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First recognize every need as an objective fact The objective reality of need points to many overlooked strong correlations. 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 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 1. Needs recur as an objective fact. 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. 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. 2. Function fluctuates as an objective fact. 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 subjective experience. Fear predictably rises, outside of subjective experience. Testable hypothesis: The worse 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. 3. Emotions occur as objective events. 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. List qualifier... PART A: Predictable results of resolving needs PART B: Predictable consequences of unresolved needs 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 myths 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 evil this normalizes. 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. That 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 alchol 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 abiity 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 NOTE: Part B remains unfinished at the time of publishing this post, and will be completed as time and energy affords. Thank you for your understanding. 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 pesists, 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 functionability. 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. First Second Third Reasonable connection: Theorized hypothesis: Null hypothesis: IMPLICATION: unbearable emotional attachment to legalism - unhealthy substitute drawn to legalistic solutions that rarely resolve your needs lack legitimacy offer adversarial options which prevent you from resolving needs, restoring wellbeing, and removing pain reinforces your dependence upon legalistic authority as the familiar way to cope A6 inverts this hypothesis. B7. The less you can fully resolve a need, the greater your risk for dysfunction. summary intro focal cycle; focal range Testable assumptions. First Second Third first, symfunction then symfunction capture Reasonable connection: Theorized hypothesis: Null hypothesis: IMPLICATION: A7 inverts this hypothesis. define dysfunction B8. The less you replenishes what your life requires, the less you can function. summary intro Testable assumptions. First Second Third Reasonable connection: Theorized hypothesis: Null hypothesis: IMPLICATION: A8 inverts this hypothesis. B9. The less replenishment of what’s required, the harder to overcome addiction. summary intro Testable assumptions. First Second Third Reasonable connection: Theorized hypothesis: Null hypothesis: IMPLICATION: While no one sits above the law, no law sits above your natural needs. 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. Anankelogy Principles Every social science operates on a series of assumptions that shape what gets asked and researched. Anankelogy is no different in this respect. These principles guide the start of anankelogy in this adventure of discovery and improved lives. Foundational A natural need is an objective fact. An organically prioritized need is an objective fact. Basic Resolving needs improves wellness. Emotions personally convey needs. Your emotions prioritize your self-continuance. Your feelings alert you to the status of your needs. Beliefs exist to serve needs. You believe what you need to believe. Your biases prioritize your needs. All beliefs include error. All your behaviors serve your needs. Needs resolve and evolve. Needs get queued and then evoked. General There is no good nor bad except for need. Your feelings serve you, or you serve them. Resolved needs improve your understanding. You don’t choose your needs; your needs choose you. Natural needs never clash with each other. All natural needs sit equal before nature. Wellness is psychosocial. Problems persist without solution where needs resist full resolution. The more you generalize, the less of reality you realize. Big changes may seem stronger. But small changes often last longer. Pain There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Natural pain is inherently good. Pain is perhaps nature’s least appreciated gift. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain tries to report. Reacting to your pain tends to leave you in more pain. Any unquenchable desire becomes another pain. We typically prefer the pain we feel over the pain we fear. Take the easy course, then life gets hard. Take the hard course, then life gets easy. A life full of comfort is a life not fully lived. A life full of pain is a life filled with too many unmet needs. Conflict We cannot solve our specific problems from the level of generalizing that created them. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it. A rush to debate usually skips the details that really matter in life. There is less reason to debate when you can vulnerably relate. Violence is weakness turned outward. Resilience is strength turned inward. When violence seems the only answer, quickly rethink the question. Rights and responsibilities depend on each other. The more you offer to ease their needs, the more they seek to ease their pain. The standard applied sets the standard replied. What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness. Self-righteousness is a weak savior. Arrogance is no savior at all. Authority You don’t need anyone’s permission to breathe. The more an authority undermines resolving needs, the less its legitimacy. You don't exist for human authority; human authority exists for you. Power is not really ‘power’ unless resulting in resolved needs. Legitimacy of authority can be lost when imposing a hidden cost. Authority proves less necessary where needs freely resolve. Love While no one sits above the law, no law sits above your natural needs. Our laws do not govern but guide; our needs govern. Our laws do not resolve needs; people do. It is against the grain of law to fully resolve needs. Laws impersonally convey needs. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes they make a law. Each of these principles should be testable with the tools of social science. Conclusion (but not necessarily conclusive) 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. Wisdom-informed relations anchored in an indigenous relationship of appreciating the central role of nature I am intuitively compelled to brainstorm ideas and experience epiphanies, independent of pouring through available research on the subject matter. dismissive - avoidant reduction: "believed, theory" - myth of choice, free of consequences 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 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. If put under the microscope of social science research, you will find high correlations between the objective fact of needs and various outcomes of how such needs are addressed and experienced. With near-100% correlations, I can confidently guarantee… Ø the less you resolve your need, the more in pain you will be; Ø the less your needs resolve, the less fully you can function; and Ø 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. back-to-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 - quantifiable evil: To unpack how power differentials explicitly damage the vulnerable. Tool 4 - 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 Tool 4 mutuality process law-fit quantifiable evil 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: quantifiable evil Since anankelogy recognizes the objective fact of need, and of functional level, it recognizes an objective dimension to morality. This includes quantifying evil, identified as benefiting from harm, often with diminished awareness and where some viable alternative exists. This form provides space to identify these four factors. Need-response focuses on the harm from power differentials upon the vulnerable who are relatively less powerful. benefit The powerholder "impactor" gains something of value. harm The powerless "impactee" loses something of value, primarily the means to properly resolve their needs. awareness The impactor remains unaware of the harm. Typically from relying on loaded language, propaganda techniques, logical fallacies, inaccurate assumptions, and cognitive biases. alternative The impactor could pursue an option that does not harm the impactee. CR Need-response process 1) ANNOUNCE redirection severity 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 T benefit harm awareness alternative Applied to medical billing T benefit harm awareness alternative Applied to employers T benefit harm awareness alternative None of these negate the moral agency of the impactee to responsibly choose and act upon the best option available to them. But the "best" option may not be good enough, if it interferes with human flourishing. If the impactor in the power differential can directly satisfy the impactee's need then it counts as a power problem. Otherwise it counts as a structural problem with one or more of these features: upchain: authority comes from a higher source downchain: authority delegated to underlings sidechain: authority shared, like in a committee nondescript: authority from some other arrangement 6.4) Need-response tool 4: 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

Let's ask AI how power differentials affect your wellbeing A "power differential" exists when one side of a relationship impacts the other more than impacted by it. impactor: impacts the other side more than is impacted by it. I.e., powerholder. impactee: impacted by the other side more than impacting it. I.e., relatively powerless. I asked three different AI platforms the same prompt question: "How do power differentials from professionals and government officials impact the wellness level of those under their influence, for good or bad?" Click these or scroll down for the results, provided verbatim. Gemini________________ Claude________________ Copilot________________ Click these buttons to check for yourself this prompt in all three AI platforms. Gemini_____________________________________________ Power differentials heavily dictate the wellness level of subordinates, significantly altering their physical health, mental stability, and community safety. When authorities wield power responsibly, they elevate public well-being, but systemic abuse or negligence rapidly degrades it. 📉 Negative Impacts (The Bad) Chronic Stress: Constant surveillance or fear of authority triggers cortisol spikes. This weakens immune systems and accelerates cardiovascular disease over time. [1] Help-Seeking Suppression: Fear of official judgment, deportation, or punishment stops individuals from reporting crimes or seeking medical care. Institutional Trauma: Negative experiences with law enforcement, Child Protective Services, or biased medical professionals cause long-term anxiety and systemic distrust. [1] Resource Deprivation: Officials hold the power to deny funding, housing permits, or clean water, directly forcing vulnerable communities into toxic living conditions. Learned Helplessness: Prolonged lack of agency over personal outcomes leads to depression, apathy, and a total loss of motivation. 📈 Positive Impacts (The Good) Safety Architecture: Proactive officials enforce labor laws, environmental regulations, and safety codes that prevent injuries and shield the public from corporate harm. Psychological Safety: Compassionate professionals (like supportive doctors or ethical supervisors) reduce anxiety and create environments where individuals feel secure enough to thrive. Resource Equity: Accountable leaders use their authority to distribute healthcare, educational funding, and social services directly to marginalized groups. Empowerment Amplification: Traumatized individuals experience profound psychological healing when officials validate their rights, listen to their grievances, and enforce accountability. When Gemini AI prompted again... Power differentials shape wellness by controlling resources, validation, and autonomy. When authority figures use their power poorly, they create chronic stress and systemic harm. When used well, they build safety, equity, and community resilience. [1, 2] Negative Impacts on Wellness Chronic Stress: Constant subordination triggers prolonged cortisol release. This weakens immune systems. [allostatic load] Institutional Trauma: Margining practices or systemic neglect by officials causes deep psychological distress. Biased Healthcare: Medical gaslighting occurs when professionals dismiss patient symptoms. This worsens physical health outcomes. Loss of Autonomy: Top-down government mandates can strip away personal agency. This lowers self-esteem and mental health. Resource Deprivation: Discriminatory policies restrict access to clean environments, housing, and healthcare. This shortens life expectancy. [3] Positive Impacts on Wellness Systemic Protection: Strong public health policies eliminate large-scale health hazards. Clean water acts are one example. Psychological Safety: Empathetic professionals reduce patient anxiety. Clear communication fosters trust and healing. Resource Distribution: Supportive officials fund social safety nets. This relieves financial stress for vulnerable groups. Empowered Advocacy: Shared decision-making in medicine improves patient compliance and recovery rates. Community Resilience: Structural investments build safe spaces, parks, and clinics. This elevates collective well-being. [4, 5] [1] https://www.nashconsulting.com [2] https://www.newlocal.org.uk [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov [5] https://www.sofi.com Claude_____________________________________________ Power differentials between professionals/officials and those under their influence have profound effects on wellbeing — both protective and harmful. Here's a comprehensive look: How Power Differentials Shape Wellness The Core Dynamic Power differentials are inherent in many relationships: doctor-patient, teacher-student, employer-employee, police-citizen, social worker-client. The asymmetry creates dependency, which amplifies both the benefit of good actors and the harm of bad ones. Positive Impacts on Wellness When authority is exercised responsibly, it can: Provide safety and structure — Effective law enforcement, public health mandates, and zoning laws create environments where people can thrive physically and psychologically Deliver expertise — A skilled physician or therapist uses their knowledge advantage to genuinely improve health outcomes; the patient benefits precisely because they defer to expertise Reduce decision fatigue — Trusted institutions (schools, clinics) absorb complex decisions, freeing individuals from overwhelming cognitive load Create equity — Officials can redistribute resources toward vulnerable populations, correcting market failures that would otherwise harm them Offer protection — Child protective services, labor regulators, and consumer protection agencies shield people from exploitation they couldn't resist alone Negative Impacts on Wellness Psychological Harm Learned helplessness — Chronic subordination can erode a person's belief in their own agency, contributing to depression and anxiety Surveillance stress — Communities under heavy monitoring (welfare recipients, parolees, certain immigrant groups) show elevated cortisol levels and chronic stress responses Epistemic undermining — When professionals dismiss a patient's or client's own account of their experience ("you're fine, nothing's wrong"), it damages self-trust and delays care Physical Health Medical paternalism — Historically, and still today, physicians overriding patient autonomy has led to harmful treatments, especially for women and minorities Environmental racism — Government zoning decisions have disproportionately placed toxic facilities near low-income and minority communities, with measurable health consequences Rationed care — Bureaucratic gatekeeping in insurance or public health systems can delay or deny life-improving treatment Social & Community Harm Institutional betrayal — When an organization fails to protect someone it was meant to serve (e.g., a school that ignores abuse), it compounds the original trauma significantly Stigma reinforcement — Social workers, courts, and medical professionals who pathologize poverty or cultural difference can entrench shame and social exclusion Coercive control — Welfare conditionality, mandatory treatment programs, or punitive policing can strip dignity and autonomy in ways that worsen mental health Key Variables That Determine the Outcome Factor Healthier Outcome Harmful Outcome Accountability Professionals subject to oversight Acting with impunity Consent & transparency Client/patient informed and involved Decisions made unilaterally Cultural humility Power-holder understands context Applies one-size-fits-all approach Trust Relationship built over time Transactional or adversarial Recourse Appeals, complaints, alternatives exist No exit or challenge mechanism Motive Genuinely service-oriented Self-interested or ideological What Research Shows Therapeutic alliance in mental health care is one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes — meaning how a clinician relates to the power gap matters enormously Communities with high institutional trust show better public health compliance and better health outcomes overall Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) research shows that early exposure to abusive authority (parents, teachers, officials) has lifelong physiological effects on stress response systems Studies on procedural justice in policing find that how officers treat people — fairly and respectfully — matters more to community wellbeing than actual outcomes of individual encounters The Bottom Line Power differentials are neither inherently good nor bad — they are force multipliers. A competent, ethical professional with power over a vulnerable person can be a profound source of healing and protection. That same structural position in the hands of someone negligent, biased, or exploitative becomes a mechanism of harm that individuals often have little ability to resist. This is why accountability structures, informed consent, transparency, and community voice are not just bureaucratic niceties — they are essential wellness infrastructure. Copilot_____________________________________________ Power differentials held by professionals (e.g., doctors, social workers, educators) and government officials shape the wellness of people under their influence in both positive and negative ways. The core mechanism is simple: those with power control resources, decisions, and narratives, and this directly affects who gets to be healthy, safe, and heard. Below is a structured explanation grounded in the evidence from your search results. 🧭 Core Takeaway Power imbalances—especially when tied to structural oppression—are among the most upstream determinants of health and wellness. When power is used equitably, it improves community agency, access, and outcomes; when misused or concentrated, it reinforces inequities, stress, and poorer health. healthinpartnership.org SAGE Journals 🧩 How Power Differentials Affect Wellness 1. Structural Oppression → Chronic Inequities Power held by institutions often reflects historical systems like racism, patriarchy, and class hierarchy. These systems determine who has access to resources such as housing, healthcare, education, and political voice. These imbalances are described as “the most upstream cause of health inequities.” healthinpartnership.org They shape life expectancy, chronic disease rates, and exposure to harm. SAGE Journals 2. Decision-Making Control → Whose Needs Are Prioritized Government officials and professionals often decide: What policies get funded Which services are offered Whose knowledge counts in planning Webinar participants identified policymakers and healthcare institutions as the most influential actors in shaping health equity. partners4healthequity.org When communities lack influence, their needs are sidelined, reducing wellness. 3. Resource Distribution → Access to Care & Opportunity Power determines who gets: Funding Health services Infrastructure Representation Unequal distribution of resources perpetuates avoidable health differences. SAGE Journals 4. Community Agency → Psychological & Collective Wellness When communities gain power—through shared decision-making, organizing, or representation—wellness improves. Interventions that strengthen community knowledge and leadership rebalance power and improve health outcomes. SAGE Journals Multisector collaborations that intentionally shift power increase people’s sense of influence and belonging. 81% of participants in one study reported increased power to influence their community. pophealthinnovationlab.org 5. Stress & Autonomy → Mental & Physical Health Powerlessness is a chronic stressor. Feeling unheard or controlled by institutions increases stress, reduces trust, and worsens health. Conversely, shared decision-making and transparency reduce stress and improve engagement. pophealthinnovationlab.org ⚖️ When Power Is Used Well (Positive Impacts) Shared decision-making increases trust and improves health outcomes. Community power-building enhances agency and leadership. SAGE Journals Transparent governance reduces inequities and increases participation. Cross-sector collaboration helps communities address systemic drivers of health. partners4healthequity.org ⚠️ When Power Is Misused or Concentrated (Negative Impacts) Policies may reinforce inequities (e.g., underfunding marginalized communities). Professionals may impose solutions that don’t reflect community needs. Structural barriers persist, limiting access to care, safety, and opportunity. Community voices are minimized, reducing trust and worsening outcomes. Stress and disempowerment increase, harming mental and physical health. 📊 Summary Table: How Power Shapes Wellness Power Dynamic Positive Impact Negative Impact Decision-making power Shared governance improves trust & outcomes Exclusion leads to inequitable policies Resource control Fair distribution improves access Concentration deepens inequities Professional authority Expertise can guide effective care Paternalism reduces autonomy Community agency Empowerment boosts wellness Disempowerment increases stress Structural systems Reform can dismantle inequities Oppression perpetuates poor health 🔍 A Non‑Obvious Insight Power is not only about who holds it, but about which types of power are activated. Interventions that activate multiple forms of power—individual, collective, structural—are the ones that successfully shift inequitable systems. SAGE Journals This means wellness improves most when: Communities gain voice Institutions change their internal processes Policies redistribute influence and resources TAKEAWAY Power differentials significantly impact the wellness of those under the influence of powerholders. Producing both negative and positive wellness outcomes. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Until the new professional service of need-response came along, no current institution effectively bridged the two sides on an equal playing field. Only need-response incentivizes both sides to support each other to properly resolve needs to solve personal and social-structural problems.

