Search Results

Gage how responsive each INVITATION recipient has been to you. What was their level of response? Did they respond right away or take some time? Pull out your list of personal contacts. Next to each name you sent an INVITATION, mark how responsive they have been: Firm yes: Eagerly responsive, such as promptly stating a need you can respect. Soft yes: Hesitantly responsive, such as requiring more information to go along. Equivocal: Expressed a willingness to reply but took a while to follow through. Soft no: Declined to be cooperative without a stated reason. Firm no: Asked not to be involved in anyway. Now do something similar with the influential person list. Next to each name you sent an INVITATION, mark how responsive they have been using the same criteria above. OPTIONAL: Wellness Warmup supplement If using the supplemental spreadsheet tool, you can log more of the interactions. Each of the four need-response cycles register here as A, B, C, and D. These are averaged at the right to help you decide which invitee's to later invite to your full wellness campaign. You enter each invitee's name here on page 6. Click on the blue number at the left of the invitee's name to instantly go to that entry below. You document each interaction here. You log the results using dropdown lists. Except the items in gray, these are used to calculate the responsiveness scores of each need-response cycle. This supplement adds the invitee's level or urgency for their expressed need, to include its meaningfulness to the score. If you haven't already downloaded the supplement tool, here it is. Click the 'button' below to acknowledge reading this material and to proceed.

To each of these items, answer YES or NO to present how prepared you are to launch your own wellness campaign. Read each one to familiarize yourself with the item. Then take the survey of these items in the next step. I am at least 18 years of age. I live in the United States. I am fluent in English. I am free from any diagnosis of ego-syntonic personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. I have a PayPal account (or can partner with someone who has a PayPal account), or I have an online bank account or debit/credit card to process payments or receipts. I have routine access to the Internet (such as wifi or through an ethernet cord), or someone who can serve as my proxy has such access. There is someone in my life I can call on to partner with me through this process. I can produce a list of names of those who would support my wellbeing. I have done everything possible to solve a problem but it persists. I am open to trying an untried approach at the risk of it not immediately succeeding. If you honestly state NO to many of these items, you could still be involved in a wellness campaign. Either led by a proxy you trust, or to follow and support someone else's campaign. Click the 'button' below to go to the Self-assessment survey. You can fill out this survey using the downloaded WC100 spreadsheet tool. It then provides you with your specific results.

Step outside of your shell and realize how responsive you are to the needs of others. Find how responsive they are to you. Click the 'button' below to acknowledge reading this material and to proceed.

See how responsive others are to your responsiveness to them. Persist with your intent to show you care. Click the 'button' below to acknowledge reading this material and to proceed.

Were any unresponsive, even after your repeated attempts to get their reply? You need not grant more than two weeks at the most for a reasonable reply. Even 24 hours can be generous. Life is busy for most of us. Remind those who have yet to reply that you patiently await their response. If still no reply, remind them one more time. If no response after ample time of your second reminder, mark them as “unresponsive”. We count these on the same level as a soft no. After a set time, no more than two weeks, score the responsiveness to your INVITATION. Use these numbers for each to quantify their observable responsiveness: Firm yes: 1 (100%) Soft yes: 0.8 (80%) Equivocal: 0.6 (60%) Soft no: 0.4 (40%) Firm no: 0.2 (20%) Remember to score those who never replied as a soft no “4” (40%). Even if the finally replied after your cutoff period (e.g., if finally responding over two weeks late). Hopefully, you received far more positive responses than negative ones, or non-responses. If so, you can use that as another guide for determining how a wellness campaign is right for you. OPTIONAL: Go the extra mile With the supplement spreadsheet tool, you get a deeper sample of experiencing a wellness campaign. Scroll down past all 20 entries to view the resulting report. Now you will be ready to decide if a full wellness campaign is right for you. Click the 'button' below to acknowledge reading this material and to proceed.

