Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Natasha Tori Maru]

7 hours ago, Joshe said:

What do you mean by "relationally understand you"? 

You're right, I often don't have high confidence that I know what you're getting at. I pick an interpretation and roll with it and expect explicit correction if I misinterpreted. I try to parse and understand you, then you let me know if I've misunderstood, then I adjust. No need to get hung up on misunderstandings or dwell on the fact that it happened. Good-faith communication keeps moving forward. 

Understand my meaning. Not just surface analysis where you think because a mechanism is "explained" their behaviour, intentions, meaning and experience are known. 

For example - with a passage like this:

Quote

It’s time to feed Leo’s superiority complex. This is just him finding some weird thing to use as an excuse to tell you he’s more conscious than you all are. It has nothing to do with any deep insight that you’re missing or that he wants you to see. It’s a recurring pattern. Tends to come in waves. This wave probably isn’t over. 

What are you trying to achieve, other than to advertise an analytical observation of mechanistic behaviour? It substitutes analytical interpretation for relational understanding. Your action here appears to take Leo's observed rhetoric and convert it to a model of Leo's inner state and motives. That model/analysis may be partially or entirely correct. Do you think you might be trying to produce insight? This is unlikely, by itself, to produce the kind of self-recognition that facilitates voluntary change. Especially as this sort of analytical model-push has been repeated by you many times (and others) on the forum, over a prolonged period. Again I make no comment as to whether I think you are correct or not. 

If you want to achieve a change in Leo, you need to create the possibility of affecting recognition from him. He needs to recognise himself in your representation of him. There is very little relational connection occurring in the interaction as described. Connection needs to have this relational aspect to be transformational. Hit from both axis (insight "There is a pattern here" + recognition "Yes, I see this pattern occurring in me").

Your analysis of Leo denies his meaning before discovering it. Imagine Leo responds to the above "That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm actually trying to articulate something I think people are misunderstanding." Often the response will be: "That's exactly what someone with a superiority complex would say." (in fact, I can imagine you writing this - and maybe you wouldn't, but my mind took me there!). But that is a self sealing model where anything Leo says is more evidence for the model. That is the opposite of relational understanding. This the other dataset you are overlooking by focusing so much on analytical understanding (mechanistic explanation) then the "mind reading" epistemological leap. And that dataset is found in relational understanding. 

By avoiding relating in this way, you subtly dehumanise Leo (you may not intent to do this at all, it is just this mode of relating can have dehumanising effects regardless of intention). You can remove yourself from the relational experience of what you're saying, and therefore from what it may be like to repeatedly have someone interpret your inner world through armchair psychology. 

Stripping someone of their humanity like this is just going to block your message from being recognised. Relational knowledge and understanding is part of the pathway by which another person can actually receive and integrate a message. Explanation is not understanding.

Having said all that - this is why I am confused as to what you are trying to achieve. If you just fancy your ability to diagnose and play psychologist, or if you are genuinely trying to get through to Leo and aren't aware that you have more tools available to you. And if the case is the latter - the dehumanising effect your persistent comments can cause is shooting you in the foot.

Edited 1 hour ago by Natasha Tori Maru