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 unpacks the hidden threat to wellness from power differentials. PART 2: 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. Steph Turner came out as trans in 1993 to Janet Turner, their older trans sibling. After moving in together, a young girl with lesbian feelings gawked at Janet, apparently inspired by Janet's defiance of gender norms. When in trouble with her mother for not being home, the young girl accused Janet of snatching her off the sidewalk and dragging her to Janet's apartment to be sexually assaulted. This nascent lesbian could not risk being outed. Both Janet and Steph were accused of popular anti-trans groomer tropes and then charged with CSC. Later, both were wrongly convicted and sentenced to serve lengthy terms in men's prisons. Janet died in prison of cancer. Being ineligible for parole for maintaining innocence, Steph finally left prison in 2005. Now required to register as a sex offender for life, the asexual Steph cannot get a meaningful job using their talents, skills and education. Before being released, Steph switched from identifying as transgender to identifying as a wisdom-dispensing transspirit. While overwhelmed by social problems, Steph aims to help develop some meaningful solutions. [NOTE: Steph uses gender neutral pronouns primarily because indigenous languages do not have gendered pronouns as with European languages like English. This simple decolonization act also works well with the gender transcendant dimension of Steph's transspirituality, as a secondary purpose for gender neutral language.] Click for comprehensive details 1.1) Context Coming out In February 1993, Steph came out as trans to Janet, Steph's older sibling, who was already out publicly. Both were estranged from each other for 16 years. Janet previously ran afoul of the law, but now law-abiding and more emotionally mature since embracing her transgender self. Janet then lost her job and apartment in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. So she moved in with Steph in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Four weeks after moving in, Janet attracted the unwelcomed attention of a young neighbor girl. Later, Steph learned that this young girl was experiencing nacent lesbianism and could not risk being outed to her homophobic parents. After gawking at Janet throught the apartment front window, Janet naively tried to placate the girl's curiosity about this "man with lipstick" by inviting her inside. Steph remained asleep in the back bedroom. All hell breaks loose Steph awoke to hear voices. Leaving the back bedroom, Steph observed Janet talking with a young girl that Steph had never seen before. Leaving the apartment for errands, neither Janet nor the girl acknowledged Steph's presence nor exit. After returning, Steph saw that the girl was gone. When asking Janet who that was, Janet seemed unwilling to talk about it. Shortly after, the girl's upset mother appeared at the door. She demanded to know what Janet was doing with her daughter. Janet stepped out to explain. Before Janet could finish, the girl's stepfather rushed at Janet with a crowbar. Janet jumped inside and Steph locked the door. As the man repeatedly beat the door with the crowbar, Steph called 911. Police arrive Police get involved. The young girl was interviewed. The officer had Janet and Steph wait in the back of his squad car. Then the officer joined the other officers who were interviewing the girl, who desperately could not be outed to them. About 20 minutes later, the officer returned. He indicated that both Janet and Steph were now being charged with CSC. Steph asked the officer what CSC stands for. "Criminal Sexual Conduct," he answered. "What did the girl say we did?" Steph increduously inquired. "I think you know," the officer replied, as he drove away to take the two to the county jail. 1.2) Falsely accused of sexual assault on July 7, 1993 CSC 1. Steph Turner was accused of aiding and abetting a sexual assault allegedly committted by Steph's transgender sibling, against a ten year-old neighbor whom Steph has never met. CSC 2. Steph was also accused of fondling the complainant's chest. The specifics remain unclear, as the charge was cherrypicked from an allegation m we were both being arreested for CSC. ade from an inconsistent testimony apparently coached with leading questions (standard at that time). Steph soon learned how easily trans folks get overcharged and over-incarcerated compared to most non-trans people. Implicit bias. Steph also had to quickly detransition for survival in the men's jail. Steph's older trans sibling Janet (deadname Daniel) was accused as the principal. Since Janet died of cancer in prison on October 8, 2001, little else is mentioned of her here. 1.3) Wrongly convicted of CSC charges on December 13, 1993 The trial began on November 30, 1993. Both Janet and Steph were tried together, but each had a separate jury. Steph expected to be acquitted since the accuations lacked corroborating evidence. Then Steph's defense counsel showed in a Michigan law book that "no corroborating evidence is necessary for a conviction of sexual misconduct". That sank Steph's mood. Steph's defense counsel believed in Steph's innocence, but had doubts about Janet's innocence. The jury later indicated that if Janet was guilty, then they assumed Steph must also be guilty of the charges. Neither jury was checked for the propensity to project sexual angst onto asexual trans folks simply because they are different. Amidst a nationwide moral panic of sex abuse hysteria, at a time many believed the transphobic trope of "sexual predators", both were found guilty. 1.4) Sentenced on February 2, 1994 to serve 30 years in a men's prison The Presentence Investigator expressed her doubt about the conviction, but explained she had to do her job to examine all the relevant details and recommend a sentence as determined by law. Her Presentencing Investigation report recommended sentencing Steph at the low end of the 5 to 10 year minimum range. The maximum was set by statute at 30 years, which Steph did not fully appreciate at the time. At the sentencing hearing, the prosecutor argued for a minimum closer to 8 years. Steph's defense counsel counter-argued for a minimum closer to 2 years. After sentencing Janet 30 to 50 years, the judge claimed he had to keep the sentence for Steph proportional to the codefendant. This misapplication of the Milbourn case law later served as an appellate issue. The trial judge departed upward from all the recommendations and sentenced Steph 15 to 30 years. 1.5) Appeal Steph appealed the conviction prior to sentencing. Steph's appellate counsel found so many appealable issues that the written appeal ran in excess of the 50-page limit. After getting the court's permission, he filed a 60-page appellate brief on Steph's behalf. The brief was filed on December 27, 1995. The appellate panel returned their unpublished opinion in January of 1998. They threw out the CSC 1 conviction, but then replaced it with a CSC 2 conviction. While grateful for partial relief, Steph remained disappointed that the court failed to recognize and correct its costly mistakes. The appellate panel traditionally avoids the role of "tryer of fact" as they reserve that function to the trial jury. They granted themselves an exception to interpret the trial transcripts for themselves to decide a jury could find Steph guilty of CSC 2. The appellate panel remanded the case for resentencing. On February 2, 1999, exactly six years after the fist sentencing hearing, Steph returned before the same sentencing judge. He resentenced Steph to serve 8 to 15 years. This moved up the maximum outdate from 2023 to September of 2005. And this updated the earliest release date to 2001, if eligible for parole. 1.6) Incarcerated in the MDOC from March 1994 till September 2005 Faithfully maintaining the integrity of their innocence left Steph ineligible for parole. Steph finally discharged fully from state custody on September 22, 2005. And went home. While grateful to leave prison and be back home, Steph remains hopeful to reverse the wrongful conviction and restore their sullied name. Thanks in part to Janet taking the lead to embrace their Oneida heritage, Steph shifted from identifying as transgender to recognizing the indigenous aspect of gender holism. By 2002, Steph identified more as a "transspirit". Steph briefly wondered if the two-spirit tradition best explained their compulsion to transcend gender norms. But digging deeper, Steph realized the term transspirit fit better. A transspirit is one compelled to transcend divisive norms, like gender norms and hostile political sides, to deeply connect with life's full potential. This now includes transcending hostile adjudication categories of the adversarial process, like accuser and accused, and the overgeneralizing categories of guilt and acquittal. After initially in shock after asking "why me?", Steph shifted perspective by asking "Why not me? What does God see in me to test and refine my resilience and rise me up to a threat-defying purpose?". Besides being totally innocent of a wrongful conviction, Steph learned to empathize with the plight of not-so-innocent fellow prisoners, who presented many painfully unaddressed social issues. 1.7) Shooting the messenger Irony While incarcerated, Steph recognized transspiritual features in the book of Isaiah. When wondering who will step up and find the wisdom to correct such problems in society, Steph stepped forward with "Here am I, send me!" Mirroring the message in Isaiah, Steph soon wondered who will take notice of such of such profound and yet unconventional wisdom. "Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Transspirituality gifts Steph with the wisdom to both understand the roots of conventional thinking and the its limits if taken too literally. Let these nuggets of wisdom inspire you to see beyond conventional wisdom. All natural needs sit equal before nature. Natural needs never clash with each other. There is no such things as pain apart from unresolved needs. Pain is not the problem as much as the threats pain exists to report. We cannot solve our specific problems from the level of generalizing that created them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes they make a law. There is no greater human authority than resolving needs with love. It's best to change yourself, conventional wisdom claims, before trying to change society. But what if you have done all you can and must wait for societal changes to enable you to actually change yourself? Hyper-individualism results, which prevents human flourishing. Be rational, conventional wisdom claims, and check your emotionally charged expressions. Hyperrationality results, which prevents human flourishing. Don't overthink things, conventional wisdom claims, so you best keep things simple enough for all to understand. Overgeneralizing results, which prevents human flourishing. You should be happy, conventional wisdom claims, by avoiding uncomfortable matters. Discomfort avoidance results, which prevents human flourishing. Take a stance on the issues, conventional wisdom claims, so you should oppose those that you know are wrong. Hostile adversarialism results, which prevents human flourishing. 2. Steph empirically demonstrates their innocence and cause for being scapegoated. consistently maintains their innocence and has no other history of criminality. Steph presents a compelling case of actual innocence. After creating a spreadsheet form with an innocence checklist, to compare an innocence claim to those already exonerated, At no time has Steph taken a plea deal, or confessed during any investigation or at a parole hearing. At no time prior or after this alleged crime, and no time during state custody, has Steph presented any violence of any criminality. Instead, Steph as a nonconformist has endured a history of being misunderstood, outcasted, scapegoated and targeted for projected shame of others. Click for comprehensive details 2.1) Estimated Innocence Report Steph created an interactive spreadsheet tool, called the Estimated Innocence Form, that automatically calculates the viability of an innocence claim. The more the innocence claim includes elements known to contibute to wrongly convicting the innocent, the higher the likely innocence score. Its attached Estimated Innocence Report summarizes the results. This effectively improves upon the adversarial law’s convenient yet oversimplified categories of guilty or not guilty. This provides a more honest look at each viable innocence claim than normally afforded in the slow motion and biased-riddled adversarial system, hampered by apparent conflicts of interest. As the first guinea pig, per se, Steph applied this form to their own innocence claim. When compared to cases already exonerated, Steph scores an 89% chance of being actually innocent. (A different scoring arrived at 86%, and another at 92%.) 2.1.1) Synopsis Asexual person comes out as transgender in early 90s, gets falsely accused as being a "sexual predator" homophobic stereotype. Convicted without evidence. Must register as sex offender for life. Forced into poverty and homelessness. 2.1.2) Hightlights no criminal history always maintained innocence transphobic & homophobic prosecution no corroborating evidence climate of sex abuse hysteria no crime occurred sensationalized coverage in local media despite several degrees, no one will hire 2.1.3) Flipside Prior to accepting herself as transgender, Janet (principal & codefendant) often ran afoul of the law. She appears to have suffered Asperger’s (high functioning autism), so was slow at responding to social cues. Overcoming shame of being gender different helped her escape cycles of self-defeating behaviors. She overcame dyslexia and other challenges to lead a healthy life, until this happened. 2.1.4) Summary On July 7th, 1993, Steph Turner awoke to hear voices from the other room. Steph could hear her sister Janet talking to someone. That person left, but later returned with her irate mother to accuse Janet of an incredulous crime. You see, Janet was born male and now openly transgender, long before that was socially acceptable. And Janet had yet to fully transition. At the height of the sex abuse hysteria in the early-90s, Steph came out as gender-nonconforming transgender. But living in a religiously conservative community, Steph kept it private. Steph soon came out to Janet, years after Janet had. They shared an apartment to rekindle their newfound bond. Both now freely embracing their feminine sides. Both describe themselves as asexual, as unable to feel erotic attraction unless being fully loved for their full selves. Both felt more drawn to their indigenous spirituality, of transcending the gender divide for deeper connection. A neighborhood child drew curious, peeping into Janet’s window to gawk at what she called the "man with lipstick." She later came out as gay, but understandably could not risk rejection at home because of her young age. When caught not being home on time, the child leveled bizarre claims of sex abuse unbecoming from a child. Perhaps she was exposed to porn. The child then dragged Steph into her transphobic-indoctrinated accusations. The child claimed that Janet and Steph had her pose in a photo, with her stabbing Steph in the chest with a jelly-stained butter knife. She claimed this was to scare her from talking to police, that Janet and Steph would use the Polaroid photo to claim this young girl was the aggressor. Of course, no such photo ever existed. Unbelievable? Not if you already believe trans people are subhuman. Child testimonies back then were often coached. Trans people were easily vilified. Since no corroborating evidence was necessary back then to convict for sexual misconduct, both transwomen were wrongly convicted. And both sentenced to long terms in men’s prisons. Janet did not survive. In 2001, she succumbed to cancer. Repeated efforts to overcome their wrongful convictions have failed. After serving a full 12-year sentence, Steph was discharged and finished undergraduate and graduate degrees. But now Steph must register as a sex offender for life, despite being asexual. This continues to destroy Steph's economic and other opportunities. Your support can help turn this around. This "Estimated Innocence Report" results from filling out the Estimated Innocence Form which Steph created for anyone with a compelling innocence claim neglected by the legal process. See Steph's full Estimated Innocence Report See Steph's full Estimated Innocence Form 3. Steph repeatedly finds the adversarial legal process unresponsive to justice needs. Steph finds the innocence movement as disappointing as the appellate process. Six times Steph as sought help and not received any for their compelling case of innocence. Steph recognizes how all post-conviction options remain mired in toxic legalism. Which is where the law serves the needs of powerful institutions more than the powerless people. Steph sees how the powerless are unaware of many inaccurate beliefs thy have about the imperfect judiciary. And how this can lull even you into "innocence offending". Steph accepts their fate as like a canary in a coal mine. By demonstrating the limits of mere law, Steph hopes to attract interest in the new profession of need-response. Which is set to respond to justice and other public needs for more accountably. Click for comprehensive details 3.1) The innocence movement replicates the problems of adversarial law While grateful for innocence orgs that can help extend recourse to challenge wrongful convictions, the huge demand from viable innocence claims far outstrips the meager supply of innocence investigators. The advent of AI holds promise to expedite cases more quickly, but it might only put a dent in the massive problem of this systemic injustice. This reality reflects a stark, systemic crisis in the post-conviction legal landscape. While thousands of wrongfully convicted individuals maintain their innocence, the combination of severe funding deficits, meticulous evaluation criteria, and a chronic shortage of investigators creates a massive bottleneck in securing justice. For now, innocence litigators offer the only avenue of hope for post-conviction relief, for justice from miscarriages of justice. Just like Steph's. 3.1.1) Steph's first attempt After the disappointing appellate opinion, Steph first sought help from the Innocence Project while early in their prison term. The law project was new and still finding its legs. They wrote back to decline offering help because they had to prioritize innocence claims on death row. 3.1.2) Steph's second attempt A few years later, Steph tried again. Back then, innocence projects focused mainly on testing DNA. The only conceivable piece of damning evidence against Steph or Janet was semen found on a green blanket. Neither Janet nor Steph owned a green blanket, so testing this DNA sample could help demonstrate their innocence. Declined again. This time told they had to prioritize innocence claims serving a life sentence. 3.1.3) Steph's third attempt Steph was rightly concerned that the wrongful conviction and lifetime sex offender registry would cost them a meaningful job and housing once out. So just before completing the full sentence, Steph again reached out for help from an innocence project. By this time, each state had its own regional innocence project to process claims. However, Steph was declined help again. They had to prioritize innocence claims who still had many years to serve in prison. 3.1.4) Steph's fourth attempt In 2014, after being out for 9 years and struggling to survive on a student loan, Steph tried again. By then, innocence projects began to specialize serving certain cases, like bogus sex crimes. This time, you guessed it, they also declined help. They had to prioritize serving those still in prison. 3.1.5) Steph's fifth attempt In 2020, Steph fell for a scam from someone claiming they needed Steph to send $50 to prevent being rearrested. So once again Steph reached for help. By this time, prosecutors launched their own conviction integrity units in response to the mounting evidence of wrongful convictions of the innocent. Steph filed an innocence claim to the Michigan attorney general Conviction Integrity Unit. They forwarded the claim to Cooley Innocence Project in Lansing, because they just received a grant to process DNA. But they declined help when prematurely deciding Steph’s case lacked a path to reverse the conviction since the case did not significantly involve DNA. Back to the drawing board. 3.1.6) Steph's latest attempt Most recently, Steph filed an innocence claim with the Michigan Innocence Clinic. They specialize in reviewing innocence claims without DNA testing. Steph has yet to receive a reply, as it takes up to two years for them to preliminarily check the claim. Steph braces for the news of being denied legal help again. In fact, Steph has become disillusioned with the innocence movement because of its reliance upon the same toxic legalism that produces such errors. 3.2) The compounding problem of toxic legalism Steph openly wonders if relying upon the legalistic innocence movement leaves them complicit in the quantifiable evils of toxic legalism. In contrast to surgical application of law, kept accountable to outcomes respecting rights, toxic legalism operates as something of a sledgehammer. It favors the wants and desires of the powerful at the expense of the inflexible needs of the relatively powerless. Wisdom recognizes such needs as objective fact. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs they exist to serve. Steph's wisdom unpacks five dangerous aspects of toxic legalism that twists the machinery of law away from justice. 3.2.1) Hyper-individualism Laws hold individuals accountable. But can drift into holding individuals responsible for making the only choice available. While holding powerless individuals accountable, usually the politically powerless such as poor people of color, the legal system rarely if ever holds its use of legally privileged power accountable. Including the power to target and wrongly convict the innocent. This compromises the legitimacy of the adversarial judicial system. 3.2.2) Hyperrationality Laws reflect rational-legal authority. But can drift into suppressing and even repressing the emotional warnings of unresolved needs in the name of reason. The emotionally charged insistence of being innocent can be dismissed as irrational denial, which denies the imperfections of the adversarial legal system. This undercuts the trustworthiness of law enforcement to relate honestly to the needs that laws ostensibly exist to serve. 3.2.3) Overgeneralizing Laws are kept vague to apply widely. But can drift into oversimplifying situations, and turn hyperbolic rhetoric into believed exaggerations. Relevant nuance gets squashed. That includes oversimplifying categories of procedural convenience. Such as accuser and accused, overlooking incidents where the violated is also an unidentified violator. And imposing the guilt-innocence binary that prematurely provokes defensiveness of the innocent. This waters down how well the legal system can be trusted to serve our justice needs. 3.2.4) Avoidance Laws are kept impartial to avoid favoritism. But can drift into alienating privileged avoidance of vital specifics. The appellate court can insist on conviction finality, ostensibly to avoid retraumatizing the accuser but enabling the courts to evade recognizing or admitting the high volume of miscarriages if justice. This pulls the rug out from fully trusting the judicial system. 3.2.5) Adversarialism Laws come with punishment for violators. But can drift into premature opposition to those assumed to be guilty of something. The falsely accused could sit down and explain the misunderstanding, to clear things up. But once adversarialism enters, any attempt to explain what actually happened or didn't happen easily appears like some kind of defensive denial. This robs the legal system of full legitimacy. You see, this goes well beyond the injustice of wrongly convicting the innocent. Justice costs much, while injustice runs cheap. 3.2) Public naivete about the actual machinery of adversarial law Most of us live with the bias that the legal system reliably protects us from violent offenders and fairly treats all who get detained. Those processed through the adveresarial judicial system quickly lose such illusions. When they speak up about the many shortcomings of the judicial system, they get silenced. Privilegeed avoidance smears them as stereotypical offenders, who deny accountability for their offenses. As if they are the only ones with mistakes to hide. Such accusations project as a confession. It is now easier for the accused to humbly admit their mistakes than for police and prosecutors to humbly admit their mistakes. On one level, that is how the adversarial legals system actually works. Perhaps you have seen videos on YouTube of citizens angrily protesting to some cop that they know their rights. Like the fool who insisted he wasn't guilty of "posession" of stolen property because he didn't actually "own" it but was merely holding it for a friend. Perhaps you naively hold to less extreme assumptions about the law. Are you open to questioning your beliefs about the law? Do you believe that people generally get what they deserve? Do you believe that all or at least most prisoners claim they're innocent? Do you believe that high conviction rates contribute to a reduction in crime? Do you believe that the U.S. has the best judicial system in the world? Do you believe that wrongful convictions of the innocent rarely occur? Do you believe that a criminal defendant is more likely to lie than a police officer? Do you believe that if someone gets arrested, they must have done something wrong? Do you believe that no one would confess to a crime unless they're guilty in some way? Do you believe that forensics evidence provides conclusive proof of culpability? Do you believe that the appeals process will correct any miscarriages of justice? Do you believe that eyewitness identification of a perpetrator is consistently reliable? Do you believe that the judge is the most powerful person in the criminal justice system? The more you believe and act on such things, the more at risk of "innocence offending". 3.3) Innocence offending Steph offers grace to each identified innocence offender. And almost everyone is. Grace is meeting you where you are honestly at. It works well with humility. The more you can drop your guard and trust my understanding, the more you can learn and grow from increased awareness. Initial awareness of innocence offending can be understandably uncomfortable. Lean into it. Such pain is not the problem as much as the threats it exists to report. Together, we can remove the threats fueling our pain of unresolved needs. There is no such thing as pain apart from unresolved needs. Along the way, you too can improve your life by dropping the legalism that no longer serves. Allow yourself to learn from me, as a kind of canary in a coal mine who had to drop such legalism long ago. 3.3) Canary in a coal mine The toxic legalism tainting the lives of the adjudicated could soon target you. The government has us all under surveillance now. Zealous law enforcers can detain you for ostensibly violating laws you may never knew existed. Overzealous prosecutors, who can get a jury to indict a ham sandwich and count on conviction rates to prove their worth, could eventually target you. As American society become more culturally diverse, it has also become more legalistic. Which increases the profile of law enforcement's interactions with citizens. Conside the ICE raids as the more visible tip of this iceburg. When that hammer comes to town, you could be the nail it seeks to pound. As more Americans feel disillusioned with legalistic insitutions, most "felons" are already disabused of such illusions. They may even shrug at those who ignored their warnings and now suffer the consequences. Does that include you? Steph has been developing a new profession to complement law enforcement, or compete with it to produce better outcomes. Unfortunately, Steph shows little progress due largely to the wrongful conviction. [the wrongful conviction - placing an asexual person on lifetime sex offender registry points to a sick society] 4. The wrongful conviction has trapped Steph in poverty and homelessness. Despite earning degrees in sociology, anthropology, public administration and counseling, Steph remains underemployed. Background checks exclude Steph from consideration. Criminal background checks excludes Steph from better housing options. Relied on campus housing Lived with family members Residing in a slum lord boarding house Steph's skills, talents and degrees remain underutilized while working in a factory for low wages and living in a slum lord boarding house. Consequently unable to afford to hire a lawyer to undo the damage, and not convinced that would do any good. And ready to confront the deeper system problem of toxic legalism. Click for comprehensive details 4.1) Shortly after leaving prison, Steph returned to college Steph attended college year round from January 2006 to December 2015. That was the only way to qualify for housing and a student loan for a cost of living allowance. 4.1.1) Bachelor in Sociology and Anthropology Steph enrolled in Oakland University north of Detroit, and finished in two years an undergraduate degree in sociology and anthropology. With honors. Steph became dependent on year round student aid for survival. And year round campus housing. This accelerated enrollment allowed Steph to finish in two years. Outside of class, Steph launched the Native American Student Association. Or NASA for short; we stayed grounded instead of heading to space. Steph also kept active in the Gay-Straight Alliance (now SAGE) on campus. Becoming its president during their senior year. By this time, Steph was visibly out as trans, the first trans woman on campus. As the GSA president, Steph oversaw coordination of its annual drag show in early 2008. And performed in it as as a student and amatuer. Outside of campus, Steph edited and produced a quaterly publication distributed nationally. This Trans Sprituity zine was for and by transgender prisoners across the U.S. It ran from December 2005 until early 2008, when funding was pulled. As some drew closer to leaving prison, they lamented the lack of any reentry service specifically for trans ex-prisoners. So Steph launched the TransAction program, the first ever reentry service specifically for trans ex-prisoners. Overwhelmed by the challenges, Steph reached out for help from Transgender Michigan, a nonprofit clearinghouse linking linking trans people to much needed services. But the lean organization needed help to be sustainable, so Steph joined the board in the summer of 2007. Steph then sought a degreee in Public Adminstration to help sustain the vision. 4.1.2) Master of Public Administration Steph continued their education at Oakland University, enrolled in their MPA program. With an emphasis with nonprofit management. Steph resigned from the Transgender Michigan board to focus on post graduate studies. But then returned for their capstone project: providing Transgender Michigan's first strategic planning process. Which helped them to refine their mission, vision, and branding...among other things. During this time, the executive director of Transgender Michigan, Rachel Crandall, was cultivating her vision to imprive trans visibility around the world. This evolved into Rachel Crandall starting the International Trans Day of Visibility each year March 31st. Background checks prevent Steph from capitalizing on this experience and education. To continue surviving on student aid, Steph returned to Oakland University to puruse another graduate degree. 4.1.3) Master of Counseling Steph enrolled in the Masters of Counseling program from 2012 through 2015. As a visibly trans woman. Early into the program, Steph openly acknowledged the wrongful conviction and wrongful lifetime sex offender registration. While many within the counseling program empathetized with Steph and appreciated how a trans person can be unjustly targeted by law enforcement, the school's attorney was not one of them. After securing malpractice insurance for interning as a student counselor, and blessed to proceed by the academic leadership including the provost, this lawyer initially refused to grant clearance. While waiting for such permission, Steph exhausted eligibility for student aid. Only then did the school attorney allow Steph's internship at Affirmations in Ferndale. Consequently, Steph was unable to pay the full tuition bill. And could not graduate. Steph soon recognized this as systemic exaction, of powerful institutions or powerful individuals coercively extracting concessions from those who can do little about it, which apparenlty is privileged under color of law. This lawyer presented the same toxic legalism manifested in the wrongful conviction. Neither the public facing public admin education nor the inward facing counseling education provided meaningful answers for redressing such law-privileged power differentials. In fact, there currently isn't any professional service to transcend the limits of law to directly address the neglected needs that laws ostensibly exist to serve. Steph might have a solution. Sabotaging Steph's attempt to rebuild their life and improve not only their earning capacity but their potential to help others, because of a wrongful conviction, is arguably not properly authorized in the more disciplined need-responsive sense. This concluded Steph's time at Oakland Univesity, and would next move in with family in Kalamazoo. But this legalism problem would crop up again and again. 