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8 < Back to list A. Character refunction 8 A reconciliation 8 .1 A Need experience 8 .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. 8 .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. 8 .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. 8 .5 A Associated defunctions This subsection points to similar or applicable defunctions. If reading this, there are no defunctions specifically associated with this defunction. 8 .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. 8 .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. 8 .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 rebuild your trustworthiness after admitting a wrong, the more your needs resolve. After letting go of your anger with forgiveness, continue nurturing the relationship by offering to restore any losses. Rebuild trust by compensating others for any damage for actions caused. Respect where others cannot go on without restoring what they’ve lost. Connect with others where they hurt, with empathetic generosity. Respond to other's gestures toward you who seek to rebuild any damaged trust. See how atonement resolves needs. Previous Next Discuss at our Engagement forum

Glossary O objective evil (n. ) Anankelogy recognizes pathologizing plus benefiting from it as equivalent to evil. harming others + benefiting from it = evil Anyone who can be empirically measured as gaining something of value from empirically hindering the objective needs of others (and potentially of oneself) can be counted as “objective” evil. This points to three observable elements that can be captured using the tools of social science. 1. The objective needs of others. 2. Any hindrance of resolving such needs. 3. Benefiting from such hindrance. The more one gains from their imposition on others, however ostensibly benign or obviously pernicious, the more they tend to deny its harm. Or they resort to motivated reasoning to rationalize that any negative impact was necessary for some claimed greater good. This tends to occur only in power relations, where a more socially influential person or entity imposes their self-serving will onto the vulnerably less influential. As the less powerful can adequately function as a consequence, the blind-sighted powerful may see this as proof of their superiority. Evil then becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is generally easier to be self-righteous when no one is in place to hold one accountable. The most evil figures in history tend not to recognize themselves as evil. Nor would those currently acting as such, until now with these three measurable variables tested with the social science of anankelogy. See evil . objective sin (n. ) Measurably falling short of fully resolving need, which limits optimal functioning in an objective way, independent of emotion, belief or perception. Imperfection objectively limiting full wellness, whether from one's own limited actions or from other's imposing limitations, or both. objective wickedness (n. ) Measurably obstructing resolution of need, which objectively limits full functioning, independent of emotion, belief or perception. Often with good intent, such as offering relief from the pain of unresolved needs that risks perpetuating pain by ignoring the objective needs. The more you become attached to pain relief to the point of neglecting the underserved needs (which dutifully prompts pain to call attention to your diminished wellness), the more your resulting diminished capacity to function becomes normalized. You then risk protecting this more familiar pain to avoid the lesser known pain of processing the uncomfortable alarm of your unresolved need. The more you avoid this call to remove a threat to your capacity to function, the more this persisting threat prompts more pain for you to try to ignore. This occurs as objectively wicked in that your objective capacity to function measurably declines, independent of any emotion, belief or perception. oppo culture (n. ) - DEFUNCTION Short for "opposition culture", this refers to the set of written and unwritten norms that privileges or compels taking an antagonistic stance against others with whom one disagrees. It tends to displace the more noble potential for mutual regard . It functions in proximity with avoidance culture as key components to the power delusion . See adversarialism . organic 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

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Resolving needs improves wellness. < Back B01 Basic Principle List of all principles Resolving needs improves wellness. Image: Pixabay – Bessi (click on meme to see source image) Summary Wellness is another word for function. All needs exist to serve function. The more you resolve your needs, the better you can function. The more you eat well, the better you can function. You eat, breathe, connect with friends and enjoy moments of solitude all for the sake of being able to function through life. The less your needs resolve, or the less you attend to your prioritized needs, the less you can function. Or the less well you will be. Where there is no function to serve, there is no need. Description Which do you think is more likely? Your ability to function has little to nothing to do with your needs. OR Your ability to function has everything to do with your needs. Anankelogy This unique understanding of your needs recognizes that your every need relates to your ability to function. The less your needs resolve, the less you can function. And the closer to being unwell. The more your needs resolve, the better you can function and be well. Accessible anankelogy refers