We are Here to Do
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Action is at the bottom of the Personal Endeavour Hierarchy-RH at L1. L1 in THEE hierarchies is often assigned low status and treated as seemingly insignificant in the grand scale of things. Yet the whole hierarchy has no point or grip at all without action.
That fateful question "Why do we exist?" can be answered with just
4 words►
We exist to do!
Yet action (like all Level-1 entities) is but the means. The entire RH superstructure, indeed the whole of THEE, is about enabling our Action-RL1 to be the «right action».
Inter-penetration of Worlds
Action-RL1 involves other people directly or indirectly and also the physical environment. So it is a socio-physical engagement occurring in time and at a place.
At the moment when you act to get a desired result, psychosocial reality and actual reality inter-penetrate. Actualization makes parts of the impersonal world your own. In turn, this empirical reality affects and alters, sometimes disrupts, your psychosocial reality. The end result is that both worlds are changed, for better or worse.
I refer to this inter-penetration as the Primal Nexus.
Reminder: Endeavour is not just «work».
«Endeavour» has a much broader reference than «work». It relates to whatever you choose to do, which includes work, but also play, relating to others, getting on in society, contributing to your community, learning, developing yourself &c.
Exclusions
Because Action-RL1 is built around choice (or decision), it excludes random physical movements, unconscious habits and reflex behaviour. Many popular books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, John Bargh’s Before You Know It, and even Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow almost seem to glorify the way human behaviour is driven by unconscious tendencies that often defeat our conscious aims. These studies are certainly valid, and awareness of unconscious tendencies is of great value: but they say nothing about human action per se. However, following a tradition that goes back millennia, such studies may help us understand and master our biology.
We see action all around us as activities that we know or presume are part of someone's endeavour to change things in a psychosocial world. If the endeavour is our own, we are deeply interested. If the endeavour is someone else's, our interest is likely to be minimal—unless we enter willingly or are forced into that person's psychosocial world.
Benefits & Costs
The benefit sought by action poses no puzzle: it is a change in reality that includes the outcome we seek. But actions affect far more than the focus of our interest and so there will be ramifying side effects. The cost of action has two elements: these unintended consequences, and the use of resources. These resources mainly lie in empirical reality e.g. personal physical energy, physical materials, money, space, services, someone else's attention and good nature. Resources get consumed and are typically experienced or perceived as scarce.
Difficulties
Action-RL1 often goes wrong in its own terms i.e. quite apart from higher-level problems like confused purposes-RL6 or poor communication-RL5. Probably the commonest difficulties relate to:
- confusions about relevant psychosocial realities,
- resources in the relevant context, and
- dehumanization of action.
More:
Self-awareness is critical for right action, because it helps ensure we know what we are doing. Empirical reality is socio-physical i.e. it includes the uncontrollable psychosocial realities of other relevant people. Self-awareness is needed to handle this aspect of the environment.
Resources in the context refers to costs mentioned above that lie within and without a person.
The tendency to dehumanize our choices involves being instrumental rather than creative. Blocking awareness of our actions and their disparate effects can limit our achievement as well as harm ourselves and others.
- The way we can ensure right action is by using the superstructure of Action-RL1 within the Root Hierarchy. Go to the Superstructure now.
Originally posted : 06-Jul-2011. Last updated: 06-Jul-2013.
