall premature consensus. Controversies dramatize change meaningfully, often making a critical difference even in life–altering decisions, in reality no less than in drama.
Thus, by dwelling upon the small mindedly trivial and picayune rather than drama or controversy, only petty bickering arises because the crucial impetus to however grow and progress has effectively been hobbled. And so, in real life, the tension rises all the more, but in fiction only if the reader or audience can be brought to care.
In
dramatizing
controversy,
POV
facilitating
inner
motivated
conflict
and
dramatic
dialogue
makes it
hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In
a good play, everyone is right."
But
how far would they go?
Or will they change and
grow?
Indeed, scientists, journalists, detectives, intelligence analysts and even
dramatists or novelists, are all professionally required to address a range of information,
multiple perspectives, authorities, and opinions on any number of topics or
subject matter.
Albert Bandura“People's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively the case.” -
And however inadveritently,
even search engines may significantly decrease their productivity or even
conceal incompetence if controversies are overly difficult to investigate or
dig deeper, as will be crucial for insight into
difficult
struggle,
because aggregation algorithms tend to emphasize popularity of
opinion, effective consensus, and hence, simple mediocrity rather than genuine
objectivity.
Hence, the more damnable, as, for example, with
Inductivism blandly and
copiously marshalling so called "facts"
in the pretense of
objectivity, for human agents to promote the suppression or
concealment of controversy, quite deliberately! And, as will be seen, how
vulgar and malignantly
manipulative
to do so in the name of love!
Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."
The naming of questions (of this or that noun) without actually framing any salient question, thereby evades, smoothes, sooths, and charms away, any troubling suggestion of the very possibility of ignorance and uncertainty. And, likewise, the mere enumeration and exposition of different POV ("competing approaches", "conflicting, [e.g., contradictory] narratives," "diversity of discourses," "different emphasis's") but never as simple points of departure in any fruitful process of elimination, is a common and dishonest tactic in the bland evasion and obfuscation of the very existence of controversy and of real life drama, the inherency of conflict on many level to situation. -Indeed ever such hurly-burly and vital Evolutionary Epistemology scorned as far too dull and cruel. And all without truth of any singular physical reality, but all merely as a matter of relative perspective, even damnable moral neutrality, so that simple error, let alone any deeper wrong, need never be detected. All devious diversion by the sowing of authoritative confusion!
And all such comes part and parcel of the bogus false promise of surreptitious decision making. Indeed, the concealment of controversy is to rob the dissident of their voice, a devious means of oppression.
The prevention outright rather than any rational and productive intermediation of all struggle and contest of will, even on such benign grounds of equality and kindness, nevertheless remains a principle actually hostile to life and free thought by the glorification of mediocrity, ultimately only strengthening the herd as a tool of tyranny.
All such chicanery remains the manipulative abuse of our precious creativity undermining the rational quest for truth, rather than in service thereof, that may pass as a subtle slight of hand unless, instead of being caught by surprise and then intimidated, anyone will ever risk being so rude and abrasive as to call the marshmallow throwing sickly sweet brush off touchy-feely cheat for what it truly is: Hostility towards the very vulnerable and fallible Epistemological human condition inspiring, in turn, manipulation under the guise of love with the false promise and bribe of acceptance universally yearned for and by the pretense of tender and lofty selfless motivation so as to conceal the truth of lust for power and dominance over others by professing love, thereby wielding temptation to overwhelm better judgment while also raising self-loathing and guilt in order to confuse the target's warning instincts.
At least Wonder Woman (the fanciful authorial spokesperson for Charles Moulton, nom de plum of Dr. William Moulton Marston) is refreshingly candid, in her benevolent authoritarianism and exhortations to loving submission! But then, sex sells just about anything, and even heightens drama.
