The Sixth Framework
Exploring the transition we are in through the Five Frameworks
Most of us are trained to think in small segments, see only a part of a whole, and never connect moments of historic time together into a picture of transition. Because of this, many of the people that I know lack wisdom and understanding because they only see that which is presented to them. This bright, shiny surface is assumed to be the story, never part of the story or the whole story, just the story. They become reactive and defensive in the face of new ideas or perspectives.
It is important to understand this pattern of behavior because this is why issues related to conspiracy theories, misinformation, and censorship are products of political ideology, not intellectual thought. Look at Anthony Howard’s post about Dr. John Snow and the English Cholera pandemic of 1846-1860 to grasp what it means to lean on mental models that are faulty.
If you want to think clearly, find a calm, rational place as one friend described it, and be able to make solid decisions about your future, then you are going to have to change the patterns of behavior.
We are all being seduced into believing that which really doesn’t have a lot of substance to it. We are seduced not by reality, but by its opposite, a culture of simulation.
Over the past dozen-plus years, I have read more dead people than live. I have written less about other people’s thoughts and more about my own. I find that I have done a better job of predicting what is coming than most people. What I see now deeply concerns me for the short-term, and gives me hope for the long term.
The reason for this is that I practice what I describe above. My personality is better suited to it. I am what Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin call a Neo-Generalist. Look it up. You may be one too, not realize it, and have been suffering from trying to be a specialist when your personality is not oriented that way.
Over the past twenty years, I have developed specific frameworks to address what I observe about people, institutions, communities, and the world at large. Here are the five that form the corpus of my intellectual gift to the world. I have never described all these together as I am here in this essay. It marks a turn in how I will be writing in the future.
The Five Frameworks
The Circle of Impact model of leadership, and its various applications.
“All leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.”
The Nature of Transition and Change
“We are All in Transition. Every one of us. All the time.”
The Two Global Forces
“There is the global force of centralized institutions of governance and finance and the global force of networks of relationships.”
The Spectacle of the Real
“The culture of the spectacle, of the event that captures our attention for the moment, has become the driving force in the culture of news, entertainment, sports, and consumerism. The spectacle deflects us from the real toward the hyper-real through the intensification of the historical moment as beyond history, as a singular moment in time that we must become immersed in to be alive or to be "informed." Not just a different version of the story, or different narrative, or a different perspective; but a different reality. This spectacle is a simulacrum. An iconic image event that simulates a representation of values or meaning, regardless of whether the reality of the event was about the moment being represented.”
The Networks for Relationships
“Ask: ‘Who do you know that you think I should know, and would introduce me?”
These five frameworks are based on observation, reflection, study, and finally articulation. I have tested each one in a variety of contexts to determine whether I was allowing my bias toward my ideas to prejudice me. The reason that I know that these tools of thought and human initiative work is because they have been successful across cultural boundaries.
I tell you this because you need to understand what I see right now. I am not a futurist. I am not an expert except in the field of leadership. But what I see reminds me of Neo’s last words in the original The Matrix film.
There is a set of assumptions about the future that there is an inevitability about it. I don’t share those opinions because I know that there is nothing hidden. Everything has been revealed. And people are choosing to believe or not believe in what they see right before their eyes.
The Links Between the Five
To understand how the five frameworks are tied together, we need a context, a situation where we can apply them. Let me pose this as a question.
Why is it that people are more willing to trust people that they only see on the screen, who they only know as a media personality, rather than members of their own family and closest friends?
We start with the observation that there is a breakdown of the traditional structure of societal relationships. Over the past seventy to eighty years, we have gone from a culture unified for the purpose of defeating European Fascism to a tribal culture of warring political ideologies. In the Network of Relationships framework, we learn that a network of only our closest relations restricts our access to information (perspective) and resources. Yet, expanding our network to only include social media influencers with whom we do not have an actual relationship is not the same as developing a network of direct relationships with people. By transferring our attention to media personalities, we are trapped in a cycle that ultimately alienates us from our closest relations and our local communities. In another place, I describe this process.
“I have identified a sequence of steps related to the effect of the simulation upon us. The Simulation Seduces us to adopt an Identity that is centered on our inclusion in various social classifications. Much of this seduction is focused on our desire for fulfillment, pleasure, or some other state of emotions that the simulation aims to provide. When we hear that in the future we will not own anything and be happy, we are presented with a seductive state where we are dependent and no longer responsible for our lives or our communities. This seductive state is not a stable state. Therefore, it requires a belief system, a kind of secular religious belief that essentially is a False Consciousness. Think of your own personal spirituality that provides you both comfort, and a sense of self-importance, and yet does not provide a context for a community spirituality. This inadequacy means that our lives are Controlled through the function of the Simulation in society. “
We find our way out of this trap by focusing our lives on the creation of impact. Impact is the difference that we make that matters. It comes from our actions, not from our preferences and opinions. When we click “like”, we are just signaling a kind of message that has no real resonance in the real world. It is how we participate and contribute to the culture of simulation. However, when we take personal initiative to create impact, we are participating in a real-world process of change. Our contribution matters to those who benefit from our initiative.
The Circle of Impact provides a simple model for being a person of impact. We think clearly about our values, purpose, and vision for impact. We build direct relationships of respect and trust based on shared values, and a common purpose for impact. We establish a structure that creates and sustains the impact that we desire. In this sense, our whole life becomes aligned with the idea of the impact that we seek to create. At this point, we begin to elevate the decentralized side of the Two Global Forces to be a fully responsible human being in service to those we care about and the institutions and communities that we love.
