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When my circumstances got so wrong that I had to be right about understanding the needs Understanding what's needed in our imperfect world Overcoming painful difficulties Appreciating your every need as an objective fact Solving problems by resolving needs with anankelogy Q1: What are the chances for an asexual transperson to be placed onto the lifetime sex offender registry? Q2: What are the chances for thousands of wrongly convicted innocent persons to be ignored by our adversarial judicial system? Q3: What are the chances for our legal system to get things completely wrong and backwards? Answer: The same as the chances for the legal system to smear the one person with the liberating insight we almost all crave. I’m living proof! 1. Understanding what’s needed in our imperfect world It’s now easier for the falsely accused to humbly admit their imperfections than for police and prosecutors to humbly admit theirs. We don’t incentivize authorities to humbly admit their errors, so they understandably keep making them. Our legal system runs on the low octane of adversarialism. One side trying to beat the other side down. Try to win at all costs. Try to get some relief from emotional pain. But not me. Spirituality inspires me to endure pain. Maybe too much pain. Some like to project their pain onto me, when eager to rid themselves of excess discomfort. I press on without reacting, because I understand the needs. 2. Overcoming painful difficulties I’m not going to talk about the 13 years taken from me, but instead to share with you how calamity brought out the best in me. After coming home, I finished my undergraduate degree. Then went on to earn two graduate degrees, one in public admin and the other in counseling. I’m not going to waste time talking about being the first out trans student there and its challenges. I’d rather dive into the epiphanies that led to coming up with a new social science. My indigenous spirituality (i.e., I’m an enrolled Oneida of Wisconsin) inspired me to come up with anankelogy, the academic study of need. I’m not going to spend time talking about setting up the first reentry program for trans ex-felons who leave prison with nowhere to go. Or how I helped Transgender Michigan with their first strategic plan as its cofounder started the Trans Day of Visibility . Instead, I will focus on how I wrote and self-published a book introducing anankelogy to the world. Now I am here to focus on what you need. To help you understand your needs, like never before. Now I am working on a website to showcase this new social science: AnankelogyFoundation.org . And now I am here on Medium to spread the word. Almost every new thing must start humbly from somewhere. 3. Appreciating your every need as an objective fact Émile Durkheim famously established sociology as a science by asserting “ social facts ” that exist independent of individuals. Which can then be subject to empirical observation and social science measures. Likewise, anankelogy recognizes a need as an objective fact . Anankelogy is a science recognizing need as objective fact. You objectively require water to function, for example, which you subjectively experience as thirst. You may choose how to get that water, but you can never choose to no longer require water. That requirement — that need — exists prior to, and independent of, your subjective experiences. So think about it. When was the last time you chose to be thirsty? Or when you chose to require closeness with someone? Or when you decided you can only function if granted some privacy? Each of these needs occur prior to your subjective awareness of them. And that makes them open to scientific inquiry with the proper social science tools. Anankelogy helps you understand your needs by distinguishing between your unchosen needs and your chosen responses to them. Many things we refer to as a need is actually, from an anankelogical point of view, merely a preference. I never actually need a “bottle” for water, but prefer a bottle over cupping my hands under the faucet. If I could pick something else, according to anankelogy, then it’s only a preference and not a need. If no room to choose, then anankelogically it’s an objective need. 4. Solving problems by resolving needs with anankelogy Failing to distinguish between unchosen needs and chosen preferences fuel many of our problems. While Putin can decide to invade or not invade Eastern Ukraine, he cannot decide to ignore the risk to his and his people’s need for security . Not while NATO encroaches up to the Russian border. At least not without painfully compromising their unchosen requirement to fully function. And the Ukrainians cannot choose to ignore their affected security needs. Both Palestinians and Israelis need security and self-determination in the place they call home. Neither can choose to not require security nor forgo self-determination. Any framing of the conflict failing this distinction risks making the problem worse. Which helps explain why it’s endured for many decades. Student protestors can decide to encamp on the quad in protest. But they cannot elect to passively allow their tuition to pass into an endowment. Not if they find that helps fund violence they see killing thousands of children in violation of their integrity. Their beliefs shape how they experience their integrity, but not the need for integrity itself. Even if you oppose their actions, you can always affirm their unchosen needs behind those actions. I can decry the bizarre wrongful conviction that derailed my life, while still affirming the unchosen needs of all those involved. I support the underserved needs of the police, of prosecutors, and even of the false accuser. Indeed, the more their needs find a path for proper resolution, the less likely to slip into error and crush others’ lives. Anankelogy promises to provide answers to help solve many of today’s problems. From personal problems between friends to global problems threatening humanity. Follow along and see if your own problems can be solved by better understanding each other’s unmet needs. See how this new understanding of needs can shed more light and spread more love. Together, let’s reignite our potential for love — of honoring the needs of others as our healthier selves would have them honor ours. Love must start from somewhere. So let my rejection serve your acceptance. Let’s affirm the unchosen needs in each other, whether there’s anything we can do about them or not. Let’s nurture and blossom our untapped love by better understanding and affirming our needs. After we understand each other’s needs like never before. Thank you for reading, and for clapping. Engage this in the comments: Debunk this notion of objective needs. Can you think of any exceptions? If a need exists as an objective fact, what could that imply to you? This begins a series of introducing anankelogy to you and to the world. I look forward to engaging anyone who appreciates this vision for improving our lives by better understanding our needs. More to come. Your responsiveness to this Medium article Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact others and create your forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love. back-to-top

List of defunctions As a new social science, anankelogy introduces you to a new approach to understand and to address problems facing you. It's about your ability to function. Problems lower your ability to function. Solutions raise your ability to function. Anankelogy identifies a growing list of items that decrease and increase your ability to function.  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 Click on the letter above to quickly go to that letter section below. A adversarialism  ( n. ) Opposing others largely for the sake of opposition. [Gordon Fellman] anti-wellness ; anti-wellbeing ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of limiting or going against pursuing or reaching full wellness, by impeding prompt resolution of needs even in the midst of accompany pain. Almost always results in some form of pathology and lingering pain . See wellness offender . avoidance culture ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The set of written and unwritten norms that privileges or compels evasion of needs to the point of perpetuating a status quo of keeping such needs underserved and unresolved. This functions in proximity with oppo culture as components of the power delusion . avoidant adversarialism ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Opposition to others to evade discomfort of engaging others, or to face the details involved in a conflict. Exists as a type of normative alienation . Answered by refunction of engaging mutuality . avoidant legalism  ( n. )  - DEFUNCTION The the widespread defunction that assumes as long as the law or law enforcement regimes do not infringe upon one’s own needs then the status quo legal system gets categorized as good. back-to-top B back-to-top C citationization ( n. ) - REFUNCTION The association of any stated norms with the needs they are expected to serve. A less formal (i.e., accessible anankelogical ) term for this is law-fit . civic legalism ( n. ) -   DEFUNCTION The less formal name for the defunction of nomoscentricity , which prioritizes obedience to laws or to social norms over serving the needs for which they exist. Answered by the refunction of law-fit (among other refunctions ). coerced poor options dependences ( n. ) [Or CoPOD ] - DEFUNCTION Acclimating to less-than-optimal resources (i.e., alternate or substitute resource ) to address needs to the point of rarely if ever considering the accessibility of optimal resources ( primary resources ). This plays a significant role in symfunction capture as a common gateway into dysfunction , to pain and persisting problems. conflict porn  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A defunction of contending with others less with the aim to solve problems or resolve needs and more with the intent to indulge in the pleasure of winning over others and being viewed as right or to push others away in reasoned sounding ways. Features in oppo culture . See indulgent side-taking . critical version  ( n. ) - REFUNCTION Original theory or philosophy of something widely accepted, developed with academic discipline that is generally more descriptive than normative , and remains open to academic peer review and constructive correction. Opposite of popgen version . cyclic correlation ( n. ) Empirical association between identifiable variables that indicates one set of changes affecting other sets of changes, which in turn affects the originally identified set of associated variables. When A changes along with B, we observe B changing with C, which we can observe changing with other pairs of associated variables, coming back around to observe a change in A. This points to what anankelogy appreciates as a reflexive correlation , in contrast to the simpler linear associations widely identified in the social sciences outside of nature-based paradigm . For example, consider this 4-part cycle of discomfort avoidance . The more you hate pain, the more you try to avoid pain. The more you avoid pain, the less your pain-reported needs can resolve. The more your needs remain unresolved, the more pain you suffer. The more pain you passively suffer, the more you hate this pain. Now consider this 4-part cycle of discomfort embrace . The more you respect your pain to report your unresolved needs, the easier to endure such natural discomforts. The more you endure the natural discomfort of your unresolved needs, the more attentive you can be to more fully resolve your needs. The more you fully resolve your needs, the more you remove cause for your pain. The more you remove pain by resolving needs, the more you can respect and embrace pain to report your unresolved needs. The nature-based paradigm  of academic anankelogy anticipates these cyclic associations. back-to-top D defunction ( n. ) Anything that diminishes one's ability to function fully, compromising their wellness. Opposite to a refunction . deprioritization blind spot ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A defunction that diminishes awareness of needs by drawing one's focus on a different set of pressing needs, especially where a contrary priority of needs suggests one's own needs may remain painfully unresolved. Once your needs seem most urgent, motivated reasoning can compel you to afford little to no attention to the urgent needs of others. You remain cognitively blind to whatever your set of needs deprioritizes. You focus on what you need to focus . And relate poorly to those matters you don't feel as urgent to your needs. As Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” This social invisibility of needs feeds into avoidance culture . discomfort avoidance  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A defunction   that evades resolving needs to remove cause for pain by prioritizing evasion of the body's natural yet unpleasant warnings of a threat to be removed. The more you habitually avoid your own pain, the more pain you tend to get to keep trying to avoid. This significantly lowers your ability to function.   Opposite to discomfort embrace . Such discomfort avoidance occurs cyclically in four phases. Hate pain . The more you hate pain, the more you avoid painful reality. Avoid pain . The more you avoid painful reality, the less you resolve painful needs. Unmet needs . The less you resolve painful needs, the more pain you must endure. Suffer pain . The more pain you must endure, the more you likely hate the pain. Reacting to your pain tends to leave you in more pain . Pain is perhaps nature’s least appreciated gift . See easement orientation . discomfort embrace ( n. ) - REFUNCTION A refunction to intentionally face the pain of unresolved need in anticipation to better appreciate the need to be addressed, with the intent to more fully resolve the need that would then remove cause for such pain. Opposite to discomfort avoidance . This discomfort embrace  occurs cyclically in four phases. Respect pain . The more you appreciate pain to report threats, the more you can endure the sharp pain of reported threats. Endure pain . The more you can endure the sharp pain of reported threats, the more you can effectively remove such threats. Remove threats . The more you remove these threats, the more of your pain gets removed. Remove pain . The more of your pain removed, the more you can appreciate pain to report threats. See easement orientation and strategic pain relief . drift ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The gradual and often imperceptible change from fully resolving natural needs to only easing such needs. Consequently, optimal functioning shifts to suboptimal functioning, from peakfunction to symfunction . This tends to occur when the means to fully resolve needs persistently declines. See symfunction capture . The shift from symfunction  into dysfunction is identified more specifically as deviation . The shift from dysfunction into misfunction  is identified as departure . But the simpler language of accessible anankelogy  may use “drift” to cover all these shifts into lowered levels of functioning. dynamic relating  ( n. ) - REFUNCTION Actively relating to the needs and experiences of others instead of relying on assumptions, expectations or impersonal rules. Counters normative alienation . back-to-top E earned legitimacy  ( n. ) [wellness campaign terminology] - REFUNCTION The refunction of establishing trusted responsiveness to vulnerable needs of those relatively less socially powerful, based empirically on measurable impacts on the needs of those under a powerholder's influence. E.g., positive or negative changes in health outcomes like chronic anxiety, major depression, and addictions. Posited as a higher form of legitimacy than widely accepted " ascribed legitimacy ", which is prone to manipulation and privileged unresponsiveness . Applies a response reputation or "response rating" to those in positions of of power. engage ( v. ) - REFUNCTION To openly explore each other's affected needs to resolve a conflict, as opposed to debating or disputing or arguing; to show intent for mutual regard making room for social love over norms privileging avoidance and opposition that tend to perpetuate pain and problems. Contrasts with the defunction of mutual defensiveness . engaging mutuality  ( n. )   - REFUNCTION Responding personally to what others may need in ways that encourage reciprocal respect for one’s own needs. Counters avoidant adversarialism . See responsivism . engaging query ( n. ) A formatted invitation to consider thinking beyond an accepted assumption about something to reflect on a more specific and relevant perspective that could empirically result in resolving more needs. Invites a transition from being feel-reactive to being more need-responsive . Format: Opens with a question to compare two or more perspectives. E.g., "Which do you think is more likely?" or "Which would you prefer?" Then offers a widely accepted assumption, typically a more feel-reactive belief. "Or" to set up the illuminating comparison. Finally, a more specific and relevant perspective is offered to challenge the earlier assumption(s), as a more need-responsive belief. See examples in the openers to most blog entries here. evil ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Benefiting from diminishing the functioning of others or of oneself, often correlating with a lack of sufficient awareness of the painful results. In other words, causing pathology + benefiting from it. back-to-top F friction ( n. ) Anything going against the full resolution of any need. Also referred to as resolution resistance . E.g., limited to drinking impure water; finding no one to offer encouragement while facing a personal struggle; dismissiveness of felons complaining of contributing external factors to their poor choices; politicians offering policy options that ignore the needs of many in their constituency; and war that invokes violence to serve the preferences of the winning side against the losing side. back-to-top G back-to-top H back-to-top I indulgent side-taking ( n. & v. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of choosing to support a side in some conflict against the opposing side as a way to pacify discomfort, instead of taking the disciplined approach of empathy and mutual regard to address each other’s affected needs . This shameless rush to a take side typically overemphasizes each other's differences while disregarding common ground, relies on impersonal arguments to avoid engaging relevant specifics, resists addressing or resolving needs when easing discomfort of those needs, opposes the other side’s inflexible needs that they cannot change, called moral conflation (i.e., conflates unchosen needs with chosen responses to them), misapplies critique of moral relativism and moral neutrality , provokes the opposed side’s defensiveness to produce more of what is opposed , and self-righteously and arrogantly  serves own conflict porn  to win at the expense of others. Although aiming to ease pain, it usually results in more pain since it overlooks the affected needs prompting that pain (i.e., discomfort avoidance ). See premature opposition and oppo culture . This contrasts with a more disciplined approach to take a side on a contested issue, which could include a negotiated agreement on a resolution path to mutually solve the issue. The key distinction is between an intent to relieve discomfort and to resolve needs . See easement orientation and conflict orientation . See adversarialism and avoidant adversarialism . back-to-top J judicialism ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Reliance upon the impersonal, avoidant adversarial  process to address justice needs with emphasis on assuring a fair adjudication process, but with little to no accountability to actual outcomes upon the justice needs of the vulnerable. Exists as a structural problem  level of defunction . See civic legalism . back-to-top K back-to-top L law-fit ( n. & v. )  - REFUNCTION The less formal name for the refunction of citationization . legalism ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The shorter name for the defunction of civic legalism (i.e., nomoscentricity ). Corrected by the refunction of law-fit (AKA citationization ). back-to-top M moral conflation  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of failing to distinguish between unchosen needs and chosen responses . E.g., The rhetorical demand "I need a bottle of water" conflates the unchosen need for water with the chosen response to get that water in a bottle, which could be accessed in other ways. While expecting another to choose to get that water in some way fair to others, expecting another to not require water naturally provokes conflicts unnecessarily. Likewise, conflating another's unchosen need for security with their defensive chosen responses to feel more secure easily invites an avoidable conflict. See adversarialism , conflict porn and indulgent side-taking . Countered by the refunction of moral distinction that affirms unchosen needs before questioning chosen responses to such needs. moral distinction  ( n. )  - REFUNCTION The refunction  of distinguishing between unchosen needs  and chosen responses by first affirming inflexible unchosen needs before addressing flexible chosen responses to them . Answers the defunction of moral conflation . mutual defensiveness  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of prioritizing discomfort avoidance and normative alienation over vulnerably engaging the affected needs during a conflict with others. mutual regard ( n. ) - REFUNCTION The need-responsive refunction of attending to the needs on all sides of a conflict. In contrast to feel-reactive defunction s like indulgent side-taking , mutual defensiveness and conflict porn . back-to-top N need-response cycle ( n. ) - REFUNCTION Four quadrant cycle from alert to a specific need, to assess its need experience, to audit responsiveness to it, to avow to resolve it, and back around again until all needs fully resolve. See image below. need-response conflation  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Failing to distinguish between unchosen needs and chosen responses to them. Easily provokes defenses when unable to change what another demands. See adversarialis m , avoidance culture , avoidant adversarialism , conflict porn , indulgent side-taking , mutual defensiveness and oppo culture . need-responsive ( adj. ) - opposite of feel-reactive Putting more of an emphasis on identifying and addressing the needs evoked by a situation than trying to ease the discomfort of such needs. Applies a disciplined approach: more descriptive than normative . Delays gratification of responding immediately to thoroughly describe what is honestly affecting all the relevant needs. Exists as the opposite of feel-reactive . nomoscentricity ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of prioritizing human law or social norms over addressing or resolving the needs for which they exist to serve. Correlates with the defunction of normative alienation . Manifest in authoritarian attitudes presenting attempts to officially control behavior to avoid uncomfortably engaging (i.e., discomfort avoidance ) the specific unresolved needs behind that behavior. Exists in the context of the power delusion . Informally referred to as civic legalism or simply legalism . Corrected in need-response primarily by the refunction of citationization , or less formally referred to as law-fit . normative alienation ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of socially privileged expectations to not to personally engage with one another, and rely instead on impersonal rules to guide behavior toward each other. Such estrangement correlates with the hyper-individualism of psychosocial imbalance . back-to-top 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 . back-to-top P passive-aggressive pain relief ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A defunction of reacting to the discomfort of unresolved needs by immediately trying to ease its discomfort in both unassertive and hostile ways. Similar to the defunction of reactive pain relief and in contrast to the strategic pain relief and discomfort embrace . pathological pragmatism ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of emphasizing what seems more practical or easier to achieve in the moment, permissively lowering standards in ways that risk perpetuating painful problems. Distinct from the grace of affirming progressive steps towards reaching a standard for resolving needs. Correlates with symfunctionality . pathology ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Condition of diminished wellness that prevents continued functioning at a level necessary to effectively respond to needs, both to your own needs and to the needs of others. Typically results in sustained pain as the body continually warns of the perceived diminishment of functioning. Too often, one feels compelled to relieve the pain instead of removing cause for this pain, which tends to create a vicious cycle that can reinforce the pathology. Such compulsion to prioritize relief may correlate with a sense of powerless to do much if anything to resolve the affected needs, such as those needs constrained by power problems and more acutely with structural problems . The more powerholders or others benefit in any way from such pathology, the less inclined they are to support resolving the affected needs, which anankelogy defines as evil . popgen ( n. & adj. ) - DEFUNCTION Short for "popular generalization" or "popular generalizing" that privileges (with social norms) overlooking many specifics necessary to resolve the relevant needs. Akin to the notion of a "lay" version of something. See relief-gen . Also a type of defunction , such as a popgen version . popgen version ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A popularly generalized watered down form of an accepted theory or philosophy, presenting with generalizations that are typically more politically normative than academically descriptive , and often discounted by opponents as too ideological. Opposite of critical version . EXAMPLES : popgen liberalism popgen existentialism & popgen rational choice theory popgen postmodernism popgen microaggression popgen race theory popgen identity politics & popgen intersectionality popgen transgenderism popgen libertarianism popgen gun rights popgen free market dynamics Each of these grew out of a critical version with some merit, but then watered down to relieve some felt need with little to attention to the affected needs of others. Opponents to these watered down normative versions who seldom or never acknowledge the merit of its original critical version readily indulge in oppo culture and avoidance culture as part of the power delusion . See relief-gen . power delusion ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Rigid belief in holding socially privileged influence over others and calling it power, or rigid belief in others holding socially privileged influence over you, contrary to all evidence that such coercive-leaning influence typically detracts from resolving needs, which mostly perpetuates pain and problems. Can also refer to conflating the lesser "power" of privileged social influence with the greater power of nature that shapes the needs that in turn prompt widespread desire for this lesser power. premature opposition ( n. ) prematurely oppose ( v. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of asserting one’s difference of flexible beliefs or flexible actions in contrast with another’s flexible beliefs or flexible actions without first relating to the inflexible needs behind such beliefs and actions. In other words, reacting to a difference in opinion in such a way that predictably provokes defensiveness. While trapped in mutual defensiveness, the affected needs remain painfully unresolved. That opinion typically serves as an outwardly less vulnerable and safer expression for an inwardly vulnerable need that cannot be easily changed. This could include instances of being needlessly confrontational, which may feed one's conflict porn . This defunction exists as part of the power delusion , and manifested in avoidance culture and oppo culture at odds with resolving needs and at odds with sustainable wellness. See indulgent side-taking . psychosocial balancing  ( n. & v. ) - REFUNCTION The refunction of cultivating an equilibrium between your pressing social-needs and pressing self-needs . Nature automatically pulls you to balance both through a process of psychosocial oscillation —compelling you to focus on seasons of self-needs and seasons on social-needs . Your spring : when your less resolved social needs emerge and demand your attention. Your summer : when your social needs dominate more than your self-needs . Your autumn : when your less resolved self-needs  emerge and demand your attention. Your winter: when your self-needs  dominate more than your social needs . The more your self-needs resolve and social needs resolve on par with each other, the more your natural needs can resolve, the more pain you can remove, and the more potential you can reach. The more you can match what you can do for yourself with what you can rely on others to provide what you cannot reliably do for yourself, the more psychosocial flow you experience. The less your self-needs resolve and social needs resolve on par with each other, the less your natural needs  can resolve, the less pain you can remove, and the less potential you can reach. You experience this as the defunction of psychosocial imbalance . psychosocial flow  ( n. ) - REFUNCTION The refunction of unleashing your natural energy to resolve needs, to remove pain and to raise functioning, by syncing your internal potential with external supports. See psychosocial balancing . psychosocial imbalance ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of self-needs and social needs not resolving on par with each other. You either ease your self-needs more than your social needs , or you ease your social needs more than your self-needs . As this limits your ability to function fully, your body warns you with some form of emotional pain. If reacting to this pain instead of addressing your psychosocial needs evenly, you tend to reinforce such imbalance. And continue to suffer in pain . The degree of balance to imbalance correlates to the functionality array . Psychosocial oscillation : natural transitioning between addressing self-needs and addressing to social-needs , for sustaining psychosocial balancing . Correlates with peakfunctionality . Psychosocial vacillation : intense shifts between self-needs and social-needs , leading toward psychosocial imbalance . Can explain some political extremism; see psychosocial orientation . Correlates with symfunctionality . Psychosocial crystallization : settling into the familiar painful pattern of more severe psychosocial imbalance . Correlates with dysfunctionality . Psychosocial disintegration : neither self-needs nor social-needs adequately resolve, resulting in swings into violent psychosocial extremes. Correlates with misfunctionality . psychosocial orientation  ( n. ) The routine or regularly situated experience of psychosocial imbalance , manifested in one of two directions (i.e., two dominate orientations): WIDE-focused : less resolved social needs than self-needs ; tends to generalize how to ease unmet social needs while guarding one's relatively more resolved self-needs . DEEP-focused : less resolved self-needs than social needs ; tends to generalize how to ease unmet self-needs while guarding one's relatively more resolved social needs . When your self-needs continually resolve more than your social needs , you become predisposed toward liberal or progressive values. Politically left ideas provide outward expression for your inward psychosocial priority to ease (with public support) your less resolved social needs while guarding your more resolved self-needs from public pressures. For example, if your self-need for unique self-expression  as a sexual or religious or ethnic minority is more resolved than your social need for inclusion as one of these historically marginalized minorities, you tend to find more support from left leaning supporters who rely on public policies to protect both their negative right  (what the government must not do) to freely be their unique selves, and their positive right  (what the government must do) for greater social inclusion against patterns of historical discrimination. When your social needs continually resolve more than your self-needs , you become predisposed toward conservative values. Politically right ideas provide outward expression for your inward psychosocial priority to ease (with public support) your less resolved self-needs while guarding your more resolved social needs from public pressures. For example, if your social need for family cohesion in a local community is more resolved than your self-need for personal freedom  to explore your life’s potential, you tend to find more support from right leaning supporters who rely on public policies to protect both their negative right  (what the government must not do) to never infringe on their gun rights to protect their own families, and their positive right  (what the government must do) provide security with a professional police force so they can be in public to explore their personal potential without fear. You gravitate towards others who experience the same or similar unchosen priority of similar psychosocial needs as you, in contrast to others experiencing a different priority of needs . This provides the seeds for partisanship affiliation. The rational choice myth of debating which side presents the better idea for shaping public policy overlooks this dynamic of unchosen needs . The more you can resolve one set of needs closer on par with the other set, the more open to gravitate toward the other political side. The less you can resolve one set of needs relative to the other set, the further you tend to shift to a political extreme. This illuminates why there can be tension within each political side. Need-response offers to replace the mutual defensiveness of conventional politics with mutual regard and social love . Instead of emphasizing each other's different yet unchosen priorities , which prioritizes easing the pain of psychosocial imbalance , need-response provides a disciplined path toward mutually resolving each other's affected psychosocial needs . The process aims to remove the pain of psychosocial imbalance by cultivating more psychosocial balancing . psychosocial blind spot  ( n. )  - DEFUNCTION back-to-top Q back-to-top R reactive pain relief  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A defunction of reacting to the discomfort of unresolved needs by immediately trying to ease its discomfort with little to no thought of how ignoring the unresolved needs evoking such pain tends to persist and potentially intensify the pain ineffectually avoided. Defunction similar to passive-aggressive pain relief . Contrasts with the refunctions of strategic pain relief and discomfort embrace . refunction ( n. ) Anything that raises one's ability to function more fully, improving their wellness. Opposite to a defunction . relational knowing ( n. & v. ) - RK ( abbr. ) - REFUNCTION To directly understand something by identifying how one thing appears to go along with another, allowing you to create your own testable hypotheses. You identify for yourself the associations between two or more things affecting your needs. You observe four types of associations: more-more : more of this, then more of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction) more-less : more of this, then less of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions) less-more : less of this, then more of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions) less-less : less of this, then less of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction) relief-gen ( n. ) relief-generalizing ( v. ) - DEFUNCTION The defunction of oversimplifying a reaction to some need to gain broad support for relieving its pain, typically resulting in more pain since the overgeneralization overlooks the specifics necessary to fully resolve the needs. This typically results in more pain from these unresolved needs, which in turn feeds this vicious cycle of continually generalizing for relief. See popgen . resolution path  ( n. ) [wellness campaign terminology] - REFUNCTION Identified steps to resolve a need or needs. Once identified and announced to others for their feedback, the identified steps get appropriately adjusted to include respect for the affected needs of others. Once concluding such inputs, the process commits all involved to enable resolution of the identified natural needs on all sides, and to also confront any selfish impediment resisting resolution. Applies to the "avowal" phase of the need-response cycle in a wellness campaign . resolution-friction ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Any resistance to fully resolving needs. Does not have to be intentional, but frequently results from an intent to avoid the pain of reported threats to functioning. This includes well-established social norms like the adversarial approach of legal systems in the judicial process and in politics. The historical way these legal structures favors a relieve-over-resolve approach tends to resist a resolve-over-relieve effort to fully resolve needs. The resulting pain typically reinforces the norms to prioritize relief over fully resolving needs that could remove cause for such pain. There is no such thing as pain apart from the body reporting a perceived theat to functioning . response conflation  ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION Another name for the defunction of moral conflation . response distinction  ( n. )  - REFUNCTION Another name for the refunction  of moral distinction . response reputation ( n. ) [wellness campaign terminology] - REFUNCTION One's informally or officially recognized trustworthiness to respect the needs of others. responsivism ( n. ) The belief and practice that responding to the unchosen needs of others, before addressing any chosen responses to such needs, can produce more favorable results than adversarial alternatives. Counters the moral conflation inherent in avoidant adversarialism with moral distinction , as a way to more effectively address and solve social problems. Need-response is the profession while responsivism is the activity. Examples: Personally Responsive to apply moral distinction Responsive Supervision Responsive Depolarization for depolarizing politics Responsive Innocence for the wrongly convicted innocent responsivist ( n. ) One dedicated to applying responsivism to address social problems, as an alternative to adversarial activism that easily slips into the problem of moral conflation , which tends to perpetuate pain and problems. back-to-top S social love ( n. ) - REFUNCTION The act of prioritizing a desirable response to another's need as being as important or more important than one's own need(s), at least in the moment, to set the inspiring standard for others to prioritize a desirable response to one's own needs. Need-response posits this as a vital adjunct to a conflict orientation of staying open and learning amidst conflict, to dissolve the constricting tension of staying closed and defensive amidst conflict. strategic pain relief ( n. ) - REFUNCTION A refunction of momentarily easing the intense discomfort of unresolved need with the intent to get back to facing the pain in order to resolve the need, with the long-term anticipation to remove the cause of that pain. Exists in contrast to the widespread norms of passive-aggressive pain relief and reactive pain relief . See easement orientation .  See discomfort avoidance and discomfort embrace . supportive bias ( n. ) - REFUNCTION The refunction of prioritizing resolution of unchosen needs , to remove cause for cognitive distortions and improve the level of functioning. This can lower the risk of confirmation bias and other problematic biases. Anankelogy defines bias  as prioritizing to ease need. The more resolved the needs of the observer of phenomena, the less of a pull to cherry-pick what their unresolved needs would urge them to prioritize. The more your bias prioritizes the full resolution of needs, the more you will prioritize seeking the full breadth and depth of reality. symfunction capture ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION A 3-step process of slipping from optimal functioning ( peakfunction ) towards diminished functioning ( dysfunction ). 1) symfunction creep ; 2) symfunction strain ; 3) symfunction trap . Fills gap between fully well and fully sick. symfunction creep ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The first in a 3-step process of symfunction capture . The 2nd is symfunction strain . The 3rd is symfunction trap . symfunction strain ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The second in a 3-step process of symfunction capture . The 1st is symfunction creep . The 3rd is symfunction trap . symfunction trap ( n. ) - DEFUNCTION The last in a 3-step process of symfunction capture . The 1st is symfunction creep . The 2nd is symfunction strain . back-to-top T back-to-top U back-to-top V back-to-top W back-to-top X back-to-top Y back-to-top Z back-to-top List updated Last updated: 2024-05-06 back-to-top

Conflicts from the latest Hamas-Israel war to political conflicts at home convince many to resign to the popular notion that morality is merely subjective . Anankelogy provides tools to appreciate morality’s objective side. If every natural need exists as an objective fact , then our responses to them can be regarded arbitrarily moral but not the needs themselves. Anything in the way of resolving any natural need necessary for objective functioning presents as objectively immoral—and therefore scientifically measurable. Let’s start there. Which do you assume is more likely? Morality is subjective and therefore not accountable to any empirical science. OR Morality includes an objective dimension accountable to empirical science. Anankelogy asserts that any natural need exists as a natural fact . Hence, anankelogy suggests there is an objective dimension to morality —to choosing actions that either resolve needs for improved functioning or detracts from resolving needs that painfully lowers functioning. Anankelogy distinguishes between inflexible natural needs and flexible responses to those needs . Since you do not nor can you choose to experience a naturally occurring need, any obstruction of such a need is objectively immoral. And empirically measurable. How to respond to those needs can have a more arbitrary moral dimension. The natural existence of any natural need can never be reduced to any arbitrary moral platitude or belief. That itself is immoral, with objectively measurable unfavorable consequences. What we sometimes declare and do in the name of morality—often in a rush to ease some unsettling frustration—is too often immoral itself. Anankelogy offers a list of empirically grounded principles to guide our actions through even the most morally ambiguous situations. When applying the first and second principles of object needs and objective priorities , consider these nine examples as merely a helpful starting point. Empathic or nonempathetic? Relieving pain or removing cause for pain? Indulgent side-taking or mutual respect? Selfishness or generosity? Generalize or specifics? Obedience or responsiveness? Feel-reactive or need-responsive? Hate or love? Right or wrong? More about this objective morality of anankelogy 1. Empathic or nonempathetic? If you do not empathize with the inflexible needs on all sides to a conflict (i.e., judicial conflict, political conflict, etc.), then you are wrong . If you empathize with the inflexible needs on all sides to a conflict (i.e., judicial conflict, political conflict, etc.) toward resolving such needs, then you are right . COMMENTARY You don’t know what you don’t know. Clinging to your beliefs or to impersonal rules leaves you blind to how you impact others. You can believe you are being moral while doing some of the most immoral things to others. You can follow rules religiously while damaging others in the name of the law. Or you can empathize with others. You can try to appreciate how they experience a moral issue. You can step outside of your shell and ask another how they feel about the situation, and you can listen to understand when prioritizing respect for their stated needs instead of insisting on your way. The less you try to relate to the needs of another through their perspective, the more feel-reactive you likely will be. Their objective level of functioning will objectively diminish from empirically observable ways you and others affect them unknowingly. The more try to relate to the needs of another through their perspective, the more need-responsive you likely will be. Their objective level of functioning will objectively improve from empirically observable ways you proactively support their needs. 2. Relieving pain or removing cause for pain? If you prioritize relieving the pain of unresolved needs over resolving the needs causing that pain , then you are wrong . If you prioritize resolving the needs causing pain over relieving the pain of such unresolved needs , then you are right . COMMENTARY Anankelogy introduces you to your easement orientation . When confronting life’s natural pain, you either favor avoiding such discomfort or facing this momentarily unpleasant experience upfront to ensure the pleasant experience of more fully resolving the need behind the pain. There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs . Moralizing all pain as bad and best avoided results in all kinds of immoral behavior. You can rationalize almost any action harmful to others to get out of experiencing painful harm to yourself, or harm of those you care deeply about. Or you can reorient yourself to embrace life’s natural discomforts to resolve more needs. You could stretch your comfort zone to improve your easement orientation with our free online course . You can then shift from feel-reactive to need-responsive moral behavior. The more you prioritize avoiding pain, the more feel-reactive you likely will be. The more you prioritize ignoring the needs your pain tries to report, the more pain you shall suffer. The more this avoided pain mounts, the more you can be independently observed to act more desperately to cope with its climbing agony. The more you process your pain to face threats to be removed, the more need-responsive you likely will be. The more you prioritize resolving the needs your pain tries to report, the less pain you shall suffer. The more you remove threats or remove yourself from threats to your ability to function, the more you can be independently observed to function better, and act morally towards others. 3. Indulgent side-taking or mutual respect? If you take sides in a violent battle to avoid the discomfort of relating to each side’s affected needs, then you're ultimately wrong . If you face the discomfort of relating to each side’s affected needs to dissolve resorting to violence, then you're ultimately right . COMMENTARY Anankelogy exposes the dangerous trend toward what it calls oppo culture or adversarialism , or the set of norms that pits humans with their inflexible needs against each other. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it . The more you oppose someone’s inflexible need to survive, the more their need for survival will compel them to do almost anything to push back and survive. The more you oppose another’s rights to self-determination, for example, the more their needs such rights exist to address assert themselves uncontrollably. The more you indulge in opposition, the more you create conditions for what you ostensibly oppose—effectively inverting morality. Oppo culture ’s popular yet watered-down morality insists you take a side in a violent conflict. As if the Russia-Ukraine and Hamas-Israel conflicts were sports events for your spectatorship. Ignoring the needs of the other side is a feel-reactive thing to do, exposing a lack of morality. Prioritizing the inflexible needs on all sides is the more disciplined need-responsive thing to do, demonstrating a higher moral commitment. After all, what you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce . Subjective side-taking morality ensures the conflict persists to fit the familiar patterns of frenzied mutual defensiveness. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness . When violence seems the only answer, quickly rethink the question . Side-taking morality easily rationalizes violence, even the slaughter of innocent kids as collateral damage. Any side-taking can address what we do about our needs and can never change with rationalized violence the natural needs themselves. Violence is weakness turned outward. Resilience is strength turned inward . Resilience is necessary for sorting through access needs at the root of most conflicts. The less you relate to the inflexible needs on all sides of a conflict, the more your defensive actions tend to enflame tensions—further preventing resolution of needs. The more your side-taking morality prevents others from resolving their inflexible needs, the more you can be independently observed as objectively immoral. The sooner you relate to the inflexible needs on all sides in a conflict, the quicker you can defuse tensions—enabling resolution of each other’s affected needs. The more you contribute to resolving needs, the more you can then be independently observed as objectively moral. 4. Selfishness or generosity? If you prioritize your own selfish interests over the inflexible priorities of another, then you are wrong . If you prioritize the inflexible priorities of another over your own selfish interests, then you are right . COMMENTARY As an independent economic actor, conventional wisdom privileges you to act selfishly. You buy things you personally want that helps others to buy thing they personally want. You vote for what’s in your own best interests with little if any regard for others. You sue others to get what you believe you rightly have coming without regard for their affected needs.   What you selfishly do for yourself ultimately benefits a free society, or so goes such thinking. Such watered-down philosophy easily slips into anti-generous self-indulgent behavior. You buy something for your own pleasure that could be better invested in something another needs that would then provide you a deeper sense of meaning and connection. Selfishness easily spills fuel on painful alienation that we seek to alleviate with self-indulgent stuff.   Anankelogy counters this downward moral spiral with social love . Love pulls you out of your silo of self-absorbed alienation to connect meaningfully with the needs of one another. The more you personally connect with the inflexible needs of others, the more they can personally connect with you and your inflexible needs. The more you respect the vulnerable needs of others, the more you inspire them to respect your vulnerable needs.   Selfishness traps you in pain. The more you prioritize avoiding pain, the more feel-reactive you likely will be. The more you prioritize ignoring the needs that your pain tries to report, the more pain you likely suffer. The more this avoided pain mounts, the more you can be independently observed to act more desperately to cope with its climbing agony.   The more you process your pain to face threats to be removed, the more need-responsive you likely will be. The more you prioritize resolving the needs that your pain tries to report, the less pain you ultimately suffer. The more you remove threats (or remove yourself from threats), the more you can be independently observed to function better, and sustain generosity towards others. 5. Generalize or specifics? If you do not empathize with others but instead rely on political or other generalizations to ease your pain, then you are wrong . If you empathize with others to address specifics behind political or other generalizations to resolve those needs, then you are right . COMMENTARY We cannot solve our specific problems from the level of generalizing that created them . But we keep trying anyway, don’t we? Just about every political “solution” must skip over specifics that risk undercutting a fragile coalition. But trusting these sweeping answers is so much easier than the hard work of seeing the lives of others through their own eyes. Especially when stuck in pain.   Pain temps you and me to cling to the low hanging fruit of relief-generalizing . The more in pain, the more self-absorbed and less attention afforded the specific details to relate more honestly and realistically with the painfully unresolved needs behind our problems. So we tend to latch onto some easy way out.   The shortest way out of pain easily turns into the surest way back into pain. Reacting to your pain tends to leave you in more pain  when you fail to address the threat your pain exists to report. At least you know how to handle the pain you keep enduring. We typically prefer the pain we feel over the pain we fear . So we often cling to generalizations promising comfort now that also promise some familiar pain later.   The more you generalize, the less of reality you realize . The more we trust in our self-serving political generalizations, the more we tend to drift from relevant facts affecting each other’s inflexible needs. The more we replace generalizing with an honest search for what each other inflexibly needs, the closer we can solve our specific problems.   Your inflexible needs and my inflexible needs exist as objective facts. All of our inflexible needs sit equal before nature . Each inflexible need persists whether we generalize and overlook them or specifically address them. We might as well specifically address each one, so we can each objectively improve our ability to objectively function. Your safest generalization is to love . 6. Obedience or responsiveness? If you prioritize any arbitrary law or social norm over the inflexible needs they ostensibly exist to serve, then you expose an improper priority . If you prioritize addressing inflexible needs over any arbitrary law or social norm applied to avoid addressing such needs, then you expose a proper priority . COMMENTARY You should obey every rule of authority without question. Or should you? Most of us follow given rules with little if any question. Most of us prefer to avoid the likely wrath of disobedience.   Most of us would’ve went along with Nazi laws if living in Germany during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Most of us would’ve went along with legalized theft of Indian lands and theft of black labor if living in 17th Century colonial America. Most of us would’ve went along with ill-informed government mandates during the latest pandemic. Most of us did.   It’s completely natural to acquiesce to authority. Especially when trusting authority to act in the people’s best interests. We trust authority bound by the rule of law, that recognizes everyone sits under the law. The probable alternative of chaos encourages us to appreciate being a nation of laws, and to agree to obey such laws.   But before we can be a “nation of laws” in a healthy fully functioning way, we must first recognize we first became a “people of needs”. The needs came first. Laws followed. Needs emerged as inflexible objective phenomenon . Laws then emerged in response as flexible social norms . While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve .   When you think about it, you realize it is actually against the grain of law to fully resolve needs . Laws tend to stay vague to apply a variety of situations, regardless of inconvenient specifics. And laws tend to stay impersonal to avoid bias, easily reinforcing norms of social alienation. To fully resolve needs usually requires to know the specific needs and the specific ways to best address them. Laws don't do that.   Respect every just law, but merely as a minimal standard for behavior. Our laws do not resolve needs; loving people do . As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn aptly observed, a society slipping into dysfunctional legalism can easily quash our higher potential. Laws can never mandate our highest potential, which is love. There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love .   After all, you don't exist for human authority; human authority exists for you . Humanity does not exist for the Sabbath rest, but the Sabbath rest exists for humanity. How easy we can get this backwards when authority slips from accountably fulfilling its purpose to support our exposed needs into increasingly supporting more of its own interests at our coerced expense .   Authority demonstrates legitimacy the more measurably responsive to the objective phenomenon of your inflexible needs . Laws and their enforcement by legitimate authority can protect us from harm and our rights to thrive in life. But must never interfere with our greatest potential to lovingly respond to each other’s needs . If this sound like some kind of revolution, then so be it. There is no greater revolution than to revolve back to love . 7. Feel-reactive or need-responsive? If you act upon your emotions to try to quickly relieve its intensity, without regard for how your actions impact others, then you are wrong . If you reflect upon your emotions to try to explore every option, with regard for how your actions could impact others, then you are right . COMMENTARY Your emotional pain only exists to convey your unmet needs. You can only feel pain when your body warns you of a presenting threat to your capacity to function. Objectively speaking, there is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs .   The more urgent your need, the more intense your unpleasant emotion. Your need to steer clear of a pending threat cannot wait. The more potentially crushing that threat, the more your pain compels you to some self-protective reaction.   Your body’s warning provides you sketchy information. While it could be incorrect, your pain serves you well by not leaving you out to dry. Every possible threat coming your way gets registered. Every confronting threat evokes some reaction, something for you to do immediately to guard your possible vulnerabilities. Your emotions prioritize your self-continuance .   A little reflection helps to put the actual magnitude of the perceived threat into perspective. React too quickly and you possible could trigger the very harm you sought to avoid. The more you relate to the actual needs behind your reactive feelings, the less likely you react with regret.   Delaying your reaction gives you time to consider the impact of your actions upon others. Your deferred reaction also gives you opportunity to seek the support of others, or at least receive their helpful feedback to your cloudy perceptions. Enduring this moment of passing pain to respond to the needs at hand lets you avoid suffering the pain of keeping your needs unresolved.   If habitually reacting to your painful emotions, you risk trapping yourself in more painful emotions. If cultivating a habit of pausing long enough to realize the specific needs involved, the better your chances to remove cause for pain by resolving the underlying needs.   Fully resolving your needs not only removes cause for pain, but restores your ability to function. Once your capacity to function gets fully restored, and there are no more unmet needs for your body to report, it becomes impossible to experience any pain. You either let your pain serve you, or you will end up serving your pain .   You either react to your feelings , or respond to the needs your feelings exist to convey . You either find yourself in the wrong when overreacting to your feelings, or find yourself objectively functioning well while cooperatively supporting others to objectively function well. You either react to feelings, or respond to needs. 8. Hate or love? If you act upon a widely accepted generalization that negatively impacts anyone’s inflexible needs, then you expose your unrighteous avoidance of reality. You then are wrong . If you act upon the widely universal generalization of love that honors each other’s inflexible needs, then you show your righteous relating to reality. You then are right . COMMENTARY “I’m no hater!” you assure us all. Fine. But we all experience anger at some point.   