Jeff,
Thanks for this narrative. I am fairly aware of Trump’s biography. Regarding his biography, I would argue that central to the issue at hand (the nature and origin of the algorithm) is his hard driving father, the failure of his older
brother Freddy to meet his father’s expectations, and how then Trump moved in and filled the void. This translates into Trump internalizing the capitalistic competitive ethos at the level of identity. It is a dog eat dog world out there, and that then serves
to justify his intuitive relational system. To understand what I mean by his intuitive relational system, here is a map of the human relational process dimensions, which map how people intuitive depict and navigate self-other dynamics. They can be considered
the forms that nature has built into our primate social relational structures:
The matrix maps the way we humans intuitively perceive self-in-relation to others. As a function of temperament, reinforcement, vicarious learning, attachment style, and justification and so forth Trump became centered on the blue line.
Now lots of powerful leaders, not surprisingly, have high power motives. What is remarkable about Trump is the blatant and simplistic way his self-consciousness system justifies his blue line proclivities. The map of human consciousness
embedded in the unified system as follows:
The experiential self is the intuitive perceptual theatre, the private self is the self-conscious justifying narrator and the public self is what you justify to others as why you are doing what you are doing. In interpersonal exchanges,
the experiential system is framed by the Matrix (which is why it is placed there on the diagram). What is striking about Trump’s character is how his blue line intuitive power of self-over-other motive is so blatantly legitimized by his self-conscious system
and so unapologetically proclaimed to others. At a personality--individual difference analysis (i.e., why is this person different from other people), that is what is striking about him in this context. I don’t know of any other person (other than perhaps
some 11 year old boys playing video games) who are so dramatically predictable in doubling down and legitimizing his self-serving tendencies.
Now one thing that is notable about Trump in this regard is that his supporters love how “authentic” he is. What they mean by this is that indeed he does not filter. They presumed that people like Hillary were every bit as self-centered
as Trump. But they would filter it and lie about it and cover it up. What was so refreshing about Trump to many was his unabashed self-centeredness. At least he is honest in that regard, many folks think.
Of course, all this pertains to his character. What we see in his tweets and so forth. What elected him is a totally different dynamic.
Best,
Gregg
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of JA Martineau
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2018 1:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: draft blog on Trump Algorithm
Thanks Gregg. Yes, we have different expertise.
I take this to mean that we should be concerned about how President Trump (and really all of us) was "formed" and that biography matters.
He was reared in Jamaica, Queens in 1946. He turns 13 in 1959. Military high school and then Fordham for two years (important that Fordham had not yet done away with its Catholic/Humanities Core when he was there in the mid-60s before Fordham
went the way of Television culture at end of the 60s). Queens, like Brooklyn, was not Manhattan. Much more of a Radio environment than Television during that time, as Television slowly spread beyond the city center over the years. Diverse ethnic neighborhoods.
American is getting its legs as it took over from the Brits. The Cold (psych) War is in full throat. Ike is President, having been promoted by and then turned on by the Rockefellers - those that created American Social Science during the interwar years. You
may recall that Radio was viewed as the "authoritarian" or "propaganda" (think Theodore Adorno) medium of the era, which Television would correct (see Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson). An anecdote: the December 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore
Colts and the NY Giants was played at Yankee Stadium. It is considered the game that ushered in the modern television NFL. Yet virtually no one could actually watch it as it was blacked out in most of the City and few other cities could carry it given the
tech of the time. It was actually a Radio game, which Ike listened to as he played cards in Gettysburg, PA.
The President often speaks fondly of the Eisenhower years and his youth in the outer boroughs running around with his friends.
If you go on to YouTube and "watch" Eisenhower while President, he is decidedly not Television, and neither was Kennedy nor Nixon, all having been formed in a different paradigm.
The President has often spoken about the impact his Mother had on him, she being from the very small Scottish fishing village of Tong on the Isle of Lewis. There is a great deal of biographical material about the President, for those of
"good will" and want to look for it, with a big dose of caution: we did not experience any of it, and unlike the children of today, it was not being recorded.
So President Trump's "sensibilities" and "attitudes" likely have some non-Television grounding. Yes, biography does matter. His upbringing looks quite a bit different from those that came before him in the White House. So it may make some
sense that Television has issues with the President, and anyone else, that does not act and speak in the ways that came about during the Television paradigm. Really, this is what we should expect now.
Any casual viewing of Television interviews of Mr. Trump dating from the late 1970s indicates that his worldviews have been largely the same as an adult. And yet...he eventually gets elected. Inquiring minds want to know...he is the great
manipulator?...or maybe something happened to all of us. There is no such thing as "using" Television or the Media. What happened is that the environment changed and it eventually dawned on everyone that Television and the Media were, to borrow from Marshall
McLuhan, a "put-on." So our own expectations are now changing, thus why Television screams at us every day, but yet we seemingly don't pay much attention anymore.
"Self-serving bias?" Seems this is the very basis for Television/Media and its business model (its certainly not about truth or knowledge).
As Joe suggested in his recent lecture, there is also the issue of private and public faces and voices that need to be taken into account.
Might we now be living in the early days of the Life After (Television) Democracy era? Aristotle will be of great help to us on this front.
Jeffrey A. Martineau
Vice President
Center for the Study of Digital Life
New York City
202.413.4542
On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 9:09 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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
On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:30 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[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]> On Behalf Of JA Martineau
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2018 2:30 PM
To: [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]> wrote:
Mark:
Are you referring to the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater rule? 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).
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
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