Is PCT really about violence?

[From Bill Powers (930928.1605 MDT)]

Hal Pepinski (930928) --

I have been trying to describe the mindset I find myself
adopting as I work within PCT. I find myself there in the same
mindset as I have otherwise modeled as "violence."

Then I suggest that you treat this as evidence that you don't yet
understand PCT. More important, you don't yet understand what
_kind_ of theory PCT is. PCT isn't a proposal about how people
behave: it's a proposal about how they WORK, no matter what
behavior they happen to be producing. Whether the behavior is the
kind of which you approve or the kind you'd like to see changed,
the model remains exactly the same. People who get along together
nonviolently and noncoercively are just as good examples of
control systems as people who indulge regularly in force and
violence.

One difficulty that many newcomers have is with the word
"control." People have told me that I ought to stop using that
term and call the theory something else. But I feel that there is
a good reason for people disliking the term control, and that in
coming to understand why they dislike it they will learn
something important about control and about human nature.

Control is a basic natural process that has been very poorly
understood. Most of the problems people have with control arise
from this lack of understanding. Consider, for example, "self-
control." Self-control, as commonly understood, means keeping
yourself from doing something you want to do, or forcing yourself
to do something you don't want to do. But in PCT, this is
evidence of conflict: the problem is that you want to do two (or
more) things that are incompatible with each other, so you have
to force yourself to behave according to one goal while you
actively suppress or overcome another control system inside
yourself that is trying to achieve a different goal. When self-
control is needed, this is evidence of a failure of the
organization of control systems. Unconflicted control doesn't
feel like forcing yourself to do anything or to overcome
anything: it just feels like doing things, effortlessly. Most of
the effort you feel in doing ordinary things comes from you
fighting yourself. The Zen masters knew this long ago, although
they didn't understand how it comes about.

People don't like to be told to control themselves because they
know that there's something wrong when they have to do that. If
they really understood how control works, however, they'd realize
that what they object to is being put into conflict with
themselves. It isn't control itself that they dislike; they
dislike the consequences of setting up their own control systems
in a self-defeating way.

In relationships between people, control gets a bad name in
another way. People who don't understand that EVERYONE controls
regularly make the mistake of trying to control other people. The
people to whom this is done don't like it, for reasons which PCT
can explain in detail, and retaliate by trying to control right
back, which the original controllers don't like, either. This is
the etiology of all human conflicts like the ones we see in their
logical extension in places like the former Yugoslavia. Violence
is the natural result when living control systems try to control
each other.

PCT teaches us how control works in a living organism, and so
teaches us what to expect when living organisms interact in a
controlling way. With an understanding of PCT, it's no longer
necessary to play out the game of control and countercontrol
mindlessly, as most people do. When you understand that pushing
on another control system naturally produces a counterpush, you
can predict immediately that pushing will simply create, quite
naturally and automatically, a effort counter to your own effort.
Your own effort is producing the countereffort that thwarts it.
If producing that countereffort isn't what you want, then you'll
naturally look for some other way that will work better. Of
course you may have some reason for wanting to elicit active
opposition. PCT doesn't forbid you to do so. It simply tells you
what to expect.

It's certainly not necessary for people to try to control each
other. Given our culture and history, it's not easy to work out
noncontrolling ways of living together, but it's possible. It's
particularly hard to do when interacting with others who will try
to control you at the drop of a hat, and apparently enjoy it
without considering the consequences. But it's possible, with
practice, to figure out how to opt out of that game and seek
other ways. I think that some people have understood this
situation and have tried for millenia to find other ways -- but
without the understanding of human nature that would help them
pin down exactly what's wrong and therefore what to do about it.

[As I consider another model] I find I get more of the
consequences I seek, as against confirming fear and distrust of
others as I live within the violent control model.

As I said, control theory applies to all behavior. When you speak
of "getting more of the consequences you seek," you're describing
a control situation. You compare the consequences you're getting
with the consequences you want, and use the difference as the
basis for adjusting how you act. That's straight undiluted PCT.
Fear and distrust of others is created through uninformed
interactions with other control systems that are also uninformed
by PCT. Mutual fear and distrust certainly do exist. But they
exist because people don't understand how they and others work,
and therefore keep doing things, like trying to control others,
that only increase the fear and distrust.

I would like to hear how your "other model" is constructed. I am
quite confident that it will turn out to be closer to the actual
implications of PCT than the concept you're rejecting under the
false impression that it _is_ PCT. Violence represents a failure
in an organization of control systems; it represents the actions
that a control system will produce when it's managed to allow
itself to be forced to extremes where control is on the edge of
total failure. You have somehow come to characterize control
behavior in terms of situations where control is about to break
down, a situation that no foresighted control system would ever
allow to occur. And you're thinking of the way control systems
interact when they're ignorant of their own nature, and treat all
other living systems the same way they treat any object. You
can't deny that people often do behave in this way -- but control
theory does not cause that. Ignorance of control theory causes
it.

ยทยทยท

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Best,

Bill P.