Individuology
New Thinking Tools
Why a new 'ology'?
People Problems Persist - in spite of millions of sincere people, 'professional' and 'private' trying to solve them, many, crucial people problems, like the Columbine High School, & Virginia Tech shootings, corporate, congressional, and international greed; suicide etc. have not been solved in any consistent way. People have tried to solve these problems with Type Based Thinking or Category Based Thinking, which I'll explain later. They haven't worked, which is the context for creating some new thinking tools.
At a more personal level, many of us, and our loved ones, are not achieving all the satisfactions and fulfillments that we are capable of achieving. In some cases these frustrations lead to personal violence.
A question we could all ask ourselves is: Is my life going completely well in all areas?
So what is Individuology?
& How can I use it?
This new approach to problem solving, specifically people problem solving, impacts 6 areas of our mental landscape.
- Our Paradigms. This sounds compicated but it's quite simple. Hopefully one of my examples will ring or feel true for you. A paradigm is a 'whole mindset' for approaching certain types of problems or situations. It contains many mini-rules, often unspoken yet firm, for how to behave. It often defines, subtly, what questions can and can't be asked. Examples:
- Being in a grocery store
- Being at a board meeting
- or a wedding
- or at Aunt Nellie's house
- or in court
- or on death row
- or on spring break
A new Knowledge Paradigm
The old Objective vs Subjective Knowledge Paradigm is replaced by:
The new Personal and Shared Knowledge Paradigm.
- In the traditional Objective Knowledge Paradigm, you can't ask about 'subjective' experiences. (All of the personal experiences that make life worth living.) Only so-called Objective data is saved for analysis and all of the richer subjective experiences are thrown away.
This makes the actions of Individuals and specific events incomprehensible.
- In the new Personal and Shared Knowledge Paradigm we acknowledge that all new knowledge is created by an Individual with a specific need or perhaps frustration or problem. They might survey what others have tried, but if no workable solution emerges, they strike out on their own. They explore our common shared experiential world with all sorts of experiments, most of which will fail, but hopefully at least 1 will succeed. It's rumored that Thomas Edison rejected about 100 elements for a filament for his lightbulb, before settling on one that worked.
Then 2 phases follow:
- Personal - Does it solve my problem? Does it just solve today's problem, or will it be useful in other circumstances?
- Shared - Could it be useful to others?
To answer this, at least 2 more activities are relevant:
- The Personal Knowledge before being shared must be tested, experientially, to see if it works in other circumstances. There are 2 main types of testing, which I'll cover later, academic and experiential.
- A decision must be made to share or hide the new knowledge. Trade secrets last virtually forever. Patents reveal all the details, but give a temporary financial advantage for 14 years. Copyrights protect many creative works. And putting something in the Public Domain, releases it for everyone.
IF we decide to share, How exactly do we go about it?
How is our personally constructed knowledge Shared and/or Hidden?
The primary method is Language: words, and phrases organized by syntax and metaphors. This can be broken down in several ways, verbal & non-verbal, written, spoken, acted, etc. In addition to popular languages like English, British, French, German, Arabic, Hebrew, Swedish, Japanese etc.
There is one language that is close to universal and that is the language of science - Mathematics. A truly delightful language!
The basic process is that you start with an intention to share something useful. You then convert that intention into words and metaphors from your own personal experiences. Then you share those words by speaking and/or writing; and the other person then translates your words, phrases & metaphors with their private experiences into their personal meanings.
A very fragile process indeed.
- A crutial element to understanding this paradigm is:
The metaphor of the Map vs the Territory.
This clearly indicates 2 very distinct types of knowledge. Our 1 shared experiential world which consists exclusively of Individuals that grow and/or decay over time. This is often called the Territory. Knowledge we, each one of us, constructs in our heads about that 1 shared experiential reality is individual, personal & unique to each one of us - our personal 'maps' of our one shared Territory. Indeed we often construct, over time, multiple cognitive ideas or maps about a single experiential person or event. These cognitive ideas, or maps, have a timeless quality, neither growing nor decaying over time, like the Territory they represent. This is a key quality that distinquishes our maps from the reality of experience, the territory. For more details see:
Experiential & Abstract World views
and/or
World views
- A breakdown of this new more precise type of Knowledge reveals
5 Necessary & Sufficient parts:
- Distinctions or Identities, often called facts or vocabulary.
