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Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it. < Back E02 Conflict Principle List of all principles Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it. Image: Pixabay – jplenio (click on meme to see source image) Summary The more opposition goes against what the other side inflexibly needs, the more their defensiveness gets naturally provoked. Either side can possibly change what they do about their needs, but neither side can change the needs themselves. That’s impossible. Too often, their provoked defensiveness gets misinterpreted as willful stubbornness. If you cannot change your needs for them, why expect them to change theirs for you? Description Which do you think is more likely? You must take a firm stance against anyone you see as believing or acting wrong. OR The more fervently you oppose others, the more you reinforce their errant beliefs. Anankelogy Your prioritized natural needs exist as an objective fact , prior to your subjective experience of them. Others can have an objective priority of natural needs at odds with yours, even while they experience them subjectively. Neither side can easily change objective facts to fit their subjective experiences. The more you oppose what the other cannot readily change, the more they must dig in their heels. The more you provoke their defenses, and they provoke yours, the more all sides tend to get stuck in the dark of diminished awareness. You easily conflate what they do with what they naturally need. Anankelogy distinguishes between inflexible natural needs and what we flexibly can do about those needs. You can rightly question, challenge and perhaps oppose what others do about their needs. You have a need to report how their actions impact your needs. You fight in vain to resist the natural needs themselves. What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce . The more you push against what they cannot change, the more they naturally push back. They double down. They use your opposition to grow their coalition of support against you and your types. To guard their inflexible priority of needs, they vilify you. T he more you honestly relate to each other’s natural needs, the less you slide into stifling debate . Instead of triggering each other’s defensiveness, you will solve more problems by keeping it safer for each side to drop their guard and be more vulnerably honest. “You catch more flies honey than vinegar.” And who wants to honestly solve a problem while being viciously shot down? Need-response Need-response answers this oppo culture problem with mutual regard . You address the inflexible needs on all sides in a conflict. You learn to shift from popular yet failed selfish approaches to more effectively engage each other. Instead of shutting down awareness of how we came to our current needs, you shine a light on the best path to resolve each other’s affected needs. Rather than stay stuck in pain, you mutually support resolving needs to remove cause for pain. Reactive Problem Anankelogy and its application in need-response identifies this as a problem of what it calls the power delusion . That’s believing it is good to socially pressure others to agree with you. We recognize it as a delusion since all available evidence suggests such coercive behavior typically detracts from resolving needs, which then perpetuates our problems and pain. Many of us prematurely oppose others. Less because we’re truly right and more because we try to avoid the discomfort of exposing our vulnerable needs . Let’s be honest, we oppose those we want to push away. This delusion of coercion includes the problem of oppo culture . Short for "opposition culture", this refers to the set of written and unwritten norms privileging a more antagonistic stance against others with whom disagreed. This intent to quickly oppose others betrays the intent to avoid the discomfort of a disciplined path toward resolving needs . It’s easier to claim another is wrong than to invite them to acknowledge their weak points on par with you admitting you have weak points they could call out. Responsive Solution You’re introduced to the power of mutual regard in a wellness campaign . It works in concert with social love , to temporarily put the needs of others ahead of your own. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness . Consider how this could dissolve the tensions in polarizing politics. A progressive argues for the reproductive right of the woman not ready to be a mother. A conservative tries to the voice for the voiceless unborn. Oppo culture tends to reinforce each side not being able to address their inflexible needs. Mutual regard opens a meaningful dialogue for each side to better understand and relate to the other. Social love dares to do something for another’s need selflessly. Neither side tries to change the other. They focus more on what can be changed: the way they relate to each other. A wellness campaign can show you how to coordinate your efforts to resolve more needs, remove more pain, and reach more potential. Instead of enflaming conflicts with selfish opposition, you learn to snuff out the fire of painful tensions with the power of love. Responding to your needs How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these: But I can’t let others walk all over me, so sometimes I must take a stance. Right? What if the other side exploits me when I drop my guard? How does this apply to adversarial justice and to oppositional politics? Isn’t there any exception to this, when it’s better to take an immediate stance? Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . See other principles in this category - Foundational - Basic - General - Pain - Conflict - Authority - Law - Love - Previous Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Next

