[From Kenny Kitzke (990810.1300EDT)]
<Bill Powers (990809.0633 MDT)>
Thanks for your post Bill. It is so thought provocive, I don't know where to
start or where to end. 
I guess that makes it worthwhile.
<I had in mind the initial growth of the hierarchy.>
I understand and agree. Our personal control reference hierachies seem to
grow over a lifetime by a process of learning and experiencing, the details
of which are not totally understood.
<From what the Plooijs
seem to have found, the hierarchy has reached the sequence level by the age
of 18 months, so we could expect the system-concept level to begin
functioning not too long after that. What the Plooijs reported was that
just after a new level comes into view, its operation looks stereotyped, as
if the reference signals were not being varied by a higher level of control
system.>
This makes intuitive sense even though I have not studied their experiments.
Of course, I think this argues for the possibility of a higher or 12-Level of
Perception perhaps being formed as a person searches for the deepest meanings
of life?
<But as the next level begins to form, _random_ variations appear,
so that for a time behavior seems to become _less_ organized, even
regressing to earlier stages.>
I agree this is quite possible. I do not agree that the variations *need* to
be random. Can't they be studied and somewhat organized? When the
perceptual concept of S-R behavioral science became a disturbance to you, was
your look down on it really by random ideas? Did ice cream appear as a
possible explanation that was rejected until the idea of a control loop
randomly came along in your mind?
In my case, Catholicism wasn't giving me comfort about moral and spiritual
aspects of my conscious mind. I certainly considered the gamut and read
about the world's main relgions and philosophers. I regressed all the way to
perhaps there is no God at all and the Bible is a myth. If this is the sense
in which you are using "random," in a sense of considering a lot of
alternatives before latching on to something, then we are closer together on
this aspect of higher levels.
<I don't doubt that reorganization continues throughout life, at all levels.
However, as each level acquires a broader range of controlled variables,
and as all the levels acquire increasing skill, the occasions for
reorganization become fewer -- that, after all, is the point of acquiring
the systems in the hierarchy, to learn systematic ways of controlling one's
experiences so that the large errors that drive reorganization don't happen
any more.>
No quarrel. My last system level reorganization has dramatically changed
what variables I control and made that control more effective and life
dramatically better as I experience it.
<I'm not the only one who has remarked how hard it is to effect any changes
at the system concept level. In part, I think, this is because any change
at that level has far-reaching consequences at all the lower levels, so any
reorganization is more likely to increase than decrease intrinsic error. We
may reorganize at that level, but we're likely to reorganize right back to
where we were. This must be the case for any system, once it reaches a
state of minimum error: any further change is likely to be for the worse,
even if the minimum of error is only relative to local conditions.>
Now, we are starting to diverge. I sense that if your beliefs are disturbed
with big error (intrinsic to life itself or not), you can reorganize quite
quickly at the systems level. And, if your systems level is disturbed,
well...
At the conference you elegantly described an important change you personally
made in your life. You said you had what turned out to be a naive belief
that scientists were interested in the truth. BTW, I am paraphrasing what I
perceived you said, and please correct my rendition.
As life with PCT went on, you discovered a disturbance to this belief.
Various systems references kept at least some psychologists from behaving as
scientists according to your belief. I assume you handled this by changing a
systems concept of what science was really about in your own mind regardless
of what others did? That reduced the error for you and off you went doing
science in the way you perceived it should be done, even if others let you
down.
Are such changes in systems references necessarily hard or slow? What about
how fast conflict can change when you move up a level in MOL? Can't there be
a level above systems references where they can turn on a dime? Not that
they always do, but that it can be that way.
<A religious conversion, I would guess, results from a reorganization at the
system concept level. The new systematic way of looking at the world and
oneself results in a marked reduction in overall error, as new principles
are adopted and old ones are changed or dropped, resulting in the
resolution of conflicts both external and internal. The systemwide error
reduces below the level formerly accepted as normal, which may explain the
sense of peace and calm that is felt, the born-again feeling.>
Yes, indeed. That is why so many with that feeling want to tell everyone
else about it. From PCT, I've learned what a waste of time this is.
<This sort of conversion experience is not limited to religion; John B.
Watson described one in which he suddenly realized that the bird in his hand
was being
caused to struggle by the sight of its nest. For the rest of his life, that
was _his_ system concept regarding behavior.>
Again, I agree. The 12th level of perception I am exploring is not limited
to religious concepts, although they may be in there. For example, I
listened to the Dalai Lama on TV the other day. He believes in a Spiritual
element of man that survives physical death and allows reincarnation in a new
body. He believes there is no Creator other than the one in his mind.
Fascinating stuff.
I've have used the term Spiritual Level to separate it from the more physical
world of natural experience of the body and mind. By definition it is
something about the human mind not found in the rest of the rhelm of living
things. I think that your human spirit causes you to search for the truth
about behavior. Where does that yearning for truth and discovery come from?
Did you create it? Were you taught it? Do others have it? Do all men have
it? Do apes have it but to less evolved degree? These are questions to
which I would like truthful answers. But, then again, according to Chris
Cherpas and his Enneagram Types, I'm just a Romantic, perhaps a hopeless one
at that.
I see your rather long referenced post is getting to the crux of a 12th Level
of Perception. So, I will continue on that in a separate post with a new
Kenny
···
subject: The Twelfth Level.
) the more I learn the more i understand how much I
here.>