Relationships

Introduction

No! It’s not what you think. We’re not here to gossip or give advice about “relationships.” Sorry.

But we are here to talk about relationships, though from a somewhat different perspective, one more in keeping with our stated aim at PRC - helping each other achieve the fullest and freest expression of our powers. So, let’s begin.

For a long time now I’ve been struggling with the problem of the relation of our behaviors. How are our behaviors related to human behavior itself? Or, a slightly different way of putting it, What is the relationship with our individual behaviors to human behavior itself? An even deeper question could be, How do we relate those behaviors to the self that lies beneath them and is their ultimate source? And, finally, How do we bring those behaviors together in our attempt to shape a meaningful life?

Of course, since that life is given meaning through our responses to the world we live in, and since responses involve the mind, another way of putting all of this would be to say, How does the mind get to the world? Or, How does the world get to the mind?

Since both mind and world are words, this is another way of saying How does a word get to a word? And the answer, obviously, is that a word doesn’t do anything. We do.

So then, What connects us to the world? Or,

How are we connected to the world?

The only thing that connects human beings to the world is human behavior (verbal and nonverbal). Behavior is also the only thing that connects us to ourselves. In short, it’s all about behavior, verbal and nonverbal. And, as we said in our first entry, by human behavior we mean simply, People Doing Things.

So, to spell it out completely, let’s put it this way:

Human Behavior = People Doing Things

But, remember, this is about the problem of how our separate behaviors are related to human behavior itself and how human behavior is related to both itself and the world we live in. Or, in other words, it’s all about relationships.

By the way, as with all vocabulary central to PRC, we’re using the word relationships in the most general and least demanding way. But we’ll offer a more specific use of the word later on.

And by behaviors in this entry is meant that which relates to such things as experimentation, thought, creativity, and belief. Or, science, philosophy, art, and religion (belief-systems). We'll have much more to say about all of this in a future entry when we relate these behaviors to cultural innovation and adaptation.

So, with that out of the way, let’s get to it. Oh, one more thing, as always, there will be no attempt to be exhaustive or “right.”

Part I

Naturally, when we think of relationships we generally think of relations within a family, society, culture, and everything in between, including one’s relationship with themselves. Of course, given the context here, we’re including the relationship between PRC and our partners, past, present, and future (now that I'm retired, by future of course I mean readers of this page).

Certainly one conclusion I’ve come to is that, because relationships are transactions, a relational transaction is ultimately a responsive transaction. Or, as we say here at PRC

The meaning of life is your response to it.

Though an interesting and important follow-up question to that would be How do we come to have those responses?

Leaving that question aside, another conclusion I’ve come to is that, because no one ever responds correctly, or even adequately, all of the time, whether in their own judgment or in the judgment of others, A problem-free relationship isn’t a relationship at all.

Hence the PRC motto Embrace The Fucked-upness.

Admittedly easier said than done. In fact, if anything truly deserves the use of the word compassion it’s this motto. Simply because embracing our fucked-upness requires so much of it.

I first started learning about relationships (as I am using the word here) in a meaningful and exciting way after being introduced to the subjects of Cultural History and Family Systems and what connects them both, Human Behavior, over thirty years ago.

It didn’t take long to see that these subjects involved the individual and society and that all of them, the individual, family, society, culture, history, and systems, could all be subsumed by human behavior itself, and any understanding of human behavior could only be communicated by explanation.

So, from this perspective we could talk about the relationship, for example, between the individual, society, and culture. A discussion of one could easily include the other. In fact, it’d be hard to imagine being able to talk or write about one without including the other two. The three are interdependent.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the people I tried to talk to about the subject of relationships were either not that interested or extremely discouraging.

Of course, part of that had to do with me and my inability to clarify what I was saying, or properly handle what is admittedly an emotionally loaded subject. Some of it was just too personal.