7 < Back to list A. Character refunction 7 A forgiveness Forgiveness is here defined as letting go of anger toward another who acted toward you, or to others you care about, in ways you found objectionable. What you rejected you no longer reject as intensely. This includes releasing anger toward yourself, to release your own sense of shame. 7 .1 A Need experience Others wrong you when doing something you perceive as (and may well be) a threat to you. Social norms grant you various forms of retribution, from mildly embarrassing the offender to charging the offender with a felony leading to a death penalty. Threatening them in return offers some relief from your pain. But rightful retribution seldom resolves needs, and can provoke avoidable needs . Releasing your anger frees you to focus on more important matters. Easing your rejection of the person can segue to specifically rejecting their challenged actions. Then segue further to rejecting the conditions behind the offense while affirming the identified offender. You create a clean slate to hopefully make it easier to address the relevant needs more responsibly. By forgiving the offender, you consider the needs of the other person, and target your rejection to how their unresolved needs painfully impacted you. You cease linking the painful action of the other as essentially the same as that other person. You refuse to let any hatred get a foothold in your attitude toward life. You inspire the offender to be honest and humble , to be more prosocial. You prioritize resolving all the needs involved. 7 .2 A Defunctionalizing Info This subsection applies 'relational knowing' statements to illuminate how this defunction relationally lowers your ability to fully function. It is typically framed with more/more or more/less or less/more or less/less associations that can be empirically tested. 7 .3 A Refunctionalizing Info This subsection applies 'relational knowing' statements to illuminate how this defunction could be turned around to raise your ability to function. It also uses more/more or more/less or less/more or less/less associations that can be empirically tested. 7 .4 A Example(s) This subsection offers some examples of this defunction you may observe affecting your life. Usually more than one example is provided. If reading this, there are no examples yet to this defunction. 7 .5 A Associated defunctions This subsection points to similar or applicable defunctions. If reading this, there are no defunctions specifically associated with this defunction. 7 .6 A Relevant refunctions This subsection points to relevant or complementary refunctions. If reading this, there are no relevant defunctions to correlate with this defunction. 7 .7 A Applicable principles This subsection points to those anankelogical principles that aptly apply to this defunction. If reading this, there are no anankelogical principles related specifically to this defunction. 7 .8 A Referenced blog posts This subsection points to those blog entries that relate to, or cite, this particular defunction. If reading this, there are no blog entries yet related specifically to this defunction. Date created: 8/29/23 Type: Date revised: A. Character refunction The more you let go of your anger toward those who wronged you, the more your needs resolve. Let go of your anger when wronged. Release yourself from your own self-chastisement. View any infringement of your rights as a mistake they can freely admit. Give others the space to honestly admit their imperfections. Rebuild trust by acknowledging your errors toward others. See how forgiveness resolves more needs. Previous Next Discuss at our Engagement forum

There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. < Back D01 Pain Principle List of all principles There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Image: Pixabay - Barbara-Iandolo (click on meme to see source image) Summary The more your needs fully resolve, the less your body must painfully warn you of threats. Emotional pain like depression and anxiety only exist to warn you of threats to remove. Once all threats get removed, it is impossible to feel pain as your body has no remaining cause to report any threats. Persisting pain points to lingering perceived threats. Fully resolved needs remove cause for pain. Description Which do you think is more likely? Life is so painful that you must continually suffer some level of physical and emotional pain. OR Pain only exists to warn of unresolved needs, and once you satisfy all your needs you will find it impossible to experience pain. Anankelogy Nature-based anankelogy demystifies your pain. Your pain only exists to warn you of threats. Without any perceived threats, your body has no cause to warn you with this unpleasant feeling. Any pain, any level of discomfort, points back to some apparent threat holding back your ability to fully function. The