to your level of functioning simply as wellness . Recognizing your wellness exists in gradient levels provides us with a deeper understanding. Anankelogy identifies four key levels of your ability to function . Peakfunction : When you prioritize to promptly and fully resolve your needs. You reach more of your full potential. You enjoy sustainable wellness. Symfunction : When you prioritize pragmatically easing your needs with help from others. You can sufficiently function. Just not at your best. Dysfunction : When you prioritize relieving the pain of your many unresolved needs. You can hardly function. You typically cope with something addictive. Misfunction : When you prioritize survival from too many unresolved basic needs. You barely hang onto life. You find yourself repeatedly at death’s door. A need can be appreciated as a kind of metaphor for function. The more your need for water is satisfied, the better you can function. The less your body’s requirement for water can be satiated, the less you can function. If you cannot satisfy your thirst, you will find yourself obsessing for something to drink. While you experience these subjectively, they begin from the objective reality for your life’s requirement for something to function. This applies equally to your emotional needs. If you cannot satisfy your longing to be understood and appreciated by those closest to you, you will find yourself obsessing to be accepted. You must receive some social connection to function, or you will remain in the pain of loneliness. Anankelogy recognizes a range between illness and wellness . Instead of suddenly becoming sick, you gradually lose the ability to function. You regressively shift from wellness into illness when your needs do not or cannot fully resolve. Need-response This new profession of need-response applies this central anankelogy principle. It can either complement or compete with other service institutions. Need-response can complement the psychological focus of psychotherapy by adding the essential dimension of responding to the needs that the mind processes. Need respond can complement law enforcement and the judicial process, and even politics. Or it can compete with these institutions by creating better results when addressing the needs for which they ostensibly exist. Reactive Problem These service institutions of law and psychotherapy tend to follow the popular norm of relieving pain over addressing the needs prompting such pain. The more a court battle or ballot contest offers mere relief for the pain of publicly affected needs, the less we can function. We tend to accept such relief is the best we can get. We accommodate to lower levels of being able to function. We cope with the increasingly pain of these unmet needs. We also get angrier and angrier at each other. Responsive Solution The more inspired to endure the discomfort of working through the painful portion of fully addressing our needs, the more we can fully resolve them. Pain is not the problem as much as the threat such pain exists to report . The further you can remove the threat prompting the pain, the better you can function. The more your needs resolve, the more your wellness improves. Once your functioning gets restored, the more capable of removing other threats. You then become less vulnerable to coping habits like addictions. As your wellness—your level of functioning—improves, the more your anger can shift toward grace, peace and love. The more your needs resolve, the more wellness you enjoy. 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 this apply equally to a physical need and an emotional need like the need for love? How long do I have to put up with the pain before I can enjoy restored functioning? Isn’t short-term pain relief okay, or is the only path toward better functioning is costly pain? If I’m already trapped in addictive patterns, how can this insight help me climb out of them? 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

< Back 5. Balancing masculine competition with feminine cooperation Do you prioritize one gender side over another? Or do you integrate both? Masculine focused If you're more rational than emotional, your needs best met with a more emotional emphasis naturally seeks some balance. One way nature prompts you to fill this void is through sexual energy, to compel you to pursue the complementary emotionality you currently lack. Whether stereotypically in a woman or perhaps in an emotionally attuned man. The less you integrate your rational qualities with emotional maturity, the more prone to swing between extremes of irrationality and unemotionality. For example, _________ The more you blend your rational qualities with emotional maturity, the more needs you can resolve and remove cause for pain. For example, becoming both reasonable and intuitive enables you to _________ Feminine focused If you're more emotional than rational, your needs best met with a more rational emphasis naturally seeks some balance. One way nature prompts you to fill this void is through sexual energy, to compel you to pursue the complementary rationality you currently lack. Whether stereotypically in a man or perhaps in a rationally minded woman. toward balance Cyclic balancing of these gender-associated traits Vacillating between opposing extremes Balancing complementary sides Oscillating toward a balanced center Encountering the holistic center Transspiritually compelled holism Conventional reaction to transspirituality The more attached to conventional norms, the more one tends to guard the comforting familiarity of pragmatism creep . text text Saturday, November 1, 2025 at 8:58:14 PM UTC Previous Next

