ABTI | Joseph Riggio International

The Skeleton Key To Transformational Performance

Why We Focus On Neurocognitive Developmental Training As The Basis Of Instigating Transformational Change And Peformance Breakthrough

At each stage of human existence the adult is off on his quest to his Holy Grail, the way of life he sees by which to live.
– Clare W. Graves

 

Because people get stuck when the worldview they are using doesn’t accommodate the outcomes they intend … they need a way to get out of their “stuck state.”

Neurocognitive Developmental Training provides the skeleton key that unlocks the mystery of success.

This is the essential and most rewarding reason “WHY” it makes sense to get Neurocognitive Developmental Training (NDT) … but, once you dive down the rabbit hole you’ll find so much more that will be valuable to you too.

Neurocognitive Developmental Training is all about building “(Human) Adaptive Intelligence” – i.e.: the ability to adapt your thinking to the situations and contexts you encounter and are engaged in at any given time.

When you put your attention on it, you’ll likely recognize that what I’m calling (Human) Adaptive Intelligence, or (H)AI, is an innate trait of almost everyone you’ve met and know, including yourself. However, you may also simultaneously recognize how most folks avoid “adapting” their way of thinking, or probably more frequently reach the limits of their capacity to adapt rather quickly.

So, why is it, if we all seem to possess the ability to use adaptive thinking, that we don’t more naturally, frequently, and easily do it?

I’d argue it’s because it makes us uncomfortable to operate outside of, or beyond, our most familiar ways of operating, in this case thinking and acting.

This is the clearly identified and documented psychological “Cognitive Dissonance Theory” …

attitude change cognitive dissonance cartoon
Cognitive Dissonance: https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

 

Essentially this theory states that people will avoid whatever is unfamiliar, and when they cannot make sense of the unfamiliar create a rational reason to explain what is unfamiliar within the boundaries of their current Model of the World, i.e.: their way of perceiving and making sense of the world around them, including their current beliefs and values.

Simply stated, Cognitive Dissonance Theory, suggests that people would rather live with discomfort and/or dissatisfaction, and continue to fail at succeeding in the ways the claim to most desire, than have to change their beliefs and values to match the situational and/or contextual evidence they confront, i.e.:

Therefore, unless AND until someone shifts the Model of the World they are operating from, they will keep repeating the same challenges they have confronted in the past, and fail to make the changes in their life would allow them to succeed, but cause them instead to continue failing in the same way that they always have in the past.– Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

This presents people with a huge limitation in getting what they want, yet people will still avoid updating their Model of the World even when they recognize and know that’s what’s required of them to get what they want, and to find satisfaction and peace in their lives, all because the discomfort of making that change seems to them in the moment more disquieting and unreachable than not having the satisfaction and peace of getting what they deeply desire feels like to them now.

Ultimately most of us operate off of well established patterns of neurochemically and neurophysiologically ingrained behavior. These patterns arise in us as “GO” or “NO GO” signals.

Our “GO/NO GO” signals are actually organized somatically as well as psychologically, originating for the most part as shifts in our vestibular and proprioceptive systems, literally we “feel” in or out of balance, and like we’re stuck or motivated to take action.

This is deeply connected to the idea of  your “gut response” … that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know something is wrong and it makes you a bit queasy or nauseous, or when something is very right and you feel a tingling warmth about it in your belly.

Most people have learned to override this primitive, instinctual system designed to serve as both an “early warning system” as well as a “alert system to opportunity” by processing the “signals in the system,” i.e: the data that’s present, rationally or logically instead.

So they lose out on the benefit of learning how to trust this ancient system of response that is designed to protect and serve them.

We now know, through recent neuroscientific research, that the “vagal pathway” a system of nerves that is dominated by the vagus nerve that runs from brain to the digestive organs, controls much of what we have historically thought of informally and colloquially as our “gut response” … that innate way of knowing what is bad or good for us, before we even have time to think about it.

Here’s a short list of some of the ways the vagal pathway is involved in our health and sense of wellbeing (http://upliftconnect.com/12-ways-unlock-powers-vagus-nerve/):

Vagus nerve dysfunction can result in a whole host of problems including obesity, bradycardia (abnormally slow heartbeat), difficulty swallowing, gastrointestinal diseases, fainting, mood disorders, B12 deficiency, chronic inflammation, impaired cough, and seizures.

Meanwhile, the vagus nerve stimulation has been shown to improve conditions such as:

  • Anxiety disorder
  • Heart disease
  • Tinnitus
  • Obesity
  • Alcohol addiction
  • Migraines
  • Alzheimer’s
  • Leaky gut
  • Bad blood circulation
  • Mood disorder
  • Cancer

So you can see that we’re looking at a very significant part of our nervous system as it affects us.

What I’ve found in my work with people is that the “GO/NO GO” signal we experience is also part of the vagal response system, and that it links to our vestibular (sense of balance) and proprioceptive (sense of self/movement) systems, the very thing that gives us the feelings of either being stuck or being motivated to take action.

As far as I can tell from my work with thousands of clients this function of the vagal response system is deeply intertwined with the Neurocognitive Developmental Level you are operating from as well. Literally, where in your brain you preference when you are noticing information in the environment, making sense of what you notice, making decisions based on what you perceive, and taking action based on the decisions you make.

Using my unique Neurocognitive Developmental Training technology, ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training, you can literally update your vagal response to be more resilient and effective in aligning your “GO/NO GO” signals to the actual signals in the system and the outcomes you want to achieve.

In the ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training model, I refer to the chain of processes from Sensory Perception to Sense Making to Decision Making to Action Taking, as the “Perception to Action Loop” in part because it’s both iterative and recursive, updating as it “loops” on itself.