less you can function because of it, the more intense the pain. A mild threat evokes only a mild discomfort. When someone failed to meet with you on time, this threatens your ability to function. You were counting on them to be punctual so you would have enough time to cover matters you rely on to function. The pain of disappointment conveys the upended expectation to continue functioning at the anticipated level. Let’s say the person arrives just a few minutes late. And you get a text message letting you know the commitment you had after this meeting has been canceled. Your feelings of disappointment dissolve. You may still feel the unease of broken trust, but now that you can confidently cover all you came to the meeting to address, that threat to your ability to function has been removed. Once removed, your body has no cause to alarm you of that threat. If all threats suddenly went away, you would suddenly feel no pain. If you suffer an overbearing load of pain, then you’re facing an overwhelming load of threats. Removing all these threats removes all your pain. Apart from a need to connect more deeply with others, you feel no alienation . Apart from a need to reject some apparent threat, you feel no anger . Apart from a need to make sense of something, you feel no confusion . Apart from a need to redirect your energies, you feel no depression . Apart from a need for others to be trustworthy, you feel no disappointment . Apart from a need to remove something offensive, you feel no disgust . Apart from a need to cover something exposed, you feel no embarrassment . Apart from a need to handle something menacing, you feel no fear . Apart from a need to have things go as planned, you feel no frustration . Apart from a need to adjust to a deep loss, you feel no grief . Apart from a need to restore your respect for others, you feel no guilt . Apart from a need to avoid any risk of harm, you feel no insecurity . Apart from a need to enjoy what another enjoys, you feel no jealousy . Apart from a need to connect with someone, you feel no loneliness . Apart from a need to control your situation, you feel no powerlessness . Apart from a need to rethink your actions, you feel no regret . Apart from a need to promptly get something done, you feel no restlessness . Apart from a need to deal with some loss, you feel no sadness . Apart from a need to guard your social image, you feel no shame . Apart from a need to meet some high expectation, you feel no stress . Easier said than done, right? Exactly! That’s where need-response can help. Need-response No current option helps you resolve all of the needs creating the conditions for your pain. Only need-response is designed to fully remove the cause for pain by fully resolving every need. As James Hightower put it, “The problem isn’t that people fall through the cracks. The problem is that there are so many cracks.” Need-response fills those cracks with improved responsiveness to every type of need. Reactive Problem Our legal systems, such as the judiciary and politics, do not help you resolve needs. By design, they primarily try to ease the pain of the winning side in a court battle or ballot contest. The losing side gets to keep their pain. The needs on both sides typically remain unresolved. Their pain persists. While the winning side enjoys some relief, their functioning potential gets compromised. They may blame the losing side, but that will not restore their wellbeing. As Dr. King put it, hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. We are so accustomed to this lower standard of win-lose outcomes that we don’t even look for a win-win alternative. What if there was an option seeking to identify, address and ultimately resolve each impacted need? Then the pain would finally clear up, and allow all involved to reach more of their functional potential. That’s what need-response is for. Responsive Solution First, we readjust your orientation to be more open to the natural pain occurring in your life. Then we invest your improved resiliency to thoroughly address the sources of unnatural pain , such as power relations. The more you’re equipped to process your natural pain, the better positioned to take on unnatural sources of pain. With a team of supportive need-responders , you will gain the courage to speak truth to power . And do so in a way that incentivizes them to listen to those impacted . In the alternative, you invite a qualified need-responder to advocate for you. Once they agree, they advocate mostly for all the needs affected by the power relationship. Not only does this help you resolve your impacted needs, it helps the powerholder in the relationship to more responsibly resolve their needs. In the process, the powerholder identifies and addresses their need to be more responsive to you. Their professional reputation depends on their demonstrated leadership skills. We incentivize them to support you in resolving your impacted needs by linking the results to their measurable leadership skills. Eventually, there is much less pain to go around. Responding to your needs How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these: I can’t imagine a life without all the continual pain I endure. Maybe this offers some hope. I want to envision a life without as much pain. I want to explore this option. I am disillusioned with adversarial justice/politics and am open to considering this alternative. After resolving my needs I still feel some pain. So what’s that about? Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . See other principles in this category - Foundational - Basic - General - Pain - Conflict - Authority - Law - Love - Previous Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Next

