C-103. Relevance

Irrelevant particulars may well rank, along with the general angst of incomplete instruction and discontinuity’s separateness of behavioral entities (III), at the very top among behavioral afflictions. As if circumstances were not bad enough, our change efforts seem plagued by others’ (and sometimes our own!) irrelevant content and timing … and we may also find ourselves embarrassed – or worse – for our own efforts to be helpful to others’ behavior … and, most tragically, unable to help ourselves, or to be helped, in composing solutions to our problems.

Any particular instance of a noted irrelevancy indicates a nonsingularity (VIII). It represents a cognized discrepancy. It tells us, if read and read appropriately, that this intrusion, whatever its intent and for whatever reason, does not fit. Further, it tells us that if we want to be helpful (App. I), then we must achieve a comprehensive realization of behavioral architecture (C-90), of consequentiality and functionality (App. XIX) from an understanding of behavioral need, through developed capabilities, to exercised contributions to compositional change (II) for ourselves and others.

A cognized discrepancy acts – or should act — as a stop signal. But not (just!) to refuse proffered help. Nor to give up on one’s own effort. Stop to do what else? How about to consider the importance and implications of fitting in? Not of a puzzle to be solved, but of problems needing a composed solution (I). For which behavioral architecture stands out as the technological advance we should be investing in (App. XIII, App. XVII). What do we need to be able to build, and when?

As a concept, weakly explicated though it is, relevance (and any irrelevancy signal) should, even so, be nagging us to pay more attention to development’s “fittingest” leverage toward humanity’s survival, for us to be less swayed by evolution’s story of human history (App. XVI; C-38) – more attuned to, and in accord with, ADEPT’s positivity relative to ADAPT’s passivity (App. IV, App. XVII) … to adapt “it”, not just to adapt to “it.”

It is (too?) well known that individual and institutional efforts to be helpful may not succeed – at all or not as well as hoped. (“Too?” because we haven’t got relevancy’s message?) They may even be resented, resisted and/or refused. Typically these unsuccessful efforts are diagnosed as a case of “those who can, do … but that’s all they do … because that’s all they know.” Which is to say, in the context of functional realization (App. XIX), they suffer from late-state functionality (C-97), mind-bound as surely – and disastrously – as they would be if foot-bound or waist-bound. They offer developmental help only along the lines of their own developmental history: The underdeveloped leading the less developed.

There is a telling irony in all this. On the one hand the bothersome irks, the lack of accord, which incurred irrelevancies inflict on the person … while on the other hand the much greater suffering the person endures from a lack of accord (C-9) with the Nature of Things.

Behavioral architecture holds out the promise of a technological solution to the latter that might relieve much of the former. As we have remarked – now, many times – solving the behavioral problem (I: Pbeh) will help us solve many situational problems (I: Psit). And in the case of community building, in order to solve the most vexing of problems (I: P), solving the behavioral problem is a virtual necessity.

Visualize this more realized, not merely defined, concept of relevance (C-81) as a door opening up to a store of newly available human resources – resources growing, in contrast to our emptying stores of extracted resources. (Also see C-104.)

(c) R.F. Carter
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