I think the Shell, Shield, Staff post by SquirrelInHell feels very relevant to all of this. (Not sure if SquirrelInHell would endorse my application of it here).
A few people said the original post was too poetical, and I’m not sure I can summarize it without resorting to most of the same poetry, but here goes:
i. Shell
If the world seems scary, often people first start by forming a shell. The shell prevents the world from affecting them at all. This is “safe”, but it means that you’re limiting your opportunity for growth. Well meaning friends may try to coax you out of your shell, but you know that if you leave your shell they’ll start trampling over your boundar.ies and hurting you.
ii. Shield
An evolution of the shell is the shield.You figure out which parts of the world are most threatening, and develop a defense specifically against those. Instead of fully protecting you, the shield points to only one side. This has the advantage that it gives you more flexibility. You can let parts of the world affect you that seem trustworthy, allowing you to learn and grow. Occasionally this results in your getting stabbed, but you’ve become resilient enough that it’s worth accepting the risk—you can take the occasional dagger to the back.
The downside of the shield is that it obscures part of your vision. If you raise a shield against a particular kind of attack, you’re unable to see and learn from that part of reality.
iii. Staff
The final evolution in this pattern is the staff. That staff doesn’t protect you at all. It helps you stand taller. You can lean on it. It gives you some structure, preventing you from falling into a puddle on the ground. But standing taller makes you more exposed to attack, not less.
By trading a shield for a staff, you’re optimizing for agility, and trusting in yourself to regenerate faster than reality can deal damage to you. It helps you walk faster, farther.
One thing that’s not great about this framing is that since the three things come in an order it’s easy to get into an implicit frame where people with staffs are better than people with shields who are better than people with shells, or at least be worried that other people are doing this. (I have this concern about Kegan levels, for example, and it seems related to PDV’s concerns around circling / NVC.)
So I’d like to push strongly for additional norms around this sort of thing, of the form “and also let’s agree that we won’t criticize people for having a different pattern than us or try to pressure them into ‘leveling up’ from our perspective.”
Is this a social worry (“people will use it as a blugeon”) or an epistemic worry (“people will incorrectly think there’s a hierarchy, but actually they’re all useful frames”)?
I don’t have strong feelings about shell/shield/staff, but I’ve gotten a lot of value out of Kegan levels, and I think the hierarchy is actually a loadbearing part of the theory. (Specifically, it matters that each level is legible to the one after it, but not vice versa.) I endorse being careful about the social implications, but I wouldn’t want that to become a generalized claim that there aren’t skill hierarchies in the territory.
I think the Shell, Shield, Staff post by SquirrelInHell feels very relevant to all of this. (Not sure if SquirrelInHell would endorse my application of it here).
A few people said the original post was too poetical, and I’m not sure I can summarize it without resorting to most of the same poetry, but here goes:
i. Shell
If the world seems scary, often people first start by forming a shell. The shell prevents the world from affecting them at all. This is “safe”, but it means that you’re limiting your opportunity for growth. Well meaning friends may try to coax you out of your shell, but you know that if you leave your shell they’ll start trampling over your boundar.ies and hurting you.
ii. Shield
An evolution of the shell is the shield. You figure out which parts of the world are most threatening, and develop a defense specifically against those. Instead of fully protecting you, the shield points to only one side. This has the advantage that it gives you more flexibility. You can let parts of the world affect you that seem trustworthy, allowing you to learn and grow. Occasionally this results in your getting stabbed, but you’ve become resilient enough that it’s worth accepting the risk—you can take the occasional dagger to the back.
The downside of the shield is that it obscures part of your vision. If you raise a shield against a particular kind of attack, you’re unable to see and learn from that part of reality.
iii. Staff
The final evolution in this pattern is the staff. That staff doesn’t protect you at all. It helps you stand taller. You can lean on it. It gives you some structure, preventing you from falling into a puddle on the ground. But standing taller makes you more exposed to attack, not less.
By trading a shield for a staff, you’re optimizing for agility, and trusting in yourself to regenerate faster than reality can deal damage to you. It helps you walk faster, farther.
One thing that’s not great about this framing is that since the three things come in an order it’s easy to get into an implicit frame where people with staffs are better than people with shields who are better than people with shells, or at least be worried that other people are doing this. (I have this concern about Kegan levels, for example, and it seems related to PDV’s concerns around circling / NVC.)
So I’d like to push strongly for additional norms around this sort of thing, of the form “and also let’s agree that we won’t criticize people for having a different pattern than us or try to pressure them into ‘leveling up’ from our perspective.”
Is this a social worry (“people will use it as a blugeon”) or an epistemic worry (“people will incorrectly think there’s a hierarchy, but actually they’re all useful frames”)?
I don’t have strong feelings about shell/shield/staff, but I’ve gotten a lot of value out of Kegan levels, and I think the hierarchy is actually a loadbearing part of the theory. (Specifically, it matters that each level is legible to the one after it, but not vice versa.) I endorse being careful about the social implications, but I wouldn’t want that to become a generalized claim that there aren’t skill hierarchies in the territory.
Mostly a social worry.
Yes, important point.