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Violence is weakness turned outward. Resilience is strength turned inward. < Back E05 Conflict Principle List of all principles Violence is weakness turned outward. Resilience is strength turned inward. Image: Pixabay – Dimhou (click on meme to see source image) Summary The more you react towards threats from others, the more you expose your inability to effectively express, address and resolve each other’s affected needs. You could appear weak. The more you stand humbly firm while threatened, and give yourself a chance to understand and relate to their inflexible needs, without reacting in self-protection, the more you give opportunity to resolve each other’s needs. Description Which best describes your response to conflict? I must never appear weak to those who challenge me. OR I must remain firm yet humble when someone challenges me. Anankelogy Anankelogy helps us understand a key motivation for violence. When you experience a need, you quickly evaluate its urgency. If you must satisfy a need now in order to survive, or to avoid harm, your options include brute force. Even when you feel this option, ready to apply force against another, we usually reflect for a moment and discount it as inappropriate. But in those moments when you must defend yourself from a violent threat, you may be glad that option sits ready and able. You also have the option to absorb an insult, to laugh off a stinging offense, and to ignore a painful slight. Where physical force gives you outward strength, reasoned options give you internal strength. The less pain you provoke, the less pain you attract. Anankelogy appreciates how unprocessed pain spurs most acts of violence. Reacting in violence, even nonphysical violence like verbal and emotional abuse, tends to result in more pain. If not checked, a vicious cycle unfolds trying to ease the pain it repeatedly creates. Need-response Sometimes brute force is necessary, even at the risk of hurting another. But we best exhaust every less violent option first. As the pilot episode of Kung Fu aptly put it: “Avoid [contention], rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill. For all life is precious, nor can any be replaced.” A key problem with violence is how it easily creates more problems than it solves . Once you bite into that low hanging feel-reaction fruit, it can be extremely difficult to get back to more effective need-responsive options. Reactive Problem Once you hurt another with some kind of force, they instantly distrust you. They’re less likely to tell you what they actually need of you. You may appear like you don’t care anyways. Inappropriate use of force can create emotional wounds that hurt much longer than physical wounds. Physical wounds tend heal more quickly. Festering emotional wounds damage relationships, sometimes beyond repair. The more you react with violence, or even the threat of violence, the less you are trusted. The more you emotionally wound others, the more others pull away. Responsive Solution If struck with force, you typically have the option to not strike back. Consider the example of Jesus who was struck repeatedly on his way to the cross. Never once striking back. Consider historical examples. Ghandi inspired thousands of Indians to oust the occupying British with an effective nonviolence approach. Consider Dr. King and the effective nonviolence of the civil rights movement. Sure, those civil rights activists endured harsh training. They were subjected to all kinds of abuse by their fellow trainers, to prepare them for the real abuse they faced when confronting white supremacy. You and I under those circumstance may be less tolerant. Need-response offers a free program that can stretch your tolerance for life’s many forms of pain. You learn you can endure far more than you thought you could. You develop your stamina to take undeserved punishment. You grow your resilience to face almost anything. Responding to your needs How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these: In the heat of the moment, it’s not always easy to be resilient. I can see myself sliding to the opposite extreme of being stepped all over. How does this apply to geopolitics? Could this apply to diplomacy to stop wars? How does this apply to the state privileged violence of the criminal justice system? Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . See other principles in this category - Foundational - Basic - General - Pain - Conflict - Authority - Law - Love - Previous Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Next

Glossary B biostructural pain (n. ) A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z < back to glossary menu

