An Outline of Human Nature

A Human-Direction Specification Map

Map version: November 22, 2022 (request-for-comment version)

Timothy Corwen :: Human-Direction Mapmaker :: tcorwen@humandirectionmap.com

An Outline of Human Nature in Three Parts

Human nature and existence can be differentiated into 20 aspects, which in turn can be divided into three parts:

Other Pages on This Site

►Homepage
►Origins of HDM
►About
►HDM directory
►HDM glossary

Part 1: Setting the Terms of Our Existence

There are 10 basic positions we need to take to function in life, including attending to one sort of reality or another, or combination of those (e.g., biosocial, situational, religious, or scientific reality, or combination of those), how we think events unfold (causal chains, divine or social interventions), setting expectations and actions according how we see events unfolding, taking a position on what we see as important in life, what human nature is, what identity we see for ourselves, and so on.

Part 2: Functional Cycle

With the terms of our existence in place, we can, when appropriate, seek to do something (or achieve a state). That functionality in life is defined by a cycle of four stages: seeking guidance, deciding what to do or what stance to take, mustering support for that course of action or stance, and then acting or achieving a state of person.

Part 3: Engagement in Arenas of Life

After the first two parts of our existence are in place, we turn to engage some or all of the six arenas of life: awareness, state of person, action, substance of person, rapport with others, and deep order.

Contents of Outline of Human Nature

Part 1 of Outline of Human Nature: Ten Alignment Frames

To start, there are 10 alignment frames with which we set the terms of our existence, position ourselves, and get our bearings.

► Frame 1: Reality Types

Which of the seven basic reality types do we attend to, or find are imposing themselves on us? These fall into two categories: those in which reality is what we see (i.e., nos. 1, 2, 4, and 7 in the list below) and those based on the idea that what is real can be defined as what has caused what we see. For example, in religious reality, an abundance or lack of food is only superficially what is real – what is “really” real is the divinity behind that abundance or lack and the place in the divine plan that occurrence occupies.

Situational reality: What is real is whatever situation we find ourselves in, often with no way of knowing how it arose.
Biosocial reality: What is real is need fulfillment, family flourishing and reproduction, and status in social hierarchies.
Social-current reality: What is real are the patterns of group behavior and communication that manifest themselves in, and are underpinned by, the shared ideas, beliefs, and values of a group, tribe, society, nation state, or block of nation states. This can occur at one or more of three levels: among a group whose members we know (family, friends, colleagues, and community), in society at large (i.e., the public current), or in the world as a whole (geopolitical trends). There are four common views of the second of those, public-current reality, which are the basis for different types of commentaries: (a) apex manipulators (small rich and powerful group controls what matters); (b) class conflict (e.g., bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat, or between any economically defined groups in society); (c) greater cultural and/or psychological forces (wide-spread beliefs, guiding narratives, or other psychological influences compell people to act in a certain way en masse); and (d) geographic, demographic, and/or technological greater powers (characteristics of, or changes in, material circumstances shape group and societal actions).
Here-and-now reality: What is real is our experience of the present moment, the reality of the here and now.
Religious reality: What is real is what is eternal, in the all-determining spiritual realm, beyond this ephemeral and superficial world.
Mathematical–scientific reality: What is real is what has been verified by mathematical calculation or scientific evidence. Everything else is merely an appearance or opinion.
Qualitative reality: Beauty, goodness, quality of experience, clarity of insight and expression, and rapport and love of others are what is real in life.

► Frame 2: Types of Unfoldings of Events

How do we see events unfolding? Simple and elegant, or messy and intermixed?

Elegant unfolding: Events unfold in a precisely predictable pattern, such as the rising and setting of the sun.
Full intermix: Events unfold based on a complex interaction among many factors, largely unpredictable, because the outcome may be changed not only by the addition or removal of any of factors but by the timing and manner of its interaction – such as the weather, cooking, and nearly all of human behavior.

► Frame 3: What Is Human Nature?

How do we see human nature? Are we formed as divine likenesses? Are we mechanical organisms?

