Vertical and not lateral differences compromise our politics TLDR: click here for the text to this short video above. "The Quality of Politics" HOOK Left or right? Wrong question. The real divide in politics isn't sideways. It's vertical. It's quality. THE TWO ERRORS Political elites on both sides benefit when we stay divided, because division keeps us dependent on low-quality options. And they rely on two errors. One: treating one side of the spectrum as better than the other. Every side's prioritized needs carry equal weight. How to address them is debatable, but the needs themselves are not. Two: treating name-calling, lying, and demeaning the opposition as no different from empathy for an opponent's needs. Those are not the same. THREE LEVELS First, let’s define politics: Politics is the art of generalizing how to agreeably address needs in differing social situations. Done well or badly, it lands on one of three levels. Standard politics negotiates agreeable policies: self-interest, rational debate, safe generalizing, necessary but short evasion, and mutual opposition. But when needs go unmet, pain narrows our thinking, and standard slides into toxic politics. Self-interest becomes selfish demands. Debate becomes petty arguing. Opposition becomes mutual defensiveness. Optimal politics flips each of these five elements: a selfless offer instead of a demand, emotional honesty instead of petty arguing, relevant nuance instead of rigid generalizing, bold engagement instead of avoidance, and mutual understanding instead of defensiveness. FOUR MORE UPGRADES Optimal politics adds four more. Lead with the positive, using the praise sandwich. Describe before you prescribe. Replace "consent of the governed" with earned legitimacy: measurably improved wellness outcomes. And put liberty over legalism, resolving needs directly, with courts and politics as the backup. CLOSE The bottom line: the less responsive a politics is to real needs, the more it fails. So stop asking which team a leader is on. Ask how good their politics is, and rate them on evidence. The highest standard is love: honoring others' needs as your own. For more on improving the quality of politics in your life and community, follow Politically Homeless. Click to view full table of contents The more political elites divide us, the more they hold us down. Both Democratic and Republican leaders benefit when hindering us from resolving our politicized needs. Typically, they remain unaware of this quantifiable evil of benefiting from such harm. They generally lack awareness of how they enslave us to depend upon low-quality options. They trick us into thinking our ideological differences matter more than the quality of our interactions. They likely believe this demonstrable falsehood. Both parties unethically benefit from two unchallenged errors. Two common errors Error #1: Treating the lateral POLITICAL SPECTRUM as vertical Regarding one side of the political spectrum as better than the other when actually each side's prioritized needs exist of equal value. How to address them is debatable, and not the fact that they exist. Error #2: Treating the vertical POLITICAL QUALITY as lateral Regarding low-bar political behavior (like name-calling, lying, and demeaning the opposition) as no different from more noble political behavior, such as empathy for an opponent's needs. I previously unpacked politics to explain how our political differences span a lateral spectrum of equally valid prioritized needs. No political stance is more important than another, as all of our needs sit equal before nature. All of us require public respect for our public-facing needs to function properly. Now I dive into the vertical spectrum of political quality. Optimal Politics Where quality optimizes the resolution of needs Standard Politics Where quality enables agreeable policies Toxic Politics Where quality gets severely degraded Politics defined Wisdom guides me to appreciate what politics actually is. This definition suggests three inherent ranges within politics, not of equal lateral value but of unequal vertical quality. Both conservatives and liberals (or progressives) suffer from decreased political quality, as public policies equally neglect their objectively existing prioritized needs. Consider how politics is... the art of generalizing (from generalizing to specifics) how to agreeably address needs (from avoiding to engaging others' needs) in differing social situations (from polarizing to unifying options). Quality matters Consider how this speaks to the quality of our politics. The more we cling to political generalizations, the less we address our specific needs. The more we avoid others' affected needs, the less they engage our affected needs. The more we polarize over our differences, the less unity to properly resolve needs. Let this illuminate what is obviously wrong with today's politics. And then let it guide us to something far better: Optimal Politics. Let's start with "standard politics" and how it continues to slide into dysfunctional "toxic politics". Then let that put a fire under us to shift to "Optimal Politics". Creeping normalcy may blind us to how politics was once mediocre instead of toxically bad. Let's compare the two. A. Standard Politics Intent to form agreeable public policies, negotiating what fits the most interests. Societies emerged to formulate policies to address needs that individuals cannot address on their own. Like securing a community's water supply and defending the society from external threats. Factions naturally emerged among those with different priorities of needs. Politics emerged as the social mechanism to sort out these differences. Standard politics evolved to shape a society's agreeable norms. The above definition points to five areas where politics can grow stale. Besides the three ranges identified, it suggests two more shaping our political landscape. 1. Self-interest: Western emphasis on the individual What you particularly need from public policies can differ sharply from what others require. In Western culture, we learn to define these different priorities as our self-interest. Standard politics expects you to vote according to what benefits you. And this arguably benefits others as well. 2. Rational debate: Rational-legal authority For shaping public policies, Western culture also favors rational arguments over emotionally charged demands. Standard politics owes much to what Max Weber called rational-legal authority. We prefer our public policies grounded in shared reasoning and not personal will. 3. Provisional generalizing: Laws kept vague Each law must apply widely. It must fit diverse situations. It cannot be too specific to fit one situation more than another. Standard politics generalizes in two senses of the word. First, it avoids disagreeable details that could compromise unity in a fragile coalition. Second, what applies to one is generalized to apply to all. Each generalization can then lead to relevant specifics on a more personalized level. 4. Temporary avoidance: Laws kept impartial Each law must avoid any favoritism. Or even the appearance of partiality. Legitimacy depends on what is required of one is equally required of all. Standard politics ensures we avoid slipping down the rabbit hole of partiality in our public conduct. We can temporarily avoid overemphasis at the start, but then engage where more emphasis is needed. 5. Mutual opposition: Laws kept punitive Each law typically includes some enforcement mechanism. Those of a different priority must not violate those for which a law exists to serve. Standard politics provides a process for ironing out these differing priorities. Sides then coalesce into competing blocs to attract majority support for their preferred public policy priorities. Mutual opposition is expected to keep each other in good faith to champion their own side. Consider how each of these elements can sour into what can be called "toxic politics". B. Toxic Politics Intent to get the most out of public policies, even if at others’ (and own) expense. Indigenous wisdom recognizes how a society can lose wellness much like an individual who gets sick. The less a society's politics helps to resolve needs, the sicker that society usually becomes. As the members of a community respond less to each other's personal needs, the role of law emerges as supreme. Too much law is not much better than no law at all. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it: Toxic politics mirrors the dire social problem of toxic legalism. This toxic legalism turns the five elements listed above into unhealthy norms. It tends to spring from a vicious cycle. Poor political quality begets more poor outcomes, which begets more poor political quality. Consider how each of these five degraded elements features in today's politics. 1. Selfish demands Emphasizing self-interests while enduring the emotional pain of unmet needs tends to sink into selfish demand. Emotional pain narrows your cognitive bandwidth to prioritize prompt relief. Toxic politics normalizes this downward shift into self-absorption. If everyone suffers at least some pain from unmet needs, then it must be okay for anyone to demand public policies provide them some personal relief. 2. Petty arguing Rational debate becomes a veneer for emotionally charged petty arguing to insist that public policies provide some relief. Instead of staying open to learn anything from the other, toxic politics lets you shut down and guard your emotional pain from accusations of irrationality. Toxic politics normalizes such motivated reasoning. Clinging tightly to an ideology is more than identity fusion. Missing from the social science literature is an account of how emotional pain prioritizes attention to unmet needs. Bias exists to prioritize attention to painfully underserved needs. And no amount of reasoning can tame the nature of your brain to bias you to put your painful needs ahead of others' needs. We can mask it with petty arguing, but we may end up only fooling ourselves. 3. Rigid generalizing Generalizing becomes less provisional while coping with the pain of unresolved needs. Your shrinking cognitive bandwidth cannot afford to look far beyond your trusted generalizations. Toxic politics normalizes this disregard for specifics outside your accepted generalizations. You dare not bring up any specifics that could risk your coalition of political support. 4. Discomfort avoidance The more you suffer pain from unresolved politicized needs, the more you naturally seek to avoid any further discomfort. Temporary avoidance slips into long-term and permanence. Toxic politics normalizes pain avoidance. Others go along with easing cognitive dissonance, despite leaving you vulnerable to more pain as your needs continue to be ignored or neglected. 5. Mutual defensiveness Mutual opposition easily devolves into mutual defensiveness. The opposition appears to prevent you from resolving your painful needs. They seem like the cause of your pain. Toxic politics normalizes mutual enmity and mutual defensiveness with ideological outsiders. These apparent culprits to your mounting pain must be your sworn enemies. It must be their fault that you can no longer function as well as before. From coerced political dependence to liberating political independence From coerced political dependence to liberating political independence Let go of the idea that your stuck because you made poor political choices. And wake up to the realization that political elites imposed poor options. By limiting your actual choices, they coerced you into settling for less than your needs require. Too much gets made in the media and elsewhere about reasoning your way to a better future. Anything that skips the objective reality of your inflexible politicized needs is guaranteed to fail. Optimal Politics starts with your objectively existing needs. By instilling an ethic of love—of honoring the needs of others as one’s own—Optimal Politics lays out a path of equitable liberation. By leveraging the power of LOVE to resolve more politicized needs. C. Optimal Politics Intent to optimize social norms so that all can reach more of their life’s potential. Optimal Politics emerges from a wisdom grounded in the indigenous appreciation for nature. Specifically, nature's role in your politicized needs. This speaks to a depth of reality that neutralizes the role of self-serving persuasion. You can never be persuaded to not honestly need what you objectively require to function. Optimal Politics also restores the role of love. The more you support your political opponents to properly resolve their needs, the more inclined they will reciprocate to respect your needs. Political quality correlates with a level of wellness Wisdom guides me to appreciate three salient levels of our personal and collective wellness, or functionality. Plus a fourth level less applicable here. Peakfunction: When you can prioritize fully resolving your needs, you can reach more of your full potential and function extremely well. Optimal Politics nurtures your potential to reach peakfunction. Symfunction: When you can only partially resolve your needs with others, you adequately get by in life and function at something of a mediocre level. Standard politics tends to pull you into the mediocrity of symfunction. Dysfunction: When you must increasingly relieve the pain of your unresolved needs, you can hardly function at all and tend to function at a level of constant coping. Toxic politics emerges out of standard politics that no longer effectively addresses our needs. Political quality correlates with a level of epistemology Wisdom further shows me three correlating degrees of what can be called “epistemic reliability”. Or how confident we are with what we think is true or untrue. These correspond with Kohlberg’s levels of moral development. And correlate with these quality levels of politics. Postconventional “trusters” keep an open mind when learning the “facts” and stay ready to engage new and disconfirming data. They do not cling to what they hold as true but instead engage more of reality by cultivating a high degree of ethical integrity. They position themselves to reach peakfunction. Optimal Politics moves past conventional beliefs and practices of status quo politics, to get to the purpose of why politics exist: to properly resolve politicized needs. Conventional “faithers” tend to agree uncritically with others in their group. They tend to hold tighter to such views if attacked by outgroup members. They find comfort in the symfunction of their shared experiences. Standard politics gravitates toward the low hanging fruit of easy agreement, and for the lowest common denominator members of a dumbed down coalition. Preconventional “beliefers” cling rigidly to whatever makes simple sense and eases cognitive dissonance. They often react to critique as their beliefs form a foundation of their sense of security. They sink into the dysfunction of relieving pain of unmet needs. Toxic politics caters to falsehoods popular among those desperate for relief from the grinding pain of countless unresolved needs, especially if necessary for the numbers to reach an uncritical majority. From 'standard' to 'toxic' to Optimal Politics conventional "faithers" preconventional "beliefers" postconventional "trusters" If standard politics of conventional "faithers" slips into the toxic politics of preconventional "beliefers", Optimal Politics can pull us up into the peakfunction of postconventional "trusters". Consider how this works for each of the five cited elements above. 1. Selfless offer over selfish demands self-interest selfish demands selfless offer Instead of selfishly demanding what you think (and likely) is best for you, Optimal Politics incentivizes you to know how your preference affects others of a contrary preference. Instead of demanding your policy preference be served over others' policy preference, you ask, "How does my policy preference affect you and your inflexible needs?" We state this either from a conservative to a progressive view, or from a progressive to a conservative view. Let's use the issue of immigration to illustrate. *I use progressive instead of liberal as most Democrats have basically become centrists. "If you support open borders to let in unvetted immigrants, how does my stance on closing the border and carefully vetting every entrant personally affect you?" "If you support closing the border and carefully vetting every entrant, how does my stance on open borders to let in unvetted immigrants personally affect you?" The intent here is for you to know how you politically affect others. Stretching beyond your own self-interests and beyond selfish demands does more to shape policies toward a meaningful solution. Status quo politics Focus on self and remain dissatisfied. Responsive politics Respect others and find more satisfaction. 2. Emotional honesty over rationalized avoidance rational debate petty arguing emotional honesty Instead of masking your rich emotional content under the veneer of rationality, Optimal Politics cuts to the chase by welcoming and embracing your emotional honesty. Not to indulge in what you feel but to fully appreciate what your emotions honestly tell you about the current state of your needs. The risk of emotional bias is greatly overstated. Emotions do not directly cause cognitive biases; unmet needs do. Your unresolved needs use your emotions to prioritize your attention to address such needs. The less you can function because of that unmet need, the more intense that emotion. Click to see all 20 Suppressing such emotions to appear socially acceptable as "rational" or "reasonable" actually fuels your bias. Shooting the messenger does nothing to stop the message that you cannot fully function because your needs remain unresolved. Your emotions exist to convey your needs. While the contents of your emotions remain subjective, they occur as objective fact independent of subjective choice. Once you perceive a threat, for example, you predictably and quite objectively experience fear, to be aware of that threat to your wellbeing. Removing that threat, or removing yourself, removes the fear. Not rationality on its own. Cultivating emotional honesty subjects reasoning to serve objectively occurring needs. Instead of suppressing your emotions to fit reasonable sounding arguments, you humbly express how the other's stance emotionally affects you and your prioritized needs. Let's use the issue of abortion to illustrate. "I feel a strong need to honor the sanctity of all life, including the yet to be born, who will never get to reach their life potential if voicelessly aborted by her seemingly selfish mother." "I feel a strong need to freely access health care for my oft-controlled female body, including safe space to make the ultimate decision to end an unbearable pregnancy." The intent here is not to persuade with emotion, but to invite connection to how each other experiences the politicized need. Increasing awareness of how each side experiences their politicized need does more to facilitate a solution than petty arguing or a rational debate. Status quo politics Argue and keep pushing others away. Responsive politics Share feelings and incentivize respect. 3. Relevant nuance over generalizing provisional generalizing rigid generalizing relevant nuance Instead of generalizing that excuses exaggerations, Optimal Politics promptly shifts from stated generalizations to whatever nuance that is relevant to the needs of all involved. The quicker we detach from helpful generalizations to address the messy details of each other's affected needs, the sooner we can find a political solution satisfying to all. We cannot solve our specific problems from the level of generalizing that created them. The problem with most generalizations is that they skip over reality. Every generality best serves as a starting point to search and engage relevant nuance. Hyperbole may grab much needed attention to a matter. But can rarely scaffold a good argument. Your needs cannot cater to other's overgeneralizing. So you best not expect others to fit your generalities. Your safest generalization is to love. You can safely generalize how others are worth your respect as you are worth their respect. Optimal Politics lets you quickly get to the other details that matter most. Let's use the issue of healthcare access to illustrate. "I see my health as between me and my private providers. I believe state run healthcare will lose quality in the hands of administrators less accountable to market forces. But I can see how government helps to ensure the public good of our individual health needs." "I see healthcare as a birth right, not just a privilege for those who can afford it. I believe government exists to guarantee this right to all much like providing for the public’s safety. But I can see how too heavy a hand from bureaucrats can risk the quality of healthcare deliverables." The intent here is to make sure any generality serves as a stepping stone to vital details, and not become a stumbling block to needed awareness. Paving a path to turn useful generalities into drawing attention to relevant specifics can go a long way to mutually finding meaningful solutions. Status quo politics Generalizations risk obstructing awareness. Responsive politics The specifics of reality is what matters most. 4. Meaningful engagement over privileged avoidance temporary avoidance discomfort avoidance bold engagement Instead of habitually evading the avoidable and risking shock by sudden surprises, Optimal Politics incentives you to boldly engage what you otherwise would prefer to avoid. Instead of habitually fleeing pain that chases you, Optimal Politics prompts you to chase pain and force it to flee from you. The sooner you remove all threats to your wellbeing, the sooner you remove all pain. There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Removing all threats, or distancing yourself from all threats, removes cause for pain. Status quo politics in either its standard or toxic form rarely addresses the source of your pain. Winning at the ballot tends to offer more pain relief than meaningful solutions. Most politics drag your function level down despite the best of intentions. Only when all sides can freely and fully resolve their needs can political solutions sustain themselves. We must not fall trap to zero-sum thinking. Needs would never evolve if vulnerable to only one side gaining at another's cost. That is a reality we must not avoid. Sure, there can be some tradeoffs. Such bargains typically involve preferences and not at the cost of fully resolving a need—unless a bigger problem stands in the way. Which can lead to a meaningful political solution with the proactive dimensions of Optimal Politics. Sure, you may have to endure some discomfort amidst the interim. Let that build your resilience and your equanimity. After all, pain is not the problem as much as the threats to wellbeing that pain exists to warn you to remove. Remember, courage is not the absence of fear but the result of doing what is right and realizing you can handle it after all. Optimal Politics can help build up your courage. And reward you with meaningful political change. So you won't have as much discomfort to avoid. Avoiding your pain tends to leave you in more pain. If you hate and avoid pain, you typically avoid resolving the needs prompting the pain. Which can leave you in a vicious cycle. Optimal Politics guides you to respect pain with bold engagement. You learn to endure pain as you discover you can handle more discomfort than you likely give yourself credit. This includes the discomfort of affirming the needs of your political foe while wondering if they will ever affirm your needs in return. You learn you can function just fine while stretching your comfort zone. Along the way, you remove more threats to the point you remove cause for your pain. Let's use the issue of gun safety to illustrate. "I endure the agonizing dread of the government interfering needlessly in my life. I can provide my own localized safety from both random acts of individual violence and encroaching threats of collectivist tyranny. But I can understand why many on the left mistrust the fact I own a gun." "I continue to cope with the trauma from mass shootings. I need to be kept safe in public from unpredictable acts of individual gun violence, often by xenophobes targeting the vulnerably different like me. But I appreciate why many on the right insist on carrying their own firearm." The intent here is honor the real emotional pain of others. The more you respect their pain around politicized issues, the more inclined they will respect your pain. Status quo politics Avoidance easily misses the boat. Responsive politics Boldly engage them before they engage you. 5. Mutual understanding over mutual defensiveness mutual opposition mutual defensiveness mutual understanding Instead of normalizing mutual differences that can sink into mutual hostilities and defensiveness, Optimal Politics rewards mutual understanding. How much does each side truly know about the affected needs of the other? The urbanite can learn about the challenges of the rural farmer. That farmer can learn about the challenges confronting the urbanite. The more each side understands each other's challenges and needs, the more they realize political generalizations about the other is mostly hot air. The left leaning urbanite experiences the opposite priority of needs than the rural resident. The city dweller relies more on environmental codes than the folks living in some local town, for example. One benefits from increased regulations while the other from decreased regulation. Both can be true. One can find improved inclusion for their LGBTQ+ experience while the other still enjoy their family's more traditional cohesion. One can favor public policies protecting consumer rights while the other favor policies honoring producers large and small. Optimal Politics holds open the communication channel to give no occasion for mutual defensiveness. For example: The left can champion trans rights while respecting the right's concern about the impact of trans athletes on the competitive opportunities for their daughters, and perhaps suggest gradient categories much like boxers use. The right can champion traditional gender norms to sustain family cohesion while recognizing that trans people do exist to upend those norms without necessarily compromising family cohesion. What appears to contradict on the surface, when clinging to avoidant generalizations, often lose their bite with improved mutual understanding. We tap deeper into our human potential when empathizing with those we wished would empathize more with us. Let's illustrate this with the issue of criminal justice. "I seek to provide police and prosecutors with better tools to serve and protect the public from those lacking personal responsibility. But I understand how you prefer to hold police and prosecutors personally accountable for their many abuses of discretion, or just revamp the whole system." "I seek to hold police and prosecutors personally accountable for their many abuses of discretion, or just revamp the whole system. But I understand how you prefer to provide police and prosecutors with better tools to serve and protect the public from those lacking personal responsibility." The intent here is to skip the risk of mutual defensiveness. Optimal Politics has you embrace every opportunity to properly resolve your politicized needs by understanding those with an apparent contradictory set of priorities. And increase the chance to turn assumed foes into potential allies. Status quo politics Stay stuck in mutual suspicion and hostilities. Responsive politics Know your foes and let yourself be known. 4 more advantages of Optimal Politics Besides these five exceptional improvements above to political thinking and behavior, add these four features to soar far above status quo politics. All of these stay anchored to the objective fact of your inflexible needs over the arbitrary nature of flexible laws. And heralds love (i.e., demonstrably honors the needs of others as one's own) as the ideal and reachable standard for us all. See the separate article on parsing politics to learn how these elements affect a politico's scored political legitimacy. 1) Proactively responsive: positive over negative Instead of focusing on the negative qualities of the opposition, OP first affirms the value and needs of the opposition. Then you can bring up how the opposition's political behavior affects your needs. You give little to no cause to provoke their defensiveness. They have no grounds to provoke your defensiveness. Instead, you both can cultivate mutual rapport. You utilize the "praise sandwich" format. You see this same professional business communication format in a late payment notice. A = "We value as a loyal customer." A positive slice of news. B = "We notice you have not paid for last month's service." A negative slice buried between two positives. C = "If you have already sent your payment then disregard this notice. And have a good day." The message closes on a positive note. Opening with a negative too easily sparks defensiveness. And contributes to divisiveness. Opening with the positive of affirming their value and needs builds more rapport. You can then find it easier to trust each other. And work meaningfully together to find an agreeable solution to each other's politicized needs. No one is perfect, of course. Not even our leaders. Let their humility warrant our grace and mercy. To give them another chance. Let them model the empathy and resilience we all need. Let their positivity improve their political quality. Status quo politics low quality Repeated disappointment with failed negativity. Optimal Politics higher quality Encouraging results with positivity. 2) Scientifically disciplined: descriptive over normative Instead of first declaring what should be done about some politicized situation, OP takes the effort to first thoroughly observe the situation. It first carefully describes what is observable and can be tested. Then be better informed about a proper course of action. This is basically the social science equivalence of having the discipline to delay gratification. This includes the discipline to frame any claim in a falsifiable way, as much as possible, so that the truth claim can be independently validated or invalidated. This can help end the habit of politicos overlooking our needs in favor of rational argument, or explanation. It's pointless to expect better ideas to improve lives when we need better ballot options. Their normative reactions could use a descriptive overhaul that better accounts for our unresolved politicized needs amidst poor options from which to choose. OP can first apply this social science feature to identify and describe what is called "mass institution mission creep". Mass institution mission creep Every public serving organization tends to shift from prioritizing its originating purpose to prioritizing its own self-continuance. The mass legal institutions of the judicial system and of politics are no different. Mounting distrust in such institutions betray the perception of the public who recognize how political (and judicial) leaders tend to hold onto power to serve their own interests while showing little if any progress toward fulfilling its originating purpose to serve the public's needs. OP observes and carefully describes this shift. Not to shame our leaders. But to show where they can improve their trustworthiness, their legitimacy. Status quo politics low quality Degrade trust with premature claims. Optimal Politics higher quality Build trust with testable claims. 3) Measurably accountable: earned over ascribed legitimacy Instead of passively relying on the social contract standard of the "consent of the governed", OP raises the stakes to "measurably improved outcomes". OP introduces a new social contract standard (MIWO) to outperform the old (MCOG). MCOG = Manipulated Consent of Governed - ascribed legitimacy: legalistic MIWO = Measurably Improved Wellness Outcomes - earned legitimacy: responsive Our consent gets too easily manipulated. While an improvement on the old social contract of kings keeping feudal lords in check, limited ballot options coerce us to accept less ideal outcomes. Democracy can then get coopted by those of greater influence. Earned over ascribed legitimacy OP challenges the "ascribed" legitimacy of our political leaders who manipulate voter perceptions, often with propaganda techniques like fearmongering, without grounding their trustworthiness in empirical terms. Exploiting voter fears points to a lower degree of political quality. Or to a lesser degree of political legitimacy. OP helps candidates running for office to "earn" legitimacy in measurable terms. Independent voters and many partisan voters will accept no less. By establishing their empirical bona fides, candidates can gain an advantage over old school candidates still relying on ascribed legitimacy that counts on sounding persuasive. Obsolete persuasion Optimal Politics reduces or even removes the role of persuasion. By contrast, candidates trying to get votes by using propaganda techniques like fearmongering can appear quaint and outdated. Besides, ascribed legitimacy is easier to lose than earned legitimacy. Continuous improvement Once in office, the ballot winner gets held to the high standard of results. If constituent lives improve, legitimacy increases. But if their lives stagnate or quality of life declines, legitimacy decreases. Sure, each constituent has personal agency to improve their own life the best they can. But OP affords no excuse for leaders who cannot show improvements in a majority of their constituents' lives. The leadership owns any lack of improvement. OP keeps such leaders accountable to results by incentivizing them to remain evidence-based. Instead of persuasion and hoping for the best, office holders learn to use the social science marker "as indicated by" when backing up a claim. The more our political leaders earn their legitimacy, the more society and its individual members can resolve their needs and improve their wellness. And the less we all suffer. Status quo politics low quality Persuading voters to trust them. Optimal Politics higher quality Empirically earning voters' trust. 4) Independently resolved: liberty over legalism Instead of always depending on legal processes to address every public-facing need, OP advantages individuals to directly resolve needs themselves. Legal institutions of the judiciary and politics work largely as backup plans. Both the judicial system and the political system are tainted with legalism. Application of the law is not explicitly designed to properly resolve needs. Trusting the law alone can pull you into dysfunction. Both rely on convenient categories to objectify us (defendant, liberal). Exceptions to those categories tend to get overlooked. Both offer pain relief to the winner of a legal battle (court or ballot). The losing side faces more pain. Neither side receives help to restore full wellness. Both assume and then pull us into an adversarial relation with each other. Alienation from each other is assumed. Divisiveness tends to follow. See how these three correspond to the ranges identified above: generalizing, avoiding pain, and opposing each other. We intuitively know this is bad for our lives, and terrible for our communities. So we typically prefer a different route. OP offers such an attractive alternative. OP checks their assumptions You can confidently say to your leaders: "You don't know what you don't know." Their legalistic application of top-down politics usually presumes we are rational actors who are extrinsically motivated. Many of us are actually bounded rationality individuals who are intrinsically motivated. What is the difference? rational actor: makes choices calculating maximum benefits at minimal costs extrinsically motivated: behavior incentivized by fear of punishment bounded rationality: makes choices based on perception of limited available options intrinsically motivated: behavior incentivized by internal satisfaction Political leaders lose efficacy (and legitimacy by extension) if assuming one thing while we exist as quite another. You perhaps care more about helping Palestinians than the risk of losing your job; you are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated. But you don't how you would pay your bills if fired and consider the safest form of protest: you are more a bounded rationality person than a rational actor. Both can be true at the same time. Political leaders tend to operate on the simplest behavior models. To be frank, such low political quality can then bite them in the ass. But we suffer as well, if not more. Coordinated accountability OP assesses political leaders assumptions. The less measurably responsive to our factual needs, the less legitimate. And if intransigent, we assert the liberty to resolve needs outside of their adversarial legal process. Yes, we exhaust opportunities to address our affected needs independent of lawyer-filtered processes. We place the burden of proof on lawyers and the government if assuming a need for their extrinsic motivation options. We have them exhaust all intrinsic motivation before imposing their legalistic extrinsic motivating options. OP grounds this bold challenge in the inspiring words of the Declaration of Independence, where it asserts that ...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute ...a new form of politics. One more accountably responsive to the people's needs, and not for serving raw power that readily neglects our needs. Status quo politics has turned "consent of the governed" into acclimating to poor quality ballot options. I for one do not consent to be manipulated into accepting their poor quality options. Political elites degrade democracy with "coerced poor options dependence" (or CoPOD for short). OP counters by raising the social contract standard from "consent of the governed" to "measurable outcomes among the governed". We do not consent to be manipulated to trust their unaccountable promises. Trust (i.e., legitimacy) cannot be manipulated; it must be earned with evidence. Political leaders can earn that trust the more our politicized needs resolve. Whether helping us with the tools of law or granting us the liberty to resolve the needs ourselves. The objective fact of our needs does not bend to law or to politics. Our needs respond better to the power of love. Status quo politics low quality Focus haphazardly on legalistic policymaking. Optimal Politics higher quality Focus directly on properly resolving needs. Greater legitimate authority of love There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love. The more I support you to properly resolve your politicized needs and you reciprocate and support me to properly resolve my politicized needs, the less we need politics or government or lawyers. Love your enemies, as Jesus urged. Love your political foes, whose needs persist as inflexible as yourself. Address kindly how the way they address their politicized needs affect you. Listen to how they complain about your impact on their inflexible needs. Be the quality and integrity we seek in our lesser quality leaders. Offer your political leaders the opportunity to earn your trust. OP incentivize these political leaders to cultivate trustworthiness by having independent voters like you continually rate their political quality based on evidence. Let others decide how to vote based on these published scores. The bottom line is each resolved politicized need, as indicated by improving wellness outcomes. Not only measured by self-reported decreases in anxiety or depression, but also by independent measures like decreasing allostatic load levels. As top-down politics continues to shrink in relevance, let OP provide a meaningful grassroots alternative based on evidence of resolved need. And fueled by cultivated mutual love for one another. Substantive democracy Let the power of our love clean house. Worry less about how democracy has turned shallow. And gives room to some ugly alternatives also unhinged from properly resolving needs. partisan extremism techno-feudalism centrist mediocrity populist authoritarianism neofascism Watch all of these melt under the power of love. It's about the quality of our politics. Not our ideological differences. I believe Dr. King was on a path to instill more love in our fractured politics, when he was brutally taken from us in 1968. Let's take up that mantel, with OP. Yes, it's time for a revolution. Sorry, Malcom X, some revolutions are bloodless, including this one. His point is well taken, that we must not turn the other cheek when we run out of cheeks to turn. In other words, we cannot keep putting our faith in the next election when the ballot repeatedly fails to provide a meaningful path to effectively resolve needs. But let's get back to love. There is no greater revolution than to revolve back to love. OP will have you love your faulty political leaders until they see the wisdom to act, or simply leave. Quality matters. Results matter. Love...or else! Takeaway Political Quality Summary Chart TLDR: The less responsive to actual needs, the more a political response will fail. Political quality matters. The greater the political quality, such as with Optimal Politics, the better we all will be. Compare the options and then choose wisely. Standard politics Toxic politics Optimal Politics 1. self-interest selfish demands selfless offer 2. rational debate petty arguing emotional honesty 3. provisional generalizing rigid generalizing relevant nuance 4. temporary avoidance discomfort avoidance bold engagement 5. mutual opposition mutual defensiveness mutual understanding 1) negative outrage positive 2) normative imposing descriptive 3) ascribed legitimacy illegitimacy earned legitimacy 4) standard legalism toxic legalism liberty to resolve needs NOTE: Earlier versions of Optimal Politics called it Harmony Politics. They are basically the same. Responsive Depolarization Respond better to political differences with understanding and love. Politically Homeless Follow more at the Politically Homeless show on YouTube. Learn how to improve the quality of politics in your life and community. Model a life of love!

