Desire to Know Meets Desire NOT to Be Known

OR--  Boy Meets Girl

A common cause for dissonance or ruffled feathers is the conflict of intention and desire between a man desirous of personal contact with a particular woman and the woman’s desire for the fore-mentioned man to get lost.  This is less of a problem if both parties respect and understand the value of self-determination in themselves and others and how this translates into a desire to gain and/or maintain control of the personal life. If all concerned understand how the citizen (or other) hat or interface allows contact or interaction only regarding matters relevant to that hat or interface, then the assumption of this interface can be used at any time (by civilized people) to move away from and put a stop to any sort of undesired personal contact. This is a “backing off” of the attention from the personal aspect back to the impersonal, fully public interface. 

The “rejected” party should then, if he (or she) still feels a continuing affinity towards the party of the other part, transform this affinity into a respect for the self-determined assumption and furtherance of the citizen hat or interface by the party of the other part. There is no need to apologize for placing attention on the public interface as long as it is appropriate to the overall public scene that includes both parties. That is to say that undue attention should not be shown.  Keep in mind the purpose and goal of whatever hat or interface is being used (and that is appropriate to be used in that situation). Show only attention that is directly aligned with this purpose that will contribute to progress towards this goal. When you are operating outside of the area of personal interaction, then all decisions regarding which hat is appropriate and what action to take from that post viewpoint should be made from an objective viewpoint. There is little room for subjectivity beyond the personal life, and whatever room that does exist will be fully within an objective framework.

Men can make it safer for women to interact with them if they are educated in what a hat or post viewpoint is and have developed skill in working out what it would be in particular situations, then use it in those situations. Women can help to strengthen the civilization and maintain control of their personal lives by educating themselves in this and encouraging men to apply it by showing favor or preference to those who do.  Men may also find this helps them to recover more quickly and move on from a rejection of their advances.

Keep in mind also that even if a person has not been educated in this behavior, there is a good chance that they may have, somewhere in the past, a reservoir of good experience in which they did interact in this way with others.  There is a possibility that your good behavior can help contact such a reservoir of good experience in another, especially if it Is not buried too deeply.

Good People

A good person doesn’t  follow unquestionably the path laid out for him. A good person focuses on what is right and wrong rather than on popularity. He realizes the value in using objective criteria in his evaluations to factor out mental or spiritual aberration. He comes up with the right solution and puts it into effect or contributes to it if it is already moving in the right direction.

P.S. Why do so many Americans prefer to run on concrete paths or sidewalks rather than dirt or grass or even blacktop surfaces? Is there some sort of compulsion at work to follow the path laid out for them?

Flaws in America

Democracy is promoted to John Q. American Public as almost sacrosanct—almost holy but not quite. Actually our version of democracy is really a democratic republic, but it was inspired by the original democracy in Athens, Greece nearly 2500 years ago. When the Founding Fathers put together the constitution and finally got it ratified they had succeeded in putting together the closest thing that had existed in the 2200+ years since the original Athens democracy. So really what we have today is a highly modified version of a dusted-off prototype that had not been in active use for quite awhile. It was and still is a very liberal idea that has not stood the test of time to anywhere near the degree of say, the Roman Empire or the feudalism of the Dark Ages. That is not to say that the Roman Empire and feudalism passed the test, but they did stand long enough for it. In view of this it is rather inappropriate to see Democracy as near holy. A better attitude would be something akin to the attitude of a development and testing team towards a new prototype that shows promise but is expected to require tuning and modification and maybe even an overhaul.

Here are some major flaws I see in the style of “democracy” we have today in the USA:

1)      It is generally not understood that for a democracy to work,  at least the majority of the electorate needs to operate in the analytical band of thought, and not in a group think or mob mentality mode.  To allow for this there needs to be available a set of practical philosophical principles regarding the mind, its analytical and non-analytical components, and principles of group dynamics and health.

a.       Did the Founding Fathers even give a thought to giving women the right to vote?

b.      We could considerably raise the average level of analytical thought in the electorate just by revoking the 19^th amendment.

2)      Elected politicians do not have as foremost the purpose to do what is right. They are primarily focused on maintaining or gaining approval .

a.       Will any elected or electable politician ever take the position that we should go from an unbacked paper currency to a gold (or other metal) standard? Our economy will not last backed by printed paper.

b.      Will any politician ever mention that the “War on Drugs” could be won if Americans would simply stop using the drugs?

