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Attention this is ELI5 post. If you are smarter than five year old you may not be able to find value in it
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About: This is a little silly ELI5 technique. It’s like my cognition is tinted with some weights, and switching to one of the modes proposed here helps me change the weights on a lot of vectors at once. It helps my imagination quickly take a different perspective, and draw new conclusions, or calibrate to something more effectively.
Seeing humans as… humans.
Ok, this is silly, but it will prove helpful a little later. Here humans means humans in an enlightenment mode. That is, humans intelligent, not biased, not groupish thinkers. Here, being human is desired, glamorous, and proud.
Seeing humans as ants. That is who are into work, work, work.
That is being blinded by work, being not here and now, but in what’s next. Being mostly unfulfilled. Focused on imaginary next thing. Being sad if they are not productive.
Sorry, I may be stereotyping ants. I am actually not sure if ants actually work more than other creatures. This is just a silly metaphor of an ant carrying something humongous in relation to their body size. Plus this feeling, a mindless, hiveish attitude towards work, work is our life, work is valued almost above other things. Some automatic, zombie aspect of it, one is gonna be possessed by work .
Seeing humans as monkeys
Sorry, I may be stereotyping monkeys here!
This stands as directionally opposite to seeing humans as humans (see above). It is seeing them as groupish thinkers, very biased, biased in a sense that is silly and predictable, e.g., motivated by climbing hierarchies. Focused on me, me, me. That is, this theory is mine, so it's better (confirmation bias, my-side bias). Signaling kindness and altruism but really being selfish.
Whenever one is feeling tension, a little stress, intimidation by humans (that is humans as humans, see above). That is humans in a measured, intelligent, desirable being. Imagine some distinguished group of deliberating experts. It’s fun to substitute it to monkeys. When I use that I often see a lot of things are revealed. I find it as helpful shortcut to spot our faulty reasoning or as a good descriptions of human behaviors
Example
I am on a website and there are this blissful idealistic frames of humans, everybody is smiling, captured exactly at their best angle, wearing their best clothes. And I am like this are sensible humans why they are showing this one take of human experience. Will there be social norms that en mass this is harmful for humanity and may be consider cringe? Maybe, but I am just a monkey with low-resolution imagination, with a heavy availability bias, look right here these dudes are smiling. It must be good.
I think status-seeking is a manifestation of fear, and while unconditional love is possible, it's not our default state, at least rn in the point of human development. It's a brutal realization that our relationships—even with parents and life partners—are in some significant way about status. But what if there's a way to accept this tendency in others and ourselves? What if we can embrace being humans who are naturally motivated by status?