My pioneering efforts to end depression continue to be resisted by authorities HIGHLIGHTS Injustice sparks further injustice What could alleviate depression is being hindered You can engage me at the Need-Response podcast Almost a counselor Long shadow of transphobia An injustice repeating injustice Again, I must pay for the mistakes of others Overdue justice Visionary alternative to troubling legalism Recasting this challenge into opportunity Inviting you to personally engage me Almost a counselor I’m not a counselor, but I almost became one. A decade ago, I was trained to be one. I earned my master's in counseling in 2015, at Oakland University in Michigan. Getting through the program as the only openly trans person proved a challenge. While most of my classmates and teachers proved supportive, I still met some detractors. After completing all classwork, I interned at the local LGBTQ+ community center. Getting placed there was no easy matter. I first had to get permission from the school’s lawyer. Long shadow of transphobia Unlike my counseling classmates, I entered the program as a wrongly convicted innocent person. When I first came out as trans in 1993, I was falsely accused and wrongly convicted by a jury who believed the popular trope of LGBTQ+ people as child recruiting predators. No evidence supports the conviction. The accuser’s testimony seemed obviously coached. And I had no other felony or misdemeanor convictions, all which weigh in my favor of asserted innocence. There are far more viable claims of innocence than the courts, or even the innocence projects, can effectively process. So I make the best of what I can with this monkey on my back. An injustice repeating injustice The school’s attorney held up placement for my internship. I was able to secure the standard malpractice insurance without much of a hitch. But the lawyer delayed approval. Thankfully, the school’s provost supported me. She understood how easy it can be for a trans person to be wrongly convicted. And end up falsely on the national sex offender registry, despite the fact that I am asexual. As I waited, I continued enrolling in extra classes. As a wrongly convicted trans person, getting a job and housing proved elusive. I enrolled in college and lived on campus year-round just to survive. A fast-food job is all that I could find. Again, I must pay for the mistakes of others By the time the school’s attorney released me to intern at the local LGBTQ+ center, I had overextended by enrollment. Instantly, I was ineligible for tuition coverage. While legally discriminated against by employers because of the wrongful conviction, I had no way to pay the added tuition. The fast-food job I found barely covered my rent. The wrongful conviction also cost me getting the degree I earned. I couldn’t even find a place to live. I had to stay with my adult daughter for a while. She needed me to vacate to make room for her kids. So I ended up homeless for a year. I finally found somewhere to stay on the rough side of town, a rundown shack crawling with bugs. Overdue justice Last month, a decade later, the state of Michigan sends a collection letter to my daughter’s address. They want that money now. All $3,659.16 of it. And they’re threatening to garnish my meager wages if I don’t cough up this full amount somehow. I definitely do not have that much money on hand. The injustice I suffered in 1993 finds way to replicate itself. I now must pay for that lawyer’s delay back in 2015. No recourse to this action was offered. At least none that I’m aware of. Besides, the adversarial legal process tends to favor those with more clout. It casts itself as the sole or even best means for justice. Even as it quietly squashes the vulnerable to being able to fully resolve their needs. Visionary alternative to troubling legalism The timing disturbs me. I’m about to launch a podcast introducing an alternative to such adversarial legalistic pressures. Called the Need-Response podcast, it links wellness to being able to fully function without imposing pressures from powerful others. Then this occurs. I am on the verge to end the plight of depression and other maladies by resolving stubborn needs, then this pops up in my way. I should be working on preparing the podcast, I tell myself. So much more to do, and now I must set aside precious time to deal with this?! Or perhaps it’s an opportunity disguised as a challenge, that allows me to demonstrate the amazing potential of need-response. Perhaps the Service Collection Bureau in Lansing will receive the honor of being the first to benefit from this alternative to failing adversarialism. Recasting this challenge into opportunity Thank you, SCB in Lansing, for this opportunity to demonstrate this preferable alternative. Thank you, ahead of time, for this opportunity to incentivize you to be open to this more effective option to resolve such needs. Thank you for this opportunity to replace failed hyper-individualism that excessively blames politically powerless individuals, like me, with greater appreciation for how wellness is psychosocial. I have little to no influence over how others mistreat me, like that school lawyer perpetuating the injustice of a wrongful conviction. Thank you for this opportunity to illuminate the psychosocial complexities of common problems dragging us all down. Thank you for this opportunity to replace the hyperrationality evident in their blind faith in the adversarial process, both here and in the wrongful conviction, with greater awareness of our emotionally affected needs. Thank you for this opportunity to affirm your messy needs that defy rational explanations Thank you for this opportunity to replace habits of overgeneralizing about what we think we know, since no one in this process appreciates the specifics of how that school lawyer delayed my internship placement, with relevant specifics too easily overlooked in the adversarial process. Thank you ahead of time to recognize these details that occurred beyond my control. Thank you for this opportunity to replace the norms of impersonal alienation that permits lawyers to avoid the discomfort of getting to know my tragic situation, such as avoiding the painful facts of how the adversarial system mistakenly put an asexual trans person, with no history of violence, on the national sex offender registry. Thank you ahead of time for finally engaging who I really am. Thank you for this opportunity to replace hostile adversarialism that needlessly provokes each other’s defensiveness, which vainly expects me to internalize the defendant role that I continually defy, with the mutuality to relate to each other’s affected needs. Thank you ahead of time for recognizing and respecting my affected needs as I strive to recognize and respect your affected needs. Inviting you to personally engage me You can follow the develops of how this unfolds in our upcoming podcast: the Need-Response podcast. Each Wednesday starting in April 2025, we share this vision for a much-needed service that breaks out of the debilitating mold of adversarialism. If I’m unable to prevail and the state pushes me further into the abyss of poverty, I do not know now if this could prevent me from continuing the podcast. I am open to anyone’s financial help to help ensure the podcast and the need-response service has a chance to succeed. To be blunt, I see little hope for us if we do not let go of our collective addiction to adversarial legalism. I brace for slipping further into collective despair without a service like this equipping us to speak truth to power in ways that incentivize the powerful to listen. Help keep this vision alive. Donate whatever you can to support this visionary alternative. Go to AnankelogyFoundation.org and invest in your own future by helping to improve the chances for this service to become a living reality. Thank you. Thank yourself for keeping hope alive to spread more love.

Privileging anything less than properly resolving needs React culture consists of any social or cultural norm privileging anything less than properly resolving needs. React culture provides “rational” and “legal” cover for not fully or promptly resolving needs. Which excuses not restoring wellbeing. And rationalizes any resulting pain. It consists of many “privileged reactions”, including the ones listed below. React culture stands in stark contrast to a response path (or responsive path), which is any legitimate means to resolve needs. Each entry below concludes with a corrective response path to redress that privileged reaction. Of course, there are far more ways to not properly resolve a need than to properly resolve that need. But we trust you will find the discipline well worth it. Privileged reactions Anankelogy identifies a list of barriers to properly resolving needs. Called a defunction, these hinder resolution of needs, results in compromised wellness and prompts pain. Anankelogy recognizes the objective fact of 1. recurring needs, 2. fluctuating wellness, and 3. occurring emotions alerting you to your evoked needs. One type of defunction is a privileged reaction that occurs at a sociocultural level. Any flexible social or cultural norm that sanctions reacting instead of resolving an inflexible need exists as a privileged reaction. Many of these work in concert with another type of defunction: the power problem. These get baked into our society to the point we no longer see the danger. Fortunately, each defunction be countered with a “refunction”. And each reaction can be corrected by a proper response. Responsive path Any legitimate means to resolving needs restores wellness and removes or reduces cause for pain. Need-response paves a disciplined path to 1. resolve needs, 2. restore wellness, and 3. remove pain. Which involves identifying the many barriers of react culture, and countering each barrier with a specific responsive path to resolve needs to restore wellbeing and remove pain. Refunctions correcting defunctions Anankelogy, the study of need, identifies anything that limits resolving a need and reduces your capacity to function as a “defunction”. Anything that enables resolving a need and raising wellness (i.e., capacity to function) is called a “refunction”. Almost every defunction can be corrected by a refunction, but not always within one’s individual control. First, let’s revisit the character refunctions, or universal principles recognized by every world religion and frequently applied in almost every spiritual tradition. This can lead to less defensiveness and more humble honesty of our imperfections. We’re all imperfect, so let’s embrace honesty, humility, empathy, forgiveness, mercy, tolerance, and understanding…among other applicable universal principles. Need-response addresses defunctions beyond the individual’s control with various services still under development. Central to such wellness compromisers is something called toxic legalism with its privileged reactions dragging us all into a sick society. Toxic legalism reactions Imagine you get pulled over by a police officer while driving home from the store. She issues you a traffic ticket for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign a few minutes ago. You ask how she knows for sure you didn’t come to full stop, since she was nowhere around at the time. She tells you she has an image from a surveillance camera to prove it. You wonder aloud if this violates your constitutional right to confront your accuser. She invites you to ask the traffic court magistrate, if you choose to schedule a hearing and take time off from work to contest it. She suggests it would be easier to admit fault and simply pay the fine online. Thar’s the law. She points out that you agreed to abide by the rules when getting your driver’s license. If it’s the law, then that must be a good response. Right? Well, not so fast. Not every situation calls for mindless obedience to the rules or to authority. If a police officer lies about you being a witness to a homicide and threatens to arrest you if you refuse to sign a witness account he himself wrote, do you comply? No one is literally above the law? False! That TR quote more specifically declares that no one’s impactful actions sit outside the scope of legal standards proven to lead to more resolved needs and sustainable personal and societal wellness. Not passive compliance. Passive compliance to a harmful law or authority is no excuse. Not for the Nazi’s accused of war crimes in the late 1940s. And not for us now. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, which are flexible social constructs relative to inflexible needs, then ignorance of affected needs is far less of an excuse. Everyone’s person is above the law, since human life existed before human laws. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve. Laws are flexible. Natural needs are not. Excessive reliance on laws, to the point of causing damage, gets labelled as toxic legalism. Many privileged reactions stem from this prioritization of norms over needs. Anankelogy identifies five key elements of this coerced compliance to norms over resolving needs. Click the button to dive deeper into each one. List of privileged reactions Some of these also qualify as a power problem, which are privileged by a power differential and gray areas of law. All of these are "defunctions", which refers to anything decreasing one's capacity to fully function. These first five set the foundation for all privileged reactions. "Privileged" suggests the law or social custom permits it, or at least how laws are created, interprted, applied and enforced. These first five show how the "good" of law can spoil into toxic legalism. 1. Psychosocial imbalance Do you ever react by asserting your individuality over the crowd? We all do at times. Western culture privileges individualism over the collectivism of a cohesive society. When left to slide into extremes, this favoring of the individual over the group tends to slip into hyper-individualism. Social norms then objectify individuals as law abiding citizens, devoid of complicating social contexts. We enforce norms to make sure individuals make good personal choices. Less attention on the social realm assumes each individual has an array of good options from which to choose. Dive deeper into atomization culture below. You can react atomistically or respond holistically. React: You either react by emphasizing personal responsibility to the neglect of real-world contexts that limit personal options from which to choose. Which correlates with resolving fewer needs, compromising wellness and suffering more pain. Respond: Or you respond by balancing both internal biopsychological factors and external socioenvironmental factors. Which correlates with resolving more needs, restoring more wellness and removing more pain. Psychosocial orientation (PO): individualism or collectivism Your life has a steady approach to resolving self-needs and social needs. You either resolve your self-needs more than your social needs or resolve your social needs more than your self-needs. And this predisposes your political views. Refunction: psychosocial balance path Shift from a self-over-social focus or social-over-self focus to self and social equal focus. Moreover, to cultivate a holistic approach that removes incentive to enforce social norms that errantly reinforce hyper-individualism. 2. Hyperrationality Do you ever react by self-censoring your emotional responses? Do you posit a socially viable reason for your actions? We all do at times. Sociology calls this impression management. To avoid rejection, we present a socially acceptable front. One that sounds more reasonable, less emotionally biased. Ironically, this itself is a bias. Our biases prioritize what we need. By properly resolving our needs with emotional honestly, we get passed the disturbing distortions of our cognitive biases. Dive deeper into hyperrationality culture below. You can react hyper-rationally or respond integrally. React: You either react by sounding more reasonable that others, which has the appearance of being more disciplined but actually evades rich emotional content for better understanding each other’s affected needs. Which correlates with fewer needs resolved, wellness compromised and more pain suffered. Respond: Or you respond by integrating your intuition, with its quick insights gleaned from your enriched emotions, and your reasoning process disciplined by your critical thinking skills. Which correlates with resolving more needs, restoring more wellness and removing more pain. Authenticity orientation (AO): emotional suppression or honesty Your life has a predictable approach toward dealing with intense emotions conveying needs. You either try to control emotions with rational arguments or you process emotions to deflate their compulsive nature. Refunction: authenticity path Shift from an emotional suppression or repression to emotional humble honesty. To let go of social norms relying on disingenuous rationalizations and replace with norms incentivizing authenticity that integrates impassionate and passionate cognitive content. 3. Overgeneralizing Do you ever rely on hyperbole to make your point? Do you then sometimes react by exaggerating just to keep things simple? We all do at times. You keep things simple to compete for attention. You’re tempted to oversimplify some stuff to hold your mark in our fleeting attention economy. Others may accuse you of deliberating ignoring vital details. Perhaps you acknowledge those details, which prompts others to bring up counterfactuals. Now it gets complicated. Dive deeper into hyperbole culture below. You can react vaguely or respond specifically. React: You either react by relying on generalizations that avoid uncomfortable detail. Which correlates with resolving fewer needs, compromising wellness and suffering more pain. Respond: Or you respond by exploring relevant nuance of vital details. Which correlates with resolving more needs, restoring more wellness and removing more pain. Relational orientation (RO): generalize or specific Your life has a stable approach for relating to matters outside of yourself. You either relate to things in more general terms or you relate to them in more specific terms. You either take hyperbole literally or explore any relevant nuance. Refunction: relevant nuance path Shift from social norms permitting dangerous exaggerations to social norms incentivizing exploration of relevant nuance. To accountably deal with vital details necessary to properly resolve needs. 4. Discomfort avoidance Do you ever evade something simply because you can. Do you react to avoiding something uncomfortable? We all do at times. If chasing the junk value of extrinsic happiness, you’re likely tempted to avoid all kinds of pain at any cost. But ignored pain eventually catches up to ruin your day. If always chasing after pleasure, and not resolving needs, you likely find yourself on a desperate treadmill. All privileged by social norms others chase just as religiously. Dive deeper into avoidance culture below. You can react evasively or respond engagingly. React: You either react by staying alienated from uncomfortable content. Which correlates with fewer needs resolved, compromised and suffering more pain. Respond: Or you respond by enduring or even embracing discomfort, to identify the threats your painful feelings prompt you to remove. Which correlates with resolving more needs, restoring more wellness and removing more pain. Easement orientation (EO): relieve pain or remove pain Your life has a stable approach toward life’s many discomforts. You either habitually pursue relief to avoid pain or you embrace discomfort to identify and remove the threat causing such pain. Including the options to remove yourself from the situation. Refunction: engagement path Shift from a discomfort avoidance to discomfort embrace. Instead of instantly reacting to pain, move toward it. Find out what that pain is trying to warn you about. Recognize how pain is not the problem as much as the threats that pain exists to warn you about.. 5. Dehumanizing adversarialism Do you ever react by taking a defensive stance against others? We all do at times. Ever wonder if there was a better way to resolve such conflicts? Opposing another’s need does not extinguish moral conflict but enflames it. Social norms around struggling with others risk keeping you locked down in perpetual conflicts. No one can change what they inflexibly need to get along with you. Nor can you change for them. You can either break free from such debilitating norms or remain stuck in pain. Dive deeper into oppo culture below. You can react defensively or respond approachably. React: You either react by taking an oppositional stance, which triggers mutual defensiveness shutting down needed awareness. Which correlates with resolving fewer needs, compromising wellness and suffering more pain. Respond: Or you respond by staying open amidst the conflict, to learn what you can from the others to develop a mutually satisfying solution. Which correlates with resolving more needs, restoring more wellness and removing more pain. Conflict orientation (CO): guarded or open Your life has a stable approach toward dealing with conflict. You either routinely get defensive and stay closed or you remain open to learn what’s going on. You either become instantly adversarial or you seek mutual respect to resolve conflict.. Refunction: mutuality process Shift from a closed-and-guarded to open-to-learning. From passively triggering mutual defensiveness to cultivating mutual understanding. From hostile apathy to generous empathy, even as they persist in opposing you. Set the standard for them to follow. Model the responsive path toward properly resolving the needs underlying the conflict. Drift into react culture Anankelogy has a word to describe this culturally normalized gradual slide into lowered levels of functioning. It refers to this normalized diminishing wellness as “drift”. These remaining privileged reactions reveal how we drift into trouble in socially approved ways. 6) Accountability diffusion Privileged deviation from being held responsible. 7) Ascribed illegitimacy Authority based primarily upon manipulating the public’s trust. 8) Bothsidesism misuse Smearing empathy for each side’s needs as false equivalency. 9) Coerced compliance Manipulated to submit to questionable expectations of authority. 10) Coerced poor options dependence Manipulated to rely upon limited options to address needs. 11) Degraded social contract Manipulating “consent of the governed” to accept poor outcomes. 12) Dysfunction pathway Settling for less-than-optimal outcomes that slowly damage lives. 13) Excessive resourcing Constraining access to the vital means to resolve needs. 14) Gaslighting Privileged coercion of others’ perception of reality. 15) Humanity loathing Animosity toward all fellow humans, enabling actual sources. 16) Indulgent side-taking Privileged adversarial stance negating cooperation. 17) Manipulative deception Coerce the vulnerable with falsehood. 18) Mass institution mission creep Privileged shift from founding purpose to self-interests. 19) Moral conflation Regarding inflexible needs as the same as flexible responses. 20) Normative alienation Standardizing estrangement from each other. 21) Pathological pragmatism Prioritizing easier to reach yet problematic results. 22) Permitted evil Privileged illicit actions not explicitly illegal or enforced. 23) Petty arguing debate Contend not to learn but to win regardless of the facts. 24) Premature defensiveness Raising guard without external cause. 25) Privileged avoidance Evading what’s uncomfortable simply because one can. 26) Projected antagonism Hostility toward those presumed to be as hostile as oneself. 27) Pseudo-rationality Emotionally charged subjectivity under veneer of being rational. 28) Relativizing universal wisdom Denying the absoluteness of widely grounded statements. 29) Self-incriminating denials: “not-that” Hyper-defensive resistance to critique betrays something to hide. 30) Shame shifting Privileged projection of own embarrassing propensities. 31) Structural exaction Coerced to sacrifice value by social structures. 32) Zero-sum thinking Privileging a winner-take-all falsehood. There are plenty more possible privileged reactions dragging us all down. Let these serve as a guide. And ... CHECK IN LATER TO SEE NEW ONES ADDED X) Item Succinct definition of this privileged reaction with a hint of its impact upon one’s functionality level or capacity.