3)      In the original Golden Age of Greece version of democracy a citizen that stood for election would have his personal and public life thoroughly gone over.  They definitely believed in character.  Nothing was overlooked.  Today we trust the press to do this for us, for the most part, and this gives them the opportunity to factor in their own bias.

4)      The weak under-belly of the USA today is the inability of John Q. Public to think for himself, or at least to do a good job of it. He trusts the news media to evaluate and summarize for him.

a.       Mr. Limbaugh, a leading conservative voice, does not want his listeners to think for themselves. He wants to think for them.

5)      The place an enemy wants to be is where you want to look for him the least , or where he is least likely to be questioned, but yet has much influence.

a.       In recent years we have had the idea of our “God-given rights” promoted to us. Is this a set up? What God gives, God takes away, right? I thought we had to fight the British for our rights.

b.      America is now “under God”, according to the Pledge of Allegiance. Many Americans do not realize this is a relatively new development that occurred during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, which was a classic case of rampant mob mentality in the public arena. Who is going to look closely or question an individual or group standing behind the G-O-D word? We got along all right for our first 160+ years  without being “under God”, which is easily translated as “under those who purport themselves to be representatives of God”.

                                                               i.      If the normal fabric and supports of our country were disrupted would the influence of the Christian Church expand to the proportions of a virtual governing body? Christianity has historically promoted the “Who band”, or bottom of  the scale of group causation. If this did occur it would be a major braking action on the progress towards civilization.

c.       Cadets in the Air Force Academy have been encouraged to see themselves first as part of “God’s Army” . Non-Christian cadets have been discriminated against.

                                                               i.      Is something similar happening in the academies of the other services of the military?

                                                             ii.      Is someone planning to use the military in a way that would require officers to see themselves as something other than American citizens first?

The Beginning of Slavery-- a Devolution of Aberration

Please try to imagine for yourself a large picture, as complete as possible of the ideal scene of group creation, participation, growth and maintenance in a time probably long ago and possibly in a different place altogether. In fact, the time and place is really not an important part of the picture. The idea is to get a clearer picture of what to strive for as the ideal scene.  There would have been elements that we still see today, at least to some degree, but there also would have been other elements that are very rare or missing in today’s world. 

First, there would have been a high degree of literacy and mastery of language, including grammar. Although in the local area one language would most likely predominate, it would be safer if the civilization included several different languages that would act in a similar way to water-tight compartments in a ship. If a social aberration that tended toward “sinking” the civilization developed in one area it would be more difficult for it to spread rapidly throughout the rest of the civilization. Such aberration would be concentrated in the non-analytical or less analytical areas of culture. Those who could speak more than one language, and so were able to pass through a “water-tight door” into another language area, would be on average more analytical, and so less likely to transmit or carry with them such aberration from one area to another. Of course, there could be some “bleed-through” of aberration from one language area to another, but hopefully the rate of spread would be slowed enough to allow the analytical elements of the culture to effectively deal with it. 

 Individuals would have a strong sense for and awareness of self-determination in themselves and others. They would respect and value the competent application of same towards advancement of pro-life purposes and achievement of pro-life goals. They would be motivated by a desire for self-improvement and work towards accumulating good life experience to achieve this.  They would recognize that self-determination was an active ingredient in gaining such worthwhile experience, and that self-improvement was not possible without it. They would not embrace any religion or philosophy that did not support the self-determination of the individual. 

Each person would be able to apply themselves with simple or more advanced tools in carrying out small pieces of work or small projects. They would have a good sense of how to optimize their resources of time, space and material to best carry out such work. They would have developed a good ability to face up to, understand, operate and maintain machines and equipment to carry out larger projects or higher volumes of specialized work. 

Having achieved a good understanding, judgement and “feel” for the application of optimized systems of interconnected parts (machinery or equipment) to the successful carrying out of purposes, it would an easy  step for an individual to integrate himself or herself into larger optimized systems that included other individuals for the achievement of larger and long-range goals beyond what they were capable of themselves. They would value such groups as a large-scale servo-mechanism for their own self-determination which allowed them to achieve their own long-range goals, and so would be quite interested in developing them, correcting them, maintaining their health, growing and operating them.   

Individuals would accumulate skills in developing, modifying or expanding the “DNA” or policy of a group that would contain base DNA common to all groups, with layers of more and more particular DNA laid on top of each other. These skills would also be used in protecting and better controlling their private lives.  

