In this chapter, I will give an overview of each of the nine dispositions which arise from the intersection of Eros and Thanatos with the two sublimation levels which the Framework describes. These overviews will supply you with a laundry list of information, from their conversational affect (the most distinctive trait of a pathological disposition), to the subconscious bargains which sustain them, to their likely demographics. Hopefully, these overviews will provide you with enough information to locate yourself within the Framework of dispositions— and, more importantly, hopefully it will aid you in locating the people around you on this matrix, as comparison to others is the best way of clarifying your own pathology.

Before we get to this, however, I’d like to explore for a while the traits which closed and open dispositions share among themselves, and how these traits sublimate into more abstract forms across the second and third level. It’s important that we keep in mind that these dispositions arise from the intersection of our fundamental Eros/Thanatos duality with the Ladder of Sublimation; a third-level open disposition (3o) and a second-level open disposition (2o) are fundamentally the same impulse, just re-instantiated at a higher level of abstraction. Therefore, there are some common traits of open and closed dispositions that you can use to locate yourself across this divide, especially if you have only been inculcated with a pathology on a single level.

The most obvious manifestation of the closed/open split is in conversational affect; what I mean by this, put narrowly, is that people with closed dispositions are less expressive than they should be, and people with open dispositions are more expressive than they should be. This manifests both in the literal quantity and volume of the words they contribute to a conversation, and also how freely they give their opinions about things. Closed dispositions are overly afraid to interrupt people, and open dispositions interrupt people too often. Closed people are afraid of giving opinions which might be provocative or controversial; open people seek out provocation and controversy reflexively.

This tendency to over- or under-express is really an outgrowth of the dispositions’ relationships to authority. Open individuals, left to their own devices far too often in their childhood, are accustomed to assuming responsibility for their own conduct, and that of other people, and even of spaces— of telling other people how they should act. They experience a tug of discomfort when they perceive a void in the shared responsibility for the space, and feel a duty to fill that space, because in their childhood they were forced to take charge of things which their parents could not be bothered by. Open individuals are also gain motivated; since their self importance has been artificially lowered by their inability to get a rise out of their parents in childhood, they are more likely to take a gamble and risk annoying the people around them in order to produce a more interesting or effective conversation.

Closed individuals, on the other hand, were watched over too-closely in their childhood by their “helicopter parents”. They therefore feel deeply uncomfortable when forced to tell other people what to do, and are unlikely to speak up to break a silence or to interrupt someone in the middle of making a point. They find unstructured conversational spaces liberating, and often resent attempts to steer a conversation— attempts which remind them of their parents’ tendency to ignore their ideas in favor of telling them exactly how to act. They are risk motivated, and are too afraid of angering their conversational partners to say anything contentious or unusual, or to ask prying questions.

These characteristics of pathological individuals’ conversations sublimate from the 2nd level to the 3rd, though they do so in such subtle ways that it takes a little bit of insight to understand the differences between those with 2nd and 3rd level pathologies. These differences become clearest when you recognize that everyone, even someone bearing only one pathology, carries two dispositions around with them; for a person with a single pathological disposition, their other disposition is neutral. Careful observation reveals that at some timescales a given person might act rationally, and at other timescales they will lack self-consistency. The topic of conversation is ultimately more important in activating a person’s disposition than the dynamics of the conversation.

Let me provide an example: let’s take a person who has an Erotic disposition on the second level, and no disposition on the third level. This would be second level closed, third level neutral, or 2c3n; the 3n can be omitted in this notation, so we’ll just say they’re 2c. This 2c person will display a characteristically closed disposition whenever the topic of conversation occurs at a more personal scale, but not when the conversation assumes a more abstract scale. They will have great difficulty contradicting someone who’s talking about something interpersonal— “It really annoys me that Jim does x”— but will freely speak up when someone is talking about something e.g. political— “I don’t think the Democrats are right about y”.

This split dynamic really cuts to the heart of how the sublimation levels manifest themselves in very tangible situations. The classic division, between so-called “introverts” and “extroverts”, suggests a pattern of behavior that only really pertains to the most severe cases (2c3c and 2o3o). Most people, so the popular formulation holds, “are somewhere in between”. But the reality of the situation is that conversational topics and conversational roles aren’t distributed randomly in the manner which a sliding scale suggests; they’re clustered into intervals, and it’s at these intervals that people display irrational and unbalanced behavior. A 3o individual will be able to sit and listen respectfully for ten minutes as someone narrates how terrible their roommate has been acting recently; but as soon as the conversation turns to what the city should be doing about the recent influx of illegal immigrants, they will feel strongly compelled to give out their own opinion on the matter, as though holding it in is burning them. What’s more, a 2o3c individual in that same conversation will face far more complex constraints on their behavior. Their friend’s narrative about their terrible roommate will produce a torrent of advice and suggestions— but as soon as the conversation rolls around to political issues, they will clam up and wait for a cue to take. Is such a person introverted, or extroverted? Most who subscribe to the introvert/extrovert dichotomy would reply that they are neither the one nor the other but somewhere in between; and this is a singular advantage of an all-inclusive engine of solve like the Framework— there’s always something meaningful to say about someone, because no one is ever just “in between”.

Beyond their conversational affect, closed dispositions and open ones display common traits which result mostly from the way risk-oriented and gain-oriented thinking warps their judgment. Open dispositions, dominated by Thanatos, are less worried about minimizing risk than they are about maximizing gain; they go out and hunt the mastodon, for all that it might trample them. Closed dispositions, as the Erotic converse, focus on minimizing risk and maximizing gain; they’ll stay near the village to pick berries, even if this doesn’t feed them as well as they’d like.

While dispositions are held at specific sublimation levels which are  far more abstract than the level at which questions about how to find dinner are concerned, it is also the case that many of the questions of a person’s private behavior span the breadth of the sublimation levels. That is to say, the same situation is dealt with along multiple hierarchical scales of time and intensity. In such cases, if a person is operating in an Erotic or Thannatic dominant mode, their risk-reward mechanisms will constrain them to characteristic behaviors even in situations that might seem below the level of complexity at which they are pathological.

For instance, Open individuals are far more likely to keep their bedrooms clean and well organized; this is because cleaning is an act of Thanatos, taking an undifferentiated mass of “mess” and breaking it down, putting individual objects in their individual places. One’s bedroom intersects with both the emotional and social sublimation levels; with the emotional level as “your private space, for which you are responsible”, and with the social level (more weakly) as “your private space, which reflects on your character”. As they go about life in their dominant mode, cleaning their bedroom is a convenient way to instantiate their Thanatos urge.

By the same token, Closed individuals are likely to keep their bedrooms messy; the Thanatic nature of cleaning doesn’t resonate with their dominant mode, and as such, cleaning their room does nothing to further the demands of Eros which they face constantly. One might object that the real root of the issue is that their parents, being controlling, cleaned their bedrooms for them in childhood, and that they simply never learned how to clean; but much of growing up is developing the capacity to, say, clean one’s room, go to the dentist, and cook a meal for oneself, and a marked reluctance to do these things shouldn’t be taken as a sign of an inability to do them, but as a sign of a reluctance to do them. A 3c nuclear physicist with a messy office desk isn’t incapable of devising a system for storing his belongings; devising such a system simply involves a mode of thought which he’s been conditioned not to engage in.

