My need for Expression is partly realized by writing untraditional book reports. They have now taken on a new Purpose as I embrace an unexpected opportunity for Growth. All of my writing, including this book report, is now input for the Personal AI I am building. I am hopeful that new Connections will result. This initiative may amount to nothing but at the moment it feels meaningful, ripe with Possibility.
I love paradigms, systems, models, frameworks and tools. But how many do we really need? How many can we learn about? More importantly, how many can we put to use? I am generally overwhelmed so I was not intrigued when I first heard about the Four Forces, probably just one more model I thought.
That changed when I saw Trish Blain, the creator of the Four Forces model, in action. She was facilitating a Member Engagement Team meeting, of which I was a member, at Emergent Commons. The team was struggling with several important issues and progress had stalled. Trish was brought in to help the team move forward and regain momentum. Over the span of my forty-three-year career, I had seen many coaches in action and I would rate Trish as one of the best. And Trish joined Emergent Commons as a member which significantly heightened my interest in reading her book.
One theme in The Four Forces of Everything that resonated strongly with me was an emphasis on uniqueness.
If you ask 100 people what a better world looks like, you’re going to get 100 different answers… a better world doesn’t exist… there were 8 billion better worlds, all different.
Nevertheless, Blain identifies four forces that she views as the common desires of everyone.
Connection. We want to love and be loved. We want to belong and be part of something greater than ourselves.
Expression. We want to be seen, heard, and recognized. We want freedom, choice, and the ability to get our desires met.
Purpose. We want to contribute. We want our lives to have meaning and impact. We want to feel there is a higher order to life and that we are a significant part of it.
Growth. We want to thrive and have tomorrow be better than today. We want progress, new experiences, and a feeling of creative, tangible mastery over our world.
Trish Blain reveals a paradigm in her book that I share, along with a growing number of others. To build a better world we need to build better people and we need to start with ourselves. I need to change, even now as a retiree living the last chapter of my life.
Another theme in the book is going deeper. The book itself goes deep into going deep. The book is dense, packed with complex ideas and information. There are hints that Trish Blain has deeply researched her topic over many years. But she also includes enough of her own personal journey with her subject matter that we get colorful glimpses into her lived experience with the four forces.
I now want to take a look at my own life in light of the Four Forces.
Connection
I feel a very strong connection with my tribe which I call metamodern wannabees. I feel a very strong connection with my online community, Emergent Commons, and a significant number of its members. I feel a very strong connection with Lakeside, the area in Mexico where I live. I have strong connections with a reasonable number of friends. And I have a very strong connection with Pat, my wife of many years.
But I do not feel very many deep relationships in the way that Trish Blain describes Connection. I sense that much more is possible for me. At the same time, I have some skepticism. Obviously deep connection is not a solo sport. It would require a significant commitment from other individuals also familiar with the concept. And it would require time, a very scarce commodity in a world where so much is trying to capture our attention.
Making a distinction between strong connections and deep connections is my own nuance, not directly addressed in the book.
Expression
You are unique… Even though you are unique, so is everyone else!... When you live deeply from your uniqueness, it is a habit and a normal way of life… From the position of uniqueness, you don’t need validation, or to prove anything… Uniqueness Is Always Evolving… In our uniqueness, we are separate. We are distinct and different from everyone else. No other human will ever have your set of you-ness.
I do not think I need much encouragement to express my unique self.
But...
When we are in over-expression, we power-over to get what we want and to be seen the way we want to be seen.
Reading the Four Forces has started me reflecting on whether I over-express my unique self and whether my very strong desire to be seen somehow indicates the four forces in my life may be out of balance. I have met people who seem to have a very low desire to be seen. These people puzzle me but now I wonder if they repress Expression. And I wonder if such people are puzzled by those of us who perhaps overemphasize Expression.
Purpose
If instead of Purpose, I asked you, “What is the story of your life?”
In retirement, I am thinking a lot about my life as a story. And I am writing that story on my website, The Life of John Stokdijk, an average and ordinary life. Rather than lacking Purpose, I often feel overwhelmed with too much Purpose.
When we are in deep Purpose, rather than focusing on our purpose as a role, job, or identity, we embrace a new definition. We know we are connected, and at the same time unique; we now choose to contribute to the whole in order to create something greater. We choose to be in conscious relationship.
My primary Purpose is to thrive for as long as I can. That sounds selfish but for me to thrive includes contributing to something much greater than my own life. I want to contribute to the Metamodern/GameB/Liminal MOVEMENT and be in meaningful relationships with others sharing this motivation.
Before we can engage others, and create something greater than ourselves, we need to be clear about what we personally want. We need to be clear about our intentions, and embrace the skills of consciously choosing.