If a person did not want to interact personally with someone, or not include them in their personal life, then he or she would have the analytical skills to develop “on-the-fly” and utilize the impersonal interface of that part of a formal group that would be inclusive of and appropriate to the interaction with that other person. He or she would also be confident that the not-so-well-liked party of the other part would have the analytical skills to recognize and respond appropriately to the desire of the party of the first part to interact on a formal, non-personal basis. This would be the case because the second party would value and respect the self-determination of the first party (and visa versa) to a greater degree than any desire they may have to interact personally, and so would respect the wish to interact impersonally. People would value not only in themselves, but in others, the skills in creating these optimized formal interfaces on-the-fly. Thus it would be possible even for individuals who did not like each other to still have good experience in working together in a formal group to achieve a common self-determined purpose. This would be true even if that formal activity was only temporary-- as in a clerk/customer, teacher/student, or driver/passenger or just a citizen/citizen interaction. Both parties could have confidence that the other’s reservoir of good experience in group participation would allow them to easily stay focused on the common purpose and forward it to a successful conclusion. 

There would be a large pool of individuals who were deaberrated enough in the area of work and groups that they could be counted on to respond towards opportunities to participate in groups that were organized towards achieving one of their own goals, or at least one similar to their own, or just towards a general pro-life goal that allowed for good experience in organization and participation at a high level. A person with a specific goal could form up a set of group DNA (policy) and present it to members of the pool. If it was a good enough purpose, and the group DNA was formed up well enough around it, then he could expect to elicit some self-determined desires to join and participate in this new group. If there were enough positive responses the group could go forward to form up and grow and carry out the purpose—hopefully to a successful end. 

An individual looking to forward his self-determined purpose would not always need to start from scratch. Often an existing group would have a purpose line matching closely enough to his own purpose.  He might then be able to join, participate in and help grow this group as a means to forwarding his original purpose. 

This scene, or at least an approximation of it must actually have occurred at some point in the past. That is because it is the optimal operating basis to allow the most “bang for the buck” in terms of progress made along self-determined purposes for a given amount of effort by the largest number of individuals. So a large number of individuals, all of which were well aware of the game of gaining good experience, and with the intention of growing their own self-determination and respectful of the desire of others to do the same, all working to optimize resources to allow the most success along this line would have formed themselves into just such an optimal configuration. What would have held it together was the awareness of and respect for the self-determined purposes of others more than just those of self, and the desire to allow the opportunity for others to be successful in forwarding those purposes as much as for self. The motivation for this would just be the recognition that this whole scene depended on a large pool of deaberrated group members capable of going into agreement with  and operating on a self-determined basis being available, and that the best way to guarantee such a pool would continue and grow into the future would be to allow each an opportunity for success along these lines, so as to give each a reason to stay in the area and accumulate more good experience. 

Actually this scene may have been only a sub-scene of a wider, less optimal scene, and maybe it did not happen everywhere, but I think it is still a good philosophical tool to help point the way from the current scene we find ourselves in towards an improved civilization. Please take a moment to imagine a civilization operating in this manner before reading on. 

How did this scene devolve into what we see today? One way to look at it is that the average level of group health must have declined for various reasons. The environment could have changed more quickly than the ability of the group to modify its policy framework to accommodate it. The group members may have had less than adequate training on their jobs, which led to mistakes and errors which were withheld or hidden from the rest of the group, which led to poor communication and withdrawal and individuation of the group member or a subsection of a group from the group as a whole, which led to less than complete agreement on the group policy set, which led to fractionation of the group into factions, which led to worsening production, etc. The pool of available group members shrank so that fewer and fewer new groups would be able to be manned up. 

Finally a point was reached where  someone who had developed a set of group DNA (a policy set) for their own particular purpose was selfish enough to adopt the attitude of “I want my purpose forwarded and I don’t care about your self-determination and your purposes”,  and solved his problem of not having enough self-determined response to participate in his group by forcing participation on those unwilling, or not willing enough. Thus slavery came into being. It is a not facing up to or non-confront of the pro-life way to organize and participate in groups. It is a lazy, selfish solution that sells out the future of the overall scene for what seems to be a temporary gain in the ability to forward the slaver’s selfish purposes in the present. 

Slavery institutionalizes a lack of regard for and a closing of the door on the forwarding of the self-determined purposes of others. This was a vital motivation that held the ideal scene together, so progress towards it is effectively barred.  