By far the more dreary,
metaphorical haberdashery and general balderdash not withstanding, the eminent Dr. Edward de Bono goes so far as to
actually assert the contention, to argue, the
inadequacy of argument, to whit, that argument simply lacks constructive
creativity! Thus does Dr. Edward de Bono camouflage a dismissal of all learning
and progress
via
controversy that is cornerstone open rational
democracy, by which errors are
ever detected and corrected. But Dr. Edward de
Bono is in not actually in such sheer historical
denial, or, so it might seem,
forgotten his vaunted
Yellow
Hat of optimism in the search for
value, benefit and opportunity, nor
entirely discarded his trusty
White Hat
of pertinent information
research, as to ever genuinely be so blithely unaware of the long record of creative effort
and constructive output from the practice of argumentative
controversy. Of course skilled
argumentative attack certainly challenges creativity, while supporting arguments
are by definition constructed. Indeed, only crippling inhibition and crushing
social pressure prevent what otherwise flows easily enough with but a modicum of
autonomy. Indeed, On page 7 of 'I Am Right - You Are
Wrong,' Dr. Edward de Bono writes: "The most powerful case for the
value
of argument as a thinking method is that it encourages the
motivated exploration
of a subject. Without the personal gratification or argument (win/lose,
aggression, cleverness, point-scoring) there might be little
motivation to
explore the subject." But if not for it's own joy at all, not to shake
things up, and certainly never as
crucible of truth, because that entire adversarial
Epistemological
Methodology, according to
the cult-like and faddish sheer militant hypersensitive
heteronomy of Dr. Edward de Bono, is
nothing more
an ancient racket! Then to what end does Dr. Edward de Bono make even as small a
concession as he offers? Only so that the rams amid the
sheeple may likewise
be shepherded to the bliss of consensus via
predisposition to
heteronymous
Cohesion-Norms
of
Groupthink
team traps
of Stockholm Syndrome!
For only such can be the sole
redeeming virtue of argument and discourse, according to Dr. Edward de Bono.
All such is classic manipulation by the pretense of tender and lofty selfless motivation so as to conceal the truth of lust for power and dominance over others by professing love and raising guilt in order to confuse the target's warning instincts.
Indeed, to subvert the practice of Brainstorming into similar consensus manipulation as with the abuse of the Delphi Technique, Alex F. Osborn's Non Justificationist recommendation of a'posteriori deferred judgment/evaluation is often distorted, effectively extended indefinitely, in order to serve touchy-feely Anti-Critical Bias.
Indeed, the famous Six Thinking Hats Technique of Parallel Thinking in which the participants examine issues and problems together from different standpoints rather than contesting them one against the other, was invented by Dr. Edward de Bono in service of his own flagrant and virulent Anti-Critical Bias, actually deploring adversarial argument/debate/polemic as Status Quo intellectual thuggery!
In a nut shell, Dr. Edward
de Bono is
just
Postmodern, Nihilistic and
heteronymous, for all the touchy-feely
hearts and flowers. And, despite his
innovations in massaging the exchange of perspective, Dr. Edward de Bono has still got the proverbial baby out
with the metaphorical bath water! Indeed, donning our
Black Hat of fault
finding and problem definition, ever alert to danger, the bottom line
remains that to completely rule out the practice of argument is also to
effectively rule out dissidence, which is never at all the kindly gentle tolerant geniality that Dr. Edward
de Bono pretends, but inevitably the
most antirational intolerance and and crafty Medieval oppression.
Or else, just how, exactly,
do we, so lightly treading and traipsing along with pied piper Dr. Edward de
Bono,
merrily donning together our
Green Hat of creative alternatives and
solutions, escape the ugly vicious trap, and oh so convivially answer just this
above monumental begged question in order to properly address so
thorny a problem?
Alas, donning our
Blue Hat
of organization and summary, indeed as we have sadly seen is typical of
consensus "facilitation" (manipulation), what Dr. Edward
de Bono omits to spell
out, is just how decisions are reached without confronting disagreement
directly, because raising questions but only as far and as much is possible
while avoiding argumentative
conflict,
that is to say,
controversy,
is
the most urgent top priority and monumental hubris of Dr. Edward de Bono. And
so, rather than by despised categorical
logic coming to any conclusion in the
now astonishingly discredited quest for truth, defined as the location and
identification of correspondence to reality in
assertions, instead the
hamartia of Dr. Edward de Bono aims at
consensus
of all concurrent private deliberation, consideration and
contemplation, unvoiced individual thinking including any
degree of however unresolved reservations, all coming to converge with and
within organizational process and whatever collectively "owned"
Groupthink, the individual finessed
of individual dissent, exactly as Lynn M.
