I couldn’t figure out which one of these quotes to use, so here they are:

In most models of reality — assessment, problem solving, policy, standards, etc. — there is often an assumption that there is a negative trait based on some standard… and to me this identifies it as BS….

Example: I saw a neat assessment model the other day that showed workaholism as a trait.

Whether they mean it too or not, this word is pejorative, and holds that there is a negative connotation to this trait by nature.

Obviously, someone like me is overly sensitive to this connotation, in that my entire life revolves around my work —> by design.  I love to work, or what some people would call work, and certainly the overuse, as workaholism, depicted by a pejorative trait.

Yet, it’s clear to me that I find @F-L-O-W and Happiness as well as Success in my design. Reiss indicated that we find who we are through six modalities, one of which is Work, the others I think I remember as Sports, Family, Relationships, the Pursuit of Pleasure, and Spirituality.

A model that elevated one of these above the others, rather than noting how they fit and the possible consequences emerging from that fitness, or emphasis of one over the other, to me is BS.

@F-L-O-W tries to establish an idea that there is no pejorative, only thinking makes it so, as each condition in the environment often calls for some "fit" and this fitness is based on such, not an apriori standard… which means there are standards created through fitness and consequence.

The second we lean into judgment about good or bad, we color the situation through our values, rather than fitness and consequences. A person who was high on family, might not be so high on the idea their spouse was high on work… and there are fitness levels, compatibility issues and consequences that are emergent from these equations.

To label someone as a familyholic (which I have never seen because society is slanted in the OKness of family) would achieve the same pejorative valuing from those workaholics are us —> I think I hear the term family balance again, I will throw up.<g>

[Side note: more than likely the children of these workoholics often are not motivated much to family anyway, and understand the needs for this trait expression, or not. But it’s an idea to be checked out, versus judged according to a narrow standard.]

What’s key to me, is the idea of fitness and consequences.

Do we know the situation and the appropriate fit, and can we discuss the consequences. Those steps are pretty important in determining a path, rather than projecting an unconscious standard into the mix of assessment by suggesting by it’s existence something is pejorative or bad, or for that matter good.

Too many of our assessment models, reality models, problem solving models carry with them the author’s bias of reality and don’t give us the neutral tools we need to assess fitness and consequences, IMHO.

Helpful Hint: While it’s obviously a relativist position — relative to conditions — it may be less so than we think due to the idea that even taking this perspective has within it, some rigidity and dogma, so to speak —> that in order to judge, we need fitness and consequences, before we apply good and bad value judgments.  For those who think this might be relativistic, one would want to see the fitness and consequences of the model to judge it so.<G>

Action Step: Try this. The next time you run across a model using pejorative language in its reality making, ask yourself, is this a model that is providing me with neutral (not pre-judged according to hidden, or author standards) data exploration and filters, such that I can identify fitness and consequences —> allowing sense to be made from those data points.