We all taste the bitter roots of outrage. We all slip into righteous and not-so-righteous indignation. We all see our own anger differently then others likely experience it. What you see as your right for heated protest, in a brash tone, others may easily interpret as your hate.   The less you know what others specifically need of you, the more you tend to rely on ill-equipped generalizations to guide your actions. When this fails to fit their expectations, their reactions quickly fail your expectations.   Call this a mere rift, if you like, but such negativity poisons relationships. The more you cling to a comforting generalization, the more discomfort you likely spark in others. At its core, anger is rejection. And who wants rejection?   Anankelogy recognizes your anger as your body warning you of something you cannot accept. If only mild irritation, you likely could accept it but prefer not to. If tirades of livid outbursts, you see no room for any acceptance anytime soon.   When intensely angry, we tend to overlook important pieces of reality. We risk trapping ourselves in situations continually confronting us with the very thing we reject. We may come to reject our own reactions, and perhaps reject ourselves.   The further you can look past whatever you feel you must reject, and find the innate value in others and in yourself, the closer you can snap free from the chains of anger. The more you can focus on each other’s inflexible needs, the easier to cultivate the love we all seek and need.   The more you can let go of your anger to identify what you can realistically accept and not accept in the moment, the easier to mutually respect one another. You can go from provoking mutual defensiveness to sparking mutual respect. Mutual respect resolves far more needs than mutual defensiveness . 9. Right or wrong? If convinced you are right , then you are wrong . If suspecting you could be wrong , then you are right . COMMENTARY You can easily convince yourself you are right when convincing yourself you must pick a side on some moral issue. You declare how you must not stay morally neutral. Many have denounced moral neutrality as complicit with the wrong side of morality.   “We must take sides,” Elie Wiesel insists. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”   “If you are neutral in situations of injustice,” Desmond Tutu warns, “you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”   “People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo,” explains Max Eastman. “Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence,” cautions Louis D. Brandeis. “Neutral men are the devil’s allies,” declares Edwin Hubbel Chapin.   Dante reportedly said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”   These all speak to vertical conflicts, not lateral conflicts. A vertical conflict exists where one side is clearly wrong for brutally harming the other side. A lateral conflict exists where each side experiences a contrasting priority of inflexible needs.   An organically prioritized need is an objective fact . One side must take the far route to restore their capacity to function fully, while the other side must take the near route to restore their capacity to fully function. Neither side is more correct than the other.   Most political issues are lateral conflicts. The woman with an unplanned pregnancy exploring her reproductive rights, for example, experiences an intensely felt different priority than the woman compelled by a priority to speak up for the voiceless unborn.   The fledgling business owner experiences an inflexible priority for less government intrusion, for another example, than the traumatized ethnic minority experiencing an inflexible priority for something like a government to protect them from privileged forms of exploitation.   Opposing what others inflexibly need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it . The more you push against what another inflexibly needs, the more they naturally push back. The more you resist what they must do, the more they do what you think you must resist.   Ultimately, what you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce . The more you yell at others who upset you for being their natural selves, for example, the more they dig in their heels to assert their natural selves in ways that upset you. You get more of what you ostensibly oppose with your moral stance, and perhaps feel satisfied with the familiar blowback.   The problem with most conflicts is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And you cannot know much more while insisting you are right. Self-righteousness is a weak savior. Arrogance is no savior at all . There is always more to know, more to discover, more to learn about the affected needs on all sides.   There is always room to be like Socrates and take the stance that you don’t yet know all you could know, so it’s best to remain open to learning. Instead of rushing to debate, you could take time to relate. You may find there is less reason to debate when you can vulnerably relate . A rush to debate usually skips the details that really matter in life .   Admitting you could be wrong doesn’t mean you are wrong. You could well be correct on all points. But you demonstrate that laudable maturity of recognizing THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE TO LEARN . You keep engaging channels open. You address needs as they occur, in real time. You optimize opportunities to resolve them promptly. Instead of convincing yourself you must be right, convince yourself of the very real possibility you could be wrong, at least on some if not all points. Instead of pushing others away, close the gaps of alienation. Instead of going along with the throng that spreads animosity in the name of taking a stance, join us in spreading more love. More about this anankelogically objective morality If objective, it can be empirically measured in some way. Anankelogy introduces relational knowing for you to create your own testable hypotheses. Pain relief tends to be arbitrary. It’s not buttoned down enough to be reliably measurable. Besides, easing discomfort too easily slides into the problems your life could do without . Anankelogy’s objective morality points to empirically reliable ways to fully resolve needs, to remove cause for pain, and boost your functionality level . This is why a wellness campaign can point to a reduced level of addiction as a reliable measure. The less pain induced from blind social power, while the addict acts in good faith to overcome addictive behaviors, the more the relatively powerless addict can resolve more needs to remove cause for pain, and improve their ability to get more done. This “ relational knowing ” correlation can be tested, for a vitally good cause. The more we dismiss all morality as arbitrary, the more we tend to slide into legalistic traps. And the more vulnerable as sitting ducks to the socially powerful. Shall this objective morality take a back seat to legalistic powerholders who draft and interpret and enforce such limiting policies. Need-response asserts the higher authority of resolving needs in love over the lesser authority of adversarial legalism . Legal systems of the judiciary and politics pit us against each other often for the benefit of these institutions and their elite-bred leaders. Need-response challenges their legitimacy. Need-response asserts the objective morality of mutually resolving needs over our current troubling malaise of indulgent outrage, antagonistic alienation, and bloodthirsty cries for war. Need-response asserts love over hate , and shall not compromise this objective morality for no blind power . Love compels us to support each other to more fully resolve each other’s inflexible needs. The objective morality of anankelogy affords us little else. So let’s stop the hate and spread some love. Before hate, hostilities and wars consume us all! Your responsiveness to objective morality Your turn. Need-response provides you an opportunity to improve your responsiveness to needs by expanding your capacity to endure the natural discomforts of resolving needs. Instead of habitually avoiding natural pain in the name of "good" that results in much "bad", you can take our free online course to start certifying your competencies as a need-responder . You can actively address moral needs by launching your own wellness campaign . You can take our free online brief course to check if a wellness campaign is right for you. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this applied anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. 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If raised with a Western mindset, you likely presume individualism rules supreme. You likely assume your problems arise because you as an individual failed to think clearly or make a rational decision. Meanwhile, trust in our institutions continue to collapse since they either drag us into problems or get in the way of solving our problems. We encounter problems on many levels. Pain occurs from different levels of human problems. Anankelogy identifies four types. NOTE: Much of this is verbatim from chapter 4 of You NEED This , the book that introduces anankelogy to the world as a new social science for understanding your needs. Which do you think is more likely? You can solve about any problem you face simply by making the best rational choice. OR Most problems you face stem from items for which you have little to no control. Problems occur on four different levels. Anankelogy instills the discipline to resist indulging in the assumption that every problem can be solved by mere individual change. Your pain occurs from four different levels of human problems. Problems persist when overlooking all of its dimensions. Personal problems Interpersonal problems Power problems Structural problems Problem of complicated problems Too often, we assume the individual only needs to change themselves to fix a problem. Too often, we overlook aspects of a problem no single person can change, at least not without creating more problems. Too often, we can bounce to the opposite extreme. When you know you cannot be held personally responsible for every aspect of a problem, do you ever insist you have no personal responsibility in the matter? Do you lose your sense of personal agency in the face of more powerful barriers? 1. Personal problems A problem may exist only because of a personal failure to make a responsible choice. For example, if you decide to indulge in binge eating to the point of getting a stomach ache, you have a personal problem. No one has the problem but you because of your own personal actions. In our individualistic culture, we often presume personal problems when overlooking external factors. Overeating can be a coping reaction to these painful problems identified below. It’s arguably be easier to change one individual than many people or social structures. Consider these three examples. Personal vocational problem . You get repeatedly angry at work due to your unrealistic expectations of your boss and of your coworkers. To resolve this problem, you simply adjust your mindset to what you can reasonably anticipate from others on the job. Personal political problem . You can’t understand why your roommate voted ‘yes’ on a ballot initiative you oppose. To resolve this problem, you could ask your roommate and intently listen to their reasons without interrupting or expecting they first listen to your reasons. Personal judicial problem . After being convicted of something that never even occurred, you must emotionally adjust to the loss of your freedom. To resolve this problem, you will have to thoroughly grieve your losses which include finding a new path forward while less free. Need-response addresses such personal problems in your wellness campaign . You receive support to address personal problems in the BASE phase of the wellness campaign . 2. Interpersonal problems A problem exists when two or more people of relatively equal social standing fail to respond effectively to one or more impacted needs. As soon as one responds to the affected need, it can more easily resolve. For example, if you fail to return something you borrowed because you could not find that person at the agreed upon time, you have an interpersonal problem. Only the actions of one or both contribute interpersonally to the problem. Consider these three examples. Interpersonal vocational problem . Your coworkers try to tease you in fun without realizing how such bantering evokes traumatizing memories, which compromises your work performance, for which they tease you even more. To resolve this problem, need-response offers you a viable way to understand and respect their affected needs which can incentivize them to better understand and respect your overlooked needs. Interpersonal political problem . You cannot share your stance on the ballot initiative with your roommate without spinning out of control into a heated argument. To resolve this problem, need-response unpacks politics so you can better understand and respect the policy needs on both sides of each politicized issue. Interpersonal judicial problem . You start losing friends and family members who assume you must be guilty of something, who remain unaware of the high rates of wrongful convictions. To resolve this problem, need-response provides an estimated innocence form that automatically calculate the viability of an innocence claim by comparing it to known exonerations. Need-response addresses such interpersonal problems in your wellness campaign . You receive support to address interpersonal problems in the ALLY and TEAM phase of the wellness campaign . 3. Power problems A problem exists when someone with more social power fails to respond effectively to the impacted needs of those with relatively less social power. Power dynamics often prevent the less powerful to voice their concerns, to avoid risking retribution. For example, a power problem occurred if your teacher ever scolded you for poor performance when you lacked a viable way to report the reasonable context for your unusually low performance. Solving this kind of problem requires cooperation from someone typically less inclined to admit there is a problem. Need-response incentivizes such powerholders to listen to those impacted . Which enables the less powerful to speak truth to power . We level the playing field with what we call the Impact Parity Model . It identifies the powerholder as the AI (ascribed or acknowledged impactor) and the vulnerable powerless as the RI (reporting or recognized impactee). Consider these three examples. Power vocational problem . Your boss insists on yelling at you to try to motivate you when this actually demotivates you, prompting her to shout at you even more, and you prefer not to risk any retaliation by telling her what actually incentivizes you. To resolve this problem, need-response offers managers a way to improve their leadership skills by holding them accountable to how to they affect the needs of their subordinates. Power political problem . Your local representative thanks you for sharing your critique of her stance on this ballot initiative only to placate and ignore your affected policy needs. To resolve this problem, need-response offers Harmony Politics that can create data of impacted needs to hold all elected representatives accountable to their decisions. Power judicial problem . Your court-appointed appellate attorney doubts if he can find an issue to reverse your conviction in court. To solve this problem, need-response uses the estimated innocence report to build support that can compel the attorney to exhaust all options. Need-response addresses such power problems in your wellness campaign . You receive support to address power problems in the GROW phase of the wellness campaign . 4. Structural problems A problem exists at a more fundamental level when social norms or institutional structures prevent you from resolving your impacted needs. Those in positions of power are not always free to deviate from established norms. If bound by laws to perform certain duties, their responsiveness to your needs could be limited. Those in positions of authority cannot easily change things to fit your impacted needs. At least not without great peril to themselves or to others. For example, elected officials step in line to follow the “ social facts ” of divisive norms. They often can do little to nothing to alter the fault lines of political divisive­ness. Especially when political coalitions ensure they avoid getting too specific about your particular needs. Great leadership overcomes such frustrating norms. Need-response introduces the concept of " citationization " for identifying what specific need or needs a law is expected to serve. Mindlessly obeying laws can pull us away from resolving the needs our laws ostensibly exist to serve. And this can create conditions for mental health challenges. While no one sits above the law , anankelogy asserts, no law sits above the natural needs they exist to serve . You don't exist for human authority or power structures , also asserts anankelogy, such authority and power structures exist for you . Consider these three examples. Structural vocational problem . Your employer informs you how they are only bound to follow minimal legal requirements, which do not include holding other employees accountable for retraumatizing you with crude banter between each other. To solve this problem, need-response works with employers to identify opportunities to nurture their talent in ways that could give them competitive advantage over other entities, which in turn helps you to more freely be and do your best on the job. Structural political problem . You cannot find a candidate within the two-party system who best speaks to your neglected policy needs, so you feel coerced to choose the lesser of the two evil options. To resolve this problem, need-response transcends the left-right divide and even the establishment-populous divide to better understand and respect the needs on all sides of every politicized issue, toward resolving needs, removing pain, and improving each other’s level of functioning . Structural judicial problem . Your every attempt to secure exoneration through any judicial recourse hits roadblocks built into its adversarial system . To solve this problem, need-response transcends the lower moral standard of the adversarial system with a mutualizing approach that addresses the needs on all sides with empirical accountability. Need-response addresses such structural problems in your wellness campaign . You receive support to address structural problems in the GOAL phase of the wellness campaign . Problem of complicated levels of human problems Problems rarely fit neatly into one of these levels. The more an individual changes to do their part, the more these other levels emerge as a barrier to fully resolve an affected need. The more laws change to reduce structural barriers, the more this tends to upend and perturb those dependent upon the status quo. But if laws frustrate your basic needs, then the law be damned. You are not governed by laws as much as you are governed by your unrelenting needs . Laws guide but cannot control. Your body’s insistence to function as best it can may defy laws or popular norms on how to handle problems. Resulting problems emerge as various forms of imposed pathology. Anankelogy recognizes any sustained resistance to resolve needs as potential evil . Any benefit from normalized pathology easily blinds you to the damage of keeping needs unresolved. The rules can spell out what should result in better lives, but reality sets in to insist you function no matter what the law or its enforcement says. Despite the best efforts of written or unwritten rules, your need to function pulls you into need-conveying guilt, fear, depression, and anger. Your responsiveness to these various types of human problems Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. 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A bulk of overlooked needs in society result from professional power relations and their unresponsive institutions. Social power silences dissent with their oppositional systems. As distrust in our institutions hit all-time lows , our need-responders complement or competes with these failing systems—built into adversarial justice and polarizing politics—with a more engaging reconciling process anchored in mutual respect. Which do you think is more likely? All current helping professions sufficiently address and solve all of our current problems. OR We can solve our problems only when the helping professions address each affected need. Do you view lawyers and psychotherapists as fully responsive to your needs? Or as a matter of professional design, do they limit the scope of how much they can actually help you to escape your pain? If yearning for a more responsive alternative, consider these seven ways need-responders could outperform lawyers, politicians and psychotherapists. As need-responders , we aim to restore this ideal balance in a number of ways. First, we identify power relations impacting your wellbeing . We then unpack common phases in that power relation . We replace the adversarial with a reconciling approach . We replace arbitrary legitimacy with earned trust . We support leaders to transform restrictive social structures . We assert the greater power and authority of love . We refer to available research on power dynamics . 1. First, we identify power relations impacting your wellbeing. A power relation exists when one side holds more influence on the relation than the other. It may be called by other names. power relationship power differential power imbalance power imbalanced relationship The typical power relation is between a powerholder and a relatively powerless person. The terms of the relationship tend to favor the powerholder, at the powerless one’s expense. The relation can be brief, as between a banker denying a loan and the customer with poor credit. Or it can be long term, as between an employer and employee. Such power dynamics even occur between romantic and married couples. That type of power differential falls outside the scope of this impact parity model (or IPM ). The less the powerholder personally knows the relatively powerless, the greater the risk for harm. Think of the damage an uninformed powerholder may cause in those who habitually avoid the risk of retribution by not speaking up. Cop over citizen . Coerced compliance to the cop’s will. Manager over line worker . Pleasing the boss over full throttled productivity. Teacher over student . Learning to appease more than learning the subject matter. Counselor over client . Withholding honest feelings that may risk rejection. Doctor over patient . Avoid admitting symptoms from poor health choices. And so forth. As the second feels forced, the first loses reputational efficacy. Such unaddressed imbalances could be fueling our institutional decline . The more humanity departs from its indigenous tribal roots, where everyone could personally know one another, the greater these power differentials present as a problem. We need a new type of profession to fill this gap, before modern society collapses from crushing alienation. That new profession is need-response . To keep this simple, need-response identifies the powerholding side as the Ascribed Impactor (or AI ), and the powerless side as the Reporting Impactee (or RI ). ​ ASCRIBED IMPACTOR REPORTING IMPACTEE ​ ​ The powerholder side is called the Ascribed Impactor , or AI . The powerless side is called the Reporting Impactee , or RI . ​ ​ The AI impacts the relation more than impacted by it. The RI is impacted by the relation more than impacting it. ​ ​ "Ascribed" because the AI may find they are a link in a chain of higher authorities of impactors. "Reporting" because the RI humbly reports being negatively impacted by a power relation. ​ ​ AI becomes “ Acknowledged Impactor ” for each AI who enters the process. RI becomes “ Recognized Impactee ” after the first AI enters the process. ​ Chart : Impact Parity Model (IPM) Let’s depict this to illustrate the greater weight of the AI ’s influence over the RI . Despite many laws that prohibit outright taking advantage of the powerless, AI s tend to exact concessions from RI s in often less socially visible ways. We then blame the RI for much of the damaging results. Left to its own devices, these power relations deprive each side the opportunity to fully resolve their needs. While the RI risks more unresolved needs than the AI , the impact parity model can help the AI to address more of their own overlooked needs in these distorting relations. First, need-responders help to unpack the common phases that throws both sides into mutual blind spots. 2. We then unpack common phases in that power relation. ​Research into power relations observe a kind of approach-and-avoidance dance. Put in another way, one side expresses a stance to fight when the other side seeks flight. The tide may turn. When the RI cannot take anymore, their avoidance of AI pressures shifts into adversarial overdrive. They push back. Until the AI placates enough concern to maintain their grip on power. At least until the RI returns to vociferous complaining. Rince and repeat. The more RI s under the AI ’s influence, the harder for the AI to relate to each RI ’s specific needs. The AI counts on trusted generalizes to keep RI s content. But the further these generalizations stray from RI ’s specific needs, trouble erupts again in this predictable pattern. ​ As an AI... As an RI... ​ ​ you likely steer clear of uncomfortable details of those you impact in this avoidance phase . you typically endure the coercive impact of a power relation in a fearful avoidance phase . ​ ​ When they eventually react, you guard yourself from further pain in this adversarial phase . When the pain gets too much, you likely shift to a reactive pain-relieving adversarial phase . ​ ​ Peace resumes when resolving each other's needs in our responsive reconciling transition . Peace resumes when resolving each other's needs in our responsive reconciling transition . ​ Chart : power relation common phases Each situation follows its own unique path. Sometimes the RI remains stuck in the avoidance phase . Sometimes the adversarial phase results in separation between the RI and AI . Need-response offers a transition out of these debilitating patterns. Need-responders bring both sides in one of these power relations to identify and address each other’s affected needs. Using the power of love, need-responders leads all sides in a reconciling transition to resolve more needs, remove more pain, and unleash more potential. One step or phase at a time. Avoidance phase Initially, avoidance typically prevails. Few impactees dare rock the boat. A little unfairness can be tolerated. The impactor can easily get the mistaken impression that their influence is only positive. Thinks to self: "I hear no complaints, so I must be doing okay." ​ Thinks to self: "I cannot risk losing what I have, so I best keep quiet." This easily fuels avoidance culture . Avoidance culture is a set of norms for evading what feels too uncomfortable to face. Avoidance culture normalizes our behavior of avoiding important matters we'd rather overlook, dodging the reality of our many needs. Avoidance culture features… moralizing all pain as bad leaving own trauma unprocessed being dismissive of others expressing unrealistic expectations reinforcing isolation and alienation normalizing hyper-rationality evading meaningful discussions prioritizing privacy over social connections guarding all of one’s own vulnerabilities spreading mistrust and fear These tend to advantage elites at our expense. They generally view us as lacking courage, and their interests tend to be served by keeping us trapped in fear and the pain of their own pressuring influences. Need-responders have learned to reorient themselves from habitually avoiding discomfort to embracing more of life’s discomforts. That includes enduring the discomfort of speaking truth to power despite the risks. We all present what anankelogy calls an “ easement orientation ”. Most of us feel oriented to avoid discomfort. We prioritize relieving pain over resolving needs that could remove the cause for pain. In our first development program , need-responders learn to shift their easement orientation from a mostly relieve-over-resolve direction to a resolve-over-relieve direction. This equips them to help you endure the discomforts necessary along the path toward solving your problems of unresolved needs. The more discomfort you can face, the more of life you can embrace . Adversarial phase As imbalance grows more painful, the impactee often reaches a breaking point. They resist further compromise. Which often takes the complacent impactor by surprise. Who understandably gets defensive. Thinks to self: "I hear no complaints, so I must be doing okay." ​ Thinks to self: "I cannot risk losing what I have, so I best keep quiet." This easily fuels oppo culture . Oppo (or opposition ) culture is a set of norms pitting us against each other. Oppo culture normalizes the notion that every issue is a winner-take-all battle, dodging the reality of our inflexible needs . Oppo culture features… black-and-white thinking insisting others are wrong & oneself as right eagerness to fight little if any listening disregard for empathizing pursing a selfish agenda expressing self-righteous beliefs projecting own pain onto hated others provoking mutual defensiveness provoking outrage and hate These tend to advantage elites at our expense. They generally view us as entrenched in conflicts, and their interests tend to be served by keeping us trapped in ongoing conflicts. Need-responders have learned to reorient themselves from habitually taking oppositional sides to engaging the stubborn needs that keep us digging in our heels. That includes treating those in power as equals, whose needs are no more or less important than our own. We all present what anankelogy calls a “ conflict orientation ”. Many of us react to disputes by either going to the extreme of arrogantly fighting when we could take the more proactive steps to solve the disputes by addressing the conflicting needs. To avoid discomfort, too many of us prioritize winning arguments for instant relief over resolving each other’s needs with the power of love. In our next development program , need-responders learn to shift their conflict orientation from a mainly closed-and-guarded direction to an open-and-learning direction. This equips them to help you resolve conflicts by more effectively addressing the stubborn needs on all sides in a conflict. What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce . The problems then persist down a different course. After all, opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it . Continually vacillating or finding balance Alternatively, this impact parity model equips the impactee to speak truth to power of their impacted needs. This need-response process enables the AI to listen to other impacted RI without accepting fault. Unlike politics or the judiciary, this isn't adversarial. Unlike psycho-therapy, this does not stray into pain avoidance. In contrast to other services, the need-response process aims for mutual support for resolving each other’s affected needs. The incentivized AI can then apply what they learn to others similarly situated, to improve their leadership effectiveness. All the while letting this proactive process attract more diverse resources toward resolving more and more needs. The power relation equalizes as the AI 's need to listen to those impacted ( LTTI ) sits on par with the RI 's need to speak truth to power ( STTP ). Interdependence replaces the norms of avoidance and hostility. Proactively asserts to all: "I need to ​ Proactively asserts to all: "I need to L ISTEN T O T HOSE I MPACTED. ​ S PEAK T RUTH T O P OWER. "Even if I have no direct bearing over the impacted needs. I am honored with this opportunity to competitively resolve needs." ​ "Even if risking loss of this relation and all that comes with it. I am passionately committed to resolving these needs for myself and others." The need-response process invites the RI to list possible sanctions against the unresponsive AI . This list of adversarial options dangles over the AI like a Damocles’ Sword , ready to fall if the AI fails to meet a minimal standard of ceasing any harm, legally privileged or not. AI are also incentivized with positive rewards. When agreeing to our proactive reconciling process the waives all adversarial options, the RI agrees to respect the AI ’s inflexible needs on condition the AI demonstrate adequate responsiveness to the RI ’s inflexible needs. A more flexible need of the AI is their professional reputation, or an institution’s brand. The more demonstrably responsive to the RI they directly or indirectly impact, the more legitimacy the AI earns. More on that below, under #4 . As the AI becomes dependent on cooperative RI to provide valuable impact data these AI require to improve their leadership effectiveness, the power relation can more readily equalize. When each side needs the other to treat them as equal, without distorting the expertise of authority, both are freer to resolve more of their affected needs. 