4.2) Steph then moved in with family in Kalamazoo, and trouble followed Once moving in with family, Steph discontinued presenting as a trans woman. All of Steph's children reached adulthood, having kids of their own. Besides steering away from having to explain "trans visibility" to these conservative leaning kin, Steph went back to prioritizing the spiritual dimension of being transspiritual. Which is mostly invisible to others. While others wrestle with contrasting extremes, transspirituality compels Steph to integrate complementary sides toward greater wholeness, toward human flourishing. instead of unemotional or irrational sides, blending reasonableness with intuition instead of intellectualizing or emotionalizing, blending reasoning with sensitivity instead of dominating or smothering, blending safeguarding with cultivating And so forth. Instead of indulgent side-taking of clashing gender norms, which easily compromises human flourishing, the underbelly to Steph's gender norms transcendence aims to integrate the best of both worlds. Normies assume such balance can only be compelled by sexual desire, as they have no frame of reference to appreciate spiritual compulsion toward holism. Meanwhile, leaving campus life allowed Steph to pursue some entrepreneurial goals, to try to fulfill their transspiritual purpose in life. After moving to Kalamazoo, Steph... created an eCourse on Udemy: Defusing Polarization: Understanding Divisive Politics, wrote a book and self-published on Amazon: You NEED This, Introducing anankelogy, built and launched a website on Wix: AnankelogyFoundation.org, began a post-legalism exoneration service for the unexonerated innocent, and launched the Need-Response podcast cohosted with a friend in Brazil. After moving to Kalamazoo, Steph was no longer active on social media. The algorithms provoking needless hostilities proved too smothering for Steph's transspiritual integrity. So normal paths for promoting these ventures were not as open to Steph. Without needed help, Steph found little success in these efforts. Due to the wrongful conviction, the pandemic shutdowns and family requiring space to raise their kids, Steph became homeless for a year. Taking a low paying factory job provided the meager means to afford substandard housing. Meanwhile, Steph endured repeated exploitation and economic exclusion of transspirits and the wrongly convicted innocent. This includes that problem with Oakland University's lawyer. 4.2.1) Damaging power differentials with attorneys Steph received notification from the state Department of the Treasury asking for repayment of the unpaid tuition bill. Steph replied each time with a request to contest the bill, to hear their side of the story. Each time, Steph's asserted due process rights were ignored. prompted Steph to wonder if innocence even matters to anyone in position of power. In the autumn of 2025, the Michigan Treasury Department froze Steph's bank account and garnished their wages. They took the alleged amount owed from Steph's bank account, and continued garnishing their wages beyond the ststed amount owed. State lawyers brazenly violated Steph's 4th Amendment rights against seizing my private property without due process. Several weeks later, they returned the "overpaid" balance, without any apology. Steph's financial health went from bad to worse. 4.2.2) Damaging power differential with healthcare providers Speaking of health, Steph endures many power differentials from medical providers failing to transparently identify actual billed costs. In contrast to the ethical standards learned in social science research with human subjets, of informed consent, Steph gets repeatedly coerced (while vulnerably in pain) into making healthcare decisions without being informed of the actual billable costs. Then later receives a medical bill exceeding their marginalized means to pay it. Slipping into medical debt runs counter to Steph's overall wellness. When asking a medical center receptionist about the actual billed amount prior to visiting the doctor, Steph was told that they do not know the specific amount because of insurance billing practices outside of their control. Which violates Steph's patient's rights for transparent medical billing. Specifically, such information assymetry and "surprise billing" violates the new Federal No Surprises Act. Is it up to the patient desperate for relief from a medical ailment to know and assert their legal rights? Or can healthcare provides exploit the vulnerably uninformed with little if any impunity? The wrongful convictions adds a layer of ethical implications, robbing Steph of the financial means to afford hiring a lawyer to undo such added damage. And no lawyer can address the innocence offending involved. Those in power continue to extact value from the vulnerable under color of law, all privileged by toxic legalism. 4.2.3) Damaging power differentials with employers The only job Steph could initially get was with Jimmy Johns. Many (not all) of its managers would repeatedly yell at the workers to coerce their compliance. As an intrinsically motivated worker, Steph easily lost motivation when externally pressured with a manager's anger. Blind to their error, these inexperienced managers would often react by yelling even more. A vicious counterproductive cycle unfolded, undercutting Steph's good faith efforts to cultivate human flourishing for us all. Once when objecting to a manager of being needlessly yelled at, the HR later called Steph and threatened termination if Steph voiced such complaints again. Steph was silenced and not allowed to complain how they were not paid for all their hours on multiple occasions. All under color of law. As long as you obey the law as those in power over you violate your rights under color of law, Steph observed, such power differentials will continue to damage the lives of us all. There must be a better way. Perhaps Steph will craft a much-needed alternative to failed adversarial law. 5. Steph unpacks the hidden threat to wellness from power differentials. Power differentials can impact wellness outcomes in positive and negative ways. As society slips further into anomie, negative impacts abound. Often under the radar of social visibility. And often privileged by social custom and written laws. Less visible is how power differentials bring about a sick society. We're quick to blame the individual, while slow to recognize the accumulative ill effects from many power problems and structural problems impeding the proper resolution of needs. Unresolved needs lead to lowered wellness and increased pain for us all. While every individual remains accountable for their moral agency, for their personal choices, those choices can only be as good as the options realistically available to them. The more the influence from power differentials constrains those options, poor wellness outcomes become predictable. Each power differential features an "impactor" and an "impactee". Impactor: impacts the relation more than impacted by it. I.e., powerholder. Impactee: gets impacted by the relation more than impacting it. i.e., relatively powerless. The impactee who remain humbly content with a lean lifestyle, instead of aggressively pursuing wealth, can be targeted by aggressive accumulators of property. Some of these wealthy then abuse others with their material advantage, to exploit the humbly content person's vulnerabilities, and invest their resources to rig the system toward their legal advantage. Then assume their actions are legitimate since few if any complain. By what authority does any powerholder impede the humble person's path toward human flourishing? How is this not some privileged evil? Moreover, what can be done about it? Steph may have an answer...in part two. Click for comprehensive details 5.1) Impact disparity Individuals interacting with professionals or with government officials will generally have less impact on wellness outcomes than that professional or official. Need-response assumes societel wellness or societal sickness primarily results from these power differentials, in ways Western culture tends to overlook. Each power differential features an "impactor" and an "impactee". Impactor: impacts the relation more than impacted by it. Impactee: gets impacted by the relation more than impacting it. Each power differential includes a powerful impactor and relatively powerless impactee. The academic literature on power differentials helpfully sheds some light on this structural problem not yet effectively addressed by any professional service or institution. Because no current service nor institution properly recognizes inflexible needs as objective fact. In arguably the key academic article in this literature, authored by Keltner and others, they address the need to hold powerholders accountable. 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) In the words of Frederick Douglas, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." In the full context of his 1857 West India Emancipation Day address in Canandaigua, New York, he said: If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Perhaps Malcolm X was echoing this sentiment, in his Message to the Grass Roots, when declaring that "there is no such thing as a nonviolent revolution". You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. The only kind of revolution that's nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. ... Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. As Malcolm X and others pushed back against MLK and the nonviolent civil rights movement, both sides complement each other. Need-response brings the best of both together. Only this new profession holds us all accountable to honor the inflexibility of needs in each other, heralding the standard to love over law, and also incentivize responsiveness to such needs under something of a Damocles sword. 5.2) Provoking poor wellness outcomes Despite obeying the law, Steph gets targeted by people in positions of power for exploitation. Unquestioning obedience appears overrated, in these three power differential realms. 1. Wrongful conviction. Despite Steph only having sexual contact with their then wife, this power differential privileges others to project their sexual angst onto Steph. Which hinders Steph from properly resolving needs, resulting in poor wellness outcomes. The tragic irony is that Steph is demisexual (a form of asexuality where one must first form an emotional bond to experience sexual attraction), but was accused of a sexual offense without evidence. And every background check replicates this law-privileged injustice. The power differentials built into the adversarial judicial process privileges those in positions of authority to distort public perception of reality toward their liking. The adversarial legal process offers relief from pain for the winning side, and grants Steph a steady source for anxiety and depression. 2. Medical billing. Despite enjoying relatively good health at 63 years old, Steph still seeks medical help for the ocassional ailment. Creeping medical debt from "surprise billing" of unexpectedly large copays now costs Steph full wellness. The tragic irony of trusting healthcare providers who bill for services without fully informed consent leads to compromising the patient's wellness. A tradeoff imposed by these power differentials. The power differentials built into the doctor-patient relation includes the ethical standard of informed consent. But the capitalist pressures involved find a way to brush aside this ethic of transparent billing. While easing the suffering from physical pain, such practices can evoke the emotonal pain of anxiety and powerlessness. 3. Insensitive managers. Despite seeking jobs utilizing their education, skills and talents, the wrongful conviction traps Steph in low paying at-will jobs. None allow Steph to fulfill their purpose in life. Especially when managers emotionally pressure Steph to bend to their expectations. The tragic irony of pressuring an intrinsically motivated worker with extrinsic motivations can risk demotivating top performers. Or exploiting intrinsically motivated employees with more tasks can lead to burnout and other poor wellness outcomes. The power differential built into the employer-employee relationship, on who the typical employee is vulnerably dependent upon for their economic wellbeing, dissuades the employee from seeking legal recourse to investigate potential abuses of power. What if they are wrong and then let go? Instead of making waves at a time jobs are hard to get, many suffer silently as they use a portion of theor paycheck to sooth their pain of anxiety and ecomic insecurity. ____ Steph is in a unique position to debunk the popular notion that doing the right thing brings the right results. And to illuminate how such power differentials contribute to producing a "sick society" with limited options for making things better. 5.3) Impactee options When in conflict with those with the power to make life miserable for you, you likely experience the amygdala-fueled stress response options of fight-flight-freeze-fawn-flop-or-fatigue. The flight response, or raction, can evoke your "adversarial options". The other "F" reactions evoke your "avoidant options". The less such options result in properly resolving needs, the less well you likely will remain and more pain you likely will endure. Not enough attention is given by existing professions or institutions to navigate such conflicts toward full resolution. You could hire a lawyer. But an attorney takes an adversarial stance that usually does little if anything to properly resolve your affeected needs. You could hire a psychotherapist. But a counselor can hardly help you incentivize power differentials to support your affected needs. Need-response steps in to fill this gap. For both professional and official government power differentials. Professional power differentials typically allow competition. Official power differentials typically do not. Reactions unfold accordingly. 5.3.1) Avoidance options (cope: flight, freeze, fawn, flop, fatigue) presenteeism (showing up less than 100% well) absenteeism do only what is minimally required decreased economic productivity reliance on public welfare endure mounting anxiety suffer depression cope with mood altering substances and behaviors redirect any ire to less threatening targets (displacement) 5.3.2) Adversarial options (cope: fight) lawsuit (litigate in court) administrative complaint regulatory body grievance process media campaign online negative review public petition denouncement on social media ballot (official level) direct political action civil disobedience 5.3.2) Need-responsive options Continue reading in part 2 how to shift from these poor options to what we all need. Not only for Steph's overlooked innocence, but for the power differentials impacting your life. Discover how we can speak truth to power (STTP) in ways they will want to listen to those impacted. (LTTI). Public Exoneration of Steph Turner part 2 Click the button below to conclude this post.

The less a law fits its purpose to serve needs, the more we risk slipping into 'toxic legalism' Click to view image source at Pixabay “Take responsibility. Be rational. Keep it simple. Relieve your pain. Take a stand.” What’s wrong with these? Everything! These snippets all point to the problem of “toxic legalism”. Toxic legalism is when you put flexible laws ahead of the inflexible needs, which such laws exist to serve. This occurs in at least five dimensions, covered below. Which do you believe as more accurate? No one is literally above the law. OR No one's impactful actions are beyond the reach of agreed upon responses to our needs, but the needs themselves sit above laws as they occur before any law was ever codified. Anankelogy establishes a natural need as an objective fact. The less your needs resolve, the less you can objectively function. And the more predictably you will suffer pain. Objective needs are inflexible needs; they cannot be readily changed to fit the demands of laws. By contrast, anankelogy recognizes human laws as arbitrary legal fictions. The more we obey laws more than respond to needs out of love, the more our wellness suffers. Arbitrary laws are flexible laws; they can be readily changed to fit our inflexible needs. There are at least five ways the original purpose of laws can slip into toxic legalism. Slipping from personal accountability to hyper-individualism Slipping from rational authority to hyperrationality Slipping from vagueness to overgeneralizing Slipping from impartiality to alienating avoidance Slipping from punitive enforcement to hostile adversarialism Toxic legalism can be defined as prioritizing subservience to laws or to social norms over serving the needs for which they exist. Anankelogy recognizes each of these elements as a level of functioning, or of your level of wellness. MORAL DEFUNCTIONS MORAL REFUNCTIONS hyper-individualism psychosocial holism hyperrationality vulnerable honesty overgeneralizing relevant nuance discomfort avoidance discomfort embrace hostile adversarialism supportive mutuality The law exists to impersonally convey each other’s needs. Taken to extremes, it devolves into something ignoring our needs, or worst. Too much law sinks into what anankelogy recognizes as toxic legalism. Each toxic element starts out innocent enough, trying to address some need. Then slips into problems when misapplied. Instead of helping our needs, it dangerously undermines our needs. Anankelogy considers such hindrances to our needs as defunctions. Which gets corrected by what anankelogy calls refunctions. Need-response exists as a new profession to help us restore our functioning. Need-response gets us back to resolving needs to improve each other’s wellness. Laws do not resolve needs; properly motivated people do. In short, toxic legalism presents these five dangers. Need-response counters each one in ways no one else even tries. 1. Slipping from personal accountability to hyper-individualism This starts with something good. The law emphasizes personal responsibility to act appropriately. Authority compels your responsibility toward the rights of others. Too personalized, and we slip into overlooking the external limits constraining compliance. That easily morphs into toxic legalism. Taken to extremes, this actually undermines our personal and shared responsibilities. Toxic legalism tends to overemphasize personal responsibility at the neglect of other’s responsibility toward you. This tends to leave your needs unaddressed. You might solely blame yourself for the resulting pain, which risks trapping you in more pain. This affects your psychosocial orientation (PO). Anankelogy recognizes how everyone has a relatively fixed approach to address their self-needs and their social needs. The more your self-needs resolve relative to your social needs, or the more your social needs resolve more than your self-needs, the more you experience a disturbing tension. You outwardly express this tension in your political views. Nature compels you to integrate your inward self-needs with your outward social needs. You find wellness with psychosocial holism—resolving your self-needs (like personal autonomy and self-initiative) on par with your social needs (like acceptance from others and group supports). Unresolved needs can pull you into hyper-individualism. To understand how how so many of us can slip into hyper-individualism can be explained by the phenomenon of symfunction capture. It pulls us from the benign purpose of law into its toxic legalistic elements. From peakfunction to symfunction creep, then into symfunction strain, onto symfunction trap, and into painful dysfunction. Slipping from peakfunction into symfunction creep From a norm of effectively holding individuals personally accountable for their impactful behavior to normalizing the blaming of individuals for some things beyond their personal control. Slipping from symfunction creep into symfunction strain From a norm of blaming individuals for some things beyond their personal control to normalizing the exaggeration that you can be held responsible for an increasing load of items beyond your personal control (i.e., locus of control from internal to external). Slipping from symfunction strain into symfunction trap From the norm of being held responsible for a growing list of items beyond your personal control (which others who can effectively maintain an internal locus of control and intrinsic motivation poorly assume others should be able to do likewise without knowing their specific situations) to normalizing the generaliza­tion that you are solely responsible for all of your actions regardless of the sociocultural limitations to effectively address your inflexible needs. Slipping from symfunction trap into temporal dysfunction From a norm of generalizing of being solely responsible for everything that befalls you to normalizing the resulting as something you solely must cope with on your own. TLDR From a norm of holding individuals personally accountable for their behavior to normalizing being solely responsible for all that happens to you. Need-response can restore your wellness with psychosocial holism. Need-response balances internal and external factors affecting our needs. Sometimes you can resolve your needs with individual merit. Other needs run into systemic structural barriers. Anankelogy recognizes our problems occur on at least four levels. Personal problems. You can easily solve on your own. Interpersonal problems. You solve with cooperation with your peers. Power problems. You solve with cooperation with those in authority over you. Structural problems. Solving such problems calls for systemic changes. Anankelogy recognizes how each problems level differently affects our self-needs (like autonomy and personal freedom) and our social needs (like acceptance and group support). Easing our self-needs more than your social needs, or easing your social needs more than your self-needs, leaves you with uncomfortable tension. That tension is “psychosocial imbalance”. This informs our political views. How these sets of needs resolve relative to each other shapes your psychosocial orientation. You externally express this internal inflexible priority of needs with your flexible political views. The more you can resolve your self-needs and social needs on par with each other, the less politically passionate and more responsive to each other’s needs. Need-response cultivates each other’s psychosocial orientation from ignoble psychosocial imbalance to noble psychosocial balance by addressing and even resolving self-needs and social needs on par with each other. In short, we proactively transition from hyper-individualism to psychosocial holism. 2. Slipping from rational authority to hyperrationality This starts with something good. The law checks your irrational behaviors if reacting on your feelings. Rational-legal authority checks your impulses toward others. Too rational, and we slip into guarding our vulnerabilities even from ourselves. That easily sinks into toxic legalism. Taken to extremes, this actually undermines rationality. Toxic legalism bends toward rationalizing in ways that enable you to hide your vulnerable feelings. You expect your rational arguments to be socially safer than exposing your less defensible emotions. So you cover your emotions with slick sounding arguments. This points to your vulnerability orientation (VO). Anankelogy recognizes how everyone has a relatively fixed approach to interacting with others. You typically keep yourself defensively guarded from those you do not know, and likely do not know you. You are more inclined to drop your guard and be more vulnerably honest to those you feel you can trust. You mature better the more you can be vulnerably honest to all of those around you. Hyperrationality provokes defensiveness. Daring to drop your guard invites others to do likewise. Which opens the door to mutually understand each other on a deeper level. Unresolved needs can pull you into hyperrationality. To understand how so many of us can slip into hyperrationality or even pseudo-rationality can be explained by the phenomenon of symfunction capture. It pulls us from the benign purpose of law into its toxic legalistic elements. From peakfunction to symfunction creep, then into symfunction strain, onto symfunction trap, and into painful dysfunction. Slipping from peakfunction into symfunction creep From a norm of checking our emotional overreactions, that can lead to inappropriate behaviors, to normalizing the disparaging of intense emotions as automatically dangerously irrational. Slipping from symfunction creep into symfunction strain From a norm of disparaging intense emotions as dangerously irrational to normalizing the attitude that all intense emotions are dangerously irrational and must be rationally suppressed, increasingly leading to guarding own emotions from other’s reasoning. Slipping from symfunction strain into symfunction trap From normalizing the attitude that all intense emotions are dangerously irrational and must be rationally suppressed to defensively hiding one’s own emotions behind “reasoned arguments” that easily blind us from our vulnerable needs. Slipping from symfunction trap into temporal dysfunction From a norm of remaining ignorant of our own emotionally fueled needs with “reasoned arguments” to a norm of repressing emotions to the point of overlooking the underlying needs, which increases the likelihood of more intense emotions as those needs scream with emotional pain for prompt relief. TLDR From a norm of keeping our emotions in check to routinely denying our emotions to the point of neglecting the underlying needs, which ensures our “irrational emotions” shall persist. Need-response can restore your wellness with vulnerable honesty. Need-response incentivizes us to let go of our rational arguments long enough to drop our guard to expose our indefensible and inflexible needs. We nurture trustworthiness to courageously reveal our vulnerabilities. There is less reason to DEBATE when you can vulnerably RELATE. When we first address what both realize cannot be changed—our inflexible needs—we put ourselves in a better position to address areas that can be changed. We reward honestly admitting how our flexible response to our needs can unintentionally hinder others from resolving their own inflexible needs. Emphasis on rational arguments easily discourages humble admissions. We make it safe to expose our imperfections when shifting from rationality to safer vulnerability. We honor the knowledge of our internal needs over knowledge of merely external things. That stuff is important, but never as important as the needs requiring to be resolve so you can function well enough to contemplate on those external things. Hiding your vulnerabilities behind reasoned arguments often becomes counterproductive. The more you rely on rationalizations to avoid your vulnerabilities, the less likely you can fully resolve those affected needs. Especially if kept hidden from everyone. The less your needs resolve, the more intense the resulting emotions. Which you likely seek to cover with more motivated reasoning as you keep your guard raised to avoid feeling hurt. Need-response cultivates an environment to safely drop your guard to each other. To cultivate the vulnerability to be better known and appreciated by each other. Instead of constantly trying to prove something to others, you welcome knowing each other as you truly are. You can then recognize we each are doing the best we can with the challenges facing us. You help each other to make it easier to honestly face our own needs, and our imperfect responses to them. You appreciate rational arguments as a tool, and never as a panacea to guard your vulnerabilities. Need-response cultivates each other’s vulnerability orientation from ignoble self-protective rationalizing to noble self-disclosed needs that posits inflexible needs over flexible reasoning that often avoids the vulnerability of inexplicable and inflexible needs. In short, we proactively transition from hyperrationality to vulnerable honesty. “To understand people, I must try to hear what they are not saying, what they perhaps will never be able to say.” - John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? 3. Slipping from vagueness to overgeneralizing This starts with something good. The law tends to be vague to apply to various situations. Laws remain flexible to apply to a wide array of situations. Too vague, and we slip into overgeneralizing that overlooks relevant specifics of our affected needs. That easily slides into toxic legalism. Taken to extremes, this actually undermines the intended flexibility of the law’s vagueness. Toxic legalism persuades you avoid any details that risk rejection. Coalitions stick around widely agreed upon generalizations. You also might prefer to avoid uncomfortable specifics. You perhaps generalize for relief from pain. This affects your relational orientation (RO). Anankelogy recognizes how everyone has a relatively fixed approach to relating to the world around them. You either generalize about those things that matter little to you or your needs. And you tend to seek specifics to address the details of your life. You enjoy more wellness the more you engage the relevant nuance affecting your life. And the more you engage such specifics in the lives of others, the trust you engender. Let every generalization serve as a temporary pit stop on your way to delving into it a little deeper. Unresolved needs can pull you into overgeneralizing. To understand how so many of us can slip into overgeneralizing can be explained by the phenomenon of symfunction capture. It pulls us from the benign purpose of law into its toxic legalistic elements. From peakfunction to symfunction creep, then into symfunction strain, onto symfunction trap, and into painful dysfunction. Slipping from peakfunction into symfunction creep From a norm of leaving written rules vague enough to apply to various situations to a norm of overlooking relevant specifics not addressed by laws. Slipping from symfunction creep into symfunction strain From a norm of overlooking relevant specifics to an emerging norm of evading specifics that may risk disagreement from others whose support is counted on. Slipping from symfunction strain into symfunction trap From the norm of avoiding potentially controversial specifics to a norm of neglecting the reality of relevant specifics, trusting generalizations to offer reliable answers for all. Slipping from symfunction trap into temporal dysfunction From a norm of sidestepping specifics to latch onto comforting generalizations to blindly trusting one’s generalizations to somehow effectively lead to satisfying results. TLDR From a norm of keeping rules vague for wide applicability to the norm of overgeneralizing to the point of neglecting relevant specifics, which keeps needs from being fully resolved. Need-response can restore your wellness with relevant nuance. Need-response encourages us to utilize our trusted generalizations as mere stepping stones. Behind everything we learn, we can always dig a little deeper. Anything we learn can serve as a bridge to explore the finer details affecting our many complicated needs. We graciously invite better awareness of our needs. No more hiding behind sweet sounding generalizations that offers more comfort than sustainable solutions. Too much hyperbole and exaggerations easily pull us away from resolving needs, which easily traps us in pain. First, we distinguish between needs we cannot change and our responses that can be changed. We cannot solve our problems by provoking other’s defenses when triggered to guard their inflexible needs with our rational sounding generalizations. We melt defensiveness when explore missed specifics behind their needs. Which models how they can be more specific about our exposed needs. We let go of generalizations that no longer serve. We replace oversimplifying rationalities with relevant nuance. We get down the nitty gritty of what each other specifically needs. And explore the details of how to address those needs with minimal negative impacts on others (i.e., externalities). Need-response cultivates each other’s relational orientation from ignoble exaggerations to nobly addressing specifics to address what often gets overlooked. In short, we proactively transition from overgeneralizing to relevant nuance. 