Those I spoke to regarded my efforts with a lot of suspicion. In one sense they were right. I had a lot to learn about what to say and how to say it when it came to talking about relationships.

In other words, I had a lot to learn about both the process and content of communication. I still do and probably always will. I certainly hope so. Though one can never know it all, one can always learn. And isn’t that why we’re here, to learn?

So, what was the problem with those I tried to talk to about relationships? The problem was the reasons for their attitude were wrong. Not because we weren’t in agreement with each other. I would have been more than happy to learn from them.

But that was just the thing. I wasn’t really learning anything from them. Why? Because their reasons were dictated, not by any genuine confrontation with the subject, but by their rejection of any attempt to connect relationships to problem-solving.

What can one say? Most people don’t want to know. They want to judge. It’s just easier. But I did want to know, and still do.

So, dashed, but not discouraged, I continued thinking about relationships and how to better communicate what I was learning, to myself and others. So, that’s what we're doing today.

Happiness, like good teaching, can not be a direct aim. Happiness is a by-product. A by-product of what? Well, a by-product of the same thing that makes for good teaching, cultural vitality. And what I mean by cultural vitality has nothing to do with academia.

But it does involve the intellect and for a reason. The intellect is the choice-making instrument. We all have one.* The Latin root of intellect (intellectus) is intelligent (intellegere) and the root of intelligent is inter (between) and legere (to choose). And the translation in Spanish of course is elegir - to choose. In short, the intellect is the choice-making instrument and we all have one.

*Which is why those in positions of power who operate out of The Dark Triad, whether in a family, business, or country, or whatever, try to take that choice-making instrument from everyone else as soon as they can. And to take it from them forever. The longer they succeed (if that's what you want to call it) the greater the cultural impoverishment. This would explain why dictatorships don't work.

Like any other skill, if we don't use it we lose it. And, since life for us is impossible without social interaction, the only real place to use our intellect is in our relationships. Whether that relationship is with others, with the world, or with ourselves.

Obviously, when we think of the word intellect we think of intellectuals and academics. But I see no reason why such a valuable word should be limited to a small group of people.

Especially when one considers how much damage so many intellectuals and academics have done to that word and especially when we come to recognize the obvious fact that we all have one.

It's time to take the power back. And the intellect is a power.

Namely, the power to choose - for ourselves.*

*And it's exactly because it is - above all - a spiritual power, that you don't want to give it to someone else. But it would explain why those with institutional power would want to take it from you. Especially those who have mockingly reduced the power to choose to a right, as in, the right to take human life as if it were nothing, because all life, except theirs, is nothing to them. Obviously.

A good place to start would be with the choice-making instrument - our intellect - as it is used in our relationships. A better way way to help each other achieve the fullest and freest expression of our powers would be impossible to imagine.

In any event, this is what I mean by cultural vitality.

When an individual does something the whole person does it. Whether that person is an artist, a thinker, a writer, a housewife, a truck driver, or anyone struggling to become who they are. So the more we understand how all of this works the better off we'll be.

Far from being a source of unhappiness, the work I’ve done over the years in my attempt to understand something about relationships and our responses to them has been a source of joy.

In fact, I learned from direct and extensive experience that Nietzsche was right when he said that Joy is deeper than sorrow.

And, since both joy and sorrow are experienced in our relations with ourselves and others, any attempt to learn about relationships can be a source of joy that goes way beyond sorrow.

No one - no one - knows this more than the Family Scapegoat Survivor. Especially if they're lucky enough to get into some kind of recovery and stay there. They are nothing less than the new Prometheus and the model of the future of human consciousnes.

My only interest here is to simply direct attention to the subject of relationships and touch on the part they play in the problem-solving process as that process relates to human adaptation.

Note: Add to this Creativity, which is inseparable from problem-solving and adaptation.

Though I’ll always have more to learn, as we all do, and though the ideas presented here will continue to be developed and modified, as all ideas should be, I am, however, convinced of their soundness enough to offer the present account of them.

