Mode-5: Personalized Versions

ClosedReminder of the clarification process so far:

  • Mode-1: Produce a satisfying explanation of the situation. [Causal]
  • Mode-2: Develop a coherent framework for the situation. [Structural]
  • Mode-3: Identify polarization within the situation. [Dialectic]
  • Mode-4: Narrate the trajectory of the situation. [Dynamic]
  • Re-enter Mode-1: The explanation is satisfying and sufficient. [Causal]

The mode of realizing (μ)refers to the set of values to be incorporated from a depiction method. Once incorporated, there is a new Stage of clarification (Φ) that includes values of all previous modes.

So Stage 4 clarification (Φ4) has produced a sufficient explanation.

ClosedTransition from a sufficient explanation-Φ4

  • The next step appears to be the production of a definitive explanatory account, which requires Atomistic values like responsibility and autonomy.
  • Unitary involves conformity of any account to relevant socio-cultural standards: but if the narrative has not been taken seriously enough to generate a personalized version, there is nothing of substance that has to conform.
  • Unified involves adjusting an explanation to take account of the context when acting: which is again irrelevant if there is no personal ownershipof the explanation.

Personal Ownership requires the Atomistic Mode

The explanatory formulations in Stages 1 through 4 can be provided by a wide variety of interested parties: yourself, journalists, bloggers, executives, consultants, politicians, spokesmen. None need take any significant responsibility for the explanation. Commonly, their position on the situation shifts to accommodate their own interests and in response to pressures of all sorts.

An explanation may be obviously plausible and apparently sufficient, and yet most people only superficially acknowledge its value or worry about details. Often it is easiest to view explanations as too distant and too complicated to get involved with.

However, if the explanations is going to act as a guide to making changes, then taking responsibility for the explanation is required. That means engaging more deeply so, if challenged, you can justify actions you take in terms of your explanation of the situation. Producing your own sufficiently coherent account takes effort. Like the actions that follow, it requires personal commitment and determination which means autonomy is being expressed.

Responsibility and autonomy are core values of the atomistic paradigm-L2. As expected in this paradigm, there will often be many who either spontaneously or on request address the situation seriously, and each will naturally generate a somewhat different personalized version.

Personalization involves assimilating and internalizing the explanation. This does not require a complete re-working of a given narrative. However, you can only assimilate what you are ready, willing and able to absorb into your internal schemas—which will be unique. Such informal self-centred clarification calls for a simplification in which certain critical aspects are brought to the foreground and made the focus of personal acceptance.

Example: ClosedInvestment Discipline

Example: ClosedPrize-winning Journalism

Oscillation:

To continue the subjective-objective and limited-comprehensive pattern (see Cycle-1 summary): the Atomistic mode-μ5 is about the operation of personal judgement which is subjective; and, because any account is affected by a person's perspective and resources, the result will be limited.

Values & Assumptions

Stage-5-atomistic to personally own the explanation.

Promoting Acceptability

ClosedEssence: Personal Ownership

You need to accept and own a particular explanation of what is happening. That means appreciating and internalizing values in the four Cycle-1 modes and re-working the resulting narrative to suit your own conceptions. This personal version becomes a willingly held belief about the situation with an awareness that others may not fully share that belief.

. Critical readers of an account will look for impartial coverage of the literature, access to key players in the situation, care with statistics, and a genuine feel for the situation.

ClosedBenefit: Sense of Responsibility

Without ownership, it is not possible to act responsibly and manage eventualities: you would be simply acting as someone else's agent or functioning as a pawn under pressure from the social group. Developing and owning a personal version of an explanation provides a solid basis for making decisions for which you can and must feel genuinely responsible.

ClosedMeans: Assimilation to a Mindset

A sufficient narrative may be to hand and widely acknowledged, but some investigation and reflection is required before any personal belief in its correctness is possible. You get your own feel for the situation through relevant reading, perhaps discussions with those in or near the situation and looking at statistics, but everything gets filtered through your existing mindset. Your own autonomy demands that you value this mindset and somehow adjust it to include what you learn.