Here’s a look at one way of graphically representing this system:

[File Download: ACT-PerceptiontoActionLoop]

If we add the ‘GO/NO GO” signaling process that operates through the vagal pathway the model might look like this …

[File Download: ACT-PerceptiontoActionVagalLoop]

 

In part, updating the Neurocognitive Developmental Level you’re operating from by default updates what you’re noticing for and how you notice for it in the environment – what I call your Perceptual Filters, and the way you make sense of information – what I call your “Sorting Patterns” … this has the effect of changing the decisions you make and the action you take, because you are noticing different information and making sense of it differently as well.

A simple example of this would be whether you are noticing for risk or opportunity, the sequence in which you do that (assuming you can notice for risk and opportunity), and the way you balance how you make sense of both in relationship to one another.

Someone who notices first for risk will tend to be “risk adverse” and protective of themselves and the relative safety of their current situation.

Someone who notices first for opportunity will tend to be “risk willing” and seek to leverage themselves and the possibilities in the current situation.

Now which one is the better choice is totally situational and contextual …

For example making a decision to walk through a dark alley late at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood to cut ten minutes off the time it would take to get to your hotel if you walked the long way might suggest that the more useful strategy is to first access the risk and act with some degree of risk aversion.

An alternative example might be making a decision to run an advertisement for your business that has an upside of 1000% return on the investment and only represents .01% of the revenue that a product or service currently generates suggests that the more useful strategy might be to first access the opportunity and act with some degree of risk willingness.

Understanding that you are not stuck to one fixed way of thinking about the world, or using one fixed, default pattern of response is the first step in freeing yourself to experience a major update to your worldview and the model of the world you operate from, as well as the ability to reap massive rewards associated with significantly increasing your level of adaptability.

When you engage in Neurocognitive Developmental Training you begin this process of loosening the lock hold that your current worldview has on you, and releases you from the limitations of the model of the world you are operating from now in those situations and contexts where it simply doesn’t serve you best.

Neurocognitive Developmental Training really gives you a smoother and more elegant access to the full range of (Human) Adaptive Intelligence, than you currently have now, and opens up your ability to access all of the Neurocognitive Developmental Levels that are innately available to you, even if you have difficulty accessing them now, or simply don’t access them at all yet.

“When man is finally able to see himself and the world around him with clear cognition, he finds a picture far more pleasant. Visible in unmistakable clarity and devastating detail is man’s failure to be what he might be and his misuse of his world.
This revelation causes him to leap out in search of a way of life and system of values which will enable him to be more than he has been. He seeks a foundation of self-respect, which will have value system rooted in knowledge and cosmic reality where he expresses himself so that all others, all beings can continue to exist.
His values now are of a different order from those at previous levels: They arise not from selfish interest but from the recognition of the magnificence of existence and the desire that it shall continue to be.”
– Clare W. Graves

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics
Stockton, NJ in the Delaware River Valley

P.S. – You can also read more about ACT! | Adaptive Cognitive Training, the Perception to Action Loop, and Neurocognitive Developmental Levels here: Transformational Performance Breakthrough

Claiming Your Right To Be … Become The Buddha

Taking A (Semantic) Stand …

What Would It Take To Get You To Put A Stake In The Ground, And Claim That Space As Your Own?”

 

[“I am Diogenes.”]
One version of the story about the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree seeking the complete unfolding of consciousness tells of his last challenge by the gods before his enlightenment. Just prior to realizing his final enlightenment the gods, represented by the demon Mara had him send his most beautiful daughters, sometimes thought of as “Lust” and “Desire,” to seduce the future Buddha, but he was unmoved by them, so they departed.

Then Mara sent his monstrous army into the fray, and again Siddhartha Gautama, the future Buddha, sat unmoving and untouched. They launched their weapons, arrows and spears darkened the sky they flew in such profusion, but as they reached the future Buddha they fell around him having turned inflight into a shower of flowers. 

Finally Mara himself stood against the future Buddha, and he proclaimed his right to the seat of enlightenment by the virtue of his spiritual accomplishments, and his armies of demons and monsters all stood with him acknowledging his accomplishments as well. With this Mara asked, “My army speaks for me, who will speak for you?” and the future Buddha seemingly unmoving but for the single gesture of reaching down with two fingers of his right hand touched the earth, and in that moment claimed his right to be and the space he sat upon, and he was enlightened.

This single, final gesture of the future Buddha is captured in the “earth witness” mudra, where the left hand rests palm up upon the knee of the folded and crossed left leg, while the right hand reaches down to touch the earth and claim witness for one’s right to be. This simple expression of one’s being is the ultimate representation of steadfastness, and the silent exclamation, “I AM!”

I’ve always found this part of the story profoundly moving …

I yearn for Siddhartha Gautama’s steadfast stillness, his willingness to simply be … needing nor wanting anything more. Even when the irresistible temptations of mana … power, prestige, authority are thrust upon him he resists, or when irresistible beauty, lust and desire threaten to seduce him he never falters … remaining silent and unmoving.

As I’ve shared before I’m a “good” Roman Catholic boy by indoctrination if not actualization, and as a good student I’ve learned my lessons well. This moment of the Buddha’s reminds me as well of the moment the devil tries to seduce Jesus in the cave with temptation of worldly gain and power, even trying to trick him with simplicity by offering simple bread and water for his cavernous hunger and blistering thirst … to which Jesus replies, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds. out of the mouth of God.” rebuking Satan and his temptations.

These mythic forms of claiming one’s space, one’s right to be, have always been compelling for me.

For almost my entire adult life I have sought to incorporate and assimilate this simple understanding for myself, one’s right to be” – and to explore it and share it with others who share my fascination with this thing that I think is the ultimate expression of what it is to be human … our ability to claim our right to simply be, without adornment or even proof beyond our being itself.

