Jeff, There are (at least) two issues here. One is What is Trump’s character structure? How is he built? What is his form? This requires the expertise of a personality psychologist, which is one of the areas of my expertise. And I am very clear on what kind of character Trump is, and I have not seen anything that even relates to that analysis in your discussion. Now, the second issue pertains to what are the social forces and techno-cultural Zeitgeist elements that get at why did Trump got elected in 2016, when in 2008 it was a complete joke, given that his form did not change? What was the ground swell of events in the City that set the stage for what many thought was an impossible event? That is the second issue. The point that I was disagreeing with was your implication that the second question dictated the first (and or) that my character analysis of Trump was wrong. The bottom line is that I saw your reply as either wrong or as a non sequitur. What you say here in terms of the societal forces that got him elected and what it means for us are interesting points that I do not necessarily disagree with and very much worthy of discussion. But that is simply a different subject matter than Trump’s self-serving algorithmic behavior at the level of him as an individual human person. Best, G From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of JA Martineau Sent: Friday, September 14, 2018 11:52 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: draft blog on Trump Algorithm Hello Gregg, Yes, it is easy enough to disagree in the times in which we live. You have done much in developing the ToK, with particular insight in the "dimensions" aspect: its not one thing. What this implies, I think, is trying to get at the Causes of things, or what underlies what everyone now is aware of - the world we were all "formed" by has come to an end, with much nostalgia and mental illness, but few answers going forward. Aristotle was the first actual "social scientist" in that he attempted to get at what all living things actually are: "by nature" and by their environment, or "City" for humans. "Causes" are at the foundation of all his "science." Humans are what they are because of their soul or psyche, their matter being what it is and their "formation." Given the nuttiness of Athens and what had happened to the Greek world in the 30 years of war, he was concerned with how societies/cultures/cities came about. How the psyche is formed became the basis for his discussions of metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Today, many millions of people throughout the West are going against the environment/paradigm that formed them. It may make some "feel good" to point at the US President, but no one really thinks that is the problem, but really a symptom of something else: children are not being "formed" differently than in the past because of politics or because of how one person is being portrayed in the media. It's a cultural thing. I sometimes say since I am a political scientist: Don't like Trump? Just wait for the next one, because he is just the first in the Digital Paradigm, just as Obama was the last of the Television/Globalist Paradigm. Another comparison is Lincoln, who was the first President in the Electric Paradigm, as in it (newspapers radically changed in "creating" opinions in the 1850s due to the Telegraph) got him elected and he recognized the country had changed since his youth, though he did not know why. Interestingly, in his Memoirs, US Grant observed that the biggest change in his lifetime (born in 1822) was the common man in the middle of the country being concerned about what was happening hundreds and thousands of miles away. Now that was a big psychological change throughout the West. Today we have the opposite phenomenon occurring, despite what Television tells us. Social Sciences want to be noticed and that means explaining what has happened and where things are likely going, beyond talking about what we want or should want - moralizing or to borrow from Rene Girard, a form of scapegoating. Unlike Plato, Aristotle had much to say about how "prediction" works given how humans are formed, and it's not about trying to create the right opinions in people. Jeffrey A. Martineau Vice President Center for the Study of Digital Life New York City 202.413.4542 www.digitallife.center<http://www.digitallife.center> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:30 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Hi Jeff, I think we can just agree to disagree about these issues. Best, Gregg From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of JA Martineau Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2018 2:30 PM To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: draft blog on Trump Algorithm Gregg, It seems, as a psychologist (Social Scientist) there is a challenge here with “knowledge” or actually “knowing,” rather than imagining or “opinion” formed from other experiences and the environment in which one is formed (the “City” or in our case the Culture created by Television), per Aristotle. Knowledge would require direct experience with someone/something, AND an understanding of the CAUSES. Your blog entry reflects expected “behavior” based upon our prior Paradigm, as reflected in how the “media” must portray the President. Do you know the President, and have you reflected upon on the Causes of why he is depicted as he is by the media? Might this reflect something foundational? New environment and thus a new culture war? To “predict” requires understanding the Causes (Formal, Material, Telos and Kinetic), and “images” based upon experience. The first two, Formal and Material, tend to go together: souls are form and substance. The President has long said he has riden a wave and that his views of the world have been publicly expressed and rather unchanged for 40 years, and then, boom, he gets elected. Social Sciences have no answers beyond the superficial. Which is to say, they don’t understand what Souls are and how they are formed which the leads to habits, predispositions, sensibilities, attitudes and behaviors. My reading is that your blog does not address what is happening to the humans, who have elected across the West persons who Television tried to teach us were the bad guys. On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 10:15 Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Mark: Are you referring to the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater rule<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Goldwater-5Frule&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=3Y7PvTCoq7DlKjfCn9I6fmhBwy-TX-IQ6FFuaHq4OBM&s=xgAgEThXH9hTDLKtZkD1xFECxjkKrJH_FOV9IfqkfAA&e=>? If so, then that is a swing and a miss. Keep in mind I am a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. And surely as a psychologist I am allowed to comment on people’s behavior. The only iffy area is whether a psychologist can claiming action should be taken as a function of their status as a licensed health professional. Given that framing of the issue, we can see that the blog does nothing of the sort. It simply characterizes what everyone can see in the language of a personality psychologist. Understanding the behavior of individual persons is, after all, my job. Best, Gregg Gregg: As you know, the APA has a rule against "analyzing" anyone without actually taking them on as a "client." I know it's tempting to imagine that you know enough about a person based on how they are portrayed on television but I suspect that is not how you think clinical psychology should actually work in real life . . <g> More importantly, since this is a world leader you're talking about -- who has been the target of relentless 24/7 attacks -- I can tell you that "Trump" and "Algorithms" have *nothing* to do with what is going on in the world today (which, alas, it is my job to understand.) "Racism" is a *meme* that is being deployed by the TELEVISION paradigm because it is desperately trying to hold-on, even though obviously it has become totally obsolete now that we are DIGITAL. None of the memes make any sense anymore. Nike's "Just Do It!" has now turned into a boycott against them. As we wrote more than a year ago, we are living with the "end of memes." As it turns out, yesterday the EU actually passed a law against them (or what most in the Internet think they are). https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__medium.com_rally-2Dpoint-2Dperspectives_the-2Dend-2Dof-2Dmemes-2Dor-2Dmcluhan-2D101-2D2095ae3cad02&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=rG9ldyCLY_blxNmVNHkATP3u_ZUsQRv_uFOxF8AU5NM&s=yeRR2HMCB-3DGCJbBeJqJ9PR8pL738sMyV2a7pSq5IA&e= TELEVISION tried to convince us that there is a "Family of Man," as the ideology behind its "globalist" ambitions. None of that makes any sense any more. Hopefully my posts about China have been helpful to illustrate this "new" reality. Brexit. Italy. Hungary. And now Sweden &c. Trump is only the "symptom" of something much larger. This is a world-wide phenomenon and has little to do with Trump or anyone else's "personality" (or presumed "stage of development.") Welcome to the future (which isn't at all like most people thought it would be) . . . !! Mark ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 -- Jeffrey A. Martineau Vice President Center for the Study of Digital Life www.digitallife.center<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.digitallife.center&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Gb4XV1dLDUnEdCtwjCVKXJZTzqpYjAy_36-qxeSB9Lc&s=lJBT3jsFRT8V3Qq6hBjGyhPpjLxOYH3KijeQ4Db-GmQ&e=> 202.413.4542 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1