Physiological mechanism: We are entirely defined by our physiological mechanisms, including brain functions (which are all there is to consciousness).
Political animal: We are, as a species, defined by our complex social organizations and the hierarchies and power structures of those.
Divine likeness: We are made in the image of the divinity.
Information processor: We are animals defined by our capacity for advanced skills in processing information.
Psychological bundle: We are animals defined by our complex psychological traits, states, and capacities, including both elemental drives and more advanced self-actualization and transcendence faculties.

► Frame 4: The Nature of Happiness

What is happiness? Given that this is our primary objective in life, it would seem to be important that we are clear about it.

Material and social basket: Happiness is having one’s needs fulfilled; enjoying security, comfort, and pleasure; and having good mental health, rapport-rich social connections, and the esteem of others.
Present and eternal bliss of union with the divine: Happiness is not something we can achieve on our own. Instead, it happens as a grant of divine favor and because of union with the divine.
State of mind: Happiness a present experience of joy, being free from worry or anxiety.
Rightness of the world: Happiness is having a sense that the world is what you believe it should be. This is more often an excuse not to be happy or to claim a right to greater consideration worth for yourself or your group.
Sense of purpose: Happiness is based on our dedication to something worthwhile (a domain of greater value), so that our life has meaning, even if that involves doing without some of the parts of the material and social basket, and at times not being in the best state of mind.

► Frame 5: What Is Important in Life?

What is important? What is it that really matters in life? To align ourselves with regard to this frame, we may follow the crowd or those around us, or this may be an entirely personal characteristic. It is here, though, that our identity is drawn forth (see the next frame).

Material and social success for self and family: This is probably the most basic and common view of what is important in life, because it is so deeply embedded in our biology and social evolution.
Union with the divinity: Transcending material and social flourishing, we seek to find what is important in life in achieving a good state of connection to the divine reality.
Order in a surrounding domain: What is important is the level of order and felicity we establish and maintain in a particular part of our surroundings: the domestic sphere, a parcel domain (property beyond the home), and/or in a social group.
Self-actualization: A more sophisticated view of what is important lies in each of us realizing our full potential and developing the capacity to make the best possible contribution to beauty, good, and understanding in the world.
Clarity of expression or understanding: The realm of clarity of expression and understanding transcends any person's development of skills to contribute to it.

► Frame 6: Personal Identity

Who am I? What is my particular purpose in life?

Static-feature identity: Who we are is based on the attributes we were born with: gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual preference, and/or other qualities we have done nothing to acquire.
Role(s): Who we are is based on the roles we fill in a social group, whether that is a family, community, collection of friends, organization, or society. We may be cast in a role, or choose to take it up.
Past accomplishments: What we have done in the past defines who we are, especially notable accomplishments or indications of character.
Character: Our settled habits of character are what define us to ourselves and others.
Active presence and interests: We are what we are good at, the contribution we make (including outside any formal role), and what interests us.
Aspirations: It is what we hope to achieve that defines who we are.

► Frame 7: Circle of Responsibility

Based on what we consider important in life and what our personal identity is (and perhaps extending beyond those), how far out do we reach to try to influence, and hold ourselves accountable for, what happens?

Zero responsibility: We feel we are not accountable even for our own actions (our childhood is at fault, or what we have done was due to mental illness).
Baseline responsibility: We feel responsible for our actions only, not for the state of, or outcomes in, any of our surroundings.
Domestic sphere responsibility: We are concerned about, make an effort to maintain and improve, and feel somehow accountable for the quality of, and what happens in, our home, our surrounding domestic sphere, physical and/or familial.
Job reach responsibility: We expect to be required to look after things as specified within our job description.
Responsibility for part in greater domain: We are responsible for our part in our devotion to a domain of greater value.
Whole world responsibility: We feel we are responsible for the state of the whole world and what happens there (obviously absurd, but also not uncommon).

► Frame 8: Moorings

Where do we find connections to place, material resources, personal skills, and social surroundings? What is it that reassures us that we will not starve or be left destitute?