First recognize every need as an objective fact The objective reality of need points to many overlooked strong correlations. . PART A: Predictable results of resolving needs PART B: Predictable consequences of unresolved needs Introduction Anankelogy first recognizes how needs occur as objective facts, independent from our subjective experiences. You require water whether feeling thirsty or not. You need social connection despite any thought or belief about it. Anankelogy defines need as essential to function. If you can function without it, then it is not literally a "need". For example, you never literally need a bottle of water. If you can access a resource in different ways, such as water from a drinking fountain, then anankelogy does not count that as "essential to function". To get more specific, anankelogy breaks down the experience of need in a four-part funnel. core need - optimal homeostatic balance, essential to functioning resource need - something necessary to restore homeostatic balance access need - how to get the necessary resource, or any substitutes psychosocial need - who is to access it, yourself or someone else Anankelogy differentiates between the inflexible core and flexible external aspects of our experience of needs. You have no choice about requiring something like water, solitude or social connection to restore equilibrium. You have choices how to address such needs. As objective fact, independent of awareness. The objective fact of needs Anankelogy invites us to discover the many significant correlations with our objective needs. Proper use of social science can test the veracity of these theorized relations. The findings can give credibility to our efforts to resolve more needs, which then removes more pain and restores more wellness. Anankelogy isolates these objective dimensions of needs And anankelogy can help us scientifically predict the result of unmet needs. If put under the microscope of social science research, you may find high correlations between the objective fact of needs and predictable outcomes of how such needs get addressed and experienced. With near-100% correlations, I can confidently guarantee… the less your needs resolve, the less fully you can function; the less you resolve your need or function, the more in pain you will be; and the more you relieve the pain of your unresolved needs without getting to its source, the more pain you ultimately experience as your body persists in warning you of the threat not yet fully removed. 1. Needs recur as an objective fact. Anankelogy fundamental principle 01. A need is an essential requirement to function, independent of subjective experience. Needs require resources to be accessed in order to restore functioning, independent of subjective experience. The bodily requirement for water, for example, sits outside any belief or feeling. Testable hypothesis: The more we must have something particular to stay alive or to function, and the less we can function without that particular something (or someone), the more that essential requirement exists outside of subjective experience. How this can be tested has yet to be designed. One way is to operationalize the observable distinction between the "what" of a need's objective occurrence and "how" that need gets subjectively experienced. 2. Function fluctuates as an objective fact. Anankelogy fundamental principle 03. When a need is not resolved, capacity to function gets reduced independent of subjective experience. For example, if the need to handle a threat is not resolved, one's function goes down regardless of feelings, beliefs or behavior. Fear predictably rises, outside of subjective experience. Testable hypothesis: The less we can function when a particular need is not met, and the better we can function when that need is met, the more removed that function (or wellness) exists from subjective experience. How this can be tested has yet to designed. 3. Emotions occur as objective events. Anankelogy fundamental principle 04. The content of emotions is generally subjective, like how to deal with one's fear. But the conveyance of fear as a warning when faced with something one cannot handle occurs independent of subjective experience. Sure, the details of that fear are subjective, such as the belief that the threat can't be handled or the belief it must be handled alone. But the occurrence of fear to warn of a possible threat always emerges outside of subjectivity. Testable hypothesis: The more we identify the same emotion to a particular need, the more removed that emotion from subjective experience. Here are five survey questions to test if emotions predictably occur as objective events. We could add more items, perhaps a total of ten. Respondent instruction: Identify the emotion that best characterizes your response. Q1: When stumbling upon a skunk and it starts to lift up its tail, I feel ___. curious bewildered afraid amused Q2: When running late to an appointment because traffic is unusually thick, along with new road construction, I feel ____. exasperated frustrated annoyed disappointed Q3: When learning my neighbor lied to me about why my trash cans came up missing, I feel ____. betrayed angry irritated exploited Q4: When losing a loved one to a sudden death, I feel ____. sad depressed grief lonely Q5: When caught lying to my friend about something I was too embarrassed to admit, I felt ____. exposed vulnerable irritated guilty Operationalized hypothesis: The more agreement among respondents (i.e., inter-rater reliability) identifying the most likely feeling, the more likely the identified emotion occurs independent of subjective experience and outside of personal biases. Emotions can then be characterized as occurring as objective fact. Null operationalized hypothesis: The less agreement among respondents, with diverse labeling of a corresponding emotion, the more likely the identified emotion points to subjective experience and personal biases. Emotions then cannot be characterized as occurring as objective fact. Democratizing science Anankelogy democratizes social science with what it calls relational knowing. Abbreviated RK, it empowers you to relate more accurately with your experienced needs. As you observe two things change in apparent association with each other, you frame your own testable hypotheses. You naturally entertain the notion of one "variable" causing the other. But scientific discipline encourages you not to rush to that conclusion. Know the four types of associations The discipline of social science reminds us to put the descriptive over the normative. We delay the gratification of acting upon our initial assumptions. We carefully describe all that can be observed, to ensure the greatest accuracy. We look at four different ways the association could be correlated. more-more: more of this, then more of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction) "The more generous with your time, the more others test your patience." more-less: more of this, then less of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions) "The more defensive you get, the less others open up to you." less-more: less of this, then more of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions) "The less you eat well, the more easily you get sick." less-less: less of this, then less of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction) "The less honest you are, the less others will trust what you say." Consider these knowable correlations in the testable hypotheses below. Each can be tested with the tools of social science, such as surveys, interviews, experiments, and the like. While suggesting a relationship between the two identified variables we observe changing at about the same time, we recognize how correlation is not necessarily causation. Even a spurious relationship can illuminate further inquiry. Embracing ambiguity Consider these five degrees of certainty using 'relational knowing'. Appears or seems - worthy of further investigation, exploration, but low to no certainty until tested Presents - can identify a way to test and measure this apparent association. Demonstrates - preliminary measures suggest a significant correlation. Demonstrates as indicated by - reliable measure points to a significant correlation. Demonstrates as verified by - reliable measure independently used that results in about the same findings. Any suggestion of absolute certainty ought to ring alarm bells. The more we feel certain about something, the less we seek to know further about that item or topic. Our dynamic understanding then risks crystallizing into beliefs that often cannot hold sufficiently true over time in newer situations. The less we feel certain...the more we seek...topic. Defining need Definition of need: something necessary to function. Or more simply a necessity to function. That "something" could be variable and therefore dependent on perception and culture. The raw necessity to function occurs prior to, and independent from, any perception or any human culture. Function occurs independent of subjective experience. If you do not receive sufficient nutrients, for example, your ability to function will objectively decline. I present these testable correlations in two complementary veins. PART A: Predictable results of resolving needs PART B: Predictable consequences of unresolved needs Social science accountability These assertions could be verified or invalidated using social science research tools. Keep in mind that science seeks to invalidate plausible but unsupportable assumptions more than it seeks to prove anything. I anticipate strong correlations in each of these. But such anticipation increases the risk of confirmation bias. Appropriate application of science mitigates this risk, such as using the null hypothesis to try to invalidate an untested theory and using double-blind experiments where neither the tester nor the tested know the anticipated results. With all research involving human subjects vetted through an IRB. Format Each entry below follows a simple pattern. The testable need-based hypothesis (sub header). Summary introduction to this testable hypothesis. Testable assumptions. Reasonable connection. Theorized hypothesis. Null hypothesis. Implication. Hypothesis in reverse. Quick caveat: I admit my grasp of statistics and academic research has grown a little rusty in the decade since completing two graduate degrees. I welcome critique to improve my suggested use of such research to invalidate or validate these wisdom-inspired correlations. PART A: Predictable results of resolving needs Anankelogy suggests a high correlation can be found in these associations. The more a need resolves, the less pain there can be to suffer. The sooner you remove a threat to functioning, the quicker your pain fades. The more your needs fully resolve, the better you can function. The more your needs fully resolve, the more you can reach your full potential. The more your needs fully resolve, the less drawn to unhealthy habits. The more you refill what your life requires, the less you crave unhealthy substitutes. The more you can fully resolve their needs, the easier to sustain peakfunction. The more you replenish what your life requires, the better you can function. The more fully replenishing what’s required, the easier to overcome addiction. Part B looks at each of these in reverse, at correlations of needs not resolving, A1. The more a need resolves, the less pain there can be to suffer. click to download After working a couple hours straight under a tight deadline and drinking coffee, you desperately need a restroom break. As soon as you go, you feel immediate relief. That applies to any other physical or emotional need you experience. As soon as your friend positively replies to your request for their help, your anxiety subsides. When you still cannot get everything accomplished as you had hoped, some anxiety persists. Your emotions faithfully report the level of your objective needs. Testable assumptions: This hypothesis rides on these guiding anankelogical assumptions. Anankelogy recognizes a need as an objective fact, which we subjectively experience after the fact of reduced function, occurring independent of awareness. This study of need also recognizes emotions exist to personally convey those needs, and that there is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Apart from the body compelled to warn of a perceived threat, it is impossible to experience any pain. No perceived (or vicariously felt) threat means no felt pain. Reasonable connection: Because every need exists as an objective fact for objective functioning, and pain only exists to report a threat to functioning (i.e., unresolved need), there should be a high degree of predictability. This theoretical correlation is to be tested to determine its veracity. Theorized hypothesis: The more a need resolves, the more the accompanying discomfort fades. The less a need resolves, the more intense the accompanying pain. Null hypothesis: The more a need resolves, there will be no significant decrease in the intensity of its pain. The less a need resolves, there will be no significant increase in the intensity of the pain. Operationalized: The more your air conditioner cools you down to an optimal body temperature on a hot day, the more your uncomfortable sweating goes away. The less your body can return to your optimal temperature, the more uncomfortably you sweat. IMPLICATION: If sufficiently validated, all services and institutions addressing needs of a populace could better relate to their pain. They can anticipate higher levels of reported pain likely points to lower rates of resolved needs. This also suggests that offering or providing long-term pain relief risks perpetuating pain. The body must continue warning of a threat to functioning until that perceived threat gets fully unremoved. B1 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A2. The sooner you remove a threat to functioning, the quicker your pain fades. When you arrive at the public restroom, you find you must wait in line for an available stall. Your body faithfully reports your need to go, however uncomfortable that message. But as soon as you finish what you came there for, that discomfort rapidly goes away. Your body loses reason to report such a threat to functioning once your bladder gets emptied. Testable assumptions: This hypothesis rides on these guiding anankelogical assumptions. The more one resolves a painful need, the less cause for the body to signal a threat. The sooner the removal of a reported threat, the sooner the body ends its painful warnings, allowing the accompanying pain to fade. Reasonable connection: Because every perceived threat that materializes negatively impacts functioning, and every removed threat removes cause to warn with pain, one can predict that removing a threat also removes the warning message of pain. This theoretical correlation is to be tested to determine its veracity. Theorized hypothesis: The more one respects pain to report threats, the more endurance to the sharp pain of reported threats. The more they endure such sharp pain of reported threats, the more effectively they can remove such threats. The sooner they remove these threats, the quicker their pain gets removed. The more pain removed, the more they can respect their pain and appreciate it to report threats, cycling back to the first relation. Anankelogy adds two types of testable correlations: reflexive and cyclic. To complement standard social science correlations, anankelogy introduces two unique types of testable associations. Its nature-based paradigm anticipates not only linear links, but reflexive and cyclic relations. Reflexive correlations. An empirically observable association between two or more variables that seem to change each other. While correlation is not necessarily causation, social science research typically anticipates one variable (the dependent variable) to change as an apparent consequence of another preceding variable (the independent variable). Anankelogy recognizes the possibility of variables reflexively impacting each other. This can point to a cyclic correlation between a string of variables. Cyclic correlations. The nature-based paradigm of academic anankelogy anticipates a string of dependent variables looping together. As variable A changes along with B, B changes with C. Then as C changes along with D, those changes in D link to changes in A. Each independent variable gets identified as a dependent variable to its preceding variable, in that part of the ongoing cycle. This suggested correlation can illustrate such cyclic correlations using the 4-part cycle of discomfort avoidance. (Start in the eastern quadrant.). 4-part cycle of discomfort avoidance Respect pain. The more you respect 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 respect your pain to report threats. Null hypothesis: The sooner one removes a pain-reported threat, there is no significant change in the timing of that pain’s decrease or removal. IMPLICATION: If sufficiently validated, clients and patients complaining of physical or emotional pain could be better understood as perceiving a threat to be removed. Instead of focusing on relieving their symptoms or pain, more attention could be given to the threats prompting the pain. The pain serves to warn against the threat constraining their lives. Anankelogy recognizes how pain is not the problem as much as the threat any pain solely exists to report. Instead of always trying to ease each incident of physical or emotional pain, we may be better served by removing the actual threats prompting such pain. Anankelogy suggests each of us has one can be called an “easement orientation”. We either embrace the discomfort of realizing there’s a threat to be removed or we avoid the discomfort and likely overlook a threat that persists to prompt more warnings with pain. We either present a resolve-over-relieve or a relieve-over-resolve easement orientation. The more overcome with pain, the more likely oriented to relieve the distress. Lessen your pain’s intensity by engaging the message of your pain. Unless overwhelmed by pain from too many unmet needs, your pain can fade before fully resolving the need. Instead of reacting to your pain by trying to avoid it, go toward your pain and make it serve you by taking these mindful steps. Acknowledge your pain. Recognize it is only there to warn you of some apparent threat to remove. Feel your pain lose its agonizing edge once you face it down. Identify what that threat may be doing to limit your wellbeing. Feel your pain start to fade as soon as you get its message about what you need in that moment. Do anything to try to remove that threat, or distance yourself from such a threat, and start restoring your functioning. As you perceive the threat going away, your pain loses its intensity. Partially remove a portion of that threat, or significantly distance yourself from the threat, so you can get back to fuller functioning. Your pain then loses cause to exist. Mostly remove the threat or remove yourself from that threat, to restore most of your lost functioning. You now only feel mild discomfort, reminding you how that threat is not yet totally gone but is mostly out of the way. Fully remove the threat, or fully remove yourself from that threat, to restore full functioning in that area. Your pain fully dissipates and then gives way to feeling relief. Moving promptly through these steps greatly reduces the risks of slipping into unhealthy habits. Failing to identify and remove threats significantly increases the risk of addiction, as coping mechanisms for dealing with the objectively occurring pain of objectively unmet needs. Short-term relief may be necessary. But the pain will return, often in a different form, if you continue to neglect the threat. As soon as possible, identify the threat and take steps to remove that threat, or remove yourself from it. But remain attentive to the underlying threat. Or that pain will find another way to compel your attention, and possibly pull you into some debilitating addiction. Let your pain serve you instead of you serving it. B2 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A3. The more your needs fully resolve, the better you can function. One day you're fine. You wake up the next day feeling like warmed over death. You feel too sick to go work. Did you cross over some invisible line overnight? Wasn't there some phase between being well and waking up unwell? Anankelogy suggests there indeed is such a phase. Between the wellness of "peakfunction" and the unwellness of "dysfunction" lies a phase called "symfunction". But then what exactly is function? Anankelogy defines function as the level of ability to continue existing and doing things as naturally possible. Anankelogy identifies four distinct levels of such functioning: peakfunction - prioritize resolving all needs fully; completely well symfunction - prioritize easing needs pragmatically with others; mostly well dysfunction - prioritize relieving pain of unresolved needs; increasingly unwell misfunction - prioritize surviving under threat of demise; totally unwell Testable assumptions. According to anankelogy, a need is a requirement of something or someone in order to function. Consider this: Every instance of not accessing what's required to function always diminishes the capacity to function. The more one replenishes what's been depleted, and removes threatening excess, the more their functioning returns to a more optimal level. Apart from this necessity to function, we have no needs. Reasonable connection: What academic anankelogy defines as function generally equates with accessible anankelogy's concept of wellness. A colloquial way to phrase this hypothesis could be: The more your needs fully resolve, the more well you will be. Inversely, the less your needs resolve, the closer your slide toward being unwell. Theorized hypothesis: The fewer needs demanding attention, the more one can fully function. The more needs demanding attention, the less one can fully resolve. Null hypothesis: The fewer needs demanding attention shows no significant change in one's ability to function. IMPLICATION: If a service provider, like a doctor or counselor, only helps you ease your pain, they risk limiting your full potential. The more professionals help you identify and address such needs, to ultimately resolve them, the greater the chances to reach more of your life's potential. Need-response sets itself apart from standard pain-relieving options by focusing on the needs causing such pain. B3 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A4. The more your needs fully resolve, the more you can reach your full potential. Everything feels fine for you this day. Nothing hurts. Your mind entertains some ways to stretch your horizon. Testable assumptions. When all of your needs fully resolve, you enjoy the capacity to more freely pursue more of your life's potential. As soon as you experience a need demanding your attention, you cannot focus as much on pursuing your life's full potential. When suffering the emotional strain of too many unmet needs insisting on your attention, you rarely can afford to pursue your life's potential. Reasonable connection: If you must attend to basic needs, then you likely cannot afford as much attention to addressing the higher growth needs like interpersonal intimacy, mutual trust, developing competencies, nurturing economic stability and the like. Theorized hypothesis: The more your needs resolve, the better you can function. The better you can function, the more your attention tends to get pulled toward reaching more of your life's potential. The less your needs resolve, the less you can fully function. And the more your focus shifts away from pursuing your full potential and toward doing something about the mounting emotional strain warning you of these unmet needs. Null hypothesis: The more your needs resolve, there is no significant difference in your capacity to function, nor in your ability to pursue your life's full potential. IMPLICATION: If sufficiently validated, more attention can be given to ensuring needs properly resolve, instead of increasing access to resources or relying on reasoning, or any of the other less effective modes for pursuing one's potential. B4 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A5. The more your needs fully resolve, the less drawn to unhealthy habits. When your needs properly resolve, you suffer less emotional pain. Since you suffer less pain, you typically do not seek as many comforting distractions. For example, when your need for social connection gets routinely satisfied by the quality time you spend with your closest friends, you feel little to no reason to seek validating "likes" on social media. Anankelogy recognizes three levels of resource needs for redressing your emotionally felt needs. Primary resource: What our body has evolved to utilize to restore optimal balance. E.g., water for thirst, interpersonal connection for loneliness, empathy for resolving conflicts. Primary resources fully resolving needs correlates with peakfunction. Alternate resource: What can allow a need to at least partially resolve. E.g., sweetened juice, casual friends, sympathy or pity toward those opposing you. Alternate resources partially easing needs correlates with symfunction. Substitute resource: What can only provide relief from the pain of the unresolved need. E.g., alcohol, social media “friends”, apathy or antipathy toward hostile foes. Substitute resources relieving pain correlates with dysfunction. Testable assumptions. Without the emotional strain warning you of unmet needs, you unlikely seek ways to distract yourself. While your daily routine results in properly resolving needs, you leave little to no room to slip into unhealthy habits. As you establish a routine that results in healthy living, you experience no incentive to indulge in unhealthy habits. Reasonable connection: As your needs remain mostly resolved, you can sustain the inertia to maintain healthy habits. Your raised capacity, and absence of emotional strain, can incentivize you to steer clear of poor habits. As you enjoy eating a healthy diet, for example, you feel less tempted to indulge in junk food on a regular basis. Theorized hypothesis: The quicker your needs fully resolve, the quicker your emotional strain warning you of the evoked need starts to fade. The sooner your identify the need, the less emotional strain you will suffer. The quicker you attend to the need, the less drawn to ways to distract you from the mounting discomfort from the painful need. Null hypothesis: The quicker your needs fully resolve, there will be no significant difference in the level of emotional discomfort you will experience. IMPLICATION: The sooner you can fully resolve a need, the less of a chance for emotional strain to build. Without mounting emotional strain from unmet needs, there is less of a chance to slip into unhealthy habits to cope with such pain. Anankelogy recognizes how there is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Once a need gets fully resolved, your body has no reason to signal any emotional discomfort about that need. You then experience pleasure or relief. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain exists to report. When feeling pain, thank your body for warning you of an apparent threat to remove. In other words, instead of habitually shrinking from that discomfort, move toward it to identify and address the need. Flee from pain and it will chase you; chase pain and it will flee from you. Then feel that pain go away. Flee from pain and it will chase you; chase pain and it will flee from you. B5 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A6. The more you refill what your life requires, the less you crave unhealthy substitutes. Let this build upon the previous hypothesis. Slipping into unhealthy habits begins with feeling satisfied with pain-relieving substitutes. The more you can reliably access primary resources to properly resolve your needs, which your life requires, the less likely you habitually indulge in unhealthy substitutes. You eat a healthy meal, so your hunger goes away. Or you grab a quick snack, but the hunger won't go away. You cope by eating more junk food, which leaves you craving for more. Then you find you lack the energy to prepare a healthy meal. You spend quality time with a friend who truly listens to you, so your loneliness fades. Or you call a friend, but they don't have the time to give to you. So you browse social media, hoping for 'likes' to your posts to give you that feeling you're being acknowledged. No amount of such shallow affirmations will actually satisfy you. Testable assumptions. The more responsive to your inflexible needs, by promptly replenishing what your life requires and promptly removing any threats, the less you seek to "replenish" with substitute resources. Desiring what is unhealthy almost always begins when not being able to access what is healthier. When alternate or substitute resources are more readily available than much-needed primary resources, we tend to be like electricity and take the shortest path. We grow dependent upon what is most readily available, whether that satisfies our needs (primary resources) or reliably eases our needs (alternate resources) or satisfies our desperation to get rid of the persisting pain of unmet needs (substitute resources). Reasonable connection: You can maintain a healthy habit only as long as primary resources remain available to you. Once you must adjust to lesser resources and then find them consistently accessible, your risk goes up to becoming emotionally attached to such lesser resources. As your life accommodates such compromised wellbeing, you become attached to the familiarity of lesser resources. You then rarely if ever seek primary resources anymore, and may lack the energy to do so. Theorized hypothesis: The quicker you replenish whatever your your life requires, which typically refills what has become depleted, the more likely you maintain a good habit of continually accessing such primary resources. The more you faithfully resolve your needs with healthy options, the less likely you crave any unhealthy options. Null hypothesis: The quicker you replenish whatever your your life requires, there will be no significant incentive to maintain healthy habits. Slipping into unhealthy habits could routinely occur regardless of promptly resolving needs. IMPLICATION: Social norms anticipate the predictable availability of resources. Wherever primary resources remain consistently accessible, social norms may cast lesser resources as taboo, or even forbidden. For example, Islamic and other cultures forbid alcohol because of its known damaging effects on personal and social wellbeing. The robust accessibility of healthier options like water, tea and juice make it easier to curtail access to alcohol. Wherever primary resources remain persistently inaccessible, social norms may normalize lesser resources as acceptable, and even preferable. For example, the adversarial judicial system and politics normalizes the lesser resource of dealing with conflicts with antipathy between both parties, leaving little if any room to encourage empathy for each other's affected needs. If no institution exists to resolve all needs of all involved in a conflict, we will understandably crave the less healthy substitute of offering pain relief to the winning side in a court or ballot contest. Yes, it is still better than violently attacking one another. In any distorted economy where a few can horde access to the best resources, and social systems can manufacture scarcity despite an abundance of primary resources, the number of people who slide into craving less healthy option will naturally rise. Anankelogy identifies the problem of excessive resourcing, where access to primary resources gets horded or wasted. Which spills over into manufactured discontentment. Instead of supporting each other to access much-needed resources, we find ourselves in a consumerist society of cutthroat materialism fueling hyper-individualism and alienation. This cultural climate normalizes the excesses of capitalism norms. Consequently, an increasing number must resort to lesser resources and accommodate compromised wellbeing along with mounting pain. Even the materially wealthy become spiritually poor in the process, who never find meaningful contentment unless they find purpose in sharing their excess wealth. But that doesn't heal society's disconnected materialistic sickness. Current norms tend to perpetuate this imbalance, with a marketplace willingly serving up unhealthy substitute resources. "We're just providing what the market wants," serves up as a convenient yet clueless excuse, rationalizing away complicity in diminishing our personal and collective wellbeing. A society that ensures all can access what they require in life may seem too socialistic or communistic. Or perhaps cast as too Pollyanna, too unrealistic, too impractical. Meanwhile, the complicit pay the price with their taxes that goes to public services to bail out those trapped in craving unhealthy substitutes. B6 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A7. The more you can fully resolve your needs, the easier to sustain peakfunction. Resolving your needs enable you to sustain your capacity to function. As Abraham Maslow noted, resolving your basic needs (like security) sets a foundation for your to attend to your higher needs (like intimate connection with others). Indeed, as your more basic needs feel resolved, your higher growth needs awaken. But if you must suddenly defend yourself from a permeating threat, those growth needs typically get put on the back burner. Promptly removing that threat frees your focus to reach more of your life's potential. You can then sustain peakfunction capacity. With your needs consistently resolved so you can continually functioning optimally, you may reach a state of flow enabling you to reach more of your life's potential. Which enables you to remain more attentive to the presenting needs of others. Helping them resolve their needs serves your own higher need for meaningful purpose in life, as an aspect of peakfunction. Testable assumptions. Fully resolved needs serve as a prerequisite to fully function, to optimal wellness. Partially resolved needs leaves you functioning at a less than optimal level. Promptly and fully resolving needs as they occur provides you the inertia to pursue your optimal goals. Reasonable connection: You don't have to seek optimal wellbeing to experience this pull toward reaching your full potential. As your needs somehow get fully resolved, you naturally feel pulled to attend to higher needs tapping into your full potential. Theorized hypothesis: The longer you maintain wellbeing by promptly resolving every need that arises, the greater your capacity to reach and sustain peakfunction. Null hypothesis: Promptly resolving your needs has no significant impact on your ability to function. If at a higher level of functioning, there will be no significant change in your likelihood of reach or sustaining peakfunction. IMPLICATION: We may assume reaching our full potential demands developing a unique set of skills. Or having the luck or talent to go where few if any have gone before. Instead of emphasizing individual prowess, with out Wester bias, we could cultivate a sociocultural climate incentivizing the proper resolution of our needs, and then see our potential for human flourishing blossom. Much of what hinders our full potential is symfunctionality, fed by divisive social norms anchored in adversarialism and privileged alienation of toxic legalism. Anankelogy considers this rigid conformity to familiar social norms as cisconventionality. And recognizes how nature fills this void with a corrective transconventionality. Those spiritually compelled to transcend divisive social norms to connect deeply with life's full potential are recognized as transspirits. Where cisconventionality prioritizes compliance to social norms, to fit social expectations even if they lead us astray from life's full potential, transconventionality prioritizes the proper resolution of needs to reach life's full potential. "Ciscons" tolerate the gradual debasing of symfunctionality and dysfunctionality, like the boiling frog of creeping normalcy. Transspirits get compelled to directly resolve the needs which norms emerged to serve, but not to settle on partial resolution or on pain relief but to fully resolve needs to remove pain and reach more of life's full potential. Instead of appreciating such norm-challenging transspirits yearning peakfunction for us all, ciscons often cling to the familiarity of acclimated symfunction. And then deride transspirits, who could potentially liberate their full potential, as outlaws and outcasts. (I speak from experience.) For example, ciscons cling to the divisive norm of labeling asymmetric warfare participants as "terrorists" while conveniently ignoring how their own side has engaged in violent acts that can be characterized as terrorism, as targeting noncombatants. Yes, Palestinians who resisted Israeli settlers with deadly violence is disgusting. So is the deadly violence of the Sullivan campaign that killed hundreds of noncombatant Iroquois during the American Revolutionary War, with General Washington's blessing. The transspirit recognizes both sides as asserting their inflexible needs for security and self-determination. Many a ciscon falsely claim empathy for each side's needs as a kind of moral neutrality. They have bought into the zero-sum myth of excessive resourcing, that only one side gets to claim the land or whatever resource being fought over. Their symfunctionality tends to blind them (i.e., diminishes awareness) from the quantifiable evil this normalizes. Which suggests they think at a lower level of epistemic reliance of available facts. Divisive norms compromising full potential can be organized by culturally established gender traits. Blending these traits can liberate life's full potential. And that's exactly why some transspirits (like myself) experience a transgender dimension. Not as a gender identity, but compelled spiritually to integrate all complementary sides of humanity to reach our full potential. As a demonstration of epistemic maturity at the postconventional level. Which includes honoring the inflexible needs of others as one's own, as an act of social love. B7 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. Good science offers satisfying answers. Great science produces better questions to ask and test, to continually dive deeper into the realms of meaningful reality. A8. The more you replenish what your life requires, the better you can function. All desires begin as an emotional signal to replenish something depleted that is essential to function. For example, thirst for water after your body's water level has fallen beneath its optimal level. Or desiring friendship to satisfy the need for social connection after feeling some loneliness. Once adequately replenished, your body signals your satisfaction with a feeling of pleasure. Your thirst feels quenched. Feelings of loneliness shift to feeling affirmed. These satisfied desires enable you resume optimal functioning. Resolving needs improves wellness. That assumes you replenish what's depleted with a primary resource. Water for thirst. Trustworthy friends for loneliness. When resorting to alternate or substitute resources, such as alcohol to alleviate thirst or social media "friends" to pacify loneliness, you cannot resume optimal functioning. When not resuming optimal functioning, your body continues to signal with emotions to attend to such needs. Anankelogy recognizes how emotions personally convey needs. Anankelogy also recognizes how your emotions prioritize your self-continuance. When suffering needs not fully resolved, your emotions "biases" your compromised wellness, your constrained ability to function. In short, your biases prioritize your needs. You can hardly concentrate on other matters while your capacity to focus or stay well remains constrained. Once your needs fully resolve, your capacity opens up to your life's potential for profound growth. You can think more clearly, empathize more easily with others, and see beyond your previously self-absorbed myopia when struggling with unmet needs. You can then focus more freely, without your scope narrowed by biases. Basically, resolved needs improve your understanding. The more your needs resolve, the easier to sustain your wellbeing. The quicker you replenish with primary resources anything depleted, the better you can focus on matters outside of yourself. You can care more for others, be more empathetic to their pain, and do more for what others need. You can more freely honor the needs of others as your own, to inspire others to honor your needs as their own. Love unleashes our lives' potential. Testable assumptions. All natural needs sit equal before nature. Nobody's needs matter more than anybody's else's needs. No one can function optimally at the expense of others. Natural needs never clash with each other. Your need for solitude, for example, never competes with another's need for your friendship. The problem of excessive resourcing, of demanding access to resources beyond what is proper for living a contented and meaningful life, can trick us into believing myths of scarcity. Needs could never evolve if actually clashing with other needs. Reasonable connection: While emotions personally convey needs, laws impersonally convey needs. But social norms can never fully or accurately convey your needs to others who may affect them. Translating your emotions into loving ways to invite other's empathy and care can go a long way to sustain your wellbeing. Theorized hypothesis: The more you properly resolve your needs, by replenishing what's depleted with primary resources and removing threats, both while imposing as little if anything upon others, the more your capacity to function optimally will remain sustained. Null hypothesis: The more you properly replenish primary resources when they become depleted, or remove threats, no significant change will occur to your capacity to function. IMPLICATION: Illicit desires emerge only when we cannot properly replenish resources when they get depleted. Illicit sexual desires, for example, emerge as a consequence of not being able to properly satisfy the benign desire for meaningful intimacy. All desires