About THEE: Your Questions Answered

Here are answers to the basic questions. All the issues are developed further within this About division of the website—see Table of Contents.

For more about the component Frameworks, leave About and go directly to Explore > Frameworks.

«Taxonomy» refers to … a formal specification of how to represent everything that exists in a particular area of interest, including the relationships that hold among things. Also called an ontology, especially if fully comprehensive.

What is special about this Taxonomy?

It deals directly and comprehensively with the fundamentals of personal functioning: how we experience and live our lives, including our work, our relationships and the functioning of our societies.
It is a scientific model developed by direct observation and open to correction and refinement. This model is now producing findings that did not go into its construction, and appears to have its roots in our biological evolution.
It recognizes diversity and appreciates human frailty, while enabling and supporting personal autonomy, personal responsibility and reflective awareness.
It is non-ideological and requires no theoretical commitments: all perennial ideologies and paradigms, from the mundane to the mystical, are likely to be found within THEE. You will easily recognize them in posted frameworks.
It leads naturally to strategies and technologies, experiential and intellectual, that are of practical use and produce win-win-win outcomes.

Why is Taxonomic Analysis important?

It assists with change.
Practically:

The Taxonomy provides a language of reference so that people can cooperate in projects and institutions. This common language enables systematic design in the social realm. Because the Frameworks offer helpful guidance for handling oneself and others, if and when appropriately adapted, they can guide the handling of tricky communal and organisational challenges.

The «THEE Conjecture» is that any theory, model, tool, method or principle that has been found useful to advise, help, manage or treat people, has its roots in this Taxonomy. A large number of confirmations have been provided.

Personally:

The Taxonomy fosters a self-awareness that supports taking responsibility and exercising autonomy in all your endeavours. THEE Frameworks identify and engage directly with personal diversity and differences. They can be used to temper unconscious assertions that are such a potent source of unnecessary personal distress and social conflict.

Because this Taxonomy must order whatever exists, it contains fundamentally incompatible ideologies and theories. Being part of our human heritage, these can never be abolished or outgrown. Frameworks reveal how we can each affirm our own uniqueness—while handling the diversity of personal identities—always in the service of effectiveness and reasonable harmony.

It also enables scientific inquiry.
How?

This research addresses the unchanging fundamentals of being human and using our consciousness constructively. So it covers every non-technical and non-physical entity relevant to working, relating, organizing, managing, prospering, inquiring, communicating, thinking, governing … (the list is far too long).

Without effective naming and an organized knowledge of the elements in a field, theorizing about that field as a whole is weak or perhaps impossible. If the elements are also known to exist in a pattern, theorizing has a powerful guide (cf. the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements).

What practical use is this Taxonomy?

THEE is an immediately meaningful, common-sense approach to applying our will and creativity. It helps us engage positively with the human element in ourselves, our relationships, our organizations and our societies. The deliberate use of its frameworks is akin to «artificial intuition».

The Taxonomy fosters autonomy, responsibility and awareness by ordering and revealing what we might call our «mind-at-work» or the «self-in-committed-action». As a result, its Frameworks enable better handling of needed change.

Many effective psychosocial tools and powerful experiential technologies and intellectual technologies can be developed. As well as benefiting us personally, these simultaneously strengthen our organizations and societies.

What does this Taxonomy order?

THEE is a map of personal functioning. Broadly, the Taxonomy deals with the use of awareness (consciousness) in the pursuit of endeavours of any and every sort. As we go about our life in group settings, these endeavours lead to the creation of psychosocial reality.

The Frameworks within THEE make explicit (conscious) what is usually left implicit (unconscious) in everyday life. These Frameworks are assumed to be based in brain functioning. If so, this biologically-based system automatically and effortlessly guides our choices and activities, and shapes our experiences of ourselves and others.

Examples of Taxonomy contents.

How was the Architecture developed?

The present Taxonomy is the result of over 30 years of persistent scientific effort supported by successful consultancy work and wide reading.

Specific cultural antecedents for this scientific approach can be traced to Kant, Schopenhauer and Freud amongst others. The philosophical underpinning is Wittgensteinian, as exemplified by the recent writings of Peter Hacker.

Nothing in the Taxonomy, apart from its structure, is new. All the more specific ideas that are developed and organized into Frameworks can be found distributed widely—in management and systems literature, in social sciences, and in writings of thinkers, reflective practitioners and observers of the social scene.

The general idea that psychosocial reality differs from physical reality is part of the perennial wisdom of all world cultures and, committed materialists aside, is taken for granted in our own. It has recently been articulated forcefully by Karl Popper.

What is the THEE Online Project (TOP)?

TOP, an acronym for the THEE Online Project, was conceived at end-2007 to allow all interested in this field to explore, learn and contribute. A single vision led to the discovery of the Taxonomy and to TOP. That vision is about developing societies, organizations and relationships which are fit for people, rather than the other way round.

THEE is a discovery that will survive and develop only insofar as it is a useful map, and not another theory or cult-ideology. Currently, there appears to be an expansion of consciousness to our common humanity, and this needs constructive intellectual support. At the same time, brain science is developing the tools that may eventually lead to an integrated understanding of the biology of complex experiences.

Looking inwards, THEE needs to be improved and elaborated further. Many can contribute, not just orthodox scientists. However, more than enough of the Taxonomy has been clarified to make more enlightened conventional research possible.

How can I get more involved?

You can leave your comments on these About pages. You can thoughtfully correct and improve Topics in the Taxonomy Project itself by using the Give Feedback tab.

If you wish to collaborate, participate or support more actively, contact Warren Kinston.

You are welcome to benefit freely from TOP as explained in the website Terms. If you wish to engage in commercial use of THEE materials, contact us.

Originally posted: 14-Jan-2014. Amended: 16-May-2018.