Any unquenchable desire becomes another pain. < Back D06 Pain Principle List of all principles Any unquenchable desire becomes another pain. Image: Pixabay – jplenio (click on meme to see source image) Summary The less you can resolve a need, the less you can function. Which feels painful. The less you can replenish what your life requires to function, the more your body warns you of this limitation as a threat. If unable to eat anything all day, you experience your obsessive hunger as something painful. Talking about pain can also refer to the painful desires you can ever adequately satisfy. Description Which do you think is more likely? Pain is pain and desire is desire and there is little these have in common. OR Unsatisfied desire can present as a threat that you experience it as a form of pain. Anankelogy If you haven’t eaten anything in over a day, your craving for food naturally grows intense. Eventually, your hunger feels painful. Your body warns of a threat to your access to food. And you feel that warningas a form of pain. Just as “biostructural pain” sends missed warnings to your body to experience, you can also experience in your body the missed signal to replenish something emotional. The more you ignore your feelings of isolation and loneliness, for example, the more your body may warn you of this threat to your full functioning by prompting you to feel intensely hungry for interpersonal connection. You know when you misinterpret this feeling as literal hunger when the feeling persists no matter how much you eat or drink. When feeling a burning hunger even after enjoying a full meal, ask yourself, What must I replenish in my life? When feeling thirsty for something sweet or for something intoxicating, ask yourself why? What emotional need have I been neglecting? Dig deeper still and you may realize you are not so much missing the message but feel powerless to do much about it. Need-response addresses these deeper causes to your unquenchable desires. Need-response Need-response challenges our popular consumerism reactions. Instead of placating any hunger or thirst with something pleasurable to eat or drink, we drill down to identify and address your neglected emotional needs. Reactive Problem The more powerless you feel you can fully satisfy your emotional needs, the more vulnerable to reacting to your unquenchable desires. Conventional wisdom touts willpower and your responsibility to make proper choices. But you can only choose options available to you at the moment of these emotional and physical needs. If you require a moment of solitude to reconnect with your authentic self, but must acquiesce to powerful pressures to forgo solitude—less you lose your freedom or means of income—no amount of willpower or right choices will matter much. Such popular philosophies, although grounded in reliable wisdom, tends to pull us into reacting to our pain. To distract us from ultimately resolving our painful needs. Responsive Solution Need-response address the power relation dynamics that easily interfere with your ability to fully resolve all of your needs. The NR301 program equips you with a viable way to incentivize the powerful to respond better to these overlooked needs. You learn to approach them as an equal. You’re both human, with real human needs. You both prefer less pain. You both can cause less pain in the other. You both can do more to mutually respect each other’s vulnerable needs. The more you can help each other to resolve each other’s affected needs, the better you can address your own unsatiable desires. There is no such thing as desire apart from some need to replenish what your body reports as lacking. If the primary resource you need to fully function proves inaccessible, your body suggests an alternative . If that’s unavailable, you can always pursue some substitute that only eases the pain. But if those in powerful positions seek legitimacy, let them enable you to access more of the primary resources your life naturally desires to fully function in life. Responding to your needs How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these: How can I tell the difference between emotional and physical hunger during a fast? How does this relate to overeating and any associated health problems? The more I can fully function after addressing each need, the less hungry I notice myself feeling. Will eating properly help me recognize when my hunger reports something I must replenish? Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . See other principles in this category - Foundational - Basic - General - Pain - Conflict - Authority - Law - Love - Previous Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Next

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The more an authority undermines resolving needs, the less its legitimacy. < Back F02 Authority Principle List of all principles The more an authority undermines resolving needs, the less its legitimacy. Image: Pixabay – PublicDomainPictures (click on meme to see source image) Summary Authority earns its trust the more its actions or inactions results in resolving needs. The more its actions or unexpected inactions results in unresolved needs, experienced as pain and diminished ability to function, the less it can be trusted to impact needs. Legitimacy of any authority correlates with how it impacts the exposed needs of the vulnerable. Description Which do you think is more likely? Questioning authority in the way of resolving needs can only make things worse. OR The more authority impedes me from resolving needs, the more I must speak up. Anankelogy Legitimacy can be defined as the right and acceptance