- Skills - To Distinquish and/or Connect
- Organizations with Connections and Relationships
- Purposes or Intentions
- Contexts which vary over time for Experiential Knowledge,
but remain frozen in time for Cognitive 'Maps'.
- Types of testing. There are many types of tests but 2 main categories stand out.
- Academic testing - Creates questionaires and lab experiments.
- Experiential testing - Goes into the field to observe Individuals.
- Types of Certificates - signed by an Individual or an Institution?
More later...
- Our Principles - Rather than collect a huge list of very specific rules for very specific situations, we develop principles that are more general guidelines which help us figure out what to do in new and even unforseen situations. And also when our values conflict, which value is more important to us? For example: Safety is paramount in aeronautics.
In Individuology these are most paramount:
- Respect for Individuals AS Individuals, NOT as members of a group.
This works both ways for both inclusion & exclusion.
- Experiential Testing - see above.
- Performance based.
- Not artificial lab tests or questionnaires.
- Generalizing - Never project past the most extreme value tested.
And be sensitive to the incremental range of values tested.
- Our everyday Working Mental Models:
- Necessary & Sufficient Causality. (No mysterious, unverifiable, forces like Id, Ego, SuperEgo, Introjects, etc.!).
See: Necessary & Sufficient Causality
- Dynamic Thresholds (Relative - Absolutes).
See: Dynamic Thresholds
- A Person Model - A model for Individual People, their internal parts, external relationships, and especially the dynamic boundaries between them all.
- A Community Model
- New - A Deliberately Selected Sample Populations for surveys!
Yes, the great God Random is indeed DEAD!
- Personal yet Precise Terminology - so we can talk meaningfully to one another, and create group projects. In aerospace we measure things like O-Rings to thousands of an inch; in psychology we have vague terms like 'anxious' or 'depressed'.
- KnCells to Store & Compare Knowledge.
- Checklists, the antidote to Individual differences.
- KRG, (Kelly's Repertory Grids) & Clean Language.
- Paul Linden's Body Language for Emotions.
- Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey's 7 Languages for developmental stages.
- Incremental Growth - A place & process for testing and improving our answers over time. This has worked well in aerospace, but not so well in education & psychology. For example: Memory! Back in my University days, I studied several different books about memorizing facts, dates, Names, Faces, etc. Over the years, I added several more. (I don't remember how many.) Yet in spite of how critical this skill is to the learning process; it's Knowledge & Skills are not collected into a single place or curriculum.
- Checklists - Aerospace's solution to Individual Differences.
- KnBases - Personal & Shared.
- Places like the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board).
See: NISB
If the NTSB can investigate every plane crash from many, many directions - mechanical failure, pilot error, communications errors, weather, runway length, component stress, etc., etc., etc. Why does the psychological community which dares to call itself a profession, when they have a crash, a suicide, simply bury the evidence and learn absolutely nothing!!!!!
- Maintenance - Since Individuals in our experiential world grow & deteriorate or decay over time, maintenance activities need to be scheduled and performed.
Personal note: This discipline of Individuology and it's tools & techniques could also be applied to all other 'Individual' things and events, such as animals, plants, trees, and perhaps even rocks, and our chemical environment. However, my personal focus is exclusively on Individual People. If there comes a time when all Individual people on the planet, have adequate shelter, food, and dignified living conditions, then and only then, will I turn my attention to animals and others issues...
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Last Updated: Monday, Jun. 1, 2009 10:15 AM
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All my studies have been conducted by Individual humans, with Individual humans, and for Individual humans.
No rats have ever been harmed or even inconvenienced.
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