start as benign or even benevolent longing for something to restore wellbeing, as life has evolved for such needs to be fully and properly satisfied. When situations compel us to settle for alternate or substitute resources, our emotions persist to warn us of not meeting our full wellness. Biases then creep in, to prioritize our attention to address whatever may be lacking. And often with little regard for what others need, to prioritize our own self-continuance. The tendency toward cognitive bias correlates with unresolved needs. Your body easily overrides your best attempt to remain rational or impartial when it compels you to give your full focus to redress unresolved needs. Bias prioritizes addressing unresolved needs. Apart from unresolved needs, or the habits developed from experiencing them, you experience little to no cognitive bias. The scientist struggling with bias should self-reflect on their pressing needs in the moment. The scientist whose needs promptly resolve fully tends to be freer to focus on their work. Since their body is not compelling them to prioritize attention to a necessity to sustain functioning, their thinking can remain open to processing more data. Including disconfirming evidence challenging their pliable assumptions. When weighed down by unresolved needs, they tend to cling to assumptions that can offer some semblance of relief. Even if only because of their familiarity, at a time their mind gets contracted to focus on what can be trusted to provide relief. When needs fully resolve, the mind can then turn more of its attention to untapped possibilities. Ideas can flow freely, independent from what one's life requires. Theories can then reflect more of reality outside of oneself. Boundless epiphanies may emerge, as one discovery sheds light on another. Good science offers satisfying answers. Great science produces better questions to ask and test, to continually dive deeper into the realms of meaningful reality. Science is well served by the scientists whose needs promptly and properly resolve, to sustain their optimal functioning. Which then helps us all to function better. B8 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. A9. The more fully replenishing what’s required, the easier to overcome addiction. If you maintain a healthy diet and do not feel stressed out by life's demands, what are the real chances of you getting addicted to junk food? If you do find yourself indulging too much processed foods, then take proactive steps to prepare healthy meals as you get your life in order, can you see your risk of addiction to junk food significantly decline? Addiction typically emerges as a coping mechanism to deal with unbearable emotional pain. The numbing effect of alcohol, for example, helps distract us from emotional pain like overwhelming meaninglessness, perpetual loneliness, and devastating discouragement. When unable to replenish what your life requires to sustain your wellbeing, your may begin to desire alternative or substitute resources. You placate agonizing feelings of loneliness, for example, by seeking "likes" from social media "friends" who barely know you, if at all. If you never connect deeply with a trustworthy friend, you risk becoming emotionally attached to your shallow social media "friends". The ease and familiarity serves as low hanging fruit, as your diminishing capacity to function makes it harder to emotionally invest in true friends. For most of us, the pain we feel is preferable to the pain we fear. We know how to handle the low grade, albeit gradually climbing, level of familiar pain. It's generally easier to cope with the mild discomfort of being occasionally annoyed by a foe, for example, than risk triggering their painful rage if shouting some complaint. Creeping normalcy sets in. We acclimate slowly to increasing pain and decreasing capacity to function. As capacity shrinks, along with collapsing cognitive bandwidth, we become less equipped to handle the less familiar discomfort that often accompanies the resolution of stubborn needs. While addictions on the surface seem bad, they may actually be better than suffering overwhelming agony and allowing oneself to become functionally paralyzed. Removing that pain by resolving your needs with primary resources creates meaningful steps to liberate from any attachments to alternate or substitute resources. You can then focus better as your capacity improves, as your cognitive bandwidth allows more room for better planning and decision-making. Desiring what you actually require and can access replaces your Illicit desires. Testable assumptions. There is no such thing as pain nor desire apart from unresolved needs. Illicit desires typically emerge as a fallback to an apparent absence of primary resources. Satisfying your needs with what it actually requires tends to break any attachments to what only placates your feelings, which were signaled when those needs were unmet. Reasonable connection: Access to primary resources to fully resolve needs often depends upon the cooperation of others. Western culture risks overemphasizing what the individual should do to overcome addiction to substitute resources. This approach does not limit itself to what individuals can do but includes what others can do to affect addictive behavior. As anankelogy notes, wellness is psychosocial. Theorized hypothesis: The more you can fully resolve your needs with reliable access to primary resources, the lower your risk for becoming emotionally attached (i.e., addicted) to readily accessible alternate or substitute resources. Null hypothesis: The more you can fully resolve your needs with primary resources, there will be no significant difference in your risk to becoming addicted to alternate or substitute resources. IMPLICATION: Efforts to help individuals overcome their addictions could be greatly enhanced by identifying and addressing socioenvironmental barriers to primary resources. After exhausting attempts to change internally, persisting dysfunction indicates likely external factors to change. When seeming to blame society for their personal problem of addiction, the addict's frustration sheds light on the psychosocial reality of human wellness. Instead of reacting by countering with the hyper-individualism extreme of personal responsibility, we would do well to address both internal and external factors fueling dysfunction and addiction. We can start by recognizing the path from symfunction when settling on wellness-compromising alternate resources that slides into dysfunction when resorting to pain-relieving substitute resources. Symfunction comes with constant emotional reminders of unresolved needs, which takes up some of your cognitive bandwidth. The less your needs resolve, the less cognitive bandwidth to contemplate and reflect on other matters. Poor moral choices often begins with an inability to see or find primary resources necessary to fully resolve needs. Often beyond one's personal control. This leaves you susceptible to relying upon generalizations, even overgeneralizations, that overlook vital specifics for resolving needs and solving problems. Which feeds a vicious cycle, of avoiding more essential specifics. As emotional discomfort increases, avoidance typically sets in. You then cling more tightly to comforting generalizations. Which pulls you deeper into painful symfunction, and potentially into dysfunction. Following simple rules, like only try to change what you can change which is yourself, becomes attractive. It eases your pain, but unlikely removes all pain after neglecting its external contributors. Legalism then serves as another addiction. Sustainable liberation from addiction must integrate internal changes with proper external changes. Or we all risk slipping further into symfunction, then down into dysfunction. With the social science of anankelogy, we can find the discipline to meaningfully liberate far more from the blight of addictions. B9 expresses this hypothesis in reverse. "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller PART B: Predictable consequences of unresolved needs Anankelogy suggests a high correlation can be found in these associations. The less resolved a need, the more intense the accompanying pain. The longer it takes to remove a threat, the more the pain intensifies. The less a need resolves, the less you can function. The less your needs resolve, the less you can reach your full potential. The more in pain from unresolved needs, the more drawn to pain coping behaviors. The less you refill what your life requires, the more you crave unhealthy substitutes. The less you can fully resolve a need, the greater your risk for dysfunction. The less you can replenish what your life requires, the less you can function. The less replenishment of what’s required, the harder to overcome addiction. B1. The less resolved a need, the more intense the accompanying pain. Anankelogy recognizes a need as an objective fact, which we subjectively experience after the fact of reduced function, independent of subjective awareness. This study of need also recognizes emotions exist to personally convey those needs. Furthermore, it anticipates that the more urgent the need for one's functioning, the more intense that emotion. Not just randomly, but with a high degree of predictability. This theoretical correlation is to be tested to determine its veracity. Reasonable connection: When pain persists, including emotional pain, there is likely some need or needs not being adequately addressed. Testable assumptions. Anankelogy recognizes a need as an objective fact, which we subjectively experience after the fact of reduced function, occurring independent of awareness. This study of need also recognizes emotions exist to personally convey those needs, and that there is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Apart from the body compelled to warn of a perceived threat, it is impossible to experience any pain. No perceived (or vicariously felt) threat means no felt pain. Reasonable connection: Because every need exists as an objective fact for objective functioning, and pain only exists to report a threat to functioning (i.e., unresolved need), there should be a high degree of predictability. This theoretical correlation is to be tested to determine its veracity. Theorized hypothesis: The less a need is resolved, the more intense the accompanying pain. The more a need resolves, the less intense the accompanying pain. Null hypothesis: The less a need is resolved, there will be no significant increase in intensity of the pain. The more a need resolves, there will be no significant decrease in the intensity of the pain. IMPLICATION: If sufficiently validated, services addressing pain could focus more on the underserved needs that likely fuel the pain. The finding could help need-responders serve clients with the assurance their emotional and physical pain will likely decrease the more the service can help them to fully resolve their identified needs. This could be tested using the tools of social science research. This correlation could be tested using a survey in a clinical setting. Select a common need that conveys a specific need of a client. For example, fear or anxiety. "Apart from your need to handle something menacing, you feel no fear." Clients seeking the services of need-response are expected to report anxiety as a key feature. Survey how much they experience the need and accompanying emotion. For our example, add the level of anxiety a client experiences when experiencing the need to handle something they report as menacing. Use a Likert scale to assess their level of anxiety, from the most intense to no anxiety felt at all. After helping them handle the menacing threat and they demonstrate an ability to actually handle it, resolving their need, assess their level of anxiety again. Give this survey to a population of at least 400, anticipating a 50% response rate. After receiving usable data from at least 200 respondents, to improve the reliability of the findings, collate the data using SPSS software. Apply linear regression analysis. Process the data in a chi square table. Let this table show how much changes appear at random (supporting the null hypothesis) and how much follows a predictable pattern (supporting the theorized hypothesis). Write up the results for peer review. Follow any actionable critique to improve this testing process. Rince and repeat these steps above. A1 inverts this hypothesis. B2. The longer it takes to remove a threat, the more the pain intensifies. Pain is faithful. It consistently warns you of a perceived threat. Short of mood altering interventions, it will not abandon you until your body perceives all threats are removed. If it wasn't so unpleasant, we perhaps would be more grateful for pain's faithfulness. Thankfully, pain's predictability can be anticipated with these testable correlations: The less a threat gets removed, the more their pain persists. The more one suppress their pain, the more their pain persists The longer it takes to remove a threat, the more pain intensifies. Anankelogy adds the research tool of reflexive correlations. When a correlation suggests an accompanying relationship, and that relationship points to another association, back to the first examined correlation, we can recognize the cyclic nature of our needs. Testable assumptions. Both physical and emotional pain only occurs when perceiving a threat to one's ability to function. Pain consistently warns of a perceived threat until perceiving that threat is removed. The more such pain is ignored, the more it likely persists to faithfully warn the body of the perceived threat. Reasonable connection: Pain serves its purpose by maintaining the warning of an apparent threat to functioning, to wellbeing. Theorized hypothesis: The longer a perceived threat persists, the more pain the body measurably sends to evoke a self-protective response. Null hypothesis: As a perceived threat persists without abatement, there will be no significant change in the measurable level of pain. IMPLICATION: After a long while, such residual pain switches to biostructural pain to pull all stops to insist the threat gets removed, or to remove oneself from the threat. Then eventually the accumulating pain emerges as a threat itself, resulting in metapain. When a primary resource to remove the threat remains unavailable, an alternate resource offers some partial relief. But that may merely delay the pace of mounting pain, if the hypothesis is correct. A substitute resource may momentarily stall the alarm of pain. Which may prove necessary to reclaim some focus. But reliance on substitutes risks addiction. A2 inverts this hypothesis. B3. The less a need resolves, the less you can function. Anankelogy links inflexible needs (like water, social connection, security, self-determination, and belonging) to functioning, or more colloquially known as wellness. The less you can satisfy your thirst, or remain lonely, or left insecure, or controlled by others, or rejected from any group, the less you can function. Unresolved needs compromise wellness. Anankelogy recognizes how wellness is psychosocial. Your wellness, or capacity to function, depends both on internal psychological and biological factors as well as external cultural, social and environmental factors. Western culture emphasizes the internal to the risk of neglecting external factors. Which risks blaming the individual for not properly resolving their needs because of factors beyond their personal control. For example, the judicial system blaming a Black youth for offensive behaviors after that adversarial system previously denied the youth a stable childhood with his father for dubious reasons. The pattern unfolds in these reflexive correlations along three separate yet complementary paths. G: Picture being able to fully meet your childhood needs with your father's guidance. Y: Then picture your dad being taken away at a time you are too young to understand. R: Finally, imagine seeking guidance and only finding it among similarly impacted peers. Testable assumptions. One's capacity to function depends on both internal and external factors. Western bias can cast a blind spot on such impactful external factors. The less one can function, the more powerless to contest this destructive bias. Reasonable connection: If anyone should be able to resolve their needs with their given social environment, then incidents of lowered wellness (like anxiety, depression and addictiveness) would be statistically low. Mounting rates of poor wellness outcomes (or "mental illness") indicate otherwise. Theorized hypothesis: The less one can access primary resources to fully resolve their needs, the less they can function. Null hypothesis: The less one can access primary resources to fully resolve their needs, there will be no significant change in one's capacity to function. IMPLICATION: If verified, this phenomenon can serve as the process for symfunction capture. Which can predict outcomes when something other than primary resources (i.e., less-than-optimal resources) gets repeatedly used to react to felt needs. Symfunction creep. Having to occasionally settle for less-than-optimal resources. Symfunction strain. Acclimating to less-than-optimal resources. Symfunction trap. Having to rely mostly upon less-than-optimal resources. Symfunction capture can pull one into dysfunction. Which serves as a precursor to addiction. Which can have profound implications for addressing the problem of addictions. A3 inverts this hypothesis. B4. The less your needs resolve, the less you can reach your full potential. "Empty stomachs have no ears," goes the African proverb. As economic inequality widens under current norms, fewer can now access the essential primary resources to enable them to function optimally. They likely struggle with increasing pain and illness. Economic norms, in our alienated consumerist culture, incentivize the public market to cater to the manufactured demand (i.e., exploitive advertising) of mollifying alternate and pain-relieving substitute resources. The increased demand for less-than-optimal resources can drive down costs and prices, fueling this vicious cycle. Essentially, keeping the average Joe from living his dream could mean big business. Testable assumptions. Availability of a necessary primary resource gets shaped by market forces beyond the individual's control. Affordability of resources tend to favor less-than-optimal resources. Routinely accessing less-than-optimal resources compromises the capacity to function enough to pursue human flourishing. Reasonable connection: The equitable availability of primary resources, to fully resolve needs, is affected in part by what anankelogy recognizes as excessive resourcing. The more economic norms privilege accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, the less the marketplace gets incentivized to enable us all to properly resolve needs. Not only material needs, but emotional needs as well. Theorized hypothesis: The more the consumerist marketplace makes less-than-optimal resources more affordably available than expensive (or scarce) primary resources, the less consumers who cannot readily access primary resources can effectively function to pursue their full potential. Null hypothesis: The more the consumerist marketplace makes less-than-optimal resources readily available, there will be no significant impact on the consumer's capacity to pursue or reach their full potential. This could be easily tested with publicly available data This could be tested by comparing sales data of products with high-fructose corn syrup and health data of obesity and type 2 diabetes rates. Can it be assumed that those suffering such health effects are not reaching their full potential? Does this inexpensive sweetener incentivize those struggling with the pain of unmet needs to "self-medicate"? Foods laden with HFCS offer virtually no essential nutrients and displace nutrient-dense, whole foods in your diet. And does that undermine their capacity to pursue any human flourishing? If so, what does this imply about the ethics of food sellers using HFCS? IMPLICATION: Current economic norms readily serve the status quo social contract standard of manipulated consent of the people. The less this results in resolved needs or fewer people reaching their full potential, the more need-response challenges this status quo standard with a new one: measurably improved wellness outcomes. A4 inverts this hypothesis. B5. The more in pain from unresolved needs, the more drawn to pain coping behaviors. "Just because the pain is in my head," you could say, "doesn't mean I can do much about it." Unreplenished resources insist attention with obsessive desires. Unremoved threats persist in warning with pain. Your emotions don't care if such resources remain out of reach. If you can do little if anything about the lack of accessible resources to address such needs, then the resulting emotional strain can become unbearable, and overwhelming. Much like electricity seeking the shortest path, you will opt for substitute resources just to cope with the agony. This can devolve into your new normal. You may have to accommodate getting by somehow with less. You acclimate to an apparently manageable level of constant emotional pain. You survive on less than healthy coping behaviors, but at least you get to see another day. You might even find yourself emotionally attached (i.e., addicted) to social norms as a preferred way to cope with all of that emotional pain. As long as others act predictably according to the laws, you can trust you'll avoid harsher pains. Testable assumptions. Rising pain prompts the most readily available form of relief. Relieving pain can easily feel more important than patiently removing the cause of pain. Laws provide one way to cope with the subtle emotional pain of unresolved needs. Reasonable connection: Besides coping with addictive substances or behaviors, relying on legalistic solutions provides another way to cope with unresolved needs. Coping with illicit substances or questionable behavior taxes one's self-image. Coping with toxic legalism appears for more noble and socially supported. Theorized hypothesis: As the pain of unresolved needs mounts, one's coping behaviors also rise. The less one's needs fully resolve, the more one relies upon laws to manage their risk for more pain. Null hypothesis: As the pain of unresolved needs mounts, there is no significant change in one's coping behaviors. The less one's needs fully resolve, there will be no significant change in one's reliance upon laws. IMPLICATION: The aim of the legal system is not to properly resolve needs of all involved in a conflict, but to offer relief from pain for the winning side. Both the adversarial judicial system and the adversarial political system relies heavily on manipulating public perception that the law is the best and only option available to deal with unmet needs. Need-response challenges the legitimacy of such legalistic solutions, by raising the standard from "consent" of the manipulated people to measurably improved wellness outcomes. Any social structure holding us all accountable to improving wellness outcomes, by properly resolving needs, will produce far fewer offenders, addicts, or annoying legalists. And cultivate more space to nurture our potential to love each other better. A5 inverts this hypothesis. B6. The less you refill what your life requires, the more you crave unhealthy substitutes. There is no such thing as desire apart from unreplenished primary resources. Drinking water removes thirst. Meaningful social connection removes loneliness. Finding meaningful personal space removes feeling socially smothered. When the water your body requires feels out of reach, you understandably will settle for a soft drink. When your friends cannot be found, you understandably settle for social media "friends" affirming your posts. When the solitude you crave eludes you, you understandably shut out the noise with your ear phones and favorite music while in a noisy crowd. If all you can find is something that can help numb the pain, you understandably will settle for such an unhealthy substitute. Spread over time, you may end up craving such unhealthy substitutes. And lose hope of being free from pain, as you acclimate to the familiarity of this consistent discomfort. Testable assumptions. When a primary resource cannot be attained to replenish something depleted, to sustain or restore wellness, more accessible alternate to substitute resources may emerge that can lessen or stop the discomfort of obsessive craving. When lived experience normalizes the easier accessibility of such less-than-optimal resources, while unreplenished needs prompt desire for anything to fill the hole, one may believe they are innately prone to having such bad desires. Hyper-individualism of Western thinking (which often discounts external contexts for lived phenomena) can cast those trapped using substitute resources (i.e., addicts) as "bad people" while overlooking the "bad" of societal sickness that limits their options. Reasonable connection: Assuming addictions emerge simply from individuals making "bad choices" overlooks the psychosocial dynamics that increase the likelihood for having to opt for less-than-optimal resources to cope with the consequential agony of not being freely able to fully replenish what has been depleted or fully remove threats prompting pain. The problem is not that so many people fall through the cracks. The problem is that there are so many cracks. - James Hightower Theorized hypothesis: The less one can replenish what their life requires, the more they fall back on using substitute resources to mollify their obsessive craving. Null hypothesis: The less one can replenish what their life requires, there will be no significant behavior that chooses to settle for identifiable substitute resources. IMPLICATION: No one spontaneously desires illicit drugs, junk food, social media "likes" over meaningful connection, or a host of other unhealthy cravings. These all emerge as something of a backup plan to try to fill that hole with something. Which serves as the etiology of almost every addiction. In short, moral agency is only as good as the real options available. And not simply a cost comparison rational choice. Yes, everyone is responsible for their own consequential choices. But no one is responsible for the actions of another or a system that removes all of the oxygen from a room. Public policies overlooking the equitable access to primary resources risks reinforcing the problem of addictions. The less the people in a population can fully resolve their needs with stable access to primary resources, the more discomfort they will endure, and the more of their wellness will be compromised. Which slips easily into a vicious cycle. A6 inverts this hypothesis. B7. The less you can fully resolve a need, the greater your risk for dysfunction. Having to opt for a less-than-optimal resource to abate emotional pressure means your evoked need cannot be fully resolved. At least not right away. Some level of emotional message will return to insist this impact on functioning gets addressed. Anankelogy illustrates this with its focal range diagram. Aware. Emotions prompt awareness of a need, then accessing the relevant resource promptly results in relief from pain or pleasure from desire. Alert. Emotions alert the risk to functioning if the need is not fully resolved, as the threat to one's functioning persists. Alarm. Emotions scream out a painful alarm if the threat to functioning risks damage, when the vital resource remains elusive. To manage such persisting pain or incessant desire, we naturally organize our lives to limit how much we suffer. Getting by with a limp is better than not getting on at all. Testable assumptions. Unresolved needs prompt pain, to warn against the threat to one's functioning. We naturally prefer to avoid the displeasure of persisting pain and unfulfilled desire. We typically prefer a lowered capacity to function over mounting discomfort. Reasonable connection: Theorized hypothesis: The longer one adjusts their life to a norm of fewer needs resolving, the more likely they slip into dysfunction. Null hypothesis: The longer one adjusts their life to a norm of fewer needs resolving, there will be no significant risk of slipping into such dysfunction. IMPLICATION: Anankelogy recognizes a process between wellness and sickness. Called symfunction capture, it helps to explain how we can slip almost invisibly into dysfunction. This process recognizes three key phases. Symfunction creep from fully resolving needs to partially resolve some needs. Symfunction strain from partially resolving some to most needs. Symfunction trap from partially resolving most needs to not resolving any need fully. Without reliable social supports to endure discomfort, for the discipline of accessing vital resources to fully resolve needs, one tends to slide into this symfunction capture process. As more of us struggle with loneliness and alienation, we depend more upon impersonal rules to convey each others needs. Which results in fewer of our needs being properly addressed. A vicious cycle ensues. Public policies neglecting this reality risks perpetuating the problem by offering legal relief over addressing the unresolved inflexible needs behind the troubling pain. Which fuels growing disillusionment with legalistic institutions. Need-response moves beyond such dangers of toxic legalism to incentivize more responsiveness to our vulnerable needs. If the hypothesis can be verified, then the need-specific approach of need-response can close the "cracks" to this gateway to dysfunction. A7 inverts this hypothesis. B8. The less you replenish what your life requires, the less you can function. Desire only exists to replenish something depleted in your life. Once refilled, and short of psychological habit, you experience no desires. Sure, you can feel attracted to something or someone at any time. But this is not the same as the emotional obsession to fill some internal hole that we know as desire. A casual wish can be dismissed, unlike a pressing desire. If not getting what you need in water, nutrition, social connection, personal space, or any other requirement when required, you will not be able to function as well. You will become increasingly unwell. Testable assumptions. Desire only exists to replenish something depleted in your life. Desires can be mollified with substitutes that do little to aid functioning. This shift from healthy to unhealthy desire is largely invisible. Reasonable connection: The notion of willpower and perhaps discipline to withstand some questionable desires fails at the weight of life compelling behavior to fill that hole. Theorized hypothesis: The less one can replenish the vital resources one's life requires to wholly function, the more exposed to illness outcomes. Null hypothesis: The less one can replenish the vital resources one's life requires to wholly function, there will be no significant increased exposure to illness outcomes. IMPLICATION: Redressing problems best begins by thoroughly addressing the unresolved needs fueling problems. Public policy tends to react more than respond to such needs. Need-response starts with inflexible needs, for which flexible laws and flexible policies ostensibly serve. Any law or authority that compromises wellbeing, which is necessary to fulfill the purpose of law, lacks legitimacy. The less one can function, the less capable to compy with every law or norm. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above our natural needs for which laws exist to serve. Desires cannot be constrained by mere law. Inflexible needs will spur desires in ways no law can change. Only how we respond to such needs and desire, never the needs or desires themselves. Need-response incentivizes us to honor the needs of others as own own, to properly resolve each need so they do not sink into improper desires. Which leads to noble authority. There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love. A8 inverts this hypothesis. B9. The less replenishment of what’s required, the harder to overcome addiction. If unable to find meaningful connection with trustworthy friends or family, it can be next to impossible to break free from relying on social media to seek some affirmation. Or to stop binge eating junk food if unable to restock nutrients with healthier foods beyond reach. But let's think beyond such personal addictions to address society's addiction to toxic legalism. Our societal sickness gets rooted in large part to normalizing the neglect of each other's vulnerably affected inflexible needs. If our social structures and cultural norms do little to support properly resolving needs, then dysfunction and addictions will predictably abound. Testable assumptions. Dysfunction prioritizes relief from pain, not getting to the source of such pain. Addictions typically emerge as a way to cope with continual pain. Restocking what the body requires tends to negate illicit desires. Reasonable connection: Widespread addictions to social structures that are privileged to remain unresponsive to inflexible needs undermines sustainable attempts to address personal addictions. Theorized hypothesis: The longer one feels they must opt for discomfort-easing options, including legalism, the more prone to becoming addicted to such options. Null hypothesis: The longer one feels they must opt for discomfort-easing options, including legalism, there will be no significant risk to becoming addicted to such options. IMPLICATION: Any public policy overlooking any affected need will fail. In fact, legalism's offer to relieve pain for the winning side in a public conflict reinforces dysfunction and addictions, by deliberately neglecting painful needs. If adversarial law is the only official option, then emotional attachment to such legalism likely emerges. Instead of restoring wellbeing by resolving affected needs, adversarial law in politics and the judiciary evolves as unhealthy substitute resource. Many are drawn to legalistic solutions that rarely resolve needs. Adversarial options usually prevent us from resolving needs, from restoring wellbeing, and from removing pain. Which ironically reinforces widespread dependence upon legalistic authority as the familiar way to cope. Until disillusionment upends it all. Disillusionment abounds with many current institutional options. Many are disillusioned with lawyers. And many are disillusioned with psychotherapy. There a growing number of lawyers disillusioned with being a lawyer. There a growing number of psychotherapists disillusioned with being a psychotherapist. Those disappointed by the courts are disillusioned with the adversarial judicial system. Wrongly convicted innocents are disillusioned with the legalistic innocence movement. Much of this comes down to power differentials provoking poor wellness outcomes. Power holders lacking a track record of positive wellness outcomes tend not to be trusted as much, which compromises their legitimacy. Especially when they benefit from the harm that traps us in dysfunction and addictions. Current norms rarely incentivize them to empathize and relate to the specific needs they impact in subordinates. Need-response dares to raise the social contract standard from manipulated consent of the governed, held down by dysfunctional legalism, to measurably improved wellness outcomes, anchored in love for one another. Need-response incentivizes us to socially love one another, to honor the needs of others as one's own. Then we can replenish what life requires in us all, to properly resolve needs with the power of love. A9 inverts this hypothesis. BONUS: Theory explaining what shapes our political views The second foundational principle of anankelogy recognizes the priority of one's needs as objective fact. This applies to the basis of one's political views. Anankelogy recognizes political orientation as the outward flexible expression of one's inward inflexible psychosocial orientation. WIDE oriented: When your self-needs get more resolved over time than your social needs, you naturally develop a "wide" psychosocial orientation. You tend to guard your resolved self-needs, like guarding your turf. You generalize how others are to respect your less resolved social needs. In the American political spectrum, you likely favor progressive policies. You guard your unconventional individuality, while championing social policies like equal rights and social justice. DEEP oriented: When your social-needs get more resolved over time than your self-needs, you naturally develop a "deep" psychosocial orientation. You tend to guard your resolved social-needs, like guarding your turf. You generalize how others are to respect your less resolved self-needs. In the American political spectrum, you likely favor conservative policies. You guard the social cohesion of your family, while championing individual rights like personal property and personal protection with you your own firearm. This understanding challenges the widely accepted reductive view that political beliefs can be debated and readily changed. Because "political beliefs" outwardly express an inward inflexible orientation, any challenge can feel like an existential threat. The meaningful difference here is not lateral; it is not between the political left and political right. Neither side can change their priority of needs, lest they compromise their wellness and suffer pain. The vital distinction is vertical: between immature and mature development. Or what anankelogy identifies as one's epistemic reliance level. The immature preconventional gravitate toward overgeneralized political views, correlating with high incidents of dysfunction. The maturing conventional benefit from the wisdom of the crowd but risk groupthink, correlating with stifling symfunction. The matured postconventional can readily empathize with all sides, correlating with the liberty to reach peakfunction and enjoy human flourishing. Current politics tends to pull down from optimal peakfunction and into more familiar zones of symfunction and dysfunction. Unfortunately, the familiar pain we feel is often preferable to the growth pain we fear. If politics was more about honoring the priority of needs in ways with the least negative impact upon the needs of others, political conflicts would naturally clear up. As more politicized needs resolve, personal and collective wellbeing could improve. And less pain suffered. To dive deeper into this need-focused appreciation of politics, check out this video and post on Let's Unpack Politics. Conclusion (but not necessarily conclusive) Why Steph Turner? I bring to the table a fresh perspective for better understanding and resolving our needs. As an indigenous person, I am less socially conditioned into Western constructs. For example, I am inclined to maintain a holistic view while examining minute details. I am less prone to disconnecting the parts from the whole of nature. Or objectify people. Or slip into reified reduction. With my indigenous background and spiritual gift of wisdom, I am intuitively compelled to brainstorm ideas and intuitively experience epiphanies, independent of pouring through available research on the subject matter. Which has opened my eyes to see what others generally miss, like the objective fact of needs. By earning degrees in education, theology, anthropology, sociology, public administration and counseling, I bring something of a holistic view to this new social science of anankelogy. But my lived experience of being marginalized has yet prevented me from bringing this new social science to the academic world. Perhaps that can soon change. Another social science Until the Anankelogy Foundation can establish its own research department, these correlations will have to rely on clinical findings when testing our new need-responsive interventions. Anankelogy aims to build upon the shoulders of the other established social sciences. And add to their findings. Anankelogy adds the insight that bias results primarily from unresolved needs compelling attention for their relief. The more a researcher or scientist stays atop of their needs, the less prone to confirmation or other forms of bias. Without unattended needs compelling their attention, they remain freer to recognize more of reality. They experience more epiphanies, as ideas can instantly blossom out of intuitive connection unimpeded by emotionally charged unmet needs. In short, resolved needs mitigate risks of bias while freeing up the scientist's cognitive bandwidth. All the other social sciences tend to neglect the centrality of need to the human experience. Its literature often oversimplifies this motivating factor as simply "goals" or mere "interests", as if free will could alter what a person or community factually requires. Appreciating the plumbline of need can demystify much of the human experience. Anankelogy seeks to complement the other social sciences by adding this overlooked perspective. All the social sciences—psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics—exist to address our needs. Now we have a social science to better understand and address the needs themselves. The author invites your input Leave a comment below. Drop a line in our inbox. Let's start a dialogue about our needs. back-to-top

A new service for speaking truth to power & listening to those impacted video script Power differentials impact the wellness of the powerless side. Let’s call them impactees. Which impacts the legitimacy of the powerful side. Let’s call them impactors. Impactees need to speak truth to power in a way that the powerful will listen to those impacted. Each best speak to what the other side needs. . Impactees could help impactors earn legitimacy by incentivizing the impactor to help improve impactee wellness. By impactors helping impactees resolve their power-impacted needs. That’s exactly what the new program of Wellness Matters seeks to do. Bring both sides together for a win-win solution. Its 8-step process incentivizes both impactee and impactor to honor the need of the other as their own. If cooperation breaks down, the impactee asserts a path toward greater wellbeing. “No” is not an option. You can help shape this. First, learn more about this visionary service at anankelogyfoundation.org/post/wellness-matters. Then connect with us at engage@anankelogyfoundation.org. Let's build a brighter future together, with the power of love.

