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Attention: Harmony and Conflict
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Attention: Harmony and Conflict

written by Nathan Vanderpool

This essay draws on concepts originally developed in Joe Edelman's essay Four Social Worlds

Attention, from the Perspective of a Human

I don't usually think about how what I'm paying attention to affects my decisions and ways of being. But if I slow down and reflect on where my attention goes, it's being guided toward different things. Depending on how I make sense of a situation, different choices stand out.

Design methods usually rely on observations like: What do you buy? Where do you go? Who do you vote for? Technology is making all of that data easier to capture. But we're still blind to the reasons that a human chose to do this or that. And it matters. A LOT. I'll give you an example:

Get the Groceries, GO TEAM GO!

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Tim and his friends are planning to have a picnic this afternoon. They meet up at the grocery store at 10am to buy supplies. Tim gathers everyone into a huttle outside the store, and starts to delegate tasks: Joe is in charge of fruits and vegetables, Anne will organize snack foods, Serge needs to figure out drinks, and Tim will grab the breads and spreads. GO TEAM GO!

🕵️‍♂️ "Objective" Perception

This story provides "objective data", and clearly tells me what happened. But at this point, I can only guess why. And as I'll argue below, the why is deeply important.

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← Click here to read more about 🕵️‍♂️ The Realm of Pure Perception

Quoted from Four Social Worlds by Joe Edelman

In this realm, all of the facts are available to you as soon as you enter a room. You know how often the people there are breathing, whether they're sweating, what the temperature is in different parts of their bodies. You can pattern match on this, and make guesses about their emotions, because you know that different emotions change temperature and heart rate and muscle tension in different ways. But there's no meaning attached to any of this. Like Sherlock Holmes, you see all of the facts, and can draw inferences and see patterns.

Imagine you also see yourself through this lens. You know your sensations, your heart rate, and so on, but have no opinion whether these are good or bad.

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We'll call this the world of pure perception. You see people like this if you use behavioral analytics on a website. You see yourself like this if you cultivate a quantified self, or practice certain kinds of mindfulness. Take a moment and think about your current environment, and recent environments you've been in, through the lens of pure perception.

If we want to discover Tim's reasons for approaching shopping this way, we would have to ask him. As a thought experiment, I'll outline three different categories that those reasons might fall into: expectations, outcomes, and personal values. Then I'll show how they might interact.

💍 Social Expectations

Imagine that Tim sees himself as a leader who can provide structure. If he's good at his role, he thinks other people will follow suit, and accept him socially. So his attention is being guided by meeting the expectations that he and others have around "leadership". Being a leader could be a reason he chose to approach shopping like he did in the story above.

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← Click here to read more about 💍 The Realm of Social Expectations

Quoted from Four Social Worlds by Joe Edelman

Welcome to the realm of social expectations, where what matters in a social environment is what it takes to fit in or belong. Here, when you're with other people, you are always either setting expectations (taking the lead, announcing how things will be, disapproving of people, approving of other people) or you're meeting them (being charming, likable, accepted, etc).

Every environment has rules, and they are mostly unwritten. In the realm of pure expectations, you try to intuit the rules of the room you're in, or the scene you're part of. For instance, when you are at a work party, you are all about performing professionalism, courtesy, sincerity, and whatever else is required. With each new scene, you try to intuit: What would lead them to accept you? What are the standards here?

Once you get that far, maybe you'll try to change the standards. What kinds of expectations do you want to set? How should everyone be different at work parties and how can you create the right kind of pressure?

In other words, you read social situations in terms of norms. There are norms you'd like to create, and norms you hope to comply with. You see yourself in these terms. There is (1) whatever makes you likable or accepted: are you a good worker? a good friend? And there are (2) the examples that you set for others: are you leading people into productivity? Are you a good feminist? A good Vegan? A good conservative? Do you represent the kinds of family values that you hope will spread in your community?

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This is a world of pure expectations. People see the world this way when reputation is high stakes, such as when they have a service job where they could easily be fired. They may also see the world this way if they have a deep fear of rejection, or have developed a hyper-awareness of social rules. Take a moment and try to approach your current environment, or a recent environment, as pure expectation.

If Tim slowed down and put it into words, his attention was being guided by an image like this:

💍 being a leader: create a plan, and show others the way forward

📈 Practical Strategies

Imagine that Tim just hates shopping. He wants to get this over with so that he and his friends can spend more time enjoying their picnic. Maybe he was also afraid of forgetting something on the list if they all went shopping together. Those might be reasons he chose to approach shopping as he did in the story above.

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← Click here to read more about 📈 The Realm of Pure Strategy

Quoted from Four Social Worlds by Joe Edelman

Imagine a very goal-driven person: maybe they want to retire early, start a company, build a brand, or get laid. And every interaction, every social space, is understood in terms of whether it can advance those goals—in terms of its strategic value.

As in 💍 the world of expectations, this person may want to be liked. But this 📈 strategic person only tries to be liked in situations where being liked advances her goals. Everything is instrumental—she cares whether things are useful for her goals or whether they interfere with them.

She reads herself in terms of goals, and also in terms of how well she's proceeding with them. Is she killing it? Are her key metrics going up and to the right?

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Here we have the world of pure strategy. This view is closest to how game theorists, mechanism designers, and economists model human beings. People see the world this way when they are playing high-stakes games or in life-and-death situations (or the situation feel like one). This view has some of the calculating aspect of 🕵️‍♂️ the world of pure perception, but here only certain information, that's relevant to goals and strategies, is picked up from the environment. Take a moment and try to approach your current environment, or a recent environment, as pure strategy.