Growth
Deep Growth Is Emergence
Emergence is the process of coming into being. When something emerges, something is there that wasn’t before… Deep Growth brings ideas, a seed, plans, intentions, into physical reality… Emergence is new territory…
Once again, Trish Blain and I are thinking along the same lines. Emergence is a concept that I have only become aware of in recent years. Now it is an important aspect of my worldview and concept of self. I now see myself as a complex system from which a new self is always emerging. Deep Growth is exciting because it is not possible to clearly see what will emerge from whatever small changes I am able to make today.
Growth is about the unknown and stepping into new territory. We can know we are at our growth edge because we feel fear or excitement… Fear is anticipation of something we don’t want; excitement is anticipation of something we do want.
I do not feel very much fear but I do feel a lot of excitement.
As much as I like the Four Forces, I feel a desire to also express some thoughts on areas where I am unconvinced by what I read.
It is a profound truth that our common ground as humans can be a powerful connector. In fact, the Four Forces are our deepest common desires, and I believe the key to creating an amazing future together.
Of course, Trish Blain is going to be very enthusiastic about the framework she has created. But it is a key to a better future, not the key. And I believe that our deepest common desires are those that emerged from our long evolutionary past, firstly our desire to survive and secondly our desire to reproduce.
Consciousness and the nature of reality is an immense topic with complexity that is way beyond the scope of my knowledge and this book. However, over the last 30 years, I’ve found the idea of consciousness as fundamental and universal aligning well with what I have learned and experienced from the Four Forces.
Trish Blain is far more comfortable with the idea that consciousness is fundamental than I am. It gives her book a New Age flavor that will probably appeal to many people, but not me. Personally, I am learning to live without anything being fundamental, trying to live with no belief in any particular foundation.
Finally, Trish Blain uses the word ecstatic quite often in her book. I do not doubt the authenticity of the experiences she describes. Personally, I am living at a very good level of subjective well-being, mostly level 8 and sometimes even level 9 on the Hanzi Freinacht scale. I do not doubt that higher states are possible but I am not motivated to seek them.
Nevertheless, I am sufficiently impressed by The Four Forces of Everything that I would like to support the work of Trish Blain financially, albeit very modestly given the reality of my resources, if an opportunity arises.
Trish Blain's book is unpublished at this time and incomplete (Last Chapter TBD). She gave me an ePub version (thank you!) that I was able to upload to my Kindle. But my version has no cover and I wanted an image for display on my website page for My Book Reports. I retained Kim Nisbet, an artist and Emergent Commons member, to create something for me. This little project nicely captured the Four Forces!
2023-12-04 Update
Recently I attended a series of six events offered by Trish Blain at Emergent Commons. A Crew was created for Paradigm Shifting Communities - Untangling group dynamics and building "not Game A" skills with The Four Forces Framework. Trish continues to impress me when I see her in action.
I have been using the Four Forces as a useful frame but not in the way intended by the program. Rather than using the Four Forces to enhance my participation in my online EC community, I am thinking more broadly, thinking about all aspects of my life. A lot has been shifting lately.
Connection
My sense of strong connection with the EC community has been shaken and I will write more about that in an EC Update. However, I continue to feel a strong connection with specific members. And I feel total disconnection with some other members experienced as an unbridgeable gap.
Expression
My desire for Expression remains very high. But in hindsight, perhaps I was seeking power-over the EC community in a futile attempt to shape it to better meet my desires. Now with new energy, I have begun satisfying my desire for Expression outside of EC with a Substack publication, Metamodern Wannabes.
Purpose
In hindsight, perhaps I was trying to achieve my Purpose within the EC community. That seemed to not be working very well. Perhaps my Purpose lies outside of the community.
Writing my story on my website, The Life of John Stokdijk, an average and ordinary life has recently become more meaningful as I think about my Purpose in life, as I will explain elsewhere.
Growth
Growth has become less important to me. Of course, I still want to personally grow, build skills and develop. But this is much more important for someone half my age, at age 36 rather than at age 72.
I would like to record some reflections on the Paradigm Shifting Communities program.
I really like Trish Blain’s emphasis on skill-building. It feels far more comfortable as an objective than the vibe of superiority I sometimes sense from some people who emphasize developmental stages. However, developmental models themselves also appeal to me, just not some of the people who push them.
I continue to like Trish Blain’s emphasis on the uniqueness of every individual.
Several program participants seemed interested in a Four Forces Book Club at EC and I expect this to proceed. That could be interesting as the book has considerable depth beyond the six-week program. However, I have already read the book and I do not feel drawn to go further in this direction.
I am skeptical that the Four Forces will have much impact at EC. In my opinion, it could, but only if a large number of active members made a strong commitment to going down this path. I would like to see some paradigms shift in the EC community but I sense other forces more powerful than the Four Forces will offer resistance.
Trish is not exclusionary in her approach and presents her model as one that could (implying should) be a high-level approach over other useful frameworks. This is effective marketing but not a view I share. Important, imo, is the view that all models, including very good models, are just models, and in a certain sense no model is special.
Lastly, I am not drawn to the positioning of the Four Forces with the nonordinary. I do not think that approach is wrong. But personally, I am more interested in making the ordinary as good as possible.