Of course, that isn’t to say that open dispositions are universally orderly and well-behaved and that closed dispositions are not; personal hygiene displays the exact inverse dynamic that room-cleaning does. Across cleanliness, fitness, and healthcare, Thannatic dispositions are inclined to neglect their bodies— willing to run the risk of damage later for the freedom of neglect right now. By the same token, Erotic dispositions are fastidious in their self-maintenance.

Hygiene and room-cleanliness are also impacted strongly by the coping strategies which pathological individuals employ to cope with executive dysfunction. Having suppressed their Erotic drive to pursue security, open individuals are liable to seek that security through the limited means which their “bargain” has permitted them as a necessity— namely, over-eating, since everyone has to eat, and consuming entertainment media, since developing one’s taste and discretion is a means of instantiating Thanatos by practicing solve on a piece of art. As a result of all this, they are distinctly more likely to be overweight, and generally unpresentable. Conversely, closed individuals have suppressed their Thantic drive to pursue excitement, and are liable to abuse the sources of excitement which their own bargain permits them— socializing excessively, even with people they don’t really like; and driving themselves to the brink of over-exertion in their work and lifestyle.

At the outside edge of these coping strategies— where the intensity of a pattern (via a double disposition or strong executive dysfunction) compels a person to real self-destruction— the repressed drives to Eros and Thanatos can manifest in extremely self destructive ways. Cutting and other direct self-harm is broadly engaged in by 2c individuals; extreme obesity is characteristic of 2o. Drug abuse can afflict pathological individuals of either variety, though carried out in a distinct manner— seeking out heroin as an Erotic embrace or a Thannatic rush, seeking out cocaine as a way of courting danger or as a means of imposing executive control on a flighty mind. But these coping strategies lie at the outside edge of the harm dispositions lead a person to do to themselves; the majority of pathological individuals never stray this far, or do so only periodically.

Beyond risk assessment, another valuable way of considering the difference between closed and open individuals is that closed individuals have difficulty refusing people, and open individuals have difficulty asking people for things. A 3o person will tell you to use a coaster because that’s a thing that people should be expected to do, and will gladly explain at length how coaster-use is in everyone’s best interests, but will never express any gratitude for your obedience . A 3c person will ask you to use a coaster as a favor to them, and if you point out that the table is pretty dinged up already and ask for their reasoning, they will be upset that you questioned them, because they are the host. (Of course, coaster use is the rare example of a phenomena that can be both requested and demanded; far more often, pathological individuals simply shy away from entire ranges of behaviors because they constitute requests or commands within the sublimative range of their pathology. )

This relationship to authority— of asking and ordering— is naturally inverted when it comes to sex and romance, as these are a domain of life in which people’s internal bargains often allow them to access their repressed mode. Closed individuals are much more likely to be dominant in sex than submissive, and open individuals are much more likely to be submissive than dominant. This extends past sex itself and into all areas of romance— put bluntly, Erotic individuals are generally looking to find someone they can order around, and Thannatic individuals are looking for someone to cater to their desires. I’ll discuss this in more depth later on, in the chapter on pathological compatibility.

For all the disparateness of Eros and Thanatos, there’s one similarity which dispositions on a given level share, which dispositions of the same polarity on different sublimation levels do not: their relationship to nostalgia. Generally speaking, people are significantly nostalgic only for periods of their life in which they did not develop a pathological disposition. For instance, a 2n3c individual is generally very nostalgic for their childhood; a 2c3n individual is very nostalgic for their adolescence; and a 2c3c individual won’t be very nostalgic at all. This simple principle has profound effects on how cultures construct themselves, which I’ll discuss later on.

One last note on these characteristics of Erotic and Thanatic dispositions, on a more technical level, is this: where a person possesses contradictory dispositions— 2o3c or 2c3o— the lower-level disposition, being more urgent, will prevail over the other where they directly contradict. Eg, a 2o3c individual will be more capable of cleaning their bedroom than a 2n3c one, if they expect that anyone will see it; whereas, a 2c3o individual will be more likely to make a doctor’s appointment of their own volition than a 2o3c one.

With these broad-strokes divisions between closed and open accounted for, we can now move on to the list of dispositions and their qualities. For each of the 9 dispositions, I will provide a general overview, comprising the following sections:

1.  The Disposition’s Name
2. Desire, Fear, Duty, Privilege, and Constraint
   1. This section outlines the childhood circumstances which give rise to each disposition, and the character of the bargain which is struck between upper and lower mind in its formation. Your desire is that which the lower mind craves, because it is perceived to be in short supply. Your fear is that which the upper mind sees as a pitfall to be avoided in pursuing this desire. Your duty is the means by which you pursue your desire while avoiding your fear. Your privilegeis the transcendental state that you seek to achieve in which your upper mind will allow your lower mind to seek its desired thing freely. Your constraint is the direct, rational path to your desire, which you have forbidden yourself from employing.
3. A Narrative Example
   1. These showcase the functioning of the disposition’s bargain with recourse to a real-life situation I’ve witnessed.
4. Conversational Affect
   1. “Affect” here is meant in the sense of “how one presents oneself” (Aff-ect, not uh-ffect). This section outlines how a disposition contorts a person’s mode of expression, as experienced from the outside.
5. Demographics
   1. This section discusses which cultures, if any, give rise to the disposition under consideration, and how common it is.
6. Common Life Circumstances
   1. This section discusses the life circumstances— parental illnesses, divorces, etc— which commonly lead a person to develop the pathological disposition being examined.

Before we dive into these overviews, though, I would like to begin with a word of warning. What an overview actually is is a pathological disposition towards Eros or Thanatos on the 2nd, 3rd, or both levels of sublimation. Any description which seeks to take this definition and put it into other words is necessarily inaccurate. As such, this overview of the 9 dispositions is intended to be evocative, not definitional. Seek in them not a summary of what each disposition is, but a portrait of how each disposition looks when filtered through the medium of the societal milieu in which they coexist.

I have tried somewhat to ameliorate this departure from reality by adhering to rigid symmetry in my construction of these portraits. I have been foiled in this symmetry by the realities of our language; our vocabulary has not been constructed with sublimation levels and dispositions in mind, and as a result, the exact relationships the words which I employ bear to one another are not always as symmetrical as I would like. For example, the 3c desire for “validation” is really the expression of the same desire as the 2c desire for “admiration” at a higher sublimation level. However, since these Erotic yearnings are not positioned along a continuum within our language, I have been forced to leave their relationship to your post-hoc reconstruction, where I’d have preferred to embed it in the very syntax of each overview.

With this copious front matter aside, here follows an overview of each of the 9 dispositions.