The right to be shows up for me most in the idea of what I call one’s mythic form … the deep, often pre-conscious autobiographical narrative that defines and drives us. This narrative, unlike most stories that are told pre-exists in form and precedes language … it’s more somatic than it is semantic.

It’s been thirty years this year that I will have committed myself to unearthing the mystery of mythic form as I conceive of it. What I’ve convinced myself of in these three decades dedicated to the realization of, what it means to simply be, is that it is held and contained in what drives us to action, and comes to expression in our acts … on our own, with and in relation to others.

This beingness, if you will, is the source of our personal power, it is the seat of our personal performance, and yet it remains elusive at best for most of us.

So we seek to come to terms with our being, what we perceive rumbling unceasingly beneath the surface, driving us, seeking expression, willing us to become .. and, we know it only through what we can call our ‘worldview’ … the totality of the way we know the world around us and ourselves in relation to it … our private realities.

These realities are what I think of as mythic form, the massive, imposing, singularity of the autobiographic narrative that precedes language, and at the same time dominates everything thing we think and speak. Our mythic form is unmistakable in our actions, in deed and in word. And, can seem to us “a given,” fixed in space and time, an irreversible, unchangeable aspect of ourselves … ”who” we know ourselves to be.

Yet this simply isn’t true, we become what we claim to be, much more fully than what we’ve known we were. This then is your key to freedom, your key to become fully human, as the renowned scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested.

This ability to claim our future being is all about what it is to be human, and it requires us to drive a stake into the ground as surely as the Buddha showed us in his simple act of claiming his right to be be by touch the earth with the two fingers of his right hand. In his moment of defiance Siddhartha Gautama was the stake in the ground.

So, as is my wont at the start of the new year I give voice to my stake in the ground, the spot I will sit upon for this revolution of the earth around the sun.

This year I lay claim to “MAD SKILLS” … the expression of virtuosity in action, in my deeds and words. And … I invite you to join me in claiming MAD SKILLS for yourself as well, beginning at the core, with the unfolding of the mythic form, the worldview that drives you.

This surely is at the heart of it all … the chain of causality that determines not just what we do, what we accomplish, realize and gain for ourselves and with others, but ultimately who we become … the worldview we hold, the seat of our perceptions, sense-making, decision-making, action-taking … the results and outcomes we achieve, and fail achieve … our pre-conscious, and ever-present, mythic form.

I share with you that at the very center of our ability to choose and decide who we are in this moment, and who we will become in the next, is our commitment to building ”MAD SKILLS” … virtuosity in our action-taking.

There is a paradox I invite you to explore with me this year … that our doing both proceeds from our being, and precedes it as well in our becoming.

My invitation to you is to enter the liminal space of exploration that exists just before and between our acts, to take control of who we are and who we are aiming to be as well.

This is the space that opens before the Gates of Perception that determine how we know the world around us, and our place in it …

Are you ready for the journey of your life?

Remember, this ship you are upon set sails but once for you … lay claim to who you will have been and who you have become before it docks for the last time …

Best,

Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

P.S. – Click this link to find out more about the Gates of Perception and how you can dive in deeper … much, much deeper than you probably ever have now.

Hi, I’m from New Netherland …

11 nations of the US Map

The US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures

(From Business Insider July 27, 2015)

 

In my work I travel extensively, and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit many countries and also to meet many people who live in those countries. In some I’ve even built lasting friendships.

When I speak to my foreign friends about the United State I keep trying to explain that distinction that the United States is really very, very different depending on where you are from and/or living.

Colin Woodward is a journalist, who’s originally from Maine, making him a true Yankee born in the nation of Yankeedom according to what he writes in his book, “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.” 

In this book he makes the cogent argument that America is really a nation of nations, and not one undivided nation coast to coast as we have been led to think about it. 

Of course, I’m not suggesting that politically the United States of America is not one sovereign nation under the Constitution organized as a Federal Republic of individual sovereign States, and neither is Colin Woodward. The argument is that the regions of the United States have such unique points of view that they can be looked at as absolutely distinct, similarly to the individual nations of Europe for instance.

I totally agree with his fundamental premise that the United States is regionally diverse … politically, economically, socially and in terms of the basic and fundamental things we value the most from region to region. Using his book as the starting point then …

 

Here are my tongue-in-cheek analysis and observations on the article:

I’m from what the author, Colin Woodward, calls, “New Netherlands” … and I now live in what the author refers to as “The Midlands.” I have both friends and family in “Yankeedom,” and on “The Left Coast,” as well as in “The Deep South” but most of those are displaced “New Netherland-ers.”

I know people from all the other regions and find it easier and more difficult to relate to their way of seeing the world depending on where they are from on this map. Sometimes I think those of use from the New Netherlands are the hardest for folks from almost all the other regions to fit in with over the long haul, because we’re both headstrong and pushy about our beliefs in a way that comes across as harsh, abrupt and/or rude to most others.

Once they know you’re from the New Netherlands they’ll accept the attitude that brings, but that isn’t the same as liking it. Those of us from the New Netherlands have just as hard a time at the close-minded, myopic ways we sometimes perceive those from these other nations operating. It’s also sometimes difficult to deal with what we see to be the naive and privileged attitude of the Left Coast-ers.

However, for New Netherland-ers it all begins and end with “Attitude” …

New Netherland-ers are particularly proud of their “Attitude” and see it as quite special, even unique. There’s a time element to it, i.e.: they expect everything to happen “yesterday” and only minimally accept “now” as an answer for when. They move fast and live fast, much faster for instance than the rest of the nations indicated on the map, with some few exceptions in the largest cities in Yankeedom, The Midlands, Tidewater, and surprisingly The Deep South, but that’s because of how many displaced New Netherland-ers there are in some of The Deep South cities.

