.png)
Anankelogy offers the public three levels: academic anankelogy, applied anankelogy, and accessible anankelogy. Each with its specific focus. This post focuses on accessible anankelogy. The Anankelogy Foundation seeks to make all three an everyday reality.
Anankelogy may feel inaccessible to those untrained in the social sciences. Its mind-bending insights may either get ignored, or watered down into silly oblivion.
Consider how psychology often gets reduced to its more digestible yet oversimplified forms. Pop psychology emerges when trying to keep rigorous psychological concepts accessible to laypersons. That can serve as a good entry point. But watering down those concepts too far risks slipping into pseudoscience.
Anankelogy anticipates the need to keep it accessible to all. So it comes packaged to you in these 9 available ways.
1. Accessible anankelogy invites armchair social scientists.
Scientists are trained to watch out for distorting conclusions, such as from confirmation bias and similar mental traps. We know correlation is not necessarily causation. Our observations may miss something, which undermines certainty that one thing created the change in the other.
But we risk slipping into the opposite extreme of overlooking meaningful relationships when dismissing an observation as mere correlation. Accessible anankelogy puts you one step ahead of these reasonable concerns. Instead of constantly doubting your intuition, accessible anankelogy encourages you to frame your own testable hypotheses. You can do this with the anankelogical tool of relational knowing, or RK for short.
2. Accessible anankelogy expands your awareness with “relational knowing”.
Most of the time, we think in simple black-and-white terms. We miss so much of the gray area in between. So we rely on impersonal rules to fill in the gaps. Trouble often results.
Accessible anankelogy offers you the tool of relational knowing, or RK for short, to overcome our tendency to overlook nuance affecting your needs. With RK, you frame your own testable hypotheses. You identify for yourself the associations between two or more things affecting your needs. You observe four types of associations:
more-more: more of this, then more of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction)
more-less: more of this, then less of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions)
less-more: less of this, then more of that (“negative relation” as both move in opposite directions)
less-less: less of this, then less of that (“positive relation” as both move in same direction)
As something goes up, you observe another thing going down. The more of this thing over here, then the more of that over there. That’s relational knowing, to know matters relationally yourself. You think relationally and more directly, instead of getting tossed around by clever arguments of others.
You observe that the more your boss gets angry, for example, the more defensive you get. You know that the more your boss appreciates your contributions with an occasional praise, the more incentivized to do your best for the team. You see how the more openly vulnerable you are with her, the more she trusts you with her own secrets. You note how the less you obsess over stuff that could go wrong, the more prepared you are to improve your chances for success.
The more you can identify what’s specifically needed, and you know you can appropriately do it, the less pressured from hostile expectations. The more internally motivated to personally engage each other, the less externally pressured by onerous impersonal rules.
3. Accessible anankelogy democratizes science.
The more you can identify for yourself these need-affecting associations, the less vulnerable you will be to the apparent priesthood of academic experts. That statement serves as another example of RK. The more of this, then the more (or less) of that.
Any layperson can frame what they observe with a testable statement. If you connect the dots in these need-affecting relations and still find yourself depending on experts to direct your personal affairs, then you invalidate the above association predicting your expected independence. At least for now. The more you utilize this basic scientific tool in your life, the greater the chance your needs will more fully resolve, and enable you to become more independent minded.
Each of these “relational knowing” statements could be tested. But the most meaningful result has less to do with scientific accuracy and more to do with how fully you resolve such needs. The more resolved your needs, the more other matters can take care of themselves. See, more RK statements.
Such statements are best framed as tenuous associations. You remain open to further possible inputs. You tolerate ambiguity, and let go of having to be certain. The more you remain uncertain about the little things, the more you can be certain about the big things. The more you can benefit from anankelogy, the more your needs can resolve more fully, and the better your life—and all of our lives—will be.
4. Accessible anankelogy lowers your risk of personal bias.
Anankelogy recognizes bias as prioritizing what you need. The more your needs fully resolve, the less vulnerable you are to distorting biases. The more your needs fully resolve, the better you can function and relate honestly with the world around you and within you.
The more your needs fully resolve, the more open you are to appreciating reality as it actually occurs, instead of feeling you must interpret it to serve your pressing needs. The more resolved your needs, the more trustworthy your intuitions. The less resolved your needs, the faultier your intuitions, as your feelings compel you to sidestep the full truth to ease your urgent needs.
We still utilize the null hypothesis to minimize the risk of confirmation bias. We still rely on the discipline of the scientific method, but we’re not biased to assume that’s the only way to appreciate the truth affecting our experience of needs.
Accessible anankelogy recognizes and affirms your capacity to realize more of reality the more your needs resolve. Distortions seep in when generalizing for relief from the anguish of urgent needs. Once I cling to a generalization, I am at risk of being dragged into accepting what is only partially true or not true at all—to relieve the pain of my unmet needs.
