On the other hand, if you truly understand the “name of the game” you will be able to negotiate successfully with a large selection of different people, benefitting from their resources, ideas and time.
In a successful negotiating both of you will be giving something of value. This can be money, services, things, attention, basically anything that has value. In this exchange, both parties will change somehow.
But always things don’t go as planned. One or both parties might be reluctant to change, fruitful deals may wither and everyone is left worse off.
In this text, I’m going to explore the underlying issue of non-successful interactions with people. Instead of focusing on psychology, I’m going to take a more formal approach.
By looking at human interaction from the point of view of the “Model of Hierarchical Complexity” (MHC) I will explain, how the underlying contradictions between two people’s worldviews and behavioural patterns can create unsuccessful attempts at trade, leading to broken relationships or conflict.
To understand the MHC, check out this blogpost first since now I’m going to presume you have a working understanding of it (but, you don't really need to read the post behind this link, it just helps): https://isonaminustatuleeviisas.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-smelly-fart-death-of-god-and-model-of.html
Our Shared Complexities
Since we are talking about humans, we will need to look at some developmental psychology.The MHC has many parallels to Jean Piaget’s theory of human psychological development. Piaget was concerned with the average human being developing into a functional adult. Piaget’s theory runs parallel to the MHC until the 12th stage of systematic thinking.
Stages 13-16 are only present in the MHC, representing higher levels of psychological development, beyond the norm. So after reaching the ability to think systematically and understand multivariate problems, we can say an adult human being has reached their normative mold.
The way I think about this is by imagining a normal distribution of people. Stage 12 in the MHC represents the middle of the distribution, which would also be the arbitrarily chosen IQ level of 100.
Some people may achieve higher levels of cognitive development thanks to their genes and environmental factors, like nutrition, sleep, exercise, education and play. Others may lack the genetic potential, or the environment might prevent them from reaching their potential due to poor nutrition, disease, injury, under-education or abuse.
In either case, the MHC can be understood as the underlying organising structure, that models the process of psychological development.
As children develop into adults, they learn to function in their specific environments, so as to attain resources helpful to them (the terms “environment” and “helpful” should be understood very broadly here - it is not a question of individual or group wellbeing, rather a more neutral term describing evolutionary success of individuals, groups, ideas and more.)
This developmental history is filled with particular details that are unique to the person, their group, the culture at large, and phenomena outside of those realms. To successfully forge and dismantle relationships the individual has to understand these details and how they relate to other people.
For example, a young child participating in rough-and-tumble play with their friends is learning what the existing social structures are, especially on the sensory and motor levels (MHC stages 2-4).
As they reach adolescence and early adulthood, they further their tacit and explicit - that is subconscious and conscious - understanding of higher MHC stages. This includes stages 5-12, where verbal communication, abstraction, and higher cognitive skills are located. An example of this could be a teenager getting into the local heavy metal culture. As they play an instrument, form bands, create music, and organise events they participate in these sophisticated MHC stages.
The fact that the teenager is able to accomplish these things shows that they know - either tacitly or explicitly - how to function in the social environment. At the same time, they are encountering problems that show their understanding of the particular MHC structure is lacking.
And this is where we get to the heart of the matter. If you don’t understand the MHC structure, you will fail in your endeavours with other humans.
So when the people around You aren’t behaving like you would want them to behave, you are in conflict with them. This conflict stems from tension on a certain (or several) levels in the MHC structure.
The trick here is to be able to identify, at what stage(s) the tension is, so you can successfully evaluate the risk-to-reward ratio of pursuing a certain behaviour.
If you share a common background with someone, you share similar MHC-structures up to a certain stage. The more in common you have, the more similarities you share. So, it is likely that you get along with people you have known for a long while because you have participated in the same MHC structure for a long while.
Also, as you develop through the stages, you will be able to take larger and larger chunks of the system into account. This way you can successfully form fruitful relationships with people, who only share similarities with you on the higher stages.