The Greater Appalachia, The Far West and El Norte are foreign lands for us from the New Netherlands. We try not to go there, except for those New Netherland-ers who somehow have opted out of real life and work, and have the time to ski. Otherwise we avoid the natives of those regions, because we’ve heard strange stories of abductions and dueling banjos, a ritual we don’t actually comprehend ourselves.

One of the unique aspects of each of the nations of the United States are our food rituals …

The New Netherlands boasts a remarkably varied ethnic smorgasbord of foods … Italian (predominate), Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Greek, French, German, Ethiopian, Jamaican … and it goes on and on. We often refer to the option to go out by the question, “What do you want to eat tonight?” meaning which kind of ethnic cuisine. The other unique thing about food in the New Netherlands is that it is the only place on the planet with authentic pizza – forget Naples!

The other regions also have their unique cuisines … the southern New France has something they call “creole” food … worth a trip across the border to get. Tidewaters does some remarkable things with seafood, and the Midlands and some of Appalachia are masters of a meat dish called, bar-b-que. The Left Coast is highly influenced by both Asian and Mexican cooking, and you’ll find some unique fusions of these cuisines there, as well as an assortment of ethnic foods rivaling the New Netherlands. El Norte of course is where they have mastered the art of what’s called “Tex-Mex” cooking as well as some truly traditional Mexican foods. I’m not sure if or what they eat in Yankeedom or The Far West, but I hear it’s got to do with a lot of lobster, beef and dairy.

But, above and beyond all of these distinctions of the nations of the United States we see some of the greatest ways they differ politically and socially. What each region needs and wants in these arenas isn’t just different or unique, but literally oppositional.

For instance while the New Netherlands shares much in common with The Left Coast in many ways, they are in many other ways almost in direct conflict on some major political issues and how they think about social justice. In the New Netherlands it’s all about “applied politics and social justice” a kind of social street code. On The Left Coast it’s much more about an idealism and activism that’s divorced from the reality of many, if not the actual majority, of the inhabitants. I think I’d apply the word “gritty” to the politics and social issues of the New Netherlands, where I’d call them “idealistic” on The Left Coast. So sometimes those of us from the New Netherlands see the Left Coast-ers as somewhat prissy in their approach, while I’m guessing they see our way of attacking the same issues as aggressive.

The other regions also have their thoughts and approaches to politics and social justice. I don’t feel equipped to address them as they often make little to no sense to me personally. Like many of the Midland-ers have a kind of live and let live attitude they share with much of New France as I see it, while the Greater Appalachians and The Far West-ers have a more “Don’t Tread on Me” attitude they share in common with much of Yankeedom. The Deep South, again along with much of Greater Appalachia, is still trying to get past 1865 and into the modern world I think I live in, but I get that’s just a point of view for both of us. Tidewater folks really believe they are a separate country, and are more or less just annoyed to be attached to the mainland and have to deal with its issues along with their own, but they’re happy at least that they run the country-at-large. El Norte … who the hell know what they’re all about, except possibly wanting to annex the area they live in back to Mexico???

So it’s really useful for folks outside the United States to get that there is no such thing as “an American” if you’re thinking about some creature that’s the same from coast-to-coast.

It’s also just as useful for Americans to get that we are a divided people united by choice and affiliation, and that a dominant federal government or system doesn’t truly serve as it did when we were evolving from thirteen colonies to the fifty states we’ve become. We haven’t even included the lands of Polynesia or The Far North here either, just to make the issues even more complex.

Trying to unite our great country as fifty individual sovereign States under one singular federal government that we allow almost absolute power over us legally and economically is no longer as feasible or useful as it once was in simpler times. It may be that we look to this map to establish regional governments, that abide to a common agreement to collaboration via a centralized federal government, but with much more autonomy from it than the States are currently operating under, despite the promises of the Constitution that officially governs us, but has been continually degraded over time. Let the regions rule their lands and their people, and make the federal government beholding to them instead of the other way ’round.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

P.S. – As always I’d love to read your own observations and comments … in fact I’m already looking forward to them!

P.P.S. – The original article from Business Insider, Jul. 27, 2015, can be found here: “This map shows the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures” and you’ll find the book by the author, Colin Woodward, on Amazon here; “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America”

Leaping Forward …

Preparing The Future …
Neuro-Evolutionary Modeling

 

I posted something on Facebook in response to comment made there about how someone wasn’t getting the point that the person posting was trying to make … not an uncommon scenario unfortunately.

 

But there are different reasons people won’t get a point someone is making … maybe the point isn’t being clearly made, or getting it requires a bit of background that’s missing, or sometimes it can just be that the people disagree and that creates a block in the communication.

However, in this case I believe it was something else … a fundamental inability for people to see anything that’s beyond their neuro-evolutionary development.

Here’s my response to that posting:

I’m a big fan of neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling. Think of the work of Julian Jaynes and his bicameral mind theory, or the work of Clare Graves or Jane Lovinger, or E.O. Wilson’s work in sociobiology. This is where my attention has been for the better part of a decade now.

Rebecca Costa has summed up some of this work in her excellent book, The Watchman’s Rattle. In the book she speaks to the neuro-evolutionary trait of insight, technology, complexity and the collapse of civilizations. Well worth the read.

In my work I’ve been looking at a few things too … different from Costa or the others. I think some of my work is paralleling the things Ken Wilber has been speaking to most recently. My focus has been on how we create transformational change leading to a new position of consciousness and performance breakthroughs. NOT better performance where we already are, but performance we cannot get to from where or how we are today.