Material resources: We generally need to have a sense of where our material supports come from, including where to find food, what tools we have available, and what clothing and housing, property, and money we have for fulfilling our needs and to serve other purposes.
Social connections: We carry with us some idea of where our social ties lie, how reliable they are, what we can expect from others, and what our own consideration worth is seen to be, by ourselves and others.
Personal skills and understanding: Our social connections may be limited or otherwise disappointing, so we also have to maintain a sense (hopefully, an accurate one) of what we can do for ourselves. This is where confidence and self-esteem are important factors.
Sense of purpose: Religious faith is an important mooring for many, but also, with or without it, we may be supported by being grounded in dedication to a domain of greater value and having a sense of deep order.

► Frame 9: Rules of Place and People

What are we expected to do to maintain our proper place in our surroundings and among other people?

General moral rules: Do not kill without justification (e.g., justified by self-defense), do not steal without justification, do not lie without justification.
Rules specific to a place: Do not jump off a cliff if you want to avoid injury, do obey traffic lights, etc.
Rules specific to a group: Do not make stupid remarks when with intelligent people, respect the vocabulary, customs, values, and preferences of the group you are with, unless you want to put yourself in opposition to them.

► Frame 10: Time Perspective

How do we see and relate to time at different levels - immediate, today, this week, in the next few weeks and months, in this stage of our life, or over an entire lifetime?

Lifetime parts: Chronologically, what does our lifetime consist of? (a) no parts (we live moment to moment, or one day at a time); (b) life stream with stages (a single stream of development and career, from childhood, to schooling, to job, to raising kids, to retirement); (c) a part discovered (at any stage, we discover something that changes everything); (d) single-moment redemption (religious view that faith discovered at any moment, even on our death bed, changes everything about a lifetime).
Range of time: What time frame do we set for our expectations of results or outcomes or of the unfolding of events? These commonly include (a) moment by moment; (b) one day at a time; (c) a period of days or weeks; (d) a period of half a year, one year, or a decade; (e) a period defined by some major stage in our life (assuming we set our lifetime parts frame to something other than no parts or single-moment redemption), or (f) a lifetime.
Scale of measurement: What scale of measurement do we use for our expectations of results or outcomes? (a) tight-counting – in the modern, industrial age, clock time was adopted to measure how productive we are or how long it takes to reach an outcome (i.e., minutes or hours); (b) broad-counting – creativity and many other activities require a broader scheme of time measurement, with some latitude for nurturing an undertaking and developing its foundations before coming forth with a result after weeks or months; (c) long cycles: in agriculture, there is an annual cycle of many months within which crops are planted and nurtured, harvested, and then the fields lie fallow over the winter. Also in creative endeavors or development of self, many years may be required between inception and outcomes.

Part 2 of Outline of Human Nature: Functional Cycle of Four Stages

Having set the terms of our existence, based on a set of alignment frames (at least provisionally), we look for functionality.

► Stage 1 in the Functional Cycle: Seek Guidance

Seeking guidance involves three steps, which may form a cycle of their own whereby we look at each in turn and use it to adjust our approach to the others.

Guidance Step 1: Choose among simply carrying on, being swayed, or pausing to consider

In this, as in all of the aspects of being a person, we have a choice among simply carrying on, being swayed by an influence or many influences, or pausing to deliberate and seek guidance.

Guidance Step 2: Coordinate with alignment frames for types of reality and unfoldings

Looking back at the frames we set for type of reality and type of unfolding of events, do those already point us toward what guidance we might seek, or indeed toward not seeking guidance, but simply carrying on as usual?

Guidance Step 3: Consider one or more of the nine basic approaches to guidance in life

There are nine basic approaches to guidance in life. Sometimes acting in the world or on ourselves means simply carrying on with our normal routine – a choice we make in Step 1 of this first stage of the functional cycle. But at other times, we may need or want to look at what choices the different approaches to guidance have to offer.