4. Slipping from impartiality to alienating avoidance This starts with something good. The law tends to be impersonal to avoid favoritism. Laws are best kept impartial, to treat all equally. Too impersonal, and we slip in avoidance of the natural discomfort of our bodies warning us of real threats. That easily devolves into toxic legalism. Taken to extremes, this actually undermines impartiality. Toxic legalism has you avoiding discomfort and avoiding others, to the point of remaining painfully alienated. You slip into isolation to avoid having to deal with others. Until you find your seclusion painfully lonely. This impacts your easement orientation (EO). Anankelogy recognizes how everyone has a relatively fixed approach to discomfort. You either habitually avoid just about every level of pain. Or you routinely endure life’s natural discomforts. You only experience pain when your body reports some threat to remove. The more you embrace this discomfort, the more aware of those threats and what to do about them. Let such discomfort embrace serve you well. Unresolved needs can pull you into alienating avoidance. To understand how so many of us can slip into alienating avoidance can be explained by the phenomenon of symfunction capture. It pulls us from the benign purpose of law into its toxic legalistic elements. From peakfunction to symfunction creep, then into symfunction strain, onto symfunction trap, and into painful dysfunction. Slipping from peakfunction into symfunction creep From a norm of striving for impartiality by keeping enforcement as impersonal as possible to a norm of keeping “professionally” yet coldly distant from those targeted for enforcement. Slipping from symfunction creep into symfunction strain From a norm of keeping coldly distant from those targeted for enforcement to a norm of formalized estrangement toward those affected by enforced social norms. Slipping from symfunction strain into symfunction trap From a norm of remaining alienated toward those affected by enforced norms to objectifying those targeted for enforcement while avoiding their actual experiences. Slipping from symfunction trap into temporal dysfunction From a norm of objectifying those targeted for enforcement that avoids their actual experiences to normalizing the avoidance of uncomfortable awareness of negatively impacted painful needs. TLDR From a norm of trying to stay impartial to norm enforcers standardizing avoidance of the underlying needs, and of any pain resulting when those needs are kept from being fully resolved. Need-response can restore your wellness with discomfort embrace. Need-response seeks to inspire our neglected capacity for greater resilience and audacious engagement of each other. Instead of dodging what’s unpleasant about ourselves or each other, we stretch our resilience. Anankelogy recognizes how you only experience pain when your body warns you of a threat to be removed. Pain is not the problem as much as the threat your pain exists to report. Instead of settling for pain relief that never completely goes away (because the need persists to prompt more pain), need-response helps you remove pain by helping each other to remove threats. The more you address the needs you affect in others, the easier for others to address your needs that they affect. You cultivate an affinity for each other’s welfare. You nurture trustworthiness, to express and engage each other’s vulnerable needs. You ultimately replace alienating avoidance with mutual resilient engagement of each other’s affected needs. Need-response nurtures each other’s easement orientation from ignoble pain relief to noble pain removal by resolving the needs prompting pain. In short, we proactively transition from alienating discomfort avoidance to engaging discomfort embrace. 5. Slipping from punitive enforcement to adversarialism This starts with something good. The law opposes lawbreakers to ensure respect for others. Facing social sanctions for disrespecting others proves a powerful motivator. Too adversarial, and we slip in mutual hostilities and defensiveness that shuts down needful cooperation. That easily shrinks into toxic legalism and fuels problematic oppo culture. Taken to extremes, this actually undermines critical opposition to questionable actions or ideas. Toxic legalism normalizes premature opposition to others. Slight disagreements expand into mutual hostilities. Common ground gets overlooked to indulge in side-taking. You oppose another’s needs who oppose yours, locking you into mutual adversarialism. This shapes your conflict orientation (CO). Anankelogy recognizes how everyone has a relatively fixed approach to conflicts. You either get defensive and close down or remain open to learn what each other needs. You either let yourself get pulled into the darkness of mutual defensiveness, or hold out for the light of mutual understanding. You will reach more your life’s rich potential the more you favor mutuality over adversarialism. Fight to properly resolve needs, not fight each other. Challenge what others do, but never oppose the inflexible needs of others. Or they will oppose your needs which you can never change. Unresolved needs can pull you into hostile adversarialism. To understand how so many of us can slip into adversarialism can be explained by the phenomenon of symfunction capture. It pulls us from the benign purpose of law into its toxic legalistic elements. From peakfunction to symfunction creep, then into symfunction strain, onto symfunction trap, and into painful dysfunction. Slipping from peakfunction into symfunction creep From a norm of incentivizing compliance to social standards to a norm of assuming violations of norms call for some kind of punishing coercion, even if some benign social faux pas. Slipping from symfunction creep into symfunction strain From a norm of assuming violations of norms should prompt some kind of punishing coercion to a norm of assuming each of us are selfish actors kept in check only by external authorities. Slipping from symfunction strain into symfunction trap From the norm of assuming each of us are selfish actors kept in check only by external authorities to a norm of pitting “selfish actors” against each other in some adjudication process by “impartial” authorities largely biased against the accused. Slipping from symfunction trap into temporal dysfunction From a norm of pitting violators of social norms against each other in an adjudication process to a norm of institutionalized adversarialism that systemically discounts our potential for mutual understanding or cooperation, which regularly impedes opportunity to mutually support and resolve each other’s affected needs. TLDR From a norm of motivating compliance with threats of punishing rule violators to a norm of widespread adversarialism that leaves little if any room for mutual understanding or support, which effectively normalizes unresolved needs. This positions enforcement regimes as the only means to address the resulting problems of unresolved needs, which benefits from keeping needs from being fully resolved. Need-response can restore your wellness with supportive mutuality. Need-response incentivizes all sides to a conflict to engage each other’s affected needs with a simple format: A) Affirm each other’s objectively existing needs; B) Bring up how the other ostensibly affects own inflexible needs; and C) Continue to mutually understand and support each other’s good faith attempts to properly address those mutually conveyed needs. Instead of indulging in taking a side against each other’s outwardly stated stance on some issue, we invite them to express their inwardly inflexible needs. We distinguish between inflexible needs and our flexible responses to them. We mutually affirm each other’s indisputable needs before questioning impactful responses to them. We cultivate mutual understanding by graciously expressing how one’s own views and behaviors affect those needs. We only oppose those who refuse to engage each other’s inflexible needs in good faith, not those who cannot change what they inflexibly need to suit what we ourselves flexibly prefer. We shift from mutual defensiveness to mutual openness and understanding, and then from mutual hostilities to mutual support. We shift from indulgent side-taking, which favors relieving pain over resolving needs, to the discipline of knowing and respecting each other’s inflexible needs. Need-response cultivates each other’s conflict orientation from ignoble adversarialism to noble mutuality. In short, we proactively transition from antagonism and hate to mutuality and love. Law-based institutions compound toxic legalism Sociology has long recognized how every institution and authority tends to drift from its founding purpose to serve a public need to serving itself to ensure its own continuance. Beyond these five key elements, other factors emerge that pull authorities from serving the law's original purpose—to address our needs—to serving mostly themselves. Reification of "power". When we speak of those in power or having power, then believe they literally have actual power over us, we slip further into toxic legalism. They have significant social influence that we label as "power". Without the real power of nature compelling our needs, they have no social influence. Power isn't power unless it resolves needs. Otherwise, it is only coercive force that pulls into toxic legalism. Reification of "self-interest". Modern philosophy and economics emphasize how we function largely from pursuing our self-interests in a system largely complementing each other's self-interests. When watered down into a palatable "popgen version", many rationalize their selfishness and even their self-righteousness. These easily harden into hyper-individualism that politically excuses our lapse into toxic legalism. "No one above the law" myth. Teddy Roosevelt rightly asserted that no one's impactful actions sit outside the reach of the law. That doesn't mean the law itself is literally above your existence, or above your inflexible needs. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve. The inflexible needs evolved first; laws flexibly arrived later as social constructions. To forgo what you need to suit some demanding authority robs you of wellness, fueling another form of toxic legalism. More of these toxic elements exist that compromise our wellness in the name of the law. For now, consider how the five key elements emerge in the adversarial justice system. Hyper-individual: When confronted by law enforcement, externalities get patently ignored. Hyperrational: Authority patently ignores your vulnerably felt needs. Overgeneralizing: Adjudication easily neglects the many specifics involved in a situation. Avoidant: Adjudication offers relief for the winning side, not a path toward removing pain. Adversarialist: You are pitted against another, with little if any effort to identify or address the needs on all sides. Now consider the makeup of polarizing politics. Hyper-individual: Politics reduces you to an atomized rational decisionmaker, blaming you for poor ballot options. Hyperrational: You’re supposed to rationally find answers, rationalizing unresponsiveness. Overgeneralizing: Coalitions rely on avoiding specifics that could evoke disagreement. Avoidant: Politics tend to keep you alienated from each other, to avoid relating with each other on a more personal level. Adversarialist: You are pitted against another, with little if any effort to identify or address the needs on all sides. The more judicial and political authorities benefit from these toxic elements, the less they are aware of its cost to our wellness. Ironically, the more you submit to toxic legalism, the less well enough you will be to faithfully comply with every legal requirement. Authorities then position themselves as the solution, despite fueling the problem. Love over law Need-response calls out this conflict of interest as a form of empirical evil. It is measurable, independent of personal biases or religious beliefs. Need-response then offers to replace it with empirical uprightness. Need-response helps you to measurably improve wellness by directly addressing the needs that laws exist to serve. After all, you don't exist for human authority; such authority exists for you. Need-response counters all of these elements, with the refunctions listed above. And by prioritizing inflexible needs over flexible laws, with what it calls citationization or "law-fit". Which calls for citing the needs to be served by any cited social norm. Need-response raises the standard with universal principles, or “character refunctions” including love. Moreover, need-response raises the standard from the law’s harm reduction norm to loving one another—to properly honoring the needs of others as you would have them honor your own. Which can more easily result in more resolved needs, less pain to suffer, and greater overall wellness. What to do about toxic legalism? Toxic legalism is the problem. Law-Fit serves as the need-responsive answer. back-to-top

Are you more of a "truster" or "faither" or "beliefer"? What do these even mean? TLDR Summary Individual belief: Rely upon what one personally thinks as true or not true. Organized faith: Rely upon what one's group declares as true or untrue. Dynamic trust: Rely upon continual interactions to accountably improve awareness. beliefer faither truster FOCUS guard self, avoid pain, relieve pain address what group declares as important properly resolve needs, reach full potential FEATURES low to no engagement socially approved engagement high engagement CERTAINTY low tolerance of ambiguity, craves certainty tolerance by consensus, prefers shared certainty high tolerance of ambiguity, embraces discovery MATURITY low maturity, not at full functioning capacity modest maturity, reach more of one's capacity high maturity, reaching much of full capacity CONTENTS Unpacking these three reliance levels Different realms in epistemic reliance Moral development levels Preconventional beliefers Conventional faithers Postconventional trusters Further distinctions Engagement Certainty Maturity Prioritizing In spiritual expression Beliefer believers Faither flock Truster testers Reactive to pain or responsive to needs Grace and understanding Takeaway Unpacking these three reliance levels Anankelogy, the discipline study of need, recognizes how not all “believing” or epistemic reliance is the same. Dependence on whatever one finds true or untrue mirrors the three levels of moral development. Consider Kohlberg’s three main levels of moral development. Preconventional. Moral reasoning relies on avoidance of punishment and seeking rewards. It tends to be egocentric. Conventional. Moral reasoning relies on social norms, as agreed upon by the collective of one’s social universe. It tends toward social conformity. Postconventional. Moral reasoning relies on universal principles that can transcend individuals and cultures. It tends to lead toward human flourishing. These reliance levels, or "reliability taxonomy", mirror Kohlberg’s three levels. Beliefing. Guarding what one thinks as true or untrue, and typically defensive toward any challenge of such views. It too tends to be egocentric. “Beliefer”. Those who defensively guard what they hold as true, while avoiding relating to details that could disconfirm their conclusions. Trusts generalizations as an end. Faithing. Accept as true or untrue based largely on social cues, such as what one’s group accepts as true and untrue. Also tends toward social conformity. “Faither”. Those who hold as true and dependable what others in their tribe or social circles also hold as true and dependable. Shares generalizations as an end. Trusting. Vulnerably relying on the most dependable over which one has no control, such as a Supreme Being, while ready to question whatever can be found as not fully dependable. It likewise points toward human flourishing. “Truster”. Those who humbly rely upon what they encounter as more trustworthy, while exposing what they think is temporally true to helpful critique and correction. Besides universal principles, uses generalizations as a starting point to explore further. These levels also mirror the levels of functionality. Trusters tend to sustain peakfunctionality, as they cultivate ways to relate to others and themselves in ways that enable them to promptly resolve their needs. Faithers gravitate into symfunctionality, as they primarily ease their needs according to the accepted social norms guiding their understanding and behavior. Beliefers risk descending into dysfunctionality. as they cope with pain from unresolved needs, and cling to oversimplified conclusions that work against resolving needs. Anankelogy unpacks how we rely on others, or how we have confidence in what we think as true or untrue, in different areas of our lives. Different realms in epistemic reliance These apply in different realms. One could be a truster in their role as a spiritual leader in a faith tradition. Then be a faither in their political ideology, going along with other partisans. While being an adamant beliefer in the criminal judicial system, avoiding its disconcerting imperfections. It's more likely, perhaps, that one would gravitate to just one of these three levels in all realms in their life. The more mature with wisdom would gravitate toward being a truster. The less mature and unwise would slide toward being a beliefer. Moral development levels These three epistemic reliance levels mirror Lawrence Kohlberg's levels of moral development. Preconventional beliefers FOCUS. The beliefer tends to focus mostly upon the self. A list of unresolved needs prompts so much emotional pain that they tend to become self-absorbed. For example, the alcoholic (or shopaholic drug addict, sex addict) typically cling to their beliefs that offer the quickest relief. Which can be far from the actual truth. FEATURES. The beliefer defensively guards what they think is true or untrue, actively resisting critique, For example, when pseudoscience aficionados denounce any helpful critique. As they identify with their ungrounded beliefs, any critique feels like a personal attack on them. CERTAINTY. The beliefer typically demonstrates a low tolerance for ambiguity. Their high level of emotional pain, from unresolved needs, prompts them to crave certainty. For example, an extremist political activist feels their ideological views must be right. They simply cannot afford any room to doubt their political convictions or biases. MATURITY. A beliefer is likely dysfunctional. They typically prioritize relieving the pain of their many unmet needs. Which hinders their personal development. For example, the self-righteous partisan depends on their underdeveloped view of the world. Dissenters fit neatly into their overgeneralized category as the "bad" people. Conventional faithers FOCUS. The faither tends to focus more upon the social realm. What they rely upon as true is best confirmed by others in their social groups. For example, the devoted partisan of any political party finds assurance when others of similar views affirm their beliefs. This can be a good thing, when fellow partisans they trust have carefully examined their views. But can also be a case of the blind leading the blind. FEATURES. The faither gravitates towards what others in their group find reliable. They often evade critique from others outside of their group. Groupthink abounds. For example, the guilt-ridden churchgoer assumes we all fail at times to make responsible moral choices. Then regards as too liberal to admit the times we can be stuck with poor quality options. Which pulls us into symfunctionality. CERTAINTY. The faither craves shared certainty over putting up with any ambiguity. Some uncertainty can be endured when shared with others in their groups. Otherwise, any doubt feels like a sin. For example, litigants in a court battle may cling to what they find familiar, as they both sink into mutual defensiveness. Which limits their scope. The less aware in their legalist myopia, the further they slide uncontrollably into the abyss of symfunction capture. MATURITY. A faither is primarily symfunctional. They tend to prioritize easing their needs in ways that never fully resolve such needs. For example, ethnocentric club members who oppose outsiders grow accustomed to never fully resolving their needs. And likely blame their emotional pain on outsiders. Postconventional trusters FOCUS. The truster tends to focus primarily upon deeper unity. What they hold as true points to universal principles unshakable in any circumstance. For example, the deeply spiritual person relies more on principles like humility, empathy, grace and love. They intuitively realize how applying such principles will almost always result in more resolved needs, more wellness and less pain. FEATURES. The truster humbly relies on trustworthy others. They invite their helpful critique. They know the limits imposed by their own biases. They remain open to learning. For example, the effective investigator relies on tools to check their biases, and their untested assumptions. They will be slow to act on beliefs they have little to no evidence to support. CERTAINTY. The truster demonstrates high tolerance for ambiguity. They promptly embrace pain to identify what threat prompts such a painful warning. Then they remove the threat, or themselves, which faithfully removes such pain. For example, the martial artist flows through space like water. They quickly note the movement of others. They rapidly move through the air with sharpened intent. Contact with a foe bounces of a deeper reality. They move toward their pain and embrace it. They face any discomfort honestly, and let it go. Pain is not a foe but a fleeting gift. MATURITY. A truster may reach peakfunctionality. They will prioritize properly resolving needs. Which enables them to promptly restore wellbeing and remove pain. Not only for themselves, but potentially also for others. For example, a spiritual guru regards the needs of others as equally important if not more so than their own. They shape their life to avoid negatively impacting others. They encourage and even inspire all to reach more of their full potential. Further distinctions Engagement Beliefers rarely engage, and instead often barricade themselves inside a cocoon of presumed safety. Faithers rarely engage on a personal level, preferring to follow group leaders who do the risky engaging first. Trusters more openly engage, and risk the unknown, as they endure the discomfort for the likely reward of spiritual growth. Certainty Beliefers crave certainty. They present a low tolerance for ambiguity. Faithers share uncertainty. They present a low to high tolerance of ambiguity. Trusters embrace uncertainty. They present a high tolerance for ambiguity. Like Socrates, they are judiciously agnostic to remain open to learning. Trusters welcome disconfirming information. They welcome the discipline of not acting on their own unchecked biases. Maturity Beliefer - nothing else matters to consider; haughtiness, ambiguity intolerance, avoid exposing vulnerabilities. Faither- other matters to consider but can't be relevant; impression managed humble front, certainty with group, myth following. Truster - other matters to consider that could be relevant; humility, grace, honesty. Prioritizing Beliefers prioritize the self. "My needs matter more than your needs." "My wellbeing matters more than your wellbeing." "My beliefs and feelings matters for than your beliefs and feelings." Faithers prioritize the group. "Our needs matter more than their needs." "Our wellbeing matters more than their wellbeing." "Our beliefs and feelings matters for than their beliefs and feelings." Trusters prioritize all humanity equally. "No one's needs matter more than anyone else's needs." "No one's wellbeing matters more than anyone else's wellbeing." "No one's beliefs and feelings matter more than anyone else's beliefs and feelings." In spiritual expression Beliefer believers Beliefers can recall a deep spiritual experience they once had, but tend to credit it to their beliefs (what they hold as true or not). They may have actually experienced a moment of vulnerable trust they found rewarding, but misinterpret the degree of their own agency. For example, a neophyte Christian verbally credits their "born again" experience to citing the sinner's prayer to God, or to Jesus, and regards their choice of words and parochial attitude as playing a significant or central role in their conversion experience. Such beliefers gravitate toward dogmatic views. For them, things must be a certain way in order to get back to that rewarding experience. Right and wrong are categorized into simple terms. Nuance can be seen as risking appeasement, or slipping into illicit compromises. For example, that new Christian may guard traditional gender norms as absolute in order to remain in the good graces of a wrathful God. To socially mingle with others who defy such norms risks watering down God's "truth" and then backsliding. Such beliefers may cling to their religiosity and reasoning skills to cope with the mounting pain of their unresolved needs. They tend to prefer familiar pain over the unknown pain of challenging spiritual growth. For example, the young Christian interprets salvation as a way to escape intensifying emotional pain. Instead of recognizing how such pain warns of unmet needs, they become viscerally attached to the familiarity of how they handle these painful emotions. Faither flock Faithers interpret their spiritual experiences through the lens of similar others and group consensus. Fluid spiritual experiences readily congeal into religious dogma. For example, a recent convert looks to earlier converts to get some bearing. They may dismiss their skepticism as not knowing enough yet to assess the group's views. The more satisfied with the group while seeking belonging, the less they assert their individuality. Critical thinking can take a back step to save room for group cohesion. Some faithers rise to a role of lay leader or even a top position such as a head pastor, priest, iman, or rabbi, and (knowingly or unknowingly) exploit the beliefers in their midst. Often from a "democratic" mindset of attracting followers by appealing to lowest common denominator instincts. For example, an imam tries to inspire the faithful to fully appreciate tawheed in their spiritual lives, but many take this oneness of God as a shared cognitive belief and miss vulnerably relying upon God alone for what they specifically need right now. Many faithers gravitate toward sharing a consensus of what matters most to them. They champion the conventional norms of their faith tradition, while not sure what to do with the more unconventional practices or principles espoused in their scriptures or traditions. For example, as the adherent of a cult identifies more with its dogma, they may rely on the group's support in opposing those outside the group with contrary views. They feel special in a way they likely never felt before. Faithers who remain socially and intimately connected to trusters can evidence more cognitive and spiritual maturity than faithers tapped only into other faithers. Crowdsourced wisdom works best when fueled with a source of accountable wisdom, and not left to the devices of groupthink. For example, a priest at a local parish may provide needed perspective to those new to the faith. He may inspire his flock to empathize with non-Catholics. To not judge others, and to maintain the wisdom of learning from others in humility. Truster testers Trusters entertain the possibility that much of what they assumed as true is not so true. Not that they swing to the opposite extreme of assuming it all must be false, but to stay open to exploring nuanced details previously overlooked. For example, the maturing Daoist lives the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching, "The Way that can be described is not the eternal Way". They stay open to improving their awareness. Not for the sake of mere knowledge, but to tap into the fullness of life. Trusters rely less on things, like doctrines, and focus more on the innate value of people. They recognize, at least intuitively, that all beliefs include errors. They don't value their views as much as they value people, to stay open to learning what's most relevant in life. They demonstrate the supremacy of love, of honoring the needs of others as one's own. For example, the evangelical missionary shares the love she experienced with her trust in God. If that requires her to drop her familiar messaging norms to adopt local cultural tropes, then so be it. The connection means more than insisting on cultural familiarity. Such trusters tend to be interspiritual. They typically remain independent of any single faith tradition, as they draw from all spiritual wisdom. They may be misinterpreted by faithers as people-pleasing chameleons. Thy prioritize deep connection over social cohesion. For example, an imam can tap into the Jewish wisdom of "wrestling with God" to find deeper truths, while applying Buddhist teachings about the Middle Way, then capture a Christian understanding of personal sacrifice for others. All while remaining true to the core tenants of Islam. Spiritually mature trusters respond more than react to challenges in life. They turn such challenges into opportunities for growth, for maturity, and for creating shared value. For example, an interspiritual Sikh can absorb the harsh judgments from a beliefer Hindu while also not reacting to an inconsiderate faither Muslim. They will look for some way to identify and relate to their inflexible needs. They will bee sure not to add to their problems. They will try to turn the challenge into opportunity for shared development. React to pain or respond to needs Love remains the ideal of honoring the needs of others as one's own. Beliefers are often too self-absorbed to positively regard the needs of others. Many beliefers improperly or properly relieve the pain of their many unmet needs. They slip into dysfunction. Faithers gravitate toward social conformity. Hence, many faithers improperly or properly ease their needs without fully resolving them. Which pulls them in a state of symfunctionality. Trusters are in a better position to properly resolve needs. The more their own needs fully resolve, the easier to regard the needs of others. They reach moments of peakfunctionality. REACT or RESPOND Now visualize a continuum of beliefers who primarily REACT to the pain of unmet needs to trusters who effectively RESPOND and resolve needs to remove the pain. Beliefers and many faithers can be characterized as REACTIVISTS. They habitually give kneejerk reactions to problems. They tend to overgeneralize their situations, avoid any discomfort, as they gravitate toward indulgent side-taking. For example, reactivists use labels like terrorist or militant without context of asymmetrical blowback or negatively impacted inflexible needs. They're beliefers or maybe faithers. They easily drift into warmongering that feeds the military industrial complex. They champion the path to hostilities and mutual defensiveness, easily sinking into hate and war. Pain begets more pain. Trusters and some faithers can be characterized as RESPONSIVISTS. They routinely respond thoughtfully to the needs around them, without imposing their own. They see the relevant nuance in situations, embrace any discomfort that warns of threats, as they step beyond self-serving adversarialism to mutually understand and respect each other's needs. For example, responsivists recognize the urgency of the affected needs of so-called terrorists or militants, while ready to challenge or condemn the reactive violence that spring from desperately trying to redress such needs with force. They're trusters. They support all affected to return to thriving, to human flourishing, where any use of force is limited and a last resort. They champion the path to meaningful peace and love. Grace and understanding Grace exists as that universal principle of meeting you where you’re honestly at. If you honestly fit these less than laudable descriptions of a beliefer or a faither, then you need not be shamed for it. Life has put you in a dreadful spot where your options to fully resolve needs often gets limited. As a natural consequence, you cannot function to your full potential. In other words, you must resort what you find available. You prefer to take table crumbs than nothing at all. If painfully isolated from others, you understandably gravitate toward relying on what you can individually think as true or not. If surrounded by similar others whose view resonate with your experiences, then you understandably rely on what your group holds as true. If you rely upon continual engagement of what you can perceive, and welcome accountability for what you think is true or untrue, then you might feel quite different from most of those around you. “Wide is the gate” for beliefers and faithers. With anankelogy recognizing the object fact of natural needs, we can do better to understand each other. To appreciate where each other is at, with grace. And then to love others by honoring their needs as our own—even if they do not reciprocate. Awareness of being valued for who you honestly are is worth far more than mere knowledge about things. Let this wisdom inspire you to be loved and give more love. We all need love. Takeaway Belief: Rely upon what one personally thinks as true or not true. Prone to much error, which easily prompts more emotional pain. Faith: Rely upon what one's group declares as true or untrue. Vulnerable to groupthink, which can steer them toward quiet desperation. Trust: Rely upon continual interactions to accountably improve awareness. Risks indecision if not cultivated wisely.

