This is both a way of thinking and a tool.
Example:
A central question, or struggle, for many people is: Should I look out for and serve my Self or Others? This has generated many very heated debates. Graphically, let’s look at this conflict.
Who to help:
However, if we change this from a 1 to a 2 dimentional space, here’s what happens:
Since this is both a way of thinking and a tool:
As a way of thinking, it helps when you want to resolve often contentious issues. This presumes your true intention is to unite not split. Those whose intentions are to create and maintain divisions, such as some politicians, many so-called news-reporters, and those who want to destroy our way of life, will have no use for it.
The tool part is simply a graphic way to help us ‘think out loud’. Graphs are sometimes more useful than words, since words allow us to both reveal or hide our thoughts, and focus on things and people and events as if they were totally isolated experiences. Graphs tend to encourage us to make more relationship type decisions. Where do I place the first item on a blank page? And the second item, should it be lower or higher, to the left or right, in bigger or smaller letters etc. Perhaps a different color…
Expanding this a bit further and, hopefully, shedding some light on it, and making it even more useful, we need to look at several things. Not everything we do helps ourselves or others. Sometimes it does nothing, and I’ll address that situation later, but sometimes, in spite of the best of intentions, we actually do harm. To see that graphically, lets extend both of these arrows in the opposite direction.
By pushing each dimension into the negative range we have a more complete picture to think about. To save space I’ll label the 4 quadrents, QI, QII, QIII, QIV. (Remember the Roman Numerals). The numbering is completely arbitrary.
Here we can place many groups of individuals, some of whom seem hard to understand, especially if we only have 2 places like Good & Bad.
To print this out for taking notes, right click on the graphic, select “View Image”, and when the image comes up in a separate page, Print it.
This is my view only, others may well disagree…
Quad I - Win-Win or Both Win
Diplomats are typically here. Win-win solutions is what their whole life is all about.
Internationally - Tony Blair - creating peace between England and Ireland.
SalesPeople are also here. While we sometimes think of them as self only oriented, the best of salespeople realize that no deal is concluded until BOTH parties are satisfied.
Quad II - Self Wins - Others Lose
There are quite a few folk here.
Bullies, being insecure, need to put others down, in order to feel OK about themselves.
Criminals of most all types, believe, and live, I win, others lose.
These next 3, Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Perverse Abusers or Soul Killers, I’ve known about for a while, but couldn’t figure out just where they differed or overlapped. Doing some reading and using my KnCells tools to reduce the confusion, here’s what I currently think:
Narcissists - The narcissist, is not just the center of the universe, he/she IS the universe. So the rest of us simply don’t exist.
Sociopaths - see: “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout
The Sociopath, also a narcissist, acknowledges we exist, indeed he/she needs us to play the games where he/she will ‘win’ over us. But after winning we no longer count. A recent example is Mike DeFong a now former prosecutor in North Carolina, who cares absolutely nothing about the damage he creates to others, only his own, sometimes imaginary, advancement.
Perverse Abusers - see: “Stalking the Soul” by Marie-France Hirigoyen. The ‘Perverse Abuser’, I call them Soul Killers, also a Sociopath, not only acknowledges that we exist, but is dedicated to make sure we cease to exist. They will not rest until we are destroyed. We see these on the international stage. They are also in our personal lives, but are much harder to see or accept there.
Yet another group, with deadly effect:
Homicide bombers - I win others lose.
Quad III - Self Loses - Others Win
Martyrs - Others win, I lose
Burnout - Others win, I lose
Quad IV - Both Lose
Suicides - I lose, others lose what I might have contributed.
Idea Killers - These people will attempt to kill any idea that moves us all forward. They seem to believe that somewhere in this world, somehow, there exists a person who wants to have fun; and it their mission in life is to prevent that from ever happening. They are the sadest of the sad, and it would be only their problem, but most of them are devoted body and soul to making the rest of the world as miserable as themselves.
Suicide bombers - I lose life, others lose life.
Here’s a graphic which shows where I believe these various groups fit; your values may well differ.
