Tension between Purpose and Safety15 days beforeNow that I described the tension between agency and belonging, I’d like…The Existential Anxieties

The Four Needs Framework2020The stories we tell ourselves shape how we see the world around…The tension between Agency and Belonging2020In the Four Needs framework, I identified a tension between two opposing…Tension between Purpose and Safety2020Now that I described the tension between agency and belonging, I’d like…So far, I’ve talked about the general framework and the tensions between the needs. To explore how the character moves across the Four Needs coordinate space, let’s study how the character might experience the tensions between the needs. In this story, our character is largely unaware of the pairwise polarities of the four needs. Instead, the character senses the tension, and can only relate to needs in the context of experiencing this tension.

To put it differently, the character feels that something is tugging at it, something beyond the grasp of the character’s understanding. This framing reveals a set of counterfactuals. In relation to each need, the tug produces a question of potential absence. What would happen to me if a particular need went unsatisfied? What if I didn’t have Belonging? What if I didn’t have Agency? What if I didn’t have Safety? What if I didn’t have Purpose? These counterfactuals give rise to four Existential Anxieties, the fears of the unknown, the fears of the potentiality that a need may not be satisfied–or perhaps even satisfiable.

The story of agency2021Another kind of story that I’ve encountered in my exploration of coherence…In the context of the need to Belong, the experience of the tension in the Agency+Belonging polarity is thus interpreted as the threat of not belonging, giving rise to the Anxiety of Not-Belonging. In the context of the need of Agency, the same tension manifests as the threat to one’s agency, giving rise to the Anxiety of Not-Agency. Similarly, the character develops the Anxiety of Not-Purpose and Anxiety of Not-Safety through its experience of the tension in the Purpose+Safety polarity.

The story of belonging2021Next in my adventure across the coherence narrative realm is the story…When I constantly seek others’ approval, I crave Belonging, and that craving ultimately comes from the perception of a deficit of Belonging, my underlying Anxiety of Not-Belonging. When a company decides to centralize and streamline its operations, it’s seeking efficiency and predictability, which is a marker of Safety. Lurking underneath, there’s organizational Anxiety of Not-Safety.

The System of Self2019Existential Fears form the same pairwise polarities, the Existential Struggles, laid over…Stakes2022Why is it that we are attached more to some intentions and…Existential Anxieties predict deficits of needs. They turn tensions into conflicts, each unwilling to let go, leading to vicious cycles. They vie for our character’s attention, providing catastrophic prognoses of needs being unmet. They are what compels the character to shift their position in the coordinate space.

This is an important point, so I’d like to give it more consideration. When the character is not subject to Existential Anxieties, it rests at the center of the coordinate space. The tension across the needs holds it perfectly at peace. It is only when the question of overcompensating, when there’s anticipation of a dire outcome does the change in character’s coordinates happen. Only when the character believes that there is some yet-unseen force that might push it off center does it begin to crave toward or avert away from one Need or another. These beliefs are supplied by the Existential Anxieties, and thus the anxieties are the driving forces behind the character’s journey across the coordinate space.

Mindset transitions and coherence2021I wonder if in the framing of organizational mindsets, there’s a pattern…Once the change of coordinates happens, the balance in the conflict of Existential Anxieties shifts with it: anxieties are allayed or aggrieved. Moving away from one Need flares up its respective anxiety. When, late for class, I decide to take a shortcut through a dodgy alley, my Anxiety of Not-Purpose, combined with Anxiety of Not-Belonging supply a convincing argument of upholding my identity of a “good student”, causing my character to shift to the Purpose+Belonging quadrant. Then, as I hear a strange noise behind me, the aggrieved Anxieties of Not-Safety and Not-Agency savagely pull my character into the Safety+Agency quadrant. Similarly, an organization might find itself stagnant and uninspiring after another round of streamlining driven by Anxiety of Not-Safety, yearning for something courageous and bold as the indignant Anxiety of Not-Purpose drags its character toward Purpose.

The OODA inside2021Because of the way we humans are wired, the expectation gradient is…A peculiar quality that seems to be common to all characters I’ve encountered so far is the presence of delays. Perhaps because Anxieties compete for attention and attention is a serial device, or perhaps for other reasons, the predictions of catastrophic calamities that Anxieties provide tend not to be punctual. I may sit up awake in the middle of the night realizing what a terrible goof I’ve made at the last week’s meeting and how that would definitely ruin my career. It might take years for an organization to suddenly snap into a belief that it needs a different culture. And at the same time, who hasn’t felt the visceral, immediate emotional response to a seemingly innocent remark of another? Sometimes anxieties trigger instantaneously, and sometimes they take time. As a result, the character tends to travel in wild oscillations that are common to complex systems with delayed feedback loops: as Anxieties conflict with each other, they pull and push the character along a messy, chaotic trajectory.

The third option2024The deeper insight here is that we are surrounded by polarities. Behind…The Suffering of Expectations31 days afterI have been thinking about the relationship between expectations and suffering, and…Somatic Signals: How I use the Four Needs Frameworklinks here, 2020In parallel, I’ve made some progress on developing the Four Needs Framework.…The Tree of Selflinks here, 2020At the core of the first insight is that the ever-present tension…The paradox here is that while the journey marked by this trajectory is taken under the auspice of going back to center, it is also pretty clear that the method of the journey is unlikely to result in such outcome. Yet at the same time, this journey is truly the destination: it is only through experiencing this journey that the character may be able to glimpse the nature of this journey, and perhaps transcend the Anxieties that fuel it.