This focus forced me to look at the questions of power and complexity, and their relationships as contained in the interpersonal relationships in institutions and organizations. This is akin to what John Gatto found when deconstructing modern schooling, it’s process and intent.

Simply put there may not be a place for consensus if we want real change. This idea, of consensus, is mired in what Clare Graves points out is Level Six thinking, what Spiral Dynamics labels Green, and what Dudley Lynch calls First Dolphin or Enlightened Carp thinking.

The idea that we must create consensus and bring people along is an anchor we drag from a limited world view that has not yet leaped beyond systemic thinking to fractal thinking where deep complexity resides.

Rebecca Costa points to this limitation as reaching a cognitive threshold, and suggests it’s the basis for the collapse of civilizations. Her analysis and evidence is impressive. IMO many Western Europeans and North Americans are stuck there today, along with some others as well.

(Name Withheld) you’re suggesting something that remains in a blind spot to anyone who hasn’t fully evolved beyond Level Six mind.

This posting and the responses to it got me to thinking.

 

Is it unreasonable to consider that some folks are just not neuro-evolutionarily developed enough to perceive what others do as obvious?

 

This falls under the rubric of Developmental Modeling as I refer to it, or if I really want to be fancy about it, Neuro-Evolutionary Developmental Modeling.

In less fancy terms this is the assessment and modeling of the literal neuro-evolutionary developmental stage that someone is at, and the implications of what that means.

Let me put it another way …

My work as I said in my Facebook response focuses on:

“… how we create transformational change leading to a new position of consciousness and performance breakthroughs. NOT better performance where we already are, but performance we cannot get to from where or how we are today.”

This is about looking at levels of consciousness and meaning-making as I think about it.

There’s a cognitive consideration, i.e.: how we process information beginning with perception, moving through sense-making and decision-making, and respond in regard to the action we take and the action we choose not to take.

Within the scope of my consideration is how we process that information that leads to action, including what Cognitive Scientists refer to as Situated and Embodied Cognition.

 

Situated Cognition:

The school of thinking about situated cognition aligned with the cognitive scientists say that cognition is a function of where we are situated in space and time, i.e.: the situation and circumstance we find ourselves in determines how we think about the information available to us.

Simply put, cognitive scientists say that thinking cannot be separated from doing and context as a way to speak about situated cognition. The situation becomes part of our “cognitive process” as well as what we do internally with the information we have access to, including the way the information in the situation relates to other information in the situation.

For example, if we are in a diner and hungry and we see a menu advertising the “Burger Special” we will think about it differently than if we had just left a restaurant after a particularly satisfying meal and saw the same “Burger Special” advertised on a billboard as we were driving home. The situation and circumstance changes how we think about the information that’s present.

Another example might be, if we are in the diner and hungry, but we only have enough money for a cup of coffee we’d respond differently to the “Burger Special” advertisement than if we had sat down to eat with plenty of money in our pocket to choose whatever we want for dinner.

Also, what we bring to the situation ourselves affects how we process the information presented to us as well. For instance if we are vegans or eating a strict paleo/high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet will impact how we process the information about the “Burger Special” too.

The situation becomes part of our “cognitive process” as well as what we do internally with the information we have access to, including the way the information in the situation relates to other information in the situation.

 

Embodied Cognition:

Keeping it as simple as possible, when we refer to embodied cognition we’re referring to the idea that … we think like we do because we’re embodied in world.

This means that our thinking arises from the physical experience of having a body, and the way we experience things in and with our body.

While this might seem obvious at some level the more prominent position has been held for more than three centuries has been dualism, i.e.: the separation of body and mind. Cognitive scientists who hold a strong position about embodiment believe the mind arises from the structure, processes and actions of the body.

Early examples of embodied cognition arise in the world of the phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

In the mid and late twentieth century some cognitive scientists went beyond the theories of dualism and the mind as an independent processing mechanism to considering a unified cognition that includes the body. Two of the folks who did a lot of work in the embodied cognition paradigm that influenced my thinking are Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. They studied and wrote about visual perception, including the biology of vision, like the physical aspects of the human eye, and how those physical aspects of embodiment effect how we perceive visually.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are two philosophers who are also in the embodied cognition camp who did a lot of work together around metaphor and embodiment. Their book Philosophy in the Flesh was one of the most influential early works in my own conception of mind. It was this book that led me to thinking about what cognitive scientists call enactivism.

 

Enactivism:

Enactivism postulates that cognition is a function of the tension between thinking and the environment, and the need or desire to respond to what’s happening. Specifically enactivism suggests that we shape our environments by the ways we respond and take action, shaping the environment in turn as we go.

This looping between the individual and their environment becomes a part of their cognitive processing, and as I think about it it’s here that situated and embodied cognition collide and become something more than either alone.

In some way we can say that enactivism brings about who we are as we know ourselves to be, as well how we know the world to be as we know it. Through enacting in the world we generate both ourselves and our sense about and knowledge of the world, including others.

This is where I mostly settle when it comes to how we process cognitively in a real sense of what happens as we’re processing information and acting on it.

Yet, I’m also influenced by other cognitive models that share how I think about enactivism, like neuro-evolutionary developmental models.

 

Neuro-Evolutionary Developmental Modeling:

For me the rubber hits the road when we’re talking about mental models when the dialogue revolves around neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling.

My early introduction to the idea of neuro-evolutionary developmental modeling was via the work of Dr. Clare Graves. The Graves Model lays out a double helix of stages of evolutionary bio-pyscho-social-cultural growth alternating between self-sacrificing and other-sacrificing. At each stage the dynamics of dealing with the limitations of the system the individual is contained in and relating to create a tension that leads to dialectical transformation.