3. We replace the adversarial with a reconciling approach. Need-responders invite AI to participate in our preferable process of mutual support. If faced with the alternative of adversarial options (legal or not), our reconciling approach will inevitably seem much preferred. Best to grant amicable recourse than be subjected to harsh recourse. If you’re the AI, which would you prefer? To try this reconciling approach of mutual support, or face one or more of the RI ’s legally available adversarial options? risk a publicly posted 1-out-of-5 rating risk a social media smear campaign risk bad press risk an ethics board review risk a government agency’s time-consuming investigation risk losing competitive advantage to others more demonstrably responsive risk damaging own professional reputation risk a lawsuit Need-responders guard the integrity of this process. They must challenge any attempt by an RI to game this system. The more an RI uses an adversarial option to try to manipulate the process to serve their own interests at any AI’s expense, the less support they will find from the need-responder community. Unlike lawyers or therapists who get paid for advocating for an individual or group at odds with others, need-responders only receive full compensation when the identified needs of both the RI and AI s are adequately addressed toward resolution. Favoring either the AI or the RI risks disincentivizing the need-responder’s committed aims, and bottom line. For the need-responder, it’s the reconciling approach or bust. Once the AI enters into the need-response reconciling approach, the RI agrees to set aside all of their available adversarial options. The RI and AI agree to afford each other adequate space to mutually address each other’s affected needs. They spurn indulging in a fight in exchange for giving mutual understanding a supported try. If politics and the judiciary serve as our only models, no wonder we believe fighting each other is better than understanding each other. Every court battle and election battle produce winners or losers. These adversarial institutions give lip service but little to any actual concern for our affected needs. Need-responds towers morally over them all with our reconciling approach. Need-responders incentivize those in a judicial or political conflict to pursue a more loving route. Instead of presuming all sides are inextricably opposed to each other, need-response holds all sides accountable to identify and address the inflexible needs on all sides. No more privileging of hate. The standard adversarial approach tends to trap you pain of unmet needs. At best, they offer pain relief for the winning side. The losing side get more pain, in the name of the law. “You’ve got a better approach?” they demand. Now you can reply with a resounding Yes ! If you compare the standard adversarial approach driving us all apart to the need-responsive alternative of this more reconciling approach, why would anyone prefer this litany of poor results? ​ ADVERSARIAL APPROACH RECONCILING APPROACH intent ​fight-or-flight/freeze ​full resolution 2. expected results ​win-lose ​win-win ​3. pain ​ease pain, more pain to relieve ​resolve needs to remove pain 4. understanding ​rely on generalizing ​understand more specifics ​5. social distance ​perpetuate alienation cultivate social connections 6. discipline indulge in whatever seems to cope with pain delay gratification for a lasting reward 7. aim pursue selfish aims seek social cohesion ​8. affected needs stay ignorant of affected needs be aware of affected needs 9. responsiveness ​react to feelings, own problems respond to each other’s needs 10. relationships fall into exploitive relationships hold relationships accountable 11. elites lulled into reliance on elites lull elites into reliance on us 12. conflict orient ​stay closed and guarded ​stay open and learning ​13. mutuality provoke mutual hostilities ​encourage mutual support 14. im/balance vacillate between extremes work toward needed balance 15. what meaning react to meaninglessness ​find or make meaning ​16. appeal to appeal to rules, to authority appeal to high standard of love Chart: contrasting the standard adversarial approach with the need-responsive reconciling approach Can you see how this reconciliing approach effectively incentivizes both the AI and RI to not slip into the extremes of avoidance and conflict? The more needs can more freely resolve, there is less cause for pain, for conflict, for hate. Like a rising tide, resolved needs lifts all boats. Incidents of violence would decrease. Rates of poor health would decline. Levels of enjoying life would naturally rise. What AI wouldn’t prefer being associated with such positive outcomes for us all? 4. We replace arbitrary legitimacy with earned trust. Current legitimacy of authority relies on what anankelogy identifies as “ascribed legitimacy”. We don’t know if an authority figure of institution actually delivers on its purpose for being. If merely ascribed and not actually earned, politicians can persuade us they’re legit, even if they’re not. We may rely on word-of-mouth, our own sketchy encounters, whatever we read or hear online from sources we trust, or from elsewhere. Rarely do we ever see authority point directly to reliable data demonstrating its effectiveness to help you and I fully resolve our needs. That’s exactly what need-response provides. Instead of an arbitrary “ascribed legitimacy”, need-response generates empirical data to establish an authority’s “ earned legitimacy ”. The litmus test for earned legitimacy is the level of documented health challenges the vulnerable RI continue to suffer despite every good faith effort to overcome them. It begins with rating how responsive is the AI to the RI 's expressed affected need or needs. The more responsive in acknowledging their impact, the more those impacted can work with these impactors to improve results. The more reluctant to acknowledge their impact, the less room we can grant any further risk of damage. This falls along a range of possibilities. Much as everyone using financial instruments gets a documented credit score, every person in a position of power gets a legitimacy score . The more the RI subjected to the AI exhibits failure to overcome addictions, or shows a rise or plateau in their anxiety or depression—with all other factors sufficiently ruled out—that authority gets rated downward. The more this RI exhibits improved wellness outcomes (i.e., fewer lapses in their addiction struggles, less measurable paralysis after processing trauma), the higher the AI ’s legitimacy score. exemplary responsive : 75% to 100% - eagerly enable RI needs to fully resolve improving responsive : 25% to 75% - support as much resolution as they can minimally responsive : -25%% to 25% - neither benefiting nor harming RIs substandard unresponsive : -75% to -25% - presenting continual risk of harm violently reactive : -100% to -75% - demonstrated damage to RI Power isn’t really ‘power’ unless resulting in resolved needs . Otherwise, it’s merely coercion. The power of nature drives our experience of needs. Without this deeper power of nature, there is no such thing as human social power. Authority earns its so-called power to impact our lives the more it serves our more powerful needs. 5. We support leaders to transform restrictive social structures. When those in “power” lack the power to enable us to resolve needs, or to remove pain, or reduce suffering, or decrease rates of depression and anxiety, or lessen addictions, or lower rates of suicide, then what good is such power? Need-responders seek leaders who can tap into the greater power of nature to solve all of these problems. Many leaders try. Many leaders hit a wall. Social structures often stand in their way of fostering real change. Need-responders offer a way to transcend the limits of social structure. Shared authority can also hold back the best-intentioned leader. Anyone in a position of authority has to answer to higher authorities and to the constraints of legislated, case and administrative law. Authority can also be constrained when delegated to others downstream, or shared by committee. Need-responders work with their client RI to inspire leaders ready to transform social norms. They build a team that can break through the limits of social systems. Together, the team can solve problems by addressing the needs overlooked by those systems. That’s exactly what Dr. King did in the 1950s to the 1960s. As have many others. Anankelogy recognizes four levels of human problems . Need-responders addresses the last two. 1. Personal problems we can solve on our own. 2. Interpersonal problems we can solve with cooperation with others. 3. Power problems we can solve with those in positions of power. 4. Structural problems that require social transformations to solve. Now let’s put this in context with the three levels of service offered by need-responders. Case . Need-responders typically begin helping a lone RI client to address a problem they personally have with one or a few AI s. Project . This is where a case could evolve into helping RI lead a support team seeking to pursue the cause of helping similarly situated RI s. Movement . This occurs if a project emerges with widespread support to transform intractable social structures, with a totally onboard inspirational AI leader. A movement could evolve into a revolution of love . There can be no greater revolution than to revolve back to love , back to honoring the needs of others as we would have others honor our own. Transformative leaders would know how to prioritize need-responsive love over any impersonal law or any unresponsive authority. There can be no greater human authority than resolving needs with love . 6. We assert the greater power and authority of love. Need-response raises the bar. Need-responders hold us all accountable to the high standard of love. They evaluate if the AI and the RI demonstrably respond to the needs of each other. They track and keep score who is doing more to support the need of the other side in ways they would have the other side support their affected needs. Now isn’t that a “fight” worth supporting? Instead of rooting for one side to tear down the other, we root for the side that demonstrates the most respect for your needs. Need-responders incentivize AI to compete each other to earn the legitimacy to impact you and your needs. Need-response grants no quarter to the current norms of opposition culture or avoidance culture because they correlate highly with provoking outrage and hate. Instead, need-responders cultivate the higher standard of mutual support. Which requires the discipline of honestly relating to each other’s inflexible needs, in a way proven not to provoke animosity. To this end, need-responders utilize the tested “praise sandwich” to bracket good news around a lest pleasant piece of bad news. Perhaps you’ve seen this at work when getting a late payment notice. The bad news alerting you to your delinquent payment gets couched between a positive opener and positive closing affirmation of your value to them. RESPONSIVE FORMAT LATE PAYMENT NOTICE CONFLICT RESOLUTION POSITIVE – good news “We value you as our beloved customer. positively affirm inflexible needs of the other side NEGATIVE – bad news “We draw your attention to a missed payment. address how actions of the other side affect own needs ​ POSITIVE – good news “We look forward to serving you as a loyal customer.” invite continual engagement for how to support each other’s needs in ways that respect one’s own needs Chart: demonstrating the effective "praise sandwich" communication format, nullifying mutual defensiveness Need-responders employ this same professional communication format. Couching the unpleasant bad news in between opening and closing good news properly addresses unresponsive power relations, without needlessly provoking defensiveness. Conflicts can then be turned into opportunities to relate better to each side’s needs. Conveying respect for each other’s inflexible needs effectively nullifies cause for any vacillating power struggle. The AI and RI can remain open and unguarded as they more freely engage each other’s needs. Good news – positively affirm the inflexible needs of the other side Bad news – address how the actions of the other side affect one’s own needs Good news – invite continual engagement for how to support each other’s needs in ways that respect one’s own need Consider how this can melt the power struggles fueling political polarization. Elsewhere , I discuss how political differences point to an objective inflexible priority of needs . Instead of hoping in vain that debating will somehow convince them to change their inflexible priority of needs, need-responders unpack the priority of each side behind each politicized issue . Remember Olaf’s simple definition of love? “ Love is putting someone else's needs before yours .” Need-responders incentivize each side in a political conflict to relate first to the needs of the other, to earn the other side’s trust to respect your own needs. Need-responders waste no energy opposing inflexible needs. That energy can be spent better on opposing the norms of selfishness and self-righteousness corrupting us all. Better to oppose the polarizing of our politics, the distortions in our economy, the erosion of trust in the media, the spoiling of confidence in academia, and any detraction from other once-trusted institutions. Politics runs thick with self-serving generalizations, and these competing generalizations fuel political polarization. Disrespect begets disrespect. That standard applied sets the standard replied, so we can hardly feel surprised when others denounce our priorities after denouncing theirs. Why polarize into opposing views when you can empathize and never morally lose? Yes, realize what you are free to choose—love! Politicians understandably avoid specifics that could compromise their fragile coalitions. They hope to apply, to generalize to us all, what they see as missing in our public policies. You need not follow their example of overgeneralizing. Best to rely on the generalization that the needs of others matters just as much (if not more) than your own. Your safest generalization is to love . Adversarial systems produce impersonal laws, impersonally. Adversarial systems interpret impersonal laws, impersonally. Adversarial systems enforce impersonal laws, impersonally. Adversarial systems, and those who directly serve them, do not know what they do not know, and that compromises the legitimacy of their authority. Their imperfect laws sit as a lower level of authority than needs fully resolved with love. Once fully resolved with respect for the needs of others, and you can fully function, you no longer require the role of impersonal laws. You can independently serve the purpose of laws without the imposition of impersonal laws. The more you personally honor the needs of others with the power of love, you trump the lesser power of impersonal authority. Need-responders ultimately enforce this higher authority of love. If citing authority of some law, the need-responder holds the AI accountable to the needs all such laws exist to serve. No more appealing to authority to defy the greater authority or mutually respected needs. No more denying without evidence that power relations easily damage RI wellbeing. No more excuses. Let love rule over laws. Yes, love overrules rules. 7. We refer to available research on power dynamics. The academic literature in psychology addresses power relations in ways complementing this anankelogical need-responsive approach. Anankelogy currently sits a long way from producing its own research findings. For now, we refer to available academic findings around power dynamics. Here is a list of academic articles offering deep insights into how power relations function. Click the left arrow to read that article's abstract. Anderson, Berdahl (2002). The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journ. of Personality and Soc. Psych., 83 :6, 1362-1377 . Two studies of task-focused dyads tested the approach/inhibition theory of power (P. Keltner, D. H. Gruenfeld, & C. Anderson, in press), which posits that having power increases the tendency to approach and decreases the tendency to inhibit. Results provided preliminary support for the theory: Participants higher in personality dominance or assigned control over resources expressed their true attitudes, experienced more positive and less negative emotion, were more likely to perceive rewards (i.e., that their partner liked them), and were less likely to perceive threats (e.g., that their partner felt anger toward them). Most of these effects were mediated by the sense of power, suggesting that subjective feelings of power are an important component in the effects of power. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) Berdahl, Martorana (2006). Effects of power on emotion and expression during a controversial group discussion. E ur. J. Soc. Psychol. 36 , 497–509. The approach/inhibition theory of power proposes that elevated social power increases the experience and expression of positive emotions and that reduced social power increases the experience and expression of negative emotions (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). The evidence to date for these proposed relationships is correlational. Studies that have attempted to find a causal link between power and emotions have failed to do so. The current study manipulated social power in 61 three-person groups that engaged in a meaningful discussion (explanations for poverty in the US) that produced disagreements and strong emotions. High power individuals experienced and expressed more positive emotions and less anger than low power individuals did. High power individuals were also more likely than low power individuals to openly express their opinions during the group discussion. Implications for theory and future research are discussed. Copyright#2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Galinsky, Gruenfeld, Magee (2003). From power to action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85 : 3, 453– 466. Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that power increases an action orientation in the powerholder, even in contexts where power is not directly experienced. In Experiment 1, participants who possessed structural power in a group task were more likely to take a card in a simulated game of blackjack than those who lacked power. In Experiment 2, participants primed with high power were more likely to act against an annoying stimulus (a fan) in the environment, suggesting that the experience of power leads to the performance of goal-directed behavior. In Experiment 3, priming high power led to action in a social dilemma regardless of whether that action had prosocial or antisocial consequences. The effects of priming power are discussed in relation to the broader literature on conceptual and mind-set priming. Guinote (in press). How power affects people: Activating, wanting and goal seeking. Annual Review of Psychology . Socio-cognitive research has demonstrated that power affects how people feel think and act. Here, literature from social psychology, neuroscience, management, and animal research is reviewed, and an integrated framework of power as an intensifier of goal related approach motivation is proposed. A growing literature shows that power energizes thought, speech and action, and orients individuals towards seeking salient goals linked to power roles, predispositions, tasks and opportunities. Power magnifies self-expression linked to active parts of the self (the active self), enhancing confidence, self-regulation and prioritization of their efforts towards advancing focal goals. The effects of power on cognitive processes, goal preferences, performance, and corruption are discussed and its potentially detrimental effects on social attention, perspective taking, and objectification of subordinates are examined. Several inconsistencies in the literature are explained by viewing the goal directedness of power holders as more dynamic and situated than is usually assumed. Keltner, Gruenfeld, Anderson (2003). Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychological Review, 110 :2, 265-284. This article examines how power influences behavior. Elevated power is associated with increased rewards and freedom and thereby activates approach-related tendencies. Reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment, and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related tendencies. The authors derive predictions from recent theorizing about approach and inhibition and review relevant evidence. Specifically, power is associated with (a) positive affect, (b) attention to rewards, (c) automatic information processing, and (d) disinhibited behavior. In contrast, reduced power is associated with (a) negative affect; (b) attention to threat, punishment, others’ interests, and those features of the self that are relevant to others’ goals; (c) controlled information processing; and (d) inhibited social behavior. The potential moderators and consequences of these power-related behavioral patterns are discussed. Schaerer, Plessis, Yap, Thau (2018). Low power individuals in social power research: A quantitative review, theoretical framework, and empirical test. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 149 : 73-96. We examine the role of low-power individuals in social power research. A multi-method literature review reveals that low-power individuals may be insufficiently understood because many studies lack necessary control conditions that allow drawing inferences about low power, effects are predominantly attributed to high power, and qualitative reviews primarily focus on how high-power individuals feel, think, and behave. Challenging the assumption that low power tends to produce opposite consequences of high power, we highlight several similarities between the two states. Based on social exchange theories, we propose that unequal-power (vs. equal-power) relationships make instrumental goals, competitive attitudes, and exchange rules salient, which can cause both high- and low-power individuals to behave similarly. Two experiments suggest that although low-power individuals sometimes behave in opposite ways to high-power individuals (i.e., they take less action), at other times they behave similarly (i.e., they objectify others to the same extent). We discuss the systematic study of low-power individuals and highlight methodological implications. Smith, Bargh (2008). Nonconscious effects of power on basic approach and avoidance tendencies. Soc Cogn. 26 :1, 1-24. According to the approach/inhibition theory of power ( Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003 ), having power should be associated with the approach system, and lacking power with the avoidance system. However, to this point research has focused solely on whether power leads to more action, particularly approach-related action, or not. In three experiments, we extend this research by exploring the direct, unintentional relation between power and both approach and avoidance tendencies. Priming high power led to greater relative BAS strength than priming low power, but did not affect the BIS (Exp. 1). High-power priming also facilitated both simple and complex approach behavior, but did not affect avoidance behavior (Exp. 2−3). These effects of power occurred even in power-irrelevant situations. They also cannot be explained by priming of general positive versus negative constructs, nor by changes in positive, negative, approach-related, or avoidance-related affect. Tost (2015). When, why, and how do powerholders ‘‘feel the power’’? Examining the links between structural and psychological power and reviving the connection between power and responsibility. Research in Organizational Behavior 35 , 29–56. Recent research in social psychology has examined how psychological power affects organizational behaviors. Given that power in organizations is generally viewed as a structural construct, I examine the links between structural and psychological power and explore how their interrelationships affect organizational behavior. I argue that psychological power takes two forms: the (nonconscious) cognitive network for power and the conscious sense of power. Based on this view, I identify two causal pathways that link psychological power and structural power in predicting organizational behavior. First, the sense of power is likely to induce a sense of responsibility among (but not exclusively among) structural powerholders, which in turn leads structural powerholders to be more responsive to the views and needs of others. Second, the sense of power, when brought into conscious awareness, activates a non-conscious association between power and agentic behaviors, which in turn leads structural powerholders to enact agentic behaviors. I discuss the ways in which these predictions diverge from previous theorizing, and I address methodological challenges in examining the relationship between structural and psychological power. In doing so, I suggest that certain features of the predominant methodological approaches to studying psychological power may have induced a bias in the empirical findings that obscures the crucial link between power and responsibility. ß2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. “Accountability—the sense that one’s actions are personally identifiable and subject to the evaluation of others—often acts as a constraint on unchecked power. Individuals in power who know they will be held accountable are more likely to consider social consequences and take others’ interests into account.” ( Keltner, et al., 2003 ) Key article: Power, approach, and inhibition . Too long, didn't read? Dacher Keltner is one of the leading experts in this area. With his colleagues, he contrasts the powerful and powerless. They propose twelve propositions, six for the dynamics of elevated power and six for dynamics of reduced power. POWERFUL AI ​POWERLESS RI positive affect attention to rewards automatic info processing disinhibited behavior negative affect attention to threats controlled info processing inhibited social behavior Proposition 1: Elevated Power Increases the Experience and Expression of Positive Affect Proposition 2: Reduced Power Increases the Experience and Expression of Negative Affect Proposition 3: Elevated Power Increases the Sensitivity to Rewards Proposition 4: Reduced Power Increases the Sensitivity to Threat and Punishment Proposition 5: Elevated Power Increases the Tendency to Construe Others as a Means to One’s Own Ends Proposition 6: Reduced Power Increases the Tendency to View the Self as a Means to Others’ Ends Proposition 7: Elevated Power Increases the Automaticity of Social Cognition Proposition 8: Reduced Power Increases Controlled Social Cognition Proposition 9: Elevated Power Increases the Likelihood of Approach-Related Behavior Proposition 10: Reduced Power Increases Behavioral Inhibition Proposition 11: Elevated Power Increases the Consistency and Coherence of Social Behavior Proposition 12: Elevated Power Increases the Likelihood of Socially Inappropriate Behavior Research summarized and presented by researcher Amy Cuddy In anankelogical terms, power easily enables refunction, while powerlessness risks defunction. “I think this idea that power is related to approach is mostly a good thing. I mean we want a world full of people who feel personally powerful [in charge of their own lives]. I think it creates value for everybody.” – Amy Cuddy Your responsiveness to these equalizers to power relations Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. 