of an authority , or the justification of coercive power as a right to rule, or the belief that a rule, institution, or leader has the right to govern , or widespread public confidence in the government to ensure political stability. What all these definitions lack, and many like it, is any reference to needs. Anankelogy adds the dimension of our objectively existing needs . Authority can flexibly adjust to be more legitimate by being more trustworthy to recognize and allow resolution of our inflexible needs . This effectively challenges the conventional yet arbitrary aspect of legitimacy. Since your needs exist as objective facts that you subjectively experience, legitimacy can be graded by how it measurably impacts your capacity to fully function. We shift the focus of legitimacy away from your subjective dependence upon it, which can be coerced. The less we can all objectively function because of some relatively arbitrary authority, the less objectively legitimate that authority. Anankelogy distinguishes between subjectively accepted authority and objectively qualified authority —referred to respectively as ascribed legitimacy and earned legitimacy . Legitimacy naturally declines the less responsive an authority to the needs in its care. And current systems remain poorly equipped to accountably respond to the immovable reality of our objective needs. It easily trips over its own efforts to improve its ascribed legitimacy , typically compromising its potential for earned legitimacy . Consequently, our trust in elite-led institutions continues to break down. Consider your own level of confidence in legacy media, representative democracy, polarizing politics, and the adversarial judicial system. Anankelogy addresses the widely overlooked problems these all have in common: avoidant adversarialism . Each one incentivizes you to avoid life’s natural discomforts of resolving needs by pitting us against each other for some fleeting sense of relief from the pain it mindlessly perpetuates. Need-response Need-response anchors legitimacy in responsiveness to all of our needs. There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs . These divisive institutions lack vision for how to enable you and I to optimally resolve our needs. They instead tend to normalize the tolerable pain of our unmet needs. They rarely if ever incentivize us to endure discomforts long enough to resolve these needs, which would remove cause for pain. These divisive institutions routinely coerce us to prefer the pain we feel over the pain we fear . We come to see them as the best or only option to cope with the constant ringing alarm of our unmet needs. But letting them incite us into taking sides against teach other to ease our pain tends to leave us in more pain . Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain exists to report . Divisive institutions regularly leave such threats in place. Then benefit from keeping you attached to their insidious machinations. Until you eventually get disgusted and start seeing them less as a solution and more as part of the problem. Reactive Problem Legitimacy naturally declines the more it coerces us into relying upon it to ease the pain of our unmet needs over resolving those needs. The more we wake up to realize such institutions coax our dependency to ease the pain from conditions it helps create, the less we can trust them. Especially when we realize that the more they benefit from keeping us unwell, the more blind they are to their own conflicts of interest. Let’s unpack the problem of avoidant adversarialism in each mass institution. Legacy media . To attract your attention, mainstream media outlets segment you as a part of a marketable audience. They incentivize you into indulgent side-taking to avoid empathizing with each other. You get a biased perspective, which erodes their trustworthiness as a reliable source of news. Representative democracy . To attract political support, elected leaders tend to cater to what they think you want over what you actually need. They routinely avoid facing your real-life issues as potentially costing them politically. They tend to favor donors’ interests over yours, which erodes their trustworthiness as a reliable local leader. Polarizing politics . To attract voters, candidates take stances on those politicized issues they believe will draw you and a majority of others to the polls. They pit you against others with a different inflexible priority of needs , to trap you into unwinnable conflicts. As your politicized needs and the needs of others remain mostly unresolved, politician’s trustworthiness erodes. Adversarial judiciary . To win in a court battle, lawyers on each side try to manipulate you into accept their interpretations of the available facts. They expect you and the other side to remain at mutually defensive odds, avoiding relevant details that could actually resolve your conflict. Their emphasis of procedural fairness over just outcomes erodes confidence in the courts. The more these divisive institutions get in the way of letting you resolve your needs, the less objectively legitimate in the eyes of anankelogy and need-response. Responsive Solution Need-response lays out a path for authority figures and institutions to earn the right to affect your needs. You and others evaluate an authority’s reliability to impact your