2o

2o stands for “Second Level Open”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Thannatic disposition on the emotional level of sublimation. Because neutral dispositions are dummied-out in the notation, 2o is more properly 2o3n.

Desire, Duty, Privilege, Fear, and Constraint

A 2o person’s parents are neglectful during their childhood.  They are unwilling to take action to address their child’s needs, and react with hostility or annoyance when they are compelled to do so. This causes the child’s sense of self-importance to fall, as their actions and words provoke little reaction from the people around them. Conversely, their self-esteem rises, because in the absence of parental oversight, they are forced to take a wide range of crises into their own hands, with their failures going unaudited and their successes serving them well.

The foundation of the 2o bargain is this: they have learned that asking people for their attention and assistance is bound to upset them. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. They desire to be taken care of by the people who are close to them.
2. They fear being seen as a burden and ignored by those people.
3. To pursue their desire while avoiding their fear, they feel a duty to take charge of the people around them.
4. By fulfilling this duty, they hope to gain the privilege of intimacy with other people, a closeness by which other people are compelled to take care of them without their asking.
5. They are constrained from ever asking people to take care of them.

Example: The Soup Incident

In order to give you some idea of what the 2o bargain looks like in action, I’ve written up a short scenario drawn from a real life example which showcases it.

A 2o learns that his friend is sick with the flu. The 2o himself desires to be taken care of if he should ever fall ill. He fears that in such a situation, he will seem like a burden to other people, and that they won’t take care of him. To pursue his desire to be taken care of while avoiding his fear of being seen as a burden, he feels duty-bound to bring his sick friend a care package with soup and cold medicine unprompted. He hopes that by doing so, he can gain the privilege of intimacy with him, and that he can expect him to return the favor when he next falls ill. However, at no point in this process does his friend recognize the implicit bargain which has been struck; he assumes, quite naturally, that the 2o has closer acquaintances who will take care of him at such an event. Because the 2o is constrained from asking for his friend’s assistance, he is forced to suffer through his own illness alone.

Conversational Affect

As they bear an open disposition unmixed with any closed disposition, 2os express the traits of their Thanatos domination clearly. They are loud, and interrupt people frequently. They seek to engage in provocative conversations. They aren’t shy about voicing their assumptions, and will rarely operate upon an assumption about another person’s preferences unless they’ve voiced it explicitly. They demonstrate limited tact for this reason. If, during the course of a conversation, the group appears to be in need of a voice of authority, they will be quick to fill in that role, and will assume responsibility over the conduct of it— they are willing to dictate topics of conversation. They are highly distractible, though by the same token they are capable of dispersing their attention widely.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter.

2o’s dominant affect is interrogation. They question their interlocutors insistently regarding every aspect of their personal beliefs and conduct, and seek to get to know who people “really are” in order to establish themselves in terms of intimacy with them. They wish people would show the same interest in them.

On the receiving end of dominant affects:

1. They find smalltalk (3c) extremely claustrophobic, and will rudely and actively shunt the conversation in a more interesting direction without bothering to register the attempt at mutual recognition and bonhomie contained therein.
2. They find effusive praise (2c) baffling and intriguing; because their self-esteem is so high, they see no value in it, and if uncracked struggle to comprehend what could possibly motivate it.
3. When approached with an unprovoked argument (3o), they feel obligated to participate in it, in the hopes that it might yield interesting, revelatory information about their interlocutors.
4. When confronted with interrogation themselves, 2o’s tend to react to such questioning with contempt, supplying their own (better thought out, more important) lines of questioning by which participants can get to know each other.

As a 2nd level disposition with a neutral 3rd level, 2o3n’s exhibit some open characteristics only insofar as conversations center on issues touching the 2nd level of sublimation. The 2nd level of sublimation, the emotional level, describes collective action problems that play out among 2-5 people over a span of weeks to months.  On issues involving more people over longer timescales, they don’t exhibit this Thannatic bias. They exhibit the following Thannatic tendencies:

1. 2o’s are very expressive about capital-E Emotional issues, and will share their thoughts and feelings forcefully on any such topic.
2. 2o’s are very disagreeable, even contrarian, when interacting with small groups of people with whom they can infer some intimate basis.
3. 2o’s give advice extremely freely— compulsively, even— regarding Emotional issues, an extension of Emotional authority they wish deep down that other people would extend over them in turn.
4. In discussing Emotional issues they are highly devoted to logical rigor, and will never let an error of judgment, misconception, or miscommunication persist between themselves and others, no matter how trivial.
5. Where Emotional issues are concerned they are utterly unwilling to lie. Dishonesty on this sublimative level makes them supremely uncomfortable. Lacking any countervailing impulse to dishonesty on the 3rd level, they are bad liars.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing an open disposition on the 2nd level, 2o’s experience the “right now” which encompasses weeks to months as a transient, destructible, doomed thing. They are massively predisposed to immediacy and are always in a rush to get things done as fast as possible, because they carry with them a constant unrealized expectation of their own death. They have trouble conceiving of any state of affairs as permanent or investing in any repetitive activity along emotional timescales which lacks a payoff within the current period of weeks to months. However, because they don’t suffer from any 3rd level pathology, their understanding of time on the 3rd level is accurate and undistorted. They can make investments and weigh consequences on a timescale of months to years with great clarity.

Demographics

No extant demographic groups systematically inculcate their children both 2o and 3n. As a result, the disposition is quite rare. It is the 8th most common of the 9 dispositions, and probably afflicts no more than 1/100th of the American population.

Common Life Circumstances

2o3n comes about as a result of childhood neglect which is resolved as a child enters adolescence. This can sometimes come about due to a parental illness being cured, or a hectic parental divorce being settled. However, the default American disposition is 2n3c, so a 2o child is far more likely to be inculcated 3c in their adolescence than 3n; only a pronounced hippie strain on the part of their parents and a lax school system are liable to lead them to a neutral disposition on the third level.

Misc Notes

This was my own disposition from childhood until I cured my pathology with the Framework Process.

2c

2c stands for “Second Level Closed”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Erotic disposition on the emotional level of Sublimation. Because neutral dispositions are dummied-out in the notation, 2c is more properly 2c3n

Desire, Duty, Privilege, Fear, and Constraint

A 2c person’s parents are controlling during their childhood.  They force their child to do the things they consider important, and punish them when they seek to pursue their own course. This causes the child’s sense of self importance to rise, as their behavior is constantly scrutinized and treated as though it is important. Conversely, it causes their self esteem to fall, as they are constantly berated for their failings and successes which can be attributed more to themselves than to their parents are minimized or devalued.

The foundation of the 2c bargain is this: they have learned that deference and obedience to the people around them is essential in shielding them from their anger and mistrust. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. Their greatest desire is to be admired by the people close to them.
2. Their greatest fear is to be hated for imposing their will, making mistakes, and causing others to be harmed
3. To pursue their desire while avoiding their fear, they feel a duty to be obedient to and heedful of the people around them.
4. They hope that this habitual obedience will demonstrate their good judgment to the people around them, and this will give them the privilege of dependability that leads others to seek out their advice and approval.
5. They are constrained from telling people what to do.

