Technical Summary
The World as Creative Will and its Representation
All endeavour results from the individual and joint exercise of . The is the source of personal functioning and manifests as a large range of immediately recognizable psychosocial phenomena. On the one hand, there are inner psychological experiences, processes and states, and on the other hand there are corresponding public equivalents, social institutions and outer-world consequences. All phenomena are identified and manipulated via awareness i.e. consciousness is a necessity for endeavour.
Frameworks categorizing and organizing manifestations of the have been devised in order to prevent or help resolve non-technical «people problems». These frameworks provide, in effect, tools (or t2els as such products are sometimes labeled), which meet personal and social needs, and release creative potential.
The essential discovery in the latter part of the 1990s was that the many diverse frameworks are structures that can be meaningfully inter-linked in a taxonomy (or ontology). It is hypothesised that all elements of personal functioning related to endeavours can be comprehensively identified and unified in this way. The whole map is named the Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour (THEE).
The taxonomic classification is a system of hierarchical systems of cells. The architecture reveals that personal functioning occurs within distinct Domains. The Root Domain (Will) enables and and ultimately supports survival via both psychosocial and biological functioning. It is structured into levels, each of which forms a Primary Domain of functioning.
Each taxonomic cell corresponds to a unique personal (psychosocial) function, which can be objectively recognized as a distinctive entity through its unique properties and via its relationships to, and effects upon, other taxonomic cell/entities. Each cell/entity is itself a tool.
Each cell/entity/tool is located in the Taxonomy by a unique formula (or index). People assign a variety of ordinary language labels to a cell/entity/tool and this tends to create ambiguity and inter-personal confusion. Near unique formal names have therefore been identified for cells/entities/tools in a consistent and coherent fashion. Names are chosen to evoke relevant meanings and associations that can aid application and discussion.
Power is intrinsic because using a tool is always about the production of change in oneself or others through an influence of some sort. Also cells/entities affect others when there is a relation. The hierarchical structure contains representations of these relations and dynamic processes in the form of dualities, Trees and Spirals. These and the various characteristic hierarchical patterns correspond to the Frameworks that form useful and ethical guides in personal and social life noted above. The classification is a product of common-sense axioms and logical requirements like precision, coherence and consistency. The whole may be judged as elegant and beautiful.
Because all endeavour depends on the self, the experiencing possessor of , the Taxonomy touches on the deepest issues of personal identity and illuminates human diversity—dimensions currently widely misunderstood or ignored in both theory and practice within social science and sometimes in society too. The Taxonomy is an example of ethical design, and its elements have been used to create intellectual technologies that assist in effectively organising and managing people and situations.
All taxonomic tools and derived intellectual technologies demand and foster healthy autonomy, responsibility and reflection within users, without requiring any understanding or awareness of the Taxonomy as a whole. Many parts of the Taxonomy offer a rational basis for conventional psychological and social research, especially when oriented to usefulness.
Originally posted: August 2009; last updated 22-May-2015.