If confronted with a problem that a wellness campaign can effectively address, let's see if this pioneering option is a good fit for you. This short program takes you through the following steps, so you can decide for yourself. ASSESS if this is a good fit for you. LIST & INVITE others who would support your wellbeing, and you supporting theirs. OBSERVE & FOLLOW UP their responses to your invitations to each of them. DECIDE to start your own wellness campaign, or join another's campaign. By the time you complete this short program, you will be in a better position to decide if a wellness program is right for you. OPTIONAL: Download this interactive spreadsheet tool so you can follow along offline, and to calculate readiness scores. Click the 'button' below to acknowledge reading this material and to proceed.

Welcome to this bold attempt to launch a new social science. One that focuses on studying the experience of needs. Including your specific needs, like no one has ever done before. All the social sciences exist to provide us answers to our many human needs.  Psychology offers answers to understand our minds and behavior.  Sociology seeks to understand groups and our interactions with each other.  Anthropology helps us understand cultures throughout history.  Economics provides clues to understand the trading of goods and services. If these all exist to provide for our needs, why not study the needs themselves? Social science literature can be vague about what all this is for. Individuals and groups are characterized as having motivations, interests, and goals. This course (based on the book "You NEED This") dives deeper than the reductive tendencies of the current social sciences. It goes behind all these motivations, interests, and goals to examine the underlying experience of your needs, and the needs of others. So let’s get specific. Let's begin.

Welcome to Anankelogy 101 Introducing you to the study of need Why anankelogy? Why not? Anankelogy counters some biases inherent in the other social sciences. ˜ Psychology's inward focus routinely excludes environmental contexts. ˜ Sociology's focus on external forces risk neglecting internal contributors. ˜ Economics often overlook exchanges not conventionally quantified. Specializations like social psychology and critical psychiatry have emerged to correct some of these limitations. Anankelogy simply starts from scratch. Anankelogy—the disciplined study of need—treats the experience of need as a primary focus of academic inquiry. As a proposed new social science, it asserts that needs begin as objective facts. Much as Émile Durkheim helped to establish sociology by asserting “social facts” as observable phenomenon, anankelogy demonstrates how the objective facts of needs can be subjected to empirical observation and statistical analysis. Unmet needs objectively reduce function, which you subjectively experience after the objective fact. Anankelogy levels No academic background is necessary to appreciate this book. Besides having a research focus, anankelogy includes an applied version and a more accessible version. This book includes a little of all three, with a focus on accessibility. ˜ Accessible anankelogy. Understand your needs better in plain language. ˜ Applied anankelogy. Clinically apply to your many affected needs. ˜ Academic anankelogy. Critically understand your needs with research. Applying anankelogy to politicized and justice needs Application of anankelogy begins here with politics and justice. Anankelogy arguably offers the best account for our political beliefs and differences. Only anankelogy steps outside of the bubble of politics as a presumed system of beliefs to show it goes much deeper to our different priority of shaped needs. Of course, don’t take my word for it. Read for yourself and ask if there is any­thing close to accounting for our political differences. All attempts so far trying to explain why conservatives lean right and why liberals lean left presume some level of choice. This text debunks that popular assumption. Needs come objectively first, forming our subjective beliefs. We do not choose the needs we experience. Our choices for what to do about those needs have limits. That applies not only to politics but to justice as well. This also debunks the popular notion that the felon deliberately choses to do something to violate the law. Anankelogy digs deeper to expose the elements of such violence. Popular generalizing perpetuates many contemporary problems. Anankelogy appreciates how each problem stems from unresolved needs. The originating needs exist as objective phenomenon that we can now empirically study. Overview This is the first in six programs covering You NEED This, the book introducing this new social science to the world. Each program covers a chapter in the book. Anankelogy 101 covers chapter 1: Need creation Anankelogy 102 covers chapter 2: Need conveyance Anankelogy 103 covers chapter 3: Need experience Anankelogy 104 covers chapter 4: Need easement Anankelogy 105 covers chapter 5: Functionality Anankelogy 106 covers chapter 6: Knowing The book is available here on Amazon. You get to go through the book here for free. You can express your appreciation with a donation. Before you proceed, consider how much you appreciate this opportunity at the very start. We appreciate you. Thank you. Click 'button' to proceed.