According to Dr. Graves each stage of human evolutionary growth comes about as a result of dealing with the challenges presented by the environment they are contained in and operate in relation to until the operating paradigm itself becomes the generator of the challenges the individual confronts.

When the point where the operating paradigm generates irresolvable challenges as a result of functioning within it there is a point of dialectical transformation that is reached. It is at this point that individuals within the system respond by rejecting the present paradigm and leap to a new level of consideration that offers resolution to the challenges the extant operating paradigm generates.

In other words every human system can be defined by some set of boundary conditions that limit it to being what it is in the moment. These boundary conditions arise as a result of the values that are held as true, and in some regard sacred, within that human system. These values are designed to create a functioning system that resolves the challenges that system faces collectively, and become the agreed upon and accepted values of the culture.

Yet, these values require varying degrees of cognitive development to incorporate and act upon. The neuro-evolutionary developmental models I follow closely suggest that the human cognitive system evolved in relation to the stresses confronted at various stages of human evolution. Literally on one hand the brain evolved to access new ways and patterns of thinking, partially due to the interactions of the multiple brain modules that evolved in response to evolutionary pressures.

At each level of neuro-evolutionary development the individuals who have access to that level of development become able to perceive their environment in ways that individuals before them, who had not evolved that level of neuro-evolutionary development are able to comprehend. Quite literally the ability to perceive the information in the system is limited by the level of neuro-evolutionary development.

This shows up in application or practically in relation to the level complexity the individuals within a system are able to process the information present. The higher the neuro-evolutionary development of the individuals in the system the more complexity they can perceive and comprehend. These advanced stages of neuro-evolutionary development allow these individuals to make choices unavailable to those who cannot perceive and comprehend complexity at these levels.

One way to think about this would be as the scope and range of complexity that individuals in a system use to make decisions and take action. The higher the level of neuro-evolutionary development of an individual the greater the scope and range of choice they will have, theoretically giving them an edge in responding to the emergent conditions in any given system. However, there’s a strong caveat …

The theoretical best response will arise when the level of complexity present in the system and the level of neuro-evolutionary development are most closely aligned and matched. When the complexity of the system exceeds the level of the neuro-evolutionary development of the individual confronting it the lack of appropriate choices available will limit the individual to less than ideal choices and, corresponding less than ideal responses and outcomes.

Applying higher level choices in a system that operates at a lower level of complexity than the neuro-evolutionary developmental level being applied to make the choices acted upon often results in less than ideal responses and outcomes.

 

Therefore we can say that using the most aligned neuro-evolutionary developmental level to the situation and circumstance at hand results in the most ideal responses and outcomes being realized.

Yet, when someone simply doesn’t have access to the neuro-evolutionary developmental level required by the complexity in the system they will be limited to responding from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level they can access at present.

This is how individuals and system fail and go into devolution resulting in personal failure and civilization collapse.

 

I’m seeing more and more that individuals in our complex Western civilization are reaching cognitive thresholds, which define the limits of complexity they can perceive and comprehend. Yet the systems they are operating within require a higher level of neuro-evolutionary development then they currently have access to, to create useful choices that allow them to respond and produce the outcomes they desire.

The feelings they experience as result of reaching their cognitive threshold  include frustration, anger and despair. This leads to lashing out against others who are also experiencing the limits of their own cognitive threshold, albeit in ways different from their own.

 

Regardless of the level of neuro-evolutionary development that limit an individual from accessing the most useful choices to address the challenges they face, the result is the same … i.e.: they produce less then ideal responses and outcomes. 

In particular, as a result of their neuro-evolutionary developmental limitations, these folks believe they are addressing the challenges they confront in the most ideal way possible, yet the outcome they produce replicates the conditions to perpetuate the challenges they seek to resolve.

The key to resolving the limitations of neuro-evolutionary development begins with accepting that the choices available to you are constrained by your level of neuro-evolutionary development … and NOT the conditions of the challenges you face or the system they are contained within.

 

The first step forward then starts with exploring ideas and choices that are unfamiliar and unaccessible from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level you are most comfortable with today. This means opening yourself to the discomfort of confronting your most cherished values and beliefs for what they are … values and beliefs, not facts or truths.

Individuals who can do this … confront their most cherished values and beliefs and open themselves up to the discomfort of seriously considering that ideas and choices that are unfamiliar and unaccessible to them from where they are today … open themselves up to the possibility of creating responses and outcomes that were unavailable to them previously.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean they have actually evolved to a higher neuro-evolutionary developmental level, it doesn’t matter as much as having access to the strategies used by individuals who can operate at those higher levels.

But, it also requires accepting that until we actually evolve to a high neuro-evolutionary developmental level, we will remain blind to what we cannot perceive from the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental operating level we can access ourselves.

Despite the frustration, anger and despair this realization may bring, i.e.: that we are limited to the highest neuro-evolutionary developmental level we can access, it allows us to move beyond operating from distorted values and beliefs we impose, while ignoring real facts and truths that are evident to those who aren’t blind in the particular ways we are ourselves.

This work … guiding my clients beyond the limits of their current level of neuro-evolutionary development happens in my Foolish Wisdom program and private 0ne-to-one work. The feedback I get is that while the result is often transformational leading to significant performance breakthroughs, getting there isn’t always the most comfortable experience on the way, but worth it at the end.

I’d love to hear your thoughts …

Buona Fortuna and Abundanza,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

 

P.S. – There is still time to get the details about the upcoming Foolish Wisdom program on 28 January in NJ …

 

FOOLISH WISDOM DETAILS

 

 

Why Hillary Clinton Lost The Election …

Or … Thank G-D Donald Trump Won

2a93b0af728fdccd0d0cabc4320b257fOkay, before you decide to send me death threats let’s me make something abundantly clear that it seems so many of liberal, progressive and centrist friends can’t or won’t get …

 

I don’t like Donald Trump and I think he’s bad for America.