Stuter so incisively indicts of all such typical facilitated
consensus
manipulation
chicanery and manufacture (but only on the secular Left). The subject is cunningly maneuvered into
cognitive dissonance,
the
inner
conflict
of dishonest
hypocrisy, even as manifest
in
dialogue as
Antiprocess, and thence down the path of least resistance, namely to rationalize after caving
in. Thus, though, mind you and perish forbid, no one is actually
wrong, nevertheless we (must) all agree!
However, and exactly as Dr. Edward de Bono contends, the tool of synthesis is but a means of creative thinking, not a categorical determinant of truth, optimums or even esthetic taste. Hence, any synthesis is only one more competing and perhaps viable hypothesis, strategic option or work of art, as the case may be. Once again, the most disastrous misuse is only in the direct application to decision making!
So what must be done when synthesis is not completely successful in consensus generation, and therefore complete consensus does not arise voluntarily and will not be manipulated or however lightly extorted? In truth, the actual procedural options in practice in any such an event are logically predictable by default and extensively corroborated by repeatable observation in virtually any and every context. Either, but beyond as much as Dr. Edward de Bono somewhat shiftily concede, there is truly a place for argument, and, indeed, adversarial systems of open controversy must be allowed, indeed, cultivated, in order to test stubbornly irresolvable mutually exclusive competing hypotheses for fitness against one another, at least as a last resort, or else other less voluntary and less honest means to consensus must be employed, manipulation, coercion, shunning, ostracism and so forth. In a word, bullying, a worrisome proposition, plainly enough even without all that touchy-feely and vaunted sensitivity training.
|
"Or I'll eat my hat!" |
Black Hat of fault finding,
problem definition, and danger alert, likewise, I've just got a hunch
that care may have been omitted that the dapper brim on the
Red Hat of emotion and intuition never squeeze too tight as to seal in
the insidious rising toxic mercury vapors of impulsive acrimony.
Brainstorming, particularly, was first conceived by Alex F. Osborn, first of all and foremost, as a creativity process. Decision making, generally and in the brainstorming process particularly, is a separate question not to be abused, demanding no less great care, both for the sake of arriving at sound decisions, and also, first of all, never to undermine creativity, which would be purpose defeating. (Not to mention preservation of democratic principles, values and practice, as applicable.)
And the best consensus building process as ever might indeed be crucial to sound decisions into action is still that which parallels sound Epistemological Methodology. Otherwise, what's the point?
And, of course, brainstorming, in particular, comes in at the inception of Hypothetico Deductive Method.
Or, if absolutely necessary, rather than relying upon or demanding or imposing consensus should the best choices fail to manifest for all in due course, then, in accordance with the principle of deferred judgment/evaluation which is central to brainstorming, decisions might best arrived at through open democracy in step by step elimination and then final selection of Affinity Diagram entries compiled into the Solution-Finding stage.
If consensus in choosing decisions is an indispensable priority, and all else fails, then, eventually, as a last resort, and even then subject to ongoing reevaluation, votes can be taken as to what to cross off, in turn, from the Affinity Diagrams, in
Collaborative Filtering during Solution Finding.But decisions should not be made, or if arrived at then at least not closed or committed to, before the Solution-Finding stage.
(And unlike the Delphi Technique, where in replies are gathered, summarized and spun behind closed doors, to then fed back to the group members by unscrupulous "facilitators", in the solution finding stage, everyone participates openly in gathering and editing through out, rather than being finessed or manipulated into consensus.)
Obviously, all final decisions need likewise to be postponed or tabled for at least as long as criticism is to be deferred! Otherwise, there will remain the risk that decisions will be foisted upon the unwary by namby-pamby touchy-feely guilt-tripping slight of hand, and imposed upon us all by controlled consultation with impunity from criticism and without any much regard.
Indeed, if in doubt, to keep from getting "railroaded", it may be crucial
to fall back upon
Robert's Rules of Order 
[Survival
Tips].
Bartleby.com
For optimal command and control, the wisest application of Robert's Rules of Order, after all, a parliamentary dominance procedure, may often be to hold them in reserve for whenever ambiguity of informal processes becomes untenable, or informal decision making breaks down or becomes vulnerable to abuse, in which case formal safeguards will become a vital contingency.
