[From Bill Powers (2007.06.28.0830 MDT)]
Mike Acree
(2007.06.27.0930 PDT) –
This level of verbal
generalization isn’t quite what I’m thinking of. Of course whatever
references one chooses at the principle level are “good”.
That’s
how we define
“good” (“Bad” is a principle we try not to maintain).
What I’m asking about is a “higher good”.
I hadnt seen
myself as having said anything quite so trivial. Its certainly
possible for people to do things which they themselves perceive as
bad. Thats a high-level error, and attempts to deal with it give
rise to much of what is called psychopathology. The question of
why it is a high-level errorWhats good about being good? as
you put itwas addressed most directly by Nathaniel Branden in The
Psychology of Self-Esteem, who argues that self-esteem is fundamental
to human motivation.
When people do things they themselves perceive as bad, they are in
conflict. Part of them likes doing the bad thing for one set of good
reasons: from that standpoint it is good. The other part dislikes it for
a different set of reasons, so not doing it is good. This is the
classical conflict boiled down to its essence: I want to do X and I want
to NOT do X, each for its own set of good reasons. Since that is
impossible, the control systems involved are canceling each other out or
vacillating back and forth. They resist being pushed either way. They
have taken each other out of action.
People consciously identify, most often, with one side of a conflict.
That becomes the “good” side, and the other is the
“bad” side. In the method of levels, we handle conflicts by
trying to bring the sides equally into awareness. Then the person can
take a point of view that favors neither one, and reorganization then
usually resolves the conflict quickly. As long as you favor one side, you
only strengthen the other side: yin and yang.
“Self-esteem” is simply short for saying that my perception of
self matches my reference level for self (in whatever dimensions I’m
thinking of). That brings us right back to saying that what is
“good” is whatever we have set a positive reference level for,
and have achieved. A certain set of characteristics of the self is chosen
as the target, and that defines what we will mean by a “good”
experience of the self. Artistic, sensitive, empathetic, caring, and
generous; practical, tough, brave, powerful, victorious. Achieving those
sets of goals would, for a person choosing either set, result in a sense
of zero error and satisfaction with oneself, and achievement of either
set would be judged, by the person adopting those aspirations, as good.
Yet each person would judge the other as not good. It’s the same when the
conflicting sets of admired characteristics belong to control systems
inside the same person.
Those
organisms which make moral distinctions need to perceive themselves as
good just because taking any action entails valuing the beneficiary of
the action. I think theres some question about the utility or
necessity of moral concept; morality, in the cynical view, was invented
by the intellectually strong and physically weak for the control of the
physically strong and intellectually weak.
But saying that is choosing the side of the intellectually strong as
defining morality, whereas the physically strong and intellectually weak
see their aims as the good ones. They define morality, too, as their
preferred way of doing things, and see the ivory-tower intellectuals as
deluded and ineffective. They do not see their own intellects as weak;
just as realistic and practical.
As George
Spencer Brown says in his book A Lions Teeth, If laws and
penalties are adequate, there can be no need of a second system of
prohibitions, called morality, which, unbacked by law, is merely used by
the unscrupulous to exploit the gullible. (Students of B:CP
may well doubt whether the system of laws and penalties works so well,
either.)
The penalties are simply properties of the current (social) environment.
One takes them into account, just as one takes into account the penalties
for ignoring properties of the current physical environment. They simply
exist.
Anyway, morality is not the same as law; morality is the set of
principles a person has adopted, supports, and accepts as guides for
behavior. Laws are externally enforced whether an individual accepts them
or not; principles are internally perceived and maintained only if
they are accepted. If you want to use the word morality for
externally-imposed commandments, then just use the word principles for
the internally-imposed ones. A person can reject laws and adopt
principles, or adopt laws as personal principles (pay your way, keep your
word, do no injury – or even, obey the law).
Are such principles good? If you accept them and control to maintain
them, you say yes. If you reject them, you consider them bad.