But, there are caveats galore attached to that pronouncement.

  • First, compared to what Hillary Clinton, the DNC and the Democrats and Democrat Party represents today, Donald Trump is a godsend for the American people, and I believe the world-at-large too.
  • Next, Donald Trump isn’t the enemy or even the issue … it’s the arrogance that the global elites treated him, his campaign and his supporters with, starting with monied interests represented by the mainstream media.
  • Finally, Donald Trump was an inevitability given what we’ve seen happening on the world stage, centered right here in the heartland of America … the massive division between those who have and those who have not, and the smug, highbrow patrician attitude of the intellectual and monied elite from Wall Street to Hyde Park and Hollywood.

 

Donald Trump didn’t win the election …
Hillary Clinton lost it!

 

Now of course Hillary Clinton and the Democrats would like to blame everyone from James Comey to Barack Obama for her troubles, but that’s just more of the same arrogance that cost her and her party the election.

She began losing the election when she started believing she was about the law, or at least above the rules and regulations that apply to everyone else. Then her confidants and cronies allowed her to believe the false narrative they spun around her with misinformation like the fact that former Secretary of State, Colin Powell did just what she did in setting up and using a private email server. Yet the reality was that the times and the context were radically different for Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, beginning with the fact that Colin Powell’s actions were known to and monitored by the State Department, while Hillary Clinton’s were directly against the advice and protocols of the State Department. Yet the lies were disseminated to the faithful who worshipped at the alter of the Clintons and the DNC and the chosen choose to believe despite the evidence to the contrary.

Then of course when the lies came to haunt Secretary Clinton we were fed the line that it really didn’t matter at all, that defying the State Department protocols for handling classified information were of no consequence and that there was nothing for us to see or notice there where the investigation was happening. Even when the FBI identified that classified information was mishandled, and it was likely that the server Secretary Clinton was using was penetrable to foreign powers we were again told it wasn’t really a big enough deal to prosecute or punish anyone over. But the problem for the Clinton campaign is that a substantial portion of the population just didn’t like it or believe it … including Senator Bernie Sanders, her Democrat rival for the nomination as the party candidate for president.

It was not a good report for Secretary Clinton. That is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I mean, everybody in America is keeping it in mind, and certainly the superdelegates are.”

The comments are something of a reversal for the Vermont senator, who has all but ignored the email scandal throughout the entire Democratic presidential primary. His refusal to attack the former secretary of state over her emails was a political risk; the issue plays heavily into voters’ doubts about Mrs. Clinton, who is widely seen as dishonest and untrustworthy.

Bernie Sanders seizes on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in bid to sway superdelegates
Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times – May 30, 2016

Then of course there was all the noise about the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s potential “pay for play” schemes with wealthy individuals, companies and even countries. None of it was founded in hard evidence, but the general feeling amongst just about everyone except die hard Hillary Clinton sycophants was that it was an awful lot of smoke without a fire.

Recently, the Foundation and the emails have become considerably more interconnected in a kind of toxic smoothie. Yet, when it comes to the Foundation, there appear to be two main points to evaluate when all the evidence is in.

If nothing else, both are worthy of some raised eyebrows. But they are quite different in scope and import. One is the alleged influence peddling that suggests that the Clinton Foundation may have been a well-worn avenue for some donors to travel to get access to the Secretary of State. The facts are still coming out, and there are many differing views on just how much of this occurred or should be allowed. But the appearance does seem striking. For example, it is hard to explain the report that the Foundation gathered $100 million from Gulf sheikhs and billionaires, and for what promises.

The second main issue with the Foundation is pure tax issue, that of private inurement or private benefit. This one may be considerably less serious for a political candidate, but might look somehow even more unseemly. Charities are supposed to be operated exclusively for charitable purposes. In fact, the law is very clear that charitable organizations with public charity tax exemptions must benefit thepublic interest. The law requires the charity to operate exclusively for charitable purposes, and normally the IRS really means exclusively.

Clinton Foundation’s Alleged Pay To Play Or Its Private Benefits: Which Hurts Hillary More?
Robert W. Wood ,   Contributor – Forbes – August 23, 2016

Then we can top much of that off with the DNCs role in favoring the Hillary Clinton campaign over that of Senator Bernie Sanders, despite the huge groundswell of popular support for the Senator from Vermont and his truly progressive views on politics in Washington, D.C.

Many people feel that the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders and rigged it for Hillary Clinton to win despite the will of the people.

Top officials at the Democratic National Committee criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race, according to committee emails made public on Friday by WikiLeaks.

Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clintonover Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.

Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derided the Sanders Campaign
Michael D. Shear and Matthew Rosenberg – The New York Times – July 22, 2016

This all showed how Hillary Clinton simply displayed an utter contempt for playing by the rules or being limited in her actions in a way that seemed to suggest she believed herself to be above the law that governs the rest of America and her ordinary citizens.

Then of course there was the whole “basket of deplorables” comment …

Memo to candidates: Stop generalizing and psychoanalyzing your opponents’ supporters. It never works out well for you.

The latest to fall into that trap is Hillary Clinton. The Democratic nominee, at a New York fundraiser Friday night with liberal donors and Barbra Streisand, said “half” of Trump supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables,” while the other half are people who feel the government has let them down and need understanding and empathy.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Basket Of Deplorables,’ In Full Context Of This Ugly Campaign
Domenico Montanaro – NPR – September 10, 2016

Yet the Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, many of the Democrats, dozens of media personalities, and scores of folks on the Internet and in social media sites want to blame what happened on someone else other than resting the result on the shoulders of the would be coronated queen of American politics, Hillary Clinton.