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You possess an unspoken reputation for how responsive you are to needs. The more you respond to the needs at hand, the more others trust you to respect their needs and tell others how you can be trusted. Need-response turns this informal quality into a quantifiable “response reputation” score. You build this formal reputation by responding appropriately to our challenge to “Engage.” Which would you expect to create better results? Informally evaluate one another while expecting them to know what you specifically need. OR Formally assess one another’s responsiveness to needs after explicitly sharing those needs. You disagree? Engage . You avoiding conflict? Engage each side. You opposing the other side? Engage each other's needs. CONTENTS I'm judging you . You're judging me . Do not judge, lest you be judged . Let's nurture our mutual regard . We each possess a responsive reputation . Judgment day is upon us . Engage . Let's shift direction. Instead of fanning the flames of conflict, let's resolve the underlying needs to restore peace. Let's keep each accountable by measuring our responsiveness to needs. 1. I'm judging you. Each time I engage you in public or in private, I’m subtly judging you.   I am naturally assessing  how responsive you are to my many vulnerable needs . I continually evaluate  your trustworthiness. I’m calculating  how safe to drop my guard.   I must .   The better you respond to my needs, the more of my other needs I can trust to expose to you. That supports my fragile wellness.   The lower your apparent trustworthiness, the less I shall expose you to my other vulnerable needs . I must, to maintain my wellness.   By prioritizing mutual resolution of needs in love, I judge responsibly. I now welcome you to judge me as responsibly. 2. You're judging me. You’re also assessing  how responsive I am to your vulnerable needs . Not that you’re judging me as “bad” or “evil” or “bound to hell”. But you’re honestly evaluating how much of your needs you can entrust to me. That's natural.   You see how responsive I’ve been so far and act accordingly. If I seem untrustworthy, you naturally close up and keep yourself protected. If you find me responsive enough, you can risk exposing more of your needs to me. I’m judging you as you’re judging me. Is anything wrong with that? 3. Do not judge, lest you be judged. This biblical proscription speaks directly to our usual sloppy way of sizing each other up. If I dare denounce you as some uncaring jerk, you may naturally think of me the same. The standard applied sets the standard replied . Now let’s turn this into something positive.   I invite you to graciously point out my blind spots . As I set myself to graciously illuminate your blind spots . Let’s open ourselves to each other’s supportive critique. To our untapped potential for love.   Those going the other extreme of denying any judgment tend to be those who provoke each other’s defensiveness. They convince others it’s unsafe to drop their guard. They stay painfully alienated.   We can do better. We can add the discipline of respecting each other. We can nurture mutual regard . 4. Let's nurture our mutual regard . “Mutual regard?” you may wonder, “What’s that?”   Social norms train us to quickly oppose others with whom we disagree. To fit into what’s expected of you, whenever confronted, you’re supposed to engage in mutual defensiveness.   On some level, this can be a good thing. If bullied to cave into pressure to accept what is clearly wrong, you must take a bold opposing stance.   Too often, however, we jump prematurely into opposition . We indulgently take sides . We slip into the abyss of avoidant adversarialism . We oppose the objective reality of needs they cannot change. We then suffer the pain which naturally results when rejecting reality. We blame them for our own irresponsibility. We seek relief by staying in conflict, which feeds the pain. Such premature opposition practically g uarantees both sides will fail to understand where the other is coming from.     The more you refuse to listen to the other side, the more you remain ignorant of their underlying inflexible needs. The less you understand or respect these needs, the greater your risk for acting in damaging error.   But the more you listen to the other side, the more you can understand their underlying inflexible needs. The more you understand or respect their needs, the easier for them to respect yours. This is, in a nutshell, mutual regard .   All natural needs sit equal before nature . You cannot change your inflexible needs, nor can they. Any attempt to change what cannot be changed automatically triggers mutual defensiveness , and mutual disregard . Such behavior risks provoking anger, outrage, and hate.   Mutual regard melts such anger, then leaves more room for nurturing opportunities for love . For honoring the needs of others as you would have them honor your own. If only you stay open amidst conflicts , to better understand the inflexible needs of both sides .   No, this is not " bothsidesism " or " false balance " or " false equivalency " as these only can apply to a chosen response to needs and never to the unchosen needs themselves. Such critique too easily rationalizes staying closed off to others. The more you stay open and learning amidst conflict (in your orientation to conflict ), the more you build a reputation that you can be responsive to any awkwardly expressed needs. Or do you prefer having a reputation for being easily provoked and defensive? 5. We each possess a responsive reputation . No one tells you exactly how much they trust you. Or don’t trust you. You kinda have to figure that out on your own. Read their body language. Hear something from others. Observe their behavior.   Not anymore. We’re now going to say this quiet part out loud.   It’s best shared as a “praise sandwich” that first affirms. GOOD NEWS. Then identifies room for improvement. BAD NEWS. Then closes with some mutual regard . GOOD NEWS. For example, Or for example, Both examples demonstrate a responsiveness to the needs on all sides. Consistently relating to the inflexible needs on all sides builds a very valuable reputation.   We call it a “ responsive reputation ”. How responsive am I to your needs? How responsive are your friends and family to your needs? How responsive are you to theirs? 6. Judgment day is now upon us. You will now be evaluated for how responsive you are to those needs you affect. The more you put the needs of others ahead of your own, even if only temporarily, the more highly you will be esteemed. You will now receive constructive feedback to the effectiveness of your neighborly social love . This may not be the Judgment Day prophesied in scripture , but this is  a day of reckoning. Not for punishment, but to restore out lost connections. To nurture more social love . There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love . Powerholders will now be held accountable, perhaps like never before. Underserved needs will now have more recourse than a cold system of impersonal laws and their enforcement regimes.   Need-response  not only evaluates how well you respond to the needs of others but also by how well you express your needs so others know what you truly need of them. This goes both ways. Others can be evaluated for how well they articulate their affected needs to you.   If you meet someone who cannot meet the minimal standard of mutual regard , of honoring your needs the way you’re ready to honor theirs , then it’s time to call out such B.S. It’s time to shine a light on their “below standard” disrespect. RESPONSE ARRAY . Need-response calculates a range of graduated responsiveness . From causing harm to enabling resolution of identified needs. Offensive unresponsiveness . Causing another harm; provoking more needs than helping to resolve needs. Substandard responsiveness . Acknowledging there could be needs they impact but only offering to pacify the pain of those underserved needs. Standard responsive . Demonstrating mutual regard that relates to the impacted needs of others as worthy of the same respect as their own needs. Competitive responsiveness . Addressing needs more effectively than others to boost one’s brand as professionally more responsive to their constituents. Transformative responsiveness . Addressing needs limited by current social structures, with inspiring ways to transcend such limits to fully resolve all needs. Dig a little deeper, and you may find an empirical basis for these graduated levels. Or learn firsthand amidst a conflict. 7. Engage. If you find yourself in a conflict with me and challenge me, I may say to you, “ Engage .”   Once I say it, no room shall be given to petty arguing or guarded reasoning or mutual defensiveness. We’re now beyond whether you or I agree or disagree with any position statement.   As soon as that word slips from my tongue, I’ve raised the bar . We’re both now being judged by how well we address the affected needs in that conflict.   I can’t speak for you, but I’ll be keeping score . Which of the five above will you fit best? Which of those would I fit best in your eyes?   Keep me accountable. Have me engage your affected needs, as I engage yours. All inflexible needs sit equal before nature . Let’s nullify any premature opposition  by making it safer for the both of us to drop our guards. Let’s honestly get to the unmet needs driving the conflict.   No more politically privileged selfishness. No more immature spats. No more rationalized “rational” choices. Only a mutually agreed path to resolve needs , on all sides.   Not only does this apply between those of relatively equal social station, but empowers those of considerably less social influence to speak truth to power . The more you assess the responsiveness of your friends, the more courage you can find to assess the responsiveness of your likely foes.   We must “engage” to replace failed norms and institutions pulling us all down a path of mutual destruction.   We must “engage” to stop the bleeding, to stop the violence, and to stop the fever to go to war.   We must “engage” to resolve needs, to remove pain, and to reach our full potential. So I say…   Engage . Identify the affected needs on all sides in a conflict . Reach standard responsiveness . Or lose before you start! Engage. THIS IS ONE IN A SERIES TO ENGAGE OTHERS AMIDST CONFLICTS WITH A BETTER WAY Engage. Engage! ENGAGE! reaching standard responsiveness cultivating competitive responsiveness creating transformative responsiveness Engage: Affirm their unchosen needs Your responsiveness to engaging opponents Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact others and create your forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this engage category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. 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Take sides in a conflict without affirming each other’s unchosen needs and you get burned. Opposing what others needs does not extinguish a moral conflict, but enflames it . The more you fuel conflicts, the more you reinforce problems. Take time to understand the affected needs on all sides. Serve the underserved needs fueling a conflict and you help solve problems. Need-response provides this engaging alternative to typical undisciplined approaches to conflicts. You solve more conflicts with mutual regard  than indulgent side-taking . You solve more problems with love . Mutual regard for each other's unchosen needs meets the minimal standard for a responsive reputation among peers, and for earned legitimacy of authority figures. Need-response incentivizes us to be more responsive to the needs of others than they are to our needs. As long as we can function enough to be responsive to our own needs, we can strive for competitive responsiveness or competitive legitimacy . That's the challenge when the need-responder exclaims, with an exclamation point, “Engage!” Which would you expect to create better results? Challenging powerholders with their biased adversarial process. OR Engaging powerholders with our mutually beneficial process. Engage . Mutually respect each other's needs. Engage! Resolve more needs than them. Shift from unresponsive habits to creating valuable responsiveness. Move beyond to feel-reactive norms to be as need-responsive as possible. Once invited by any need-responder, this can help to improve your “response reputation” and “earned legitimacy”. Response reputation : Measurable responsiveness to anyone’s needs to improve wellness. This applies mainly to the relatively powerless Reporting Impactees  ( RI ). Earned legitimacy : Measurable responsiveness of authority figures to the needs of the relatively powerless. This applies specifically to powerful Ascribed Impactors  ( AI ). Response reputation  is not public. It is only available to others in the wellness campaign and to other need-responders bound by our terms. Anyone leaking a responsive reputation without the RI’s permission face reduction of their own responsive reputation.   By contrast, earned legitimacy  can immediately go public since AI impacts the public in ways vulnerable members of the public have a right to know. Anyone publicizing such measurable legitimacy and receives gratitude can have their responsive reputation go up.   You can tie many societal ills to common failures to distinguish between low hanging fruit reactions and higher principled responsiveness. Need-response distinguishes between commonly accepted behaviors compromising responsiveness and legitimacy and less common nobler actions that improve responsiveness and legitimacy . Need-response provides seven of these key distinctions for improving your responsiveness to needs. Distinguish between chosen actions and unchosen needs. Distinguish between avoidant generalizing and engaging specifics . Distinguish between relieving pain and resolving needs to remove cause for pain. Distinguish between mutual defensiveness and mutual engagement. Distinguish between psychosocial vacillation and psychosocial balance. Distinguish between belief reductionism and dynamic relating. Distinguish between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Engage ! Let's outperform each other. Instead of reaching for the minimal standard to mutually respecting each other's unchosen needs, we dare you to go further and try to address more of those needs. We dare you to improve your responsive reputation or earned legitimacy by helping to resolve more needs on all sides. We dare you to empirically contribute to measurable wellness outcomes of improved lifestyles, reduced addictions, and greater life satisfaction. Engage! You can demonstrate more responsiveness to needs the less you buy into the norms of avoidant adversarialism . If you one of those who rush to take sides in every issue, to avoid dealing with the messy details, these seven distinctions are for you. Especially for authority figures who negatively impact our lives when failing to make the distinction.   Each of these seven distinctions points the way toward resolving each other’s underserved needs to better solve our problems. The better these distinctions can get you beyond the paralysis of avoidant adversarialism , the better your responsiveness reputation . And the more needs finally can resolve, the greater the earned legitimacy . After explaining the distinction, testably hypotheses are offered under the subheading Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs. More on these “MAIN” testable hypotheses elsewhere. Let’s proceed. 1. Distinguish between chosen actions and unchosen needs. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on recognizing the affected needs on all sides in a conflict. If you didn’t deliberately choose to be in the situation you find yourself in, why assume the others chose to be in it? If a result a poor choices, is that an excuse to ignore the underlying needs?   You can choose to eat in response to feeling hungry. You cannot choose not to be hungry. You can choose to find a friend for meaningful connection. You cannot choose not to be lonely. You can choose to be alone for a while. You cannot choose not to require solitude. Chosen actions follow unchosen needs, and neglecting this distinction needlessly sparks many conflicts.   We routinely overlook the unchosen needs of others when conflating them with chosen actions. You can choose to drink a cup of coffee but you cannot choose not to be thirsty. Anankelogy demonstrates how all natural unchosen needs sit equal before nature .   One of the most frequent errors stems from going too far to avoid an error. Many of us misapply the valid critique of “ false equivalency ” and “ false balance ” to equally valid unchosen needs. It is not “ bothsidesism ” to affirm the unchosen needs on all sides of an issue; it is an alarming sign of avoidant adversarialism to dismiss the unchosen needs of those who poorly express them. Those critiques aptly apply only to our responses to one another’s unchosen needs, never to those immutable needs themselves.   This also applies to the critique of “ whataboutism ” when it wrongly dismisses any affected unchosen need. Yes, what about the unchosen needs on all sides to a conflict? Not as a counteraccusation to avoid the original point raised, but to ensure disputes stay focused on what either party can actually change. No one can change their naturally existing unchosen needs to suit another.   Reread this text above and replace “unchosen need” with “unchosen priority”. Besides each unchosen need existing as an objective fact , anankelogy recognizes how each naturally prioritized need exists as an objective fact . You can choose to eat now and sleep later. You cannot choose to not require nutrition more than your body requires rest in that moment.   Beneath the veneer of chosen political differences are these unchosen priorities driven by a particular psychosocial orientation  we do not choose nor can change at will. Developing responsiveness and legitimacy depend on limiting critiques to chosen response while affirming the unchosen needs and unchosen priorities behind them. This is where a praise sandwich format helps to maintain this essential distinction between chosen actions and unchosen needs. Positive: Affirm their unchosen needs behind their actions. Negative: Address how their chosen responses affect your unchosen needs. Positive: Commit to continue supporting each other’s unchosen needs. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more you affirm the unchosen needs of those with whom you’re in conflict, the more  you reach the responsiveness level of “standard” responsiveness. The less  you affirm the unchosen needs of those with whom you’re in conflict, the less  you reach the responsiveness level of “standard” responsiveness. The more  your affirmations and disciplined critiques results in resolved needs on all sides to a conflict, your responsiveness reputation goes up . The more  your reactions and faux critiques correlates with the affected needs on all sides to a conflict staying unresolved, your responsiveness reputation stagnates . E.g., The more you misapply “bothsidesism” to unchosen needs, the lower  your responsive score. 2. Distinguish between avoidant generalizing and engaging specifics. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on identifying and addressing all the relevant specifics affecting each other’s needs. The more you avoid relevant specifics when leaning into comforting generalizations, the less responsive to needs. The more you shift from generalizing to dealing with the specifics necessary to more fully resolve needs, the more responsive to needs.   Anankelogy recognizes each of us experience a relatively fixed way to relate to whatever affects our needs. Anankelogy calls this your relational orientation .   Relational orientation : habituated way you relate to life, either relying on generalizations or delving into relevant specifics. Generalizing-over-specifying : prioritizing relief-generalizing over engaging relevant specifics. Specifying-over-generalizing : prioritizing engaging relevant specifics over relief-generalizing. This is not a natural priority but one of developmental maturity. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more you address the relevant specifics in life, the greater  your wellness. The more  you depend upon comforting generalizations to avoid engaging relevant specifics, the poorer your wellness.   The more  you guide those you impact to rely on generalizations that distract them from the specifics affecting their needs, the less responsive you are to their needs. The more  you guide those you impact to move beyond generalizations to sort through the specifics that ultimately enables them to resolve needs and remove pain and restore wellness, the greater your responsiveness to their needs. 3. Distinguish between relieving pain and resolving needs. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on facing the natural physical or emotional pain that reports threats. There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs . Once a threat is removed, your body no longer has cause to warn you with pain. You can then restore your ability to more fully function.   The more a threat to your ability to function gets removed, the less cause your body has to keep warning you with pain. But the more you avoid the perceived threat by settling for relieving the pain, the more your body must persist in warning of this ever-present apparent threat. Such discomfort avoidance fuels many of our problems.   Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain seeks to warn you about . As conditions allow for fewer needs to fully resolve, we naturally suffer increasing pain . We get sucked into the norm of reacting to this mounting pain, which tends to leave us in more pain .   We grow accustomed to dull yet manageable pain, but that load of pain can grow to less manageable heights . After all, we typically prefer the pain we feel over the pain we fear . We know, for example, how to handle the pain of repeated disappointment better than handling the pain of risking what often seems like inevitable rejection. So we normalize loneliness along with other less responsiveness to our needs.   Anankelogy recognizes each of us experience a relatively fixed way to deal with pain as our easement orientation .   Easement orientation : habituated way we experience the pain or discomforts we face in life. Relieve-over-resolve : prioritizing relieving pain that leaves the source of pain in place to cause more pain over removing cause for pain by resolving the underlying need or needs. Resolve-over-relieve : prioritizing removing cause for pain by resolving the underlying need or needs over relieving pain that leaves the source of pain in place to cause more pain. This is not a natural priority but one of developmental maturity. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more  you avoid removing any threats by trying to relieve pain (in yourself or in others), the more  problems persist. Short-term easing of painful pressures is okay as long as it doesn’t displace the aim of fully removing the threat, or removing oneself from the threat. The more  you identify and address the threats to be removed (or can remove oneself from the threat) to then remove cause for pain, the less  problems persist.   The more you can get through the sharp discomforts of facing and removing threats so you can fully function, the greater your wellness. The l ess  you can get through the sharp discomforts of facing and removing threats, the l ess  you can fully function and the poorer your wellness. s   Likewise, the more you support others you impact to get through the natural discomforts of facing their threats to functioning, to restore  their functioning, the greater your responsiveness to needs. The less  you support others you impact to get through such discomforts so they end up not being able to fully function, the less  responsive to needs. 4. Distinguish between mutual defensiveness and mutual engagement. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on staying open amidst painful conflict to get to the affected needs on all sides. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness . It’s all too easy to get defensive and closed off when feeling hurt by opposition. It’s all too common to rationalize getting defensive, when the other threw up their guard first.   It’s not easy to remain open amidst conflict while the other remains closed off. But it can be done. Even as the other side buries you with insults, you can defy expectation by keeping your guard down. You resolve more conflicts with mutual engagement than remaining stuck in mutual defensiveness. Even if such engagement starts unilaterally with you.   It’s best to get through a painful conflict by not reacting to the first volley of words. Each side tends to test the waters with something that seems defensible in the moment. If you can show yourself trustworthy to engage them, you can then get to the core of the dispute: their vulnerably affected needs.   The book of Job captures this moment: “Teach me and I will be silent,” Job replies to his detractors, “and show me how I have erred. How painful are honest words! But what does your argument prove? Do you intend to argue with my words, when the words of one in despair belong to the wind?” Author John Powell put it this way’ “To understand people, I must hear what they are not saying, what perhaps they will never be able to say.”   A bulk of our low responsiveness and illegitimacy points to our accepted norm of instantly opposing anyone with whom we have the slightest disagreement. Surely we all come to our beliefs squarely on reasoning, the assumption goes, so why bother exposing our vulnerably felt needs?   In the rush to oppose what another says or does, we too often oppose the unchosen needs they cannot change. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it . Once they feel their unchosen needs threatened, they predictably dig in their heels. The produce more of what you oppose. What you reactively resist you then reflexively reinforce . Rational debate has nothing to do with this.   We deceive ourselves when we normalize mutual defensiveness  in the name of rational debate. A rush to debate usually skips the details that really matter in life . There is less reason to debate the more you can vulnerably relate . The quicker you can address and affirm their unchosen needs, the sooner you can help resolve the conflict.   We complain how divided we’ve become and blame others for getting so defensive. But we easily ignore our own role in provoking another’s defensiveness. We treat them like the enemy, When the real enemy is our indulgent adversarial stance. To paraphrase Pogo : “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!” What I do to you I ultimately do to myself: mutual defensiveness. Author Gordon Fellman , in his 1998 book Rambo and the Dalai Lama: The Compulsion to Win and Its Threat to Human Survival , identifies this problem as “ adversarialism ”. That’s where we objectify others as enemies we must overcome, in our hyper-rationalized win-lose games. And he counters this popular “adversary paradigm” with what he calls a “mutuality paradigm”.   Fellman goes on to speak about our need for “mutuality institutions” to replace our “adversary compulsion” built into our adversarial institutions. Need-response aims to be just that. To fulfill Fellman’s vision to “move toward a predominantly mutualistic society.” To help get us there, need-response unpacks what anankelogy identifies as our routine reaction to conflicts.   Anankelogy recognizes each of us experience a relatively fixed way we handle such conflicts. Anankelogy calls this your conflict orientation .   Conflict orientation : habituated way you relate to the others amidst a conflict with them. Guarded-over-openness : prioritize avoidance of the pain of conflict over enduring the pain of conflict to identify and resolve the underlying needs provoking the conflict. Openness-over-guarded : prioritize enduring the pain of conflict to identify and resolve the underlying needs provoking the conflict over avoidance of the pain of conflict. This is not a natural priority but one of developmental maturity. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more you remain open amidst conflict to identify the affected needs on each side, leading to resolving each other’s needs, the greater your wellness. The more you remain closed amidst conflict to guard yourself from perceived hurt, leading to mutual defensiveness and perpetuating the problem, the poorer your wellness. Likewise, the more you support others you impact to remain open amidst conflict and resist the urge to get defensive, the greater  your responsiveness to needs. The less  you support others you impact to remain open amidst conflict or encourage them to get defensive, the less  responsive to needs. The more  you can nurture a social environment away from adversarialist norms of mutual defensiveness into a mutualistic environment of mutual support to resolve each other’s needs, the greater  your responsiveness than others who merely stop enabling mutual defensiveness.   5. Distinguish between psychosocial vacillation and psychosocial balance. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on addressing self-needs and social needs equally. It’s actually painful when your self-needs resolve better than your social-needs, or when your social-needs resolve better than your self-needs. Neither is more important that the other for your capacity to fully function. Anyone’s self-need for personal freedom is just as important as their social need for cooperation. Anyone’s self-need for times of solitude is just as important as their social need for times of companionship. Anyone’s self-need for self-initiative to do what they’re fully capable is just as important as their social need for social supports to cover areas they require some help.   You do not function as well if your self-needs resolve better than your social needs. Of if your social needs resolve better than your self-needs. Anankelogy recognizes this as psychosocial imbalance .   To ease the tension, we tend to focus on one to the neglect of the other, until later when we focus on those neglected psychosocial needs to the neglect of the first set. Anankelogy recognizes this as psychosocial vacillation .   To resolve the tension, follow nature’s cue to address each psychosocial need in complement to other more resolved psychosocial needs. You embrace your needs to improve your independency, for example, while not neglecting where you must be more dependent. As Ecclesiastes 7:18 puts it, “It’s good to hold onto one and not let go of the other.” You resolve self-needs on par with your social needs. Anankelogy recognizes this as psychosocial balance .   Anankelogy also unpacks political differences  to uncover the unchosen priority of psychosocial needs shaping each other’s political view. Anankelogy recognizes how our political differences stem from each of us having a different psychosocial orientation .   Psychosocial orientation : habituated way of resolving one set of psychosocial needs more than the other set. Wide : Self-needs resolve more than social needs. Deep : Social-needs resolve more than self needs. This one is  a natural priority and not merely one of developmental maturity. This experience stems more from situations impacting one’s needs than from how responsive to the needs.   Each of these presents a natural priority that exists as objective fact. The problem is not this natural distinction but responding to it in one of two ways: Reactive psychosocial vacillation : Relieve pain of unresolved needs by swinging between generalizing how to relieve self-needs and later generalizing how to relieve social-needs. Responsive psychosocial balance : Remove cause for pain by thoroughly resolving self-needs when they come to the fore, then fully resolving social-needs when they come to the fore of your attention. Yes, this is not a natural priority but one of developmental maturity.   You express your inward psychosocial orientation  with your outward political views . You can choose your political responses but no one chooses their psychosocial orientation .   Those with a wide psychosocial orientation tend to lean politically left. They tend to have a strong sense of who they are individually, but feel less included in society. They historically favored more government intervention when that government can be trusted to serve their minority interests.   Those with a deep psychosocial orientation tend to lean politically right. They tend to enjoy strong familial ties and group cohesion, but feel their individuality disrespected. They historically favored more individual rights and less government interference in their self-directed lives. Need-response is less concerned by these different psychosocial oriented different priorities, and far more with the tendency of political elites to pit the unchosen priority of needs of one side against the unchosen priority of needs of the other side. The more AI  hinder RI to resolve their unchosen psychosocial priority of needs, the less responsive and less legitimate such AI . AI  political leaders who share the political outlook of their supporters can earnestly believe they are serving them. But their political outlook is typically formed when their psychosocial needs are resolved far more than their zealous supporters. This can present an ethical problem. They lead supporters to champion policies that benefit themselves more than their supporters. Need-response can guide such AI  political leaders to be more responsive to the needs of their own political supporters.   Need-response can guide AI  political leaders and RI voters to empathize with all sides to a politicized issue. Need-response provide eight exemplary responses  each side of an issue can give to honor the affected needs of the other while remaining true to their own affected needs.   As political leaders heed these other distinctions, they can more easily support all political sides to resolve more of their affected needs. In the process, they can boost their brand as they effectively depolarize politics. They can then attract far more support and votes across the aisle, even as they personally champion their own psychosocially prioritized needs with policy preferences. They can be trusted to be more empathetic to the others with different policy preferences. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more  you address self-needs on par with social needs, to enable more of your needs to fully resolve, the greater your wellness. The less  you address self-needs on equally with social needs, allowing tension to build as fewer needs resolve, the poorer your wellness. The more you can affirm the unchosen priority of those of a different psychosocial orientation, presented as a disagreeable political view, the more  you can move past chosen responses to address unchosen needs and support resolution of those needs to demonstrate greater responsiveness. The less you can affirm the unchosen priority of those of a different psychosocial orientation, and react to their disagreeable political view, the less  you can move past chosen responses to address unchosen needs and likely hinder resolution of needs to the point of being marked as unresponsive. 6. Distinguish between belief reductionism and dynamic relating. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on honestly relating with each other’s actual needs. What we believe about our needs or the needs of others never matters as much as how responsive we are to such needs. The more try to fit our unmanageable needs into our manageable beliefs, the more we tend to neglect or overlook the complicated path to fully resolve them.   The further we get from each other, the more drawn to hyper-rationality . Rational choice theory  gets watered down to serve our preference to avoid messy details. We drift from understanding an element in decision-making to overgeneralizing all decisions as economic calculations, ignoring the emotionally driven needs  compelling actions beyond mere conscious thought.   The less we can function because of mounting unresolved needs, the more we naturally seek cognitive shortcuts. We downsize what is true to fit into our collapsing categories. We convince ourselves we are rational when actually suffering from what anankelogy recognizes as belief reduction.   As a type of avoidance, belief reduction evades relevant evidence outside of one’s beliefs that could actually resolve their needs. A matter is reduced to what one thinks is true or not to avoid facing those uncomfortable needs. Everything outside of that bubble gets repeatedly ignored.  Tunnel vision sets in. Confirmation bias  takes over. Needs kept from resolving. Pain left to spread. Wellness deteriorates.   Belief reductionism  is where someone diminishes a piece of wisdom with universal application as merely some disputable belief. Or dismisses another’s attempt to introduce a helpful idea we all could mutually explore. Or disagrees with someone out of hand without getting to the indisputable unchosen need the other is struggling to express.   You can see an example of belief reductionism  when this wisdom-inspired content gets dismissed as just another set of competing ideas. Or rejecting the notion of a spiritual gift of wisdom that has inspired universal principles enriching us all. Or claiming that “Steph believes natural needs are unchosen” when no evidence exists to support that anyone can choose to be thirsty or to decide to be lonely. You can see this when someone would rather debate something as mere belief to avoid relating honestly to their life.   It generally projects their “ beliefism ” that assumes every idea results from some rationally chosen belief, overlooking all the other factors that shape perceptions and interpretations. If you can rationally choose all of your beliefs, you could potentially find some rational to believe a hot oven will not burn your hand when touched. Or simply choose not to be poor. Mostly, beliefism  prioritizes believing in things over trusting in people. Beliefs risk less than trust. But beliefism risks slipping further into the agonizing abyss of fewer resolved needs .   Such belief reductionism  lets its adherents avoid risking any discomfort of vulnerably applying it to their own life. Such reductionists put guarded individualistic reasoning over honestly interacting about how to best resolve the needs each other faces. It serves the norms of alienation and isolation fueling the loneliness epidemic .   By contrast, dynamic relating  refers to continual openness to updating what is known, or believed to be known. It recognizes how things do not hold steady at all times. That what was true yesterday may be less true or not true today. It seeks to continually update beliefs prone to be in error .   This requires more cognitive investment than beliefism or belief reduction . It invites illumination of blind spots, those things others observe about you but you cannot spot. It explores new ideas that challenge assumptions. It encourages revising one’s stagnant perspectives. Most importantly, it leads to resolving more need.   It adds a vital tool to the need-responder’s resources to help us all be more responsives to each other’s, and our own, neglected needs. Using rational choice theory  to explain decision-making serves as one of many tools in the need-responder’s toolbox, but its watered-down version can be discarded for the shaper tools presented here.   When applied to criminology , rational choice theory often serves as a kind of belief reduction limiting investigators’ ability to actually solve crimes or create just outcomes. The adversarial judicial system suffers from a lack of legitimacy when it reduces violent acts to mere individual choices while it benefits from this narrow scope for its prestige and power. Need-response holds us all to a higher standard: to resolve the needs fueling what gets labeled as crime. It’s empirically disingenuous to assert everyone has the equal opportunity to resolve their needs while ignoring the social environment and other factors limiting actual options.   The concept of crime is largely a social construct that overlooks forms of violence privileged to the powerful. It’s not a U.S. crime for the U.S. to arm the far-right Israeli onslaught of Gazans, yet the loss of innocent life is just as immense. Need-response discipline focuses on any interpersonal or intergroup violence serving one’s own ends, instead of the ideologically manipulated concept of crime focused more on disadvantaged individuals.   Need-response encourages all individuals, authorities and institutions to dynamically relate  to the needs of us all. Especially to the exposed needs  of vulnerable RI . Leaders make better decisions the more they’re updated with impact data. Need-response incentives RI to “ speak truth to power ” to provide that essential data, and incentives AI to “ listen to those impacted ” to improve their earned legitimacy . Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more you let go of what you believe to be open to disconfirming evidence, and the more  this fresh insight enables you to resolve more needs, the greater  your wellness. The more you cling to what you believe and dismiss principles challenging your beliefs and indulgent actions, so that fewer  of your needs can resolve, the poorer your wellness. The better  you can relate to whatever impacts the needs of those around you, the greater  your responsiveness. The less you dynamically relate to whatever impacts the needs of those around you, the lower your responsiveness. The more  you enable constituents to shift from their beliefism to dynamically relate to the evolving details affecting their needs, the greater  your legitimacy. The more  you hinder constituents from questioning their beliefism to the point they overlook the evolving details affecting their needs, the lower  your legitimacy. The more  you let go of any belief reduction that insists law-focused adversarial systems rarely make damaging mistakes, to dynamically engage in reports of such mistakes, the higher  your legitimacy. The more  you cling to belief reduction that insists law-focused adversarial systems rarely produce costly mistakes (like wrongly convicting the innocent), the lower  your legitimacy. 7. Distinguish between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Responsiveness and legitimacy depend on optimizing internal incentives and minimizing external incentives for responding to needs. Relying on threats of punishment or fines or loss of property are never as sustainable as rewarding others who willingly respond to needs.   This is not exclusive to anankelogy. Vast literature exists on extrinsic and extrinsic motivation . For convenience, anankelogy looks at this distinction as another possible orientation.   Motive orientation : habituated way of what incentivizes you the most into action. Extrinsically motivated : Behavior gets reinforced more from external rewards for meeting demands of others than internal rewards from pursuing own potential. Intrinsically motivated : Behavior gets reinforced more from internal rewards from pursuing own potential than external rewards for meeting demands of others. This could be a natural priority dependent on context. At a job you hate, you could be motivated more by extrinsic motivators like a paycheck. At a job you love, you could be motivated more by intrinsic motivators like grateful clients. Intrinsic motivations arguably produce better results than extrinsic motivations.   Leaders relying on extrinsic motivators correlate with poorer results than those leaders who find what intrinsically motivates their subordinates. Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is key to performance management .   Managers often struggle to find which best motivates their staff. Need-response offers a grassroots approach, where line workers provide their supervisor with the impact data that conveys what best motivates the worker. The more productive and contented the worker after utilizing this impact data, the greater that manager’s earned legitimacy .   A similar distinction to make to earn legitimacy is to distinguish between coercive power and asymmetrical blowback . Consider the other extreme, where government authorities rely on such extrinsic motivation as the threat of state violence. Laws are inherently punitive and authorities rarely if ever relate to your affected needs when trying to apply them. Legal authorities risk provoking the very conditions they ostensibly seek to avoid . Legitimacy collapses.   On a smaller social scale, this applies to those targeted for ostensibly breaking the law. A police investigator externally incentivizes a suspect to confess to a crime to avoid facing years in prison. When that coerces the vulnerable innocent to admit to something in which they had no role, the legitimacy of that investigator and anyone going along with it precipitously collapses.   Power really isn’t power unless it results in resolved needs . Otherwise, it’s simple coercive force. The more an authority undermines resolving needs, the less its legitimacy . Making these critical distinctions can be crucial to avoid slipping into the lowest level of violent illegitimacy . On a much larger scale, this applies to government actor who act with little if any oversight. When no one is watching the watchers, their propensity for violence can erupt unchecked. For example, military officials who believe they are fighting terrorism even as they kill noncombatants in harm’s way.   The coercive power of rogue actors imposing external motivators on behalf of the state, and maybe also a bit for themselves, tend to provoke asymmetrical blowback . Those under the boot of the more powerful state may first exhaust nonviolent option as, until out of desperation they start using violence and even acts of terrorism where they target noncombatants.   The word terrorism is a loaded term  used by the powerful state actor, and its propagandist leaning media outlets, to characterize such blowback as illegitimate. Fearmongering helps their cause. Widely available images of blowback violence can be used to disregard these unchosen needs desperately expressed by "terrorism". Yes, the violence is wrong but so is the violence that provoked it. Indulgent side-taking tends to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sometimes they make a law favoring the more powerful. Legitimacy of authority can be lost when imposing a hidden cost . Authority proves less necessary where such needs can freely resolve .   Need-response instills the discipline, in these moments of rationalizing violence on all sides, to address the unchosen needs on all sides. Each side’s chosen reactions get distilled through this lens of responsiveness to unchosen needs. Need-response denies legitimacy to state actors that impose extrinsic motivation to coerce compliance to their demands, even if privileged by law or majority vote.   Reality is not a democracy. The reality of your unchosen needs or my unchosen needs or anyone’s unchosen needs is not amendable to any vote. They occur despite anyone’s wishes. Using violence against anyone’s unchosen needs earns certain denunciation or worst.   Democracies function best when debating policies for our needs and never the needs themselves. Political elites undermine democracy when manipulating us to dispute our different needs. That is undemocratic. If you want a better democracy, first affirm each other's different priority of needs. Only then can you legitimately debate different policy options. Measurably Accountable Impacted Needs The more  you rely on extrinsic motivation, the poorer your wellness. The more  you encourage intrinsic motivation, the better your wellness. The more  you think you must resort to external rewards including threats of violence, the more  you have overlooked their actual needs. The more  you find what internally motivates others to the point they can function more optimally, the more  responsive to needs. The less  you engage the unchosen needs of others as you rely on extrinsic motivations, the lower  your legitimacy. The more you engage the unchosen needs of others as you encourage their intrinsic motivations, the greater  your legitimacy. Engage! Identify the affected needs on all sides of a conflict.   Address each other’s relevant specifics, to counter overgeneralizations.   Aim to resolve needs to remove cause for pain, to counter habitual pain relieving.   Cultivate mutual supports, to counter mutual defensiveness.   Encourage resolution of both self-needs and social needs, to counter polarizing ideologies.   Continually relate to the expressed needs of others, to counter unchecked assumptions.   Find what rewards others from within, to counter coercion that robs them of opportunities.   Engage!   Try being more responsive to the unchosen needs than others than observe what happens. No more disrespecting others with a different view. No more passive reliance on impersonal rules when you can directly address their needs. No more indulgent side-taking , which easily opposes another’s inflexible needs. No more complicity in widespread pathologies like depression, addictions and suicide. No more excuses.   Engage!   Instead of avoiding each other or opposing each other, get to know what each side actually needs. You don’t have to promise you can do anything about their needs. Simply listen to them express their needs.   Engage their needs. Learn. Empathize. And never, ever, ever oppose their needs. Only challenge what you can do about their needs, or illuminate for them how their actions impact you or the one’s you love.   But never oppose the needs themselves. That can only trigger defensiveness, which pulls each other into the dark and away from the liberating light of love.   Engage!   Shift from taking a stance on issues to relating to the needs behind the issues. Dissolve the tensions by being responsive to each side’s entrenched needs.   Love is the higher moral standard we must now enforce. We now hold you accountable, as well as ourselves, to putting the needs of others ahead of your own. No excuses. Your responsiveness to the needs on all sides of a conflict will now be evaluated.   The more your love helps others resolve their unchosen needs, the greater your responsive reputation. And the greater your earned legitimacy. We will accept no less from those impacting you. Engage!   There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love .   Engage! THIS IS ONE IN A SERIES TO ENGAGE OTHERS AMIDST CONFLICTS WITH A BETTER WAY Engage . Engage ! ENGAGE! reaching standard responsiveness cultivating competitive responsiveness creating transformative responsiveness Your responsiveness to engaging opponents Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact others and create your forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this engage category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love. back-to-top

By the conclusion of my exoneration wellness campaign , I must avow to resolve unchosen natural needs. With or without cooperation or permission by the adversarial legal system. In this context, I assert this "declaration of liberty" to resolve needs. Not a liberty in the popular sense of subjectively feeling free, but in the objective sense of resolving objectively existing needs, whether authorities concur or object. This boldly asserts the higher authority of resolving needs in mutual regard over the lesser authority of adversarial impersonal law. This confidently holds all accountable to the each other's impacted needs. Love constrains me with intrinsic motive to serve unchosen needs over the extrinsic motive of bending to error-prone authority. You SHALL love is the greatest law. All else is context. To this unwavering commitment to pursue personal and collective wellness in the face of widespread resistance, I now pledge my life. Which path do you think is laid out for my fate? Accept the conclusion of adversarial authority even when obviously in error. OR Echo Patrick Henry to avow resolving needs: " Give me liberty or give me death! " Jefferson's rhetoric penned in the Declaration of Independence confronts the power struggle they faced with the far off government in London. You will find that document served me well in challenging the power struggle we face with the far off government in Washington D.C. It served as an inspiring template for this avowed commitment to resolve unchosen needs. This 15:50 minute provocative speech can be organized into these seven sections. Opening MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Impacted Needs (part 1) MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Impacted Needs (part 2) MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Impacted Needs (part 3) Proactive stages of need-response process Need-response preferable option Avowing to back up this declaration of liberty The slides you see here are also available on SlideShare . A PDF of the text to the full video is available here , which opens in a new tab. 1. Opening IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN RELATIONS , power differentials easily erode trust between those in authority and those subject to it, making it necessary for those subjected to authority’s indiscretions to assume greater responsibility over their own lives—independent of coercive authorities. Is it not self-evident that authority is only as legitimate as its accountability to the needs it serves? The more those subjected to coercion dispose themselves to suffer it, the more authorities become blindly accustomed to their toxic impacts. Where authorities manipulate the “consent of the governed” to serve its own ends, at the expense of the governed, the standard now raises to the more objective measurable accountability of impacted needs . Those coercively impacted by arbitrary authorities now express their right, their duty, to throw off the chains of arbitrary authorities unaccountable to affected needs, and rebuild the foundation of these imbalanced relations upon principles of accountably resolving needs. The initial step is purely market-based by first exhausting all direct means to identify, express and address impacted needs, before deferring to top-down authority of law—with its history of morphing into the problem it ostensibly serves. The history of authority shows an inclination to drift from its founding mission into protecting itself , however abusive to those it impacts. When originating to counter abuses, unaccountable authority easily repeats the modeled pattern of their former abusers on susceptible others. In the arbitrary way King George III imposed his will on the colonists, their descendants arbitrarily accused me—an asexual transgender and tribally enrolled person—of being a “child recruiting” sexual predator. The power differential built into the criminal justice system fails here to resolve the need for justice. Let these known facts be transparent to a candid world. 2. MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Impacted Needs (part 1) They base their conviction solely on the coached testimony of a child, previously indoctrinated to objectify all LGBTQ people as bad. MAIN 01 testable hypothesis Among sexual assault cases in the early 1990s allowing a conviction without corroborating evidence, a significant number are wrongful convictions. They resist correcting their errors in their appeal process, demonstrating more concern for protecting laws than the needs we create laws to serve.   MAIN 02 testable hypothesis The more focused on impersonal laws than personal needs, the less the legal system enables the resolution of underserved needs. They force an asexual transgender person to register as a sex offender for life, without providing context for the public to recognize a viable innocence claim .   MAIN 03 testable hypothesis The more detail offense registries provide to the public, the easier to differentiate between viable innocence claims and those clearly guilty. They objectify the complainant to further their own ends at the expense of the complainant’s specific needs.   MAIN 04 testable hypothesis The more guided support provided for victims of violence to communicate directly with identified victimizers, the more opportunities for the interest of justice to be served over the interests of judicial institutions. They rush to judgment with their convenient yet depersonalizing judicial categories of accused and accuser, overlooking conciliatory resolution, serving their own divisive ends at the expense of those involved in the inflamed conflict.   MAIN 05 testable hypothesis The more opportunities afforded to ascribed victims and accused victimizers to resolve their affected needs, the less attractive the limiting option of the adversarial justice system. They coercively objectify both accused and accuser to fit into their adversarial categories, assuming the state must mitigate conflict without accountability for their objectifying effects upon traumatized individuals.   MAIN 06 testable hypothesis The more impersonal the adversarial process, the less just its outcomes; the more personally engaged each affected side, the more just the outcomes. They fall trap to tunnel vision investigations , sometimes pursuing outlandish theories of guilt, without checking their confirmation bias, explicitly forbidden in other professions.   MAIN 07 testable hypothesis The more open to critique a criminal investigation, the more accurate will be its findings; the less open to critique, the less accurate its conclusions—correlating significantly with wrongful convictions. They impress the public as its trusted protector, while resisting public critique by evading access to its detention facilities.   MAIN 08 testable hypothesis The more transparent law enforcement institutions, the less likely damaging abuses of discretion will continue overlooked. They present the criminal justice system as the only tax-supported means to “protect and serve” the public from threats of interpersonal violence, often dismissing without impartial review other viable alternatives potentially more responsive to the affected needs.    MAIN 09 testable hypothesis The more alternatives to the criminal justice process are provided that can effectively address the needs involved, the lower the incidents of violence, lessening the burden on the adversarial court system. They impose excessive bail that routinely punishes suspects for being poor, while rewarding suspects who can afford exorbitant fees, in the name of “fair” justice.   MAIN 10 testable hypothesis The lower the amount of bail is set to correspond with what suspects can afford, the lower the rate of wrongful convictions stemming from the coercive effects of detention and from not being allowed to access a law library or to actively research own case. 3. MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Measurable Needs (part 2) They coerce the accused—often the most disadvantaged—into admitting guilt for a crime they didn’t do, by threatening further jail time and longer sentences, if not promptly accepting a plea deal, which is akin to forcing unreliable confessions under torture, ostensibly to avoid collapsing the criminal court system if more defendants asserted their right to a speedy trial.   MAIN 11 testable hypothesis The more accountable to “the absence of crime and disorder, not merely the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them,” the fewer cases the overburdened criminal justice system would have to process. They offer relief from pain to the winning side in a court battle, at the expense of the losing side, which typically fails to resolve needs on all sides, enabling root problems to recur and provide more rationale for its overused adversarial approach.   