C-82. Unbalanced balancing

In initially discussing the balance requisite and its associated dynamic relationships (XI), we suggested that the task here is like riding upright on more than one horse at a time … indeed, a lot more than one horse. As we saw later in looking at the potential of a dynamic profile assessment (DPA, in App. XVII) we find that there are many balance concerns (“horses”) we will encounter in dealing with where emphasis is to be placed on capabilities developed and/or to be developed.

Hence the need to balance one’s balancing, to avoid the calamities that can come in consequence of imbalanced balancing. Strategies – even metastrategies – may be founded, then foundered, by over-emphasis on a given balance problem. Take, for example, the individual who gives priority to agreeableness over understanding, who in relationship with others turns out to be more willing than able (in many respects). This agreeableness emphasis is the silent saboteur of effective messaging, notably but not exclusively in interpersonal communication.

Or consider the professional observer whose emphasis on the order of things (relative to the Nature of Things) provides a defensible authority for observations made of orderings found after the fact (ATF) but at the cost of observations limited in many ways (e.g., as seen in the BPO bias [C-39: body/step >1; particulars/generality >1]). We have characterized one of the worst consequences we have seen of the overemphasis on the order of things as “back-loaded,” looking backward ATF, at steps made and taken, for instruction on going forward. In consequence of this our principles of and for behavior are severely imbalanced. We have derived from particulars four kinds of ATF principles: norms, actuarials, statutes (laws as a defacto theory of behavior) and nomothetic (universals – the limited form of generality when working with particulars). But what of the two kinds of principles, general but not based on particulars (III), that we can derive from the Nature of Things: The constant general persisting conditions (GPC: partial order, consequentiality, discontinuity) and the behavioral requisites and imperatives which follow from those conditions?

Imbalanced principles hinder our work at and in the frontier (App. XVI). They exemplify the magnitude of the impediment posed to our problem solving (0:S-P; IV), and to the development of capabilities needed for more productive problem solving. Clots and clogs (XI) only make imbalanced balancing worse. They extend the simple-mindedness farther, knotting together a set of imbalanced emphases, such as those evident in the BPO bias. Adopted – even adapted to – as normative behavior (e.g., as a cultural or schooled dictate) they yield a very inertial impediment.

They get in the way of our meeting the need to get turned around (C-58), to heed the advice of the Vermont farmer (C-18) that we not start from where we are. Mired in Stage 4, that is (App. XIX). Saying vague things like, “We need to think outside of the box,” instead of referring to the mapping functionality of the four stages of consequentiality as a procedural tool (App. VII; C-83, C-86).

(c) 2013 R.F. Carter
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