TOP Quarterly Update #7: 19 December 2012

Dear Member,

Every best wish for Christmas and for an enjoyable and productive 2013.

Christmas is a time for gifts. THEE Online Project members will get a mini-relaunch of thee-online.com in January with new facilities and new possibilities PLUS some great frameworks PLUS something special to download.

Christmas is also a time for celebrations. I want to celebrate with you the passing of my focus on minutiae. Following my August break, I came back a new man. I am so happy to say goodbye to the sheer slog that was entailed in creating the website from scratch. It's also wonderful to have a team that I can depend upon.

There was, however, a special positive side in doing all that unnatural work. It made me determined to get some enjoyment by leaving my well-trodden paths and playing with new areas of human life within the taxonomy.

I focused on frameworks that were fundamental (like Creativity), topical (like Politics), potentially remunerative (like Handling Employment), widely known (like Interacting for Benefit) and architecturally interesting (like Communication). Much gratification and personal learning came from working on Your Better Self, which is just getting its final touches.

But I am ready now to return to my earliest investigations from 30 years ago. In this update, you will read about an exciting new way that I intend to present levels of work-responsibility and the organization of management.

I have also got news about a way you can get hold of most of the big fat purpose and value (RL6) book at no cost to yourself—and why.

There's a lot to tell you about, so let's get to it.

Framework Frenzy

Your Better Self

Almost all of this set of frameworks, nested with Purpose-RL6, have been posted. The initial framework was the Primal Quests, our purposes in life. Over the last quarter, frameworks derived from it have appeared.

The first of these is an unusual framework that seems to be underpinning the emerging enlightenment of the 21st Century. It dealt with how those who came before us imagined Model Beings. I mean how they pictured what being human ideally involves. I called this framework the Planes of Existence.

The next derived framework dealt with the interaction of being (or beings like ourselves) that exists on these Planes. Because the Planes are constituted by our creative and ethical qualities, there was an unavoidable necessity to confront good and evil.

Nested within Obedience, the 6th Quest, I was able to identify a Typology of Primal Injunctions. These socially well-recognized rules enable good and restrain evil. This provided the opportunity to clarify the important but often neglected difference between «evil» and «bad». These rules interact to guide our communal life—and that will be the first framework to be published in early January 2013.

A more exciting development is the structural hierarchy that can be developed. This shows us how we can, do, and should generate goodness. Amazing, isn't it? To properly appreciate this framework, it will be necessary to understand values. I mean properly understand, i.e. taxonomically. Although I am including topics about values in that framework, I wanted to give members more help ...

Purpose and Value

So the time has come to provide access to the important frameworks on purpose and values only available currently via the far-too-expensive text: Working with Values: Software of the Mind (1995).

These frameworks include the fundamental purposes, the nature of values and how they are realized in societies, the way values neatly parallel groups, the dynamics of intentionality, as well as several accounts of the ethical sphere: ethical choices, ethical rules and ethical authorities.

I lack the time at present to develop these in the web-style, so I intend to do the next best thing: posting all the Chapters and all the Master-Matrices for free downloading.

Invitation: Is there anyone out there who would like (or knows someone who would like) to learn more about «purposes» by producing draft versions of topics, presenting frameworks from Working with Values? If you can help, email us at info@thee-online.com

How We Use Language

The typology dealing with the use of language is proving difficult to explain pithily and I am having some trouble with choosing names. I want to get this posted because the approaches to using language (PH'5) are the taxonomic basis for the varying capacities to carry responsibility at work.

The levels of work ideas, as discovered and explained by Elliott Jaques, were what got me started. With the aid of Ralph Rowbottom, I took that framework further into organization of the management of work—as distinct from organizing the doing of work. We had to clarify new frameworks in order to handle practical issues in the NHS that Elliott never had to face.

I'll explain this and provide a broad perspective on levels of work issues. However, I will put most effort into the topics related to organizing management of work: types of approach, management dynamics, management elements, dynamics of participation. Remember that management systems and processes are a context for doing work (which is the content). Organizing and enabling the doing of work lies elsewhere in THEE: in decision and action (PH1), and that has already been posted under culture and employment.