Example: The Countertop Situation

In order to give you some idea of what the 2c bargain looks like in action, I’ve written up a short scenario drawn from a real life example which showcases it.

The counters a 2c shares with their roommates are habitually cluttered, and one roommate has expressed annoyance at this. The 2c desires to organize the counters and receive credit for solving the problem. However, they fear that imposing a system of organization on their roommates unilaterally will anger them. To help fix the counter problem without stepping on anyone’s toes, feel a duty to heed the annoyance of their roommate by cleaning their own dishes assiduously They hope that this assiduousness in cleaning their own dishes will indicate to their roommates that they can be depended upon to keep the dish situation under control, and that they will be given the privilege of devising the rules to solve it. However, because (for fear of overstepping their boundaries) the 2c had only cleaned their own dishes, their roommates didn’t view their actions as particularly helpful; they  were seen as doing the minimum to get by without solving the problem, and this yielded them no admiration.

Conversational Affect

As they bear a closed disposition unmixed with any open disposition, 2c’s express the effects of their Eros domination clearly. They are quiet and rarely interrupt people. They shy away from engaging in provocative conversations. They rarely voice their assumptions, and often operate on assumptions about other people’s preferences which they haven’t voiced out loud. They demonstrate a great deal of tact for this reason. They are reluctant to assume authority over the conduct of a conversation, and are willing to let awkward silences arise. They are difficult to distract, and tend to demonstrate a great deal of focus on the current topic of the conversation.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter. 2c’s Dominant Affect is effusive praise. They shower adulation on those they interact with, hoping to forestall their censure and gain their appreciation as a pleasant person to talk to. They wish others would show the same appreciation for them.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. They demonstrate great patience for smalltalk (3c), and will take the opportunity afforded by this unthreatening companionship to praise the taste and sophistication of whoever they’re interacting with.
2. Concerted argument (3o) provokes substantial fear in them, as their concern to avoid offending the person they are speaking to makes the necessity of paraphrastic opinions and thought experiments a veritable minefield; they are uncomfortable when a person’s opinions are expressed intensely, but rendered ambiguously at the same time.
3. They find close interrogation (2o) exciting. Attempts to maintain their default reservation are most easily upheld when the conversation centers on themselves, and by the same token they are granted an opportunity to risk the loosening of these barriers in a small gamble for praise.
4. When they are themselves greeted with effusive praise (2c), the 2c instinct is to minimize their own value and turn the compliment back on its deliverer; the result is a game of one-upmanship and escalation.

As a 2nd level disposition with a neutral 3rd level, 2c3n’s exhibit some closed characteristics only insofar as conversations center on issues touching the 2nd level of sublimation. The 2nd level of sublimation, the emotional level, describes collective action problems that play out among 2-5 people over a span of weeks to months.  On issues involving more people over longer timescales, they don’t exhibit this Erotic bias. They exhibit the following Erotic tendencies:

1. 2c’s are very reserved about issues that play out at this sublimative level, and don’t discuss their reasoning freely.
2. They are highly agreeable when faced with small groups of people, and will refrain assiduously from offending anyone by disagreeing too firmly.
3. 2c’s refrain from giving advice about Emotional issues unless they are compelled to do so. They had enough advice from their parents in childhood to last them a lifetime, and fear that to assume such a role in anyone else’s life would offend.
4. In discussing Emotional issues, 2c’s are more than willing to let points go unaddressed, and will invariably prefer a mostly-sufficient endpoint to a fraught conversation over a drawn out alignment of minutiae.
5. 2c’s are willing and able to lie about Emotional issues— a necessity when growing up with strict parents— and do it well.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing a closed disposition on the 2nd level, 2cs experience the “right now” which encompasses weeks to months as an abstract eternity. They conceive of themselves as having forever to solve problems on this level, and infer permanence in any conditions that arise within this timescale. They are slow to change circumstances and pursue their goals gradually on this level, and are liable to forgo opportunities which pay off on an emotional time scale due to a misapprehension that all such opportunities will recur. However, because they don’t suffer from any 3rd level pathology, their understanding of time on the 3rd level is accurate and undistorted. They can make investments and weigh consequences on a timescale of months to years with great clarity.

Demographics

No extant demographic groups systematically inculcate their children both 2c and 3n. As a result, the disposition is quite rare. It is the 8th most common of the 9 dispositions, and afflicts no more than 1/100th of the American population.

Common Life Circumstances

2c3n comes about from an over-strict childhood scrutiny which is relaxed as a person enters adolescence. This can sometimes come about through the incapacitation of a controlling parent by sudden illness, or the end of an acrimonious divorce in which the child was subject to pressures from competing parents. However, the default American disposition is 2n3c, so a 2c child is far more likely to be inculcated 3c in their adolescence than 3n; only a pronounced hippie strain on the part of their parents and a lax school system are liable to lead them to a neutral disposition on the third level.

3c

3c stands for “Third Level Closed”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Erotic disposition on the social level of sublimation. Because neutral dispositions are dummied-out in the notation, 3c is more properly 2n3c.

Desire, Fear, Duty, Privilege, Constraint

A 3c’s parents are controlling during their adolescence. They force their teen to do things that they consider important, and punish them when they seek to pursue their own course. This causes the 3cs self importance to rise, as they perceive that other people are deeply affected by their actions, and their self esteem to fall, as they are constantly berated for their failings, while successes which are attributable to more than their parents’ instruction are minimized or derided.

The foundation of the 3c’s bargain is this: they have learned that conformity to the standards of the people around them is essential to shielding them from derision and scorn. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. Their greatest desire is to be validated, to be seen as important and special by the people around them
2. Their greatest fear is to be condemned as an outsider to their society who can never be placed in charge of anything important.
3. To pursue their desire by avoiding their fear, they feel a duty to conform to the standards of behavior for their group.
4. By conforming to the standards of their group, they hope to be granted the privilege of respectability, by ascending through institutions which grant them an official station in society
5. They are therefore constrained from standing out from their milieu.

Example— The Clothing Dilemma

In order to give you some idea of what the 2c bargain looks like in action, I’ve written up a short scenario drawn from a real life example which showcases it.

A 3c woman lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a hotbed of fashion. She desires to be praised for her fashion choices. However, she fears that if she dresses too strangely, she will be viewed as an outsider by the members of her social circle. In order to pursue her desire while avoiding her fear, she feels a duty to conform by including exactly as many pieces of avant garde apparel  in her outfits as others in her milieu do— one per person. They hope that by doing so they can gain the privilege of being seen as a member of the fashionable set in the neighborhood. However, because everyone in the area follows these fashion rules, and because she is constrained from taking more radical fashion steps to truly stand out, her outfits are never particularly exceptional, and she never gains much validation for her fashion choices.

