The essence of Meta-Abstractions: Being Event Driven instead of Objectively Driven. (Part 1 - Highlights)

I discussed within online forums. I chatted and worked with other co-workers. I learned material from teachers. I read material from researchers like Lorin Friesen and other books related to personal behavior. I have heavily oriented abstract books, such as "Programmer's guide to the mind" by Lorin Friesen (in digital copy), "Patterns-Based Engineering: Successfully Delivering Solutions via Patterns" by Lee Ackerman and Celso Gonzales (gifted by a great teacher), "A Book of Abstract Algebra" by Charles C Pinter (recommended by a co-worker), and so on. All of these books have something in common: They teach a thing about a thing (hence the word these books are referred to as abstract). Abstractions may be the most hardest thing to understand of all in human kind. All the books I have discussed so far, I haven't seen them thoroughly yet as much as I could, because in order to understand them, you have to put them in your own context on how they fit for each situation.

So from what perspective we have to look life through? Through abstractions, as all the concrete output comes from those basic foundational abstractions in the end. The following saying fits very well in here "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." In essence, there is no concrete definite answer for all we see and do, but there is a definite  answer if we look at it from the perspective of abstractions. That is because we are always limited to what we see and do (mercy experiences). Even if we can explore everything, every inch and dime that happens in the world right now, we will never be able to explain what will happen after we die or the events that happened before we were born. However, if while we see and do, we put in our thoughts some abstractions, like the law of gravity formula, we can tell what time a flying object will take to reach at the ground regardless if I have unlimited mercy experiences in my head that show a strong level of confidence OR zero mercy experiences in my head about that event by just applying a formula I have no clue. 

In essence, the real numbers do not matter so much as the principles behind those numbers, as believing in the principles will guide you to the correct path to any new or different situation you encounter (i.e. formula of the law of gravity: Seeing the outcome results will "drive" you to understand it). We as humans can resonate easily the essence of abstractions and how they are applied in real life more than ever. The thing is that humans have less attention or interest on elaborating the abstractions of our own self than on what they can observe independently. In a matter of fact, we refer to "treat" humans objectively, as they are in a form of an object. Why? Cause the "subjectivity", the root, or the nature of a human, is quite harmful in general. Well, albeit it is harmful, why not promote a culture that embraces subjectivity in the right direction? That is because nobody embraces abstract stuff. Of all people I talk or met, very few apply abstractions to concrete life and almost nobody discusses life through the lens of seeing life within abstractions. The only way to embrace that positive direction of my subjectivity is by understanding the "abstractions" of human behavior. Setting up concrete rules will not work as much as setting up abstract rules where the individual can fit and set it up in their own context. With abstractions, you cannot get an instant gratification of opening each door easily with a " key", but you definitely get a "lock-pick" which can open any room. With a lock-pick, it needs effort, it needs skill, it has danger. However, the freedom that it allows you to "fit" yourself in any "situation" (as in a universal theory) is priceless and it is more worth than just being locked in one room for your rest of your life. This embraces a new concept of what the ultimate goal a human is: To never settle their own identity in a fixed position, but to set their own identity in a continuous changing position that he becomes different than on what he was before with aims that can be driven to infinity internally (governed by Teacher Experiences or the categorical imperative approach) or infinity externally (governed by Mercy Experiences or the utilitarian approach). Yes, in such remarks, categorical imperative and utilitarian ethics will always conflict no matter what. What matters in identity is not the position, but the direction, as the identity of that individual is not terminated yet as in the same premises of a soccer match that has not ended. Hence, objectivity, time, and events are very deeply correlated to each other.

When I try to judge or criticize, my ultimate goal is to target at the "event" instead of the individuals, groups, or organizations behind. You see that I give a lot of attention to the mechanics, patterns, causes for an event in such a way that can be later easily articulated in a universal framework that can be applied on any other situation that follows the same pattern.

An individual does not constantly stay the same at all times. He changes periodically, incrementally. New experiences alter the reactions of the individual when presented the same situation a second time. There is a book called "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" by Charles Duhigg and one of the introductory stories explains how it feels like when an individual cannot change its own identity long term wise but only short term wise. Its more like the individual's life has shortened to a few seconds to expand his own identity compared to a million more times within his "physical life". 

In that case, what identity represents is the direction of the individual. After all, for critical stuff, like law and order, we look people based on motivation, not only on what they just do. That also means if people want to change from one position to another, they have to have a plan, as there are many mercy experiences (=we live in a mercy world) that can interfere to reach that final goal.

Objectivity falls "correctly" in a specified "frozen" range of time, because individuals are fixed (think of the speed of a car when it accelerates, we can pick the average speed), but ever changing if we pick them at a different "range of time". That is because the individual will have new experiences from different environments that could have changed the behavior of the individual following the same situation. However, putting it in terms of time, judging a person on what he was "before" on a specific day is "more precise", but less accurate to make it universal to the extent of "all time".

That is one of the reasons I hate to hear or push my own self to judge people overall objectively. However,  I can ruthlessly judge a specific event as we can get a definite answer for an individual event, as it is a universal object that can be identified independently. The problem is that people like to generalize an event to be applied on a specific person or people try attach an event to themselves. This is a bottleneck as that is either making an unfair lawless characterization of removing an individual by an indirect discrimination (first case) or not being able to analyze individual events to get the real source of truth out of consensus and experimentation because someone is attached to that event and is sensitive about it if it gets changed (second case).

If we can separate ourselves from the event and the individual, we can look at the outcome of the event and put all of us in the right direction, as the individual is not any more in that event (not attached to it), but to a different "plan of action" for the "same situation", as long as he can identify the outcome of that event.

When I discussed with a programmer about what is the most important he learned, he pretty answered a very good principle – “When something is wrong, do not blame at people, but blame at the event. The event is more important than the people and it should be the first priority to solve.” Now the main reason he said that was not because of motivating people in the right direction for their own subjectivity. Instead, he said that because we have to set bigger priority in the concrete external goals (serving our customers and clients). He mentioned it was okay to blame people after the issue is fixed, which I do not recommend, because that way, you are blaming the person, not the event on how they can fix it/change it/plan the same situation in a better framework.

This blog post just discussed the main highlights of the topic and will have an additional part explaining the mechanics behind an individual’s identity. This is a very hard topic to discuss and I know I haven't articulated it well in here, but it is better to post something than nothing, as I believe there will be more topics in my blog related to this topic that with the help of this post, will extend it and make this topic more clear and easy to understand.