What makes this presentation new and different from anything that has gone before is my positioning of it within the taxonomy. This framework is a Q-hierarchy like Interacting for Benefit (visit its unusual path here), and that means it is one of 7 related hierarchies. I believe these refer to different domains of work that a society requires. I have determined some of them, especially work in academia and the knowledge-economy, and have a fair notion about most of the others.

Before formally posting my well-established material, I would like to have more of a feel for the fuller picture. As you know, such structural corroboration helps validate findings.

But I don't want to delay making material available to those who are interested, so I have developed a new idea ...

Welcome to a Special Space

I am developing a special part of the site for material that is in reasonable shape but is still being checked, improved and amended. I am not sure what to call it: TOP Workshop? TOP Studio? TOP Backroom? Something else? You can go here to vote for the name you prefer.

The Levels of Work Responsibility material is a natural candidate for this treatment. Another one is our Glossary. Some of my architectural discoveries and speculations might also belong here: for example, exploration of my discovery in the Primary Hierarchy of Communication that the oscillating duality can be forced to reverse itself.

In any case, I will be actively writing topics in the Special Space (and so will others of my team) and you can look in whenever you want. Even work alongside us if you wish using the Disqus Comments system.

There will be no RSSs or special announcements for changes. My webmaster will simply post the latest version regularly, probably every week.

There is certainly a potential for confusion generated by my drafting and re-drafting; and even for taking offence because there will be no formal copy-editing by our wonderful Helen. In this Special Space there will surely be errors of fact, phrasing that is politically incorrect, awful grammar, and links that don't work or mysteriously take you who-knows-where. So I won't want to be quoted from there.

No special login will be needed for access. But it will be members only, and you will be required to Read and Agree some simple conditions to help minimize disappointment or irritation.

Technology Tricks

Finally, effort in this last Quarter has gone into the website machinery. I expect that you will see the results early in 2013. Tech improvements that we are working on include: installing the more user-friendly Disqus system for comments on both public and member pages, less cluttered styling with a reduction in icons for THEE topics, easier navigation, and enabling every THEE topic to have its own unique URL.

There are also improvements under the bonnet. For example, to ensure the safety and security of your computer, we now regularly check the site for malware of various sorts, and ensure that the domain is viewed as clean by browsers and dedicated security services.

Finally, Blogging Continues ...

After taking a summer break from blogging, I resumed in September and found that I was focusing particularly on what it means to be scientific and what is happening in society in regard to science.

We surely need valid knowledge about how we can, do, and should create our personal and social lives. As in any arena, the first task is to survey the field and create a taxonomy of the elements that it contains. A scientific approach in this regard is essential, but naturally different in detail from investigating material reality. I know that a «science of metaphysics» seems a contradiction in terms. So I blogged about how tough and yet how easy it is to grasp the nature of psychosocial reality.

Treat symptoms or address fundamentals: why THEE is what it is!

What are we good at: Assessing probability where it matters.

Empirical inquiry: Distinguish useful empiricism from dogmatic empiricism.

Grasping "Big New Ideas": a taxonomy of elements in "Creating a Life" as an example.

The mystery of what is right and good is no mystery at all.

I am embarrassed by the current mania for popularizing science. Even worse are the pronouncements that reductionist, mechanist and materialist assumptions are truths. As in the stock market, even formerly sensible people are succumbing and, as happens there, people will get hurt. There can also be wider collateral damage. I am not a polemicist but I allowed myself to be provoked.

Culture's dangerous control and the beast inside: the mystery of personal responsibility.

Transhumanism Pros & Cons: Perhaps we should start with Transanimalism.

Rats, Men, Science, Transanimalism and the Display of Empathy.

Willpower, Reality and the Creative Challenge.

Knowing and excitement in society.

Rupert Sheldrake is a far more established and knowledgeable scientist than I, but he is just as frustrated and unwilling to run with the herd. He has now started a blog on these issues. The first is just out: it could be worth your time.

There were also a few blogs touching on my current thoughts and interests:

Comparison of my taxonomic approach with Ken Wilber's "Integral Theory".

The riddle of change: If caterpillars can transform, why can't we?

Understanding communication—especially in regard to using language.

Entertainment, enjoyment and Danny Kaye.

That's it till next time.

Take care and thanks for reading this far and for supporting TOP.

Warren