Relegation: We let someone else decide for us, and we do what we are told.
Following a group: Think what the group thinks, and go where the group goes.
Imitation: Follow the inspiration and example of a personal mentor, a celebrity, or a great figure in history.
Feelings as guide: Thought or evidence is not required, because what we feel is the best guide to what is real for us and what we should do.
Assert and urge: This usually has two parts: an assertion and something we are told to do as a result of it.
Tips and techniques: Steps to be taken to address a specific challenge in one's life (including psychological adjustments – adjustments to one's thoughts, feelings, and behavior that make one a more resilient and happier person).
Religion: Follow divine guidance, acting in accordance with a sacred reality that transcends the mundane limits and frustrations of everyday life. This can be done by following the instructions of a priest, reading sacred texts, or communicating (in some religions) directly with the divinity.
Science: Either apply the scientific method to the area where we want guidance, or look at the scientific research and the equations, algorithms, or theories that have resulted from that.
Map and engage: We think for ourselves based on our experience and understanding of what may be an unusual situation, and one that is not covered by any of the other eight approaches. This involves using creative lift, mental jostling, and vague-sensing to find the right pattern to a situation or cluster of related situations. We then lay that pattern down as a map, attempting to use it to guide our engagement with the world, and testing it against actual circumstances as they unfold.

► Stage 2 in the Functional Cycle: Decide What to Do and Perhaps Make a Plan

Sometimes the objective of our functioning, and thus of this stage, is simply a course of action or a state of person to adopt for the sake of a specific outcome. But underlying even tactical steps, there is a more basic need to achieve a good array. That means looking beyond specific, tactical steps, to the broader issues of what we want to do with our life – as that question arises in each and every action or stance we take. A good array has four aspects:

Clarify goals: A clear sense of who we are and what we are about, which can be guided by this Outline of Human Nature, and which will be confirmed and expanded in the actions we take or the state of person we sustain.
Clarify where effective agency lies: What are our skills in fulfilling our needs and those of our family?
Appreciate benefits and pleasures: What is there in our life to makes us happy?
Find deep order: Where and how can we find a sense of worth of person and of a greater-value domain in which we find purpose and meaning? This also gives us resilience in the face of adversity.

Depending on how deeply we want to take this, we may then extend this decision process to make a plan based on our choice (to make that decision clearer) and on the guidance we found in Stage 1. A plan will generally have 12 parts (for more detail on this, see the Actions arena, below), but central to it will be a strategy, which involves formulating the answers to three questions:

Opportunity: In what place or group of persons, or where in ourselves, might we have a chance to effect a desired outcome, with regard to our goal and our taking up of the functional cycle?
Drivers: In that area of opportunity, what makes the place, group of persons, or aspect of ourselves, function the way it does?
Approach: What is the best approach we can take to capitalize on the opportunity?

► Stage 3 in the Functional Cycle: Mustering Support

The third stage of the functional cycle involves gathering whatever resources and support we have available to us. This will range from our functional reservoir (personal resources), to material resources (tools and money), to the support of other people.

Functional reservoir: Our personal resources, which include (a) restedness, (b) fitness and flexibility, (c) breathing habits (deeply and minimally vs. panting), (d) habits of physical posture (sitting up straight vs. slouching), (e) nutrient vs. antinutrient state (quality of diet), (f) good health vs. suffering from an illness or injury, (g) mental state (good mood, avoidance of excessive anger and resentments, etc.), (h) skills, and (i) work practices, organization, plans (as developed perhaps in Stage 2), and information frameworks.
Material resources: Buildings and transportation means, clothing, tools, supplies, and money.
Social support: Rapport and status among others (especially validated-entitlement worth), and the extent to which we can muster their assistance.

► Stage 4 in the Functional Cycle: Take Active or Passive Steps or Achieve a State of Person

In the final stage of the functional cycle, we have three basic choices:

Take practical steps: For example, if car breaks down, get out tools and fix it.
Take up a stance, or position oneself: For example, if car breaks down, after calling for assistance, wait for help to arrive.
Achieve and maintain a state of person: For example, while on a trip, simply pull off the road and stop the car to sit, gaze at, and enjoy a remarkable view.

Part 3 of Outline of Human Nature: Six Arenas of Human Direction

Having set the terms of our existence generally or for a particular situation, based on the set of 10 frames, and with our functionality initiated in the cycle of four stages, we turn to one or a combination of the six basic arenas of engagement in the world.

