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Dear TOKers, I for one greatly appreciate the effort to try and clarifyedify/rectify/mollify/____ify what's going on in contemporary society. The logical go-to folks are psychologists, but I would like to submit that until we drill down to 'what 'really' makes us tick' at its fundament we will continue to go through cycles of confusion, reconciliation and confusion, as we have since the dawn of Man. We experienced the momentum from realizing that the Sun is the center of the Solar System, giving rise to the Enlightenment; we need a reboot, in my opinion caused by displacing ourselves from the center of the biosphere and contemplating how that looks in order to advance. I know that my science is a bit hard to digest, but I have found a path through the forest to the trees after wandering around for all these many years working in my laboratory. The confluence of biology and (Quantum) physics gives me pause to think that maybe we can understand where we came from so we can make educated guesses as to where we might go. I know this sounds hubristic, but we must, IMHO, continue to ask 'how and why' we exist if we are to a) survive, and b) thrive in this post-industrial age, particularly given that so many of us will be without something to do, literally, once the robots take over the workaday world, as well as our need to think (AI). If we don't make the effort to understand the ontology and epistemology of our lives we will fail to meet our evolutionary obligation to perpetuate our large brains. Delegating this responsibility to technology instead of biology is expedient, but will derail us from our genetic/epigenetic destiny. So I encourage 'going big or going home' as the mission of the TOK. John T

On Sat, Jun 16, 2018 at 6:34 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks to everyone for all the interesting comments and additional posts following from the Personalism piece by Brooks. I agree with Joe, Dave, that your Huff Post article was excellent. And I very much like the visual shared by Ken. I am also reminded of the talk given by Steve Keffer on how hunter gatherers navigated the self-other dynamics by fostering autonomy and communion in balance, while suppressing competitive dominance.

From my vantage point, the key is to create social systems that nourish relational value. This is the black line on the Influence Matrix. It refers to the experience of being known and valued by important others. How can we cultivate relational value at the level of individuals in relation to small groups in relation to nations and globally?

Along those lines, here is a recent large scale survey on loneliness that found “most adults are lonely,” suggesting we are not doing a great job currently.

One other point I would like to make here is that I think it is very important to be careful when thinking about the individualistic VERSUS communal dynamic, and that has to do with a levels of analysis argument. From a Periodic Table of Behavior view point, the human individual and human group (especially large scale group, like society) is a different level of analysis. The difference is stark if you think about it academically. The language game that I use to describe human individual level behaviors as a human psychologist is very different than what Joe uses as a sociologist. My point here is that I often see some of the confusion between individualist versus communal tensions as arising because they actually operate at different levels of analysis.

Finally, I would like to echo Nancy’s point that “elites” do often frame knowledge in too certain of terms and that, coupled with the massive fragmentation of knowledge has contributed to the diminished value placed on expert knowledge.

G

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