 

Donald Trump was the solution to Hillary Clinton

What many good intentioned people who saw and see Donald Trump as the personification of white elitism, that speaks to the worst in us … the people who voted for Donald Trump saw someone who was speaking to them and not at them.

Donald Trump spoke to the unbelievable profound distrust and despair that the middle class in America felt with a country they love in the form of her political institutions centered in and around Washington.

They saw what they hoped would be a President of the people sell them out to the bankers and the war hawks.

They saw the rich getting richer, while they struggled to hang onto their jobs and their homes.

They watched the President and his family on holiday excursions costing the American taxpayers millions of dollars, or reading about how many days the President took off golfing, when they themselves couldn’t afford to take a week off just to stay at home and recover from hard year of working themselves ragged in two or three jobs to make ends meet.

They watched as family and friends lost good paying jobs and went without work for months that turned into years, and Congress voted in packages that increased their salaries and benefits, while they stripped Social Security to pay off the debts they incurred at the expense of the American people that generations to come will still be paying off as they built their personal fortunes.

Middle class, blue collar, working Americans were sick and tired of being spoken to from the raised platform that politicians like Hillary Clinton spoke from with her millions in the bank, her multi-millionaire husband, daughter and son-in-law standing behind her, and her haughty expression and commentary about how she’s always been there for the common man, woman and child.

The simple truth is the middle America was just plain sick and tired … and they began to recognize that the symptoms were all pointing to the same disease … systemic rot in Washington.

Then they saw Donald Trump as someone outside of that system … someone who promised to “drain the swamp” … and that was enormously appealing to them.

Now they are waiting to see what this “outsider” will do … and whether or not he’s just going to be more of the same or if he’ll deliver on some of the promises he made to “make America great again” … rolling back the clocks to the post-war glory years of the 1950s with it booming economy, jobs in every town, a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.

They have forgotten the despair of those left out of that dream, or the uprisings of the 1960s that followed those golden years when those left out in the cold demanded some of the heat they were part of creating.

And, the ones who gained some ground in the decades that followed forgot the real fight was with the folks who held the reins of power and not their next door neighbors.

This is just exactly how it was planned and implemented since Bill Clinton first took office though … keep the people fighting in the streets and they’ll leave the folks in the halls of the Capitol to do their dirty deeds and create the greatest divide between the have and have-nots since Charles Dickens was writing about the best of times and the worst of times.

 

However … some good may still come of all this …

After decades of doing transformational change work with people from all walks of life on five continents around the world I’ve learned a significant lesson:

 

”People don’t change except in response to crisis.”

And, believe me this is a crisis.

I don’t think it’s the crisis that many folks think it is though. I don’t think we’re headed towards the precipice of social oblivion … or that the country will become the next historical footnote of how once great nations fall in the tyranny of fascism … or even how hate crimes, racism and misogyny will overtake civility and public decorum in the streets of America.

No, I think the crisis that’s been long coming is the crisis in faith that Americans have long held that their institutions and those that lead them were fundamentally honest and good intentioned.

The tide has changed and there are more and more people who see the government and the leaders positioned within it as the enemy of the people.

This is the basis for all great revolutions in the history of the world … especially the non-violent kind that erupt when the people demand that those who have become the corruption step down or are removed from power.

Donald Trump is the great white hope that has forced a compliant America, and much of the world to take notice of who sits on the throne of power in the Western world … and of course people are concerned.

We have been going along to get along without demanding that our representatives act as servant leaders of the people and not mouthpieces for the oligarchy that rules America.

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Echo Chambers – BBC – April 17, 2014

Now finally we have an oligarch in the seat of power in the White House and maybe, just maybe, enough Americans will wake up and start paying attention to how the system actually works.

Maybe, just maybe, people will begin to think about who they are voting for and what these people represent.

Clearly Hillary Clinton represented the oligarchy and NOT the people.

This was and remains the main and fundamental issue this election cycle has demonstrated if nothing else.

And, until enough people who have been willing to deny what they know to be true, keeping their heads firmly below the sand, while their buttocks remain exposed and ready to receive, wake up and demand to be counted and not used and abused by those in power the raping of America will continue.

Now I know this is NOT a message many of my fellow Americans want to or are ready to hear … at least not yet, but the time is always now.

We don’t have the luxury of time to wait for when it’s comfortable and we’ve adjusted to the new reality to start acting on our own behalf, on behalf of those who have less of an opportunity to be heard, and on behalf of the planet and her people at large … NOW IS THE TIME!

Our most cherished beliefs and values are in peril … AND IT’S NOT FROM DONALD TRUMP OR HIS CREW … it’s from the entrenched military/industrial/banking complex that is the cabal that runs American and much of the world … including almost every seated politician in Washington today on both sides of the aisle.

Fortunately, I believe it’s not too late … if this election has shaken you to the core, because your candidate lost, or because your candidate won … or even if your candidate never made it to the race … if you remain awake we can take back what Abraham Lincoln so forcefully reminded us that the Constitution guarantees us … a country of the people, by the people and for the people …

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo

(http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/04/we-have-met-enemy-and-he-is-us.html)

 

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

 

P.S. – If you’re ready to take the leap and wake up a bit more you can dip into my collection of materials for revolutionaries at: ABTI | Joseph Riggio International Members Platform

P.S.S. – You can get anyone of my previous programs for 50% during my Black Friday sale when you purchase them today … use the couple code “BLACKFRIDAY” (no quotes, no spaces, all upper case) when you check out and your discount will automatically be applied.

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