Regarding the usefulness of our ideas here at PRC I can only offer the testimony of our friends, partners, and students.

Putting the principles of our program before the personalities of all involved, what they have said has convinced us that we are, at the very least, consistently moving in the right direction.

And what have they told us?

To summarize, they have said that their exposure to ideas in an educational context with other teachers and consultants has been about the good, bad, right, and wrong, of what they should or shouldn’t do. In other words, they simply learned a long list of adjectives. But, that what our consultancy has done has helped them to go about perceiving and responding to human behavior in general and their own behavior in particular in ways that are, in their judgment, more focused, purposeful, and directed.

So, pragmatically, we feel, our approach is sound. Whether it is theoretically sound the reader can decide for themselves.

Although the central and crucial problem we’re directing attention to today in this entry is the relation of our behaviors, that in itself depends upon a general theory of human behavior.

Obviously, we’re not here to talk about that, though such a theory does exist* and serves as the foundation of PRC. For that reason, we do plan to explore that with our readers in a future entry.

*Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior by Morse Peckham. This book is the zenith of human thought so far. Nothing before or after its publication comes even remotely close. It makes Chomsky look like a scribbling dwarf and the pretentious, mad, bad and dangerous to know French semioticians an obnoxious clique of High School girls with Cluster-B Personality Disorder.

Part II

The failure to direct attention to the problem of relationships in human behavior, especially within and among social institutions, and even the failure to make this problem intellectually and academically professional, leads one to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong with the way we look at and talk about human behavior in both education and consulting.

If our ideas about behavior can not explain how behaviors are related, then something is wrong with our ideas of behavior.

Though it's not true that, as Freud claimed, all neuorsis stems from sexual dislocation, there's no question that the cultural confusion about human behavior increases the probability of neurosis. What we need is some clarity on the matter.

So, the best way for us to approach this would be to consider all of our behaviors as examples of biological adaptation, of the attempt of the human being to adapt themselves to their environment, and the other way around, since both are necessary.

That way we can better understand the relationship of each of our behaviors to human behavior and the relationship of human beahvior itself to the world we struggle to understand and control.

Let’s take the work we do with our partners as an example.

If we shift attention away from the company itself - as it is at any given moment - and direct it to the behavior exhibited in the act of creating and managing that company, and if we suspend judgment for the time being in regards to the good, bad, right and wrong of it all, then we can see the behavior involved in creating and managing an organization not as some kind of special activity cut off from the rest of human behavior, but to be as much an adaptation to the environment as any other human activity.

And that is what we’ll refer to in this entry as

The Ultimate Relationship: the relationship between both the individual and the group and the world that both of them have to respond to in order to live at all, and respond to well if they want to improve the quality of life for themselves and others.

Naturally, that world includes what is inside each of us.

This relationship, as defined above, helps us see exactly how relational transactions are ultimately responsive transactions.

Or, as we like to refer to it, WAR - World And Response.

Note: We'll discuss WAR along with other mnemonic devices in a future entry.

This can be very helpful for any member of any social institution, but especially for an institution's leaders who are struggling to understand and guide the activities of their organization in ways that might prove more beneficial for all involved. Ways that, for them, will better guarantee survival, success, and growth.

The important question to ask about any kind of human behavior is Why are we doing this? Or, to put it another way, Why do we trouble to do it? Whatever that it might be. In other words,

What is a particular activity’s function in biological adaptation?

This means that there’s a physiological basis for our behavior.

And the more creative our behavior the truer this is. The creative imagination being an essential part of all learning and innovation.

Now we can see the value of looking at how our behaviors are related. In other words, now that we’ve started to give some theoretical and empirical content to the title of today’s entry, we can see why it's important to know something about relationships.

In any event, the value of looking at this subject from a physiological point of view is that it helps give us a more scientific control over our ideas about behavior.