► Awareness Arena

For the purposes of human-direction guidance and this outline, awareness is defined as either a facilitating representation of reality (e.g., a tree I want to get fruit from) or a state of consciousness (e.g., being hungry and aware only of that). It normally occurs as an awareness cluster of different elements, which form relations among themselves and vis-a-vis the outside world and/or the inner state of my person (e.g., being hungry, seeing a tree with fruit and a ladder nearby).

Elements of awareness: There are seven basic types of elements in awareness that define the characteristics and quality of any particular awareness cluster:

Trellises: Formed ideas, images, scents, or sounds we know, which enable us to form an entire picture or sensation in our awareness from even a small part: for example, standing on a street corner, I may see only a front bumper peeping out from a building, and yet picture it in my awareness as a complete car, and what its characteristics and movements are likely to be.
Hard tesserae: Facts substantiated by evidence: “tessera” as the term is used here refers to the pieces of awareness that have a shape in the form of a name, a set of known characteristics, a set of relations to other elements, and a normal context.
Soft tesserae: Unsubstantiated ideas, including working assumptions, imaginative ideas or fantasies, pegs, and possible future selves.
Resonances: Emotional or emotion-like charges in an awareness cluster, which may be attached to another element of that cluster (anger attached to the idea of my exploitative boss) or act on their own (panic without any specific object). There are four basic types of resonances in an awareness cluster: (a) an anticipatory drive, which is a desire to accomplish or acquire something known and desired (these are fueled by dopamine), including need fulfillment, pleasure and avoidance of pain, and cushioning; (b) an opening striving resonance, which is a desire to create or discover something sensed, often to expand one's domains of experience, but which is known, at best, only in part or vaguely; (c) a distorting emotional resonance, which is an excessively strong and/or misdirected emotion that clouds one's view of reality and does not facilitate effective action or a good state of mind; and (d) a stilling resonance, which is an effort or influence that settles us in a still state of mind.
Voids: Things that are missing from our awareness, which we can feel to be missing, but for which we have no sense of what their characteristics might be – crucially, these require more information from outside reality (unlike inklings, where thought alone is required).
Inklings: Things in our awareness for which we have only a vague sense of their characteristics, what the right name for them might be, and where they might fit in among the other entities of our awareness (i.e., they are short of quadriclarity), regarding things incomplete or not yet accomplished, which can be in and out of our thoughts and awareness for many years, even decades.
Patterns: Ordered arrangements of elements in a cluster of awareness, which help us understand what we are aware of, and to facilitate effective engagement in the corresponding reality. These include verbal strands and maps.

Relations among elements: These relations define how our awareness clusters form, and mental sensing of these relations, whether through clear- or vague-sensing, is the basis for jostling the elements of our awareness in an attempt to see them more clearly.

Distance vs. proximity: The nearness or farness of elements can be a factor in how our awareness is formed. For example, my image or idea of an apple and a pear are closely related (both are fruits, have rounded shapes, etc.); but my idea of an apple and that of evil are more distantly related – through the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden, perhaps; while my idea of an apple and that of space travel may be very distant from each other. Elements of awareness can be very close to the point of being connected: through narrative association (e.g., in Bible story), or chronological, correlational, causal, or logical connection (one of the functions of fracture in creativity is to break such connections in one's thoughts).
Congeniality vs. antipathy: Our ideas of germs and of good health are antipathetic to each other; while those of exercise and good health are mutually congenial.
Polarity: The alignment of elements in awareness toward an objective. If I am hungry, then all of my perceptions, feelings, and thoughts may be focused toward that and doing something about it. This is often driven by an anticipatory drive resonance (see above: Elements of Awareness).

Quality of awareness cluster: Our awareness cluster on any given occasion may be steady and clear of the distortions of excessive emotions, or overcharged with emotion and thus unstable perhaps and full of inaccurate representations, or it may dull and inattentive. We may also find our awareness is closely tracking something we are attending to, whether in our surroundings or our own thoughts, or we may be distracted and unfocused.