If Tim slowed down and put it into words, his attention was being guided by a strategy like this:

📈 get it done: delegate tasks so that they are accomplished efficiently and thoroughly

🌳 Personal Values: Inspiration/Appreciation

Now imagine that along with social expectations and practical strategies, Tim also has ways of being that he appreciates, that inspire him, that feel intrinsically good.

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← Click here to read more about 🌳 The Realm of Pure Appreciation

Quoted from Four Social Worlds by Joe Edelman

Here, everything is poignant with meaning and value. You never just see a tree in front of you: you see it's beauty, or it's importance in an ecosystem. You see it as grand, or precious, or extraordinary and wonderful. Or maybe you see it as an obstacle, and you are excited or dismayed by the difficulty of getting around it.

In this world, everything is experienced as having a practical, moral, or aesthetic value. Nothing is just there. Instead, it is beautiful or tragically flawed; strong or in need of protection; etc. You are in an intimate relationship with everything around you. Nothing is cold. Everything is alive with meaning.

When someone smiles, that's never just a fact. It's an opening for action. Or it's a moment that's beautiful in itself. Everything is inspiring, or challenging, or beautiful, or sad. Even the way the milk mixes into the coffee somehow says something about life—something about your life, not something abstract.

And of course, in the world of pure appreciation, you read yourself this way. You are wholly made up of the things that you're appreciating, the discoveries you're making. There are no pure sensations. Everything has value. Indeed, all you are is values. All of your emotions point to something that's important in the world, important to you. You are never scared or happy for no reason—each emotion is a window into what's good for you, or what's frightening.

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That's the world of pure appreciations. Some people see things this way when they take psychedelics, or when they are in moments that feel like they really matter in life—like when they are deciding to live in a more radical way. It is a window into what some philosophers call values, strong evaluative terms, ideals, or virtues. (see 🌳What the Hell are Values?, Part 1 ) Take a moment and try to approach your current environment, or a recent environment, as pure appreciation.

If Tim put it into words, his attention was being guided by a personal value like this:

🌳 coordination: create (even arbitrary) challenges that allow everyone present to work together as a team with a common purpose

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← Click here to find out why this is a 🧪 Pure Value

I would call coordination a 🧪 Pure Value for Tim because (when I asked him) he would have felt good about showing up this way even if someone else had taken on the role of leader (💍 Expectations), or if he found out he could have had all of the groceries delivered directly to the picnic site (📈 Strategies).

His personal value guided his awareness toward the possibility of making choices that are intrinsically meaningful, inspiring, and beautiful to him: organizing a team of friends to coordinate in this specific way. (This is also the reason that Tim loves basketball 🏀)

Tim's personal value fits well with the relevant social expectations and practical strategies. In other words, the different things that could have guided his attention were in ☮ Harmony. He ended up feeling that the shopping trip was time well spent. But what would it look like if his personal value hadn't fit to the expectations and strategies?

💥 Conflict! (❣️ Emotions to Values)

🌳 Personal Values vs. 📈 Practical Strategies

Imagine that rather than the coordination value above, Tim's personal value was this:

🌳 equanimity: approach your day with slow sincerity, calm and concerned about how to best respond to the moment

That could have been in harmony with the social expectations in his mind:

💍 being a leader: create a plan and show the others the way forward

But would have clashed with his practical strategy:

📈 get it done: delegate tasks so that things happen as thoroughly and efficiently as possible

This would result in a 💥 Conflict as Tim's 📈 Practical Strategies and 🌳 Personal Values compete to guide his attention. Even though 🌳 equanimity seems like the best way to approach life, 📈 get it done might win out. If that happened, the result might have been this:

Tim felt depressed because he had rushed around in the supermarket.

The strategy of getting things done made his equanimity value seem impossible to live by. The objective facts are the same as in the story above, but reasons make the difference in how Tim feels about it. Here's another example:

🌳 Personal Values vs. 💍 Social Expectations

Imagine Tim was trying to act in a different way he really believes in:

🌳 kindness: support others in discovering and enacting their best understanding of self-care

That could have been in conflict with both the social expecation that was guiding his attention:

💍 being a leader: create a plan and show the others the way forward

AND would likely have come into conflict with the practical strategy guiding his attention:

📈 get it done: delegate tasks so that things happen as thoroughly and efficiently as possible

This would also result in a 💥 Conflict as Tim's 💍 Social Expectations (+ practical strategies) and 🌳 Personal Values compete to guide his attention. Even though 🌳 kindness seems like the best approach to life, 💍 being a leader might win out. If that happens, the result could be this:

Tim felt embarassed because he had been bossing people around.

The expectation of being a good leader (and strategy of getting things done) caused him to neglegt his personal value of kindness.

In the next section, you'll learn how to work backwards from the emotion and what happened to the expectations, strategies, and values that were guiding your attention. That's a skill called❣️Emotions to Values. It's the foundational practice of the Human Systems design method.

Summing up

When it comes to human choices, reasons matter. If social expectations or practical strategies don't alight with personal values, you could end up spending time that feels upsetting and/or meaningless. But as a values-literate designer, you can rewrite games to align expectations and outcomes with personal values.

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Expectations, Strategies, and Personal Values are lenses through which humans make sense of situations. They guide attention to certain choices, and can be in ☮ harmony (which results in yummy feelings) or 💥 conflict (which results in crummy feelings).

In Level 1: 🌳 Personal Values, you saw that articulating people's values is a difficult but important step in values-based systems design. Here, in Level 2: ❣️Emotions to Values, you will examine the motivations behind your own forms of attention. In Level 3: 💡Wisdom Interviews, you'll use that lens to interview other people about what is meaningful to them.