Otherwise, just for brainstorming and creativity, there is no reason that any entry cannot remain on the agenda for as long as anybody at all remains interested in it at all, rather than heavy handedly and arbitrarily curtailing creativity, a practice that seems somewhat purpose defeating at best.
Unless there is actually a clear reason why coming to a decision has become crucial, then why force it? For example, is indecision actually obstructing task/goal interdependency? But has whichever task/goal interdependency been fully and creatively explored in brainstorming?
Indeed, far from building consensus, to heighten and sustain sheer creativity, it may even be important to actually cultivate and to sustain creative difference, controversy and tension.
And the joy of creativity can even be more than enough to safe guard amicability, albeit only among those who will partake thereof instead of just knea-jerk bullying for consensus and affirmation. And, if need be, the latter behavior must be curtailed either in some healthy social interaction within the group dynamic within which discourse in contexted, or else ruled out and quashed by the forum moderator.
Clearly tact and sensitivity are only virtues never beyond but only as subordinate to honest truthfulness, truthfulness being, so goes the wise proverb, the value without which, first, there can be no other values, and not even much creativity.
Yes, honest is the best policy, for creativity, decision making and human relations. And compromise with standards of honest is often more costly than will be admitted.
Indeed, consider the importance of honestly bad writing.
Q. But isn't consensus-building at the very heart of collaboration?
A. Disagreement or controversy with
that very sentiment may be subtle, yet pivotal, in the question of the engineering of consent, the means by which ever such achieved making every crucial difference.What point is there in adding to the dubious collaboration already filling our sad sick world?
Fortunately, there are also more enlightened methods of mass change of thinking that are happier in the results, because these processes parallel good
Epistemological
Methodology (systematic application of principles by which
knowledge arises) and/or rational problem solving.
Investigation, then, of the
success of the latter, must be the best route to choosing the best way to
collaborate. For
such is at the heart of desirable
collaboration.
Indeed, consensus is a crucial social institution, but among the highest
democratic
values
is for all social institutions to remain open to
criticism,
responsible and agile enough for ongoing readjustment and error correction.
Indeed, debate even otherwise with consensus is the truest exercise of the
true spirit of
democracy.
And one important feature of free exchange as in brainstorming is that consensus is never made central and, thereby, so important in it's own right as to become arbitrary and thereby, destructive.
Rather, it is unsupported speculation from points of creative departure that are most fertile for options and possibilities, and then adversariality that is made the central crucible to refine any end product. Argument/debate/polemic is also central to free exchange, the attack and defense of competing ideas, even if any first stage of brainstorming might require criticism to be deferred temporarily. And any of this sort of consensus, historically, has been no more than the fruition of such progress.
This highest aspiration of an open and democratic society beyond the most
rudimentary achievement of the bloodless transition of power, is the hope of
real progress, a consensus evolution ever at all actually mirroring sound
Epistemological
Methodology.
More than this,
collaboration in writing may be less of a
consensus effort at all, than merely an exchange from which each participant may obtain input useful or inspiring. A writer simply builds with what is useful, and tries to offer as much to others. Again, writers
brainstorming
together sometimes part ways, going off in different directions, or sometimes completing projects together,
or both, even concurrently. After all, why not?
The question may then be posed, what will bring
collaborative projects to completion?
-And preferably without stifling creativity... And to answer that
it may be best first to ask, what causes the disintegration of
collaborative
brainstorming,
one way or another? One answer is, quite simply, poor sportsmanship.
A
moderated creative writing collaborative brainstorming prototype Online community is provided as a demo on this site, for testing the bold hypothesis that creativity and productivity will be maximized with little more than the guidelines of keeping at all on topic, no flaming nor personal attacks, and no touchiness finding personal attack where there is none. This is the minimum Social Contract, and the minimum consensus. And all that is really needed for best results.Indeed, collaborative brainstorming is a powerful productivity tool. But not for those unwilling to enjoy disagreement. Such will only want smooth sailing, regardless that any end product be banal and inept.
And, in their vanity they may even neglect, for example and as applicable, the crucial fiction writing fundamentals.