Need creation Nothing. Prior to any beginning, nothing. Nothing to move. Nothing to seek in order to function. No need. No pain yet exists. No purpose. No desire. No pleasure. No longing. No joy. No movement. As soon as the first thing exists entirely alone, there would still be no movement. It would have to be entirely self-sufficient since nothing else exists to need. Before requiring something, it would have to first evolve with it. 1.0.1. What changed? As soon as two or more things exist in relatively close proximity, each eventually moves in relation to the other. The functioning of each impacts—and gets impacted by—the functioning of the other, or others. Need emerges. At its core, “need” is movement for functioning. What never functions relative to its surroundings never develops a need for that environ­ment. The earliest subatomic particles moved around each other. Even at this most elemental material existence, subatomic particles basically “need” in relation to each other. They move to function in relation to each other. Just as these particles dance with gravity in relation to each other, much of life dances in relation to others in its environment. Move closer. Move apart. Move closer again and apart again. Cycling again and again and again. 1.0.2. This needs that Something drew closer. Then another. Often, these were pushed away and expelled. They proved unhelpful, as a hindrance to functioning. Or functioning eventually ceased, and these as entities were no more. Need creation Then something moved in closer that enabled functioning. Primordial protein molecules functioned in water in ways it never functioned in the dry cold vacuum of interstellar space. The earliest microorganisms took in surrounding nutrients and expelled rudimentary waste. Homeostasis emerged as a basic relationship to material existence. Life continues when organisms maintain such equilibrium with their immediate surroundings. Such need emerges as life’s central experience. Every need you experience evolves from this genesis. 1.0.3. Act on need Biological inertia. Water moves in and out of the cell in self-regulated rhythm. Nutrients travel the bloodstream to automatically reach where needed. The heart pumps just the right amount of blood throughout the body. No sensation. No pain. When life runs on autopilot, it never requires a sensation for you to intervene. Food, of course, does not automatically enter the body when needed. Life prompts action to feed the body, from something viable outside of it. You pick some fruit to eat. To report the need, you feel hunger. You feel prompted to ease that hunger. Take too long, you feel the pain of hunger. Desire prompts you to replenish something lacking. Pain prompts you to remove a threat. Pleasure reports sufficient replenishing. Relief reports sufficient removal of threats. More on this later. Apart from unresolved needs, you never experience desire or pain. Essen­tially, your needs drive your life. Your lingering unmet needs consume your focus. That is life. 1.1. Reverse engineer your needs This thought experiment lets us reverse engineer how needs first came into being. Our distorted human reasoning can assume we have more control over our experience of needs than nature affords. We generally want to be in charge of our needs, and how we respond to them, or how we react when painfully unmet. Instead of more distortion from our felt need for control, this nature-based approach gets back to how your needs originally formed in nature. Humans have survived and even thrived since time immemorial. Mostly from allowing nature to take its course in resolving needs naturally. To daily drink water at levels the body actually requires, for example, instead of consuming flavored drinks high in sugar―then wonder why we feel so miserable. 1.1.1. Long before the pain Look back how a need first evolved. See how nature restores us to full func­tioning. Always with the same resource used back when that need originally began. The further we depart from nature’s course to fully resolve a need, the more problems naturally emerge. The more we rely on alternatives to merely ease our needs, the less we can fully function. We then endure more suffering, requiring more laws to sort it all out. When your “new normal” results in fewer resolved needs and more pain, think how far we have drifted from the higher standard of resolving needs. If all of our social sciences adapt to this less optimal standard, then consider how nature-based anankelogy. It understands needs from the perspective of nature. Getting back to the original design can liberate you from pain and its dysfunction. It can also unleash your untapped potential.