Conversational Affect

As they bear a closed disposition unmixed with any open disposition, 3cs express the effects of their Eros domination clearly. They are quiet and rarely interrupt people. They shy away from engaging in provocative conversations. They rarely voice their assumptions, and often operate on assumptions about other people’s preferences which they haven’t voiced out loud. They demonstrate a great deal of tact for this reason. They are reluctant to assume authority over the conduct of a conversation, and are willing to let awkward silences arise. They are difficult to distract, and tend to demonstrate a great deal of focus on the current topic of the conversation.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter. 3c’s dominant affect is smalltalk. By choosing topics of conversation which don’t truly matter to any conversation participant, 3cs can feel out the norms of the group and learn to conform to them. Smalltalk topics contain strategic ripples of dissent which give participants the opportunity to demonstrate that they are willing to seek consensus and conform to group standards in a small arena before larger topics are broached.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. 3cs receive the smalltalk of other 3cs with a great deal of bonhomie, as a reflexive expression of recognition that they are 3cs among 3cs. This reflex is a consequence of 3c domination of modern society. In the absence of this conviction regarding the rightness of the practice, 3cs find smalltalk stultifying, and wish they had the latitude to broach topics they find more interesting without fear of censure.
2. 3cs react to effusive praise with pity, as they recognize in it an impulse to appease which is even more urgent than their own, and take pains to humor it without going so far as mirroring it.
3. 3cs see in forceful argument an opportunity to ingratiate themselves to the group to which they belong by skillfully defending group consensus, and will leap to do so with the assistance of anyone they perceive to be on their side. It is not uncommon, for this reason, to see numerous 3cs debating one 3o. Lacking fear for 3c mechanisms of group derision, the 3o usually prevails.
4. They find close personal interrogation supremely threatening, as close attention will reveal the necessary incompleteness of their conformity to group norms. They are quick to cast such interrogation as a violation of group norms in an attempt to shut it down.

As a 3rd level disposition with a neutral 2nd level, 2n3cs exhibit some closed characteristics only insofar as conversations center on issues touching the 3rd level of sublimation. The 3rd level of sublimation, the emotional level, describes collective action problems that play out among 10-50  people over a span of months to years.  On issues involving fewer people over shorter timescales, they don’t exhibit this Erotic bias. They exhibit the following Erotic tendencies:

1. 3cs are very reserved about issues that play out at the Social sublimative level, and don’t discuss their reasoning freely.
2. They are highly agreeable when confronted with large groups of people or social convention, and feel deeply compelled to go along with crowds.
3. They are very careful to avoid giving unwanted advice regarding 3rd level issues, and when they do give advice they seek to do so only as an equal representative of a group consensus, and never as an external authority figure.
4. When discussing Social issues, 3cs consider rigor and consistency a useless impediment to consensus.
5. The imperatives of conforming to social groups necessitate a great deal of dishonesty from 3cs, and while they are less schooled in avoiding tells and managing their physical comportent than 2cs, they lie capably and are apt to reinforce the lies of others who they perceive to be on their side.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing a closed disposition on the 3rd level, 3cs experience the “right now” which encompasses months to years as an abstract eternity. They conceive of themselves as having forever to solve problems on this level, and infer permanence in any conditions that arise within this timescale. They are slow to change circumstances and pursue their goals gradually on this level, and are liable to forgo opportunities which pay off on a social time scale due to a misapprehension that all such opportunities will recur. However, because they don’t suffer from any 2nd level pathology, their understanding of time on the emotional level is accurate and undistorted. They can make investments and weigh consequences on a timescale of weeks to months with great clarity.

Demographics

3c is the dominant mode of inculcation under Capitalism, the latest antithetical era. As such, it was ascendant in the West (gaining more members with each generation) until the 1960s, where it began its precipitous fall. The Boomer generation was the American feneration both inculcated most fully 3c, and also the first generation to crack the disposition as a pathology en masse. It is still the case that the majority of the country is 3c, clustered most tightly where institutional power is thickest on the ground— urban population centers, especially the coasts.

As will be discussed in a later chapter (The Four Classes of American Politics), 3cs come in two primary flavors in America, urban bourgeoisie and rural bourgeoisie. Their numbers are fewer in rural areas, though, as it is there that 3c institutions are collapsing most quickly.

3c is far and away the most common disposition, making up around 45% of the American population.

Life Circumstances

3c as the default disposition in America is reinforced by the pressures of the public school system. Parents who believe in the Capitalist-Corporatist worldview will intentionally raise their children 3c; those who object to this worldview may very well attempt to raise them otherwise, but social pressures are such that they may often fail. Familial circumstances have a smaller impact on generating 3c outcomes than other dispositions because 3c is still the default. A parent needs not only to avoid being controlling to avoid their child becoming 3c, they also have to mediate between their child and all the controlling authority figures embedded in the school system

3o

3o stands for “Third Level Open”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Thannatic disposition on the social level of sublimation. Because neutral dispositions are dummied-out in the notation, 3c is more properly 2n3o.

Desire, Fear, Duty, Privilege, Constraint

A 3o person’s parents are neglectful during their adolescence. They are unwilling to give their teen guidance, and react with hostility or annoyance when compelled to do so. This causes the child’s sense of self-importance to fall, as their actions do little to affect their parents. Conversely, their self-esteem rises, because in the absence of parental oversight, they are forced to take a wide range of crises into their own hands, with their failures going unaudited and their successes serving them well.

The foundation of the 3o bargain is this: they learn that asserting their right to belong to networks of support will frustrate and annoy people. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. They desire to belong to networks of support which are bound to take care of them by default
2. They fear being excluded from groups to which other people belong because they are perceived as unhelpful
3. In order to pursue their desire while avoiding their fear, they feel a duty to be devoted to the care of the people around them
4. They hope that by fulfilling their duty they can achieve the privilege of creating a community to which they can belong by default
5. They are constrained from asserting their right to belong to their community proactively and demand to be cared for on that basis.

Example— The Dinner Party Conundrum

In order to give you some idea of what the 3o bargain looks like in action, I’ve written up a short scenario drawn from a real life example which showcases it.

A 3o woman wants to have weekly dinner parties with her old college friends. She desires that these dinner parties should become a self-perpetuating institution which all the attendants contribute to. However, she fears that if she doesn’t contribute a large amount of effort to these parties, she won’t be invited to attend them anymore. To pursue her desire while avoiding her fear, she feels a duty to take care of all the logistics for these dinner parties single-handedly— sending the invitations, cooking, cleaning, and hosting. She hopes that if she fulfills this duty long enough, her friends will develop a sense of belonging to this dinner party community, and will begin to carry out the logistics of organizing them without her input. However, because she feels constrained from directly asking her friends to relieve her of the burden of managing the community, her friends begin to think of the dinner parties as “her [the 3o’s] thing”, and are unwilling to intrude upon her prerogatives by helping to organize. As a result, she is forced to choose between managing them single-handedly and giving them up altogether.