8-step program to address impact from power differentials TLDR Summary Still in its infancy as a proof-of-concept model, this pioneering program addresses the impact of power differentials. Wellness Matters is the provisional name for this new need-responsive process that brings both sides of a power differential together to cooperatively solve problems, by mutually resolving needs. Win-win. Problem Solution Prep, Process & Product Testing this Your input Contact Me Problem A power differential occurs between an identifiable "impactor" and "impactee". The impactor impacts the relation more than impacted by it. The impactee is impacted by the it more than impacting it. For example: Employer-employee Creditor-debtor Doctor-patient Teacher-student Police-civilian Counselor-client Politician-voter Attorney-client And many more. The impactor typically gets what they want from the relation more than the impactee. The power diffrence tends to coax the impactee to sacrifice what they honestly need. Which can negatively affect the impactee's wellness and undermine the impactor's trustworthiness, or legitimacy. Not only on an individual transaction level, but also insitutionally and societally. Power problems Wellness Matters specifically exists to address "power problems". A power problem is one endured by the impactee from the power difference, and falls outside the scope of legal remedies and therapeutic adjustment. Which is why so many impactees suffer from them. Each challenging problem translates into an opportunity to resolve a power-impacted need. For example, the line worker suffers when her supervisor overloads her with added work because he trusts she is unlikely to complain about it directly to him. He could assign the work more equally among his staff, but is not legally required to do so. Problem: work overload. Need: equitable delegation. If her upbringing or values or cultural background makes it more difficult for her to vocalize her concern, then her boss is exploiting her silence in a legally privileged way. And why should she seek counseling to adjust to a situation not of her own making? Click here for a list of more power problems & their related power needs Power problem Related need privileged discrimination cultural incompetence surprise billing rushed decision misinformation social justice cultural competence transparent billing informed decison verifiable sources Such common problems could use a radical solution. Solution This pioneering service brings both sides together to serve the other. Instead of compelling attention with laws or reasoning to serve what each one needs, this process incentivizes each side with internal motivation to serve the other. The impactee needs wellness, from resolving a stubborn need. The impactor needs legitimacy, from earning trustworthiness. Impactee needs wellness The impactee needs to resolve a need with the impactor's cooperation. Until resolved, it objectively diminishes their capacity to fully function: their wellness. Impactor needs legitimacy The impactor must be trustworthy to their subordinate impactees. Until then, distrust undercuts the impactor's capacity to lead effectively: their legitimacy. Only this new program from need-response incentivizes each to serve the need of the other. As the impactor helps the impactee resolve their need, restoring wellness, the impactee can vouch for the impactor's effective leadership, their legitimacy. Each needs the other. Need-response is a new profession applying the new social science of anankelogy. Only need-response recognizes the objective fact of both the impactee's need and the impactor's need. Only need-response can design a program that recognizes the objective fact of each other's capacity level, of each other's affected wellness. Prep, Process and Product "Wellness Matters" serves as this program's current provisional name. It will likely change. Steph, its creator, serves as its first guinea pig client. We break the program down into three main phases. Prep: Getting the service user started on a sound footing. Process: Walking the service user through its eight steps. Product: Guiding the user to utilize the results of each step. Prep The service-user is always the impactee. The impactor can invite a subordinate to start the process, but as currently envisioned they can never start a process themselves. The service captures the impactee-user's wellness baseline. This holds the process accountable to evidence-based outcomes. This proof-of-concept version relies on an Excel spreadsheet to serve as a dashboard. Most of its 61 pages replicate the pair of impactor profile pages like pages 5 through 8 seen here. The impactee-user brainstorms a list of power differentials with impactors currently affecting their life. Their employer, their creditors, their healthcare providers, etc. From this list the impactee-user selects which to target first. Next, they identify potential peer supporters, who they will invite to follow their progress. Then the process gets under way. Process This proof-of-concept version experiments with this 8-step process. Which will likely evolve as it gets market tested. Each step identifies a challenge, then shifts it into an opportunity for Wellness Matters to address. Step 1: Alert. Power differentials tend to keep impactor and impactee alienated from each other. Wellness Matters introduces the impactor to the impactee's affected need, along with this opportunity to address it together, in a meaningful engaging way. From alienation to engagement. By bring impactor and impactee together to honestly engage each other. click to dive deeper Step 2: Follow-up. Power differentials tend to limit impactor's awareness of the actual impacts they have on others. Wellness Matters follows up on that initial alert to bring greater awareness to the challenges and underutilized opportunities of power differentials. From obliviousness to awareness. By following up on the initial alert message, introducing more of this process. click to dive deeper and brochure introducing th impactor to this program. Step 3: Good faith. Power differentials tend to sour rapport between impactor and impactee. Wellness Matters builds mutual trust by mutually assessing each other's responsiveness. From distrust to trust. By developing impact parity that nurtures mutual support for each other's needs. click to dive deeper Step 4: Options. Power differentials tend to limit options available to impactees, to either react adversely or concede in silence. Wellness Matters adds the alternative of mutuality. From power imbalance to impact parity. By recognizing and shifting from standard poor options to a better option of mutuality. click to dive deeper Step 5: Law-fit. Power differentials tend to enable the impactor to coerce compliance to those laws which advantage them and disadvantage the impactee. Wellness Matters ties each applicable law to the need or needs it exists to serve, along with the actual effects on each other's needs. From legalism to responsivism. By relating honestly to the inflexible needs constrained by flexible laws and legalism. click to dive deeper Step 6: Exaction invoice. Power differentials tend to coerce the impactee to sacrifice value without just compensation. Wellness Matters itemizes the hidden imposed costs of a power differential interaction and then provides the impactor with opportunity to convert this into earned legitimacy. From ascribed to earned legitimacy. By converting itemized coerced costs to empirically demonstrated trustworthiness. click to dive deeper Step 7: Mutuality. Power differentials generally rely on the social contract of "consent to law" which is often manipulated to suit the powerful. Wellness Matters raises the social contract standard to mutually improved wellness outcomes, measured in ways that cannot be manipulated. From manipulated consent to improved outcomes. By hammering out a Memorandum of Understanding with mutual regard. Step 8: Liberty. Power differentials tend to normalize the shrinking capacity of impactees and impactors to fully resolve their needs. Wellness Matters concludes this process by asserting the freedom to properly resolve needs with or without the cooperation of others. From societal sickness complicity to societal wellness credit. By pledging to properly resolve needs with or without the impactor's full cooperation. Click to view an example Product The above process produces each "product" as the conclusion of that step. Alert draft message that alerts thee impactor to the impactee's underserved need. Follow-up message and brochure to orient the impactor to this new service. Good faith survey to assess each other's responsiveness. Options menu, and if waived if impactor agrees to mutuality option. Law-fit form to identify relevant laws and the needs involved. Exaction invoice that itemizes hidden costs and invites conversion to earned legitimacy. Memorandum of Understanding to mutually work out how best to address each other's needs in amicable terms. Memorandum of Agreement that puts the negotiated MoU into actionable terms that prioritizes the liberty to properly resolve needs. Unilateral or Cooperative Each step provides the impactor a "unilateral track" in case the impactor exits or never responds. The preferred "cooperative track" leads to more value, but the service does not leave the impactor, with their inflexible needs, vulnerable to the whims of any impactor. 'No' is not an option When invited to cooperate to help resolve the impactee's need, which the impactor affects, "no" is not an option. We move on without that impactor. Perhaps they will onboard later after realizing all that they are missing. Until then, the impactor must plow ahead. Consequences The uncooperative impactor may regret the consequences built into the program. Options menu: adversarial options may be reasserted. Exaction invoice: itemized items stand as documentation for potential legal contest. Declaration of Liberty: impactee asserts right to properly resolve needs on thir own. And other less pleasant results. Including FOMO. After demonstrating good faith intent and offering mutual regard for the impactor, it will be difficult for that impactor to politically rationalize their departure. Adoption, of course, should be more for positive gains than unpleasant costs. But only by testing it in real time can we know for sure what actually works. Testing this in real time I am now testing this on myself with the impactors influencing my life. I need this service to improve my own wellness, as ethically questionable professionals hinder my ability to fully function. I begin by addressing three different types of power differentials. 1. Power differential type: healthcare provider/patient. Problem: surprise medical billing. Need: transparent medical billing. Despite transparent medical billing mandated by the 2022 Federal No Surprise Billing Act, some of my healthcare providers send me a bill I either do not owe or convince me to receive nonurgent care without an estimate of what it would cost me. Is it worth sliding into medical debt to undergo an expensive medical examination that warns me of some future health risk that some lab result flagged? What about my current health need not to be subjected to financial stress? 2. Power differential type: creditor/debtor. Problem: siloed transactions. Need: contextualized finances. Each of my creditors remain ignorant of every other creditor and bill collector knocking on my door. Until now. Each will now be informed of the context of my limited finances. Then challenged if their legally privileged economic pressures fall under predatory behavior exploiting the economically vulnerable. 3. Power differential type: employer/employee. Problem: cultural incompetence. Need: cultural incompetence. My supervisor and manager over him damage their rapport with me when trying to motivate me with emotion or when paternalistic toward me. Despite appearing as a white person like them, I am indigenous to the core (enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin). The more culturally competent toward the culturally different, the more productive we all could be. These are impactors who interact with me each day. So I should be able to get through this process much more quickly with them. Who's next? After initial testing on myself and these impactors I target, I hope to find a handful of fellow impactees to continue testing this. They will likely be innovators who struggle with at least one power problem, is gravely aware of this power problem, has a priority to solve it as soon as possible, is currently seeking a solution to it, and will willingly risk this untried solution. Does that sound like you? If so and you're interested in helping this grow, click the Contact Me button below. I look forward to hearing from you and onboarding you to help try this visionary new service. I need your help working out the bugs. To offer a complementary perspective. And to test any built-in assumptions. Assumptions to test Every new idea includes high-risk assumptions that could derail it if proven false. "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." No market plan survives first contact with the market. Sending out alerts to my impactors begins the process of testing my unproven beliefs. Will they validate or invalidate my calculated expectations? Here are some of my assumptions now put under the shredder. Desirability A significant percentage (25%?) of impactors will opt for our mutuality alternative over status quo options. Null: An insignificant percentage of impactors will opt for this mutuality alternative, which suggests we will have to pivot or maybe scrap the program. (Apply this null hypothesis to each assumption below.) A significant percentage of impactees (20%) will trust this as a viable alternative to shaky ascribed legitimacy and agree to earn their legitimacy by accountably helping the impactee resolve their power need with this process. A significant percentage of impactors (20%) will follow through all eight steps with the impactor. A significant percentage of impactees (20%) will value a testimonial from a served impactee and/or their vouching for successfully helping them. Viability A significant percentage (25%) of impactees exposed to this option will eventually participate and pay for this new service. The process will inspire a significant percentage of impactors to invest their own money to cultivate widespread improvements. Click for a summary of the revenue model and its assumptions to test Assumption: After a member of the public becomes aware of this service and takes interest in it, a significant number (20%) will enroll in our a free follower program.: "Your Needs Matter". Your Needs Matter Type: free educational program - introduces the objective fact of needs and how that measurably applies to others particpating in the Wellness Matters program, and can inspire hope in the each free follower with power problems of their own. Cost: Free as in no charge at all. Benefits: Receive routine reports of how this service is helping others, and how it can help the follower. Might include exclusive DIY content if subscribing to the podcast. Assumption: A signficant percentage of YNM participants (15%) will sign up, with the 30-day trial, to try the WM program. Assumption: A signficant percentage of trial period participants (50%) will continue to pay the monthly membership fee to participate in the WM program to address their own power problem and needs. Wellness Matters Type: personal "case" program - peer-supported or DIY process incentivizing individual impactors to work mutually with individual impactees to solve power problems and earn legitimacy. Cost: $119.48 per month, lowered to $48.98 per month at the start. Benefits: Proactively address problems not solvable by current legal or therapeutic options, which can boost wellness and unleash human flourishing potential. Support: Peer supporters are often professional need-responders seeking to build rapport with the impactee, to encourage them to gain the value of their added support. Assumption: A signficant percentage of WM participants (10%) will upgrade to the Results Matter option, if they gain the support of an increasing volume of grassroot backers. Results Matter Type: shared "project" program - a professional need-responder guides a group of impactees to work individually or collectively with impactors, especially those unresponsive at first, which can raise their legitiimacy to the laudible competitive level. Cost in addiction to monthly membership fee: $150/week. This gets spread to supporters who invest as little as $30 each week, as a kind of crowdfunded venture. Benefits: Receive regular (weekly?) group support led by a qualified professional need-responder, who is qualified to incentivize even the most stubborn impactor individuals and entitiies to improve their reach among their constituent base. Support: Pro need-responders are typically trained psychotherapists with experience guiding group therapy, but learn to shift from psychotherapy to psychosociotherapy where the power relation dynamics is the subject to be changed and not the individuals themselves. We anticipate finding qualified candidates among psychotherapists disillusioned with psychotherapy as a profession. Perhaps that includes you. Assumption: A signficant percentage of RM participants (5%) will upgrade to the Maturity Matter option, if they gain the support of an increasing volume of grassroot backers. Maturity Matters Type: collective "movement" program - one or more professional need-responders coordinate invested impactors working toward transformative structural change, to improve many impactee lives and raise impactor legitimacy to the exemplary transformative level. Cost in addiction to monthly membership fee paid by impactees: $300 per billable hour, up to six hours per week, paid by the invested impactor entities, typically for support to create transformative structural change. No added cost to impactees. Benefits: Backed by fully onboard impactors, guided by qualified pro need-responders shifting the focus from "consent to laws" that privilege the powerful to "measurable wellness outcomes" that fulfill the purpose of laws and carves open a path toward mutual human flourishing on a larger human scale. Support: Pro need-responders are typically trained lawyers with experience applying laws to specifically address underserved impactee needs underserved in the adversarial legal process, which necessitates shifting from the adversarial role of attorney to the mutuality nurturing role of a "responsivist". We anticipate finding qualified candidates among lawyers disillusioned with law as a profession. Perhaps that speaks to you. Assumption: A sufficient number of impactors will be inspired enough to invest thousands of dollars to transform social structures to liberate human potential and meaningfully solve deep seated structural problems. Pro need-responder compensation Each contracted professional need-responder directly receives 80% of the billed amount. They qualify to receive up to half of the withheld amount, as a performance bonus, if at the end of the process the impactor quantifiably improves their wellness outcomes in a way that quantifiably improves the impactor's trustworthiness to surveyed impactees. Public Fund Pool Any amount of that 10% balance not claimed by performance bonuses gets placed in a public fund pool. Impactees in the program can then request an interest-free loan to help cover any unexpected costs necessary to resolve their power need. The first loan will be set at a low amount (like $200) and the impactee cannot request another until paid back in full. Of course, any of this could change overnight. Feasibility The impactee can find and use the targeted impactor's contact information, and this will lead to the impactor receiving the impactee's message. Alerts sent directly from the Anankelogy Foundation provides a level of professionality that could incentivize the targeted impactor to take the message more seriously. NOTE: Incorrect assumptions about contacting impactors or incentivizing their response could fast track the "unilateral track" in a not so legitimate way. Your input invited Would you like to see such a program succeed? Could you use such a service? Do you now suffer a power problem? Each impactor may utilize this service to address an impactee who sits over them. Which could help this service go viral. I want to hear from you. Especially if you're disillusioned by current institutional options. Are you disillusioned with lawyers? Are you disillusioned with psychotherapy? Are you disillusioned with the adversarial judicial process? Are you disillusioned with the inncence movement? Are you disillusioned with politics as usual? If so, then let's build this out together. Perhaps I could partner with law schools. Perhaps you can add something I'm overlooking. Am I missing anything? Want to learn more? Then follow its development. Follow developments Want to know what happens next? Follow developments on my Need-Response Podcast. Episodes drop every other Wednesday morning. As soon as I can start season three. Because I need this service, I continue to struggle with personal challenges. My day job drains much of my energy, so I am best able to invest my efforts on the weekend. I am seeking someone who can complement my limits. If left entirely to me, this may never get off the ground. Know of anyone who can help. I am open to suggestions. Currently, I do not aim to launch a nonprofit for this. Not yet. I first aim to find a fiscal sponsor and another nonprofit to host this visionary program. I am open to suggestions. I welcome your help to turn this into a going concern. Have any questions? Concerns? Insights? Comments? I look forward to engaging them with you, sooner than later. Start responding to this now Two ways you can provide your feedback. Comment below. Share your input for all to see. Let others see any feedback to your comment. And see if you start a helpful public discussion. Direct message. If you prefer to keep your message discreet, then use the button below to contact me personally. I will reply as soon as I can. Contact me Send me your direct message using our contact form. Thank you for your interest.

The 2nd step in the need-response process What Why Who How Next Coda Need-response process chart Downloadable brochure Follow-up message template Anankelogy Foundation, 126 E Kilgore, Ste 400 #469, Portage Mi 49002 [DATE] Recipient Name Recipient address City ST 00000 Dear Recipient: This follows up a message you should have received from [NAME]. And fulfills the second in eight steps of a dedicated wellness journey. [NAME] is committing to improving their wellness amidst challenges presented by power differentials. We identify your relation with [NAME] as a power differential. [NAME] now invites you to help them address their need to [NEED]. Without your cooperation, the need will likely remain unresolved and produce a bad outcome. And that risks compromising your legitimacy. Need-response is a new professional service specializing in helping power differentials shift from provoking negative outcomes into cultivating positive ones. Learn more from the enclosed brochure. Thank you, /S/ This follows up the initial alert to a power problem identifying the receiver’s involvement. The previous message followed a basic business professional format. Similar to what you get in a late payment notice from a service provider. A) Affirming the receiver’s value to the sender or affirming their apparent need(s). B) Bringing up the need(s) the receiver apparently impacts in this power differential. C) Continuing to cultivate mutual rapport to cooperatively solve this power problem. That brief message initiates the need-response process. This follow-up provides more details to answer some likely questions. 1) What is need-response? Need-response is a new profession focused on identifying and addressing underserved needs. Specifically, it addresses needs shaped by power differentials. Where one side impacts the other side more than being impacted by it. The impactor impacts the power differential more than impacted by them. The impactee is impacted by the power differential more than impacting it. For example: Employer-employee Supervisor-supervised Doctor-patient Teacher-student Police-civilian Counselor-client Politician-voter Media outlet-viewer And many more. If receiving a follow-up, you are identified as an “impactor” to the “impactee” who sent it to you. You could be an impactee in other relations, such as your supervisor or to government authorities. As an impactor, you typically enjoy more control over outcomes than the impactees under your influence. If a conflict emerges, you usually get your way more than the impactee. Consequently, power differentials impact wellness. Both on a personal level and on a societal level. Only need-response seeks to resolve needs to solve problems. Only need-response links this proper resolution of needs to measurable wellness outcomes. And only the professional service of need-response works to accountably improve the health of society as a whole. 2) Why need-response? Where can the vulnerable impactee go with their power problem need? Such as… Wrongly convicted innocent persons refused justice by the errant courts. Patients in pain exploited to accept expensive medical care leading to debt. At-will employees coerced to take on an exhausting workload. Lawyers can help apply the law, but the legal process can do little to stop exploitive impactor behavior that is legal. Besides, the legal options prematurely pit parties against each other. And legal battles offer pain relief to the winning side without any accountability for resolving the underlying needs. Psychotherapists can offer emotional support, but many problems persist outside of one’s internal processes. As the Indian sage Krishnamurti put it, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Political and judicial options easily slip into problems themselves. Only need-response offers a viable alternative to the toxic legalism that taints these institutions. Consider these two examples. Need-response incentivizes mutuality instead of legalistic adversarialism. Politics and the courts needlessly provoke mutual defensiveness, and squanders human potential to empathize when rushing into a conflict. Need-response incentivizes engagement instead of legalistic alienation. The law privileges impactors to avoid whatever they find uncomfortable about impactees. Only need-response aims to fill the gaps left open by lawyers and psychotherapists, when a client is faced with a problem beyond their control. Only need-response prioritizes inflexible needs over arbitrary law exploitable by the powerful. And only need-response aims to remove cause for pain by getting to its source—unresolved needs. 3) Who is it for? This need-response process is for every impactee in a power differential who cannot resolve some stubborn need or needs. Resolving that need will improve their wellness and decrease their pain. This process is not only for the impactee but also for the impactor who needs legitimacy. By helping the impactee to resolve their need, the impactor earns the public’s trust. And the impactee is incentivized to vouch for it, and even provide a testimonial for the impactor. The need-response process indirectly serves lawyers with clients who cannot sue an impactor for illicit actions privileged by law. With a business associate agreement, the need-responder can complement the lawyer’s efforts by incentivizing that impactor to honor the impactee’s need. The need-response process indirectly serves psychotherapists with clients who they cannot fully help because of a power problem need. With a business associate agreement, the need-responder can complement the psychotherapist’s efforts to reduce their client’s anxiety by getting to its source. Only need-response accountably addresses all the needs in a conflict. Only need-response holds impactors accountable with incentivized reason to be measurably responsive. And only need-response prioritizes the inflexible needs over laws, which ostensibly exist to serve such intractable needs. 4) How does it work? The process puts both the impactor and impactee on a level playing field. Both are incentivized to understand and honor the need(s) of the other. After each step in the first half of the need-response process, each side assess the other’s trustworthiness. No one side gains advantage over the other. No one is to be exploited under color of law. Impactor responsive status – Impactee responsive status – significantly untrustworthy moderately untrustworthy not yet assessed moderately trustworthy significantly trustworthy The process is open to suggestions, recommendations and requirements for how to improve one’s rating status. Both ways. After each step in the second half of the need-response process, each side gets assigned by the other into one of these informative categories of responsiveness. offensive substandard standard admirable exemplary offensive: disputed or hostile toward expressed need substandard: dismissive of any role in expressed need standard: sympathetic but no responsiveness to the expressed need admirable: presented responsiveness to the expressed need exemplary: demonstrated responsiveness to the expressed need By the second half of the process, the impactor’s responsiveness categories look a little different, in preparation for accrediting their legitimacy. Admirable becomes competitive. Exemplary becomes transformative. offensive substandard standard competitive transformative If what gets measured gets done, then the impactor will gradually convert their privately assessed responsiveness to publicly available legitimacy accreditation. This could all change by the time you read this. And there is much more to cover on how the need-response process works. We will have to learn it together as the rubber meets the road. But we’re confident we are introducing you to something exquisitely wonderful. Only need-response creates a bridge to link to those who need to speak truth to power and those who need to listen to those impacted. Only need-response creates a bridge of mutual benefit to turn power differential conflicts into beneficial opportunities for both sides. And only need-response aims to improve societal wellness by improving the responsiveness to needs of those in power. And what’s next? In its current design, this follow-up provides the second of many steps. It offers more context than the brief message sent earlier. Unless altered, the next step aims to cultivate mutual good faith. This chart presents the need-response process as it is currently designed. Keep in mind how this untested process will remain in flux, as realities on the ground will alter its contours. Indeed, no plan survives contact with the enemy, whoever that is. As now designed, each step and action is either initiated by the impactee or by a need-responder on behalf of that impactee. NEED-RESPONSE PROCESS CHART No. Step Action 1 alert Contacts the impactor to report a power problem need using the ABC communication format, with the opportunity to help solve it. if impactor unresponsive Sends a follow-up that rates the impactee’s responsiveness to the impactee’s mutuality intent, which can expose the impactor’s incompetence or neglect. transition when responsive Shifts from alienation to engagement, by recognizing the objective fact of needs and affected wellness we all impact in one other. 2 follow-up Recaps expressed power problem need with added context, plus details about this pioneering alternative. if impactor unresponsive Proceeds with next step of cultivating mutual trust along with identifying the benefits that could be missed. Hesitation expected. transition when responsive Shifts from obliviousness to awareness, by acknowledging how negative impacts can be cooperatively turned into positive ones. 3 good faith Cultivates mutual trust to relate to each other in good faith by incentivizing each other’s positive intent toward each other. if impactor unresponsive Proceeds with next step of sending the impactee’s limited options which could expose the impactor’s bad faith & unprofessionalism. transition when responsive Shifts from distrust to trust, by cultivating empathy for each other’s affected needs and liberating potential for social love. 4 options Presents the impactee’s standard and alternative options for dealing with the power problem in this power differential. if impactor unresponsive Suggests the listed adversarial & avoidance options will not be waived if the impactor does not opt for the preferrable mutuality option. transition when responsive Shifts from impact disparity to impact parity, by addressing each other’s needs on an equal basis, removing distortions. 5 law-fit Identifies the needs to be served by applicable laws and checks how toxic legalism fails to serve impactee and impactor needs. if impactor unresponsive Proceeds with next step of sending an exaction invoice itemizing hidden costs of privileged coercion. transition when responsive Shifts from legalism to responsivism, by acknowledging threat of legally privileged harms to trustworthiness and recognizing better outcomes when shifting from react culture norms to social love. 6 exaction invoice Itemizes the hidden coercions costing the impactee their full wellbeing, then invites the impactor to earn legitimacy in lieu of financially compensating these documented structural exactions. if impactor unresponsive Informs the impactor that the itemized list could be used as evidence if impactee must revert to their adversarial options. transition when responsive Shifts from ascribed legitimacy to earned legitimacy, by having impactee accredit impactor’s public trustworthiness after they demonstrably help impactee to resolve their power problem need. 7 mutuality process Coordinates mutual support to properly resolve each other’s identified needs, spelled out in a Memorandum of Understanding. if impactor unresponsive Barred from having any further harmful impact on others by supporting impactee to sever all ties to such an impactor. transition when responsive Shifts social contract standard from manipulated consent to improved outcomes, by measurably improving outcomes that ground authority in properly resolved needs. 8 liberty Pledges to mutually honor needs, both the power problem need & accredited legitimacy, spelled out in a Memorandum of Agreement. if impactor unresponsive Avows to resolve needs unilaterally, with or without impactor cooperation, spelled out in an assertive Declaration of Liberty. transition when responsive Shifts from societal sickness complicity to societal wellness support, by properly resolving needs together to solve structural problems. Coda We encourage you to critique the process, to point out any gaps, question anything confusing, and kindly challenge our faulty assumptions. How can we improve this to better serve you? Comment below. We’re bracing for likely resistance to something so new, so different, so aspirational during a time of low bar pragmatism and pessimism. But failure is not an option. So pardon our dust. We’re going to build something amazing together that the world sorely needs right now. And you are on the ground floor of this inspiring solution. Know anyone who could benefit from this? Then please share the news by sharing this link. Let’s spread some love. Trifold brochure (pdf) Click this cover image to open in a new tab

The 5th step in the need-response process State the cited norm(s) Identify the need(s) to be served by the cited norm(s) Describe the apparent impact on all needs from enforcing the norm(s) While no one sits above the law, no law sits above inflexible needs. The law can only do so much. Need-response takes us beyond minimal legal standards to respond directly to the needs our laws exist to serve. In other words, we ensure our flexible laws "fit" our inflexible needs. To ensure wellness of all. CONTENTS Why would you need law-fit? The problem of toxic legalism Asserting the greater authority of properly resolved needs Responding to needs over mindless obedience Who benefits? For whast need? Applying the praise sandwich format Use this simple ABC template Affirming paragraph Broaching paragraph Continuance paragraph Example from real life Do it yourself with peer support Law-Fit professional support Need-response offers this service of law-fit to introduce you to this new way to improve your wellbeing. When anyone cites some law or informal social norm, you have them state the need they expect that standard to address. Law-fit: linking a norm with a need to be served. Law-fit serves as an entry level for a much more thorough process of "citationization". Which dives deeper into this link between any cited norm and its impact on needs and wellbeing. Citationization: process to link flexible norms to accountably serve inflexible needs. Why would you need law-fit? After doing everything you can to obey the law, you can still find yourself in trouble. Perhaps some lawyer has convinced a court that you are in the wrong, despite the independent fact you are clearly in the right. To start small, this service focuses first on the wrongly convicted innocent. Have you—or someone you love—been falsely accused and convicted of a crime? Perhaps they were not even there. Or no crime even occurred. Are you fully innocent and not yet exonerated? Are you—or your loved one—unable to get a lawyer to reverse the conviction in court? Are you disillusioned with the legal process? Are you disillusioned with the innocence movement? As this gains ground helping the innocent overcome injustice, it can expand to serve others strangled by the adversarial legal process. For example, those denied insurance coverage for a legal technicality. Or those unduly denied their rights by any aspect of the adversarialist legal system. Are you ready to give up on the adversarialism of the broken legal system? Are you open to a fresh alternative? Can you see yourself pioneering a new approach of mutual respect for each other’s needs? Law-fit radically changes gears. You shift from failing adversarialism to mutual engagement of each other’s needs. Yo directly address the needs our laws ostensibly exist to serve. You break free from mindless compliance to fallible laws to embrace engaging responsiveness to each other’s inflexible needs. Click this image to engage this principle. Law-fit raises the standard. It holds authorities accountable to the inflexible needs they affect. It shifts from easily contorted legal arguments to the independent accountability of measurable wellness outcomes. You fit the purpose of law to serve each other's needs over passively serving the law itself. It prioritizes everyone's inflexible needs over flexible laws. Use it to overcome the privileged problem of toxic legalism. The problem of toxic legalism Reliance on laws to address your needs only takes you so far. Laws reek of imperfection. The imperfect institutions we trust to create and enforce them slip easily into costly errors. Need-response identifies and counter five costly errors built into the human laws. Each starts with a benign purpose. Then slips into a painful problem we often overlook. 1. Slipping from personal accountability to hyper-individualism. Laws hold us personally accountable for our actions. But risks neglecting the socioenvironmental contexts challenging our needs. 2. Slipping from rational authority to hyperrationality. Laws emerge from rational authority. But risks suppressing the rich emotional content of our experiences of needs under a shroud of disingenuous rationalizations. 3. Slipping from vagueness to overgeneralizing. Laws remain intentionally vague to apply to a wide array of circumstances. But risks privileging exaggerations that avoid dealing with the messy details of our complicated lives. 4. Slipping from impartiality to alienating avoidance. Laws remain impersonal to apply equally to everyone. But risks alienating us from each other to the point we no longer personally engage each other. 5. Slipping from punitive enforcement to hostile adversarialism. Laws compel compliance by opposing violators with harsh punishments. But risks objectifying you as a presumed offender to the point of opposing the needs you cannot change. The adversarial legal process presumes each side in a conflict must be opposed to the other. Need-response dares to test this assumption. This feature of adversarialism risks provoking mutual defensiveness. The more each side guards their side against the perceived or real threat from others, the less attention they typically give to the affected needs fueling the conflict. Instead of solving the problem, a rush to oppose others risks perpetuating the problem. The more you resist their inflexible needs, the more they must dig in their heels. You typically get more of the problem you ostensibly seek to solve. This adversarial approach generally denies our potential to be more understanding of one another. Law-fit brings out this overlooked potential in a more proactive way. Asserting the greater authority of properly resolved needs No law is necessary wherever a need fully resolves on its own. For example, no law proves necessary to compel individuals to breathe properly. Or to compel you to drink enough water to function properly. Laws can restrict how you access your water. Laws forbid you from stealing water from your neighbor's well. But no law can forbid you from requiring water. Or from requiring friendship. Or from requiring solitude. No law can legitimately negate your need for security, or for self-determination. If they do, need-respose asserts the higher authroity of properly resolving needs. To properly resolve your needs means you do not negatively impact the inflexible needs of others. The detached way the adversarial legal system operates tends to illegitimately negate many of our inflexible needs. Law-fit starts with the gacious assumption that such authorities mean well. It seeks to help authorities realign its actions with its founding purpose to respect needs. Over time, many institutions drift from their founding purpose. Law-fit can help authorities recognize their mission creep that undermines their legitimacy. Click this image to engage this principle. We rely on authorities to create and enforce laws. But we dangerously allow ourselves to become excessively dependent on laws to compel others to respect our needs. We allow ourselves to become more alienated. You never have to ask others what they specifically require of you when you convince yourself that following the rules should be enough. Do established rules always cover your exact needs? Law-fit challenges our blind faith in enforcement authorities to ensure the social order. As long as you are not the one objectified as a threat to the social order, it can be easy to hold enforcement authorities at a lower standard. Law-fit asserts the higher authority of properly resolved needs. The more we can resolve our needs, the better we can function. We can all aspire to step beyond the harm reduction standards of law to do something that actually improves each other's lives. We can love. Law-fit challenges the passivity of mindless obedience that undercuts our human potential to be more loving to each other. It reminds us to put each other's inflexible needs over the arbitrary demands of impersonal authorities. Responding to needs over mindless obedience Your needs can never fit the demands of laws. Laws must always fit the demands of your needs, and the needs of others. Click this image to engage this principle. Laws can only guide our actions to address one another's needs. No human law can ever change the needs themselves. Our actions are flexible and rightly fall under the domain of laws. However, our innate needs remain inflexible and therefore supersede all laws. Law-fit reprioritizes our inflexible needs over flexible laws. Law-fit can get us back to honoring the needs of others as we would have them honor our own. It encourages our potential to be more loving to each other. Click this image to engage this principle. Toxic legalism easily separates us from the purpose of law: to faithfully address each other's needs without compromising our own needs. We must resolve our own needs to function well enough to sufficiently respect the needs of others. Impersonal laws can drive a wedge between us, undermining our potential to be more loving toward each other. Law-fit can get us back to honoring the needs of others as we would have them honor our own. Law-fit melts normalized isolation to explore some key questions. Not to defy authority or law, but to get to the helpful purpose of applying some authority or law. Law-fit can help us fulfill the purpose of laws. For the interest of wellness, need-response uses law-fit to ask these two sets of basic questions: 1. Who benefits from the cited norm? And at what cost? 2. What need does it exist to serve? And what actual needs are being served? Q1: Who benefits? Cui bono? Who stands to gain from the establish norm, or from its current interpretation, or from its application and enforcement? How can we know when this benefit is achieved? By extension, what cost does this norm impose? Who stands to lose from the norm’s enactment, interpretation or enforcement? To what end or to what purpose? Is norm enforcement premature? What evidence of bad faith warrants this application of the norm? Why resort to external pressures of norm enforcement? Have intrinsic motivations been first incentivized? Have all mutuality options first been exhausted? Q2: For what need? Quid egestes? Since every affected need exists as objective fact, what are the intended and actual wellness outcomes? What specific need is to be served by the cited norm? Is it serving an inflexible need, or placating a flexible preference? How is that being empirically measured? Click this image to engage this principle. What are the actual needs driving the conflict? Can those impacted by the conflict become aware of these needs with a more conciliatory approach? Or is harsh enforcement the only way to compel a response to the needs the norm exists to serve? How is each affected person and entity able to function as a result of official action? Is anyone even gaging such impacts? How can we shift from alienating enforcement to mutually understand and address each other’s affected needs? We communicate this good faith intent to resolve needs mutually using the effective format of the "praise sandwich". Applying the praise sandwich format Law-fit nurtures mutuality by utilizing the communication format popularly known as the "praise sandwich". Any bad news gets sandwiched between bookends of good news. More specifically, law-fit lays out three communication modes in these three lawyers. A. Acknowledge the cited norm, and affirm the needs the norm apparently addresses. Good news to them. B. Broach your affected needs. Likely bad news to them. C. Continue cultivating mutual rapport. More good news for them. Use this simple ABC template Law-fit applies this simple ABC format to make sure each side addresses the underlying needs in good faith. A. Affirming paragraph Acknowledge any cited norm. Affirm any needs the norm ostensibly addresses. B. Broaching paragraph Identify how enforcement impacts your actual needs. Especially any of your neglected needs. Assert that your needs and their needs are inflexible, in contrast to any cited norm which remain flexible. Perhaps identify how prioritizing flexible (and fallible) laws over inflexible needs correlates with your poor wellness outcomes (i.g., anxiety, depression, addiction). C. Continuance paragraph Express your intent to identify and resolve each other's affected needs. You want to earn their trust that you will continue to seek to mutually resolve needs properly, beyond legal minimal requirements. You express your aim to improve wellness outcomes for all, and could help them improve their legitimacy by supporting their resposnives to vulnerable needs like yours. You welcome a dialogue. Do you see how this follows the POSITIVE-NEGATIVE-POSITIVE format of the “praise sandwich”? Can you envision how this can to cultivate and sustain mutuality? Law-fit counters the destructive norms of adversarialism by exhausting all possible mutuality avenues. Only after all mutuality options fail do you assert your held adversarial options. Online public campaign exposing the unresponsiveness of this particular authority. Independent media campaign of you speaking truth to power in this proactive way. Complaining to any ethics boards to test the reliability of any resourse options. Spotlighting the recurring failures of the adversarial process to faithfully serve needs. Exposing any self-serving reactions that resist accountability to serve affected needs. Challenge funding streams lacking performance measures to accountably serve needs. Civil disobedience with attention of a wide array of supporters and the whole world. You incentivize those in positions of power that you both are not foes to each other, unless you both completely fail to support resolving each other’s affected needs with the power of love. Example from real life I recently applied this format to resond to the State of Michigan. They sent me a letter threatending to garnish my wages for an unpaid tuition bill. But this occurred because of the unjust fallout of being wrongly convicted back in 1993. Injustice spurs more injustice. Note how I sandwich my concerns between addressing their concerns. I nullify cause for them to get defensive. I negate adversarialism by prioritizing each other's affected needs. Dear Collection Services Bureau: My name is Steph Turner and I am acknowledging receipt of a State of Michigan Liability Information Statement. It indicates I owe the state $3,659.16 in overdue tuition, from attending Oakland University’s masters of counseling degree program a decade ago. Thank you for drawing my attention to this problem of unpaid tuition. I support the State of Michigan to receive all due funding to maintain its educational system, like Oakland University. I must contest any assertion that ascribes responsibility for this overdue tuition solely upon my actions. I assert my rights to counter this claim, to provide full context that this action ostensibly overlooks. If I was offered an opportunity in the past to contest the claim, then I missed it. I also join the millions disappointed in the adversarial legal system to properly address such problems. I am currently developing a viable alternative, called need-response, to counter adversarialism with a more engaging mutuality approach to such litigated problems. It can potentially lead to a better outcome than this ill-informed legal action. You are invited to take part. I invite you to follow the upcoming podcast to help us find a meaningful solution to the limits of the adversarial legal process to solve such a problem. More information is to follow. Thank you, /S/ At the time of writing this, I have yet to hear back. I look forward to providing updates on the Need-Response podcast the letter mentions. Do it yourself with peer support If you have been wrongly convicted and no longer incarcerated, but cannot get a good job or housing, try this law-fit message template. After we refine this tool and gain traction with the authorities, we can branch out to apply to it the wrongly convicted innocenct who are still incarcerated. And eventually apply to others who endure the wrongs of the adversarial legal system. To get started, you can try this Word document template. Simply edit it to fit your needs. Let us know how it works for you. Or drop us a line if you have any questions. Help us shape this to best serve your particular situation and needs. Help us build this service to fit your particular need. Use this Law-Fit discussion for: Exploring how applicable this Law-Fit template is to your particular need. Offering suggestions for how to shape it to suit your particular situation. Sharing how effective or not so effective this is for you. Connecting with others trying this alternative to the adversarial legal process. Your helpful input is already appreciated. Let us help each other overcome the problematic limits of the adversarial legal process. I previously crafted an interactive tool for automatically calculating the viability of an innocence claim. It compares the details of the entrant's case with those cases already exonerated. Then produces a number that demonstrates the likely innocence of the claimant. You can download your own copy by clicking this button. The resulting Estimated Innocence Report offers a boost to the legal process. But it risks falling into the same trap of adversarialism. We are unlikely to fix a broken system with the same tools that broke it. You can supplement your law-fit message with our Responsive Innocence tool. It applies the same praise sandwich format. GOOD NEWS: Identifying and respecting the apparent needs of the complainant. BAD NEWS: Identifying your own affected needs. GOOD NEWS: Inviting mutual regard for each other's affected needs. Click this button to learn more, and to download your own copy. Law-Fit professional support Law-fit operates on a relatively basic level. We kept it simple enough for any layperson to use on their own. If the contacted authority replies, and you're uncertain how to what to do next, we can take this to the deeper analytical level of citationization. You can receive personalized support by the law-fit creator with one-on-one online sessions. When you are ready, click the 'Book Now' button and find an available time slot that fits your schedule. We offer the first session free with the understanding you will show your appreciation with what you can afford. We will continue offering this support for free for a limited time. Once we gain traction with a viable service, we will likely start charging for this service up front. Keep in mind this is all brand new. We cannot promise anything but a fresh alternative to the disappointing adversarial legal process. If you are innocent and repeatedly ignored by the adversarial judical system, what do you have to lose? Let's create this alternatie to improve your life in ways the law can never do. Let's get back to the power of love. back-to-top

The 6th step in the need-response process Authority has the privilege to coerce concessions beyond what the individual is obliged to give up. When unchecked, authority loses its legitimacy to affect the needs of the less powerful. Need-response can turn illegitimate manipulations into legitimate outcomes. PROBLEM: Power Differentials Transactional standard The less two people personally know each other, the more their interactions tend to become transactional. Each side gives and takes value from the relationship as their position allows. Each side gives up or gains what they personally seek in value. When one side holds more social influence than the other, much of the exacted value tends to flow in favor of the more influential, or more powerful. The less influential, or powerless side, tends to give up more than intended. Sometimes to simply avoid the displeasure of the more powerful side. Distorting power differentials In a more perfect world, each side naturally respects the rights and sanctity of each other. In reality, the "power differential" of one side unduly impacts the other side. Such imbalance frequently brings trouble. But of a kind often invisible to the law. Anankelogy identifies a power differential where one side impacts the other more than impacted by it. The Impactor: The relatively more powerful side, who impacts the relation more than impacted by it. Symbolized by the purple of royalty. The Impactee: The relatively less powerful side, who is impacted by the relation more than impacting it. Symbolized by the green of grassroots. A resulting problem on each side We begin on the scientifically sound premise that all needs are inflexible, that they exist equally for all, and no need clashes with other needs. Solving problems is all about properly resolving needs for all involved in a situation, which improves wellness. In other words, the personal needs of the vulnerable impactee exist as equally important as the personal needs of the powerholder impactor. The exaction invoice addresses a key need for each side. Adversarial systems ultimately disadvantage both sides. The powerholder impactor risks their legitimacy. The vulnerable impactee risks their wellbeing. The exaction invoice conveys the estimated costs the impactor's advantage imposes upon the impactee. But then shifts from the adversarial process of seeking literal compensation to our mutuality process of seeking mutual resolution of each othere's affected needs. Adversarialism prematurely provokes mutual defensiveness, which compromises our full human potential to affirm each other's inflexible needs. The exaction invoice brings both sides together to address the problem of their unmet needs. But that unlikely can be done effectively as long as one side holds most or all of the cards. SOLUTION: Impact Parity Need-response balances the power differential by incentivizing each side to provide for the key need of the other. Each needs something from the other. The impactor may improve the impactee's wellness The impactee requires wellness, which need-response guides the impactor to help resolve. The impactee could improve the impactor's legitimacy The impactor requires legitimacy, which need-response guides the impactee to help resolve. The exaction invoice places both sides on a level playing field. We call this "impact parity". See how this negates legalistic adversarialism and alienation? See how this optimizes our human potential to mutually empathize and support each other more? Impact parity enables both sides to respond equally to the other.