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. By helping the vulnerable impactor improve their wellness, the impactor earns legitimacy. By helping the powerholder impactor to earn legitimacy, the impactee improves their wellness.

Since needs and affected functionality exist as objective fact, we can now quantify evil Anankelogy recognizes the objective fact of needs and level of functioning from how well such needs get resolved. As social science can separate these from subjective experience and from social and cultural norms, the very idea of evil can now be quantifiably measured. Anankelogy stipulates such quantifiable evil include two necessary components: Identifiable benefit(s) to the one committing the evil. Identifiable harm(s) to oneself or to others. Two more conditions may be necessary yet not sufficient: Diminished awareness that the benefits exacts harm. Viable alternative(s) to properly address the underlying needs. Identifiable benefits(s) Cui bono? Who benefits? What specific gain does the powerholder receive? Identifiable harm(s) Harm runs the span from infringing upon one's wellbeing's full potential to the death of that person. Anankelogy recognizes a spectrum of wellbeing, or levels of functioning. Harm occurs along a range from mild and reversible to severe and permanent damage. Quantifiable evil includes mild harm that pulls the impactee down into lower levels of functioning. That can be from peakfunction down to high level symfunction, or from mid or low level symfunction down into dysfunction. What specific harm do you suffer from a powerholder? Diminished awareness Whatever can clear cognitive dissonance, or allow one to rationalize to themselves this gaining from others loss. These also speak to the factors of toxic legalism. For example, overgeneralizing and avoidance diminish awareness of one's own impacts on others. Biased assumptions Powerholders can hold many inaccurate beliefs with little if any accountability, and then act upon them with damaging impacts upon the relatively powerless. Privileged avoidance of what feels uncomfortable to face, along with normalizing overgeneralizations as the best option, can make these assumptions appear attractive. These contribute to the diminshed awareness of quantifiable evil. Each of these task Gemini AI to critique the given assumption. Use any AI tool of your choice to unpack any assumption. authority comes exclusively from law conflicts are a zero-sum outcome in which only one side can win emotions bias our thinking (actually, desperate needs prioritize relief-seeking, conveyed in emotions, which then prioritizes our emotions and thinking) empathizing with both sides of a debate is bothsidesism or false moral equivalency in a conflict among others one should pick a side it is good to challenge others' beliefs to keep them honest law enforcement keeps the public safe mental health occurs primarily in one's mind and in one's chosen behaviors might makes right morality is relative, so individuals must decide what is right and wrong on their own people are generally stupid people are generally untrustworthy people are typically gullible and easily persuaded people choose their political values from rational choice reasoning people would lie, cheat and steal if it wasn't for law enforcement political platforms will provide satisfying results for my life the adversarial judicial system rarely convicts an innocent person we must focus on individual deviation from behavioral norms since these are enough to sustain wellness we must have law and order to keep our depraved natures in check we must maintain law and order for a functioning society wellness can be achieved by relieving pain without trying to understand what prompted the pain willpower should be enough to overcome my cravings you can change someone's political stance with the right persuasive argument Biased adversarial justice When prosecutors select jurors during voir dire, do they exploit the naivete of prospective jurors who may accept any of these assumptions biasing the power of the state against the relatively powerless innocent defendant? an innocent person would not confess to a crime that they did not do defendants in the criminal judicial process typically get a fair trial eyewitness identification provides reliable evidence of an identified person’s culpability felons who maintain their innocence are in denial and trying to avoid the punishment they are due forensic evidence like that shown in CSI shows provide compelling proof of a defendant’s guilt only someone who is guilty would take a plea bargain physical evidence provided by state crime labs provides impartial evidence of a defendant’s guilt police testifying at a trial against a criminal defendant provides a trustworthy testimonial the United States has one of the best judicial systems in the world wrongful convictions in the U.S. are rare Cognitive biases This list of cognitive biases is from Wikipedia. The entry organizes its list “based on the task-based classification proposed by Dimara et al. (2020).” It organizes the list around these helpful sub-categories. Association: a connection between different pieces of information Baseline: comparing something to a perceived standard or starting point Inertia: the reluctance to change something that is already in place Outcome: how well something aligns with an expected or hoped-for result Self-perspective: influenced by one's own personal point of view Estimation In estimation or judgement tasks, people are asked to assess the value of a quantity. Association Aesthetic–usability effect Attribute substitution Availability heuristic Conjunction fallacy Hot-cold empathy gap Tachypsychia Time-saving bias Travis syndrome Baseline Anchoring bias Base rate fallacy Dunning–Kruger effect Gambler's fallacy Hard–easy effect Hot-hand fallacy Insensitivity to sample size Interoceptive bias or hungry judge effect Conservatism or regressive bias Subadditivity effect Systematic bias Unit bias Weber–Fechner law Inertia Conservatism bias Outcome Exaggerated expectation Hedonic recall bias Illusion of validity Impact bias Outcome bias Planning fallacy Restraint bias Sexual overperception bias Self-perspective Curse of knowledge Extrinsic incentives bias False consensus effect Illusion of transparency Naïve cynicism Optimism bias Outgroup homogeneity bias Pessimism bias Spotlight effect Worse-than-average effect Association Ambiguity effect Authority bias Automation bias Default effect Dread aversion Framing effect Hyperbolic discounting Dynamic inconsistency Compassion fade Loss aversion Sunk cost fallacy Neglect of probability Non-adaptive choice switching Prevention bias Pseudocertainty effect Risk compensation or Peltzman effect Zero-risk bias Baseline Action bias Additive bias Decoy effect Ballot order effect Cheerleader effect Compromise effect Denomination effect Disposition effect Distinction bias Less-is-better effect Money illusion Phantom effect Normalcy bias Projection bias Scope neglect Inertia Doubling-back aversion Endowment effect Escalation of commitment Functional fixedness Mere exposure effect Plan continuation bias Semmelweis reflex Shared information bias Status quo bias Well-travelled road effect Outcome Present bias Reactance Reverse psychology Self-perspective Effort justification IKEA effect Law of the instrument Not invented here Reactive devaluation Social comparison bias Hypothesis assessment In hypothesis assessment, people determine whether a statement is true or false. Association Agent detection bias Availability cascade Availability heuristic Cognitive dissonance Common source bias Fluency heuristic Groupthink Groupshift Illusion of explanatory depth Illusory truth effect Probability matching Rhyme as reason effect McNamara fallacy Salience bias von Restorff effect Saying is believing effect Selection bias Subadditivity effect Truth bias Outcome Barnum effect Belief bias Berkson's paradox Clustering illusion Confirmation bias Congruence bias Extension neglect Gender bias Illusory correlation Information bias Observer-expectancy effect Subject-expectancy effect Overconfidence effect Pareidolia Subjective validation Confirmation bias Survivorship bias Unconscious bias Value selection bias Causal attribution In a causal attribution task, people are asked to explain the causes of behavior and events. Outcome Apophenia Assumed similarity bias Context neglect bias Domain neglect Embodiment bias Form function attribution bias G. I. Joe fallacy Group attribution error Hostile attribution bias Illusory correlation Illusion of control Intentionality bias Just-world fallacy Motonormativity Plant blindness Pro-innovation bias Proportionality bias Puritanical bias Surrogation System justification Teleological Bias Turkey illusion Self-perspective Actor-observer bias Fundamental attribution error Defensive attribution hypothesis Egocentric bias Experimenter's or expectation bias False uniqueness bias Fundamental attribution error Group attribution error (negativity effect) Ingroup bias Objectivity illusion, Bias blind spot Ostrich effect Outgroup favoritism Pygmalion effect Selective perception Self-serving bias Group-serving bias Ultimate attribution error Recall In a recall or memory task, people are asked to recall or recognize previous material. Association Boundary extension Childhood amnesia Consistency bias Contrast effect Cryptomnesia Cue-dependent forgetting context effect Google effect Duration neglect Fading affect bias False memory Humor effect Implicit association Lag effect Spacing effect Levels-of-processing effect Leveling and sharpening Memory inhibition Misinformation effect Continued influence effect Modality effect Repetition blindness Mood-congruent memory bias (state-dependent memory) Next-in-line effect Part-list cueing effect Peak–end rule Persistence The Perky effect Picture superiority effect Positivity effect (Socioemotional selectivity theory) Euphoric recall Processing difficulty effect Levels-of-processing effect Reminiscence bump Social cryptomnesia Source confusion Spacing effect Suffix effect (recency effect) serial position effect recency effect primacy effect Suggestibility Telescoping effect Testing effect Tip of the tongue phenomenon Verbatim effect Zeigarnik effect Baseline Bizarreness effect Frequency illusion List-length effect Negativity bias or Negativity effect Group attribution error Positivity effect Negativity effect Primacy effect serial position effect recency effect suffix effect Recency effect serial position effect suffix effect primacy effect Serial position effect von Restorff effect Inertia Attentional bias Continued influence effect Stereotype bias or stereotypical bias Outcome Choice-supportive bias Declinism Euphoric recall Hindsight bias Recency illusion frequency illusion recency bias cognitive bias memory bias Rosy retrospection Self-perspective Cross-race effect Gender differences in eyewitness memory Generation effect (Self-generation effect) Placement bias Illusory superiority Better-than-average effect Worse-than-average effect Self-relevance effect Opinion reporting In an opinion reporting task, people answer questions regarding their beliefs or opinions on political, moral, or social issues. Association Halo effect Moral credential effect Negativity bias Inertia Backfire effect End-of-history illusion Omission bias Outcome Bandwagon effect Courtesy bias Illusion of learning Moral luck Misinterpreted-effort hypothesis Social desirability bias Stereotyping Women are wonderful effect Self-perspective Anthropocentric thinking Anthropomorphism Ben Franklin effect Bias blind spot Illusion of asymmetric insight Illusory superiority Impostor Syndrome Naïve realism Third-person effect Trait ascription bias Zero-sum bias Propaganda techniques Identify if the powerholder uses any of these messaging techniques. And determine if the results effectively undermines your capacity to properly resolve needs. Ad hominem Ad nauseam Adding qualifiers Advertising Agenda setting Algorithmic bias Appeal to authority Appeal to fear Appeal to ignorance Appeal to pity Appeal to prejudice Appeal to tradition Assertion Bandwagon Beautiful people Big lie Black-and-white fallacy Cherry picking (also called card-stacking) Classical conditioning Cognitive dissonance Common folk Common man Cult of personality Demonizing the enemy Demoralization Dictat Disinformation Divide and rule Dog whistle Door-in-the-face technique Dysphemism Euphemism Euphoria Exaggeration False accusations False dichotomy False equivalence Fault as virtue Fear mongering Fear, uncertainty, and doubt Firehose of falsehood Flag-waving Flak Foot-in-the-door technique Framing (social sciences) Gaslighting Gish gallop Glittering generalities Guilt by association or reductio ad hitlerum Half-truth Honor by association Information overload Innuendo Intentional vagueness Labeling Latitudes of acceptance Limited hangout Loaded language Love bombing Lying and deception Managing the news Milieu control Minimisation Modeling Muddying the waters Name-calling Non sequitur Obfuscation, intentional vagueness, confusion Oversimplification Paltering Pensée unique Plain folks Poisoning the well Presupposition Projection Proof by anecdote Quote mining Quotes out of context Rationalization Red herring Repetition Scapegoating Semantic satiation Slippery slope Slogans Smears Stereotyping, name calling or labeling Straw man Testimonial Third party technique Thought-terminating cliché Transfer Unstated assumption Virtue words Whataboutism Sources: AI Gemini Institute of Propaganda Analysis: Types of Propaganda Techniques Propaganda Techniques Specific techniques Loaded language Identify if the powerholder uses any of these loaded terms. And determine if the results effectively undermine your capacity to properly resolve needs, trap you in pain, and hold down your wellbeing in ways that benefit them. Alpha male: reduces human social dynamics into rigid, competitive hierarchies Anchor baby: implies non-citizen parents use their children to secure legal status Antisemite; antisemitism: when abusing IHRA working definition, conflating any critique of Zionism or of the Israeli government with loathing of Jews as an ethnicity Bipolar: describing any unpredictable, moody, or irrational behavior Clueless: pejoratively implies someone is inherently incapable of grasping reality Colorblind: claiming to “not see race” to ignore systemic inequalities endured by People of Color Crazy: “Crazy” we say out of hand when too lazy to fully understand Crime: conflates violation of arbitrary statutes with objectively offensive behaviors; e.g., it is not a crime or illegal to overbill a patient into medical debt but it is illegal for the patient to refuse to pay Criminality: suggesting someone is inherently lawless, overlooking social dynamics undermining their behavior choices in the moment; see justice Crushed: ostensibly losing an argument; see destroyed Debate: what is actually an argument without any intent of learning the truth Democracy: despite the lack of actual “people power” Destroyed: ostensibly losing an argument; see crushed Dog whistle: when applied to any innuendo Dummy: derogatory insult to question one’s intelligence or common sense; see idiot Empower: assumes some have the power to give to others assumed powerless Exotic: casts what is not familiar to own culture as suspiciously strange Extremist: By who’s standard? William Lloyd Garrison was an extremist in his day for daring to oppose slavery. Far-left: subjectively applied by those on the right to almost anyone on the left they dislike Far-right: subjectively applied by those on the left to almost anyone on the right they dislike Freedom fighter: asymmetric warrior one likes; otherwise disparaged as a terrorist. Fresh: food label without date or time of preparation; see organic Fundy: pejorative for fundamentalists Gaslighting: buzzword to dismiss alternate perspectives Gender confused: suggests the observer understands more about the trans experience than trans people themselves Guilty: when subjectively asserted contrary to exculpatory evidence Hamas: as a slur meaning terrorist. Hero: subjective marker overlooking evidence to the contrary Homeless: dehumanizing those without their own shelter, with assumptions of addiction and criminality Idiot: derogatory insult to question one’s intelligence or common sense; see dummy, moron, or stupid Illegal alien: undocumented immigrant, applied to inhabitants residing in an area prior to laws qualifying who is a citizen Influencer: by what measure? monetizing an audience? coercing the vulnerable to sacrifice their dignity? persuading the naïve to oppose their own self-interests? Insane: stripped from its original clinical meaning, it can mean whatever the speaker seeks to negatively or even positively convey Islamist: weaponized in Western and Middle Eastern discourse to conflate mainstream political activism with violent extremism Jerk: insult to reprimand others in a way that seeks to spark social condemnation Jew hater: when applied to critics of the Israeli government or critics of Zionist actions; see antisemite Justice: emphasizing personal responsibility while ignoring social injustices undermining capacity to remain prosocial; see criminality Karen: privileged white women who appear insensitive to others Lefty: to delegitimize liberal or progressive ideas by casting them as too radical for the majority of the population Legal: when illicit activity gets protected under color of law Liar: dismissing honest expression as unreliable without critical thinking Libtard: pejorative from some conservatives dismissive of progressives Loser: smearing someone or a group as worthy of social rejection Mentally ill: reduces one’s clinically identifiable struggles to a medical diagnosis and its social stigma that assumes personal fault and neglects social context Moron: derogatory insult to question one’s intelligence or common sense; see dummy, idiot or stupid No offense, but: to evade inevitable critique when overgeneralizing a sensitive matter OCD: misapplying Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder to any habit Organic: food label or other desirable items without processing information; see fresh Panic attack: describing casual nervousness in ways that trivialize those suffering clinically defined panic attacks Palestinian: as a euphemism for Muslim terrorist Patriot: ideologically claiming the moral high ground of love of country while overlooking less attractive elements of parochial nationalism Queer: demeaning LGBTQ+ people as abnormal, unnatural, or deviant Race: ethnic differences when defined in biased terms favoring the majority white population Radical left: weaponized label to characterize progressives as too similar to communists Right-winger: weaponized label to characterize conservatives as authoritarian, as fascist, or too extreme Safe space: when exaggerated into guarded settings that can stifle academic freedom and free speech Sick: usage has morphed into various meanings for different contexts, from admiration to disgust Smart Alec or smarty pants: dismissing an intelligent person as a know-it-all not to be taking seriously Snowflake: denigrating others as `prone to melt under pressure, suggesting they are oversensitive, easily offended, and perhaps too entitled Stupid: when applied to those overwhelmed with pain and consequently cannot think clearly Terrorism: when applied to asymmetric warfare tactics that do not deliberately target noncombatants yet some get injured in the crossfire Thug: applied mainly to Black men as something of an alternative to the N-word Tone-deaf: regard one as insensitive to the needs of others, while risking adding stigma to the hearing impaired Traumatized: when really meaning stressed, trivializing those suffering PTSD Urban: coded racial euphemism for city dwellers of mostly Black and Brown backgrounds emphasizing poverty, crime, and systemic disadvantage Victim: imposes the stigma of helplessness that others must empower; contrast with survivor Voiceless: paternalistically giving voice to an ostensibly silenced population in ways that easily deny their agency Whistleblower: used derogatively as if disloyal, a “rat”, or a disruptive troublemaker seeking attention, instead of courageously speaking truth to power Woke: originally meant being aware of social injustices Zionist: as an antisemitic dog whistle, conflating left-wing peace activism for Jewish self-determination to right-wing expansionist nationalism that risks negating self-determination of non-Jews There are many more, including glittering generalities. See propaganda techniques above. Sources: Loaded Language in Media Guide Gemini AI prompt: how the term tone [TERM] used as a loaded term Defense mechanisms Powerholders, along with those the powerholder impacts, can diminish awareness of unpleasant experiences with what Sigmund Freud identified as defense mechanisms. This material comes from 20 Defense Mechanisms We Use to Protect Ourselves along with some edits from other sources which are linked. Does the powerholder manifest any of these defense mechanisms? Does any side use any of these defense mechanisms? Acting out: Coping with stress by engaging in actions rather than acknowledging and bearing certain feelings. For example, instead of telling someone that you are angry with them, you might yell at them or throw something against the wall. Aim inhibition: Accepting a modified form of their original goal. An example of this would be becoming a high school basketball coach rather than a professional athlete. Altruism: Satisfying internal needs through helping others. For example, someone recovering from substance use might volunteer to help others in recovery as a way to deal with drug cravings. Avoidance: Refusing to deal with or encounter unpleasant objects or situations. For example, rather than discuss a problem with someone, you might simply start avoiding them altogether so you don't have to deal with the issue. Compensation: Overachieving in one area to compensate for failures in another. For example, someone who feels insecure academically might compensate by excelling in athletics. Denial: probably one of the best-known defense mechanisms, is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring. It functions to protect the ego from things with which the person cannot cope and is often used to describe situations in which people seem unable to face reality or admit an obvious truth (e.g., "They're in denial"). Displacement: Have you ever had a really bad day at work, then gone home and taken out your frustration on family and friends? If you answered yes, you have experienced the ego defense mechanism of displacement. Displacement involves taking out our frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening. Displaced aggression is a common example of this defense mechanism. Rather than express your anger in ways that could lead to negative consequences (like arguing with your boss), you instead express your anger toward a person or object that poses no threat (such as your spouse, children, or pets). NOTE: Powerholders are at high risk of displacing their angst onto vulnerable underlings. Dissociation: Becoming separated or removed from your experience. When dealing with something stressful, for example, you might mentally and emotionally disengage yourself from the situation. Fantasy: Avoiding reality by retreating to a safe place within your mind. When something in your life is causing anxiety, you might retreat to your inner world, where the cause of the stress cannot harm you. Humor: Pointing out the funny or ironic aspects of a situation. An example of this might be cracking a joke in a stressful or traumatic situation. Intellectualization: Reduces anxiety by viewing events in a cold, clinical way. This defense mechanism allows us to avoid thinking about the stressful, emotional aspect of the situation and instead focus only on the intellectual component. For example, a person who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness might focus on learning everything about the disease in order to avoid distress and remain distant from the reality of the situation and their feelings about it. Passive-aggression: Indirectly expressing anger. Instead of telling someone that you are upset, for example, you might give them the silent treatment. Projection: A defense mechanism that involves attributing your own unacceptable qualities or feelings to others. For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead believe that they do not like you. Projection allows the expression of desire or impulse in a way the ego cannot recognize, thereby reducing anxiety. Rationalization: A defense mechanism that involves explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, avoiding the true reasons for the behavior. For example, a person who is turned down for a date might rationalize the situation by saying they were not attracted to the other person anyway. A student might rationalize a poor exam score by blaming the instructor rather than admitting their own lack of preparation. Rationalization not only prevents anxiety, but it may also protect self-esteem and self-concept. Reaction formation: Reduces anxiety by taking up the opposite feeling, impulse, or behavior. An example of reaction formation would be treating someone you strongly dislike in an excessively friendly manner in order to hide your true feelings. Why do people behave this way? According to Freud, they use reaction formation as a defense mechanism to hide their true feelings by behaving in the exact opposite way. Regression: When confronted with stressful events, people sometimes abandon coping strategies and revert to earlier behavioral patterns. Anna Freud called this defense mechanism regression and suggested that people act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news. Repression: Acts to keep information out of conscious awareness. However, these memories don't just disappear; they continue to influence our behavior. For example, a person who has repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty forming relationships. Suppression: Sometimes you might repress information consciously by forcing it out of your awareness. This is known as suppression. In most cases, however, this removal of anxiety-provoking memories from awareness is believed to occur unconsciously. Sublimation: A defense mechanism that allows us to act out unacceptable impulses by transforming them into more acceptable forms. For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might take up kickboxing to vent their frustration. Freud believed that sublimation is a sign of maturity and allows people to function normally in socially acceptable ways. Undoing: Trying to make up for what you feel are inappropriate thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. For example, if you hurt someone's feelings, you might offer to do something nice for them to assuage your anxiety or guilt. There can be more, but these serve as a solid start. Learn more from the article in Wikipedia and from googling list of ego defense mechanisms. Click here for 31 Psychological Defense Mechanisms Explained. Logical fallacies Does the powerholder manifest any of these logical fallacies? Does any side use any of these logical fallacies? 1. The A Priori Argument 2. Ableism 3. Actions have Consequences 4. The Ad Hominem Argument 5. The Affective Fallacy 6. Alphabet Soup 7. Alternative Truth 8. The Appeal to Closure 9. The Appeal to Heaven 10. The Appeal to Nature 11. The Appeal to Pity 12. The Appeal to Tradition 13. Appeasement 14. The Argument from Consequences 15. The Argument from Ignorance 16. The Argument from Incredulity 17. The Argument from Inertia 18. The Argument from Motives 19. Argumentum ad Baculum 20. Argumentum ad Mysteriam 21. Argumentum ex Silentio 22. Availability Bias 23. The Bandwagon Fallacy 24. The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy 25. The Big "But" Fallacy 26. The Big Lie Technique 27. Blind Loyalty 28. Blood is Thicker than Water 29. Brainwashing 30. Bribery 31. Calling "Cards" 32. Circular Reasoning 33. The Complex Question 34. Confirmation Bias 35. Cost Bias 36. Default Bias 37. Defensiveness 38. Deliberate Ignorance 39. Diminished Responsibility 40. Disciplinary Blinders 41. Dog-Whistle Politics 42. The "Draw Your Own Conclusion" Fallacy 43. The Dunning-Kruger Effect 44. "E" for Effort. 45. Either/Or Reasoning 46. Equivocation 47. The Eschatological Fallacy 48. Esoteric Knowledge 49. Essentializing 50. The Etymological Fallacy 51. The Excluded Middle 52. The "F-Bomb" 53. The False Analogy 54. Finish the Job 55. The Free Speech Fallacy 56. The Fundamental Attribution Error 57. Gaslighting 58. Guilt by Association 59. The Half Truth 60. Hero-Busting 61. Heroes All 62. Hoyle's Fallacy 63. I Wish I Had a Magic Wand 64. The Identity Fallacy 65. Infotainment 66. The Job's Comforter Fallacy 67. Just Do it 68. Just Plain Folks 69. The Law of Unintended Consequences 70. Lying with Statistics 71. Magical Thinking 72. Mala Fides 73. Measurability 74. Mind-reading 75. Moral Licensing 76. Moral Superiority 77. Mortification 78. Moving the Goalposts 79. MYOB 80. Name-Calling 81. The Narrative Fallacy 82. The NIMBY Fallacy 83. No Discussion 84. Non-recognition 85. The Non Sequitur 86. Nothing New Under the Sun 87. Olfactory Rhetoric 88. Oops! 89. Othering 90. Overexplanation 91. Overgeneralization 92. The Paralysis of Analysis 93. The Passive Voice Fallacy 94. Paternalism 95. Personalizaion 96. The Plain Truth Fallacy 97. Plausible Deniability 98. Playing on Emotion 99. Political Correctness 100. The Pollyanna Principle 101. The Positive Thinking Fallacy 102. The Post Hoc Argument 103. The Pout 104. The Procrustean 105. Prosopology 106. The Red Herring 107. Reductio ad Hitlerum 108. Reductionism 109. Reifying 110. The Romantic Rebel 111. The "Save the Children" Fallacy 112. Scapegoating 113. Scare Tactics 114. "Scoring" 115. The Scripted Message 116. Sending the Wrong Message 117. Shifting the Burden of Proof 118. The Shopping Hungry Fallacy 119. The Silent Majority Fallacy 120. The Simpleton's Fallacy 121. The Slippery Slope 122. The Snow Job 123. The Soldiers' Honor Fallacy 124. The Standard Version Fallacy 125. Star Power 126. The Straw Man 127. The Taboo 128. They're All Crooks 129. The "Third Person Effect" 130. The "Thousand Flowers" Fallacy 131. Throwing Good Money After Bad 132. TINA 133. Tone Policing 134. Transfer 135. Trust your Gut 136. Tu Quoque 137. Two-sides Fallacy 138. Two Truths 139. Venting 140. Venue 141. We Have to Do Something: 142. Where there’s Smoke, there’s Fire 143. The Wisdom of the Crowd 144. The Worst-Case Fallacy 145. The Worst Negates the Bad 146. Zero Tolerance Sources: Master List of Logical Fallacies List of fallacies Viable alternative(s) What viable alternatives does the powerholder appear to neglect? Need-response offers some better solutions. Mutuality process Properly resolving needs Law-fit Exaction invoice Earned legitimacy