Conversational Affect

As they bear an open disposition unmixed with any closed disposition, 3os express the traits of their Thanatos domination clearly. They are loud, and interrupt people frequently. They seek to engage in provocative conversations. They aren’t shy about voicing their assumptions, and will rarely operate upon an assumption about another person’s preferences unless they’ve voiced it explicitly. They demonstrate limited tact for this reason. If, during the course of a conversation, the group appears to be in need of a voice of authority, they will be quick to fill in that role, and will assume responsibility over the conduct of it— they are willing to dictate topics of conversation. They are highly distractible, though by the same token they are capable of dispersing their attention widely.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter. 3o’s dominant affect is argument. They pose quandaries related to whatever subject matter is most salient and steer the conversation through the exhaustive examination of these quandaries from every angle.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. 3os respond to smalltalk by escalating it. They begin by discussing whichever trivial matters are under consideration, then escalate the conversation by the degrees towards more controversial or personal subjects, taking care to avoid offending their interlocutors to the point of ending the conversation.
2. 3os reject effusive praise outright, viewing its dishonesty as fundamentally objectionable and inferring in it an attempt to wheedle out from beneath polite scrutiny
3. 3os greet argument with more, louder argument. Wherever uncertainty is imputed and the group stands on unsure footing, 3os feel an obligation to establish certainty and declare a rigorously argued point of view by which others can find their way. If someone else is engaged in the same behavior, they will compete with them directly, and the discussion will become an endurance contest in the examination of minutiae.
4. 3os find personal interrogation agreeable, and generally welcome the opportunity to litigate the rationality of their behavior and perspective, so long as their interrogator is willing to accept their final word on the subject.

As a 3rd level disposition with a neutral 2nd level, 2n3os exhibit some open characteristics only insofar as conversations center on issues touching the 3rd level of sublimation. The 3rd level of sublimation, the social level, describes collective action problems that play out among 10-50  people over a span of months to years.  On issues involving fewer people over shorter timescales, they don’t exhibit this Thannatic bias. 3os’ Thannatic character emerges in these areas:

1. 3os are very expressive about Social issues, and feel that their obligation to truthfulness requires them to speak their mind loudly and accept the scrutiny of others freely.
2. 3os are disagreeable and contrarian to a fault on Social Issues, and will play devil’s advocate compulsively, a tendency which often gets them into trouble.
3. 3os give advice freely where conversation encounters the 3rd level, and will readily assume authority over the actions of those who come to them for help.
4. 3os prize rigor very highly where social issues are concerned, and are willing to stretch conversations about these issues on for as long as is necessary for consensus between participants to be achieved.
5. 3os are extremely devoted to honesty on the 3rd level; dishonesty on this level makes them very uncomfortable. Lacking any Erotic compulsion to the contrary on the 2nd level, they are bad liars.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing an open disposition on the 3rd level, 3os experience the “right now” which encompasses months to years as a wasting, uncertain period. They are consistently predisposed to immediacy and are always in a rush to get things done as fast as possible, because they carry with them a constant unrealized expectation of their own death. They have trouble conceiving of any state of affairs as permanent or investing in any repetitive activity along social timescales which lacks a payoff within a period of months to years. However, because they don’t suffer from any end level pathology, their understanding of time on the emotional level is accurate and undistorted. They can make investments and weigh consequences on a timescale of months to years with great clarity.

Demographics

3o was the form of inculcation which was dominant under feudalism, and limited feudal structures are still prevalent in out of the way corners of the world like rural India and Afghanistan.

More prominently in the West, 3o was the traditional form of inculcation undergone by women, and was the pathological bedrock upon which our conception of the housewife was founded. The numbers of women raised in this traditional manner have fallen precipitously since the 1960s, however, and among those younger than Gen X there are few women raised in this manner. Fundamentalist religious cultures with firmly ensconced gender roles sometimes systematically raise their children 3o, but the utopian strain in fundamentalism is generally pronounced enough that any configuration of dispositions can emerge from such chaos.

With these factors in mind, 3o remains the 3rd most common disposition, comprising up to 15% of the population.

Common Life Circumstances

Generally, when a person has not been inculcated 3o at the behest of a fundamentalist culture, they have come by it due to the incapacitation of one or both parents by illness or misadventure in their adolescence. The public school system is broadly configured to inculcate teenagers 3c, but this tendency works in concert with parental authority and support, and where such authority and support is abjectly lacking it is not at all uncommon for a neglected teen to end up 3o.

2c3c

2c3c stands for “Second Level Closed, 3rd Level Closed”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Erotic disposition on both the emotional and social levels of sublimation. By convention they are also sometimes referred to as CCs or “Double Cs”, both of which should be understood as semantically identical to 2c3c.

Desires, Fears, Duties, Privileges, Constraints

The desires, fears, duties, privileges, and constraints  experienced by CCs reflect a straightforward combination of 2c and 3c. CCs experience all aspects of both dispositions; in the rare instances where 2c and 3c come into conflict, 2c, as the lower and more urgent disposition, wins out.

A CC’s parents are strict during their childhood and adolescence. They force their child to do the things they consider important, and punish them when they try to set their own priorities. This causes their self importance to rise, as they perceive that other people are deeply affected by their actions. Their self esteem falls conversely, as initiatives attributable more to their own will than their parents’ direction are downplayed in success and castigated in failure.

The foundation of the 2c3c bargain is this: They have learned that conformity and obedience to the will of others is essential in protecting themselves from hatred and scorn. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. Their greatest desires are to be admired by their most intimate acquaintances, and to be validated by their broader social circle
2. Their greatest fears are to be hated by these intimates for imposing their will, and to be condemned as an outsider by their society
3. To pursue their desires while avoiding their fears, they feel a duty to obey the people around them and to conform to the standards of their social circle
4. They hope that habitual obedience and rigid conformity will grant them the privileges of dependability and respectability by which others will feel compelled to reward them with their trust.
5. They are constrained from telling others what to do or standing out from their milieu

Example— The Sewing Club

A 2c3c woman has joined the sewing club at her university, and its members have begun to see themselves as friends beyond the context of their shared hobby. She desires to be integrated into this budding social circle as an admired and respected friend. However, she fears that moving on from the topical confines of their shared hobby onto more personal territory will require her to guess at her friends’ personal opinions and feelings, which haven’t yet been revealed to her. Since expressing her own opinions and feelings might alienate the other members of the club, she doubles and triples down in her devotion to the club’s formal activities, frequently steering conversation back onto that subject whenever it is her turn to speak. She hopes to impress the other members by demonstrating her devotion to the shared basis of interest which originated their acquaintanceship, securing her position with the group. However, because all the other members of the group have transcended the limited basis of the club’s activities in order to pursue deeper personal connections, they perceive in her rigid adherence to the club’s subject matter a desire to keep their relationship professional, and never integrate her into the real friendship that develops beyond the boundaries of club activities.

