C-80. (Not just) Enough already!

When we take notice of an imbalance of emphasis – of which imbalances we have touched on many so far, we might well consider lessening this or that emphasis to achieve a better balance. However, in many cases that prior emphasis was entitled. It met a need. So what is indicated is that we should look to increase the emphasis on the other side of the ratio.

“Enough already!” in this sense is to be taken as a unique “stop-start” signal (VIII). It does not just say cease doing something. It also says start doing something. The “stop” was a “stop to think.” That is to say: Consider the consequentiality of the imbalance … and compose your next steps accordingly.

Even the most preliminary, approximate of Dynamic Profile Assays (App. XVII) yields such potential information to help shape up performance (C-75). Our need for such a signal is continual. We are exposed to them daily, although we may not give them (enough of!) our attention and cognition. For example, the news may overemphasize behavioral dysfunction (e.g., crime) and we wish there were more good news. But wishing does not make it so.

Sometimes the signal is obscured, even hidden by circumstance – sometimes of our own making. Consider, for example, getting married. The behavioral problem of marriage as community then arises: How to make community work along with continuing to make one’s own life work? Experience with making a community work may have been limited in family and in school. Friendships and extracurricular team work at school may have offered limited preparedness. But the shaping up of the marriage will depend on how well the individual/community ratio is read (with its implications for developing productive interdependence: C-71), raising and lowering emphases on self and marriage accordingly, and then guided by a sense of needed functionality and consequent development of capability (aka cooperation) making the marriage work. (Thus it is that although 50-50 may apply to the division of labor between the partners, it fails to state the added work required from each partner to sustain their dual behavioral entity responsibilities. Troubled marriages might well be diagnosed as weak.)

It is tempting to cry “Enough already!” to recent initiatives in science (e.g., the brain mapping project) and in education (e.g., teaching to the test). It’s not that we see no potential in these investments. But we also see these initiatives as strategically incomplete in light of the problems we need to be able to solve (0, I) and the behavioral capabilities we shall need to solve them (V).

It is even more tempting to cry “Enough already!” to the “Big Data” investments being made. The investments are largest in the economic sector, but these back-loaded ventures can be found elsewhere. In balance terms, they suggest a serious clot comprising, among others: decision making/problem solving > 1, management/leadership > 1, capacity/capability >1, ADAPT/ADEPT > 1.

We protest. But to protest is not enough. That protest expresses under-emphasized values is to the point. But if we have no way of developing capability commensurate with those values, no Accord (C-9) meta-strategy and no functionally-indicated organizational structure … in short if we have not developed community as a strong, well-balanced behavioral entity, then protest, like the infant’s cry, will look for help from some control system rather than engaging in developing an effective operating system (C-36).

These imbalances and the needed stop-start signal are not to be overlooked. (Lest we do not manage to get turned around, to become more constructive in our behavior. See C-58.) Our materiality (C-78) – human consequentiality – suffers when interdependence is stunted, as it is when imbalance prevails (C-71).

(c) R.F. Carter
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