Let’s take a microscopic look at how you can slip from being totally well to suddenly suffering the pain of some overwhelming ailment. Not so much in physical or exclusively biological terms, but more in terms of your emotional wellbeing. Let’s see how “symfunction capture” can help explain that easily overlooked zone between wellness and sickness. Symfunction capture occurs in three phases: 1) symfunction creep, 2) symfunction strain, then 3) symfunction trap. Which do you think is more likely? It’s common to be totally well one moment and then totally sick the next. OR There is a little talked about transitional zone between wellness and sickness. Symfunction refers to your less-than-optimal level of functioning. Symfunction refers to that zone you experience between being totally well and being totally sick. Symfunction refers to that level of operating in life that sits between peakfunctionality and dysfunctionality. If you ever reach peakfunction, your every need enjoys full satisfaction. You can do amazing things while peakfunctional. But if any need lingers unresolved, you slip from peakfunction to that zone where you must rely on others to still function adequately—symfunction. Anankelogy recognizes how you can enjoy peakfunctionality one moment and then slip into symfunctionality. Anankelogy further recognizes how this slippage serves as a common gateway into painful dysfunction—of prioritizing relieving the pain of your unmet needs. Anankelogy refers to this phenomenon as “symfunctional capture”. Anankelogy further identifies three phases for this experience: You start safe enough with “symfunction creep” You often feel a mounting level of “symfunction strain” You then slip dangerously into the “symfunction trap” Symfunction capture can pull you into dysfunction 1. You start safe enough with “symfunction creep” When your every need fully resolves, you can reach peakfunction and freely focus on just about anything. You can do some amazing stuff. This moment features a total absence of any disrupting pain. As soon as one of your needs does not fully resolve, your body now has cause to warn you with a little pain. A slight headache. A subtle doubt. A lingering sense of trouble. Your body uncomfortably and almost imperceptibly alerts you to this creeping imperfection. Instead of optimal functioning, you function at an adequate level with impersonal help from others. Anankelogy calls this symfunction. Symfunction creep refers to that early emotional stress you naturally experience from one or more needs not fully resolving. They resolve adequately enough for you to sufficiently function. But creeping normality sets in as your body insists with largely indiscernible warnings of a slight yet tolerable threat to your ability to fully function. You kind of notice some slight uneasiness, for example, after seeing a stranger scowl in your direction. You can function well enough but sense a fleeting possibility of a remote threat. You might be confronted by this person you’ve never met, or not. As the stranger looks elsewhere and moves on, that sensation quickly fades. When all your needs fully resolve again, you can function fully. You feel no pain. Sometimes your needs linger a while before accessing the resources to restore inner balance. But once restored, you’re back to peakfunction. After all, sometimes can only access a resource through others you do not personally know, and this can prevent you from remaining peakfunctional. If you had to deal with a stranger in a distant land completely on your own, you would likely remain vigilant. But at home, you likely depend on familiar social norms to ensure this stranger doesn’t bother you. Instead of operating at your optimal potential, you find you can function only at a level those social norms permit. This typically tends to be a little less than full functioning. After all, the more focused to what could go wrong when encountering this unknown person, the less attentive on getting things right for your peakfunctional potential. Impersonal norms typically help you. Authority to enforce them ensures the peace. But an externally incentivized peace cannot effectively address each other’s specific needs. Social norms and power dynamics shaping symfunction risk pulling you down into symfunction strain. 2. You often feel a mounting level of “symfunction strain” Symfunctional strain refers to the ongoing emotional stress you naturally experience from each need not fully resolved. Emotions only exist to convey your pressing needs. As more of your needs partially resolve, you’re spared the disturbing pain of not getting resolved at all. Each imperfectly resolved need prompts your body to warn you of its particular threat. Each need only partially resolved denies your ability to function fully. Unlike symfunction creep where you frequently return to full functioning, symfunction strain reminds you that you remain constantly at a diminished level of functioning. If enjoying a quick meal of processed foods leaves you nutritionally deficient, your body warns you that your hunger has not been fully satisfied. If sharing your emotional troubles with a trusted friend who then dismisses your complaint, your body warns you that your need for social support remains unfulfilled. If your job provides a steady income but less meaning to create appreciated value for others, your body warns there is still room for improvement to address your need earn a living creating something meaningful. Typically, you feel each warning of a partially eased need as a dull and manageable pain. If experiencing just a handful of such needs that remain partially resolved, you likely do not even notice this strain. You can bear the trouble. With most other needs fully resolved, you can still function quite well with little if any distraction. You can focus sufficiently despite that emerging reminder to satisfy that hunger. Or that slightly disturbing cue to find someone who cares about your complaint. Or that gnawing but easily ignored feeling that you are not really being valued at work for all you’re worth. These mostly resolved needs let you focus on the positives and disregard such miniscule negatives. Getting comfortable with this new normal can set you up for even worse things down the road. A few persistently partially resolved needs can blow up easily into many persistently unresolved needs. You’re then staring down into the abyss of a symfunctional trap. 3. You then slip dangerously into the “symfunction trap” Often, however, a few partially resolved needs swells into a molehill of unresolved needs. Your ratio of fully-to-partially resolved needs can slip down into most of your needs only partially resolved. Your body will not let you forget. With fewer of your needs fully resolved, your body painfully warns how your ability to function has become increasingly compromised. These can build up into a mountain of warnings constantly reminding you of growing threats to your ability to function. Any dull pain you felt at the beginning doesn’t feel so dull anymore. In fact, they can now overwhelm your attention. Your growing hunger pangs refuse to be ignored. Your increasing sense of being misunderstood crowds your attention. Your alarming dissatisfaction with your lousy job consumes your focus. These less resolved needs increasingly distract you, as they scream for your attention. They warn how your ability to function is becoming intolerably decreased. Your once-trivial problems now appear much more alarmingly urgent. You feel increasingly trapped to prioritize these alarming needs. While not completely nourished, you lack sufficient energy to always prepare a healthy meal. While wondering if you’ll find anyone who’ll care, you adjust your expectations to avoid painful disappointment. While feeling stuck in your dead-end job, you doubt if you can find any job that’s better. Symfunction trap describes this disturbing experience. You feel increasingly trapped into this mediocre level of functioning. You find it increasingly more difficult to fully resolve your needs, and increasingly absorbed by the rising levels of pain. You likely resign to your fate of not fully resolving many if not most of your needs. You increasingly drink more for pleasure than merely to quench your thirst. Sugary drinks dominate your day. Or you gulp down something for the caffeine buzz. Or you sip on alcohol to take the edge off your troubling circumstances. You slip dangerously close into destructive habits, easily shared in your social circles. You can at least get by in this modern world of technological conveniences. You can function adequately enough with the predictability provided by enforced laws. You can feel confident that you’re not alone in this situation. Indeed, more and more of us accept such mounting emotional distress as the new normal. We hardly notice as this three-phase process of symfunction capture serves as a gateway into dysfunction. Symfunction capture can pull you into dysfunction You rarely choose to go from optimal functioning to self-sabotage. You tend to get pulled into symfunction when the resources to fully resolve your needs remain inaccessible. A lack of reliable access to primary resources like clean water for your thirst, or trustworthy friends for companionship, or meaningful employment for your purpose in life, points less to personal problems and more to interpersonal, power and structural problems. Unfortunately, many social norms yank you into the abyss of dysfunction. Anankelogy identifies three levels of resources for responding or reacting to your painful needs. Only steady access to primary resources can enable you to stay peakfunctional. Primary resource: Something that fully resolves your need, like water for thirst or a trustworthy companion for deeper social connection. Alternate resource: Something that partially eases your need, like coffee for thirst or casual friends for meaningful social connection. Substitute resource: Something that primarily relieves the pain of your unmet need, like alcohol or social media "friends" for social connection. Anankelogy recognizes the problem of more easily accessing alternate or substitute resources. The more easily you find many Facebook friends than cultivate personal friendships, for example, the easier you slide into symfunction and onto dysfunction. Anankelogy has a label for this widespread yet overlooked problem: coerced poor options dependence (or CoPOD). If you cannot readily access highly nutritious food as easily as processed or junk food, you can become easily attached to these less-than-optimal options. If coerced into accepting a court decision as the best yet only available option, you understandably rely on it almost every time you think of suing someone. If you never know a life of steadily accessible primary resources to fully resolve all of your needs, you understandably acclimate to whatever best helps you get by. Despite every good faith effort to make the noblest decisions, this pervasive problem of CoPOD can pull you through symfunction capture and then on down the rabbit hole of painful dysfunction. Dysfunction means you must now prioritize relieving the incredible load of pain you cannot shake off because of problems beyond your control. In our highly individualistic culture, at least in Western societies, you may accept blame for making too many poor personal choices. What if slipping into an addiction is not completely your fault? Need-response dares us to look a little deeper into these complexities of our many problems. Instead of oversimplifying addictions as resulting from poor moral choices, need-response enables you to be more honest by recognizing different levels of human problems. A wellness campaign takes you through all four types of human problems. This need-response service could be the only professional option to help you break free from symfunction capture. One way to know is to explore this option for yourself. And it’s free to start. It's also free to check if a wellness campaign is right for you. Your responsiveness to "symfunction capture" Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check out what a wellness campaign can do for you. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this functionality category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. 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Problems persist when expecting reality to fit into our convenient binary categories. Take the sick-well binary. Or the right-wrong binary. Or the politically left-right binary. Until we honestly acknowledge the continuum that naturally exists beyond these oversimplifying categories, we will continue to suffer pain, trouble and problems. Anankelogy provides you the nuance overlooked by our many failing institutions. STOCK IMAGE: We've relied on the medical "sick-well" model for so long that we often overlook the stuff in between. Which do you think is more likely? You are either well or sick with little room in between. OR Wellness is a matter of degree between full wellness and full illness. Functionality array overview Peakfunctionality - prioritizing resolving needs Symfunctionality - prioritizing easing needs Dysfunctionality - prioritizing relieving pain Misfunctionality - prioritizing survival Functionality array nuance Peakfunction spectrum Symfunction spectrum Dysfunction spectrum Misfunction spectrum Moving from one functional level to another Functionality array overview Every need you experience only exists so you can function in life. Apart from functioning, there are no needs. The less your needs resolve, the less you can function and the more pain you will suffer. The more your needs resolve, the better you can function and reach more of your potential. Your nuanced needs could care less about those convenient categories and labels heavily trusted by medical professionals. Psychiatry traditionally relied on the medical model. It categorizes you as either sick or not sick. Its disease model threshold between sickness and wellness gets easily muddied. Letting these conventional categories reify, into something we take literally, can ironically contribute to our sickness. If what we need to effectively address dysfunctions like addiction remains overlooked by our conventional categories, then let's replace our black-and-white thinking with something that better appreciates the gradient nature of reality. Anankelogy recognizes a range between full wellness and a lack of wellness. It sees wellness as a level of your ability to function. The more you can function, the more well you are. The less you can function, then the less well you are. Or the sicker you become. Anankelogy identifies four key levels of your ability to function. This illuminates the overlap between full wellness and slipping into a lack of wellness. With this functionality array, anankelogy recognizes four dominant levels of your ability to function in life. Each presents a distinctly different priority. Peakfunctionality - prioritizing the full resolution of needs to fully function. Symfunctionality - prioritizing easing needs with help from others. Dysfunctionality - prioritizing relieving pain from unresolved needs. Misfunctionality - prioritizing survival while overwhelmed with pain. 1. Peakfunctionality You prioritize resolving needs. Your needs fully resolve so you can fully function. You embrace the sharp pain of each alerted need, then that pain fades promptly as such needs fully resolve. This touches on peak experiences and a flow state, and speaks to concepts like wu wei and samādhi. You function at your best, or even better as you stretch your expanding capacities. You reach more and more of your full potential. You thrive. You function in life by sustaining equilibrium. Any causes of pain or desire get promptly answered. Any threats are promptly removed. Depletions get promptly replenished. You can freely focus. All your present needs fully resolve. No pain or desire persists long to distract you. Your mind sits at-rest. You react where appropriate, to promptly resolve needs in routine incidents. You respond properly in novel situations unfamiliar to you, to reflect and learn how best to respect all needs. You quickly recognize what you need to resolve each need. You do not get stuck on oversimplified options. You intuitively resolve needs with the right resources and move on. You function at your peak capacity. For example: Your physical wellbeing. You maintain good eating and exercise habits. You eat to live instead of living to eat. You keep fit. You take good care of your body. You promptly address any ailments. You guard your health from intolerable risks. Your social wellbeing. You feel deeply connected to at least one other person, who knows almost all of your secrets and still loves you. You enjoy knowing that you provide deep meaning for them. You can trust them to support you through any crisis. Your vocational wellbeing. You love what you do and get paid well to do it. Your career provides rich meaning to your purposeful existence. Instead of exhausting you, your work energizes you. You look forward to serving others through your vocation. 2. Symfunctionality You prioritize easing needs. Your needs partially resolve so you can adequately function. You endure the dull pain of your partially resolved needs, which alert you of this ongoing threat to your ability to fully function. This touches on group conformity, herd behavior, and herd mentality. You function at the level your group enables you to function. Your life settles close to equilibrium. Your daily causes of pain or desire are eventually answered. Any threats get slowly removed. Depletions are gradually replenished. You can adequately focus. Some or all your needs do not completely resolve. A minimal level of pain or desire may distract you, but not much. Your mind remains aware. You react to situations the way you learned from others. You respond as others model a response. You usually take your cues from what is socially acceptable. You rely on others to help ease your needs. You risk getting drawn into over­simplified options. At times, you settle for less-than-ideal resources to address your needs. You make it work. You function at a practical level in accordance with others. For example: Your physical wellbeing. You eat what you find reliably accessible. You exercise when you can. You gain some weight and work it off. You easily find whatever weight you lose. You rely increasingly on meds. You’re generally doing okay. Your social wellbeing. You get along with others quite well. You trust your friends accept most things about you. Some secrets you hold as unsafe to share. You rely more on social norms than personal encounters to inform how to respect others. Your vocational wellbeing. You are generally successful on your job. You do what’s expected most of the time. You get along with your coworkers. Your boss can always count on you. You may not love your job but you do value the steady income. 3. Dysfunctionality You prioritize relieving pain. Your needs hardly resolve so you can barely function. You repeatedly suffer the pain of your unresolved needs, since your emotions persist in warning you of threats to your ability to fully or even adequately function. This fits closely to the sociological construct of dysfunction. You cannot fully function if too many of your essential needs remain unresolved. Your life falls into a rut of constant disequilibrium. Threats overwhelm you. Cravings consume you. Pain builds up to intolerable levels. You increasingly feel emotionally paralyzed. You cannot freely focus. Too many disruptions. Too many of your needs remain unresolved. Mounting pain distracts you. You obsess how to escape all this pain. Your mind remains vigilantly alert. You easily overreact. You find it practically impossible to reflectively respond where appropriate. Not while you remain buried in so much pain. You constantly seek what can relieve your pain. Concrete black-and-white thinking becomes your norm. You easily get stuck on oversimplified options. You likely accept any alternative resource, to ease your pain. You function at a significantly diminished level. For example: Your physical wellbeing. You tend to overeat and indulge in a lot of junk food. You likely drink a lot of alcohol. You’ve got more important concerns than whether you’re in shape or not. You look forward to getting high to cope with life’s pain. Your social wellbeing. You get easily angry at others. You seek out friends and family who tolerate your emotional ups and downs. You gravitate toward those also in much pain and like getting high all the time. You generally take more than you give. Your vocational wellbeing. You struggle to find and hold down a job. You hustle to get what you can. Maybe you sell drugs or something you know desired by the kind of company you seek. You’re classified as disabled, and rely on public assistance. 4. Misfunctionality You prioritize survival. Your needs rarely resolve enough for you to function at all. Your emotions warn you that your basic needs remain so unresolved as to severely threaten even your minimal capacity to function in life. This equates closely to pathology, but without the reductive medical model that presumes your problems are primarily internal. Basically, you enter a threshold where you, or part of you, cannot function at all. Your life falls out of balance, where you risk being stuck imbalanced. You may even grow numb to much of your pain. Short of resolving some needs, you cannot escape the overwhelming pain. You reduce it the best you can. You can barely focus. You obsess in survival mode. You feel at risk of permanent and severe damage, even death. Your mind goes into high alarm. You react instantly when triggered. You must. Survival leaves you little if any room for any reflective responses. You must wait for others to respect your intense needs before you can give any sustainable thought to theirs. You feel helpless, and you likely are. Urgency overwhelms you. Any saving option will do. Perhaps even violence. Anything to get you out of this hellhole. If you haven’t already given up hope. You barely can function at all. For example: Your physical wellbeing. You slip into poor eating and drinking habits. You eat and drink mostly to cope with your overwhelming pain. You have no room to even think about your physical health. Especially if you think about ending your life. Your social wellbeing. You likely don’t have any meaningful friends. The closest thing to a reliable friend is a professional counselor. If emotionally volatile, you probably lost connection with most or all of your family and friends. Your vocational wellbeing. You most likely have no job, no career, no vision for your immediate future. Your only job is how you will be able to manage day by day, or hour by hour, or minute by minute. Your number one job is to somehow survive. Functional array nuance We can take this gradient perspective a step further. Each level can be subdivided into its highest, middle and lowest version of itself. Peakfunction spectrum Prioritizing the resolution of needs can mean your own or out of love the prioritizing of other's needs to be resolved. Apex peakfunctionality The top functionality level possible, when promptly resolving needs to optimize life in ways that also maximize other’s ability to resolve their needs, enabling them to also live optimally. Enabling others to more fully function tends to bring returns to your ability to more fully function. Let’s call this love. Mid peakfunctionality A high functionality level when promptly resolving needs to optimize own life in ways that potentially has a positive impact upon the needs of others. Assisting others to function can cultivate some returns to your ability to function. Least peakfunctionality A high functionality level when promptly resolving needs to optimize own life in ways not negatively impacting the needs of others. If slipping into isolation, and rarely contributing to another's ability to function, you risk sliding into the impersonal dependency of symfunctionality. Symfunction spectrum Prioritizing to ease needs with others can have different results. The highest result could fall under "wellness" but not so much the lowest symfunctionality level. Threshold symfunctionality The top functionality level when actions done humanly together contribute to easing human needs without hindering other human needs. For example, driving on the right side of the road in the U.S. Mid symfunctionality A pragmatic functionality level when arbitrary actions done humanly together contribute to easing human needs with some hindrance to other human needs. For example, a terse manager ordering staff to serve a customer.