Conversational Affect

CC is a double disposition, instantiating both 2c and 3c. This double nature gives rise to some unique patterns of behavior. The chief of these is that the imperative to communicate as little as possible on both the 2nd and 3rd level presents a substantial difficulty for CCs, insofar as many of the normal modes of conversation which people engage in require a greater degree of expression than they are comfortable with. In addition to general reticence, CCs generally arrive at a particular conversational tactic which helps them reconcile their need to talk with their unwillingness to communicate: they pick a special interest of theirs— a hobby, a favored form of media, a domain of study— and talk about it constantly. In lieu of personal revelations, it becomes their new default.

As they bear two closed dispositions unmixed with any open disposition, CCs express the effects of their Eros domination clearly. They are quiet and rarely interrupt people. They shy away from engaging in provocative conversations. They rarely voice their assumptions, and often operate on assumptions about other people’s preferences which they haven’t voiced out loud. They demonstrate a great deal of tact for this reason. They are reluctant to assume authority over the conduct of a conversation, and are willing to let awkward silences arise. They are difficult to distract, and tend to demonstrate a great deal of focus on the current topic of the conversation.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter.

Bearing a complete combination of 2c and 3c, CCs engage in both smalltalk and effusive praise by default, though they will retreat to their conversational tactic of hyper-focusing on a special interest when the imperatives of smalltalk and effusive praise risk contradicting one another. If a subject of smalltalk is taken in a personal direction, or a line of effusive praise collides with socially contentious subject matter, they will generally push the conversation towards safer territory within the confines of their current fixation. They generally handle this push fairly clumsily and, on the receiving end, it can feel quite alienating.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. CCs follow others’ leads in smalltalk, participating somewhat more reticently than 3cs insofar as they remain alert for any territory which might offend others on a more personal level.
2. CCs generally respond to effusive praise by denying it insistently and self-effacingly, fishing for more of the sparse interpersonal affirmation they crave
3. CCs respond to argument with great reticence. They feel an urge to speak up as the representative of their milieu if no others are present, but will retreat into silence behind the aegis of less reserved defenders of the status quo if any at all present themselves.
4. CCs respond to interrogation with the same relish as 2cs, seeing in it an opportunity to make small concessions in a gamble for praise. However, when they are at risk of losing these gambles and falling in the favor of their interlocutor, they are quick to resort to social conventions to shut down the conversation, disputing the legitimate basis of their judgment and asserting that insufficient intimacy exists to render the interaction proper.

As a double-disposition which is closed on both sublimation levels, CCs represent the maximum instantiation of closed characteristics in modern society. Where conversations touch on collective action problems which play out on a timescale of weeks to months or months to years, CC individuals will demonstrate a high degree of reservation and a preference for obscurity. Erotic characteristics of the CC affect across both 2nd and 3rd levels include the following

1. CCs are maximally reserved, and don’t discuss their reasoning freely.
2. They are highly agreeable, and will go along with the expectations of any group which opposes them, keeping their objections to themselves.
3. CC’s very rarely give advice of any sort, not wanting to expose themselves to the scrutiny that such an assumption of authority would invite.
4. They care very little for intellectual rigor; they are not only content to leave extant lines of inquiry out to dry, they are liable to defend obscurity and anonymity as fundamental human rights.
5. CC’s are willing to lie substantially and subtly. They are rarely opportunistic in their lies, but instead build them up slowly and discreetly.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing an Erotic disposition on both the 2nd and 3rd levels, CC’s perceive their lives as an eternal present, a single uninterrupted motion without variation or end. They project their current conditions onto this eternity, and are slow to change in the confidence that the ramifications of change are liable to stay with them forever. They have great difficulty understanding changes which are forced upon them from outside, and frequently build their lives upon unstable bases which they endow with undo confidence.

Demographics

CC is one of the three dispositions which are still inculcated by existing cultures in the modern world. CC is inculcated widely in East Asia, as (unlike Christianity and Islam) Buddhism’s evangelism was incomplete in this region, and pockets of Confucian 2c-ism have sustained themselves as a base upon which 3c corporatism has been erected. While the majority of the populations of these countries are 2n3c, a substantial CC plurality remains extant.

Within America, the children of immigrants from these East Asian nations are CC at higher rates than other groups; the “tiger mom” phenomenon is an expression of this dynamic. The majority of Asian Americans are 2n3c, but a sufficient plurality of CC Asian Americans exists to color their cultural presence.

As a result of these factors, CC is the 5th most common disposition. Approximately 10% of people in modern America are CC.

Common Life Circumstances

Children whose parents force them to pursue success from a young age— athletes, students at elite elementary schools, children who take supplemental lessons at institutions like Kumon, the scions of wealthy families, etc— often wind up CC under this scrutiny. More commonly, the dominance of an abusive, controlling parent across both childhood and adolescence results in a person being inculcated CC.

2o3o

2o3o stands for “Second Level Open, 3rd Level Open”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Thannatic disposition on both the emotional and social levels of sublimation. By convention they are also sometimes referred to as OOs or “Double Os”, both of which should be understood as semantically identical to 2o3o.

Desires, Fears, Duties, Privileges, Constraints

The desires, fears, duties, privileges and constraints  experienced by OOs reflect a straightforward combination of 2o and 3o. OOs experience all aspects of both dispositions; in the rare instances where 2o and 3o come into conflict, 2o as the lower and more urgent disposition, wins out.

An OO’s parents are neglectful during their childhood and adolescence. They react with hostility to requests for guidance and assistance, and prefer that the child tends to their own affairs. As a result of this neglect, the child’s self importance falls, as they learn that their actions and words have a very muted effect on other people. Conversely, their self esteem rises, as they learn to overcome difficulties and solve problems on their own.

The foundation of the 2o3o bargain is this: they have learned that asking for assistance and asserting their right to belong will upset and frustrate other people. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. OOs desire to be taken care of by the people closest to them, and to belong to networks of support which are bound to take care of them by default.
2. They fear being seen as a burden by the people closest to them and being excluded from the groups to which they belong because they are unhelpful.
3. To pursue their desires while avoiding their fears, they feel a duty to take charge of and to be devoted to the care of the people around them.
4. They hope that by fulfilling their duty, they will be granted the privilege of intimacy with the people around them and to create a community to which they can belong by default.
5. They are constrained from asking people for help directly or asserting their right to belong to a community.

Example— The Reading Group Trap

An OO man is hosting a reading group. He hopes to engage in provocative conversation which will bring him closer to the guests at this group, and to create a feeling of community which will keep the group going without his continued impetus. However, he fears that other people will see his request to participate in this sort of structured exercise as a burden, and that the required reading will further encumber them. In order to pursue his desires while avoiding his fears, he tries to make the evening as worthwhile as possible by insistently bumping the conversation into interesting territory, and by providing a sufficient overview of the subject matter that guests’ failure to do the reading is ameliorated. He hopes that the others will look back fondly on these conversations as breaking down barriers between them, and that they will be motivated to host their own meetups with the same group of people. However, the OO host’s refusal to allow the conversation to occupy a happy medium led many of the guests to feel put-upon and subjected to uncomfortable scrutiny, and their single-handed summarization of the material led the guests to consider the reading group “the host’s thing” rather than something in which they could participate as equals. As a result, he formed no significant attachment with the other members of the group, and was also forced to bear the weight of the reading group’s logistics on their own.