The 4th step in the need-response process Conflicts within power differentials offer limited options with predictable results Power problems A power problem occurs within power differentials. When one or both sides cannot meet their needs due to some conflict within the relation, need-response identifies this as a “power problem” with its own peculiar options and effects. A power differential involves an impactor and impactee. The impactor affects the relation more than gets affected by it. The impactee gets affected by the relation more than affects it. Illustrating the power differential For example, for professional power differentials: Employer-employee Supervisor-supervised Doctor-patient Teacher-student Creditor-debtor Counselor-client Media outlet-viewer Bill collector-unemployed customer for government power differentials: Police-civilian Prosecutor-detainee Politician-voter City council-resident Gov't case manager-service seeker Zoning official-businessperson IRS-taxpayer ICE-immigrant And many more. The impactor typically enjoys more control over outcomes than the impactee. If a conflict emerges, the impactor tends to get their way more than the impactee. All is not well… Consequently, power differentials readily impact the wellness outcomes of impactees. Either positively or negatively. In ways widely overlooked in other professional options. The more the power difference impedes the impactee’s ability to properly resolve their needs, their capacity to function swiftly declines. All too often, the impactor is not even aware of their harmful influence. Not only on the impactee, but also on themselves. As the impactee’s wellness declines, the impactor’s trustworthiness (or legitimacy) correspondingly declines. This phenomenon is so pervasive that it fuels a significant portion of “societal sickness”. Need-responders function like first responders on a mass scale, to try to heal society one power differential at a time. Their approach sifts through three main options. Three sets of options Two that are sour and one that is sweet. Avoidance When the impactor’s pressure remains subtle and tolerable, the impactee typically opts to avoid confrontation. It can be easier to endure the inconvenience than risk bigger trouble. Adversarial When the impactor’s pressure becomes more opaque and painfully intolerable, the impactee likely will challenge the impactor. The risk of absorbing the blows becomes too great. Mutuality The new professional service of need-response introduces a viable alternative to those extremes. Instead of evading or confronting each other, need-response incentivizes mutual cooperation. TABLE of CONTENTS Click on the item to quickly get to that item covered below. Once there, click on its title to return to this table of contents. Part One: Impactee's options & effects I. Adversarial Options (cope: fight) I.1 Legal & Formal Channels I.2 Advocacy & Public Pressure I.3 Support & Resource Mobilization I.4 Strategic/Tactical Options II. Adversarial Effects II.1 Limitations & Reality Checks II.2 When Systems Fail II.3 Adversarialism overlooks specific needs III. Avoidance Options (cope: flight, freeze, fawn, flop) III.1 Physical and situational avoidance III.2 Informational self-protection III.3 Documentation as passive resistance III.4 Strategic compliance III.5 Third-party and structural routes III.6 Formal channels (higher visibility, higher risk and potential payoff) III.7 Collective strategies III.8 Emotional/psychological pacing IV. Avoidance Effects IV.1 Self-protection IV.2 Strategic positioning IV.3 Emotional regulation IV.4 Costs to the individual IV.5 Costs to the system IV.6 The trap IV.7 What tends to determine which way it nets out IV.8 Uncomfortable emotional warnings IV.9 Stressors: allostatic load Part Two: Impactor's options & effects V.1 Deliberate exploitation V.1.1. Information asymmetry V.1.2. Manufactured dependency V.1.3. Selective enforcement of rules V.1.4. Extraction of unpaid labor or compliance through fear V.2 Unconscious/structural exploitation V.2.1. Default assumptions treated as neutral V.2.2. Discretion without accountability V.2.3. Empathy gaps V.2.4. Self-serving narratives V.2.5. Professional norms that protect the institution over the individual V.3 Why it's often mixed, not either/or V.4 Legalism undermining impactor legitimacy V.4.1. Atomization V.4.2. Hyperrationality V.4.3. Imposed generalization V.4.4. Privileged avoidance V.4.5. Premature opposition V.5 Other power dynamics undermining impactor legitimacy V.5.1. Misassumption V.5.2. Compliance overreach V.5.3. Self-serving dismissiveness V.5.4. Depersonalizing objectification V.5.5. Coerced concessions V.5.6. Coerced poor options dependence (CoPOD) V.5.7. Diminished awareness V.5.8. Mission creep VI. Impactor Effects Part Three: Mutuality options & effects Applied to specific power differentials PART ONE: IMPACTEE’S Options & Effects I. Adversarial Options (cope: fight) I asked Claude: “What are all the adversarial options a vulnerable individual can take when their rights or their needs are being violated by those with more power?” The highlighted text is Claude’s reply to my prompt. I added the numbered outline for easy reference. This is an important question about power imbalances and justice. Here are the main adversarial options available to vulnerable individuals: I.1 Legal & Formal Channels I.1.1. Civil lawsuits — Sue for damages, injunctions, or specific remedies. Requires resources but creates a formal record. I.1.2. Criminal complaints — Report violations to law enforcement or prosecutors. Victim advocacy organizations can sometimes help navigate this. I.1.3. Administrative complaints — File with agencies like labor boards, housing authorities, civil rights commissions, healthcare regulators, or consumer protection agencies. Often free or low-cost. I.1.4. Regulatory bodies — Report to industry-specific regulators (financial, environmental, healthcare, workplace safety). I.1.5. Appeals and grievance processes — Within organizations, institutions, or government systems that have internal review mechanisms. I.2 Advocacy & Public Pressure I.2.1. Media exposure — Documentaries, journalism, social media campaigns can shift public opinion and create pressure. I.2.2. Organizing & collective action — Unions, tenant unions, worker organizing, community coalitions amplify individual voices. I.2.3. Public testimony & comment — At city council meetings, regulatory hearings, school boards, or public forums. I.2.4. Demonstrations & protests — Visible, organized public action to demand change. I.2.5. Petitions & public campaigns — Build support, pressure decision-makers. I.3 Support & Resource Mobilization I.3.1. Legal aid organizations — Free or low-cost legal help. I.3.2. Advocacy nonprofits — Groups focused on civil rights, labor, housing, immigration, disability rights, etc. I.3.3. Pro bono attorneys — Lawyers working for free on civil rights cases. I.3.4. Community organizing groups — Help build power and strategy. I.3.4. Whistleblower protections — Some laws protect those reporting illegal conduct. I.4 Strategic/Tactical Options I.4.1. Documentation — Detailed records, photos, videos, contemporaneous notes (crucial for any case). I.4.2. Demand letters — Formal written demands before escalating. I.4.3. Negotiation & mediation — Sometimes third-party mediators can help resolve disputes. I.4.4. Strategic lawsuits — Class actions amplify individual claims; precedent-setting cases create broader change. I.4.5. Political engagement — Voting, lobbying, supporting candidates/policies that address the issue. II. Adversarial Effects Claude added how adversarial options pack some chilling risks. II.1 Limitations & Reality Checks The effectiveness of these depends heavily on: II.1.1. Resource access — Money for lawyers, time to pursue complaints, transportation II.1.2. Power differentials — Systems often favor those with more resources and institutional backing II.1.3. Systemic barriers — Discrimination, bias in institutions, retaliation risks II.1.4. Type of violation — Different violations have different remedies II.1.5. Geographic/jurisdictional factors — Available protections vary by location II.2 When Systems Fail In situations where formal channels are blocked or ineffective, vulnerable people sometimes: II.2.1 Seek support from faith communities, mutual aid networks, or international human rights organizations II.2.2 Document patterns to share with journalists or researchers II.2.3 Build long-term community power for future change II.2.4 Appeal to higher authorities (appeals courts, ombudspeople, international bodies) The hard truth: Adversarial action requires sustained effort and often carries personal risk—retaliation, financial strain, emotional cost. Success is not guaranteed, and the most vulnerable often face the greatest barriers to justice, which is why collective action and institutional support are so important. These all point to legal adversarial options. Under certain harsh conditions with desperate souls demanding prompt change, a violent revolution is not out of the question. If Thomas Jefferson wrote that we have the right or even the duty to replace illegitimate government, then what could happen if all legal options thwart such an agreed upon necessary change? Both JFK and MLK illuminated this risk for violent revolution. And we know both lost their norm-transcending lives to the violence of a gun. MLK’s love-focused message warned of the costly risk of an adversarialist path. II.3 Adversarialism overlooks specific needs Need-response identifies some additional limits beyond Claude’s helpful insights. II.3.1. Provoked defensiveness – Adversarial options easily trigger mutual defensiveness. Instead of trying to mutually relate to each other’s affected needs, both sides raise their guard and avoid any meaningful dialogue. Instead of encouraging cooperation, both sides understandably get selfish. What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce. II.3.2. Cognitive contraction – Adversarial options consume more focus, as triggered defensiveness prioritizes threat removal or avoidance. Less space is available to reflect on better options. Each side is typically too busy looking out for themselves. II.3.3. Toxic legalism – Adversarial options is featured in toxic legalism where the structure of law assumes oppositional parties, which presume each side must be categorized and processed (i.e., objectified) with rational-legal authority. Relief is offered to the winning side in a political or judicial contest, without accountably addressing all affected needs. II.3.4. Squandered potential – Adversarial options wastes precious human potential to empathize with each other, to care about each other’s affected wellbeing, and to nurture the potential to love one another amidst conflict by honoring the inflexible needs of others as one’s own. II.3.5. Elite coercion – Adversarial options grant more power to expert leaders who may impose their own imperfect solutions to those in a power differential conflict. Their top-down solutions rarely address every relevant detail necessary to fully resolve a conflict and restore each other’s wellness. II.3.6. Coerced poor options dependence – Adversarial options pull each side into relying on suboptimal choices. Instead of being incentivized to identify and resolve each affected need, the opposition structure normalizes accepting the results as the best on can get, which often favors the more powerful impactor as the impactee is pressured into accepting some concessions compromising their wellbeing. II.3.7. Damaged trust – Adversarial options undermine legitimacy in our institutions as the dismal results rarely improve the lives of those struggling in power differential. Especially if the power conflict is with a government official or with a government institution itself. II.3.8. Societal sickness – Adversarial options compromise the wellbeing of individuals who are kept from properly resolving their affected needs. As such adversarial options become the normalized go-to for handling power conflicts, or even peer conflicts, the increasing volume of unresolved needs takes its toll on the whole of society. More of us then sink into symfunction. We then risk slipping into dysfunction and despair, unable to reach our lives’ full potential. Let’s admit this merely scratches the surface. And AI remains imperfect. More could be said about adversarial options and effects, but let this serve as a grounding start and then move on. By the way… A power differential with a professional is one thing. They typically enjoy access to greater resources to get their way at the impactee’s expense. They may even invisibly harm the impactee under color of law, such as cutting off much-needed service. But they do not claim an exclusive use of violence to compel your compliance. A power differential with a government official or entity is quite another. They present the power of the government, with exclusive claim to violence, to impose their will upon the impactee. The affected impactee may concede to state pressure to avoid the threat of property loss (i.e., a fine) or loss of their freedom of movement (i.e., incarceration). While appearing to be a solution, adversarialism can quickly devolve into a problem of its own. Consider the hidden problem of countless wrongly convicted innocents sent to prison. Including those who eventually are released and spend the rest of their lives without their full rights restored. I’m one, like some kind of canary in a coal mine. Canary in a coal mine What is the falsely accused impactee to do if the same impersonal legal system that wrongly convicted them is not properly incentivized to recognize or correct its costly mistakes? The estimated volume of wrongly convicted innocents runs into the hundreds of thousands. The United States has the highest volume of prisoners in the world, due in part to an adversarial criminal judicial system that can indict a ham sandwich. Of the 14.5 million Americans with a felony record but no longer under state custody, most struggle from losing their rights—from what are called collateral consequences of criminal conviction. Apply 3.5% to that population, and you get half a million innocent Americans without their rights. They are innocent in that they had no role in the reported crime. But continue to suffer privileged discrimination, under color of law. The current number of exonerees (about 4,000) presents a mere drop in the bucket to this devastating but mostly hidden problem. There are not enough lawyers to utilize the adversarial options provided in the legal process to review every viable innocence claim. And not every viable innocence claim reviewed by a lawyer finds it way back in court. And not every viable innocence claim reheard in court gets this miscarriage of justice corrected. You can think of these half million innocent Americans as canary in a coal mine. They know firsthand how easily adversarial options under law can fail them. Many of them are disillusioned with the adversarial judicial process. Some are even disillusioned with the innocence movement that was suppose to offer their last chance for justice. Here’s some more bad news. If you naively trust the adversarial judicial system to correct its mistakes and then treat a wrongly convicted innocent as if guilty, then you could be guilty of legally privileged “innocence offending”. Only need-response offers a post-legalist solution to this overlooked problem of lost innocence. They typically have been disabused of legalistic adversarial options. What failed them could likely fail you, and not only with criminal justice but with other uses of adversarial law. So you best brace yourself. You could be next. And that’s not all Let’s admit this merely scratches the surface. More could be said about adversarial options and effects, but let this serve as a grounding starting point. Then move onto avoidance options, III. Avoidance Options (cope: flight, freeze, fawn, flop) Sonnet 5 medium Next, I invited Claude to answer: “What are all the avoidance options a vulnerable individual can take when their rights or their needs are being violated by those with more power?” Again, the highlighted text is Claude’s reply to my prompt, and not the numbered outline which I added. This is a real dynamic across employment, healthcare, government services, family systems, and institutional settings generally — when someone has structural power over you, direct confrontation isn't always safe or effective. Here's a fairly comprehensive map of the options, roughly from lowest to highest risk/visibility: III.1 Physical and situational avoidance III.1.1. Minimizing unnecessary contact or exposure to the person/institution III.1.2. Choosing settings with witnesses or recording capability (where legal) for unavoidable interactions III.1.3. Seeking transfer, reassignment, or exit from the relationship/context entirely (changing jobs, providers, agencies, households) III.1.4. Timing interactions to reduce vulnerability (avoiding one-on-one situations, scheduling during less volatile periods) III.2 Informational self-protection III.2.1. Limiting voluntary disclosure of information that could be used against you III.2.2. "Gray rocking" — giving minimal, unremarkable responses to avoid escalation or giving the more powerful party material to react to III.2.3. Compartmentalizing what different people/departments know III.3 Documentation as passive resistance III.3.1. Keeping detailed, dated records of interactions, decisions, and communications III.3.2. Requesting things in writing rather than verbally III.3.3. Building a paper trail before any formal action is taken — this is often the single most useful low-risk step, since it preserves options later III.4 Strategic compliance III.4.1. Complying with what's required while avoiding going beyond it (sometimes called "malicious compliance" when used pointedly) III.4.2. Buying time — asking for delays, clarifications, or "getting back to you" rather than immediate answers under pressure III.5 Third-party and structural routes III.5.1. Ombudspersons, patient/employee advocates, union representatives — people whose institutional role is to buffer power differences III.5.2. Anonymous or confidential reporting channels where they exist III.5.3. Peer support or informal networks (others who've dealt with the same institution/person often know what actually works there) III.6 Formal channels (higher visibility, higher risk and potential payoff) III.6.1. Internal grievance or complaint processes III.6.2. External regulatory bodies or licensing boards III.6.3. Legal consultation — sometimes just to understand rights, not necessarily to act III.6.4. Whistleblower protections, where applicable III.7 Collective strategies III.7.1. Coordinating with others facing the same power imbalance, since isolated individuals are usually easiest to dismiss or retaliate against III.7.2. Public/media pressure as a last resort, where other channels have failed III.8 Emotional/psychological pacing III.8.1. Deciding what to engage with now versus later — not every violation needs an immediate response, and pacing yourself matters more than it might seem when you're depleted III.8.2. Naming the asymmetry explicitly to yourself, even if you can't act on it yet — this itself protects against internalizing blame that isn't yours A few things tend to matter across all of these: avoidance and confrontation aren't opposites so much as points on a sequence — documentation now often enables formal action later, and exit doesn't have to mean giving up on accountability, it can just mean removing yourself from harm while other routes play out. The right mix usually depends on how retaliation-capable the more powerful party is, and how much the vulnerable person has to lose in the short term versus the long term. IV. Avoidance Effects Unlike the adversarial options, Claude didn’t include the effects of avoidance options. So I put it to Claude to share some of the likely positive and negative effects of avoiding a direct confrontation with someone with more power. Formatted the same way. Avoiding direct confrontation with someone who holds more power over you is one of the most common strategic choices people make, and it's genuinely a mixed bag depending on context. Here's a breakdown: Likely positive effects IV.1 Self-protection IV.1.1. Preserves your job, relationship, standing, or safety when the power differential means confrontation could lead to retaliation (firing, demotion, social exclusion, escalated conflict) IV.1.2. Buys time to gather information, build allies, or find better leverage before acting IV.2 Strategic positioning Lets you pick a better moment, channel, or method (e.g., going through HR or a paper trail instead of a heated conversation) IV.2.2. Avoids triggering a defensive reaction that shuts down any chance of change — sometimes indirect approaches (asking questions, modeling alternatives, working through intermediaries) get further than a head-on challenge IV.2.3. Preserves the relationship for future negotiation, which matters if you'll be dealing with this person long-term IV.3 Emotional regulation IV.3.1. Prevents saying something in the heat of the moment that you can't take back Reduces immediate stress and anxiety Likely negative effects IV.4 Costs to the individual IV.4.1. The underlying issue often doesn't get resolved — it just gets deferred or displaced IV.4.2. Chronic avoidance can lead to resentment, anxiety, or a sense of powerlessness that compounds over time IV.4.3. Can erode self-respect or self-trust ("I know what happened wasn't okay, but I said nothing") IV.4.4. Sometimes the avoided problem gets worse, not better, especially if the powerful person interprets silence as approval IV.5 Costs to the system IV.5.1. Enables the power-holder to continue problematic behavior unchecked, since there's no feedback signal IV.5.2. Contributes to a culture where speaking up feels unsafe, which can affect others besides you IV.5.3. Institutional harms in particular tend to persist and even get normalized when nobody with firsthand experience of the harm pushes back IV.6 The trap IV.6.1. There's a real risk of a self-reinforcing cycle: avoidance reduces confidence in your ability to confront, which makes future confrontations feel even more daunting, which leads to more avoidance [NOTE: Courage is not the absence of fear but acting while still afraid and learning one can indeed handle (and no longer avoid) what previously seemed too overwhelming to handle.] IV.7 What tends to determine which way it nets out IV.7.1. Reversibility — can the issue still be addressed later, or does delay foreclose options? IV.7.2. Actual retaliation risk — is the power differential just uncomfortable, or is it genuinely dangerous (livelihood, safety)? IV.7.3. Whether there are indirect paths — sometimes "avoiding direct confrontation" just means choosing a smarter route (documentation, coalition-building, formal channels) rather than avoiding the issue altogether IV.7.4. Pattern vs. one-off — a single strategic retreat is very different from a general life pattern of never pushing back If you're thinking through a specific situation, I'm happy to help reason through the particular tradeoffs. IV.8 Uncomfortable emotional warnings IV.8.1. Anxiety – Anxiety builds up if having to handle an unknown threat from some source of power, or having to vulnerably deal with a powerful person or entity. IV.8.2. Depression – Energy for the external social realm quickly dries up to compel attention to one’s neglected internal realm, often as a consequence of habitually appeasing the powerful in ways that undercut one’s capacity to keep functioning. IV.8.3. Addictiveness – Unquenchable craving to fill an insatiable hole left open from not being able to replenish something depleted, which can result after conceding too much to those in power. Actual addiction does not need to occur to point to this ill effect from unresolved power conflicts. IV.9 Stressors: allostatic load IV.9.1. “Wear and tear on the body” can be measured with certain biological markers, such as cortisol levels. Constant subordination to power holders can trigger prolonged cortisol release. Which weakens immune systems. This can provide an independent measure of the ill effects to power conflicts, to validate or invalidate any self-report measures of anxiety, depression and addictiveness. PART TWO: IMPACTOR’S Options & Effects For the more advantaged side of the power differential, I invited Claude to explain: “How do those in positions of power knowingly or unknowingly take advantage of those without power?” With highlighted text for Claude’s reply and the same numbered outline. Power imbalances shape outcomes in ways that don't always require bad intent — though intent varies across a real spectrum. Here's how it tends to work, from more deliberate to more unconscious: V.1 Deliberate exploitation V.1.1. Information asymmetry. The powerful party often knows more — about how a system works, what alternatives exist, what the "standard" terms should be — and can withhold or obscure that information to extract better terms. Landlords, employers, and institutions do this by making processes deliberately opaque or burying key terms in fine print. V.1.2. Manufactured dependency. Structuring a relationship so the less powerful party has few exit options — company towns, non-compete clauses, visa sponsorship tied to a single employer — increases leverage even without any single dishonest act. See CoPOD. V.1.3. Selective enforcement of rules. Rules applied strictly to some and loosely to others (or written vaguely enough to allow this) let power-holders reward compliance and punish dissent while maintaining plausible deniability. V.1.4. Extraction of unpaid labor or compliance through fear. Implicit threats ("you don't want to be difficult, do you?") extract concessions without anyone having to state the threat outright. V.2 Unconscious/structural exploitation V.2.1. Default assumptions treated as neutral. Institutions design processes around the needs, schedules, and communication styles of the powerful, then experience anyone else's needs as "special accommodations." No one intends harm, but the default itself encodes whose time and comfort matter. V.2.2. Discretion without accountability. When officials, managers, or professionals have wide discretion and low oversight, small everyday choices — whose case gets attention first, whose tone gets read as "aggressive" versus "assertive" — compound over many interactions into large disparities, without any single decision looking unfair in isolation. V.2.3. Empathy gaps. People in power tend to interact with the consequences of their decisions abstractly (spreadsheets, reports, occasional meetings) rather than directly experiencing them. This distance makes it easier to underweight the cost a decision imposes on someone else. V.2.4. Self-serving narratives. People with power often genuinely believe the system is fair, partly because it's worked for them and partly because believing otherwise is uncomfortable. This isn't cynical — it's a well-documented tendency (motivated reasoning) that lets structurally unequal outcomes persist without anyone feeling responsible for them. V.2.5. Professional norms that protect the institution over the individual. Norms like "don't admit fault," "follow protocol regardless of context," or "protect the organization from liability" can systematically disadvantage the person with less power, even when every individual professional is following the rules in good faith. V.3 Why it's often mixed, not either/or Most real situations combine both: a policy created for defensible reasons (case management efficiency, legal liability) gets enforced by individuals who benefit personally from not questioning it (less work, less risk, more approval from superiors), producing outcomes that are exploitative in effect even if no one along the chain intended harm. That's often what makes these dynamics hard to fix — there's rarely a single villain to hold accountable, just a structure that keeps producing the same result. Perhaps you would prompt Claude or another AI differently, and get a completely different result. Or a complementary response. Let these serve as a starting point. V.4 Legalism undermining impactor legitimacy No totalitarian state has withstood the weight of its own making. The more it limits society to flourish, the less it can function well enough to last long enough into the future. Even Hitler used the law as a vehicle for tyranny. Need-response sees law as a guide and not as some panacea. When left to rot under the unresponsiveness grip of power holders, law easily spoils into something we call toxic legalism. Impactors lose legitimacy when imposing their will against impactees under color of law. Toxic legalism manifests in five key features harmful to impactees, each privileged by law. V.4.1. Atomization – Removing the individual impactee from the social context, then assuming impactee responsibility beyond the impactee’s personal control; prematurely faulting the individual impactee. V.4.2. Hyperrationality – Assuming the impactee should reason their way through everything without regard for how intensifying social pressures constrain their cognitive capacities. V.4.3. Imposed generalization – Sidestepping specifics to get a wide shot of the impactee’s situation, then applying that broad view as literal reality in ways neglecting essential details. V.4.4. Privileged avoidance – Evading anything uncomfortable about the impactee, or the impactee’s situation, or about oneself in regard to the impactee, which normalizes alienation with the impactee and invests little to no empathy or compassion toward impactee suffering. .4.5. Premature opposition – Rush to assume impactee is at odds with another or with the impactor, then typically reacting defensively. V.5 Other power dynamics undermining impactor legitimacy V.5.1. Misassumption – Impactor holds inaccurate beliefs about the impactee(s) or situation, leaves little to no room for correcting such assumptions, and acts upon such faulty notions in ways not good for the impactee(s). For example, assuming the impactee experiences the same problems as the impactor or suffers them in the same way (i.e., projection), and then acts upon this projected yet familiar belief in ways not good for the impactee(s). For example, a manager assumes all of her subordinates are extrinsically motivated when in fact about half of them are intrinsically motivated and vulnerable to being disincentivized when micromanaged. For another example, a juror assumes anyone indicted must be guilty of something and decides early to vote guilty unless something extraordinary comes up that can convince them to vote otherwise. V.5.2. Compliance overreach – Impactor pressures impactee(s), knowingly or unknowingly, to conform to established rules beyond what is necessary to serve the purpose of such rules, but out of self-convenience does not inform impactees of their onerous conformity. For example, medical staff has a patient in pain fill out a personal medical history form but does not X out items unnecessary to serve the patient’s urgent need that day. For another example, medical staff has a pregnant new mother drink a full glass of glucose to fulfill a malpractice liability requirement to check for a risk of diabetes while implying the test is only for the good of the pregnant patient. V.5.3. Self-serving dismissiveness – Impactor disregards the impactee’s expressed objection or raised concern, to avoid dealing with the discomfort, leaving the impactee underserved. For example, a case manager denies program placement to a welfare applicant who made a correctable mistake on their application form, but the case manager insists they lack the time to revisit all such filing errors. For another example, a landlord denies housing to a prospect tenant who cannot pass a criminal background check due to a wrongful conviction years earlier and can demonstrate their innocence, but the landlord dismisses such claims as stereotypical of all felons. V.5.4. Depersonalizing objectification – Impactor applies convenient categories to process the served impactee, but then starts to treat the impactee primarily or solely in terms of that convenient category, overlooking context outside of such narrow categories. Sociology shows with labeling theory how impactees then get narrowly identified, and then may behave in ways reinforcing the perception of such convenient categories. For example, law enforcement applying the category of “victim” who may also be a victimizer in the situation or adjacent situation in the comprehensive context. For another example, an impactee presenting chronic anxiety may be labeled as “mentally ill” by an impactor who remains in the dark to how their privileged pressures contribute to the impactee’s unaddressed anxieties. V.5.5. Coerced concessions – Impactor manipulates the impactee, knowingly or unknowingly, to unwillingly forfeit or extract something of value from the impactee, to benefit of the impactor. Another name for this is “structural exaction”, which occurs when a power relation legally coerces the impactee to involuntarily transfer something of value to the impactor, without accountably allowing for affected needs to properly resolve. For example, when a boss “asks” a worker to commit to overtime and the worker grudgingly concedes to avoid the boss’s scorn or subtle retribution. Remember that scene in Office Space when Lumberg asks Peter to come in on the weekend? For another example, when a local prosecutor offers a time served plea deal to an innocent defendant in jail who feels she must take the deal to avoid going to prison and losing her son. V.5.6. Coerced poor options dependence (CoPOD) – Impactor pragmatically offers limited options to an impactee in need, who is compelled to accept such less-than-optimal options. But is then improperly faulted for not being able to fully function anymore. Which need-response identifies as “symfunction capture”. Which feeds into patho-pragmatism on a mass scale, shaping societal sickness. For example, a physician prescribes pain relief medication for a persisting biological ailment without investing much time or effort to understand its psychosomatic roots, which could remove the cause for such biostructural pain. For another example, an addiction counselor dependent on income from clients may unconsciously prolong the number of therapy sessions instead of promptly helping the client recognize and address the unresolved need(s) fueling their insatiable cravings. V.5.7. Diminished awareness – Impactor’s advantage gains some benefit that harms the impactee, with little to no self-awareness, in what need-response recognizes as quantifiable evil. For example, a politician exaggerates a national threat to evoke fear among impactee voters, who will then more likely support the impactor politician’s goals at the eventual expense of the voters’ freedoms. For another example, an impactor pundit characterizes all asymmetrical warfare as a form of terrorism (i.e., using loaded language) to attract more impactee viewers who lack sufficient access to all the facts and whose potential empathy can be squashed. V.5.8. Mission creep – Impactor posits the needs of an institution they serve over the needs of the people that institution exists to serve. Internal pressures coerce the impactor to neglect the external less influential impactees in favor of appeasing those to whom they immediately report, or to compelling political pressures. For example, a prosecutor cites “conviction finality” to refuse revisiting viable innocence claims, ostensibly to not retraumatize the reporting victim but more accurately to not admit their conviction rate is based on miscarriages of justice. For another example, a professor declines to offer helpful critique to a student’s work to avoid risking a lawsuit alleging unprofessional bias, resulting in grade inflation. More could be added to this partial list. Let this serve as a helpful start. Consider how each undermines the public’s trust in the impactor. Consider how the predictable effects can compromise impactor legitimacy. VI. Impactor Effects When the impactor manifests [AN ABOVE LISTED ITEM] in a power differential, especially if exploitive of impactees, the impactor loses the public’s trust. When not promptly corrected, it costs the impactor the legitimacy to keep impacting vulnerably impactees. Perhaps the impactor’s particular leadership style can mitigate these risks. Problems will likely still seep through. Damage will inevitably continue to occur under the radar. Caveat To each impactor: “You don’t know what you don’t know” and unlikely consider to ask. Life is busy, so you fall back on what you know. Your assumptions can mislead you. You probably rely on impersonal rules to guide your interactions with impactees. Short of some violent pushback or threats challenging your comfort zone, you will likely continue to create more negative than positive impacts on the vulnerable. Disillusionment Interpersonal trust decreases. The public loses faith in you. Your legitimacy declines. Their disappointment gives way to disillusionment, in many public quarters. Consider all the impactees… disillusioned with divisive politics, disillusioned with the adversarial justice system, disillusioned with the innocence and movement, disillusioned with lawyers, disillusioned with psychotherapy. Impactees sit on the frontlines of institutional decline of the legal and psychological professions, as they disappoint those in need of meaningful solutions. The former prematurely provokes mutual defensiveness. The latter neglects addressing external pressures from disappointing impactors and their institutions. Disillusioned impactors Consider those impactors now… disillusioned with being a lawyer, or disillusioned with being a psychotherapist. As employers realize how workers don’t quit their jobs as much as they quit their bosses, then provide leadership development to improve talent retention, the same or something similar could be done for other impactors. That’s what need-response seeks to do, one power differential at a time. PART THREE: Mutuality Options & Effects Need-response starts with the evidence-based premise that every natural need exists as objective fact. Which suggests that any option—adversarial, avoidant or otherwise—leads to more problems if it fails to result in properly resolving the affected inflexible needs. Need-response is all about “solving problems by resolving needs”. Need-response holds every powerholding impactor accountable to these resulting ill effects. And need-response offers to turn negative impacts into positive ones. One power relation at a time. Need-response offers this illuminating insight: Any action neglecting the objective fact of natural needs will ultimately fail. But actions respecting such inflexible needs will more likely succeed in a sustainable way. Like a grounding plumbline, need-response holds itself and all accountable to the objective fact of: recurring needs, fluctuating function (or wellness level), and occurring emotions with subjective content of how to respond to such needs. Unresolved needs objectively compromise wellness and objectively evoke painful emotions. Need-response skips less objective social norms in favor of the scientific grounding of inflexible needs. And forgoes psychological efforts to persuade in favor of objective fluctuating of one’s capacity to function. And debunks the notion that needs and emotions are totally subjective by respecting the pain that unresolved needs predictably provoke. Because… Results matter more than empty promises. Maturity matters more than persuasiveness. Resolved needs matter more than feel good answers. Legitimacy shall now be earned. Results matter: Accountable to outcomes Mirroring Kohlberg’s three levels of moral development, need-response brings you the three maturing levels of epistemic reliance. It helps to understand the frame of mind of each impactor and each impactee. Preconventional “beliefer” – who cling to their ideas of what is true or untrue with little to no effort to challenge such beliefs. Certainty abounds. o Such impactors are dangerous. o Such impactees are most vulnerable to impactor exploitation. Conventional “faither” – who accept as true or untrue what their identity group holds as true or untrue. Groupthink abounds. o Such impactors risk becoming exploitive leaders. o Such impactees may be drawn to personality cults. Postconventional “truster” – who continually examine their understanding of what seems true or untrue. Critical thinking abounds. o Such impactors are most trustworthy. o Such impactees actively seek reality even if upending their cherished assumptions. Maturity matters: Improved wellness Whatever happened to that idea that one should never lower their standards to fit the immature? Why do we normalize immaturity in the name of politics? Or in the name of what seems easier to reach? Impactors earn the scorn of impactees when complicit in holding them back. When doing little to nothing to support impactees struggling to break free from stifling institutions that measurably infringe on their lives’ full potential, if only because it seem as the more practical way to do things. Need-response shifts from such pathological pragmatism to cultivate our neglected potential to be more than we are right now. By letting go of those compromise that no longer serve. And loving each other more, by measurably honoring the needs of others as one’s own. Impactee maturity can lead to empirically measurable improved wellness outcomes, like less anxiety, less depression and less addictiveness. Which need-responses gages with well check instruments. Impactor maturity can lead to improved responsiveness to impactee needs, enabling greater legitimacy. Which need-response vouches for with testimonials from helped impactees. Resolved needs matter: Impact parity Impactees need meaningful solutions by resolving needs to solve problems. Impactors need sustainable legitimacy by establishing their trustworthiness. Each can give what the other requires by working cooperatively together. Need-response provides the supportive bridge of impact parity. Legitimacy assessed The need-response process has the impactee assess the quality level of the impactor's presenting trustworthiness, or legitimacy, to affect their power affected need or needs. A "power affected" need (or power problem) is one that cannot be resolved without the cooperation of the identified impactor or impactors. Offensive illegitimacy: Harming impactees with one's authority or privileged influence, worsening their power impacted need(s). Substandard legitimacy: Insufficient attention to the impactee's power affected need(s). Standard legitimacy: Minimally doing no harm to vulnerable impactees, but also not doing much to enable them to resolve their power affected need(s). Competitive legitimacy: More trustworthy than other impactors in enabling impactees to resolve their power affected need(s). Transformative legitimacy: Solving structural problems by proactively transforming norms and practices. After the impactee establishes their good faith demonstrating their own trustworthiness and good intent toward the impactor, the need-response process aims to convert the impactor's fragile legitimacy into one the impactee can vouch for with an inspiring testimonial. The impactee then offers to suspend or waive their adversarial & avoidance options. Once a foundation of mutual trust gets laid, the impactee offers to suspend or waive their adversarial and avoidance options. Both can then commit to mutuality options during their shared need-response process of impact parity. Cause for either side to get defensive melts away. Instead of hostility toward each other, need-response incentivizes both sides to benefit from the cultivated good faith of the other. The impactee gains the impactor's support to improve their wellness, by enabling them to properly resolve their power impacted need(s). The impactor gains the impactee's support to earn legitimacy, by vouching for their demonstrated effectiveness to solve public problems. Legitimacy earned Need-response distinguishes between status quo legitimacy and a fact-based kind. Ascribed legitimacy – Persuading impactees that the impactor is trustworthy, typically by providing little to no evidence. Impactor’s risk losing such trustworthiness. Earned legitimacy – Measurably establishing responsiveness to impactee’s power impacted needs, toward improved wellness outcomes. Which is not easily lost. The need-response process has the impactee itemize the endured costs from the intractable power problem. These get issued to the impactor as an "exaction invoice" documenting the transactional coerced concessions. This invoice clearly identifies itself as NOT A BILL. But it can be used for documentation if the impactee feels forced to use their adversarial options. The invoice invites the impactor, who agrees they do indeed powerfully impact the impactee, to convert such listed costs into an opportunity to earn legitimacy by helping the impactor resolve their power impacted need(s). Along the way, they both enter into a new social contract less amendable to coersion. Social contract standard conversion The status quo social contract standard of “consent of the governed” gets easily exploited by impactors counting on ascribed legitimacy. Need-response offers a viable improvement. Manipulated consent: The old social contract frequently fails impactees, and compromises the legitimacy of impactors. How long until this mess explodes into some violent backlash? Measurably improved: The new social contract forges an explicit agreement between impactee and impactor: Impact me positively or do not impact me at all! ascribed legitimacy --> correlates with --> manipulated consent --> correlates with --> negative outcomes earned legitimacy measurable improvement positive outcomes Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence welcomes a revision of the social contract. If we fail to take him up on his words to collectively improve power differential results, all of society will continue to suffer with more negative outcomes. Like widespread anxiety, loneliness, family estrangement, alienation, and addictions. We can no longer regard these as merely individual calamaties. Societal wellness Since needs and affected wellness levels occur as objective facts, and fewer of us can fully resolve all of our needs and return to optimal functioning, society as a whole gets dragged down. Look around and we can see that we live with a “sick society”. Need-response helps impactors earn legitimacy, and boost their professional profile, by guiding them to shift away from the patterns pulling us in societal sickness and toward societal wellness. Which features shifting away from toxic legalism and to the responsivism of personally supporting each other’s power impacted needs. Under the higher social contract standard of "improved wellness", the impactee does not earn legitimacy until their impact on impactees correlate with the impactee's measurably improved wellness. The process makes sure the impactee exhausts their internal means to improve their wellness. Butt also recognizes that their internal efforts may stumble without proper external adjustments supporting their progress. Wellness is psychosocial. Sure, there will be problems shifting to this new approach. For one, finding reliable wellness measures that are also readily available will be one challenge. Compared to the chaos unfolding from the lower manipulated consent standard, we think that is a much better problem to have. Or challenge, cast as an opportunity for greater human flourishing. Individually and societally. By responding better to each other's needs. REACT or RESPOND? Society and individuals cannot reach their peakfunction potential while reacting to each other more than responding to one another’s factually existing needs. Need-response recognizes the hold of cultural norms privileging more reaction than responsiveness. Need-response calls this “react culture” or “reactive culture”. Anything that does not address each other’s specifically affected needs falls under “react”. For example… Faulting the individual for external matters beyond their personal control. Expecting reasoning alone to fix a problem with taking responsive action. Oversimplifying complex problems to evade the discomfort of a complicated reality. Opposing others without relating to the unmet needs fueling their questioned behavior. Addressing each other’s specifically affected needs in good faith falls under “response”. Which should produce better outcomes than reacting. For example… Asking each other if they have exhausted all of their options to solve a problem Listening empathetically to each other express the feelings evoked by a problem. Exploring the nuance beyond immediate generalizations to better relate to each other. Cultivating mutual understanding instead of provoking mutual defensiveness. Need-response incentivizes both impactee and impactor to cultivate that untapped human potential to love each other. To honor the needs of the other as one’s own. For the impactee to honor the impactor’s need for sustainable legitimacy by vouching for their support to help them resolve their power impacted need(s). For the impactor to honor the impactee’s need for meaningful solutions to intractable problems held back by power structures. Win-win. Better outcomes. And let’s our love potential flourish. Who wouldn't want more of that? Applied to specific power differentials Professional power differentials (Pro) Employer-employee: at-will employment (Pro A) Gemini AI: what are the adversarial and avoidance options available to a worker who feels overwhelmed by an at-will job or by an insensitive boss? Workers navigating difficult employment dynamics under at-will contracts often choose between confrontational or protective actions. Here are the adversarial and avoidance options available to employees dealing with an overwhelming environment or insensitive management. PA-1. Avoidance options (Disengagement and Withdrawal) Avoidance options focus on self-preservation, minimizing contact with the source of stress, or exiting the situation entirely. PA-1.1. Quiet Quitting: Performing only the exact duties outlined in the job description to conserve mental energy. PA-1.2. Internal Transfer: Applying for a different role or department within the same company to escape the specific boss. PA-1.3. Resignation: Leaving the job entirely, either with a standard two-week notice or quitting effective immediately. PA-1.4. Mental Absenteeism: Emotionally detaching from work outcomes and treating the job purely as a financial transaction. PA-1.5. Presenteeism: Working while sick, with ailments likely due in part, or in whole, to the toxic work environment. PA-1.6. Sick Leave Utilization: Taking accumulated paid time off, mental health days, or FMLA leave to gain temporary space. PA-1.7. Communication Minimalization: Using only written channels like email or chat to limit direct, real-time verbal interactions with the boss. PA-1.8. Diminished productivity: PA-2. Adversarial options (Confrontation and Resistance) Adversarial options involve directly challenging the behavior, authority, or systems maintaining the toxic environment. PA-2.1. Formal Grievance Filing: Submitting documented complaints to Human Resources regarding hostile work environments or policy violations. PA-2.2. Whistleblowing: Reporting illegal activities, safety violations, or regulatory breaches to external government agencies. PA-2.3. Constructive Pushback: Setting strict verbal boundaries regarding workloads, deadlines, or communication styles during performance conversations. PA-2.4. Legal Action: Consulting an employment attorney to sue for discrimination, wage theft, or harassment. PA-2.5. Collective Organizing: Rallying coworkers to demand better working conditions, higher pay, or managerial accountability. PA-2.6. Documentation Logging: Keeping private, chronological records of toxic interactions to use as leverage or evidence. PA-2.7. Bad Publicity: Posting scathing reviews online, such as at Glassdoor and at Indeed.com. Complaining on social media and hoping it goes viral. Recommending others to boycott the business. PA-2.8. Abruptly quitting: Whether finding another job or not, leaving without notice. Maybe in the middle of a shift. Deciding to not show up when the employer is most busy and in desperate need of trained labor. PA-2.9. Incite termination: Intentionally getting fired, short of misconduct, in order to qualify for unemployment benefits. Which can free up time to look for a new job. PA-3. Mutuality options PA-3.1. Need-response alternative: Mutual support for each other's identified need. Impactee then puts all these avoidance and adversarial options on hold. Shift from alienation to cultivated rapport. Employer-Employee: at-will employment Doctor-patient: medical billing/debt (Pro B) Avoidance options Adversarial options Mutuality options PB-3.1. Need-response alternative: Mutual support for each other's identified need. Impactee then puts all these avoidance and adversarial options on hold. Doctor-Patient: medical billing/debt Governmental power differentials (Gov) Prosecutor-innocence claimant: public exoneration (Gov A) Avoidance options Adversarial options Mutuality options Prosecutor-Claimant: public exoneration Politico-voter: politically homeless (Gov B) Avoidance options Adversarial options Mutuality options Politico-Voter: politically homeless BACK TO TOP Need-response service types Employer-employee: at-will employmeent Healthcare Provider-Patient: medical debt Innocence offending: public exoneration Politician-voter: politically homeless

Balancing power differentials to solve problems Need-response brings the powerful together with the relatively powerless to solve problems, by resolving each other's affected needs. To do this, both sides are put on an equal playing field, called the "impact parity model". STTP = speak truth to power For their wellness, the relatively powerless impactee needs to courageously "speak truth to power". Or they risk losing their ability to fully function. LTTI = listen to those impacted For their legitimacy, the relatively powerful impactor needs to proactively "listen to those impacted". Or they risk losing the public's trust. Need-response incentives the relatively powerless to speak their truth in a way that incentivizes the relatively powerful to "listen to those impacted". Serving the need of the other can help resolve one's own need, with the guidance of this new profession. First, we must address the elephant in the room: the power differential. Or "power imbalance". Where one side has more power than the other. Risky power imbalance Otherwise known as a power differential, this refers to a relation between two people or entities with different levels of influence on each other. Need-response identifies a power differential, or power imbalance, where one side regularly impacts the needs of the other far more than the other side impacts the needs of the first. Power differentials present a tension between the powerful side and the less powerful side. Need-response identifies these as the "impactor" and the "impactee". Impactor: Impacts the relation more than impacted by it.. Impactee: Is impacted by the relation more than impacting it. Consequently, the impactor typically gets their way far more than the impactee. Which risks harming the vulnerable impactee, sometimes without the impactor aware of such harm. Which rightly damages trust. Both sides lose something. Power differentials impact wellness for good or bad. Need-response uses this impact parity model to incentivize each side to honor the inflexible needs of the other. It presents impact parity as a preferable option over the impacte's otherwise limited optons. Impactee options Need-response recognizes the limited options available to impactees in a power differential. As Thomas Jefferson observed... [A]ccordingly all experience hath shewn, that [people] are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. - Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence Impactee avoidance options While under duress of a power differential, the impactee tends to endure mounting pressures taxing their wellness. Impactors get away with extracting concessions from impactees who prefer to avoid risking losing far more. Impactee adversarial options Some impactees get to a point of tolerating impactor pressures no more. They push back with a queue of contentious options. Lawsuit, social media campaign, ethics board, etc. These trigger defensiveness, and do little to improve wellbeing. Impactee mutuality options Need-response provides the impact parity option. Both become dependent on the other to effectively address their affected need. They share each other's concerns. They mutually respect each other. Win-win. Impact parity Need-response incentivizes each side of the power differential to honor the need of the other. The impactee needs wellness by resolving some power-hindered need to solve a problem. The impactor needs legitimacy to be publicly trustworthy to continue their influential role. As the impactor helps the impactee to resolve their identified need, restoring their wellness, the impactor earns legitimacy. Without impact parity, the impactee typically relies on "pain relief" to cope. With impact parity, the impactee removes cause for pain by resolving the underlying need. Without impact parity, the impactor typically relies on "ascribed legitimacy" that's easily lost. With impact parity, the impactor gains "earned legitimacy" not easily lost. Impact parity evens the playing field by linking each side to the value of the other. The relation balances as each side equally needs the other. Which incentivizes fairness. The impactor's need for earned legitimacy Need-response identifies two kinds of legitimacy. Ascribed legitimacy: The leader persuades those led to keep following them, without much accountability for how well they actually impact the lives of those led. To be sure, this a fragile kind of legitimacy, and can be easily lost. Earned legitimacy: The leader measurably enables those led to properly resolve needs, which measurably results in positive wellness outcomes and reduced pain. You can probably guess that need-response is all about this second kind. Ascribed legitimacy stinks of symfunction, of the mediocrity of just getting by. It tends to hold down our personal and collective wellness. Earned legitimacy leads to peakfunction, of reaching more of life's full potential. It can restore more of our personal and societal wellness. ascribed legitimacy earned legitimacy Impact parity improves the opportunity for impactors to measurably improve their trustworthiness to affect other impactees. The impactee's need for meaningful solutions The impactee's need to solve stubborn problems. Behind every stubborn problem is one or more needs that cannot be readily resolved. Need-response distinguishes between low quality and high quality solutions. Generic solutions: Distant leaders often offer impersonal answers to deep seated public problems. They try to placate those under their influence with pat answers. These low quality solutions inevitably fail. Failure too often gets pinned upon the impactee. This compromises that leader's trustworthiness, and fuels anti-elite populism. Meaningful solutions: The leader measurably enables those led to properly resolve needs, which measurably solves problems and restores wellness while reducing pain. Need-response provides opportunity to leaders to earn legitimacy by enabling meaningful solutions. Generic solutions stink of symfunction, by offering pain relief that neglects the source of that pain, which is their unresolved needs. This tends to hold us down and compromise our personal and collective wellness. Meaningful solutions lead to peakfunction, by resolving the needs prompting pain, and restoring us to greater levels of wellbeing. This can bring out more of our personal and collective wellness. generic solutions meaningful solutions Meaningful solutions improve wellness Need-response defines a solution as meaningful when it results in improved wellness. And removes cause for prompting pain. Any unresolved need limits one's capacity to fully function, to be fully well. Pain results to compel attention to the unmet need. By solving a problem that resolves a need, wellness gets restored and pain removed. After all, an impactee's natural need exists as an objective fact. Which objectively impacts their wellness, their capacity to fully function. And in turn objectively provokes emotional pain to compel their subjective attention to their compromised wellness. Impact parity offers their subjective attention a better option than going it alone. Subjective pain is not the problem as much as the threats that pain objectively tries to report. By contrast, the impactor's "need" for legitimacy occurs more flexibly. Without gaining trust, they can still fully function in some other viable way. Impactees are less fortunate. How impactee wellness will be measured remains a work in progress at the time of this writing. We start with three approaches. 1. Self-reported: anxiety, depression & addictiveness The impactee self-reports their current levels of anxiety, depression and addictiveness using our wellcheck tool. Power differentials impact wellness in such levels. 2. Rule out internalities: socioenvironmental impacts Another tool contrasts internal biopsychological factors with external socioenvironmental factors. To isolate results from external stressors. 3. Independent measure: allostatic load For a fully independent measure, the impactee's allostatic load can be measured by their family physician or by a medical clinician. This measure on the "wear and tear on the body" can remove self-reporting bias, for a more accurate accounting of actual wellness results. Serving each other's needs Need-response incentivizes our untapped potential to give more by relating to needs of the others side as if they were one's own. Honoring the needs of others as one's own, as a demonstration of social love, serves as a key component of need-response's "mutuality process". The powerholder needs the public's trust to maintain their social influence. They need meaningful legitimacy. The relatively powerless need their leaders to enable them to solve their stubborn problems. They must resolve their needs. The impact parity model ties the resolution of each one's need to the service of the need in the other. It instills a discipline wholly lacking in the adversarial legal process. earned legitimacy meaningful solutions With both sides on the same level, the impactee helps the impactor to earn legitimacy to improve their leadership as the impactor helps the impactee to find meaningful solutions to improve their wellness. Win-win. See how this contrasts sharply with the standard adversarial process in the judicial system and in politics? The adversarial process needlessly spurs hostility toward each other. Such mutual hostility prematurely provokes mutual defensiveness. Which typically shuts down needed awareness of each other's affected needs. And traps each other in pain. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it. By contrast, establishing impact parity in this mutuality process paves the way for both sides to properly resolve needs with love. However... What if the impactee feels they need a meaningful solution more than the impactor feels they need improved legitimacy? What if the impactor feels they need improved legitimacy more than the impactee feels they need a meaningful solution? Applying impact parity With need-response, the impactee finds the supported courage to "speak truth to power" (STTP) to report how the powerful impact their chances for finding a meaningful solution. Need-response incentivizes the impactor to "listen to those impacted" (LTTI) on their path for earning legitimacy. The less the powerholder impactor listens to the impactees they influence, for good or ill, the less legitimate that impactor's authority. The less the impactees can speak truth to power to draw necessary attention to their exposed needs, or vulnerable needs, the less likely they can solve their problems. Need-response bridges this divide with its mutuality process. Need-responsive mutuality process Need-response crafts a strong first impression with its mutuality process. Which provides a clean break from alienating adversarialism that so easily hinders meaningful resolutions. Instead of the normal expectation for each to work out their own problems, this starts on the prosocial footing of affirming each other's inflexible needs. No one chooses to require water, or chooses to require companionship, or chooses to require solitude. Such needs are inflexible, and its pointless to oppose them. To affirm each other's needs while questioning how they act upon such needs, we apply the simple communication format of the "praise sandwich". Impact parity begins by establishing mutual rapport by using this effective messaging format. Which mitigates the risk of prematureely triggering each other's defensiveness. Positive slice: Affirm their inflexible needs. Negative slice: Bring up your affected needs. Positive slice: Cultivate mutual rapport Need-response cultivates impact parity with this deliberate mutual affirmation of each other's needs. Then it can move on to address the likely complexities in a power differential. Need-response recognizes these complexities Implementing impact parity faces some complexities. This address some of them. A) Impactor array Need-response recognizes different degrees of impact. Not all impactors influence their impactees the same. Need-response identifies a taxonomy of impactors. Which suggests which impactor to target for impact parity. Direct impactors. Impactors who directly impact the impactee's need. E.g., prosecutor to the falsely accused and wrongly convicted indigent defendant in need of justice. Indirect impactors. Impactors who indirectly impact the impactee's need. E.g., defense attorney representing the innocent defendant. Peripheral impactors. Impactors who peripherally impact the impactee's need. E.g., local news outlets parroting a prosecutor's improper indictment of the innocent defendant. Nondescript impactors. Impactors who impact the impactee's need in some distant way. E.g., jury pool populace clinging to misconceptions about the criminal judicial system. B) Legalism power dynamics Need-response recognizes the insidous pull of "law". Modern societies rely heavily upon laws to impersonally convey needs. Instead of personally telling the impactor what the impactee specifically needs from the impactor, we passively trust the law to prevail. Impactors typically have more resources to take advantage of the legal process. Even the threat of legally privileged action is enough to favor the impactor's interests at the expense of impactee's needs. The noble purpose of law then turns into something toxic. Toxic legalism pollutes the well of human potentiality for both sides to proactively support each other's needs. Power differentials exacerbate each of these five elements of toxic legalism. Atomized individualism. Legalism generally isolates the impactee individual, and overlooks the context of their intractable problems. Legalism permits the impactor to blame the individual impactee for the impactor's actions, such as directly or indirectly limiting the impactee's access to primary resources to properly resolve needs. As legal options isolate the individual impactee, amidst an epidemic of loneliness and family estrangement, they become much more vulnerable to the impactor's legally privileged exploitive advantages. Impact parity cultivates appreciation for psychosocial wellness. Motivated reasoning. Legalism often distorts our thinking by dissing our emotions. Rational-legal authority easily reinforces the widely held misconception that emotions bias our thinking. Our unresolved needs command our attention with powerful emotions. Suppressing such charged emotions with the rule of law does little to resolve our bias-inciting needs. The law privileges impactors to rationalize their "bias-overruling" power. With costly effects on impactees. Impact parity inspires honest processing of each other's evoked emotions. Convenient generalizations. Legalism privileges convenience categories neglecting specifics, oversimplified solutions, reification of hyperbole, exploitive exaggerations and power-serving generalizations. Legalism enables impactors to present their generalizing as the only option for impactees. The more these fail to provide the impactee with a meaningful solution, the more dependent the impactee tends to become on the relief offered by such soothing generalizations. Impactors benefit from this vicious cycle. Impact parity illuminates awareness of relevant nuance both require. Privileged avoidance. Legalism privileges the impactor to avoid whatever they find uncomfortable about facing in the impactee. The impactor controls the agenda and can "selectively ignore" the challenging