MAIN 12 testable hypothesis The more opportunities for parties involved in acts of violence to address their relevant needs, even in the most painful and consequential of violent interactions, the more likely the involved parties can meaningfully grieve their losses and transform the situation into more responsible living. They economically incentivize mass incarceration, instead of incentivizing reduced levels of violence, in violation of Peel principles that provided the foundation for modern policing.   MAIN 13 testable hypothesis The more accountable the use of police power to “public approval” for its purpose, the more likely it will be received the public’s respect for its “existence, actions, and behaviors.” They emphasize the role of interpersonal violence over other forms of violence with as much or more impact on the security of our lives, demonstrating a bias toward ideological individualism that goes against wholeness of balancing personal with group needs.   MAIN 14 testable hypothesis The more the needs of the individual are balanced with the needs of society, the less tension gets created, resulting in fewer incidents of violence. They fail to admit the adversarial process can be as biased, imperfect, and guilty as the subjects it concludes as guilty, even resisting the standard they apply to subjects being applied in return.   MAIN 15 testable hypothesis The more we all recognize that the “ police are the public and the public are the police ,” the more we can hold each other accountable “ to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the intent of the community welfare. ” They coax “persons of interest” into compromising their right against self-incrimination during extended interviews that morph into hostile interrogations, often manipulating innocent persons into fitting their preconceived assumptions of guilt, effectively denying legal counsel that would mitigate this perverting of justice from confirmation bias.   MAIN 16 testable hypothesis The more accountable investigations remain to the rights of the accused, the less likely the pursuit of justice strays into convicting the wrong persons that allows actual perpetrators loose to harm others. They routinely resist admitting its many errors, insisting on conviction finality, despite compelling evidence of wrongful convictions, including actual innocence, at alarming rates.   MAIN 17 testable hypothesis The less an authority admits it imperfections, the more errors stemming from these imperfections likely remain unchecked to undermine authority. They evade culpability of wrongful convictions, while under pretense of blind justice, to avoid liability of expensive damage awards to exonerees.   MAIN 18 testable hypothesis The more states that enact legislation setting a maximum compensation amount to exonerees, the higher the rate of exonerations from that state’s pool of innocence claimants. They overpolice populations already suffering from historical trauma, complicating that trauma by subjecting it with further violence, easily perpetuating the debunked “rational choice” ideology of personal responsibility, overlooking limited options the traumatized can choose from.   MAIN 19 testable hypothesis The more subjected to authoritarian pressures to fit others’ idea of good compliance, the less free to internalize responsible living in one’s own sustainable terms; the less subjected to authoritarian pressures, the freer to live responsibly— demonstrated in fewer violent interactions. They aid and abet the destruction of countless lives with collateral consequences of criminal conviction, by failing to inform suspects of these harmful consequences if they take a plea deal, fueling the problem of making quick decisions without properly considering long-term impacts.   MAIN 20 testable hypothesis The more informed a suspect of long-term consequences of a plea deal, the fewer are likely to quickly waive their right to a proper hearing; and the more court officials resist this potential backlog of cases to process more thoroughly, as a right to every accused and accuser, the less legitimate this adversarial process. They overlook my demonstrated concern for sexual violence survivors to further their own image as caring more about sexual assault survivors, as if impersonal government can provide more for survivor needs than personalized attention from caring individuals like me.   MAIN 21 testable hypothesis The more opportunities afforded the accused to convey their empathic concern for those reportedly victimized by violence, the greater the opportunity for justice to be served—serving both the accuser’s need for supportive understanding and the public’s need to heal the wounds of violence. 4. MAIN: Measurable Accountability of Measurable Needs (part 3) They fail to serve a frightened public, with their pretentious legislation for a sex offender registry, failing to distinguish between the recognizably guilty and viably innocent, undermining the right of background screeners and their users to make informed decisions of trustworthiness.   MAIN 22 testable hypothesis The more nuanced context provided in publicly accessible conviction records, the more the public can judge trustworthiness for themselves, unmolested by the corrupting biases of the adversarial process.   MAIN 22a testable hypothesis By publishing how one’s conviction was determined (plea, bench trial, or jury trial), the public can see the right-to-trial was asserted over a plea deal, correlating with a viable innocence claim.   MAIN 22b testable hypothesis By publishing one’s type of verdict (guilty, no contest, or not guilty), the public can see the trial, and not a plea deal, produced the questioned guilty verdict.   MAIN 22c testable hypothesis By publishing one’s recommended sentencing (lower than guidelines, within guidelines, or over guidelines), the public can judge the fortitude in enduring the personal cost of a harsher sentence for maintaining one’s innocence.   MAIN 22d testable hypothesis By publishing one’s institutional record (number of major misconducts, or any new criminal case), the public can see how the innocent avoids trouble, where avoidable, while in prison.   MAIN 22 testable hypothesis By publishing one’s context of discharge (paroled, denied parole for lack of contrition from maintaining innocence), the public can see how the innocent resisted pressure to “show remorse” to get out of prison early on parole.   MAIN 22 testable hypothesis By publishing one’s criminal history (no other criminal history, no prior criminal history, no follow-up charges, or no warrants), the public can judge a lack of criminal history supports a claim of innocence. They fail to correct the self-serving but false belief that all prisoners claim to be innocent, when academic surveys find only a minority claim actual innocence, furthering to dehumanize every accused person as being stuck in self-righteous denial and therefore deserving to be traumatized into compliance.   MAIN 23 testable hypothesis The more widely debunked the incorrect belief that all prisoners claim they didn’t to it, the less dismissive the public will be to viable claims of wrongful convictions. They fail to link epidemic rates of depression, anxiety, substance use, suicide and deaths of despair to its coercive influence against living freely and responsibly, by imposing external pressures at odds with internal needs the law can never fully anticipate or personally serve.   MAIN 24 testable hypothesis The more those coerced by authority to suppress their needs shift to freely express and address those impacted needs, the lower the rates of poor health outcomes. 5. Proactive stages of need-response process To answer these problems, this declaration to freely resolve needs unfolds in three proactive stages. It began by identifying needs, assessing their vulnerability to authority coercion. It followed by expressing the power differential’s current impact on these needs, auditing authorities’ responsiveness to engage us in these impacted needs. Finally, declaring the liberty to resolve needs by boldly addressing these needs, avowing to resolve these needs either in mutual cooperation or in unilateral responsibility in the face of authority figure’s comparative lack of responsibility. Since creating this video, I've added a preliminary "stage". And it's now a cycle. These original three stages morphed into this four-part cycle. Wisdom indicated an earlier step to alert recipients of this fresh approach. ALERT or ANNOUNCE this new mutualizing process. ASSESS responsiveness of recipient to this new process. AUDIT recipient's responsiveness to any identified needs. AVOW to resolve identified needs with or without recipient's cooperation. 6. Need-response preferable option Till recently, we have resigned to our avoidant options , to lower any risk of authorities’ reprisals over our tenuous lives. But wellness compels us to speak up with our conciliatory options , and if exhausted with insufficient results to then resort to our adversarial options . We reserve all viable options necessary to resolve one another’s needs, including respect for your needs. To this end, we hold each other accountable to everyone’s levels of lowered pain and improved wellness outcomes. Since creating this video, I've replaced "conciliatory" with mutuality. Mutuality serves as the corrective counterpoint to systemic "adversarialism". The word "conciliatory" can have a connotation of negotiated appeasement, and that is not at all what need-response is about. In short, declaring the liberty to resolve justice needs avows to address such underserved needs in a more responsive mutuality paradigm. The more the adversarial and quite alienating system wrongly convicts the innocent, among many other egregious errors undermining the interests of justice, the more we must refuse to be complicit in its brokenness by vainly relying on it to identify and correct its own many errors. 7. Avowing to back up this declaration of liberty Anyone in power opposing these accountable measures without offering viable alternatives shall be deemed a threat to the public good of liberty, and potentially as the very face of evil. Any coerced acquiescence invites public vilification . Anyone enabling such dysfunction risks ostracization . A dividing line is now set between those whose lives are committed to resolving affected needs, knowable by the removal of suffering, and those uncommitted and who continue to noticeably perpetuate painful problems . For the support of this declaration of liberty to freely resolve needs, with its unwavering accountability to the support of Nature by measurable correlations, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our resources and our sacred honor. Your responsiveness to this declaration of liberty to resolve needs Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact others and create your forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this wellness campaign category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love. back-to-top

The more you avoid your pain, the more pain you attract . Pain only exists to warn you of threats, real or imagined. The longer it takes to address these apparent threats, the more your pain takes on a mind of its own. Simple pain can quickly turn into complicated layers of annoying misery. Anankelogy identifies four progressing types of pain. Need-response aims to address them all in a thorough wellness campaign . Which do you prefer? Relieve your pain instantly, or avoid it altogether, even if that lets it return again and again. OR Face your pain, to identify the needs your pain reports so you can remove cause for the pain. Have you ever noticed how the more you try to get away from your pain, the more your pain somehow finds you. The more you try to flee from your anxieties, the more your fears chase you. The more you run from your anger, the more outrage jumps in your way. The more you stuff down your disappointments, the more they pop up to surprise you. Anankelogy identifies pain as a warning of a perceived threat to your ability to function . The greater the threat and the more limiting to your function, the more intense the pain. Apart from such threats to your ability to function, there is no such thing as pain . Anankelogy recognizes four graduated types of pain. The longer a reported threat persists, the next type of pain often kicks in. natural pain residual pain biostructural pain metapain originally reported threat to remove reminder a threat is not fully removed unheeded warnings seek another route warning to re­move threat of pain itself Let's take a closer look at each, along with some illuminating examples. And then consider how a wellness campaign can potentially remove each kind. Natural pain Residual pain Biostructural pain Metapain 1. Natural pain This is when your body originally reports a new threat to remove. This is often a quick and sharp pain. It is rarely agonizing when processed in a flash. Natural pain occurs each time your body immediately warns you of an emerging threat to your ability to keep functioning. Your natural pain serves you, warns you, keeps you alert to threats. Natural pain is inherently good . This basic type of pain tends to instantly compel you to seek removal of the threat. But it typically allows time to reflect on how real is that threat. And grants you space to determine if you are to remove the threat itself or if you are to remove yourself from the threat. Consider these three examples of natural emotional pain. Natural pain at work . Your boss angrily shouts at you for something beyond your control and you instantly feel the sting of rejection. Natural pain amidst political tension . Your roommate mischaracterizes your stance on a key issue, provoking you to feel the sting of being misunderstood. Natural pain from a wrongful conviction . You initially feel shocked by the guilty verdict while wondering, in horror, how the jury could find you guilty without any clear evidence. Natural pain should be easily reversable in a wellness campaign . During the initial BASE phase , you learn to shift from habitually avoiding the emotions you find uncomfortable to discovering how each specific unpleasant emotion conveys a specific need for you to address. You learn to embrace its sharp jab to face its urgent warning and then boldly address it. The more you address its warning, the more the accompanying pain of rejection, of being misunderstood, of shock, naturally goes away. Once there are no more threats to report, there is no more cause for pain. If your body perceives the threat is not sufficiently removed, you naturally segue into residual pain . 2. Your Residual pain Whenever a perceived threat persists, your body insists on warning you. If you can only partially remove the threat, or somewhat remove yourself from that threat, your body is only doing its job to keep painfully warn you. In contrast to the sharpness of natural pain , residual pain typically remains at a lower pain threshold. In fact, you often ease your need just enough to relieve its annoying discomfort. Especially if the resources to fully resolve your need seems out of reach. We often prefer the familiar pain of residual pain over the unknown sharpness of natural pain . We often gain more experience figuring out how to handle the dull yet manageable strain of our impartially resolved needs. We often find it easier tolerate lingering residual pain than to tolerate the intense yet brief moments of natural pain . However, if too much unprocessed pain builds up, residual pain can pile up layer upon layer. Eventually, these layers can grow to be as painful as sharp natural pain . Once such pain reaches intolerable levels, you understandably seek some way to avoid the agony. You likely seek out pleasures to offset the pain. If such pain relief lets you avoid the intensity of such pain, you likely ignore the threats provoking such pain. Perhaps you feel or know there is little you can do about the originating threats. Perhaps you find yourself trapped in avoiding these unpleasant warnings, which leaves the threats persisting with more alarm bells going off. The more you slip into these avoidance habits, the more you risk sliding down the rabbit hold of addictions. Getting stuck on avoiding pain can eventually result in more pain to avoid . Consider these three examples of residual emotional pain. Residual pain at work . You cannot find a suitable way to appease your boss’s anger, so you acquiesce in a way that leaves your need for approval painfully yet tolerantly unresolved. Residual pain amidst political tension . You try to overlook the slight, but your body reminds you that your need to be understood remains painfully unresolved. Residual pain from a wrongful conviction . You struggle to wait for your appellate counsel to file your appeal, as you remain constantly and painfully aware of your unmet need for justice. Residual pain could be a little challenging to reverse in a wellness campaign . During the TEAM phase , you receive growing support to identify and address your lingering unmet needs. You learn to remove cause for pain with each painful need you address with your support team. The more you sort through your lingering emotional pains of haunting disapproval, of still being misunderstood, of unfair treatment, the less pain disturbs you or distracts you. The meaningful process of sorting these out with others supporting you to succeed can be richly satisfying. If left unprocessed, such residual pain can slip into biostructural pain . 3. Your Biostructural pain “When you repress your anger,” John Powell asserts, “your stomach keeps score.” Ignore your emotional warnings too long, and your body signals the problem down another path. Repressed fear can reemerge as a headache. Suppressed depression can resurface as lethargy. Rejected anxiety may rebound in explosive anger. While you understandably don’t desire any of these, each tries to serve your need to be aware of threats to be removed. The more you can appreciate such pain and start removing the report threat, the more each pain can go away. Pain seems to be nature’s least appreciated gift . Ignored threats to your functioning can easily distort your biological and psychological processing of pain. You feel hurt somehow and not recognize the immediate source for that pain. This pain could account for the identified chemical imbalances associated with depression that psychiatric meds seek to relieve . This could also account, in more severe cases, for the severe cognitive distortions among the most violent. Consider these three examples of emotionally based biostructural pain . Biostructural pain at work . Your persisting yet unmet need for your boss’s affirmation looks for another way to be addressed, creating an obsessive craving that feeds your addictions. Biostructural pain amidst political tension . The more you suppress your anger toward others of an opposing view without trying to understand them, the more your headache returns. Biostructural pain from a wrongful conviction . Your fear of being denied on denial gradually turns to anger as you find yourself increasingly disillusioned with the criminal justice system. Biostructural pain will likely be difficult to reverse in a wellness campaign . During the GROW phase , you start to address the power dynamics trapping you in pain. You cannot remove a cause for pain when it stems from those in power over you needlessly provoking your emotional pain. Together, we incentivize such powerholders to improve their responsiveness to your overlooked needs. The further you can unpack and process the deeper pain of addictions masking over other underserved needs, of headaches and other body aches pointing to your unaddressed needs, of generalizing outrage that can blind you from specifics you cannot accept, the closer we get to reaching your ultimate wellness goal. The more underlying needs to process, the longer this process make take. The less of your biostructural pain ever gets processed, the more your body will likely shift into metapain —if not there already. 4. Your Metapain This is when your body reports a threat of too much pain. The pain load itself becomes the threat you are compelled to remove. At this stage, your wellbeing is threatened by too much pain lingering on for so long. Your health likely declines, or rapidly collapses. This is late-stage pain suffering. About the only thing worse is death, although some have “opted out” to try to escape such unbearable agony. While the pain feels like the threat to oppose, it’s only doing its job. The real threat is all those underlying unresolved needs. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain tries to report . When poorly addressed for too long, the pain emerges as another threat to face. Consider these three examples of emotional metapain . Metapain at work . All the painful warnings of your unmet need to be valued grows intense enough to be a threat itself, creating more unbearable pain for you to cope with addiction. Metapain amidst political tension . You feel overwhelmed by so much political angst that your body warns you how it cannot adequately function from too much overwhelming angst. Metapain from a wrongful conviction . Your unanswered need for exoneration shouts so loudly in your internal system that it creates its own alarming threat to your capacity to fully function. Metapain can only be reversed in a wellness campaign after addressing enough of the underlying unmet needs prompting the overload of warnings. During the GOAL phase , you receive team support to speak truth to power in a mutualizing way . This incentivizes those in power over you to listen to those impacted . We motivate them to improve each other’s responsiveness to each other’s affected needs, to remove more cause for pain. Together, we can reduce and eventually remove much of the pain fueling addictions, or your overwhelming angst during these conflicted times, or your agony over overlooked innocence. At a minimum, we challenge the legitimacy of any powerholder to continue any further negative impact on your inflexible needs. For each unresponsive powerholder , we initiate what we call a scorn campaign . Because we’re serious about removing—and not merely easing—your pain. Removing all types of pain by resolving all needs The wellness campaign supports you to go from coping with your pain to stopping it . Because a life full of pain is a life filled with too many unmet needs . Anankelogy gives you understanding to better relate to your pain. Need-response with its wellness campaign gives you tools to better address and ultimately remove your pain. To remove your pain, you must first face and embrace your pain. You will be more successful overcoming your pain if nurturing your “ easement orientation ” toward resolving needs over relieving pain. The Anankelogy Foundation provides you with a program to do just that. Join us in growing a movement toward greater wellness among us all. Start your journey by joining this free online program that gives you the tools to start removing your pain, by getting to the source of it all. Your responsiveness to these types of pain Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love. back-to-top

The more consumers grow disillusioned with increasingly failing options, the more our need-responsive alternative may appear to fit the bill. Whether need-responders complement or compete with lawyers and counselors or other available helping professionals, the value they can create may go through the roof. The more a need-responder fills a niche poorly served by others, the more their expertise could be in high demand. Which would you prefer? Continue down the familiar course of reacting to pain and problems. OR Resolve each underserved needs to restore functioning and remove pain. Need-responders seek to serve underserved needs overlooked by other institutions or industries. Its potential has yet to be fully explored, but a here are nine ways we can accurately predict that need-responders can create marketable value. Need-responders can create marketable value by… Resolving more needs . Addressing context behind poor health outcomes . Reducing unnecessary health costs . Removing barriers to your full creative potential . Supporting each other’s purpose in life . Improving economic productivity . Depolarizing politics . Reversing wrongful convictions of the actually innocent . Reversing institutional decline . Spreading more love . Need-responders uniquely position themselves to serve underserved needs. Especially those defying easy categorization as either a f ree enterprise private good or a public sector public good . Indeed, for that reason, need-responders can create solutions not readily envisioned by either capitalistic or socialistic systems. With a little imagination, you perhaps could think of many ways this fresh approach could create marketable value. Let’s simply start with these ten cases. 1. Resolving more needs. Current options pull us heavily into relieving the pain of our many underserved needs. Anankelogy shows us how unresolved needs persist in warning you of a threat to your ability to fully function. Without viable options, we normalize the resulting pain. Anankelogy helps us appreciate why we are drawn to easily to products and services easing our suffering more than removing such pain. The free market freely caters to our desires to pick the low fruit of pain-relief, dooming us to suffer further pain. Government and nonprofit remedies tend to favor the lower standard of harm reduction over the higher standard of systemic resolution of needs, which also risks leaving us in the pain of our unresolved needs. Need-responders help you identify and address not only own poorly served needs, but the needs of others with whom you interact. Need-responders incentivize you to team up with others to resolve needs more fully, and not settle for mere relief. The more your needs fully resolve, the better you can function. With better function comes less of a reason for your body to warn you with pain. Resolving needs removes cause for pain. Need-responders encourage you to explore this solution by first learning to endure a little hardship upfront in order to enjoy some resulting peace . How much is such a solution worth to you? 2. Addressing context behind poor health outcomes. ​Normalizing unresolved needs lets your body work overtime warning you again and again of unaddressed threats to your functioning. Eventually, such pain builds up as its own threat to your functioning . You experience these in the form of various health challenges. The more you try to tamp down your symptoms, the more your battered body screams out for attention in some other way. Your anxiety then turns into a stomachache, which if ignored may turn into a headache. Your bodily aches exist to serve you, or you will end up serving them . Need-responders skip pacifying your symptoms to address the source of such painful warning signs. If you require some relief, need-responders will not let you forget that any pain relief must remain temporary on the disciplined path to remove cause for such pain. Imagine your migraine headache finally clearing up. Envision your life without that persistent cough. Consider all you can do if not always chasing the next health crisis derailing your life. While not applicable in every situation, need-responders provide you with the only available means to remove cause for disturbing symptoms by addressing your underlying wellness needs. How much is such a solution worth to you? 3. Reducing unnecessary health costs. Medical bills pile up the more this dysfunctional status quo forces your health needs to take a back seat. You risk getting captured into the medicalization of your underserved needs. Or perhaps you’re painfully already there. Under this status quo, you’re to assume your mental health challenges are a private health concern. Health providers traditionally frame your addictions as independent of the social pressures crashing upon you. So you risk the stigma of seeking psychotherapy that might help you through these mental health problems holding you back. Whether out of pocket or with health insurance, you resign to the norm of assuming a medical bill for something that’s not really a personal health cost, but a public health matter well beyond your personal control. Need-responders equip you to speak your truth to power . With their support, you build a support team that encourages you to more boldly confront these external factors provoking your pain. You learn to incentivize the powerful to listen to you and your supporters. You subtlety shift the stigma onto these neglectful impactors. You appeal to their aim to improve their public brand . Instead of assuming a personal health cost to address a private health concern, need-responders inspire you to invite others to invest in your public wellness campaign . Together, we find ways to turn powerful stressors into potent supporters. Once converted, the powerful impactor gains a boost to their public reputation , who get incentivized to pay you for the privilege. How much is such a solution worth to you? 4. Removing barriers to your full creative potential. You’re unlikely to reach your life’s full potential if repeatedly held back by mounting pain of unmet needs. Your body continually warns you of threats to your ability to fully function. That’s what pain is for. You may feel too distracted by such pain to even entertain your creative potential. While continually obsessed on dealing with such pain, the years can easily slip by. Perhaps you feel powerless to live your dreams. Too many bills to pay. Too many crises popping up left and right. If only there was some way out of your life of quiet desperation! If only there was some service that helps you escape those traps preventing you from realizing your life’s full potential. Well, now there is, with this new professional service of need-response . Need-responders take you past merely relieving your pain to realizing your creative potential. Need-responders call out the patterns trapping you in symfunctional strain . Need-responders help you identify and more effectively address your many needs, by stretching your skills to meet challenges to reach a flow state . By adapting psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi ’s diagram to your specific situation, need-responders can help you reframe apparent obstacles as worthy challenges, then turn those challenges into an opportunity resolve more and more needs. When you find yourself fully absorbed and effortlessly doing what you love, your creative potential naturally flowers. How much would that be worth to you? 5. Supporting each other’s purpose in life. If you survived a major crisis, you likely learned some things that could prove helpful to others struggling with such a crisis. When grieving your painful loss or losses, you may have found meaning by helping others get through this crisis. Counseling is a great resource for helping you grieve, to adjust to any losses, and help you make meaning through it all. Need-response goes further by supporting your “ cause ” to help others similarly situated. The more you can break out of your silo of self-absorbing pain and escape from its alienating isolation, the more you can magically turn a tragedy into a kind of triumph. As need-responders support you to speak truth to power, they can incentivize these resource-rich impactors to support your “cause” of helping others similarly situated. You invite them to invest in your passionate purpose to help others still struggling. As you bring these powerful people onboard, you provide them opportunity to improve their brand. It’s a win-win not being tried by any other professional service. How much would such a service be worth to you? 6. Improving economic productivity. How productive are you when your boss angrily shouts at you? If you’re more internally motivated like me, you understandably feel demotivated. You then do just enough to avoid any further painful anger. You likely avoid risking retribution, so the supervisor continues with the misconception that they must motivate you with their stern reprimands. Productivity suffers in this blind spot. If left unaddressed, presenteeism can set in. Presenteeism can morph into absenteeism . Which can morph into abruptly quitting the job. Most quit a job to get away from an unresponsive boss . While many employers ensure their managers properly treat their workers, my career has been punctuated by less than competent supervisors. Not all employers prioritize best practices toward their talent base. Not all employers invest in leadership development programs. Of if they do, how often do supervisors check with their subordinates for feedback to their leadership? Need-responders incentivize employers, and their supervisors, to better understand the specific needs of their workers. Instead of any top-down DEI program, need-responders support a more grassroots effort to include each worker’s unique yet oft-excluded contribution. The more a supervisor is made aware of each worker’s overlooked concerns, the more productive and cohesive the team. The need-responder supports the vulnerable worker to report their neglected needs to the supervisor, to speak their truth to power . The worker is equipped to confidently assert their overlooked needs. Need-responders help dissatisfied workers to test any association with their additive behaviors to unaddressed pain stemming from their workplace situations. The more the worker can confidently express their underserved workplace needs, the less pain they will suffer, and with reduced pain they can more easily reduce their pain-coping behaviors. Which can lead to increased productivity, so this is a win-win alternative to the usual adversarial alternatives: quitting after giving a two-week notice; quitting abruptly, perhaps walking out in the middle of a shift; whisper campaign shaping the reputation of the employer or supervisor; online criticism, warning others to not seek employment or any business there; bad press coverage; industry ethics review board; and filing a complaint with the National Labor Review Board . Need-responders first helps the dissatisfied worker to compel the supervisor to cease any harm. The more the worker demonstrates less addictive behavior and more productivity on the job, the supportive supervisor may receive a boost to their professional reputation. Which is by far preferrable than the Damocles’ Sword of the worker’s withheld adversarial options. Lest anyone feels this smells too much like extortion , need-responders encourage us all to steer clear of the slippery adversarial path that avoids resolving needs. Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force, or threat of 1. violence, 2. property damage, 3. harm to reputation, or 4. unfavorable government action. Does that really apply here? Consider these salient differences. There is already a working relationship between the parties. The working relationship involves a power imbalance. There is already a level of coercion in the other direction, called exaction . And your “demand” is for a preferred mutualizing approach to responsibly address and hopefully resolve each other’s affected needs. Actual extortion includes none of these. Need-responders shall call out any such irresponsible reaction. When the supervisor learns the worker will waive their adversarial options, need-responders can incentivize them to accept the more attractive alternative of our mutualizing process to address each other’s exposed needs. It’s a win-win for all involved. How much is such a workplace solution worth to you? 7. Depolarizing politics. Let’s unpack politics . Only anankelogy provides comprehensive insight into our political differences . It’s about a different inflexible priority of needs . Only anankelogy provides the tools to empathize with the needs on both sides to politicized issues . Depolarizing our differences starts with appreciating our different priority of inflexible needs. Anankelogy defines politics as the art of generalizing how to agreeably address needs in different social situations . The less we appreciate other’s social situation, the less we tend to empathize with their different priority of needs that clash openly with our priorities. All other attempts to address political differences overlook the central role of needs. Too many hope in vain to persuade others to share their own prioritized experience of needs. The needs themselves can only be changed when fully resolved. Contemporary politics do little to help resolve those needs. Indeed, generalizing politics risk keeping you trapped in pain of unmet needs. While others complain about polarized politics, only need-response shows you how your differently experienced needs create political differences and fuels polarization . Need-responders can equip you to melt the tension using the “ praise sandwich ” approach. Instead of first disagreeing with someone with a political view at odds with your own, you learn to first listen for their underlying inflexible needs. You affirm those needs, before you question how their politics affects your needs. You close with forging a deeper connection, despite any shallow differences. How much is such a solution to the problem of political polarization worth to you? 8. Reversing wrongful convictions of the actually innocent. All prisoners insist they’re innocent, right? Wrong. Only about 15% of prisoners claim actual innocence . Other felons may complain about the harshness of the sentence, but most admit to doing the deeds. It just takes a while for many of them to realize the harmful impacts on their victims. Prisoners persistently proclaiming their innocence face repeated scorn from other prisoners. “You think you’re better than us?” Rejection by other prisoners follows on the heels of widespread rationalization that the criminal judicial system rarely makes mistakes . The adversarial judicial process benefits from its confirmation bias. The zeal to get tough in crime blinds many to its risk of wrongly convicting the innocent. Such widespread ignorance of systemic problems built into the adversarial judicial process privileges denial of factual innocence. How do you expect an institution repeatedly benefiting from its miscarriages of justice to admit and correct its own self-serving mistakes? Academic estimates of wrongful convictions range from under 1% to 15%. The more conservative rates count only those claiming actual and not legal innocent. Didn’t do it, wasn’t there, no such incident every happened—and the available evidence (or lack of it) backs up their claims. Need-response offers a viable alternative to this error-prone adversarial process. Need-responders complement, or compete, with innocence litigators and prosecutors to identify and clear innocence cases. Supporters of the innocent can download a free tool that automatically calculates the viability of a compelling claim of innocence. Need-responders can help proactively challenge any ongoing privileged discrimination against the unexonerated innocent. Need-responders seek to channel anger away from any error-prone adversarial approach, by redirecting any disgust into its more engaging mutualizing process. Need-responders dare raise the bar of justice by holding all accountable to the impacts on one another’s needs. How much is such a solution worth to you? 9. Reversing institutional decline . In anankelogical terms, an institution exists to serve a particular set of public needs in a mass society . For example, politics exist to serve public needs addressed by policies. Judicial institutions exist to serve justice needs affected by interpersonal violence. Each mass institution initially emerged to accountably serve such needs, as its mission or purpose for existing. The growing complexities of society makes it difficult for systems like politics and the judiciary to address needs with impersonal laws relying on an adversarial process that objectifies us into oppositional categories. Over time, almost all institutions tend to drift from prioritizing its founding purpose to increasingly prioritize and sustain its own existence. Growing distrust in such institutions point to their failure to adequately serve the needs for which they exist. The less an institution faithfully serves it originating purpose, the greater the risk for public distrust towards its privileged self-serving activities. We can give you nine instances of this, and how need-responders can reverse it . Need-responders address your specific needs in ways overlooked by these institutions. Need-responders circumvent the failing adversarial process, which pits us needlessly against each other, with its more effective mutualizing approach. Need-responders show you how we’re better off when understanding and respecting each other’s different needs than serving institutional categories against each other for their institutional convenience. If institutional leaders agree to partner with us, need-responders can complement their efforts. If refusing our higher standard of mutual need-resolving respect, then need-responders shall be poised to compete with these failing institutions. Need-responders shall not lower themselves to the self-serving agenda of institutions that drag society down into indulgently taking oppositional sides. Need-responders raise the bar with the discipline of resolving needs with loving respect. How much is such a solution that could reverse institutional decline worth to you? 10. Spreading more love. The lofty ideals of love tend to fade as fewer of our needs can fully resolve. You may find it next to impossible to regard the needs of others when self-absorbed around the pain of your own unmet needs. It’s not that you’re morally bad and filled with hate. Rather, you live in a world becoming less responsive to your inflexible needs. Which leave little room for your potential to spread love. Many of us find ourselves sucked into those institutional convenience categories. We’re pitted against each other. We vehemently oppose one another, never really trying to understand each other. Institutional elites gain by keeping us outraged. While we may not admit it, elites provoke us to blame others and then hate each other for feeling trapped in despair. Need-responders offer you a way out of modern despair. Need-responders seek ways you can grow your potential to spread love. First, by bring some love to you. To affirm your inflexible needs. And by cultivating a support system that encourages and inspires each other to replace widespread alienation and animosity with deeper connections and potential for human flourishing love. How much would you be willing to invest in such a service if it was offered only today? What value to you find in sticking with the status quo? Asked in another way, how much is it costing you to forgo such solutions? Can you really afford not to pursue such solutions? With many options you can start for free, why not explore this pioneering alternative to our failing institutions? And if you find any of it helpful, why not spread the word? There’s at least one major hurdle to appreciating this marketable value. Each call you to resolve needs by enduring their natural discomforts upfront. If glued to seeking and pursuing pain-relief first, none of these options may be a good fit for you. Need-responders recognize we all easily slip into the habit of avoiding whatever seems uncomfortable. Suddenly spreading some love can seem awkward and uncomfortable. So our first marketable value introduces you to an opportunity to stretch your comfort zone, so you too can help spread some love. And it’s completely free! Your responsiveness to these marketable opportunities Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this need-responders category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love. back-to-top

Need-responders fill a service gap left open by lawyers and counselors. Lawyers rely on impersonal laws . Psychotherapists focus more on individual change . Neither aims to fully resolve the relevant needs. Need-responders identify, address and work to resolve all the affected needs in a situation. That removes cause for pain . And that enables each of us to reach more of our life’s potential . Which do you think is more likely? All current helping professions sufficiently address and solve all of our current problems. OR We can solve our problems only when the helping professions address each affected need. Do you view lawyers and psychotherapists as fully responsive to your needs? Or as a matter of professional design, do they limit the scope of how much they can actually help you to escape your pain? If yearning for a more responsive alternative, consider these seven ways need-responders could outperform lawyers, politicians and psychotherapists. Need-responders… Resolve needs over neglecting or easing needs . Reach potential over restricting or privatizing potential . Remove pain over relieving pain or easing symptoms . Adjust relations over forced compliance of adjusting oneself . Address needs over avoiding, opposing or trying to change needs . Inspire investment over inconvenient legal or health costs . Spread love over provoking hate or reinforcing isolation . Answering institutional decline Need-responders can either complement or compete LAW-BASED INSTITUTIONS NEED-RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE TRADITIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY e.g., politics, judiciary ​ e.g., ​counseling, social work ​ 1. overlook affected needs ​ 1. mutually resolve needs 1. ease your needs 2. constrain your potential 2. unleash your potential ​ 2. privatize your potential ​ 3. relieve your pain ​ 3. remove your pain 3. ease your symptoms ​ 4. adjust your life 4. adjust power relations 4. help you adjust 5. avoid or oppose 5. address each need ​ 5. avoid or change 6. suffer legal costs 6. inspire shared investment ​ 6. negotiate health costs 7. reinforce your hostility 7. reinforce your love 7. reinforce your isolation outward looking: fight looking inward & outward ​inward looking: flight objectifies individuals treats relationships ​treats individuals Chart : Helping professions comparison chart 1. Resolve needs over neglecting or easing needs. Lawyers and politicians generally overlook the specific needs of those impacted by law. The law is kept intentionally vague to cover a wide array of situations. By design, lawyers and policymaker remain poorly equipped to address each affected need shaping individual and shared wellbeing. Psychotherapists generally help their clients ease their needs, but cannot promise to help them to fully resolve their vulnerable needs. By design, psychotherapists leave out external factors shaping their client’s wellness. They could refer them to activism to address their politicized needs. But with rare exception (e.g., macro social workers ), psychotherapists help their clients adjust to seemingly immutable social structures. Consequently, they typically help their clients ease their needs without fully addressing deeper structural needs hindering full resolution of those exposed needs. Need-responders focus on identifying all the affected needs in a situation, and incentivized each other to mutually seek full resolution of such needs. This includes incentivizing those in positions of power to more effectively respond to overlooked needs. And to inspire such leaders to transform social structures to be more responsive to everyone’s needs. Not to merely ease those needs or relieve pain, but to fully resolve those needs to raise each one’s potential. 2. Reach potential over restricting or privatizing potential. ​ Lawyers and politicians tend to constrain human flourishing. By design, they emphasize harm reduction over removing cause for harm. Those adjudicated in the courts or voting in an election are expected to take sides in a battle. They rarely consider empathizing with the needs of the other side. In such a climate, and often from suffering the pain of unmet needs, their life’s potential gets easily deprioritized. Psychotherapists effectively help their clients pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By design, psychotherapy is kept a private affair preserving personal agency, apart from building social supports to address structural needs. This reflects the hyper-individualism of Western culture . The more engrained to think of ourselves as responsible individuals unfettered by external limits, the more we have blind spots preventing us from considering the whole picture. Psychotherapists risk unwittingly reinforcing a client’s psychosocial imbalance . Need-responders invites others to join the client’s courage to speak their truth to power. They become freer to pursue their full potential. They cultivate social supports that enables them to find more psychosocial balance . Because wellness is psychosocial , and not merely psychological. They then become less vulnerable to vacillating extremes. With growing support, they can more boldly face life’s discomforts. They can get down to specifics that allows them to reach more of life’s full personal and shared potential. 3. Remove pain over relieving pain or easing symptoms. Lawyers and policymakers cannot effectively address each specific need that each person has, nor should they. By design, politics and the judiciary only offer a win-lose outcome. The winner(s) at a court or ballot contest get to relieve their pain, often at the losing side’s expense of further pain. This rarely results in better functioning. Psychotherapists traditionally focus on easing the symptoms of unresolved needs. By design, they rarely enable their clients to stand up to offensive authorities. Nor should they. At best, they help their clients make the necessary changes within their control. They encourage their clients to not expend too much energy to change matters beyond their control. While noble if the client neglects their own agency, prioritizing their own controllable reaction risks flying to the opposite extreme of resigning to powerlessness to damaging power relations and destructive social structures. Need-responders get to the core problem of unresolved needs on all sides. Fully resolving needs removes cause for pain. Pain only exists to warn you of some threat to your functioning. If your functioning can be fully restored, there is no purpose for pain. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain tries to report . There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs . Besides, reacting to your pain tends to leave you in more pain . Need-responders help you reconnect with the natural purpose of your pain, to help restore you to your full potential. 4. Adjust relations over forced compliance of adjusting oneself Lawyers and politicians typically hold social power over their clients. By design, the lawyer-client relation is a power relation. So is the elected rep and constituent. Unless trained in the law, such constituents and attorney clients easily deter judgment to their legal reps and policymakers. We more easily bend to their judgment when overwhelmed by a legal need. This tends to force us to comply with legal authority that may serve their own interests more than ours. Psychotherapists also serve their clients in a power relation. By design, the counselor holds some power over the client in the therapeutic relationship. To receive help, the client must bend to such professional help to address the personal problem affecting their mental wellbeing. With few if any alternative options, psychotherapy aims to help the client to adjust to a harsh environment. It does little if anything to change such a hostile climate. Need-responders shifts focus away from individuals to relation dynamics. Instead of trying to change individuals, the need-response process aims to change the power relation. Instead of bending to the norms of either a law-centric power relation or a psychological centric power relation, need-responders bend their own presenting power relation with the client into a learning experience. The need-responder use this natural power imbalance to help their client practice, in a safer supportive environment, to boldly speak their truth to power. 5. Address needs over avoiding, opposing or trying to change needs. Lawyers and politicians rarely if ever address the inflexible needs of the opposing side in a court or election battle. By design, the legal professions privilege both avoidance culture and oppo culture . Few if anyone questions why continually avoiding the elephant in the room—each other’s needs. Few if anyone question the point of opposing the other side’s inflexible needs. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it . Reacting to their needs under color of law risks provoking them into digging in their heels. What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce . Psychotherapists may unwittingly try to get their clients to change what they inflexibly need. By design, psychotherapy help their clients ease their needs without addressing the affected needs of others. Unrealistic expectations may creep in. While you can alter how you access a certain resource, you cannot change how a primary resource evolved to be the best way to restore you to full functioning, and remove your pain. Without addressing the big picture, psychotherapy risks helping the client to adjust to a sick society. Need-responders address the relevant needs on all sides to a situation or conflict. Because anankelogy recognizes that all natural needs sit equal before nature . The powerholder’s needs are no more and no less important than the needs of the vulnerable powerless. The need-response process replaces mutual hostilities with mutual support . Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness . 6. Inspire investment over inconvenient legal or health costs. Any lawyer you hire expects to be paid for any legal expenses you incur. By design, the costs of your hired solution to your legal problem lands squarely on your shoulders. If only you will gain from a court battle, only you are to bear the costs. At hundreds of dollars, you may not believe you can afford to hire a lawyer. And the risk of losing could dissuade you. There are plenty of reasons to never hire a lawyer . Any psychotherapist you hire receives payment as a health expense you incur. By design, the costs of receiving mental health services lands squarely on your shoulders, or your health insurance provider. If you’re the one primarily gaining from such help, others have no clear incentive to financially support your psychological improvement. Lingering stigma may prevent other potential supporters from even knowing of the possibility. Besides, there are plenty of reasons to never even hire a psychotherapist in the first place . Need-responders present the need-response process as an investment. The more this transparent mutualizing process can enable the client to openly resolve their affected needs, remove cause for pain, and improve functioning, the more others may want to support the cause to address their similar needs. Instead of a private expense, the need-response process provides opportunity to potential supporters—the relatively powerless and powerful alike—to share the costs of improving life for everyone. 7. Spread love over provoking hate or reinforcing isolation. Lawyers and politicians gain support the more they goad their followers to pick one side against another. By design, politics and the judiciary provoke us to be hostile to one another, to even hate those on the other side. The more they pit us against each other, the less we focus on bettering ourselves and each other. We’re too busy consumed by this provoked hatred to one another. Psychotherapists rarely invite others into the therapeutic process. By design, this one-on-one focus overlooks potential support from being able to freely bring onboard friends and family to help address publicly affected needs. Fear of stigma that stems from the implied fault of the sufferer tends to reinforce this isolation. Need-responders incentivizes all sides to identify and address each other’s affected needs. Instead of opposing one another, we pull together on the same team in a mutualizing process—against the real enemy of unresolved needs. This process could shift the stigma onto powerful impactors identified as complicit with high rates of poor mental health outcomes. We first incentivize such impactors with more rewarding motivation. This mutualizing process encourages each to support the needs of the other as their healthiest self would have others support their needs. Anankelogy calls this social love . The more we shift focus away from relieving our own pain to resolving the needs of others (in ways that inspire others to help us resolve our own), the more love we can spread in our world. Answering institutional decline The less responsive to our exposed needs, the more public trust in our public institutions naturally declines. If the institution only looks outward, as legal institutions do, then the results will remain poor. If the institution only looks inward, as psychotherapy and similar institutions do, their results will also remain poor. Trust in legal institutions wane the more the public recognizes how impersonal laws get impersonally shaped and interpreted, the impersonally enforced. The more you get objectified by representatives of the law, the less confidence you feel in what the law can do for you. Trust in traditional psychotherapy and similar institutions wane the more the public recognizes how it only treats the individual and rarely if ever the social context of our many problems. The more the counselor goads you to adjust to a sick society, the more you get naturally resentful. Need-response steps in to fill these service gaps. Need-responders look outward and inward, with a holistic approach. Need-responders transcend the norms of alienation to engage each other to address overlooked needs. Need-responders help us pursue our highest potential, together. Instead of placating individuals trapped in power dynamics, as counselors are apt to do, need-responders provide the tools to bring powerholders and those they impact into a mutualizing process of mutual support. Instead of trying to change the individual to fit into social structures as those systems currently exist, need-responders guide clients to cultivate support for transforming those imposing systems. Need-responders present as an attractive solution to the problem of institutional decline that has actually been a persisting problem for decades . Need-responders can be equipped to turn these institutional challenges into opportunities. These failing institutions could learn much from need-response, or risk being outflanked by need-responders. Need-responders can either complement or compete Need-response invites lawyers, policymakers and psychotherapists—and any helping professional—to partner with need-responders. Need-responders can potentially complement the efforts of the other helping professions to answer institutional decline. A business associate agreement can set the parameters for the working relationship. While many terms could be open for negotiation, principles of need-response are set in stone. All relevant needs must be identified and addressed. The aim cannot be to merely ease needs or relieve symptoms, but to fully resolve needs. Accountability remains set by empirically documented improved wellness outcomes. If other helping professions fail to reach a minimal need-responsive standard, then need-responders may end up competing with other helping professions. They may be positioned to resolve needs so effectively that clients may lose hope in trusting the less responsive helping professions. Need-responders are held to a much higher standard than other helping professionals. To earn the trust to monitor the legitimacy of powerholders and institutions, they must demonstrate their own legitimacy. If ineffective, need-responders risk losing marketability to the other helping professions. Since this service is so new, we have a long way to establish its effectiveness in a wide array of situations. Along the way, we seek to inspire all helping professions to better understand and serve their clients and constituents needs, with the power of love . Your responsiveness to addressing institutional decline like this Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love.