A slaver does not want to face up to this truth, or he would not be able to stand himself for very long, so he tells himself some lies. One of the main lies he uses is the false notion that position or case state is a mandate to arbitrary rule. Arbitrariness does away with agreement on group DNA or policy sets.  An arbitrary is the antithesis of policy, so this degrades group health further. Institutionalizing arbitrary rule on a large or small scale acts as a further barrier to progress. The slaver is continually committing the crime of barring the way, or at least making it more difficult to forward the pro-life purpose of approaching and operating in the ideal scene of civilization in his environment. This contra-life activity is enough to bar his own success in the game of recovery of self. To “win” he must now drop into a lower game of materialism and lie to himself about the existence of the higher game in which he has failed. He becomes less and less able to face up to not only the ideal scene of group health and anything that approaches it, but even anything that seems to be going in that direction.  Since a high ability to align data is required to put together group DNA or hierarchies of policy that forward a group purpose, or even to understand and operate an existing set of policy, this cutting across or thwarting progress towards higher levels of group causation results in a degradation of analytical abilities to align data in those responsible. The slaver becomes very dirty in the area of group causation, group health, group dynamics. He loses his abilities to face up to and deal with systems of policy, and to a lesser degree, any other kind of system. He now must reach for something simple enough that he can still understand that he can use as a substitute for a healthy group. The most common substitute is a personality-based hierarchy.  It doesn’t require much in the way of analytical abilities to apply. In fact, you could call it an analytical cop-out. To operate in such a hierarchy you just have to keep in mind 1) “Who is my boss?” 2) “Who do I supervise?” This is in common use by organized religion, organized crime and other areas of high levels of dirtiness in the area of groups.

Math for Philosophy

There are a few mathematical concepts that can be quite useful in evaluating life situations or options, yet are simple to explain and can be applied without any number crunching or Math classes. Usually approximate answers will do. The usual use for philosophical math is to compare the answer for a given scenario against the answer for an alternative scenario to see which is the better choice. If the two answers are far enough apart to give a clear answer after accounting for margins of error, then it is obvious which is the better option.

First, a vector is simply something with magnitude and direction. It is usually symbolized by a line with an arrowhead at one end. The longer the line, the greater the magnitude. This idea of a vector is useful because it can represent a purpose.

Purposes also have magnitude and direction. Usually the direction is taken with reference to the pro-life purpose. (See earlier blogs for how to find the pro-life direction). The magnitude would be the strength of the purpose, which is a function of how strongly the individual feels about it or supports it. The direction, of course, would show how far off or how close to the pro-life purpose (or another purpose used as a reference) the given purpose is.

Use a diagram (which can often be “drawn up” mentally) to get an idea of how valuable a given purpose is. The value is determined by how long of a “shadow” the given purpose vector would project onto the reference purpose vector (which would usually be the pro-life purpose vector). The projection is done by drawing lines from the ends of the purpose vector to be projected to the reference purpose vector in a direction perpendicular to the reference vector. The longer the shadow, the more valuable the given purpose being evaluated. Remember to take into account the direction-indicating arrowhead of the shadow. If it points in the same direction as the pro-life purpose vector all is well and good. If it is pointing in the opposite direction to the pro-life purpose vector then you have gotten ahold of a bad one. The length of the projected shadow will determine how bad or good it is. For those of you interested in tying this in with more formal mathematics, the concept just described is called the “dot product” or “inside product” of two vectors.

Note that vectors are like butterflies— they are free! You can move them anywhere you like as long as you retain the direction and magnitude. This leaves you free to place them near one another in making specific comparisons.

The next concept of philosophical math is called “area under the curve”. It is another way to compare two or more alternatives to see which is best.
First I need to define pleasure as movement or advancement in the direction of the pro-life purpose. Now, make a graph of pleasure versus time, with the amount of pleasure shown as the distance in the direction of the Y-axis or vertical axis, and the amount of time shown in the direction of the X-axis or horizontal, and to the right from the starting point. The total amount of pleasure, then, is the area beneath the “pleasure curve”, to the right of the starting point in time, to the left of the ending point in time, and above the X-axis or “zero pleasure “ line. You can usually approximate the areas under two curves well enough to compare them-- but if not ask a calculus student to show you how, because finding the area under the curve is an important area of calculus called “integration”. You don’t really need to know calculus. You could always write a computer program (or use pencil and paper) to approximate the answer by breaking up the area into little rectangles having lengths equal to the height of the curve at a given point and small widths. How small? That is up to you. The smaller the widths, the closer the approximation, but the longer it will take to calculate. You just find the area of each of the small rectangles, which of course is just length times width, and add them all up. In most cases, though, an absolute value for the area is not needed. It is enough just to know which of two or more options has the greater area under the curve, and that can often be readily seen without resorting to any kind of calculation.