Topography of awareness cluster: A cluster will (a) have a center, where the focus is strongest, and a periphery of elements on the edge of our thoughts. That periphery may also include our backdrop (the back of one's mind, the part of our psyche where we keep and work on an area of interest or concern, including when doing other things); and (b) be either narrow or broad.

Objectives of awareness: We may turn our awareness toward either or both of two purposes:

Guiding actions: The most basic objective of awareness is to guide our actions toward achieving something we need or want. For example, if I am walking on the street and see an approaching car, the objective of my awareness at that moment is to ensure I avoid being struck by it.
Achieving a state of mind: Sometimes it is the quality of our awareness that is important – for example, when we seek to enjoy a pleasure or to enter a meditative state.

Dynamics and functions in awareness

Perception: Using one's senses to see, hear, feel, taste, or smell the world around; or using one's interoception.
Memory: Many elements of awareness are, of course, brought in from memory.
Mental clumping: Complete intertangled clumps of images, emotions, beliefs, patterns of behavior, that are transmitted unexamined from one person to another, occupying the awareness of each. This may include running in a mental-clump herd, where one joins others carrying the same mental clump or set of clumps.
Clear-sensing: Being aware of the nature and relations between elements in an awareness cluster.
Conventional thought: Taking artifacts of thought (images, ideas, verbal strands) and rearranging them largely unchanged, but in new patterns. For example, I feel hungry, I see a tree with apples and a ladder nearby, and then connect those in an awareness cluster to guide the action of climbing the ladder to get the apples and eating them.

Dynamics of creative thought

The first aspects of creativity appear here in the Outline. Further aspects are found in the Action Arena (presentation of a creative work) and in the Deep Order Arena (finding meaning through art).

Lifting and holding suspended: This involves taking the elements of an awareness cluster and fracturing them to remove any fixed characteristics they may have, lifting them out of their normal context, and maintaining them in one's thoughts in that state of suspension. Of course, voids and inklings will already be largely free of any characterizations or interrelations.
Jostling: With the elements of an awareness cluster held up out of their normal settings and with any fixed characteristics loosened, those elements are bounced back and forth against each other, trying different possible arrangements and characterizations and making them clear as one does so.
Vague-sensing: In the process of jostling suspended and decharacterized elements of awareness, we sense what new or clearer forms and contexts they might fit into.
Laying down a pattern or map: With some time and effort, new patterns for the suspended elements of awareness will become clear, at which point we may, perhaps provisionally, lay down a new pattern (or map toward guidance) together with reassigned characteristics for those elements.

Relation to reality: Awareness, in its different dimensions (elements, relations among elements, quality, topography, objectives, and dynamics), can be related to reality in different ways.

Facilitation: Some forms of awareness are directed toward guiding us in our actions, and thus need to be accurately reflective of reality to facilitate that guidance, while other forms will facilitate achieving a state of mind (see Objectives, above).
Tracking vs. distracted: For some purposes, it is important to track an aspect of reality accurately and persistently, while in recreational states of mind, being distracted may have a restorative function.
Types of observation: Our awareness may be based on different sorts of input, especially different approaches to observing our surroundings and experiences: (a) Prima facia observation is perceiving what is there, based on what one sees, without digging into mechanisms or trying to find further evidence. If confirmed by facilitation, whereby the observation guides one to act effectively toward one's aims, this may be all the evidence of the nature of a situation that is required. (b) Validated observation involves perceiving what is there, and gathering evidence to support the accuracy of that representation. This is a stronger source of information, but validation is generally time-consuming, expensive, very often inconclusive, and may not apply to a particular individual's character or situation. (c) observation of mechanisms: seeing what underlies what is apparent, finding the mechanism that produces what is visible. This may be combined with validated observation. It produces a more broadly applicable view of the reality involved, but any mechanism discovered may or may not apply to particular circumstances and may influence outcomes in a not straightforward way that would still require prima facie observation (e.g., in a situational reality).

► State of Person Arena

The state of our person is often the most compelling and important subject of our awareness. If we are starving or seriously thirsty, it will be imperative that we address that state and questions of how to resolve it. At other times, even where our state of person does not dominate our awareness, it will be a factor in what we do and experience.