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If you or someone you support is a wrongly convicted innocent, and underserved by the adversarial legal process, need-response offes you three options. The first one is free: Estimated Innocence. Exoneration Services If you or someone you support is a wrongly convicted innocent, and underserved by the adversarial legal process, need-response offers you three alternative options. If you or someone you support is a wrongly convicted innocent, how can these services better serve you? Let us know in the comments below Welcome to Exoneration Services The video appears here in a moment. If not, refresh the page. Appellate Process Innocence Project Exoneration Services 1) Estimated Innocence 2) Innocence Profiles 3) Public Exoneration Innocence projects take cases slipping through the cracks of the appellate process. But who takes cases slipping through the cracks in the legalistic Innocence Movement? Exoneration Services does. Instead of serving laws, we prioritize serving your need for justice. First, by demonstrating the viability of your innocence claim using our downloadable Estimated Innocence Form. 1) Estimated Innocence . This form automatically compares your claim with those already exonerated. Then calculates the degree that your claim merits attention by those who take justice seriously. 2) Innocence Profiles . Upload the results of your calculate innocence to our Unexonerated page. Let the public recognize the viability of your innocence claim. Attract widespread support. 3) Public Exoneration . Invite your family and friends to support your innocence publicly. Engage innocence lawyers and judicial authorities beyond the confines of adversarial law. Incentivize them to exonerate yo u. Estimated Innocence DIY for free Download the free spreadsheet form. Fill it out and get an instant calculation of viable innocence. Use as you see fit. Estimated Innocence Innocence Profiles Free, donate if you can to offset costs Upload your completed Estimated Innocence Form. Let the whole world recognize your compelling claim of actual innocence. Attract public support. Innocence Profiles Public Exonerati on $199.99/month, crowdfunded, 30-day trial While waiting for innocence litigators to do their thing, start our public exoneration alternative. See if we can respond faster and more effectively than mere law. Public Exoneration Serving the underserved innocent Welcome to this brand-new approach to seeking exoneration from a wrongful conviction. This service is specifically for those demonstrating actual innocence , who had no role in the alleged crime. And for those underserved by the legal process. Academic research points to over a hundred thousand wrongly convicted innocent persons in prison and beyond. While grat eful for the Innocence Project, these teams of lawyers barely scrat ch the surface of these costly miscarriages of justice. While the Innocence Movement has helped to exonerate around 4,000 innocent people, far more remain falsely imprisoned. Most innocence projects lack the resources to effectively process all viable innocence claims. AI could improve this . Meanwhile, their output remains constrained by an adversarial legal system. Exoneration Services is a specialized service of need-response. Need-response is a new professional field to directly serve your needs beyond the confines of adversarial legalism. Including your need for exoneration from a guilty adversarialist system. You are witnessing something totally new. And you can help shape it into something serving your particular needs. Give your input You can help shape these visionary services to fit your particular needs. We meet up each month in our Unexonerated Innocent group on Telegram . New to Telegram? Learn more here , here , and here . We tentatively meet up the first Saturday of the month, at 10:00 am ET. We may change this as we learn when is the optimal day and time for all. Use the form below to express your interest. You will receive an invitation link to the meetup. At the scheduled time of the meeting, and assuming you have the Telegram app, just click on the provided link. Come prepared with your questions and suggestions. Let us help each other improve our chances for exonerating the innocent. telegram signup Join us on Telegram Join our private "Unexonerated Innocent" group on Telegram . When you register, you will receive the invite link in your inbox. First name* Last name* Email* Select each that describes you I am an innocence claimant I represent an innocence claimant I serve an innocence agency Your best available day to meet online each month REGISTER to JOIN Keep Hope Alive I am trying to build what I myself need. I am a survivor of a wrongful conviction, yet trapped in poverty because of collateral consequences of a wrongful conviction . To sustain this vision, I need your help. The more you can donate here, the greater the chance this can succeed for the many who desperately need this. Thank you, and they thank you. Or donate directly on FreeFunder A donation option appears here after a few seconds If not, then simply refresh the page Follow developments Can't join us on Telegram? Then follow developments on our Need-Response podcast . Episodes air every other Wednesday. Co hosted by Steph Turner and Gustavo Nascimento, season two focuses on serving the unexonerated innocent. Your input shared in our Telegram meet ups could wind up on the show. Let's talk . Let's make waves. Ultimately, let's free the innocent! You can follow the show on different podcast platforms. Spotify Amazon Castbox iHeart PlayerFM YouTube NR Clips RSS feed See you there. How can these better serve you?