Sound decision making does not begin from any Conformist impulse for consensus, but by rationally identification of what is important to decide in the first place, and why, by the techniques of
Visioning.ideas should compete, bodies should cooperate
— John Storrs Hall
Q.
But if necessary or desired, how does one best follow through all the way to make free choices, arrive at decision, individually or collectively?When fiction authors brainstorm together, sometimes they complete works in collaboration, and other times they create entirely separate works off on their own. Or one can do both! And the same principle may or may not apply to any other individual and collective priorities, strategies and agendas to real action.
But what about brainstorming towards not only abstract or hypothetical problem solving but planning and even action in cooperation, not just interaction simply to stimulate purely intellectual investigation as in creative writing including fiction? A. Certainly concrete planning not to mention implementation, any follow through into action must eventually pass beyond the scope of creativity process such as brainstorming alone.
Bringing together effective and compatible groups of people for endeavors to better succeeded is to be the challenge of future interaction on the frontiers of automated Sociometry , matching not only individuals one to another, for whatever purpose may arise, but also the formation of functional and compatible social circles, likewise. Both for creativity as in aspiring writers to collaborate and brainstorm as well as Management teams and steering committees for business start-ups and initiatives of political activism.
But in the meantime, one may be obliged to cope situationaly. For example, if one is brainstorming within a place of emolument or of what passes for education, then plans will be drawn and there is already a protocol for follow up action as a group, and to each individual member of the group, their part. That is, to the extent that brainstorming is a reality there. Or else not. Alas, where response is certain and routine, liberty, imagination and criticality may not be.
No doubt, there have been remarkable accomplishments but also severe limitations in both independent individual action and in spontaneous cooperation the likes of Open Source. But depending upon the goals and what is at stake, there may be a requirement to be able to depend, reciprocally, upon more committed and intensive closely knit collaboration and affinity. (history) For example, for such complicated and demanding undertakings as entrepreneurial early stage business start-ups and initiatives of political activism, should such be deemed necessary or desirable in the advancement of whatever goals as ever put forth.
And, once again, honesty will be crucial because cross-purposes bad faith of Anarcho-passive ambivalence will lead nowhere but aggravation.
So, just to drive home the point, click here to answer a battery of leading questions!
Indeed, brainstorming may best be followed up and concretized by further specific Techniques for Effective Decision Making.
And all such realistic questions of what it takes, belong, always, at the top of the agenda. Also find a broad selection of planning tools, much of which available free of cost, at planware.org
Why, alas, are so many "helping professionals," whether one way or another respectably credentialed or howsoever flashy and self invented, notwithstanding alike entirely so obtuse, so averse to forthright informational interview? Indeed, in a world after all so perpetually awash in ever new flavors of the same rancid snake oil, sometimes right out of left field, but indeed so often actually respectable, shouldn't rational autonomy as manifest in systematic doubt and healthy skepticism, not to mention just any honest and well-meaning friendly curiosity, only be expected as due and fair, from any alert and savvy consumer? Indeed, should not legitimate misgivings be met with candor and comfort? What treasures do they then withhold? From what lofty Heaven has the heretic Doubting Thomas found himself excluded? To who's needs and validation do these later day sages minister? Thine and mine, gentle reader, or quite simply their own craven will to power and comfortable livelihood? Indeed, by what threat reflex, and why become so evasive and even hostile, when simply questioned as to precisely what service they offer and whatever their modality or method, even beyond glittering generalities? A decent human being talking good sense, would impress me by far the more, than any frightening demands or pressure, explicit or implicit, for blind uniformity and compliance. That never goes well. And haven't we heard it all before? My own ambition here shall not be relentlessly to chisel, nickel-and-dime the random customer, or building a franchise for legions of paying acolytes to follow suit, but setting the stage one day to prospect for Venture Capital together in earnest for anything more worthy and less cult like. Not to get ahead of ourselves, however. The clear necessity then, at least among serious people, to suspend all other agenda, in order first as ever needed, to adequately resolve incomprehension and communications failure, instead of just giving up, and before proceeding any further in deliberation and taking any decisions towards action, should remain painfully obvious. And let us expect nothing less. Alas, what becomes obvious to some, remains for others, quite inadmissible.