Platform

Resources for need fulfillment
Resources for extended engagements

Present state:

capped
modes, including hurry to get through (HTGT)

Local momentum:

Functional reservoir:

Satisfaction and fulfillment:

► Actions Arena

Alignment frames are engaged here (see Part 1: Setting the Terms of Our Existence).

Methods–solutions frameworks: We guide our actions based on any of a number of frameworks that define a problem and what approach can be expected to lead to a desired solution.

Religion: the problem is sin, and the approach is prayer and belief, which leads to redemption.
Science: the problem is ignorance, and the approach is the scientific methods, which leads to evidence-based understanding.

Motivations: There are six basic human motivations:

Need fulfillment: we are impelled to act to fulfill our needs.
Pleasure vs. pain: we seek pleasure and try to avoid pain.
Emotion: we act simply out of an emotion such as anger or fear.
Habit: some things we do just because it is our habit to do them.
Cushioning: we seek to buffer ourselves against bad future outcomes or lacks regarding need fulfillment, pleasures and pains, and fears, by building up a reserve of material, financial, and social capital.
Deep order: the search for meaning in our lives can make us ready even to face death.

Motivation modulators: Some things that might appear to be motivations (making us do something) are in fact modulators of one of the six basic motivations.

Imitation: Some things we do because we see others doing them, but generally there has to be an underlying motivation. For example, we stand in line because others are standing in line, but it is assumed that there is food or some other resource that motivates everyone in that line to be waiting there.
Rational thought: As was demonstrated in the reaction to COVID, no one acts motivated solely by logical processing of facts. Instead it can be hoped that rational thought will influence our need fulfillment and emotional response.

Activation guidance

Goals
Time management
Information-handling systems

► Substance of Person Arena [in preparation]

► Rapport With Others Arena [in preparation]

► Deep Order Arena

We all have a deep need (albeit we may not always recognize the fact) for purpose, substance, and meaning in our life, to enable us perhaps to transcend impersonal annihilation on dying (death is unavoidable and has to be accepted, but what is intolerable is the thought that with death we disappear with nothing remaining to indicate we ever existed).

Purpose
Substance of person
Meaning
Greater-value worth – forms of: Greater-value worth is the deepest layer of worth of a person, in which we transcend our person to devote ourselves to a domain of value beyond any individual.

Religion: This is the most widely proselytized and thus most widely recognized approach to greater-value worth. But it is suitable only for that minority of people who find that the divinity speaks to them.
Meditation: A long and disciplined course of training may lead to enlightenment and devotion to now. This is extremely rare – indeed it can be questioned whether it ever occurs at all.
Grand social: Some people find greater-value worth in devotion to an illustrious family, tribe, nation, or other group, and dedicate themselves to upholding its honor and legacy.
Participation: By far the largest domain of greater-value worth is based on devotion to the value of a domain of art, knowledge, justice, or even the well-ordered functioning of something, such as a garden, an organization, or other cause.

Greater-value worth – components: There are four components to greater-value worth, which may be weak and unsubstantial on their own, but when combined can become one of the most important and powerful forces in human existence.

Domain of greater value: some aspect of reality that is characterized by its being harmonious, whole, benevolent, alive, and meaningful. This has often meant, for many, God or a set of gods, but it can also take other forms.
Portal: an opening that enables connection with the domain of greater value. In religion, this is generally belief in the divinity.
Intolerable unmet disorder: to spark real engagement, we must find that something in the domain of greater value requires our efforts to defend or develop it. In religion, this has often been sin.
Place in addressing the disorder, in the service of the domain of greater value: To come to life for any individual, greater-value worth must present them with a place or role in service to that domain.

Further Circuiting to Related Topics on This Website and Elsewhere

To see an extensive introduction to the different layers of worth in a person and how to advance those in concert, see my book The Worth of a Person; while for the question of what is needed for individuals and groups to adopt and maintain environmentally sustainable ways of life, see The Environment-Sustaining Person.

URL for this page: https://humandirectionmap.com/hdmw-outline-human-nature.html

(GDPR: This site does not use cookies; your visit will not be recorded by me.)