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coercion = "the exploitation of the scarcity of another, to force the other to behave in a way that you want" (working draft, edited from some chats) (this is in the context of other-coercion; self-coercion needs a slightly different definition) 🧵 https://t.co/TCc1WEnwzR
so if people have a scarcity of food, you can coerce them by feeding them conditional on them doing what you want (this is usually called slavery, and requires you physically prevent them from feeding themselves any other way!)
most people in our societies have a scarcity of money, and many jobs involve taking advantage of people having such scarcities, in order to get them to do whatever the boss wants them to do (to the extent the boss can actually measure this)
this is to be contrasted with someone who is skilled, enjoys their work, & has lots of job opps—they're somewhat immune to exploitation since they can seek out self-directed work they'd do for fun, rather than suffering to serve another's will, just in order to eat
it's not just readily-quantifiable resources like 🍞💵🏡 people feel a scarcity of social well-being, love, respect, and interpersonal okayness more generally, so others can control their behavior by shaming them or withholding love until/unless the person does what they want.
again, use of such a coercive strategy requires that the person be in a chronic state of not-enoughness; otherwise you can't control them. this is incompatible with enlightenment & advanced stages of development, as far as I can tell, plus at odds with overall health & well-being
1. personally if I'm in a circle and someone points out that I'm doing something that's getting in the way of group coherence, then I want to untangle that for entirely selfish reasons: group flow is fucking ecstatic and wonderful and I want to experience it as much as possible
2. if someone I'm living with wants me to be quiet at night so they can sleep, then even though I love loud music and staying up late, I'm inclined to find a way to satisfy them (while also satisfying myself as much as possible)
2cont. ...then I'm inclined to find a way to satisfy their need because: - I want them to be happy - I want them to enjoy living with me - my life is better to the extent that the people living with me are happy overall and glad to be living with me
AND to the extent my motivation is oriented *towards* group flow or happier partner (not just *avoiding* shame) ... I'll be creatively attempting to find win-wins, rather than: - goodharting - virtue signalling - trying to avoid getting caught doing the thing people don't like
suppose that one of us proposes that you cook us both dinner but I buy the ingredients is this coercive? depends! it's definitely not inherently coercive if both of us have enough food/money, though there could be some sort of guilt-based or status-based something
even in that situation, if I'm like "you're my friend... I really want you to be able to eat... hmm... I don't have time to make food, so I'm currently spending money on eating out, but I could save that money and thus afford more groceries, if you can prepare it"
then in that scenario there's a sense in which I'm strategizing to find a way to solve your problem that might work for you huge difference also between whether you'd be happy to cook (you just can't afford the groceries) vs would find it onerous I'm looking for a win-win!
whereas if I'm like "hmm I definitely want a chef, hey who's someone who's desperate enough that I can get them to cook for both of us?" then that's... not so good? but even there it's pretty subtle, and there's also nothing wrong with wanting to solve your own problems!
in the coercive world, I *prefer* for the person to stay in a state of desperation, so I can keep exploiting them 😈 whereas in the collaborative/creative world, I prefer for them to create a state of abundance, from which I expect us to be able to find *even better win-wins* 🤩
I broadly think that an overall attitude of attempting to find win-wins (vs attempting to control others' behavior using whatever hooks of scarcity you can find) is possible even in the context of substantial scarcity, as long as you're not literally competing for food to live on
I'm not certain of this—it's one of my big open questions at the moment, and there's lots of evidence that it requires substantial amounts of abundance in order to learn noncoercion in the first place, because if you have to keep working shitty jobs to eat it's hard to unlearn it
but this might be in part just because throughout the history of civilization (perhaps less-so beforehand, it's hard to say) there haven't been many noncoercive deals available and this is changing, due to new possibilities in feral free agency, 1000 true fans, &+
this is the connection I'm seeing between feral free agents and self-energizing motivation https://t.co/bhSA7KPm1o
this thread is heavily informed by my reading of PCT books, particularly Making Sense of Behavior, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in understanding the nature of coercion and how we might grow a culture that is based on a completely new model https://t.co/ZQdpS2ZCUx
oh I guess maybe the way to extend this into talking about self-coercion would be that self-coercion usually involves a scarcity of feeling okay/good/peace/happy and then some subsystem says "you only get to feel good once you do [thing]" @RomeoStevens76 has thoughts on this
this thread is sort of talking about this same structure, including how it breaks down https://t.co/obRAgXsmeT
the primary actually-rivalrous resource is usable energy, whether fuel or food everything else is somewhat less rivalrous: we can share it or use it together in a way that adds up to more than 2 halves but you can't spend energy twice! we can't each eat the same apple! 🍎