Handling the Group

ClosedParticipation: Explain Your Version

Any version is to some degree idiosyncratic, being produced within your limitations, perspectives and mindset. Carefully explaining what you think allows you to elaborate further, to sensibly rebut criticisms and to justify your actions or proposals for group action. Personal clarity will shape discussions and affect group agendas.

ClosedCommunication: Exchange Views

Your version is likely to be one of many that naturally coexist. Exchanging views with upholders of other versions of the situation is beneficial both for you and for the group. Exchanges may take place in panels chaired by a moderator who encourages challenges from the audience. Such exchanges can increase group awareness and activate group responsibility.

ClosedIndividualization: Acknowledge Biases

Everyone has a background and certain values that cannot be suppressed. However careful and responsible you may be in your account, these factors will create a bias. Something similar applies to the versions of others. It is therefore helpful for individuals answering questions or exchanging views to acknowledge their position on relevant factors.

Channeling Your Functioning:

ClosedGain Support: Thoughtfulness

To gain support from others, it must be evident to them that your ownership is serious because you have thought the issues through, and have responsibly investigated and assessed the evidence and arguments in a thorough and reasonable way.

My personal adoption of a framework-based narrative, like that of purpose as presented in Stage-4, is essential if I am to offer it to people as a way to handle certain problems effectively. If it is not evident that I believe my narrative of their problematic situation, then it is almost impossible for them to use my understanding and apply it for themselves.

But blind acceptance by the client is insufficient. Unless the client personally grasps and owns the framework-based account in some basic way, then they cannot handle the challenges, issues and stresses in making necessary changes in the situation that presents. While it is to be expected that their grasp of the situation will be a modified version of mine, likely deeper in some areas and more limited in others, it must be solid. If not, at the first breakdown or seeming contradiction, they will default to the habitual or conventional thinking that got them into difficulties in the first place.

Limitations

Personally committing to an explanation gives you a position in your group and provides you with a basis for responding responsibly to a situation. But what is commonly required is group acceptance.

Often it is necessary for most or at least a majority to own the explanation, but most are not prepared to make the effort and prefer to follow the herd if only their was a leader.

There is also the problem that each thoughtful person is likely to have a slightly different view or will interpret a particular version differently. So something more is required to legitimate the group's acceptance of any account.

Settling at this Stage

If a person adopts a particular explanatory account and finds they can apply and use it effectively, then they will often reject looking any deeper and be unwilling to have their outlook adjusted. In many cases, the secret to continuing success with their much-loved explanation is the avoidance of situations where the account does not apply or the avoidance of individuals who have come to a slightly different conclusion.

This recession into a shell would apply to psychoanalytic explanations and other doctrines or change-management tools. Academic and think-tank environments, despite their claims, can provide a way to avoid reality altogether. They may pursue ideas unhindered by the need to persuade others or to handle the pressures and responsibilities associated with making actual changes.

On a mundane level, when a leading figure provides personal backing for an explanation, or an author or reporter clearly believes what they have written, many may be profoundly affected and inclined to go along rather than delve into it for themselves. If this is the general or majority view, then there may be no felt need to seek further clarification.

Transition

However, if there is disagreement, dissatisfaction or distrust, or if wider dissemination would be of great benefit, then it is necessary to bring some group-based and socio-culturally validated standards to bear on personal versions of the situation.

These standards might be found in:

  • a dominant paradigm in scientific thinking
  • culturally required rules of evidence
  • philosophical demands for logic and evidence
  • popular principles or doctrines

This fits the mode oscillation pattern because such standards are offered as objective and they must be applied comprehensively.

The mode that naturally provides for control of explanations via the application of obligatory standards appears to be the unitary-μ6 (from L'7).

ClosedRuling Out the Alternative Move

In choosing between moving next to Unified-L'5 or Unitary-L'7, the need for conformity to respected group standards appears to take precedence over consideration of any highly variable contextual or environmental factors.

Originally posted: 30-Oct-2024. Last amended: 22-Sep-2025.