impactee with little if any consequence to their power advantage. Impactors benefit when their advantage invisibly pressures impactees to self-censor their valid concerns. Neither side truly benefits from remaining alienated from each other. Problems persist without solution where needs resist full resolution. Impact parity encourages each other to engage even the most unpleasant realities. Defensive adversarialism. Legalism provides the impactor with the means to oppose the impactee's attempt to redress their grievances. Legalism not only permits such hostility, but treats such antagonism as the key or only way to solve a power differential conflict. Such adversarial legalism can present a veneer of good faith negotiation while the impactor takes advantage of the impactee's vulnerabilities under color of law. Impact parity incentivizes mutual understanding and mutual respect. These five toxic legalism elements feed into what we call "react culture". Which is a set of cultural norms privileging not resolving needs. Impact parity counters "react culture" by encouraging greater responsivism. Which is the belief and practice of responding to each other's needs more than reacting to them. Being more responsive to needs opens both sides of a power differential to better options. C) Coerced poor options dependence Need-response recognizes the impact of limited options. Dilluted choices Power differentials can trap impactees and impactors into painfully disappointing options. Or what can be called coerced poor options dependence (or CoPOD for short). When primary resources for fully resolving a need remain inaccessible, impactees typically settle for alternate resources that partially eases the need. When you can't have it all then a piece of it must suffice. For example, when the impactee resorts to eating processed foods after an exhausting day at work, to appease the impactor boss. Or when the impactee student relies heavily on AI to finish an assignment while balancing a full time job. When alternate resources for easing needs become increasingly inaccessible, impactees will then settle for substitute resources that can relieve the pain of unresolved needs. Minimal suffering is preferable to perpetual agony. For example, when the impactee indulges in junk food to offset the misery of a hated job. Or when the impactee student plagiarizes a report she has no spare time to do. Impactees can then grow dependent upon such less-than-optimal options. Exploiting atomized individualism Such power differentials feed on the hyper-individualism myth that impactees should make better choices, without addressing the real barriers to making the best choices. Need-response recognizes how power differentials can trap trapping impactees in what it calls "symfunction capture". Poor options to address needs pulls the impactee from wellness into illness. They can not function as well. Their unmet needs evoke painful emotions that consume their focus. As the impactee's cognitive bandwidth shrinks and prompts errors, impactors are apt to misidentify the impactee as stupid, irrational, undisciplined, or having no self-control. Impactors tend remain in the dark to how much they contribute to such bad results. Lowering the standard As the power differential coerces the impactee to acclimate to less-than-optimal choices, creeping normalcy fuels what need-response recognizes as pathological pragmatism. We lower our standards to match what seems most practical. Noble ideals like loving each other get dismissed as too impractical, as too idealistic. As power diffentials trap impactees in diminished wellness, perpetual pain, cognition contraction, and coping options, need-response challenges the status quo of such impact imbalance. Impact parity incentivizes better options. Raising the standard With incentivized impact parity, need-response helps both the impactee and impactor to meaningfully shift our social contract standard from "manipulated consent" to "measurable wellness". From coercing depeendence on poor options to accountably improving wellness outcomes in order to maintain legitimacy. D) Diffusion of accountability Need-response recognizes different structures of impact. Called diffusion of accountability, four distinct structures can compound efforts to build impact parity. Which limits how an impactor can accountably help an impactee solve their problem. Upchain. The impactor must defer to a higher authority, either a person or written rules. Downchain. The impactee has delegated the authority to act to those of lesser authority. Sidechain. The impactor shares authority to act with equal others, such as a committee. Nondescript. The impactor cannot act alone for some other established reason. Need-response recognizes each impactor exists as an impactee in other relations. Seeing how this process can produce better outcomes, the imactor may invite impactors over them to try this pioneering approach. And invest their enegy and resources to personally support the impactees under them to resolve their need. When the impactor cannot personally help the impactee due to one or more of these structures, the identified power problem turns into a structural problem. Which complicates earning legitimacy. E) Legitimacy levels Need-response recognizes different degrees of legitimacy. An impactor's trustworthiness to affect the impactee's vulnerable wellness falls within these five levels. Offensive illegitimacy. Impactor is documented as harming the impactee. Substandard legitimacy. Impactor offers relief that impedes resolution. Standard legitimacy. Impactor neither harms nor helps the impactee. Competitive legitimacy. Impactor outperforms responsiveness to impactee needs. Transformative legitimacy. Impactor transforms norms to enable impactee to resolve needs. Need-response utilizes impact parity to incentivize the impactor to earn legitimacy. By measurably using their power to measurably improve the impactee's wellness by helping them to resolve their power-impacted need. The more the impactee can freely function after the impactor's intervention, the more improved the impactor's trustworthiness to impact such impactees. Impact parity includes mutual assessment of each other's demonstrated trustworthiness. Each impactor and impactee assess each other's 'good faith'. Each needs the other. F) Affected legitimacy Need-response recognizes different statuses of legitimacy. An impactor may be assessed as having sufficient personal legitimacy but insufficient professional legitimacy. For example, the manager presenting personal sympathy for a valid whistleblower complaint but does nothing that could jeopardize their professional position. Their complicity continues to impede resolution of impactee needs. Impactor legitimacy can be assessed on three levels. personal legitimacy status professional legitimacy status institutional legitimacy status The typical impactor is unlikely to change their institution's poor responsiveness to the impactee's needs. Need-response will have to cultivate a movement of accountable responsiveness to set the stage for needed structural change. G) Power types Need-response recognizes different constructs of "power". From an indigenous nature-respecting perspective, power isn't really power unless it resolves needs. That's merely social influence. Need-response differentiates between "weak power" of mere social influence and "strong power" of meaningfully solving impactee problems. weak power of repeatedly relieving pain, which compromisees wellness. strong power of sustainably resolving needs, to improve and sustain wellness. Weak power offers a win-lose fight, such as political contests and judicial battles. The winning side gets to relieve their pain while neither side is supported to properly resolve their needs. Strong power provides a win-win path, so all can meaningfully solve their problems by mutually resolving their needs. All sides enter into this problem-solving journey with impact parity, meaning no one has meaningful power untill all sides can resolve their affected needs. Along the way, inflexible needs come to the fore while flexible preferences and institutional norms get forced to yield to each other's inflexible needs. And such core needs never clash. Impact parity has the power to illuminate the problem of excessive resourcing and incentivize proactive contentment of by mutually coordinating access to essential resources, to properly resolve needs. That's strong power, producing meaningful solutions that results in improved and sustainable wellness for all. Results matter. The weak power of contentious legalism can never get us there. To quote MLK, "Only love can do that." H) Disillusioned individuals Need-response recognizes The standard adversarial approach presumes individuals have more power than they honestly do. Impact parity turns this hyper-individualism on its head. Unlike psychotherapy, the aim is not to help the individual adjust but to adjust the power relation. Which can redress growing disillusionment with psychotherapy. Unlike legal services, the aim is not to fit individuals to policies, but to serve the needs for which those policies exist. Which can redress growing disillusionment with lawyers. There is good reason to be disillusioned with the adversarial judicial process and with divisive politics. Now there is a viable alternative to such power differentials: impact parity. Power research This impact parity model benefits from the academic research into power differentials. 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. Eur. 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 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 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. Authors. (Year). Title. Publication. doi Abstract 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 IMPACTOR ​POWERLESS IMPACTEE 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 BACK TO THE TOP

Impartially establishing innocence independent of biased adversarial law Public Exoneration of Steph Turner – in brief After coming out as trans, Steph Turner was falsely accused and wrongly convicted in 1993. Steph consistently maintains their innocence and has no other history of criminality. Steph repeatedly finds the adversarial legal process unresponsive to the need for justice. The wrongful conviction has trapped Steph in poverty, unable to use their talent and degrees. Steph proactively addresses the needs for which laws ostensibly exist to serve. Steph raises the standard for justice to measurably improved wellness outcomes for all. Steph now holds all accountable to this higher standard, anchored in love. Steph welcomes anyone to engage them to better understand what this can mean for them. All legitimate personal and public relations with Steph will now expect acknowledgement of these facts. Acknowledging these facts improves the person's rapport with Steph. Failure to acknowledge these facts sours the person's rapport with Steph. Yes, Steph will be keeping score. Public Exoneration of Steph Turner – full 1. After coming out as trans, Steph Turner was falsely accused and wrongly convicted in 1993. 2. Steph empirically demonstrates their innocence and cause for being scapegoated. 3. Steph repeatedly finds the adversarial legal process unresponsive to justice needs. 4. The wrongful conviction has trapped Steph in poverty and homelessness. 5. Steph unpacks the threat to wellbeing from power differentials PART 2 6. Steph proactively addresses the needs for which laws ostensibly exist to serve. Being a "transspirit" compels Steph to prioritize respecting the inflexible needs that norms exist to serve, over respecting such relatively flexible norms themselves. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs they exist to serve. Steph invests their education and transspiritual gifts to convert the problem of damaging power differentials into an opportunity to improve overall wellness. It applies anankelogy's new insights to solve problems by resolving needs. Starting by leveling the playing field of power differentials, with is called "impact parity". Steph now tests this new profession of need-response on their own problem of power differentials. Steph will soon test these four pioneering tools: Tool 1 - mutuality process form: To incentivize mutual empathy to solve problems. Tool 2 - law-fit: To fit any cited norm to the needs it affects. Tool 3 - exaction invoice: To quantify the hidden costs from power differentials. That last one invites the powerful impactor to earn legitimacy with a testimonial by converting the itemized amount into good faith effort to mutually support each other's needs. impact parity to redress problem of power differentials Click for comprehensive details 6.1) Impact parity If impact disparity can contribute to unwell outcomes and illegitimate authority, then balancing the impact between both sides in a power differential can set the stage for improving wellness outcomes and improving legitimated authority. In other words, if a power differential can produce negative outcomes, then the right conditions should be able to produce positive outcomes. For both sides. The impactee needs improved wellness. The impactor needs improved legitimacy. As each need something of value from the other, both sides can be incentivized to respond to each other's needs more responsibly. Both sides can engage each other equally, to demonstrate good faith effort to properly resolve inflexible needs. 6.2) Fair trade The impactee begins with a baseline wellness score for their current level of impacted anxiety, depression and addictiveness. Their impacted wellness gets assessed after each engagement with the sent need-response tool below. These self-reported levels get independently verified by periodic measuring of the impactee's allostatic load. As the impactee's wellness level improves with declining anxiety, depression and addictiveness, the impactor's earned legitimacy rises. Of course, the impactor is not responsible for the impactee's wellness. Then neither is the impactor's influential advantage divorced from any impact on the impactee's wellness. Likewise, the impactee is not responsible for the impactor's trustworthiness to the public. But each incremental improvement correlating with the impactor's good faith effort can vouch for the impactor's demonstrable trustworthiness (i.e., earned legitimacy). Impactee wellness impact significantly improved moderately improved relatively the same moderately declined significantly declined no measure Impactor legitimacy level significantly improved moderately improved relatively the same moderately declined significantly declined no measure The more the impactee's wellness levels improve, controling for other variables, the more the impactor's legitimacy goes up. The more the impactee's wellness declines, controling for other variables, the more the impactor's legitimacy stagnates or goes down. Need-response tools Steph introduces four need-responsive tools to incentivize impactors to listen to those they impact, for their own benefit. Each is initiated by the impactee, to incentivize the identified impactor to properly respond to the identified impacted need, or needs. Tool 1 Tool 2 Tool 3 mutuality process law-fit exaction invoice These tools remain untested until now. Steph will test each on the power differentials impacting their own wellness outcomes. Which will likely alter them, to fit what is necessary for all sides. 6.3) Need-response tool 1: mutuality process form We first shift from crippling adversarialism to engaging mutuality using the 'praise sandwich'. Any "bad news" from the impactee to the impactor gets sandwiched between the "good news" slices of affirming the impactor's affected needs and a warm invitation to sustain this proactive cooperation. Defensiveness gets negated from the start. Good faith effort can then grow legs. A) Affirm the other side's affected need or needs B) Bring up own affected need or needs C) Continue building rapport to mutually respect needs Need-response process 1) ANNOUNCE mutuality intent by sending this completed form to the appropriate contact info 2) ASSESS impactor's responsiveness by how prompt in acknowleging receipt firm yes soft yes equivocal soft no firm no no reply 3) AUDIT impactor's good faith to cooperatively redress each othe's relevant needs 4) AVOW to proceed with or without the impactor's cooperation Impactee wellness impact significantly improved moderately improved relatively the same moderately declined significantly declined no measure Impactor legitimacy earned significantly improved moderately improved relatively the same moderately declined significantly declined no measure Applied to the wrongful conviction The A) I realize the school neeeds to B) C) Applied to medical billing The A) B) C) Applied to employers The A) B) C) 6.2) Need-response tool 2: law-fit How well do applied norms fit the needs they ostensibly exist to serve? Application of law is only as good as is its accountable respect for all affected needs. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. - Plato Anankelogy, the study of need, recognizes while no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs they exist to serve. At best, laws impersonally convey needs. When your moral compass relies less on impersonal laws and more on personal love to honor the inflexible needs of others as you would have them honor your own, then you are set free from the bounds of legalism. In contrast to conventional wisdom about civil disobedience, to prioritize moral conscience over laws and authorities, need-response goes beyond individual conscience by introducing the plumb line of honoring all objectively occurring needs in us all. Individual conscience can be incorrect; engaging others to relate more personally with their affected needs goes much further to properly resolve needs for which laws ostensibly exist. 6.x.x) Law-fit form Now there is a helpful mechanism for identifying the needs affected by laws and their enforcement. It's call law-fit. It fits any law or social norm to the needs it is expected to serve, then includes the actual impact on our inflexible needs. 1) State the cited norm(s) 2) Identify the need(s) to be served by the cited norm(s) 3) Describe the apparent impact on all needs from enforcing the norm(s) Need-response process 1) ANNOUNCE post-legalism shift by sending this completed form to the appropriate contact info 2) ASSESS impactor's responsiveness by how prompt in acknowleging receipt 3) AUDIT impactor's good faith to cooperatively redress each other's relevant needs 4) AVOW to proceed with or without the impactor's cooperation Applied to the wrongful conviction Does the law adequately address the complainant's presenting need or needs? 1) MCL 750.520c(1)(a); MSA 28.788(2)(1)(a) 2) To protect children from sexual predation of adults 3) The complainant's need to be affirmed and supported for experiencing same-gender attraction was never properly addressed. If it had, the wrongful conviction most likely would never have happened. Instead, the adult authorities apparently projected their sexual anxieties onto the asexual trans defendants under color of law. Item 3 departs significantly from item 2, which indicates poor legitimacy. At the time, there were few if any legal protections for children to be out as LGBTQ+. Applied to medical billing Does the law adequately address healthcare consumers' wellness needs? 1) Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Public Law 116-260): Federal No Surprises Act 2) To protect healthcare consumers from "surprise billing" of unexpected large medical bills, in contrast to the ethics of transparent medical billing 3) Steph is slipping into medical debt from being coerced into making uninformed healthcare decisions that result in large copays beyond their means to pay it promptly. Item 3 departs significantly from item 2, which indicates poor legitimacy. The social power of healthcare providers toxic legalism that undermines societal wellness. Applied to employers Does the law adequately address the problem of abusive managers who use their anger to coerce employee compliance to their expectations, with their unquestioned assumptions? 1) No statute recognizes the wrongly convicted innocent, nor asexual employees, nor transspirit worker, as a protected class. "The line between the legal definition of harassment and general unkindness can be a blurry one." Abusive use of anger to manipulate worker compliance, even applied to intrinsically motivated workers, is not explicitly illegal (unless aimed at a protected class), and under law does not by itself constitute a hostile work environment. 2) For intrinsic motivations to be encouraged and not disincentivized by any boss abusing their authority by coercing compliance with anger with the implicit threat of compromising the worker's economic security. 3) Steph's productive potential continues to be undermined, to placate the boss's anxiety about expected performance. With costly consequences to their economic wellbeing. Item 1 shows how the law cannot effectively address every problem, especially this problem. This simple 3-step form can serve as a precursor to a more thorough process known as citationization. Which asks for more probing questions. How is the norm interpreted? How is the norm enforced? Who benefits the most from this norm's enforcement? How can we know if the purpose of the norm is being fulfilled? How is the norm's enforcement impacting the population? How effectively does this norm address the needs it exists to serve? Such inquiries can be adjusted to fit each particular power differential situation. Any bad law is no law at all. - Augustine of Hippo 6.3) Need-response tool 3: exaction invoice 7.X) From ascribed legitimacy to earned legitimacy 6.3.1) Ascribed legitimacy MCOG 6.3.2) Earned legitimacy MIWO 7.4) From systemic exaction to the exaction invoice Exaction Invoice This is NOT a bill. FROM: Impactee's name; contact info TO: Impactor's name; contact info DATE: Date sent No. Item of extracted value cost qty amount 1. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 2. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 3. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 4. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 $ 00.00 While not a bill seeking collection of the totaled amount, it can serve as impactee-supplied documentation for any adjudication contest if the impactor remains in a legally privileged adversarial and avoidant stance. If the impactor opts out of this good faith alternative, it can be used as evidence to challenge the impactor's legitimacy to further impact the lives of the vulnerable. If the adjudication body compounds such biased adversarialism and privileged avoidance of the impactor's underserved inflexible needs, the results can be used as evidence to challenge that adversarial legal system's legitimacy to further impact the lives of the vulnerable. And then as a basis for asserting the higher authority of resolving needs with love. Need-response process 1) ANNOUNCE coerced costs by sending this completed form to the appropriate contact info 2) ASSESS impactor's responsiveness by how prompt in acknowleging receipt 3) AUDIT impactor's good faith to cooperatively redress each other's relevant needs 4) AVOW to proceed with or without the impactor's cooperation 6.4.1) Applied to the wrongful conviction The Exaction Invoice 1 This is NOT a bill. FROM: Impactee's name; contact info TO: Impactor's name; contact info DATE: Date sent No. Item of extracted value cost qty amount 1. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 2. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 3. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 4. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 $ 00.00 6.4.2) Applied to surprise medical billing The Exaction Invoice 2 This is NOT a bill. FROM: Impactee's name; contact info TO: Impactor's name; contact info DATE: Date sent No. Item of extracted value cost qty amount 1. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 2. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 3. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 4. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 $ 00.00 6.4.3) Applied to the employer The Exaction Invoice 3 This is NOT a bill. FROM: Impactee's name; contact info TO: Impactor's name; contact info DATE: Date sent No. Item of extracted value cost qty amount 1. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 2. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 3. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 4. $ 0.00 0 $ 00.00 $ 00.00 REACT or RESPOND 7. Steph raises the standard for justice to 'measurably improved wellness outcomes' for all. MoU Leave sick world of toxic legalism to enter th special world of need-responsive love. The imperfect adversarial legal process repeatedly fails to live up to the ideals of the "consent of the governed" social contract. Such consent gets easily manipulated. Steph lives by the higher "measurably improved wellness outcomes" social contract. Anything less results in a sick society. Click for comprehensive details 7.1) Memorandum of Understanding A Any powerholder lacking such mutual understanding shall be counted as not fully authorized to impact the identified impacted. Memorandum of Understanding This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is made and executed by and between: 1. Purpose This 2. Objectives, Scope and Major Activities The 3. Responsibilities of the Parties The two Parties 4. Duration and Option to Amend, Extend or Terminate This MoU 5. General Terms The 6. Signatures This MoU shall enter into force on the latest date of signing by qualified representatives of both institutions. /S/ /S/ 7.2) Shifting from "reacting" to "responding" In the face of persisting conventional problems, we apply these unconventional solutions. We leave the ordinary world of reacting to problems with cold legalism, to enter the special world of mutual responsiveness to each other's affeeected needs. This includes turning away from toxic legalism and toward need-respecting love. 7.3) Redressing toxic legalism From the sacred writings of the Apostle Paul to the more recent warnings from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, we know that excess dependence on the role of law compromises human flourishing. And we intuitively know that too much law and not enough love makes for a sick society. As the sage Jiddu Krishnamurti warned us, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Transspirituality compels Steph to transcend divisive social norms to connect with life's full and yet untapped full potential, for human flourishing. Unfortunately, conformists tend to misread Steph's nonconformity as some kind of pathology. Projection? transspirituality - Benefocent compulsion to transcend constraining conventional norms to connect with life's full potential. Transspirituality inspires Steph to question divisive social norms, to resist the creeping normalcy of depending on poor options We all are coerced into poor options dependence (CoPOD for short) Almost all of us drift into "symfunction" of adequate wellness that robs us of human flourishing. drift - symfunction capture - creeping normalcy of coersion to rely on poor options (CoPOD) ... need-response - to liberate from suffocating norms benefiting billionnaires more than the populace Need-response aims to nurture us out from the iciness of toxic legalism and into the warmth of need-respecting love. From REACT to RESPOND to needs 7.3.1) From hyper-individualism to psychosocial balance For example, in the wrongful conviction With surprise medical billing, Applied to workplace mangers, 7.3.2) From hyperrationality to emotional honesty 7.3.3) From overgeneralizing to relevant nuance 7.3.4) From avoidance to meaningful engagement avoidance culture 7.3.5) From adversarialism to mutuality process post-legalism exoneration 7.4) Cultivating human love and human flourishing Peakfunction The adversarial legal process basically offers pain-relief to the winning side in a legal battle. From toxic legalism to mutual love 8. Steph now holds all accountable to this higher standard, anchored in love. Pronouncement of Innocence innocence offending complicity Heralding Post-Legalism cultivating "Mutual Good Faith" Declaration of Liberty declare the liberty to properly resolve needs Heralding Love universal principles unilateral good faith...asserting higher authority of properly resolve needs in love Click for comprehensive details 8.1) Pronouncement of Innocence Nobody requires another's permission to breathe. Pronouncement of Innocence Steph Turner demonstrates being wrongly convicted and offers an alternative to faulty legalism Overlooked innocence Whereas the current structure of the adversarial judicial system remains slow to recognize, admit and correct its errors; Whereas academically estimated rates of wrongful convictions of the innocent, who had no role in the criminal act, span from 1 to 5% of all convictions, potentially even higher, and this totals over a hundred thousand; Whereas the current National Registry of Exonerations identifies exonerations nowhere near this number; Whereas wrongful convictions stem from known contributors that can be identified in a case; Context Whereas LGBTQ+ people have historically been targeted by law enforcement; Whereas the complainant had a clear motive to implicate the transgender defendant as a way to avoid being outed for same-sex attraction and risk rejection of her same-sex attraction at a time when acceptance was rare, and her stepfather uttered homophobic slurs; Whereas the defendant has no other criminal history; Whereas asexual transpeople present no threat of sexual violence to the public; Legalism limits Whereas the investigation did not question the defendant’s own three underaged daughters; who never accused the defendant of any criminal wrongdoing; Whereas the defendant continues to endure a history of being scapegoated along with legally privileged economic marginalization; Whereas repeated requests for legal assistance from innocence projects to review this case has not borne fruit and never because they could not find merit for its potential reversal in court; Post-legalist alternative Whereas a viable alternative to the limits of adversarial legal process can be found in the need-based mutuality process, as presented by the new professional service of need-response; and Whereas this mutuality process invites input from anyone affected, as long as they willingly submit to the discipline of this mutuality process to properly address each other’s needs; now, therefore, be it Resolved, that STEPHEN DENNIS TURNER effectively demonstrates their innocence of all charges from the alleged incident on 7th of July, 1993. 2026-06-07 Innocence Offending Violating the rights of the unexonerated innocent continues to be privileged by law 8.1.1) Innocence offending Anyone treating the wrongly convicted innocenct as if guilty, under color of law or unquestioning acceptance of any biased adversarial legalism, is complicit in that injustice. We call in innocence offending. legacy of harm 8.1.2) Widespread complicity – either support the innocent to rebuild their reputation and lives or fall complicit to this historical injustice accusations as projective admissions, moral inversion from reactive legalism 8.2) Unilaterally asserting the higher standard of properly resolving needs "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love." - MLK step beyond the alienation of avoidance culture and beyond the adversarialism of oppo culture with thee power of love. Replacing alienation and adversarialism with love Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. creeping normalcy slowly destructing humanity But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. With the higher social contract standard of earned legitimacy, of measurably improving wellness outcomes (MIWO), 8.3) Declaration of Liberty As used here, liberty means the "freedom to properly resolve needs to cultivate human flourishing". 8.4) Unilaterally applying the higher standard of love You SHALL love "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love." step beyond the alienation of avoidance culture and beyond the adversarialism of oppo culture with thee power of love. Replacing alienation and adversarialism with love 8.5) Unilaterally revising the social contract Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. creeping normalcy slowly destructing humanity But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. With the higher social contract standard of earned legitimacy, of measurably improving wellness outcomes (MIWO), Universal need-responsive principles: character refunctions gratitude grace endurance patience humility forgiveness perseverance trustworthiness honesty atonement discipline generosity kindness mercy equanimity empathy gentleness justice resilience love Like Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death! Indeed, the lack of freedom to properly resolve needs leads to a slow death. 9. Steph welcomes anyone to engage them to better understand what this can mean for them. dynamic effort to improve our wellness, starting with myself." Engage: Interact with Steph Express your support or your doubts. Have any questions? Click for comprehensive details 9.1) 9.2) validation honor REACT or RESPOND With great power comes great responsibility Is this making a difference? Check each impactor's responsiveness Check Steph's progress using this process If you need this kind of public declaration, Add your headline here This is a placeholder paragraph. Replace this text with your own content. to be proactive without premature opposition that inevitably provokes mutual defensiveness Never oppose another's inflexible need or needs. That never works. There is no greater revolution than to revolve back to love, to accountably honor the needs of others as one's own. "If you don't accountably honor my needs as I have accountably honored yours," Steph asserts, "then why shall I continue honoring yours?" Then adds, "Perhaps I should put this into transactional terms and send you a bill for what your one-sided extractions cost me." 5.x.x) Need-response tool 4: exaction invoice Such potent love can do far more to incentivize responsiveness to inflexible needs than caustic adversarialism. Those who fail to engage our good faith efforts shall risk 5.x.x) Earned legitimacy No [person] is above the law, and no [person] is below it. - Theodore Roosevelt firm yes soft yes equivocal soft no firm no no reply Steph introdues some new tools, yet to be tested