Working Below the Radar: Make Yourself a More Valuable Employee, or Prospective New Hire

Note: The following is meant to refer to “add-on” level software that may be created with compiled languages such as C#.NET or VB.NET. It is not meant to refer to the creation of applications with integrated, proprietary interpreted languages such as VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), or AutoCAD’s LISP language.

Most of the large “out of the box” software tools used in today’s office work environment have a built-in customization capability. This customization capability allows the tailoring of data flows, processing, reporting, etc. A customizer niche (which is often unoccupied) is created by the facts that:
· Most users of the software do not know how to make use of these capabilities, or may not even be aware they exist.
· The above goes double for levels of management above the software users.
· Users who do not understand how to customize usually also are not aware of what types of customization could possibly be accomplished by others, so are not even at the level of making a “wish list”.
· There is usually no time or money available to train an employee on how to do desired customization.
· There is usually no time or money to hire a professional programmer to address such needs.
· If a professional programmer were hired there would have to be a formal contract developed that would fully list expected functionality and interfaces, and the final software tool would not be capable of being further evolved or revised.

In order to occupy this niche, the occupier will have to find for himself alternative motivation(s). Some possible motivations are:
· An opportunity to be creative. Someone familiar with the existing work practice can imagine or envision software tools that would increase speed and/or quality of work. It is quite satisfying then to create such tools and integrate them into an upgraded work process. Many technical jobs do not allow for as much creativity as an employee would like. Here is an opportunity to add that desired creativity as an avocation.
· Increased quality and quantity and even standardization of production, which increases the morale of the software tool user (which could be the customizer or other employees), while decreasing stress in meeting commitments and dead-lines.
· Some broader use software tools that have a high ratio of utility output to programming time input may be suitable for issuance as freeware or shareware to help to “raise the baseline” of what users of the software in other offices or companies are capable of accomplishing, and so in a small way contributing to an upgrade of production and a resulting upgrade to the economy.
· If any such shareware tools are popular enough, there may be a (usually) small financial return on the programming time invested.
· If any such shareware or freeware tools become popular enough they may serve to motivate the parent software company to incorporate them into new revisions of the parent software.
· Opening new doors by learning programming languages and becoming experienced in their use.
· A long-tenured successful niche programmer may find it desirable to “work himself out of a job”. Possible reasons for this are:
o Most or all of the large-scale customizations are done in the current job, and he would like to have further opportunity to upgrade a new work environment.
o He may want to help lower or remove some of the barriers to hiring a “green” or less-experienced employee by enabling such an employee to continue an existing viable level of production through the use of such software tools. If he has put a lot into upgrading his current position he will probably feel a strong desire to see it be continued into the future at the higher levels of quantity and quality of production he has achieved.
o He may have acquired sufficient experience to work exclusively in software development (doubtful).

If a person decides to become a “niche programmer” here are some guidelines he may find useful:

