Focus: Subjectivity & Responsiveness
Well-being mentalities must be psychologically focused, which requires subjectivity and responsiveness.
mentalities must focus on a largely impersonal world, which requires .
Well-being Set
These live in a world of subjectivity and are preoccupied with:
- Maintaining sensitivity to others in the group &
- Being responsive to their needs, wishes and feelings
Moving up the diagonal, there is:
- increasing concern to use subjective states constructively, &
- more beneficial handling of people and social situations
i.e. increasingly objective subjectivity
- Kinship-centred individuals are immersed in wishes and desires, especially those of their intimates to whom they are closely attuned. Nothing matters other than the happiness of loved ones, and giving in to their wishes is assumed to produce happiness.
Feelings should be displayed.
- Power-centred individuals are immersed in their own fierce will and preoccupied with getting their own way, even if that might be harmful to themselves in the longer term. They are ever alert for, and respond to, any form of pressure or challenge which could be seen as a test of their strength.
Feelings are used to manipulate, control and dominate.
- Community-centred individuals share the experiences of the others in a group and desire to make a positive response to distress. They are socially sensitive and emotionally aware.
Feelings are important in terms of atmosphere and group morale. Negative feelings like envy, greed, rage and jealousy must be anticipated and prevented, or handled before they disrupt.
- Reality-centred individuals take a detached view of inner experience. Inner states, although ephemeral, are viewed as directing or mirroring outer events and vice versa. So responses to the system may be generated by minor events, recognized as signs with major implications. Such deep awareness enables counter-intuitive (and often unpopular or unpleasant) predictions.
Feelings are epiphenomena: to be neither indulged nor taken seriously.
These mentalities view matters subjectively at times and respond to states and events, both inner and outer. Their goals and values, in particular, are inherently subjective and remain a point of reference if emotions get aroused. However, this subjective orientation is not primarily about maintaining well-being.
- centred people are sensitive to subjectivity as the key factor in marketing success, and focus their responsiveness on market and customer signals.
- centred people view emotional and subjective responses as potential distractions from duty and as potentially diverting or even undermining of purposive activity.
- centred people view subjectivity as dangerous and misleading. They delight in informing people of how our memories, our intuitions, our judgements and our decisions conspire to play tricks on us.
- Go to managing mental states.
Originally posted: July 2009