That way we’re not just talking. Which is a good thing. Because anyone can just talk. Unfortunately, they usually prefer to. But compulsive talking is exactly what keeps one from knowing and understanding what they’re talking about. After all, what would be the value of PRC to our partners if we just let them talk?

So, this perspective gives us a far deeper understanding of the word relationship. As in the relationship between the individual and group to both the human and non-human environment.

Now that we’ve used the term biological adaptation in terms of the relationship between us and the world we live in, it’s time we say a bit more about exactly what we mean by adaptation.

Part III

The idea of the adaptational function of our behavior is this:

The primary drive of human beings is toward order.

Meaning, we need to see the world as comprehensible and to make successful predictions about the future - the foundation of all social management (however, as we shall see, though order is the prmary drive, it cannot be the exclusive drive).

To every situation a human being brings an orientation, or mental model, which is not derived from that situation, but already exists in the mind of the individual before they come to that situation.

That orientation works because it filters out from the situation any data which is not relevant to the needs of the moment.

Orientation is a manifestation of the drive to order.

However, and this is of the greatest possible importance for understanding the value of creativity and innovation, the successful use of the orientation means that much of the data of the situation is ignored or suppressed. Did you get that?

But since an orientation does not prepare us to respond to a particular situation but only with a category, or kind, or class of situations, much of the suppressed data may be relevant and useful, or even absolutely essential. As in life or death essential.

Moreover, every use of the orientation reinforces the tendency to use it again and to do so without taking into account the relevant data. More than anything else this explains human imperfection.*

*It also explains why perfect adaptation is an impossibility. That being the case, any explanation that claims to be perfect, final and true, such as Marxism, is guaranteed to be childish in its grasp of the problem and laughably childish in its solutions. However laughable it may be, owing to the murderous insanity of that verbal cancer, whenever it assumes power - no one is laughing. Marxism has sacrificed 100 million souls in less than 80 years to its rage for order and lust for power. We're still waiting for the movie. In any event, Americans can't say they weren't warned. And not just Americans.

In short, there’s no feedback and, therefore, no correction.

Which is another way of saying there's no learning, change, or growth. It's hard to imagine a healthy relationship without any of that. Especially when one considers the obvious fact that feedback and correction, learning, change and growth are, when taken together, the very source of human adaptability.

This brings us to The Great Paradox of Human Behavior.

The very drive to order which qualifies the individual and group to adapt successfully to their environment, disqualifies them when it is in their interest to correct the functioning of their mental model so as to improve the adequacy of their decisions.

This is how our behavior and institutions become maladaptive.

To use an old expression, our rage for order often leaves us stuck in the mud. When that happens there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go, because we literally can’t move. The result is, our relationships with each other and the world suffer.

Sound familiar? It ought to, because it’s happening now everywhere you look, in every culture and social institution.

So, surely then there must be some human activity that helps us out of this mess whenever we find ourselves in it. And there is!

It’s called Learning! As in teaching and learning, as in our teaching-learning institutions. Remember them? And,

Teaching and Learning is a Relationship!

Teaching and Learning, or, as some refer to it, Education, at its best, is exactly what helps us weaken and frustrate the tyrannous rage for order, the stubborn and absurd belief that we are always right, that we have all of the questions and all of the answers. In short, teaching and learning is what rescues us from our insanity.

Note: People who don't want to learn have something wrong with them. But those who refuse to admit to, let alone learn from, their mistakes have something seriously wrong with them. They are the truly weak-minded. That's why they're so dangerous whenever they occupy positions of power and influence. Whether they are parenting families, running companies, or controlling the world.

But not just any kind of teaching and learning. Not at all. The best kind of teaching and learning is the kind found in The Arts & Sciences. Specifically, the relationships found in a study of Cultural History, which includes science, philosophy, art, and religion (that is, when such teaching and learning is allowed to operate freely and is not corrupted by a police state).

