B07 Basic Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Any bias is purely rational and only requires better thinking to stay impartial.

OR

Bias primarily exists to compel your attention to preserve your ability to function.

Anankelogy

Anankelogy defines bias generally as having to prioritize something in order to function. Your unchosen needs compel your attention to do something about them. The less resolved one of these natural needs, the more compelled to give it your full attention.

Anankelogy refers to this as your focal cycle.

1. Nonfocal phase. What your life requires remains out of awareness while fully satisfied. E.g., You feel no thirst when your body fluid levels remain at optimal levels.

2. Prefocal phase. Something your life requires starts to emerge as a necessity. E.g., You start to feel mildly thirsty but could wait a while before doing anything about it.

3. Focal phase. Something your life requires takes center stage of your awareness. E.g., You must only think about getting something to drink to quench your thirst.

4. Defocal phase. As you satisfy what your life requires, it drops out of your awareness. E.g., With your thirst satisfied, you can think more about other things.

A budding priority turns into a lingering priority if you cannot satisfy the need. Your unresolved need cannot shift to defocal or onto a nonfocal phase. Instead, it remains burningin your consciousness as it demands you do something about it. If not the need itself, then do something about the resulting pain.

The objective priority of your objective needs risk turning into a subjective priority of a subjective response, to get some kind of relief. The more you find relief without resolving the needs, the more your beliefs become distorted. For example, the less you can resolve your need for friendship and experience a norm of social media “friends” as the best you can get, the more you may develop a biasthat prioritizes these shallow relationships as the best you can get.

Need-response

Anankelogy recognizes how all natural needs sit equal before nature. Only our desperate experiences prioritize them in our biases. Need-response aims to prioritize promptly resolving needs to remove cause for cognitive-distorting pain, and to quickly restore wellness.

Modern institutions tend to normalize the fact our needs often do not promptly resolve. Many of our exposed needs cannot promptly resolve, at least not fully, because of factors beyond our personal control. Need-response “responds” to these with responsivism.

Responsivism is the belief and practice that we can promptly resolve our own needs the more we promptly respond to the needs of others. The more I respond to your personal need for security as you require it, for example, the easier for you to respond to my need for security in the unique way that I may require it.

This cuts against the norms of adversarial institutions, with their cookie cutter norms. Need-response counters as a mutuality institution that incentivizes us to personally relate to our distinct needs and preferred responses to them. By prioritizing mutual responsiveness to others instead of prioritizing mutual opposition, more needs can be promptly resolved. And less room given to distorting biases that easily tear us apart.

Reactive Problem

Bias compels you to focus more on something than another. The more your life insists you focus more on some underserved need, the less aware you tend to be of other less urgent needs. While struggling to get by, you easily overlook the urgent needs of others. Especially if their priority seems to run contrary to your prioritizing urgent needs.

If you rely on government assistance to compensate for economic disadvantages beyond your control, for example, you find little if any space in your mind to think about those who experience government as more intrusive than you. You can hardly empathize with others while in pain.

Such bias can distort your awareness. You can hardly think about what someone else needs if your own needs require you to prioritize your attention toward some king of relief. You can even find yourself rationalizing some pragmatic way to ease your most painfully pressing needs, even if violating your ethical principles. Even if violent towards others.

A little bit of partiality naturally exists when compelled to attend to some pressing need. It becomes a problem when cut off from awareness of other less urgent needs. Especially when you must obsess about your own painfully shouting needs at the expense of realizing the needs of others you negatively affect.

Responsive Solution

Let’s now get right to how this principle can solve that problem. . For now, this serves as placeholder text. When I find the time, I will post the full deal here.One way responsivism prioritizes our biases to promptly resolve needs is by applying character refunctions, such as empathy and humility.

• Empathy. The less you appreciate the perspective of others, the more your biases distort your thinking away from promptly resolving needs, and more toward coping with the resulting pain. The more you see through the eyes of others to appreciate more of reality, the more your needs can promptly resolve.

• Humility. The more you arrogantly ignore your shortcomings, the more your bias of overconfidence can distort your thinking to repeatedly ignore this source of your own pain. The freer you can acknowledge your imperfections, the more your needs can promptly resolve.

• Gratitude. The less grateful for what others do for you, the more your biases distort your thinking to assume you arrived where you’re at completely or mostly on your own. The more you show your appreciation for others, the more your needs can promptly resolve.

• Justice. The more you expect others to respond to your needs while ignoring theirs, the more such a bias distorts your thinking to perpetuate the pain inherent in conflicts. The more the higher standard you apply is fairly measured back to you, the more each other’s needs can promptly resolve.

• Endurance. The longer you ignore the threats your pain exists to warn you about, the more you tend to bias relief over removing such cause for pain. The longer you can tolerate the unpleasant experience of your body warning you of a threat, the more attentive you can be to fully remove that threat.

In addition to such character refunctions, responsivismutilizes other types of refunctions. For example, the refunction of relational knowing can correct the distorting bias of thinking exclusively in black-and-white terms.

You learn to appreciate the range of possibilities of how two or more things relate to each other. The more you learn to relate along a spectrum, for example, the less your biases pull into thinking errors that trap you in pain.

Notice how each character trait above associates with resolving needs. The more of this, then the more of that. Or less of that. This can check for such things as confirmation biasand authority bias where conditions incentivize ignoring disconfirming evidence while normalizing the resulting pain and diminished levels of functioning.

Rather than seeking to improve our thinking or shape our behavior with conformity to laws, need-response holds us accountable to empirically measurable levels of wellness. By holding authority or any of us accountable to the objective level of functioning, we become less vulnerable to the painful problems of distorting biases.

Most of all, need-response champions the organic point of bias to prioritize resolving needs as soon as possible. And to acknowledge how natural it can be for distorting biases to set in, when we must cope with the resulting pain of not being able to resolve needs. Instead of going down the rabbit hole of rationalized reasoning behind our biases, need-response goes to the source by focusing on the bias-driving needs themselves.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• How can I know if my bias prioritizes my attention toward resolution or toward mere relief?

• What if responding to the needs is not enough and we must attend to our thinking errors?

• What about “defunctions” that point to the problem of prioritizing relief over reality?

• What are some other types of refunctions that can help check the problem of biases?

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.