1 < Back to list A) defunction type 1 # safety Safety is the need to not be subjected to threats to your ability to function. 1 .1 0 Need experience Need experience details. This section provides more in-depth details for this particular defunction. It can help clarify what this defunction is truly about. It typically includes more than one paragraph. it adds understanding to the summary descriptor above. And it may include references to other defunctions. The text tends to toward academic anankelogy instead of accessible anankelogy, as these sections were written prior to the emphasis on accessible anankelogy for this site. 1 .2 0 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. 1 .3 0 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. 1 .4 0 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. 1 .5 0 Associated defunctions This subsection points to similar or applicable defunctions. If reading this, there are no defunctions specifically associated with this defunction. 1 .6 0 Relevant refunctions This subsection points to relevant or complementary refunctions. If reading this, there are no relevant defunctions to correlate with this defunction. 1 .7 0 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. 1 .8 0 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. Type: Date created: Date revised: #) category for this defunction 8/26/23 not yet revised safety Previous Next Discuss at our Engagement forum

Responsivism is the belief and practice of personally responding to the needs of others instead of enaging in hostile opposition. Responsive Development Responsivism is the belief and practice that responding to the unchosen needs of others can produce more favorable results than defensive-provoking adversarial alternatives. Your every need exists as an objective fact . This truism exhorts a different approach to conflicts, to problems, and toward those in positions of power. For starters, expecting others to change their minds as a trusted way to address your needs repeatedly fails. Now we can understand why. Now we have a fresh approach, to more effectively identify and address our needs. Responsivism answers the many limitations inherent in adversarial activism. Responsivism begins with you, on a personal level. Start asking what you can do for others. No quid pro quo. Just to stretch your potential to be more giving. Activism tends to incite toxic legalism . tension between personal responsibilities and personal rights hide behind rationalizations to avoid uncomfortable exposure rely on comforting generalizations overlooking specific needs intent toward relieving pain and neglecting needs behind pain oppose each other by provoking mutual defensiveness Responsivism incentivizes mutual wellness . balances personal responsibilities with personal rights boldly self-disclose each other's vulnerable needs faithfully engages nuance to address all relevant needs intent toward resolving all needs to remove cause for pain cultivates mutual understanding of each other's needs Responsivism answers the shortcomings of legalistic activism. Replace activism with responsivism Responding to Toxic Legalism The role of law starts nobly enough. Laws impersonally convey needs where emotions personally convey needs. Problems emerge as law and authority become more important than the needs they exist to serve. Click on "Toxic legalism creeps in when..." to view each problem in more detail. Then click on the button to explore the responsive solution below. Laws hold us personally accountable. Laws curb our actions that could harm others. Toxic legalism creeps in when encouraging personal responsibility drifts into over responsibility, by overlooking collective responsibility. Problems soon arise. You can only respond to others from a capacity of others responding appropriately to you. Personal responsibility then easily slips into hyper-individualism. Illegitimate authority then targets individuals as somehow personally responsible for conditions beyond their personal control. Legalistic activism risks perpetuating such hyper-individualism by neglecting psychosocial balance between oneself and others. Responsivism counters this toxic legalistic tendency with Responsive Holism, or Holistic Responsiveness. Holistically Responsive Laws check our charged emotions wth reason. Laws ensure our interactions result in rational outcomes. Toxic legalism creeps in when rational thinking increasingly suppresses natural emotions. Problems soon arise. The more you rationalize your actions, the less honest you become with yourself and toward others. Reasoned thinking then easily slips into hyper-rationality. Illegitimate authority then allows self-rationalizations to hinder mutually safe disclosure about our honest selves. Legalistic activism risks perpetuating hyper-rationality when not encouraging each other to safely acknowledge their vulnerable limits. Their noble goals get easily coopted to serve Responsivism counters this toxic legalistic tendency with Responsive Relatability, or Relatably Responsive. Relatably Responsive Laws are kept vague to apply broadly. Laws cannot be so specific as to be excluded in some situations. Toxic legalism creeps in when vagueness becomes overgeneralizing, and overgeneralizing skips over relevant nuance of specific needs. Problems soon arise. Needs fully resolve only by fully addressing all its specific parts. Vagueness then easily slips into overgeneralizing. Illegitimate authority overgeneralizes its power when oversimplifying what must be done about each other’s needs. Legalistic activism risks perpetuating oversimplified solutions that easily magnify our public problems. Responsivism counters this toxic legalistic tendency with Responsive Specifics, or Specifically Responsive. Specifically Responsive Laws are kept