The more your needs resolve while seeking to know what is real, the more you experience epiphanies opening new perspectives to see more clearly. To curb distractions from bias, we actually rely more on staying atop of our needs, to lower the risk of distorting biases. And you don’t need to be a trained scientist to do that.
5. Accessible anankelogy uses simpler-to-understand language.
Academics routinely use mystifying terms embedded in thick language to dive deeper into observable phenomena. Academic anankelogy is no different. But that risks keeping anankelogy inaccessible to those who do not have the time to dig so deep. Or to look up new words.
Accessible anankelogy converts some of the more mystifying terminology in academic anankelogy into easier to use vocabulary. Such as introducing you to a new concept, but bypassing the classical Greek work for it with a more familiar label.
For example, academic anankelogy refers to something it calls “nomoscentricity”. That breaks down to “law” (‘nomos’ is a Greek word for law) and “centricity”. In other words, centered on law in contrast to centered on needs for which laws ostensibly exist to serve.
Accessible anankelogy turns this heavy term into “civil legalism”. Or simply “legalism”. But qualifying it as “civil” helps to differentiate this from religious legalism or moral legalism. Civil legalism simply means putting the role of law ahead of the needs for which laws ostensibly serve.
Wherever possible, the Anankelogy Foundation uses the accessible anankelogy term over the less accessible academic version. Instead of speaking about a “referent need” we will talk about a “resource need”. Referent covers more ground, but not enough of a difference for the layperson.
The Anankelogy Foundation invites you to become a member of this website and join the discussion forum to let us know if we should simply other overbearing anankelogical terms. We hope to keep our discussion in easily understood language. Unless you’re comfortable with the more collegiate terminology of academic anankelogy. We respect your needs because, you know, we understand and appreciate our different needs.
6. Accessible anankelogy debunks divisive experts.
You don’t need any college educated or credentialed professional to tell you when you are in pain. Now you can also know for yourself that your pain points directly to unresolved needs—not from your lack of expert knowledge or from some chemical imbalance in your brain or whatever some acclaimed expert declares it to be.
Accessible anankelogy lets you know that so-called experts are wrong when failing to account for any inflexible needs. Talking heads who try to get you to take sides against anyone’s inflexible needs—or inflexible priority of needs—is wrong, wrong, wrong! Whenever such experts cajole you to oppose others for needing differently, oppose them first.
Biased experts expect you to go along with them, to ease the pain of your unmet needs. Too many of us fall for this trap. We easily cave in to their lies that settling for pain relief is the best we can get. Wrong! Such a self-serving approach locks us into mutual defensiveness, locking us into pain, and needlessly alienating ourselves from each other.
When powerful experts depend upon keeping you and I in managed perpetual pain, by limiting our chances to fully resolve needs to remove all pain, their influential power is in vain. The more trapped from elites preventing you from fully resolving your needs, the more accessible anankelogy challenges you to cut ties. Let accessible anankelogy vanquish these vicious cycles trapping you in endless pain.
7. Accessible anankelogy holds us all accountable to mutual respect.
Apply this bias-nullifying approach to divisive political discussions. Whenever political debates fail to affirm the inflexible needs on each side (as most so-called debates do these days), they needlessly pit us against each other. Such political and media elites are gaslighting you. They’re trying to trick you into wasting your precious energy opposing the needs of others that cannot change, instead of challenging their pain-perpetuating influence.
You can apply this simple “mutual respect test”: If the political debate does not limit disagreement to what we do about our different priority of needs (respectful) and strays into the no-man land of any inflexible needs (disrespectful), you can easily know they are wrong. Repeatedly provoking mutual defensiveness over needs no one can change helps keep political elites in power over you. Opposing what others need does not extinguish moral conflict, but enflames it.
They could well be partially right, but opposing any inflexible need taints their whole argument. Demand better. Denounce their attempts to pull you into their audience-capture outrage porn. Put your love over their hate. You can dissolve political bias with accessible anankelogy by simply acknowledging the different priority of inflexible needs before questioning what they do about them. This “mutual respect invitation” allows far more space to affirm each other’s intrinsic worth.
Use the positive-negative-positive approach. You may be familiar with this way to package unpleasant news if you ever received a late payment notice. “We value you as our customer. Please note you are behind payment. If you already sent in your payment, then we appreciate continuing to serve you as our valued customer.” It follows a proven three-step process for couching some bad news in between some good news.
Positive news: AFFIRM. Affirm their inflexible needs and their innate value.
Negative news: QUESTION. Then question what they insist we must do about them, and how their approach impacts your needs.
Positive news: CONTINUANCE. Close on an encouraging assurance that you seek to continue this working relationship.
Here are two examples of applying this proven messaging format to accessible anankelogy’s “mutual respect invitation”, one from each political side of the fence.
“I respect your need to defend your family and property with your collection of guns. I invite you to recognize my need to stay safe from traumatizing gun violence. The more I respect your need for gun ownership, the more I hope you will respect my need for some kind of gun control.”