​ Worst symfunctionality A minimal functionality level where arbitrary actions done humanly together contribute to easing human needs mostly by stalling resolution of such needs. For example, structural problems. This can become a gateway to dysfunctionality. Applied anankelogy breaks these down into three stages of "symfunction capture". Symfunction creep: when you drift into only partially resolving your needs. Symfunction strain: when you feel a mounting strain of needs not fully resolved. Symfunction trap: when getting stuck in the mediocrity of partially eased needs. Dysfunction spectrum Prioritizing pain relief could have little to no impact on others nearby, or could have major impacts on others. Threshold dysfunctionality A moderately painfilled functionality level when you start prioritizing relief of unresolved needs in ways that actually limit resolution of such needs. For example, a steady junk food diet. Mid dysfunctionality A significantly painfilled functionality level when you prioritize relieving your pain from unresolved needs with minimal or no negative impact on the needs of others. For example, binge eating junk food. Worst dysfunctionality A severely painfilled functionality level when you prioritize pain relief over resolving anyone’s needs, resulting in significant negative impacts on the needs of others. For example, alcoholism. Misfunction spectrum Prioritizing survival may come with minimal impacts on others, or risk hurting others in some significantly damaging ways. Threshold misfunctionality When unresolved needs result in temporary damage of oneself, with likely negative impacts on others. For example, trauma. Mid misfunctionality When unresolved needs result in long-term or perma­nent damage, lowering ability to function. For example, CPTSD. Worst misfunctionality When unresolved needs result in imminent or imme­diate death, termination of all functioning. For example, suicide ideation. Moving from one functional level to another Sometimes you grow sicker. Other times you get better. Sometimes you cry in pain. Other times you grin with joy. Sometimes you can hardly get out of bed. Other times you find your second wind to perform some amazing feats. Anankelogy provides a window for you to better understand these functional changes you're experiencing. Just when you learned some new terminology, get ready for some more. Anankelogy offers a fresh new understanding largely by labeling what often gets overlooked. Defunctioning is what anankelogy labels when slipping down to a lower functioning level. Refunctioning is what anankelogy labels when rising up to a higher functioning level. Dynamism is the primary word for refunctioning upward, to restore yourself to wellness. Defunctioning depends on which level you slide down to: drift, deviate, or depart. This chart can help explain it best. Dynamism to sustain fuller functioning A cognitive lens for prioritizing the resolution of needs for optimal functioning. This utilizes testable hypotheses of relational knowing. Dynamism seeks better questions to test to replace outmoded assumptions. It embraces ambiguity, welcomes juxtapositions, sees life rich with meaningful paradoxes, remains suspicious of certainty, integrates relevant nuances, embraces life's natural discomforts while experiencing needs, and keeps open a path to fully resolve needs. Dynamism is a key ‘how’ for refunctioning. Peakfunctionality You function at your peak potential, as your fully resolved needs sit at-rest. When peakfunctional, you prioritize resolving needs. Drift from peakfunctionality into symfunctionality A cognitive bias of prioritizing the easing of unresolved needs. The more you compromise for the group, moving toward symfunctional cooperation, the more your unresolved needs compel you to see primarily or only what your unmet needs require you to see. Drift is the initial threshold of defunc­tioning. Symfunctionality You function suitably with others, as your partially resolved needs remain aware. When symfunctional, you prioritize easing needs. Deviation from symfunctionality into dysfunctionality A cognitive distortion for prioritizing relief from grinding pain. The longer your unresolved needs keep you locked in pain, the more you must see what can promise you relief from your mounting pain—even if not quite accurate. Deviation is a more significant form of defunctioning. Dysfunctionality You function painfully, as your chronically unresolved needs shout in alert. When dysfunctional, you prioritize relieving pain. ​Departure from dysfunctionality into misfunctionality A cognitive delusion for prioritizing survival amidst severe damage. The further you sink into survival mode, the more your mind invents possibilities for you to escape painful damage, and to somehow avoid the likelihood of your imminent demise. Departure is the most severe form of defunctioning. Misfunctionality You barely function, as your persistently unmet needs scream continually at alarm. When misfunctional, you prioritize survival. This chart lays out functionality in largely academic anankelogy terms. Later posts aim to illustrate, in more accessible anankelogy language, how you could stray from optimal peakfunctionality into symfunction and onto dysfunction and ultimately misfunction. And the risk stems less from you making poor personal choices, and more from the creeping normality of our many societal imperfections. Your responsiveness to these levels of your functionality Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content. Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments. Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category. Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love. Check out recent posts of interest to you. Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you. Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content. Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts. 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Nature insists on filling a void. Including the many voids within ourselves. And those voids between others and oneself, prompting intimacy. Gender serves as a key dynamic nature uses to compel us toward balance. Author-created animated GIF: click on this GIF to see a still image of it below Which do you generally find most agreeable? Gender differences are all socially constructed. OR Gender differences are created by God. OR Gender organizes our outward and inward attention to attend to our needs. When I came out as trans in the early 1990s, there were still lively discussions about the cause or etiology of transgenderism. What would make someone born in one gender to seek to be the other gender? One idea arose suggesting this could be a gift. Instead of feeling ashamed for not fitting into gender norms, perhaps nature or even God compelled the trans person to move beyond stifling gender norms. That the trans phenomenon was nature's way of filling a void. That idea was swatted down. It seemed to assert trans people are special, when many on the right were complaining how LGBTQ+ people wanted special rights. Other trans folks keep this notion alive , but the dominant narrative emerged that the reason for feeling compelled to transcend one's birth ascribed gender was because of having a different gender identity. I went along with the ride, for survival. But it never fit me fully. You see, at the same time, I was also embracing my indigenous heritage and "Native American" spirituality. Interpreted words did not matter as much as the power of nature to resolve needs. Spirituality as a force of nature For a moment, I flirted with the idea of identifying myself as two-spirit . But that did not fit either. Instead, I now see myself as a " transspirit ": spiritually compelled to transcend stifling norms in order to connect more deeply with life's full potential . This covers not only gender norms but any socially constructed norm congealing into barriers to fully resolving needs. It could be characterized as interspiritual , transcending religious beliefs that compromise full spiritual connection. Yes, think of being trans as spiritual . Wherever social norms impede full spiritual growth, nature compels some to transcend those barriers. Gender perhaps is simply the most salient aspect of this phenomenon. Gender organizes aspects we regard as more masculine or more feminine. Gender differences begin around a seed of natural complementary distinctions. The less mature we become, those subtle differences can solidify into rigid barriers to mature spiritual growth. Gender balancing act Think of the trans experience as countering this imposing solidification of gender norms, and then returning us to reach more of our full potential. What starts with gender drives much deeper into the full spectrum of life. Let's look at a series of complementary gender traits and how they can slip into conflicting extremes. Then see how the trans thing spiritually compels balance to optimize both gender-associated traits. (Click the 'GO' after each listed pairing to dive deeper.) Balancing masculine rationality with feminine emotionality [ GO )] Balancing masculine objectivity with feminine subjectivity [ GO ) Balancing masculine protection with feminine nurturance [ GO ) Balancing masculine independence with feminine dependence [ GO ) Balancing masculine competition with feminine cooperation [ GO ) Balancing masculine riskiness with feminine caution [ GO ) Balancing masculine aggression with feminine passivity [ GO ) Balancing masculine control with feminine complaint [ GO ) Balancing masculine boldness with feminine shyness [ GO ) Balancing masculine decisiveness with feminine reflectiveness [ GO ) Balancing masculine annoyance with feminine anxiety [ GO ) Balancing masculine forcefulness with feminine gracefulness [ GO ) Let's dive into each of these. First, a word about this spiritual dimension. And how spirituaility serves our needs to fully function. Spiritually compelled balance involves gender-associated traits Almost every need involves an inward focus and an outward focus . Your need or water, for example, prompts you to find a source of water outside of yourself , to draw into yourself this natural resource to restore your body's fluid and temperature equilibrium. This lateral inward-outward dimension intersects with a vertical dimension. You're either need-responsive and find water to fully resolve your thirst, or you're feel-reactiv e when gulping down a sweet drink to placate but not fully satisfy your bodily need for water. Gender generally organizes these internal and external components of our experiences. Masculinity generally covers the external or outward emphasis. Femininity generally covers the internal or inward emphasis. And both applies to all. We all experience both sets of these gender-organized qualities. The more your outward and inward foci can blend, the generally more responsive you can be to the needs you encounter—both yours and other's. The more you can properly resolve needs , the more you draw closer to human flourishing. When focusing more on inward than outward, or more on outward than inward, you cannot adequately address your needs. The less your needs resolve, the less you can function and the more you suffer pain. You become prone to vacillate between extremes. You become more feel-reactive than need-responsive . You slip into disconnection. Into mounting pain. Into a debilitating void. Nature seeks to fill the resulting void. Nature propels you toward balance, whether you agree to go along for the right or resist such compulsive balancing with all your might. This compelled integration of these gender-ascribed internal and external directions can be understood as spiritual, as compelling a deeper connection with human potential. Spirituality as a force of nature Anankelogy defines "spiritual" as relating to almost all that exists outside of oneself as connected in some need-impacting way with almost all that exists within oneself . Various thinkers, theologians and faith leaders likely use a more expansive definition, or simpler one. But anankelogy must keep its use of spirituality to what can be empirically measured. While ostensibly subjective, this disciplined understanding of the objective fact of needs utilizes the tools of social science to isolate the more objective components of such phenomenon. For example, a scale to self-report one's degree of experiencing themselves connected "with the universe" could be correlated with their level of resolving such inflexible needs as: "having a sense of purpose in life", "finding meaning in suffering", and "actualizing love as encountering the needs of others as vital as one's own". Anankelogy recognizes nature as a powerful force compelling us to redress such needs. Once evoked , you tend to address your needs within a pattern of gender-ascribed traits. Of your outward and inward attention. These traits either complement or compete, depending how balanced or imbalanced you experience them. Gender holism as a balancing act Nature pulls us with the emotional power of desire and pain to reach more of our full potential for comprehensive wellness. Which anankelogy labels as peakfunctionality . Many inward psychological and outward sociological factors emerge during life to prevent us from sustaining a peakfunctional level. Between social barriers to essential resources and personal habits that neglect resources, we slip into what anankelogy calls symfunctionality . We slide into a lower level of wellness. Accompanied by mounting pain. Too many of us get trapped in what anankelogy calls symfunction capture , which tends to pull us into comforting generalizations. When entertained, these generalities pull us into contrasting extremes. Vacillating between opposing extremes To cope with the never-ending despair, we vacillate between extremes. We gravitate toward the myth that relief can be gained at the other side's expense. Which guarantees we remain imprisoned in pain. Balancing complementary sides Transspirituality melts those barriers to essential resources. With the power of love, which honors the needs of others as our own. Emotional desire to satisfy own wants evolves into desire to see what's best for each other. Where an excessive inward focus for self-interest compromised wellbeing, a complementary outward focus on what others need brings some needed balance. Same with any other gender ascribed trait slipping into clashing sides. Transspirituality insists a balance of both inward and outward foci. Slowly at first. Oscillating toward a balanced center Transspirituality compels balancing these complementary gender traits, to reach more of our potential wellness. An inward focus moves toward an outward focus, to experience more of the rich depths that life has to offer. Frustrations gives way to clarity. Despair melts into joy. Meaningless dissolves into purpose. As wellness improves, pain fades as the threats to wellness slip way. Wholeness can be glimpsed right around the corner. Encountering the holistic center Transspirituality compels wellness, by prioritizing properly resolving needs . Which includes balancing inward and outward foci on access essential resources to resolve needs. Such spiritual compulsion comes with a profound sense of oneness with the whole universe. Whatever I do to another, I intuitively recognize, I ultimately do to myself. The more I love them for who they authentically are, the more I love myself for who I authentically am. Resistance from the conventional minded For those trapped experiencing these gender traits as contradictory, and only encountered during moments of sex, this transcendence of gender norms feels strange. And viscerally unacceptable. Reactive norm enforcers target two kinds of people. Those who violate the law for selfish gain and those who transcend the law for universal gain. I am of the latter. (click the arrow at the left to find how.) I am spiritually compelled to properly resolve needs ahead of considerations of law. Needs exist as objective fact , inflexible to law. Laws exist largely as social facts, flexible to the reality of inflexible needs .   In 1993, while coming out as transgender to Janet, my trans sibling, a young lesbian took curious interest in Janet. If only she could be as boldly open as Janet.   When caught not being home on time by her apparently homophobic mother, this young lesbian fabricated a story of being abducted and assaulted. It would show she was not there on her own accord, although she was. I fully understand her urgency not to be outed as a lesbian to her homophobic parents. I can see how she twisted her parents' homophobia toward her favor. Her claim of being assaulted fed into popular transphobic tropes of the time, especially the one casting LGBTQ aduls as child recruiting predator s .   Learn more about transphobic tropes ... Transphobic tropes are recurring, harmful narratives in media and culture that vilify or mock transgender people. Common tropes include framing trans individuals as deceptive predators, focusing solely on tragic narratives, using cross-dressing for comedy, presenting transition as a joke, or portraying trans characters as mentally ill or violent . www.geekmelange.com  +4 Common Transphobic Tropes and Narratives: The Deceptive Subject:  Trans people are portrayed as engaging in "dishonesty" or fraud, usually involving a hidden, sexualized reveal meant to disgust or humiliate others. The Dangerous/Psycho Villain:  Popularized by movies like Silence of the Lambs  and Psycho , this trope links trans identity with extreme violence, insanity, and murderous intent, often confusing cross-dressing or, in these cases, misogynistic pathology with being transgender. The Tragic Victim/Tragic Existences:  Trans characters are frequently killed off, victims of violent crime, or depicted as having no option but a miserable life, reducing their existence to trauma. The "Tr*nny" or "Shocked Reaction" Trope:  Comedy or drama that uses the existence of a trans person as the punchline, or focuses on the violent, horrified, or vomit-inducing reaction of a cisgender person finding out someone is trans. "Born in the Wrong Body" Narrative:  A limiting trope that suggests all trans people hate their bodies and that transitioning is only about fixing a "broken" body rather than social, legal, or other personal aspects of identity. The "Predator in Restrooms" Fearmongering:  A political trope often referred to as the "trans agenda," which baselessly positions trans people as threats to children or women, particularly in bathrooms, say GLAAD reports. Mockery of Pronouns/Appearance:  Focusing entirely on whether a trans person "passes" or intentionally using incorrect pronouns and names (deadnaming). Trans People Are Mentally Ill:  Characterizing being transgender as merely a mental illness, delusion, or "trend," rather than a valid identity. "They are Indoctrinating Children":  Suggesting that trans visibility is a "coordinated effort" to harm children or influence them , according to GLAAD reports. www.geekmelange.com  +9 These tropes, as discussed by organizations like GLAAD and TransActual , serve to dehumanize, reinforce transphobia, and justify discrimination. GLAAD +2 Ractive norm enforcers then punished me under the guise that I violated the law for selfish sexual gain. This fed their confirmation bias , to not consider alternatives. If a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich , and no corroborating evidence is necessary for convicting sexual misconduct , this was a slam dunk.   Any law official failing to identify and address the needs involved risks losing legitimacy. To these defenders of conventionality, life is full of zero-sum games. In any conflict, one must take a side . You're either a winner or a loser to the latest battle. They will more likely seek to relieve pain than remove cause for pain when they do not seek to resolve the underlying needs prompting the pain. Their limited perspective denies them the wisdom to appreciate these balancing dynamics between complementary gender traits. Transgender as compelled gender balance Think of the transgender phenomenon as nature filling the void that occurs when slipping into contradictory gender sides. Wherever the masculine trait is dominant, the feminine trait tends to get neglected. Wherever the feminine trait is dominant, the masculine trait tends to get neglected. Imbalance emerges and often gets normalized. We cannot reach our full human potential without integrating our masculine and feminine qualities. By letting one side dominate to the neglect of the other, we fit neatly into social norms as "men" and as "women" so we can adequately function with each other. Being cisgender is largely "symfunctional". REACT - masculine trait OR feminine trait as dominant - symfunctionality (Sf) The cisgender typically experience sexual attraction to someone of the opposite gender as the key path toward gender trait balance. They remain dependent on the other person to complement their own one-sided gender trait. This is the traditional gender norm . If failing to complement each other, they risk sliding into gendered extremes. Where the masculine trait allows no room for feminine potential, or where the feminine trait excludes space for masculine potential, wellbeing can collapse into dysfunction . OVERREACT - masculine trait OR feminine trait as exclusive - dysfunctionality (Df) As this symfunction  or dysfunction of conflicting gendered sides gets culturally normalized, wellbeing typically declines . Such cisgender may cling to the cultural familiarity of clashing gender sides, further trapping them in dysfunction. Ironically for the transphobic, less is somehow more. To be absent of the opposite gender trait means they can be more of a normal person. This tends to correlate with increased sexual energy to compel them toward gender balance. Which some project onto the trans person they do not adequately understand. RESPOND - masculine trait & feminine trait integrated together - peakfunctionality (Pf) Nature compels the transperson to transcend such arbitrary barriers to full potential, by internally integrating these complementary gender traits. They can independently reach more of their full potential without waiting for another person to "complete" them. Embracing both gender sides can become an exhilarating experience of profound oneness. Such a trans person may be initially compelled by sexual energy, much as the cisgender. But after taking responsibility for this initial sexual pull toward intrinsic gender fullness, they promptly experience a deep sense of peace. Of oneness. Of deep connection. The more the trans person integrates their gender sides into a holistic oneness, the role of sexual energy to compel this union naturally subsides. Cisgender observing this from the familiarity of their own gender disunity may project their own sexualized experience, and misinterpret the trans experience is some kind of sexual expression. Trans are not motivated by sexual desire to "crossdress" as commonly assumed by many cisgender. Rather, the trans person yearns for this peace which they find when integrating both gender traits, toward human peakfunction potential. To resolve more needs to reach greater wellbeing and remove more pain. Let's apply this to a dozen gender pairings. 1. Balancing masculine rationality with feminine emotionality Do you see yourself championing rationality to keep your emotional impulses at bay? Or do you experience yourself as emotionally intelligent, who's wisely in touch with your own feelings? REACT - Sf: rational OR emotional Outward looking rationality sits in tension with inward looking emotionality . Some situations call for more of one than the other. In novel situations, you best stop and reflect before you act. In familiar situations, you can reliably trust your gut feelings. OVERREACT - Df: unemotional OR irrational Whether through lazy thinking, slipping into poor habits, or cut off from what you need, we sometimes overcompensate. We react to cold unemotionality with irrational outbursts. Then squash such irrationality with blunt suppression of our emotions. We go to extreme of either repressing our emotions or acting on our emotions irrationally . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: reasonable & intuitive The more these complementary traits split into contrasting sides, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being reasonable and being intuitive toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being reasonable and not let go of being intuitive . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 2. Balancing masculine objectivity with feminine subjectivity Do you strive to remain or at least appear objective in your pronouncements? Or do you embrace the subjective realm of your personal experiences? REACT - Sf: objective OR subjective Outward looking objectivity sits in tension with inward looking subjectivity . Some situations call for more of one than the other. In novel situations, you best stop and reflect before you act. In familiar situations, you can reliably trust your gut feelings. OVERREACT - Df: intellectualized OR emotionalized When slipping down the rabbit hole of coping behaviors, we sometimes overcompensate. We react to stilted intellectualizing  with emotionally  rich answers. Then rationalize our emotional outbursts with biased arguments. We go to the extreme of either intellectualizing our emotions or emotionalizing our reactions . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: reasoned & sensitive The more these complementary traits split into contrasting sides, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being reasoned  and being sensitive  toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness. Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being objective and not let go of being subjective . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 3. Balancing masculine protection with feminine nurturance Do you seek to fulfill the role of protector of your loved ones? Or do you fit more into a role of being their nurturer ? REACT - Sf: protecting OR nurturing Taking a protective approach may contradict with taking a nurturing approach. Sometimes you must first protect your loved ones from threats. Other times you best nurture your loved ones, so they can develop the capacity to protect themselves. OVERREACT - Df: domineering OR smothering When slipping away from optimal performance, we tend to overcompensate. Our attempt to protect others morphs into dominating over them. Or our attempt to nurture others morphs into smothering them as we invade their personal spaces. We go to the extreme of either dominating over overs  or smothering others . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: safeguarding & cultivating The more these complementary traits split into competing sides, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends safeguarding and cultivating toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being protective and not let go of being nurturing . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 4. Balancing masculine independence with feminine dependence Do you strive for self-sufficiency to maintain your autonomous independence in life? Or do you cultivate meaningful dependence that can enrich your closest social connections in life? REACT - Sf: independent OR dependent On the surface, seeking independence seems at odds with encouraging dependence . Some occasions require you to do things completely on your own. Other times you must count on others for their help or cooperation. OVERREACT - Df: detached OR attached When sliding away from proper responses, we tend to overcompensate. Independence becomes detachment, as we avoid getting too close to others. Or dependence becomes attachment as we cling to closely to others. We go to the extreme of either alienating detachment or infringing attachment . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: trustworthy & trusting The more these corresponding traits diverge into clashing sides, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being trustworthy and being trusting toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being independent and not let go of being dependent . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 5. Balancing masculine competition with feminine cooperation Do you try to compete with others to prove your mettle? Or do you try to negotiate for cooperation among conflicting sides? REACT - Sf: competitive OR cooperative Adopting a competitive outlook ostensibly leaves little room for a cooperative approach. If you must win at all costs, then of course you will try to compete the best you can. If the only way to gain what you need is through others getting their share, then cooperation proves a better course. OVERREACT - Df: cutthroat OR placating When sliding down the path of convenient normality, we may overcompensate. Being competitive becomes a cutthroat attempt to win at any cost. Or being cooperative sinks into placating others without addressing actual concerns. We go to the extreme of either cutthroat competition  or placating negotiation . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: initiative & mutual benefit The more these compatible traits compete with each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being initiative and mutual benefit toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being competitive and not let go of being cooperative . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 6. Balancing masculine riskiness with feminine caution Do you take risks to try to get ahead? Or do you remain cautious to avoid costly mistakes? REACT - Sf: risky OR cautious Taking bold risks pits itself as opposite to playing it safe by remaining cautious . Sometimes you can see you have a good chance to overcome any possible threats. Other times you realize you best proceed cautiously. OVERREACT - Df: reckless OR avoidant When gravitating toward what seems easiest to reach, we tend to overcompensate. Taking informed risks slips into less informed reckless behavior. Or proceeding with caution slips into not proceeding at and then getting stalled in avoidant behavior. We go to extreme of either reckless risk taking or avoidant behaviors . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: courageous & deliberate The more these interrelated traits start to oppose each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being courageous and being deliberate toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being risky and not let go of being cautious . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 7. Balancing masculine aggression with feminine passivity Do you tend to get aggressive when confronted? Or are you prone to remain passive to avoid becoming a target? REACT - Sf: aggressive OR passive Getting aggressive amidst conflicts contrasts with being passive to minimize reactions. if faced with a threat requiring prompt resolution, you may opt for a forceful approach. But if you can slow down and consider the impact of your likely actions, you may prefer a more passive approach. OVERREACT - Df: violent prone OR victim prone When options seem limited, and often are, we tend to overcompensate. Starting out by being aggressive can slip into violent outbursts, targeting others with one's own violence. Starting out by being passive may slip into becoming victim prone, as a target for another's violence. We go to extreme of either being violent prone  or victim prone . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: assertive & durable The more these complementary traits seem oppositional to each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being assertive and being durable toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being aggressive and not let go of being passive . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 8. Balancing masculine control with feminine complaint Do you try to control a troubling situation? Or do you complain about a troubling situation to compel others to act as expected? REACT - Sf: controlling OR complaining Trying to control an unpleasant situation sits at odds with complaining about an unpleasant situation. If you can, you take control of a bad situation. If not, you express your complaint to summon support to address the bad situation. OVERREACT - Df: dictating OR nagging When falling into to the trap of what seems easiest, we may overcompensate. Trying to control a situation slips into trying to control others' behavior, to dictate their actions. Or complaining about a situation slips into coercing others' behavior, to incessantly nag them. We go to extreme of either dictating over overs  or nagging others . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: incentivizing & negotiating The more these interdependent traits impose on each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends incentivizing and negotiating toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being in some control and not let go of being able to complain . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 9. Balancing masculine boldness with feminine shyness Do you assert yourself with boldness in novel situations? Or are you more inclined to stay in the shadows and feel shy in less familiar situations. REACT - Sf: bold OR shy You typically are bold or shy in social situations. When you can be confident, you step forward boldly. When not so confident, you approach shyly. OVERREACT - Df: rude OR inhibited When options seem limited, we may go to extremes. Being acceptably bold turns into being unacceptably rude. Or being socially shy turns into being socially inhibited. We go to extreme of either rudeness  or inhibition . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: audacious & thoughtful The more these compatible traits start to oppose each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being audacious and being thoughtful toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being firm and bold and not let go of being vulnerably shy . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 10. Balancing masculine decisiveness with feminine reflectiveness Are you more decisive when having to promptly choose between different options? Or are you more likely to pause and reflect so you can reliably choose the best option? REACT - Sf: decisive OR reflective You can be decisive and charge ahead or be reflective and improve your chances for a successful outcome. Sometimes you have the facts to make a bold choice. Sometimes you must caution your choice by first collecting vital pieces of information. OVERREACT - Df: rash OR procrastinating When options contract and become less available, we tend to overreact and go to opposing extremes. Being decisive becomes being rash. Being reflective slips into procrastination. We go to extreme of either being rash or procrastinating . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: proactive & attentive The more these contrasting traits contradict each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being proactive and being attentive toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being decisive and not let go of being reflective . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 11. Balancing masculine annoyance with feminine anxiety Do you get easily annoyed by others acting offensively? Or are you more likely to feel anxious about others acting offensively? REACT - Sf: annoyed OR anxious You get annoyed when expecting others to fix the problem but get anxious when expecting yourself to fix the problem. When you have every good reason to demand others to change something, you gravitate toward annoyance. When others have good reason to demand you make the necessary change, you gravitate toward anxiety. OVERREACT - Df: irresponsible OR over-responsible When we cannot access optimal primary resources to resolve our needs, we likely go to readily available extremes. Getting annoyed slides into irresponsible behavior, as we quickly blame others and deny our own agency in our problems. Or getting anxious slides into over-responsible behavior, as we get boxed in by assuming we have more agency over our problems than we honestly have. We go to extreme of either being irresponsible or over-responsible . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: watchful & careful The more these competing traits get pitted against each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being watchful and being careful toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good in some moments to be anxious while not letting go of moments of being annoyed . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. 12. Balancing masculine forcefulness with feminine gracefulness Are you primarily forceful when needing to get something important done on time? Or are you more graceful to be sure what must be done works best with all involved? REACT - Sf: forceful OR graceful You can be forceful when something must be done, or you can be graceful to make room for what is also best for others. If you must act now and can ask questions later, you can be more forceful to fix a problem. If you sense that it is better for you to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission or to push ahead, you tend to be more graceful. OVERREACT - Df: disorderly OR aimless When actual choices dry up, we're prone to go the extremes of more readily available opposing options. When being forceful fails to work, we become disorderly as we overreact to situations getting out of control. Or when being graceful no longer works, we become aimless as we overreact to situations beyond our control. We go to extreme of either being disorderly or aimless . And then miss our life's full potential. RESPOND - Pf: strong & agile The more these balancing traits clash with each other, with mounting tension, the more nature steps in somewhere to fill the void. Transspirituality blends being strong and being agile toward greater wholeness and sustainable wellness.  Click here to dive deeper into this pairing It's good to hold onto being strategically forceful and not let go of being aptly graceful . For the one who integrates both can resolve far more needs, remove more pain, and reach more of life's potential. Gender Holism Recap Gender occurs along a continuum from biologically grounded distinctions to socially constructed gender norms . The more humanity drifts from its potential to blend complementary gender sides, which manifests in divisive social norms, the more nature fills the void. Most will experience this when sexually incentivized to connect with others who can likely complement their own gender side. A few will experience this when spiritually compelled to transcend divisive gendered extremes, toward embracing gender holism. click image to return to the top Most of us initially feel compelled to balance these complementary qualities through a force of nature called sexuality. We find ourselves attracted to those who present some desirable qualities seemingly lacking in ourselves. We connect with them on an intimate level. Their intimate affection permits us to draw out more and more of these hidden qualities within ourselves. We get to know ourselves more fully. We slip less into extremes. We encounter a love that brings us more in touch with our full human potential. Others of us experience a more profound realm of nature compelling such balance. How do I know any of this? Asexual While most organize their lives as either dominantly masculine or dominantly feminine, I as a transspirit am spiritually compelled to continually integrate my masculine and feminine sides into a holistic balance. This blossoms independent of sexual motivation. As such, I do not feel any sexual attraction to a complementary other. Most of us first feel some sexual attraction to someone we find attractive. I never did. I had to first cultivate a deep emotional connection before feeling any arousal toward her. I had to first trust she intimately knew me first. Most people are allosexual , otherwise known as zedsexual . By contrast, I am demisexual . Allosexual attraction (norm) Demisexual attraction (strange) physical attraction -> emotional attraction emotional attraction -> physical attraction Physical intimacy leads to emotional intimacy Emotional intimacy leads to physical intimacy I recognize my unique sexuality, of requiring deep connection prior to desiring any physical intimacy, flows from my gender-transcendent spirituality. I also recognize how this leaves me vulnerable to allosexuals who project their sexual angst onto me. I am not alone. Like the Apostle Paul, I do not burn with any romantic desire toward another. While younger, I was demisexual . I had to first establish an emotional bond grounded in a mutual spiritual connection. That occurred only once, with my then-wife. I have since become fully asexual, with no desire for any sexual partner whatsoever. The deep connection I once enjoyed with my wife was violently disrupted after being falsely accused of transphobic tropes, and then wrongly convicted of a crime that never occurred. Gender norm defenders easily projected their sexual anxieties onto my sexual innocence. Defending divisive norms Overreaction The immaturity of divisive norm defenders manifest in criminal investigations, and subsequent convictions, based in confirmation bias that ignores all evidence of innocence. Worse, it punishes the very one with the spiritually compelled wisdom to resolve needs, remove pain, and restore greater wellbeing on a personal and collective level. Divisive norm defenders intentionally protect what they find familiar, even if that includes normalization of what's unwise and unhealthy for us all. Consequently, they typically knee-jerk oppose the mature direction of transspirituality. They tend to prefer the pain they feel over the discomfort of facing the unknown path to greater yet demanding wellness. Shooting the prophetic messenger Rejected Their fear of the unknown outcasts me. The wisdom I offer that transcends toxic legalism is widely dismissed and patently ignored . Problems needlessly persist. In fact, most reactions to problems reinforce problems . That too gets easily ignored when guarding what's more familiar. Legalists rely on divisive norms expressed in many gender trait extremes. Clashing gender sides tends to be more familiar than gender holism independent of sexual norms. Likewise, settling for pain relief from our unresolved needs tends to be guarded as more familiar and trustworthy than removing such pain by resolving the underlying needs. In short, legalism compromises our full human potential. Solzhenitsyn said as much back in 1978. Transspirituality compels a return to our untapped full potential. By replacing cold laws with the incentives of love, of honoring the needs of others as our own. Perhaps my existence as a need-resolving transspirit gets picked up as a competitive threat to pain-relieving legalists . Perhaps that helps explain why norm defenders, who are now accustomed to compromised wellbeing with pain coping mechanisms, perceive me as a threat. All my life, I have been scapegoated, dismissed, and routinely avoided. My liberating wisdom ignored, regarded as too unfamiliar to take seriously. Others shame me for their own pain, as they somehow blame my invisible fullness for their painful lack of fullness. Rejecting the healer they neeed . Conformity is overrated where love is underperformed . As more of us slip into symfunction that hinders our full potential, a life aspring to full peakfunction potential can seem unacceptably strange. The more emotionally attached to what they find reliably familiar, the less tolerant they tend to be toward those instinctively challenge those norms. They prefer to feel the familiar emotional pain from their dysfunction or symfunction than the less familiar discomfort of disciplined growth. From that perspective, a gifted healer like me must be outcasted. They perceive my gender-transcendence as being less of a person. They view someone like me who exhibits both feminine and masculine qualities as somehow being less. They do not recognize how such gender holism can enable humanity to reach more of its untapped potential. To them, I must be some kind of sexual degenerate. They cannot see beyond their own myopic perspective. They cannot get to the root of their pain, which is unresolved needs . Reacting to their pain with more conformity tends to leave them in more familiar pain. They overlook the benefits of owning both feminine and masculine qualities, independent of sexual encounters. They may even misinterpret me as conventionally transgender, which I am not. I never claimed to have a feminine identify, but a misunderstood spiritual identity. Much of the transgender narrative never accurately fit my gender-transcendent experience. In fact, I no longer think of myself as conventionally transgender. Think of me as "post-transgender" not me, just illustrating a point Post-trans: Trans but not conventionally transgender I am transgender, but not transgender in the conventional sense. I do not identify as having a gender identify different from ascribed at my birth. Rather, I am more like the " two-spirits " of indigenous cultures. Not because I am Oneida by birth. But raised by my Oneida mother who grounded me in appreciating the centrality of nature in life. Indigenous spirituality grounds me to the necessity of balance, including gender balance. Such balance is vital to resolve more needs, to raise more wellbeing and remove more pain. I do not balance gender traits to express a gender identity. Rather, I naturally integrate these complementary sides to reach more of life's full potential. Not merely for me, but for us all. Balance for us all That is why I can unpack politics to spot its roots in a different priority of needs . And recognize the limits in the adversarial approach to seeking justice. Those legalistic approaches fail to effectively address our inflexible needs . We cannot properly resolve needs by pitting us against each other in either a court battle or a ballot contest. Integrating our gender traits enables us to resolve more needs, to reach more of our life's full potential. Which includes our potential to love each other more, to honor each other's needs as we would have the other honor our own. Toward need-resolving holism. Need-resolving holism Gender holism equips me to integrate the four levels of human functionality with left-right political spectrum. Another way to view this integrates the vertical spectrum of nuanced specifics (top) to overgeneralizing exaggerations (bottom). I could go on and cover these in details, but instead I will wrap this up. This is already a lot to take in. If you absorb anything from this article, consider this takeaway. Takeaway (TLDR) Nature compels those like me to transcend contrasting norms that no longer serve, to connect deeply with the untapped human potential in us all. This can seem strange and even unacceptable to many. Especially for those who lack vision to see beyond their legalistic framework. We cannot solve our specific problems from the level of generalizing that created them . Including all those overgeneralizing divisive gender norms. We can solve our problems by resolving needs with love , by honoring the needs of others as our own. That's exactly what need-response is for. back-to-top

Use this spreadsheet tool to practice for an initial HR job interview. Work at your own pace. It provides twelve of the most common interview questions. The second page provides you with instructions for utilizing this interactive tool. Each question comes with insight into what the interviewer likely seeks with each question. Click the arrow at the left to see that item's insight and tip into that interview item. 1. Tell me about yourself. Key insight into this question Your self-introduction serves as an icebreaker. It's also a good opportunity to create a strong first impression that you really are the best fit for what they seek. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question The interviewer gets to see if your personality is a good fit for the role, for the team, and for the company. The interviewer typically determines in the first 90 seconds if you will be a good candidate to forward onto the next step in the process. 2. What is your greatest strength? Key insight into this question What soft skill implied in the job description can you demonsrate in an example? That just became your greatest strength to qualify for this job. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question Are they asking for only one or for several strengths? Typically just one. Look for a soft skill that exemplifies what the job description requires. Then give a brief example of you expressing that soft skill as applied to the job description qualification. 3. What is your greatest weakness? Key insight into this question This question is asking you to humbly be honest and admit to something you are still improving. Quickly state the shortcoming then focus more on your progress in this area. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question The interviewer assumes that we all have many imperfections, but choose the one that can demonstrate how you are actively improving yourself. This can demonstrate your problem-solving and other skills. Just be sure not to pick something critical to the job description. 4. What do you know about our company? Key insight into this question The less you know about their product and services, the less reason they have to hire you. Find out as much as you can beforehand. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question They will not be impressed if citing only the basic facts about them. Tell not only what you know but what you like about them. Do you use any of their offerings? Do you love what they are about? Let your passion for them shine through. 5. Where do you see yourself in 3 to 5 years? Key insight into this question This looks at how strong and clear is your vision for your career. The better your career vision, the more likely you will be a good fit for this team. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question Avoid overpromising them your commitment to a future no one can know. Of course, you don't want to say you expect to be working elsewhere in five years, or starting your own business, even if that is likely. Assure them they are central to your current career trajectory. 6. Tell me about your greatest career success. Key insight into this question Share something you have accomplished that the job description particularly seeks. Prioritize what is important to them over what you are most proud of achieving. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question What is something in the job description you have achieved? Share it as a short story. What was the workplace challenge you met? How did you succeed in resolving it? How does it make you a perfect candidate for this position? 7. Tell me about a mistake you made at work and what you learned. Key insight into this question When you learn from your mistakes, you become a better team member. Like a healed bone getting stronger than before, show your strengths through recovering from a mistake. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question The more you drop your guard and show you humanly make mistakes, you build more trust. The more valuable what you learn from the mistake, the better your fit for this new team. Remember to end your example on a positive note. 8. Tell me about a disagreement you had with a colleague and how you handled it. Key insight into this question This looks for your teamwork skills. Everyone has a different opinion sometime, so how do you contribute your unique perspective to the team? What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question This doesn't assume you argued with a coworker. Tell about how you get along with your teammates even when you have a different point of view. Hopefully you are not so "harmonious" that you never contribute your unique perspective. 9. How would your coworkers describe you? Key insight into this question This puts in the third person paraphrasing or quoting your teammates' views of you. It can sound less partial and not risk sounding like you're boasting. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question TIP: Ask your current coworkers for feedback to your current work, then use it to answer this question. They never have to know you are seeking another job. You will sound more certain when quoting their actual words than trying to paraphrase what you think they might say. 10. Why should we hire you? Key insight into this question If you are equally qualified as all the other candidates, what sets you apart as the best pick? What can you offer the others likely cannot? What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question Think about what you offer that other candidates can unlikely offer. What particular experience or qualifications others are not likely to have. Emphasize these qualities with your passion for the opportunity to join this team, this company. You're almost there! 11. Tell me something we should know about you that we didn't think to ask. Key insight into this question Before the interview ends, the interviewer wants you to suggest anything they may have overlooked. Here is your opportunity to shine. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question Standard HR questions could overlook something that makes you especially qualified for this job. HR recognizes it may miss this, so this is an open-ended question for you to share some unique story that can help them decide you are just right for the job. 12. Do you have any questions for me? Key insight into this question Good questions demonstrate how interested you are in the job. You never want to say you have no questions. Let the time run out on the questions you could ask. What the interviewer typically looks for in your answer to this question Prepare at least 3 to 4 questions to ask the interviewer to show your interest. If you only prepare one or two and they answer each in the course of the interview, you do not want to say you have no more questions. Go back to the top and select " Qs to ask interviewer " for some ideas. You then practice your answers in the provided space. Then rate the quality of your answer. First by relevance to the job description. Speak to their needs. Second by authenticity of your answer. Avoid embellishing. Third by how specific is your answer. Generalizations don't sell yourself. Select from the dropdown list to get feedback to the quality of your response. Best : Feedback to an excellent response to this question. Good : Feedback to an acceptable response to this question. Okay : Feedback to a minimal response to this question. Poor : Feedback to an unacceptable response to this question. See this unfold for question 4: Then it provides examples of different quality level response you select from a dropdown list. Best : What an excellent response would look like for that question. Good : What an acceptable response would look like for that question. Okay : What a minimal response would look like for that question. Poor : What an unacceptable response would look like for that question. See here all four example quality levels to a response to question 4: The tool also comes with many other useful tips. This tool features how to use the CAR method for answer behavioral interview questions. You likely are familiar with the STAR method: Situation, Task, Actions, Results. The CAR method keeps it simpler. Every story has a beginning ( C hallenge to set up the story), middle ( A ctions where you're the hero), and satisfying conclusion ( R esults you created). Your short stories can be more compelling when focusing on that middle part, instead of getting bogged down an unnecessary details in the beginning. See an example CAR story on page 6 for each of these 12 in-demand soft skills: leadership skills teamwork skills problem-solving skills customer service skills communication skills interpersonal skills emotional intelligence adaptability skills organizational skills creativity attention to detail work ethic I help my student-clients practice their CAR stories to demonstrate their potential value to the interviewer. The more you practice and finetune your CAR stories, the more you can emotionally impact the interviewer to trust you as the best candidate. You can practice with me in person if you have a Cambly account. I have served hundreds of interviewees on Cambly. Here are some of their testimonials, vouching for how this tool and its emphasis on using their CAR stories has helped them. Perhaps I can help you sell your qualifications to an employer of your choice. Download this tool and see for yourself how you can improve your job interviewing skills. When you cannot find someone to help you practice, this could be your next best thing. You can practice using one of many mock interview websites . You can also practice with me. Interview Prep 1: virtual consultation 20 mins. $25 Interview Prep 2: mock interview 45 mins. $37.50