1.3. The objective phenomenon of need Anankelogy recognizes your needs as objective phenomena. While clearly involving a subjective component, your needs and mine exist independent of our thoughts, our beliefs, or our differing values. Not only your objective need for water but your objective need for companionship, and for times of solitude. Your responses to your needs are largely subjective. Your subjectively chosen actions can trigger some needs. You can choose how to respond to your needs, or choose to avoid provoking some needs. But once the need occurs, subjec­tivity and choice have little to do with its existence. You do not subjectively choose to need water, or to need affection, or to need moments of solitude. These all exist objectively, independent of your sub­jective choices. You objectively need what your life objectively requires to function, and to objectively remove a cause for pain. As an objective fact of natural phenomenon, we can observe each need with the critical tools of social science. 1.3.1. The science of need Think of science as a lens to hold our perceptions accountable to reality. Think of reality as all that occurs in nature independent of human thought, values, beliefs, or interventions. It is “real” because it exists whether we perceive it or not, like it or not, process it or not. Much as the sun is real, whether we perceive it or not, like it or not, process it or not. Any occurrence of need is not much different. Nature forms the kernel behind all our human thoughts, values, beliefs, and interventions. Social sciences recognize our actions are observable phenomena, despite its subjectivity. The kernel of need behind each action exists whether we perceive it or not, like it or not, process it or not. I can observe as a social scientist, for example, how frequently passersby fail to stop to help someone coughing uncontrollably. Then ask each passerby why they did or did not stop to offer help. Sociologists use such experiments to impartially observe behavioral patterns shaped by social norms. In other words, we can learn from ourselves using scientifically vetted techniques. We can unpack the kernel of ‘need’ existing independent of human reactions to it. Émile Durkheim, the pioneering sociologist, helped to establish the science of sociology by pointing out how interpersonal norms exist as “social facts” transcending each individual. Anankelogy builds on this understanding with its assertion that needs exist as objective phenomena. 1.3.2. Understanding the limits of understanding Anankelogy follows this tradition of the social sciences. Anankelogy uniquely links such observable behavior and self-reported justifications to the kernel of its originating needs. Then unpacks the many specifics behind needs rarely explored in the other sciences. This science of need peers through a nature-based lens. It was shaped largely independent of Western anti-nature bias. How can one fully understand what they observe in nature while also assuming they must control it? The Western mindset, for example, tends to stumble when defining emotion. How can it define emotion from its assumption that emotions must always be controlled by human reasoning? Nature-based anankelogy sees this as an emotional reaction itself, distorting observations of natural emotions. Anankelogical observation does not guarantee perfect answers. As with any social science, anankelogy in the wrong hands could dip into science-in-name-only. Poor science rationalizes, by indulging our distorted assumptions. Good science provides reliable yet provisional answers. Great science inspires better questions to ask and test. 1.3.3. Social science discipline The more needs resolve, the easier it is to observe reality with less distortion. Unresolved needs tend to insist something should be a certain way. The more painful the need, the more it insists you find the shortest path for its relief. The more your needs resolve, the less biased your observations. Anankelogy adds this discipline to the social sciences. The more an observer’s needs remain resolved, the generally more reliable their observations. And the more trustworthy their framed hypotheses for testing. Objective observations depend on the observer’s ability to function. The more their functioning depends to some extent on what is being observed, the less objective they can be. As social beings, our observations can never be com­pletely objective. But they can be kept accountable. Nature-based anankelogy appreciates the role needs play in all our science. It helps us better understand how functioning impacts us all. Needs are all about functioning. 1.3.4. Need as functioning You drink water to quench a thirst, and then your body can function. If left stranded in a desert to dehydrate, your body cannot fully function. Water draws in, and your body’s cells pass nutrients and waste. The more nutrients pulled in and waste expelled, the better that cell can perform its function. Functioning depends on movement. Moving in what your body requires, and moving out what your body cannot utilize. Obstructing such movement disrupts functioning. The less water drawn in, then the fewer nutrients can be drawn into the cell. Damaging waste easily builds up. Such cells die sooner. 1.3.5. Emotional functioning What applies at a biological level similarly applies at the level of emotional needs. You function at a biological and an emotional level based on this same rhythmic in-and-out movement. The more isolated from others you must rely upon, for example, the less you can function. Or the more smothered by others, the less you can function. There is a time for one, and then the other. Movement in. Movement out. This includes two phases of relatively little movement. Moved in and staying put for a while. And later expelled and staying that way for a while. Nature-abased anankelogy helps you appreciate this cyclic pattern. Indeed, indigenous wisdom uses a four-quadrant cycle to illustrate this primordial movement in nature.