The Two Arguing Scientists
An example of this is two scientists, one living in Peking, one in New York. Their shared MHC structures might be limited to only elementary topics of “I need to eat and sleep, I can talk” that are only a tiny sliver of the actual breadth of the lower stages. But, their common “language” is the language of stages 11, 12, and further, they have acquired from the global scientific culture at large.It is very likely that the scientists wouldn’t really want to share their everyday life with each other, as they lack the common ground for this, but they can successfully interact thanks to the commonalities on higher stages.
If the two scientists start having an argument about breakfasts, they can most likely stop the argument in its tracks and focus on their joint study. Here they both agree that a lower stage argument is irrelevant for them. This same argument, on the other hand, could be a long-lasting issue in a family setting, that creates tension for years and years, undermining the wellbeing of the whole family.
But, should the scientists get into arguments about higher-level issues, like the methodology of the study, they might truly end up dismantling the relationships. If the scientists are lucky and skilled enough, they can identify, what’s the lowest stage where they can solve the issue. In the case of methodology, it could be for example the formal 11th stage or the systematic 12th stage.
If they are not skilled in negotiating, they might be unable to identify the lower stage issue. This can send them into arguments on the higher stages, bringing into question their shared meta-systematic or even paradigmatic understanding.
If an argument devolves here, practical action is usually very different to orchestrate together. Instead the two scientists will start sending angry emails about the philosophy of science, thus wasting their time and research money. …although, of course, this might be a beginning of a fruitful development on the higher stages for science.
Eight Useful Assumptions
Alright, so all this has been pretty abstract thus far. Here I will develop some assumptions about how to avoid the possible pitfalls that emerge when both parties are unable to agree on the right stage on which to attack a problem.1. If you end up in a conflict with a person, assume that there is a problem at least on one of the MHC stages.
2. Assume that the easiest way to solve a conflict is by identifying the lowest stage (this helps to keep the rest of the system stable).
3. Assume that it might be hard and require psychologically painful communication to identify the correct stage.
4. Assume that the less you share a common background, the more you will need to be explicit about your stance, i.e. articulate your stance well.
5. Assume that the higher the stage of the conflict, the more time the conflict will take to solve.
6. Assume that the higher the stage of the conflict, the more a person is willing to exert themselves, so they don’t have to reorganise their whole cognitive structure.
7. Assume that for any additional stage the conflict spreads to, the resolution will take more time and resources.
8. Assume that there are both solvable and unsolvable conflicts, given the real-world constraints of time and resources.
To help illustrates these assumptions, I’ll guide you through a couple of examples related to one of my areas of interest, strength training, and nutrition.
Suppose I’m working as a coach and I need to get the client eating more protein so they can make better progress in their gym goals.
If my client is an avid strength training enthusiast, who shares a lot of the common worldview of the subculture, me saying “you should get 140 grams of protein a day” might do the trick.
If my client is a busy 42-year-old CEO and a father of four, a single conversation won’t do it. I need several nutrition consultations to build trust and awareness, educate and develop practical skillsets. In other words, we together would be reorganising our MHC structures, so we can trade my expertise for his money.
If my client would be an anorexic, religiously motivated vegan immigrant from a part of the world that shares very little cultural background with me, I would be faced with a multi-stage MHC problem them. I would most likely need to spend an immense amount of time trying to understand their cultural, psychological, and physiological “landscape” before I could even suggest a behavioural change that would become an internally motivated pattern for the person.
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| Imagine the god damn miracle of the Mughal leaders and European merchants forging trade relationships! This must have been at least an MHC stage 15, possibly 16 negotiation! What a miracle! |
Summary
So, by being conscious of the commonalities and differences between your and other people’s MHC structures you can gauge how much effort it would take to engage in a fruitful exchange of time and resources.Then, in practice, you can also save your energy for worthwhile relationships, as you can identify situations where your abilities to solve a conflict won’t be sufficient.
I hope these admittedly unfinished thoughts have helped you to understand how to lead yourself through your life more efficiently and build fruitful relationships that benefit both parties.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. I wrote this in about two hours, start to finish. I'm learning to gauge how long things take, so there's that.
Enlightening
VastaaPoista