impersonal to avoid favoritism. Laws must be impartiality applied to be effective. Toxic legalism creeps in when impartiality drifts into alienating avoidance, and such detachment leads to avoiding almost anything unconformable. Problems soon arise. Needs typically resolve only by meaningfully enduring its discomfort to keep you aware until that need resolves. Detachment then easily slips into normalizing discomfort avoidance. Illegitimate authority emphasizes pain relief of neglected needs over removing pain by resolving such needs. Legalistic activism risks perpetuating the mounting pain of each other’s neglected needs by normalizing such avoidance. Responsivism counters this toxic legalistic tendency with Responsive Resilience, or Resiliently Responsive. Resiliently Responsive Laws are kept punitive to compel compliance. Laws enforce social order by threatening violators with sanctions. Toxic legalism creeps in when its adversarial demeanor provokes mutual defensiveness. Problems soon arise. Authority that mindlessly coerces compliance risks reinforcing what it ostensibly opposes. Opposition then easily slips into hostilities. Illegitimate authority pits us against each other instead of encouraging us to support resolving each other’s needs. Legalistic activism risks perpetuating mutually reacting to each other by opposing each other’s inflexible needs. Responsivism counters this toxic legalistic tendency with Responsive Mutuality, or Mutually Responsive. Mutually Responsive BASE: Lay your foundation Before you try to improve your relations with others, be sure you have adequately improve yourself. Use these tools to establish the foundation of your responsiveness to each other's needs. Responsive Holism Cultivate more balance in your life and needs GO TO Responsive Relating Safely reveal more of yourself to each other GO TO Responsive Specifics Dig deeper to find the missing details of needs GO TO Responsive Resilience Stretch your capacity to bear discomfort of needs GO TO Responsive Mutuality Turn conflicts into mutual suppoort opportunities GO TO Holistically Responsive Move beyond crippling hyper-individuaism Balance your rights and responsibilities. Challenge the popular misconception of over-responsibility of hyper-individualism. See how this imbalance distorts your political outlook. Find your way back to holism again. Holistically Responsive Relatably Responsive Safely disclose more of yourself to each other Cultivate a deeper connection with your loved ones, by mutually sharing more of each other's authentic self. Grant each other opportunity to show more loving understanding. Relatably Responsive Specifically Responsive Let go of generalizations to resolve more of your needs Drill down deeper to engage the relevant nuance of your situation. Shift away from comforting generalizations to apply more and more details. Defy oversimplification to resolve more needs. Specifically Responsive Resiliently Responsive Improve your endurance to resolve needs Stretch your comfort zone. Expand your ability to embrace the natural discomfort of resolving needs. Resiliently Responsive Mutually Responsive Resolve conflicts by addressing each other's affected needs How well do you know what others need of you? How well do others know what you need of them? Replace disappointments with this proactive engagement of each other's unexpressed needs. exact Mutually Responsive Testimonials After using one of the tools above, how helpful was it for you?

Rights and responsibilities depend on each other. < Back E07 Conflict Principle List of all principles Rights and responsibilities depend on each other. Image: Pixabay - Norm_Bosworth (click on meme to see source image) Summary The more you honor your responsibility to respect the needs of others, the more they can honor your right for them to respect your needs. The less you honor their needs, the less they can honor yours. A responsibility speaks to your respect for others. A right speaks to their respect toward you. Wellness is psychosocial. And the standard applied sets the standard replied. Description Which do you think is more likely? You are fully responsible for every facet of your decisions in life. OR Your responsibility can stretch no further than your response-ability. Anankelogy Anankelogy alerts you to a tempting pull to vacillate between extremes. The less your needs resolve, the more prone to seek relief by trying something opposite of what seems to be wrong. You generalize for relief the more you’re in pain from unmet pressing needs. If you feel you’ve indulged too much on your self-needs (e.g., personal freedom, autonomy, privacy), you may react by indulging more of your social needs (e.g., family ties, social acceptance, group cohesion). If you don’t balance the two, you switch one problem for another. The more your indulged self-needs provoke the scorn of others, the more your regret alerts you to the rights of others. You may then feel some guilt for your lapse in responsibility. A right speaks to your responsiveness to their needs. For example, they have a right not to be violated by you. A responsibility speaks to your responsiveness to your own needs. You have a responsibility to attend to your own needs in a way that doesn’t violate others. Need-response Law-based institutions of politics, law enforcement and the judiciary typically fail to appreciate this tension between your rights and your responsibilities. They readily overgeneralize rights over responsibilities in some instances while overgeneralizing responsibilities over rights in other situations. Those institutions take a win-lose approach to offer relief from the pain of your unmet needs. Need-response applies a much higher standard. We take a win-win approach that seeks to resolve each other’s affected needs. The