objective needs . You empirically evaluate their actions and then categorize them on one of five legitimacy levels . Offensive illegitimacy . Authority harms the vulnerable, provoking more needs than helping to resolve. E.g., divisive law enforcement violently suppressing peaceful antiwar protesters. Substandard legitimacy . Authority acknowledges the needs they impact but only offers to pacify the pain instead of resolving such needs. E.g., law enforcement stops a thief from stealing your property without protecting your property from further thefts. Standard legitimacy . Authority demonstrates mutual regard that openly relates to everyone’s needs as worthy of the same respect as their own needs. E.g., law enforcement officers confront apparent law breakers as they would have any other officer confront their wrongdoing. Competitive legitimacy . Authority addresses their constituents’ needs more effectively than others to improve own professional reputation. E.g., law enforcement coordinates with community support organizations to reduce or eliminate common contributors to violence, so that together they can demonstrate their community is safer than other communities with a more passive aggressive law enforcement approach. Transformative legitimacy . Authority proactively addresses needs by transforming constraining norms into something more responsive to everyone’s needs. E.g., law enforcement officers walk a beat and get to know each community member on a more personal level, sometimes going out of their way to help someone with a personal problem. You learn to incentivize authority without being adversarial. You model the mutuality that we seek from them. You develop the skills to speak truth to power by first offering helpful feedback to your peers. You nurture each other’s “responsive reputation ”. You effectively compete with the disappointing results of adversarial authority. If your actions can measurably result in more resolved needs, such as a measurable reduction in addictive behaviors, you create value we all need. And authority needs. We raise the bar. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . 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Resolved needs improve your understanding. < Back C03 General Principle List of all principles Resolved needs improve your understanding. Image: Pixabay - Tama66 (click on meme to see source image) Summary The more your needs fully resolve, the more your thinking gets freed up for other things. The less your needs resolve, the less you can focus on anything but those emotionally pressing needs. You naturally prioritize functioning first. The more your needs resolve, the further you can reach your functioning capacity. The less you will then be distracted by emotional pressures or distorting biases. You can then absorb more input into what actually exists. Your expansive attention to soak in more truth can lead to a series of epiphanies. Instead of clinging to generalizations offering relief, you encounter more of reality. Description Which do you think is more likely? Your feelings must continually be checked by rational thinking and democratic laws. OR You can understand more when your mind is not compelled to focus on pressing needs. Anankelogy Everything you understand fits in some way with your ability to function. If anything gets in the way of your capacity to fully function, your mind can hardly focus on anything else but its priority to keep your life going. If you did not understand how falling off a tall cliff could kill you, your mind could entertain fancy ideas of gliding over the edge with a pair of untested homemade wings. But once aware of the dangers, your understanding bends to prioritize your survival . Your biases prioritize your need , your self-continuance. You believe what your life requires you think as true or not . If they didn’t, you risk not being around to contemplate less important things than your own survival. As soon as you perceive any threat to your wellbeing, this priority for your self-continuance commandeers your understanding. Everything else must wait. This innate priority to persist unscathed fuels your motivated reasoning . To paraphrase Upton Sinclair , it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their paycheck requires them to not understand it. Your interpretation of the situation will tend to amplify what seems beneficial, potentially exaggerate what could hold you back, and filter out what seems irrelevant. Your reasoning serves your motivation to continue without painful risks to your wellbeing. This dynamic often kicks in to avoid the pain itself. Your ability to think clearly can easily fall off the cliff when compelled to avoid the very warning that serves your self-continuance interests. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats they exist to warn you about . The more your needs resolve, the less pain to distract your thinking or to twist your understanding. Need-response The more your needs resolve, the more reliable your intuition. Your instincts serve you well when grounded on the reality of what previously led to your full wellbeing without infringing on others. Your more accurate conclusions provide a more reliable lens for framing your perceptions. Of course, the opposite is true. The less your needs resolve, then the less reliable your intuition. Your unresolved needs prioritize your attention toward their increasingly urgent relief. Your innate priority to ensure your continued functioning willingly takes cognitive shortcuts. As your needs resolve, your attention can soak in more of what you observe as actually there. Your mind integrates this input. When seeing what attracts other’s interest in you, for example, you don’t have to stumble around trying to get on their good side. Your understanding improves to appreciate what is real. Each time a familiar need recurs, you instantly can rely on your perceptions. You can rely on your understanding of what’s happening. You can respond quickly, without much reflection. You can enjoy your need resolving again. That’s the wonder of your reality-cultivated intuition. Reactive Problem Bombardments of stimuli in modern society tend to overtax our mental capacities. The less we filter out the less relevant, the more sensations we feel pulled to process. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. To manage this cognitive load, we often draw on our generalizations and categorizations. Instead of processing the inputs ourselves, we accept other’s processing as sufficient. Sometimes, that is not enough. Worse, the generalizations and categorizations of others may throw you completely off . Consequently, we’ve become a hyperrational society. We process less emotionally rich content. And try to force our needs to fit neatly into rational constructs that avoid messy details. When this results in poor outcomes, we typically revert the same failed routines trapping us in pain. When someone complains of a need they cannot resolve, we’re slow to listen and quick to argue. We’re slow to empathize and quick to take an opposing side. We’re slow to fully understand and quick to categorize and overgeneralize—for our own relief ultimately at their expense. If honest with ourselves, we’d admit we endure the slow burning pain of many unresolved needs. You likely don’t feel fully understood by anyone. You likely don’t feel fully accepted for who you uniquely are. You likely don’t enjoy the peace of living up to your full potential. We’ve all become accustomed to living lives of quiet desperation. And if honest, we don’t really understand why. Responsive Solution Responsivism —the belief and practice to respond better to the needs of others—counters the limits of “adversarialism ”. The more personally responsive to the needs of others, the less we feel we must oppose others we don’t actually understand. The more you can replace habits of avoiding others with routines of engaging each other, the better you can understand others and understand yourself. The more you can replace habits of alienation with norms of mutual encounters, the more you can face the reality that our hyperrationality easily ignores. This speaks to an advantage of anankelogy over other social sciences. Anankelogy recognizes how the biases of the anankelogist can be reduced or cleared up when the anankelogist is held accountable to promptly and fully resolve each need. The more responsive the need-responders to their own needs, the more they can be trusted to be professionally responsive to the needs of others. With responsivism , you can develop the skills to become a professional need-responder . Responsivism equips you to rebuild your interpersonal routines. You’re incentivized to resolve needs, and not settle for self-defeating relief from your unmet needs’ recurring pain. You sharpen the habit of engaging others despite the momentary discomforts while being vulnerable. You shift from develop the skills of cultivating mutual understanding, shutting down reason for mutual defensiveness that keeps us in the dark. You open our world to fresh understanding. You take in new insights that can liberate your life. As more of your needs fully resolve, and you support others to resolve their needs, you find a depth of understanding you may not have realized even existed. You can then richly understand the underappreciated scope of the full power of love. Responding to your needs How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these: Surely I will not fully understand reality simply because my needs are better satisfied. I suspect there is more to cognitive distortions than unaddressed needs. What about false beliefs that form from trusting bad sources? Doesn’t motivated reasoning have a lot to do with conflicts of interest? Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below. Engage this principle in our forum Engagement guide Any visitor to the Engagement forum can view all posts. So do keep that in mind when posting. Sign up or sign in to comment on these posts and to create your own posts. Using this platform assumes you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . Remember to keep the following in mind: Quote the principle you are responding to, and its identifier letter & number. Let’s be specific. Demonstrate need-responsiveness in your interactions here. Let’s respect each other. Engage supportive feedback from others on this platform. Let’s grow together. Together, let’s improve our need-responsiveness . Together, let’s spread some love . See other principles in this category - Foundational - Basic - General - Pain - Conflict - Authority - Law - Love - Previous Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Next