And yet t
here remains no call for anxiety. Though we are all fallible, not everything difficult or complicated in life, especially knowledge work and communications struggle, befalls one as any deliberate imposition, dire tribulation, personal slight or crushing rebuke down from On High. The ensuing challenge might even become fun and productive for such as I and thou together! All this being said, there are other impediments to communication, aside from sheer incomprehension and indeed beyond the strictly conceptual or intellectual. To wit: let the reader have their own emotions and own them. In particular, closed-minded aversion, never cogent and forthright, exceeds any scope of sane sweet reason. For in the wry assessment of Jonathan Swift: “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." Or in the biting wit of Dorothy Parker: “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."It's not whether communication shall be conducted face to face or electronically mediated. It's about the substance or trivializing lack thereof. Oh how I loath and revile the ever calculated sheer mediocrity of what must rightly only be named: (Anti)Social Media, all for its isolation, distance, unfulfilled, bored, lonely, alienated, interminably vapid and insubstantial small talk. All general uselessness in communication, finding information or establishing contact. Not to mention just to make matters even worse, frequently even further constrained by picayune heavy handed and oppressive moderation and effective censorship. Therefore FoolQuest.com ever strives at paradigm shift antithetical to the pervasively dull witted and superficial attachment disordered short attention of (anti) social media culture and ever manipulative Totalitarian Interactivity. (Anti)Social Media culture comes "recreationally" in desperate respite from the oppression and sore travail that by such unfortunate association, lends hard work effort in very principle, such a very bad name. Nevertheless, putting aside the lackadaisical half-heartedness of (anti) social media culture, true creative solution finding and collaboration inexorably entail broadest estimation of required investment including if nothing else, at all realistic projection and estimation of expected difficulty and effort towards whatever given undertaking. In a word: of passion. Without initiative from intrinsic motivation,We, the Sheeple, the masses dull and listless, actually become dependent upon authority and extrinsic motivation in order even at all to function under heteronomy. Mounting ambivalence and inner conflict remaining so uncomfortable, because by nature many people tend to grow resentful of life long prevailing coercion, of extrinsic motivation, and even paralytically oversensitive. Many indeed actually become resentful even at being encouraged, as herein, to click on hyperlinks and then to read attentively. And there's the rub!
However, beware: Indeed, 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.” Because we live in an overstressed attention economy, attention ever spread so very thin! For to quote Herbert Simon: “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Therefore, thank you gentle reader. Because nowadays more than ever, in the immortal words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Indeed, in the words of Karan Gaur: “Effort is the best indicator of interest.” Because mere attention obviously remains the least of any minimally engaged curiosity, let alone serious ambition and endeavor. Otherwise, with most profuse apologies, FoolQuest.com just isn't for you, said the Little Red Hen.
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One day the Little Red Hen and her chicks were scratching in the barnyard dirt, when what did she find, but first a single seed grain and then another. “This grain should be planted" said she. “Who will plant these grains of wheat with me?" “Not I! " replied the duck. “Not I!" agreed the goose, the pig, the cat and the dog, each in their turn. For unlike so many of us sorry sad sacks, they had such playful better things to do, at least in the mind of the illustrator J. P. Miller!Nevertheless, we all well know how that story ends. And let precisely that become our Transactional Antithesis and life script, together in contending with passive-hostile actingout:
Let us reap for ourselves
what we have sown for
ourselves, and leave
for
the petty obstructionists
no satisfaction.
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To quote from Frank Scully, Variety, Frank's Scrapbook, September 1950: “Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?” Answer: Because there is every reason to balk at the difficulty, let alone the risk. In the final analysis, an all too frequent motive for subversive innovation, organization and proactive initiative, is simply because no suitable and tenable conventional options present themselves in confronting life problems irresolvable by recourse to established institutions and their imposable fraudulent guarantees, that have failed us so. Indeed, most students in formal education and most corporate employees, remain quite frankly miserable. Job satisfaction remains highly exceptional, while formal education for the most part, remains misery in preparation for further misery. As an all too often difficult and desperately unreasonable and committed alternative envisaged and proposed herein, in striving for freedom in an unfree world, the outreach agenda of new venture creation (various business startup) and (pre-)incubation, pertains to the heady ambitious, endless possibility, creative solution finding and complex multitask interdependent interdisciplinary process of developing and transforming whatever new idea, innovation or technology, into a business of whatever kind, that can even conceivably succeed, and therefore just might possibly attract investment of Venture Capital. Indeed ventures of every kind even conceivable, profit or nonprofit, traditional, Social Entrepreneurship or even grassroots politics and more. All beginning, however, with outreach that must inspire investment of sweat equity for joint ownership profit participation as stakeholders down the line. Should anything herein presented or proposed, be rejected as unrealistic, then likewise the very objectives must be abandoned as unfeasible. Otherwise, I defy anyone to point out any lesser prerequisites towards whatever at all similar objectives. I, for one, would be intensely curious.
