Five Human Standard Operating Procedures
Humans and an excerpt from the playbook we have used for thousands of years. How many thousand?
1)Help your family, friends, and chosen or natal societal groups.
2)Achieve as much control of other people’s bodies and minds, the LifeField, and the non-living world as suits your ambitions and your capacities. Everyone has their own unique ambitions and capacities. Discovering these is part of life’s adventures.
2 a)Establishing control at the individual and group levels is for many purposes that can include selfless service to society at large (some mothers/fathers, some soldiers, some healthcare providers, some educators, some government workers, some employees, some businesses, etc.), with folks who choose to maximize their individual benefits from any life endeavor with respect to other people, living beings, or Earth’s ecosystem
at the other end of the self — other service spectrum.
3)Attempts to interpret meanings of suspected correlations between an effect and its possible instigating factor(s) as seen in local space and time. This has a survival component. Effects might be beneficial or destructive, or anything in between. This complex situation is difficult to understand and interpret for all people. This drops us into the swamp of correlation (things associated with any given event) and causation (did one event supersede all others in outcome instigating force?).
Unfortunately, causation and correlation are not the same things in statistics or reality. What you think caused any event may not be the causal element. Why? Because there is never just one thing that affects any outcome. Recent evidence from the machine learning field suggests there may be billions of separate influences on any given outcome.
In social hierarchy conflicts, confusing causation with correlation can drive many uses of force to impose any given interpretation on those who espouse different interpretations.
4)Curiosity (the drive to explore). Humans have used their native organizational skills which are expressed in cooperative or coerced group settings to explore and establish communities in a preponderance of geographical environments on Earth. Curiosity is driving us out into space and into the molecular realms of life here on Earth even as you read this flash essay. Curiosity can drive openness of mind with respect to diverse individuals and groups.
5)Constraining human relationship possibilities to optimize outcomes of interest for individuals and their associated social groups.
5 a)My way or the highway/doormat is one such relationship structure. We see this duality strongly expressed in some people and groups. The Han and Caucasian civilizations (e.g., ancient Rome) are exemplars of this approach to human relations. If this is paired with, “I must come out on top in all situations at all costs,” deadly outcomes will be seen throughout a society, between societies, or in personal relationships.
Ad hominem attack-based logic is typical of such relationships at the individual and group levels. This logic is expressed in words and narratives to create the impression in individuals and groups
that a person or group of people are bad. If people are bad, they should be opposed. Further, bad people should be punished and tightly controlled as a method of mitigating their bad effects on society. This precipitates many types of social conflict and animosity.
5 b) Treat other people as you would like to be treated. This is a more tolerant set of social constraints that posits self-interest can be a positive guide to human relationship cultivation. This social operating procedure produces cooperation among diverse individuals and groups with respect to projects that benefit the preponderance of folks.
These five standard operating procedures have interacted among human individuals and social groups and produced mixed outcomes in terms of lived experiences among all humans and the LifeField itself over the last ~15,000 years. Are these standard operating procedures due for an evaluation and update?