Part IV

And speaking of the Arts & Sciences, so much of their work has been engaged in an effort to find a relationship between the physiological level of our behavior and the phenomenal level, between what physiological research shows and what behavioral research shows. Between what is inside of us and what is outside of us. Between what we do and what happens to us in the doing.

Not only has very little been settled in this regard, but almost no connection between behavior and brain activity has been unquestionably established. But that’s ok. That just means we still have more to learn. And now we’re back to the relationship between PRC and our partners mentioned at the beginning of today’s entry. Because our relationship is all about learning.

Our relationship together forms its own teaching-learning institution. A relationship that works both ways. In other words, it’s reciprocal, as are all good relationships. The better the work the more the problems we discover, uncover, solve, and create.

A virtuous cycle, indeed.

Continuous learning, change, and growth based on our ability to see the connection between relationships and problem-solving.

And that’s just the way we like it - a relationship filled with problems. Because, remember, a problem-free relationship isn’t a relationship at all. And it's joy truly is deeper than sorrow.

Better than the vicious cycle of creating more problems than we can manage by refusing to face the ones we already have, thereby adding to our sorrow (problems created partly by our responses).

The point is, it is exactly this teaching-learning relationship that helps us achieve the fullest and freest expression of our powers.

And those powers are there for us to use in our efforts to both adapt to the world and adapt the world to ourselves, as we must.

The ultimate source that makes this possible is the self we all have and use to integrate our separate behaviors in our attempt to shape a meaningful life. And since we can't do it alone we need to learn how to relate to each other in ways that make our efforts at the very least tolerable, and, at the very most, enjoyable.

In short, it's all about relationships.

Finally, that our relationships require so much hard work, and that, for all of our efforts, nothing we do can ever be perfect and final, is why one of the greatest powers of all is compassion.

Not sentimentality. Compassion. Sentimentality is wanting to hear the tune without paying the piper. Compassion is about paying the piper. That's why it's often so difficult and so rare.

In short, that's why compassion is a virtue. Whereas sentimentality is about virtue-signalling. The sentimentalist uses other people to feed their addiction to mood-altering through self-righteousness. They talk in abstractions so as to avoid reality.

Compassion is a spiritual power that allows us to reach past our differences long enough to see just how difficult the struggle is for all of us to not only survive, but to find ways to transform those struggles into a more genuine and lasting happiness.

But, our compassion is meaningless without the power of facing unpleasant facts. And facing unpleasant facts, especially about ourselves and our families, is another power, one needed now more than ever. And like compassion, as opposed to sentimentality, facing unpleasant facts requires courage, honesty and intelligence (three things one is supposed to learn at home).

Because, without the ability to face facts we can't identify problems; without the ability to identify problems we can't come up with innovative solutions that might very well help to improve, at least for a time, our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world we're all living in, here and now. For this reason Innovation itself will be the subject of our next entry.

Conclusion

To anticipate objections, some might say that the problem with today’s entry on relationships is that it didn’t talk about relationships enough, or in a way a particular reader approves of.

To that I’ll just respond by saying that talk about relationships will end when there’s no more people left to talk about them.

So, of course we haven’t said enough. We never will.

Again, I certainly hope so.

Besides, it was never my intention to be exhaustive or “right.” To hope to be either in such matters is a fool's errand. And, only those obsessed with controlling others care about being “right.”

But what would you rather be, "right" or happy?

As I said at the beginning of today’s entry, my only interest here was to simply direct attention to the subject of relationships and touch on the part they play in the problem-solving process (and visa versa) as that process relates to human adaptation. That's all.

And, for those who find that to be an unsatisfactory answer, well then, we’ll have to confront that problem in a future entry. Or not.

Who knows? If we do and are successful, in their judgment, maybe it will help improve our relationship. If not, we can always just say good-bye, as, it would appear, we have to now.

Until then, feel free to Embrace The Fucked-upness!