“I respect your need to stay safe from traumatizing gun violence. I invite you to recognize my need to defend my family and my property with my collection of guns. The more I respect your need for some kind of gun control, the more I hope you will respect my need for gun ownership.”
Let this inviting approach to our political differences shift us away from the mutual defensiveness keeping political elite’s hold over us. Debunk the divisiveness. Debunk selfish debating. Debunk mutual provocations.
Use this approach to debunk any “expert” trying to divide us into camps against each other. Let’s prioritize instead our respect for each other’s fixed priority of needs. We cannot change the needs themselves. But we can adjust what we’re doing about them, and undermine powerful elites in the process. In other words, love works better than hate.
8. Accessible anankelogy makes it easier to respect everyone’s needs.
The Anankelogy Foundation works with Value Relating LLC to create free tools to apply accessible anankelogy to various challenges in our lives. Value Relating has been working on a set of tools to bridge the gulf between the powerful and relatively powerless.
One version of their tool is for the powerless layperson to “speak truth to power” (sttp). A parallel version is for the influential powerful to “listen to those impacted” (ltti). Value Relating fits these into their “impact parity model” for equalizing attention to each other’s needs. Here are some tools Value Relating has in various stages of development.
8.1) Harmony Politics [sttp-HP]. This addresses the problem of political polarization by respecting each other’s inflexible priority of politicized needs. See this apply the mutual respect test to eight key political issues. This tool is currently available at Value Relating, while open to continual improvement.
8.2) Estimated Innocence Form [sttp-EIF; ltti-EIF]. This addresses the failure of law-centered institutions, including innocence projects, to clear the unexonerated wrongly convicted innocent. This tool is currently available at Value Relating, while open to continual improvement.
8.3) Pain Remover [sttp-EO; ltti-EO]. This addresses the tendency to put up with the mild pain of many partially resolved needs by fully resolving needs our current institutions overlook. This tool is not yet publicly available, but could be soon.
8.4) Legitimacy Quotient [sttp-LQ; ltti-LQ]. This addresses the failure of authority to effectively serve the needs for which their institutions exist by supporting and rating each powerholder’s competency. This tool is not yet publicly available.
8.5) Social Love [sttp-SL; ltti-SL]. This addresses the creeping alienation in society by cultivating stronger ties through more deliberate communication of each other’s overlooked needs. This tool is not yet publicly available.
The Anankelogy Foundation seeks to build a platform to freely provide such tools to you and to anyone in need. Value Relating would serve as one of many individual service providers to support resolving each other’s power-impacted needs. The tools are free, but added support would cost extra.
Both the powerless and powerful in these power relations would benefit. With their advantage in resources and potentially more to gain from this mutualizing process, participating powerholders bear most if not all of the cost of added supports.
9. Accessible anankelogy equips you to cultivate more love.
Accessible anankelogy emphasize love as paramount. Not the feel-good love of friends or the romantic love of lovers, but what anankelogy refers to as “social love”.
You don’t need to feel anything toward a stranger to respect their private space, or to give them a kind complement, or avoid becoming too noisy around them. Such respect could be considered a kind of love, of respecting the needs of others as you would have them respect your needs.
We easily assume that’s what rules are for. But do you really require a rule to warn you against taking something that isn’t yours? Aren’t you motivated not to steal from others more from the incentive that would not want others to steal anything from you?
Accessible anankelogy makes more room for your intrinsic motivation that demonstrates your respect for the unspoken and obvious needs of others. Then give you tools to demonstrate your respect for those less obvious needs and their unspoken needs. We cut through the thick layers of alienation to ask what they need or expect of us.
The more you attempt to connect with what others seem to need, and take kind steps to find out, the more inspired they would do the same in kind. We all could rely less on rational-legal authority. Accessible anankelogy can help us replace a primacy of rules with the supremacy of love.
Your response to this need-responsiveness
What do you think about accessible anankelogy? Can you see yourself crafting your own relational knowing statements? Do you envision relating more closely with your needs without vulnerably relying on experts who don’t know you? Do you wish to connect more deeply with others? To remove the cause of pain over mere pain-relief? Do you have any questions or suggestions? Or simply want to learn more?
Follow the discussion in the forum. Become a site member to add to the discussion. Consider becoming a member of the Anankelogy Foundation to help integrate this need-responsive understanding into our intersecting lives. Ready to spread some love?
Your responsiveness to accessible anankelogy
Your turn. Consider one or more of these options to respond to this need-responsive content.
Check our Engaging Forum to FOLLOW discussions on this post and others. JOIN us as a site member to interact with others and to create your own forum comments.
Explore similar content by clicking on the tags below. Find similar content under this anankelogy category.
Share this content with others on social media. Share the link to share the love.
Check out recent posts of interest to you.
Add a rating below to let others know how much of a good read this was for you.
Write a comment below to give others an independent perspective on this content.
Recommend this on Facebook. Introduce anankelogy to your social media contacts.
Lastly, support us in building this new love-nurturing alternative to our hate-enabling institutions. You can help us spread some love.
Comentários