We can reverse the effects of the culture of simulation by embracing reality. In a comparable sense, reality provides a place to test our identity. We learn what we are capable of, both in terms of capabilities and personal maturity. Through the testing of ourselves, we gain self-awareness, and with that the freedom to decide the kind of life we want. This diagram illustrates the difference between these two cultures.
The question of the framework of transition remains. If we are living through the other frameworks, then we will see the range of transitions taking place. It is hard to see it while we are in it. But it is happening. We experience transition as a series of milestones. Some are small, others are major. They are points in time that we can observe as a change taking place. If we ask the first question of the Five Questions that Every One Must Ask, “What has changed? How am I in Transition?”, we can pinpoint the progression of these transition points over time.
The Transition that We are In
Think of this transition as the end of a life cycle. This transition represents the end of the viability of a particular way of being a global community.
This life cycle has been ending for at least 300 years. When did it begin? Most likely with the first civilizations that emerged from the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago. The great things that happened during the intervening millennia masked the reality of what was actually taking place. The way it was masked was through the spectacles of “bread and circuses” that hid the reality of human exploitation and oppression. Your pandemic supplement check functions in this way. It deflects attention from the real source of crisis in our lives.
There are two realities that I see that are in transition.
One is the transition happening to the hierarchical structure of institutions. Even going as far back as the English and French revolutions, the Italian and German revolutions to unify their aristocratic states, and American Civil War split the nation permanently as one nation. These revolutions do not symbolize progress, but the inability of leaders to change and transition in a manner healthy for the commonwealth. Our history is that of conflict between aristocratic elites waged with the blood of the people. We have largely been led throughout history by inadequate leaders who had to use the culture of simulation to hide the reality that “the emperor has no clothes.”
Today we are witnessing the attempt by the same hierarchies of business and government to subjugate billions of people through vaccine passports, social credit systems, and strategies of global change. Their strategies condemn the people of their nations to poverty and social dependency. We should all see this as not only the failure of elite leaders but assign responsibility not only for their failed response but for the very conditions that allowed the many crises of our time to happen. With authority comes accountability, unless you plan to subjugate the people as George Orwell showed in 1984.
We should not see these people as wise, strong, noble, and heroic leaders. Instead, their narcissistic policies are signs of weakness and fragility. They know that they have no mandate from the people. We also know this because none of them take responsibility for being the cause of the crises that afflict us. So, whenever you hear complaints about conspiracy theories, misinformation, or other claims, know that this is to deflect attention from the real conversation that we should be having.
The second transition is in the self-perception of people worldwide. For decades, writers, speakers, and seminar planners have spread the message of personal excellence and impact in the world. Every community is filled with people who read self-help books, watch videos, and attend conferences to improve their mindset and skills at being a person who makes a difference in the world. Businesses hire coaches to facilitate teamwork and communication. This is no longer a Western cultural phenomenon, but a global one.
I’ve witnessed the transition of personal identities of people from being a factory worker to being a person who has the purpose and the drive to excel in their lives. People become entrepreneurs, start their own businesses, and take on philanthropic ventures that before did not exist. Others become life and executive coaches, start consulting careers, and become ministers serving their communities part-time. This transition forwards the idea that each person has value and dignity, worthy of respect and support in their endeavors to succeed in life.
The advent of digital technology has impacted both of these transitions. Even with all the justified criticism of current social media platforms, the value of the smartphone and its apps is making it possible for people of like minds and shared values to meet and develop relationships of common purpose. We are in the infancy of the digital era. As it matures, our world will dramatically change.
Moving from Simulation to Reality
I do not believe you can fight the simulation. It absorbs aggression with its return. It doesn’t pay you to get angry. It becomes a misplaced passion.
Turn away and look to discern what it is that you truly love in this world. For what you love is where you will be willing to make the sacrifices that will contribute to creating a better community where you live.
Turn away and embrace reality. It is for this reason that I have begun posting essays that I wrote a decade ago as the Background Series. There are six separate series within this series, and it will take a couple of months to post them all here.
To reverse the effects of the simulation, take the five frameworks and begin to apply them. I suggest that you begin by reading the Circle of Impact. I will say more practically about the transition in the future.
The Five Frameworks
The Circle of Impact model of leadership, and its various applications.
The Nature of Transition and Change
The Two Global Forces
The Spectacle of the Real
The Networks for Relationships
These are intellectual frameworks for living a life of impact.
They can help you to restore trust and respect to your closest relationships.
They can help you to expand your network of relationships to gain access to information and perspective that will change your life.
They can help make better choices for yourself, your family, and the places where you give your time daily.
If love, respect, trust, and mutuality can be restored in your individual life, then be grateful.
How can you be grateful?
Practice the sixth framework that I believe is essential.
The Power of Gratitude in Action
Almost a decade and a half ago, through a strange set of events, I developed a framework called …
Say Thanks Every Day: The Five Actions of Gratitude.
It is really simple. And if you track these actions in your life, you will find greater peace and reconciliation between those who you love, but can’t stand to be around. The five actions are …
Say Thanks
Give Back
Make Welcome
Honor Others
Create Goodness
They are simple, direct ways of being a grateful person. If you can find that place in your mind and heart, then the other Five Frameworks will serve you well.
Thank you for reading my writings. I am honored by your trust. I welcome you into conversation with me so that together we can create a new kind of goodness that can restore peace and prosperity to our families and communities.