As we play these games. Do what you're comfortable with. It's really weird material. Pretty much all of the lessons are really weird and that they combine very intellectual stuff with personal stuff. Also, it’s a weird mix of sometimes like performing for each other or telling stories and sometimes getting very analytic about exactly what was said. Just get ready for that and also, if something's too personal, just because somebody else does something personal, you don't have to, stuff like that.
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We're going to start by trying to get a feel for a certain vocabulary. Which is, what's in the first section of this worksheet. The section that says, ideological commitments, norms, personal values, goals, and fears.
- Ideological Commitments. Picked because of a broad public goal or vision. “Things world be better if only everyone were ______.”
- Norms. Picked because of social pressure & consequences. “People will dislike or reject me unless I seem to be ______.”
- Personal Values. Picked because they seem to guide me—practically—better than alt ideas. “A good life for me unfolds when I choose to be ______.”
- Goals / Fears. About other people or outcomes, not about how I proceed. “In dealing with me, I want people think of me as ______.”
There's many words that fit in each column. The ideological commitments that fill in the blank there is, things would be better if only everyone were? One thing that works in that column is honest, right? You can imagine, ideologically, everyone in the world should be honest and then things would be better. It's very different to treat honesty as a norm and say, people, will dislike or reject me unless I seem to be honest. That's a totally different character even though he's got the same idea guiding his actions.
Similarly, I think it's a third thing. Honesty is a personal value if we complete the sentence, a good life for me unfolds when I choose to be honest. This is like a third character. He's not like, doesn't think that everybody needs to be honest but for him, it's a guiding principle, and so on. Then, there might be somebody. The last column is about specific goals or fears like in dealing with me, I want people to think of me as honest because, I want them to invest their money in my mutual fund [chuckles] or something, right?
Norms are things where if you didn't comply, you would be awkward, unaccepted. There is social consequences in general.
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What we're going to do first is, I'm going to set a timer for three minutes and we're going to try to write down some examples, filling in the blank of each of these things.
We’ll take three minutes. Write down at least a couple different examples for ourselves in each column.
Take 3 minutes and in a text editor or on paper write examples of each.
- Ideological Commitments. Picked because of a broad public goal or vision. “Things world be better if only everyone were ______.”
- Norms. Picked because of social pressure & consequences. “People will dislike or reject me unless I seem to be ______.”
- Personal Values. Picked because they seem to guide me—practically—better than alt ideas. “A good life for me unfolds when I choose to be ______.”
- Goals / Fears. About other people or outcomes, not about how I proceed. “In dealing with me, I want people think of me as ________.”
One you're ready go to the next section and you'll get instructions on how to play.
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All of these are different and one of the things we're going to be practicing is this weird empathy that I mentioned, which is, trying to guess when someone's driven by one of the other and which column it comes from and exactly how the motivation works for them. We are going to practice that by playing a little game which is that, Then, we're going to play a guessing game, where we'll read a random word from-- We won't tell people what column it is for us. Then the other players in the circle here will be guessing, cool?
Like if you say honesty, we'll guess based on sizing you up, whether we think you're honest for ideological reasons or as a personal value or what, cool? Of course, some fears are a super set of norms. One fear you could have is that you'll be rejected. All your norms also belong in goals and fears. You don't have to put them there but, [laughs] cool.
We're going to play a little game, we're going to play a game, there we go. Let's imagine that we're in a circle. We'll just go round the circle and we'll each read one word from one of our columns.
When it's your turn, you're going to read a word from your column and then anybody else can guess whether for you that's a norm, ideological commitment or personal value et cetera, cool? Yes, don't say the sentence.
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We're going to be using this, in this lesson and also in the next lesson. We're going to be using this terminology a lot. Also to some extent, trying to use is to separate-- We do a lot of work with personal values and so we end up learning to recognize norms and ideological commitments and goals and fears that are disguised as a personal value and asking questions about it to clarify with the person.