· He should plan to do most, if not all of the programming as an avocation rather than as part of his vocation. This means devoting enough of his own time to complete the creation of such software tools.
· Prioritize prospective projects according to improvements in the work flow versus time required to effect them.
· Try to get a “payback” of work flow improvements as quickly in the process of development as possible, so that the increased production can then be used to justify further development/debugging of the tool.
· Break down larger projects into smaller “steps”, or levels of functionality that can each be brought into service on their own to increase productivity and also serve as a base for further steps to build upon.
· Use existing tools regularly in the work process to help justify the development of other tools.
· Try to leave “hooks” in software tools that can be tied into or built out from with future tools.
· Try to incorporate consistency in the interfaces and functionality of such tools.
· Do not let other employees use developed tools until:
o They are fully “Beta tested” and are stable (will not crash).
o They have a simple, straight-forward GUI (graphic user interface), incorporating normal Windows functionality (or at least a subset of it), and have a complete compiled Help file that can be accessed from the GUI and gives a description of the functionality, purpose and usage of the software tool, and supplies a FAQ section.
o They meet any other agreed-upon criteria (see below).
· The niche programmer will have to realize that he is his own boss in the process of software development.
o Since he is not being financially compensated for his work he must maintain his independence from hints, directions or orders of others as to what should be developed.
o He should be sensitive to the inputs of other employees in regards to the GUI and functionality, realizing that a large part of the acceptance of a new tool is the affinity another user has for it as a result of
§ Ease of use
§ Low learning curve
§ Significant improvements in desired areas
§ “transparent” invocation or even self-invocation on an event-driven basis
o He should work out an agreement with his supervisor regarding criteria that must be met by his software tools before they can be entered into use by other employees. Such agreement should be made AFTER he has developed at least some software tools for his own use and has made significant use of them, but BEFORE he allows the use of such tools by other employees.
o He should make an effort, with the cooperation of his supervisor and other employees to collate in a central location any tools he has made that qualify according to the agreement mentioned above.
· He should realize that many companies have an employee agreement that stipulates that software developed on the job becomes the property of the company. For this reason (and for the larger reason that such development is usually not even possible at work due to the lack of an Integrated Development Environment for the chosen development language) he should do all development and compilation of larger jobs on his own time (not at work). He should also recognize that the final compiled tools he develops to the point that they can be used by other employees will then become the property of the company (if he has brought them into the office place), but that he retains full control of the source code as long as he has developed and compiled it on his own time and outside of the work place.
· He should write straight-forward, maintainable source code, realizing that at least some of the tools he creates for a particular company could also be modified for use in a possible future job in another company.
· It is recommended that the niche programmer maintain a profile “below the radar” of the IT (Information Technology) group of his company. The reasons for this are:
o The IT group usually likes to maintain the large view. This means pushing for standardization and automation rather than getting pulled into particularization. All forms of customization will be a type of particularization. Keep such off the IT plate.
o The niche programmer should recognize that there are limits to the size and scope of a project that he is capable of developing. These limits may become larger as he gains experience, but they will always exist.
o The niche programmer should always be a “good IT citizen”. This means that he should never need special attention or resources more than any other user, and that he should never jeopardize existing IT resources, such as shared network drives, shared databases, etc.
o Some guidelines to use for being a “good IT citizen” are:
§ Never write programmatically to a file or database on a network or shared drive.
§ If a database is used, make it a small, local, proprietary database. Any requirement for a large, frequently-accessed, or shared database will be a sign that the prospective project is beyond the reach of a niche programmer.
§ Keep programmatic data storage within a standard file-type of the parent software to a minimum (e.g. within AutoCAD drawing files, or Office application files).
§ Limit himself to no more than the development of “add-on” software to parent software packages that can be added by individual users and that operate in the local workspace of the parent software.
§ Do not modify, or even read from the Windows Registry.
§ Do not require that the user would need Administrator privileges on his account to make use of a developed software tool.
§ Do not require an installation program to be run.

All of this takes time and commitment. It is not for everyone, but it can be quite valuable to upgrade some of the lower-level workplace data management activities that take place at the “Indian” level.

Tip to employers:
While it is not legal to require or direct such software tools to be created by an employee on their own time without compensation, there is nothing wrong with regularly assigning tedious, repetitive tasks that are crying to be automated to someone who is capable of creating software tools to automate them and has shown a desire and willingness to do so. ;) Just be careful not to state or imply the need for such automation, or set unrealistic timetables for the completion of such work that could only be met with the use of automation unless you are willing to compensate for the creation of the software tools or allow them to be created in the workplace on company time. Remember, there are lower-level programming languages such as VBA and AutoCAD’s LISP that can be used for on-the-job development of general or ad-hoc solutions for simpler tasks.

Commitment

For those who have made progress into the impersonal zone of group dynamics it is usually easier to commit to a purpose or goal than to commit to an individual or personality. Commitment to a purpose or goal is a reach in the positive or pro-life direction (as long as it is a positive purpose) from the current position regarding the relevant life area.

Committing to a personality is a pull back down-scale to the lower band of group dynamics – the personal or social band. It can feel demoralizing or interiorizing. A better option in many cases—even for only two people—is to set up a framework of policy around a purpose that leads to the desired goal, then have both parties make a self-determined commitment to carry out this purpose rather than commit to each other. People change. They have their ups and downs, their good days and their bad hair days, but the purpose and goal committed to will remain constant. The only variable with regard to these is the degree of commitment. This is usually easier to control and maintain.

P.S. Women may want to take into account that men more commonly have advanced farther into the impersonal band of group causation and so may feel or sense more intensely the demoralization or interiorization described above.