more needs we resolve, the more we remove cause for pain. Need-response drills down to the specific self-needs and social-needs affected in a conflict. Need-response understands how easy we can be pulled into vacillating extremes that traps us in pain. And denies us our full potential. Reactive Problem Law-based institutions benefit when our needs do not fully resolve. Take politics for example. The politician gains by overgeneralizing rights and responsibilities. They stay in power the more we have to rely on these institutions to sort out the painful consequences of our underserved needs. Not that they try to keep us down. It’s a built-in feature of the adversarial law process and not a bug. It buys into the rationalism myth that reduces you and I into rational actors making choices based on rationally created laws. That completely overlooks how our experience of needs drives our behavior much more than law or rational thinking. And that fuels many politicized issues. For example, intersectionality as an academic theory gets castigated when it devolves into what many smear as “oppression Olympics ”. It’s one thing to appreciate complicated forms of historical disadvantage. It’s quite another to be told you must cater to those in the group who’ve claimed they’ve suffered the most marginalization. Intersectionality identifies the unique experience of those with overlapping categories of social disadvantage or advantage. The transwoman of color, for example, encounter forms of discrimination distinct from the forms of discrimination against ciswomen, and against white transwoman. She may not want to be singled out as the one who should speak first. She may not seek to replace one hierarchy (last to be let in) with another (first to speak about painfully experienced forms of oppression). Nor does she want to publicly oppose these allies when allies are few. This critical version of intersectionality, developed by feminist academic Kimberlé Crenshaw , often gets watered down into a “layperson” popgen version . Especially by those most traumatized by such historical discrimination. Trauma survivors gravitate toward relief-generalizing that insists others do whatever would reduce their pain, or reduce risk for further pain. Too often, this excludes removing cause for pain by addressing the needs on all sides. Consequently, each side asserts their rights with less emphasis on their responsibilities. Each side selfishly claims they are right and the other side is completely wrong. Neither side will honestly and humbly engage the exposed needs of the other. If your rights are more important than your responsibilities, you willingly wait for the other to act in your favor. Meanwhile, the academic discipline of descriptive over normative tends to invert into normative over descriptive . Discipline goes out the window on both sides. Little to no empathy is afforded to these traumatized survivors of overlapping discrimination. And little to no empathy is granted to those losing their autonomy when socially pressured to placate the most marginalized in the room. Responsive Solution Need-response identifies the root to this rights-responsibilities tension in your “psychosocial orientation ”. We each routinely resolve more self-needs than social needs, or more social-needs than self-needs. We either enjoy more autonomy and personal space than social acceptance and group inclusion. Or we enjoy more social acceptance and close family ties than autonomy and privacy. You express the priorities of your inward psychosocial orientation through your outward political orientation . You experience an inflexible priority of needs at odds with those of a contrary orientation. The more your self-needs resolve more than your social-needs, the more you gravitate toward liberal or progressive views. You accept how you are uniquely different and seek policies to compel others to accept your social rights for greater inclusion. The more your social-needs resolve more than your self-needs, the more you gravitate toward conservative views. You enjoy close social ties with others and seek policies to guard your personal rights. The less your self-needs or your social needs resolve, the more pain you suffer. Your body continues to warn you with such pain that it cannot fully function until those needs are met. You either resolve those pain-reported needs to remove cause for pain, or you seek relief from pain that usually leaves those needs unresolved to give you more pain. Integrating your responsiveness to the inflexible needs of others (i.e., their rights) with your responsiveness to your own inflexible needs (i.e., your response-ability), enables you to cultivate psychosocial balance . You take the lead to resolve needs to remove cause for pain. Instead of waiting in vain for others to respect your rights, need-response provides you the tool of social love to first honor the rights of others even if they’ve yet to fully honor yours. You remove your exposure to the fickleness of others’ responsiveness so you can more freely balance your rights and responsibilities. The more you can honor the rights of others, the easier to sustain your own responsibilities. The more you keep up with your responsibilities, the easier to sustain honoring the rights of others. When kept out of the clutches of selfish politicking, both work hand in hand. 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 find it impossible to honor the rights of others who completely violate my rights. Can we make a distinction between legitimate responsibilities and fake ones? How can I be more understanding of the other political side when they won’t even listen to me? There’s more to unpack in this issue around intersectionality and identity politics. 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