1.4. Cyclic functioning You function throughout life in a predictable pattern of moving toward some­thing or towards others, then moving back away. Then again moving together, followed by moving apart, in a continual cycle. This cycle is punctuated by periods of relative less movement. Being together for a while. Being apart for a while. Water moving in. Water sitting in your body. Excess water expelled. Lower water amount for a while. Friends come over to visit. They stay a while. Then it’s time for them to leave. You enjoy solitude for a while. Anything we label as need points back to this cyclic rhythm of nature. Nature is more than what exists outside ourselves. Like anything else in nature, we are all subject to this four-part cycle for our existence. 1.4.1. Being together We too are creatures of nature. We “need” stuff from nature. Some aspects of nature rely on us. As social beings, we need each other. We are drawn to be together. We rely on each other. We each need the warmth of “summer.” We cannot produce for ourselves all the food we will ever eat. Or access all the other things required in life, especially love. At some point and on some level, we continue to function by being together. Figure 1.01: BEING TOGETHER 1.4.2. Being apart Some elements in nature cannot coexist in close proximity to each other. At least not for very long. We each need our own space at times. To know we can take of ourselves when all alone. We each need to “winter” in place. We cannot always count on others to provide for our every need. We must at times be self-sufficient, and autonomous. At some point and on some level, we continue to function by being apart. Figure 1.02: BEING APART 1.4.3. Moving together Nature prompts life to shift from being apart toward a time for being together. From not having enough to replenishing what is lacking. After being alone for a while, you naturally seek some social company. To plant fresh seeds of renewal. “Spring” has arrived. At some point and on some level, we continue to function by moving together. Figure 1.03: MOVING TOGETHER 1.4.4. Moving apart Nature prompts life to shift from being together toward a time for being apart. From experiencing too much to removing the excess. After being together for a while, you naturally seek some solitude. You eagerly harvest the benefits of a relationship. “Autumn” has arrived. At some point and on some level, we continue to fun­ction by moving apart. Figure 1.04: MOVING APART 1.4.5. Natural cycle Put these quadrants together, you see a fundamental cycle behind all life. And beyond. The planets and stars move by this same cycle. Figure 1.05: FOUR-PART NATURAL CYCLE Two quadrants speak to those periods of relative calm. We can understand a lot about needs from understanding these stationary phases. Figure 1.06: STATIC HEMISPHERES Two quadrants speak to those periods of movement. We can understand a lot about needs from understanding these movement phases. Figure 1.07: DYNAMIC HEMISPHERES The four quadrants create the four-part cycle familiar to traditional Native American wisdom. Moving together in life’s Spring. Being together in life’s Summer. Moving apart in life’s Autumn. Being apart in life’s Winter. Figure 1.08: STATIC + DYNAMIC HEMISPHERES = NATURAL CYCLE You can think of these quadrants as seasons in your life, and not merely the calendar year. Native American elders did so in the past. Which enabled my Oneida ancestors to live in relative contentment with nature. And enables me now to live in relative contentment. Figure 1.09: FOUR QUADRANT CYCLE This four-part cycle provides nature-based anankelogy with a basic tool for you to understand needs. Reflect on your own needs. For food to satisfy your hunger. For a job to earn an income to buy necessary goods and services. For companionship to satisfy your intimacy needs. The cycle typically starts in the east quadrant. Two things or persons start moving together. New needs typically begin there. Figure 1.10: CYCLE TYPICALLY STARTING EAST Next, let’s understand your needs using this four-part cycle.