Therefore what is the purpose and prospect of new venture creation (various business startup) and
(pre-)incubation? What does it mean? How is it done? By what process? Active collaboration and the inevitability of friction, drama and conflict. There must be no illusions. Let us compare notes, gentle readers, and together begin undertaking no mere fireside pipedream, but the steady hard work at our own pace, of rigorously uncompromising honest feasibility study so crucial to joy and success. The key remains, that creativity must no longer isolate brilliance. Creativity can and Should be Social.
Beware the FoolQuest.com solicitation to grueling hardship
Know thyself: People can be most terrified of all that they most desire. And often, not without good reason.Desperately seeking entrepreneurial cofounder candidates for difficult, protracted, immersively laborious and necessarily innovative risk-tolerant undertaking together in endless possibility of new venture creation (various business startup). Indeed, even with complete strangers coming together in a uniquely tailor made new online intentional community. Or at least initially, more modestly, an intentional social circle or group formation. And all by social engineering design thinking.
“We happy few.” “We band of buggered!” — The Scoobs
Grueling hard work on spec, no wages upfront, long odds and overwhelming despair in unknown daunting obstacles at every turn. Indeed, concurrent, collaborative and extensively voluminous, complicated and convoluted deliberation, interstitial and interdisciplinary research and due diligence, throughout (pre-)incubation, feasibility study, planning and organization, and if all goes well, all the way through to ongoing recruitment, management team formation, multiple rounds of capitalization, implementation, growth and then exit strategy where and as ever applicable.
With unflaggingly resilient perseverance in the face of repeated serial failure, demanding extensive preparation and quick recovery to pick ourselves up and start all over again from scratch, as many times as it takes. Because truth to tell, nothing less will even ever begin actually getting anything done. But realistically and at best, what else might one expect?
It's never easy.Why, well may one ask, must this very passage of text, seem even so deliberately and so tremendously discouraging? Answer: In appeal to the yearning for worthy challenge, of course. But seriously, and more to the point: Also in all fair warning to the ill prepared. Because, not delusionally optimistic willful positivity and blind determination, but unvarnished professionalism of all due and honest pessimistic realism and the positive power of negative thinking, remains ever fundamental and crucial in surmounting every rightly and naturally discouraging extreme difficulty for ever at long last achieving whatever cherished and yearned for success.
Plus every conceivable pitfall as only to be expected at every turn, of needless folly,
bullying, drama, with bitter heartbreaking disappointment in untrustworthy dishonest and boneheadedly distant, unrealistic, petty and devious cross-purpose. People frequently disappoint.Indeed, beware the
unaware incompetent, nowhere know-it-all so bereft of all Socratic Wisdom, so set in their ways, so blithely ignorant of all venerated traditional competence and capability, yet remaining so averse to all bold new innovation and anything different.Alas, all too often, pearls cast before swine:
Good faith trammeled under bad faith, leaving only bitter disappointment in untrustworthy dishonest and anxiously short attention boneheadedly distant, unrealistic, petty and devious cross-purpose, half measures and pipedream. Indeed, at every turn, every conceivable pitfall of obvious folly, flagrant bullying and needless real world drama. Ill prepared and failing to cope with all such strife and passive-hostile obstruction that needs to be expected, accepted and contingency planned for, ambitious endeavor already so tenuous, thence typically dissipates. And what a downer! Instead, in order to maintain cohesion, participants in earnest must commiserate and support one another in every inevitable occasion of crisis and betrayal. For such and no less, remains the fabled power of love.Again, and striking to the very heart of functioning individual self determination and
autonomy, in the incisive perception of, yes, go figure: no less than that plutocratic juggernaut and raving anti-Semite Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” In the human condition, all so simple in principle, but daunting and complicated in practice. And yet happiness comes in meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others, making progress every day. Likewise so clear and simple in principle, yet daunting and hard to come by in actuality.Progress all therefore doubtful.