And indeed I
have often found that moral judgments get in the way of dealing
effectively with a person or situation. But once moral concepts
(not just a particular standard) become part of our cultural environment,
and at least until an individual manages to transcend them (and this is a
part of many esoteric doctrines, from Carpocratian Christianity to
Tantra), I think we have little choice about the need to perceive
ourselves as good people.
This is my whole point. It’s not that we have little choice: we have none
at all, because this is a matter of definition. To be a good person is to
live up to your reference conditions, WHATEVER THEY ARE. That is what we
mean by “good.” When Nixon said “I am not a
crook” he was saying “I am a good person.”
The need for a
perception of justice also goes very deep, I think. It doesnt
appear to be something that children have to be taught; indeed, judgments
of fairness intrude where we dont think they belong, as in their
grappling with randomness (Its the red ones turn). What would
liberals or conservatives get out of seeing their standards
enforced? Removal of the large error of seeing other people
flouting the rules and getting away with it.
But that is independent of what the rules are, so it’s a principle
– applying the same rule to behavior whether it is someone else’s
behavior or one’s own. Is it a good thing to uphold that principle? If
you say yes, then you will feel bad if you accidentally fail to obey it,
and try to correct the error – and you will do the same if someone else
fails to obey it. Or you say the rules apply to people, but some human
beings are not people (they are enemy combatants). If you say no, then
you just apply the rules whenever you feel like it. You say you like to
be creative and spontaneous, which are good things, not robotic or
compulsive, which are bad things. Of course when it comes to obeying
rules, most people are thinking of a particular set of rules, the ones
they accept. They tend to apply those rules to everyone. But other rules
are rejected and called “bad”, and people don’t mind if others
get away with flouting those rules. Whatever the rule, if you’ve set it
as a reference condition, you will consider it a good rule. How could you
not? If you set a reference condition and then avoid it, you are not a
control system but a runaway positive feedback system.
My point is that the relationship of “good” to reference levels
is very commonly reversed: it is said that a reference level is set high
because it is good, whereas I say it is called good because it has been
set high, for higher-level reasons or just because that is how it came
out after reorganization.
I like the questions
youre asking, and your prodding us to apply MOL to our own posts.
(If we wanted a more pretentious name, I think we would be justified in
calling it phenomenological method.)
Yes, the method of levels is a phenomenological method: the person who is
at the focus is called the “explorer” because the point is for
the guide and the explorer to explore phenomena of awareness, rather than
the guide’s correcting, directing, analyzing, or evaluating the reported
content of the explorer’s awareness. The guide knows where the fish are
likely to be; the explorer finds them and deals with them. The guide has
a fishing pole, too, but at the end of his line there is no
hook.
But I am not
sure the questions are so difficult, even if the answers arent commonly
recognized. (Or maybe I have yet to grasp the questions you are
asking.) I puzzled for some time on what liberals and conservatives
were really controlling, understanding the high gain for such peculiar
references. Why should anybody care so intensely what other people
ingest? Conservatives want people to be able to treat cancer with
laetrile, but not marijuana; for liberals its exactly the reverse.
How silly can it get?
Off-duty, guides are permitted to think things like that. On duty, the
guide avoids getting involved with the content, and looks only for ways
to move the point of view (one hopes to a higher level). Neither the
guide nor the explorer can predict how any conflict will be resolved, or
what subject will come up next. When I speak like this, by the way, I am
not being a guide.
Most people
on this list will have no trouble thinking of posts whose main purpose
seemed to be to say: Look, I hold the correct values, unlike those
incomprehensible other groups, which I put down to make myself look
better.
Of course. My values are always the good ones. How could you have a value
that was a bad one, that you avoided living up to? You would have to stop
being a control system to do that. You don’t have to make yourself look
better; you know you are already better if your perception is the way you
want it to be.
I’m trying to show that this is true not only of all people, but of all
internal points of view with large positive magnitudes of reference
signals. If perception fails to match the reference signal, that is felt
as a bad thing, and you feel yourself trying to correct the error even if
you don’t know consciously exactly what the error is. When the error goes
away, the state of perception at that time is “good.” No error.
It doesn’t matter what the perception is about.
Best,
Bill P.