Flexible hours within any responsible timely manner to task interdependence. Task interdependence denoting the interconnection of tasks such that accomplishment of each task in turn becomes impossible save by first completion of necessarily preceding tasks. Thus in fluidity of
collaboration among equals and authentic culture of helping, steady and unyielding growth into unflinching reciprocity, leadership superordinate over others in initiative arising, yet in service, subordinate to one another throughout wherein: I'm your boss when I need your cooperation, and you're the boss when any of you need anyone else's including mine. Fortunate and successful are those who accomplish this. And lost are the rest of us, to malignant conditionality and passive hostility.Like The Three Musketeers: “All for one, and one for all!” Or else, all for naught.
Thus
for serious people ever finding one another at long last, fame and fortune in case of resounding success in doing well by doing good. And all in quest of Eudemonia and authentic fulfillment together along the way, heeding the call to adventure in embarkation proceeding at our own pace, upon the all too uncertain real life Hero's Journey, forging true friendship and authentic human connection attempting anything really cool together.
for others to weigh in, or
if it's private.
To quote Ernest Hemingway:
out
in passive aggression, undermining all progress,
effectively just going on strike while howsoever pretending
otherwise, indeed even by such sabotage wresting defeat out from
the very jaws of victory, then, in such case, what must be done?
Answer: together we must remain brave, undiscouraged, agile,
adapt and find another way, even
outreach
recruiting other more
reliable partners in
collaboration. Indeed, the offender may even
be prevailed upon to help recruit their own replacement, if they
just don't want to do their own job. Instead of such helpless
and stunned dependency, there must be fall back plans in case of
such defection, no matter how seemingly catastrophic. Anyone
simply losing interest must be set free, their obligations
written of as a bad debt. There is always another way, even if
seemingly howsoever at all less advantageous. When such
controlling passive aggression no longer paralyzes and destroys
the group, by such
Transactional
Antithesis
the Ulterior Transaction or:
headgame
will quickly lose its appeal, and the offender may even decide
to mend their ways instead of simply finding themselves alone
and left out not by howsoever actually being excluded, but
simply by their own inaction and nonparticipation as the others
just move on together.
If all goes well in the progress of new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us beginning with serious
Alas, there ever remain so many
Remaining realistic in the ongoing
In dealing with scammers and neurotics, instead of surrendering to escalating discouragement, allowing all endeavor to grind to a halt, hope to dissipate and collaboration to dissolve, the most constructive deterrent in Transactional Antithesis to bypass and nullify all such destructive passive power plays, might be a standing policy of ongoing solution finding in order simply to keep strategy open. Meanwhile ongoing outreach in ongoing recruitment as ever required and qualified in order to pick up the slack. Such measures will take the joy out of passive hostile sabotage.
Both types, the passive hostile neurotic and the frantic high pressure hurried grifter, may typically begin by making themselves at least seemingly somehow indispensable, but they bring only liability of poor character, squandered talent and grandiose know-it-all unaware incompetence so bereft of all Socratic Wisdom and contemptuous of all other knowledge and expertise. But they are never truly indispensable, and there is always another better strategy multipotential polymath cross discipline. The
value of any trustworthy partner in collaboration, comes in how they can be relied upon and what they openly contribute, not from raised expectations and artificial scarcity in whatever that they so calculatingly withhold, real or imagined.Alas that the mistake of introducing a good contact to a bad contact, may often result in the alienation and the loss of the good contact. But that is not the path of serial failure until success.
Copyright 2001 - 2024 by Aaron Agassi
CONTACT:
OR
if
its private
Alas,
there can
be no certainty, faith is lunacy, and all therefore,
disbelief remains the rational skeptical default. And as
more specifically, there can be no certainty neither as
to 
A Quick Guide to