Conversational Affect

OO is a double disposition, instantiating both 2o and 3o. This double nature gives rise to distinct patterns of behavior.  The most significant of these is this: The difficulty inherent to balancing the need to break down as many barriers between themselves and others as possible without excessively offending people leads OOs to adopt a “frog boiling” conversational strategy. If they sense an opportunity for a group of people to experience conversational consanguinity, an OO will assume control of the conversation. They will then escalate the tenor of the conversation by degrees, beginning in a place of banality but posing questions which render things more provocative by degrees. They will use their authority over the situation to rebuke those who advance too quickly towards provocative conclusions, and to spur silent or reserved members to greater expression. The result is a kind of conversational dictatorship in which an assemblage of people are taken for a conversational ride at the urging of the OO in charge.

As they bear two open dispositions unmixed with any closed disposition, OOs express the effects of their Thanatos domination clearly. They are loud, and interrupt people frequently. They seek to engage in provocative conversations. They aren’t shy about voicing their assumptions, and will rarely operate upon an assumption about another person’s preferences unless they’ve voiced it explicitly. They demonstrate limited tact for this reason. If, during the course of a conversation, the group appears to be in need of a voice of authority, they will be quick to fill in that role, and will assume responsibility over the conduct of it— they are willing to dictate topics of conversation. They are highly distractible, though by the same token they are capable of dispersing their attention widely.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter. Bearing a complete combination of 2o and 3o, OOs engage in both interrogation and argument by default, though they will adopt the more gradual method of frog-boiling if one of these strategies conflicts with the other. If they are among a particularly conformist milieu, they will employ argument which engages with deeply personal conviction as a means of proceeding from impersonal to personal terrain.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. OOs see smalltalk as an opportunity for escalation into personal territory; however, they see this opportunity as a high-stakes affair, and will begin to feel claustrophobic if their attempts at escalation are resisted. They are not above violating the norms of politeness if it is necessary to ensure that smalltalk can be transcended.
2. OOs are liable to reject effusive praise as both confusing and manipulative, and are liable to respond to it with an inquisition into the motives of their interlocutor.
3. 2o3os engage with argument as though it is their calling, and are willing to pursue a line of thought wherever it might lead, dragging their interlocutors along with them as far as insistence will avail.
4. OOs generally turn interrogation back on itself, and will present their own views and characteristics as uninteresting except as vehicles for the exploration of the other party’s.

As a double-disposition which is open on both sublimation levels, OOs represent the maximum instantiation of open characteristics in modern society. Where conversations touch on collective action problems which play out on a timescale of weeks to months or months to years, OO individuals will demonstrate a high degree of expressiveness and a keen eye for detail. Their doubly-Thannatic nature manifests itself in the following ways across the 2nd and 3rd levels of Sublimation:

1. OOs are maximally expressive, and share their thoughts and feelings continuously.
2. They are quite disagreeable, and will assume the position of devil’s advocate with no thought given to its appropriateness
3. They give advice insistently and without prompting
4. They are highly devoted to intellectual rigor, and will not allow apparent contradictions or inaccuracies to rest until they have been reconciled with the facts.
5. They are pathologically bent on honesty. They lie poorly, and experience such guilt at the prospect that they are scarcely able to undertake it.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing a Thannatic disposition on both the 2nd and 3rd levels, OOs perceive the present to be a flimsy, ephemeral thing, constantly in flux and not to be taken for granted. They reckon the future in light of this inconstancy, and are quick to make changes, to seize opportunities, and to reject situations before the depredations of time take these choices from them. They have great difficulty planning for a future which, they feel deeply, will never come.

Demographics

There are no extant cultures which institutionalize OO conditioning; as a result, there are no large, culturally recognizable bodies of OO individuals. OO conditioning was previously the dominant conditioning among African American women; but this has ceased to be true, broadly, since the 1960s, and as a result, has little effect on the proportion of OO’s in our society today.

However, as they are the result of neglect, and as poverty and drug addiction are extremely distracting issues for otherwise attentive parents, OO’s are somewhat common. They are the 6th most common disposition, making up as much as 2% of the American population.

Common Life Circumstances

The incapacitation of one or both parents due to sickness, imprisonment, or addiction frequently gives rise to OOs, and is their most common point of origin. Otherwise, the presence of parents who simply refuse to assume a proper degree of authority over their children is another common cause of OO.

2o3c

2o3c stands for “2nd Level Open, 3rd Level Closed”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically Thannatic disposition on the emotional level of sublimation, and a pathologically Erotic disposition on the social level.

Desires, Fears, Duties, Privileges, Constraints

The desires, fears, duties, privileges, and constraints experienced by 2o3cs pull them in two greatly diverging directions. They experience all aspects of 2o and 3c. These dispositions frequently conflict, and where they conflict 2o, as the lower, more urgent disposition, generally wins out. Because 2o and 3c are “strongly repulsive” in terms of their pathological compatibility, 2o3cs often experience a great degree of self-hatred.

A 2o3c’s parents are neglectful during childhood and strict during adolescence. During childhood, they are unwilling to take action to address the child’s needs, and react with hostility or annoyance when they are compelled to do so. During adolescence, they are controlling. They force their teens to do things they consider important, and punish them when they seek to pursue their own course. As a result, during childhood a 2o3c’s self importance falls, because they see their actions and words as producing a limited reaction from the people around them. Conversely, their self esteem rises, because they gain experience in making their own decisions and solving problems on their own. In adolescence, the opposite occurs; their self importance rises, because their actions provoke outsize responses from their authority figures. Their self esteem conversely falls, because any actions they undertake upon their own volition are met with derision in failure and minimization in success. These alterations to SI and SE are sustained simultaneously within the adult 2o3c, and coexist upon separate sublimation levels without internal conflict; they only become conflictual in the irreconcilable imperatives they force upon the 2o3c individual.

The foundation of the 2o3c bargain is this: they have learned that asking their intimate friends for attention and assistance is liable to provoke rejection, and that conformity to the standards of others is necessary to shield them from scorn and derision. These are the terms of this bargain:

1. They desire to be taken care of by the people closest to them, and to be validated and seen as important and special by their community.
2. They fear being seen as a burden by the people closest to them, and to be condemned as an untrustworthy outsider by their community.
3. In order to pursue their desires while avoiding their fears, they experience duties to take charge of the people closest to them and to conform to the standards of their society.
4. By fulfilling these duties, they hope to gain the privilege of intimacy with the people closest to them and to be thereby entitled to their care, and to gain a position of respectability within their community which affords them admiration and respect.
5. They are constrained from asking people for help or standing out.

Example: The Poetry Miscommunication

A 2o3c woman is participating in a poetry reading. She’s reciting a poem about an awkward hookup with a male friend. She hopes to gain a degree of intimacy with the friend about whom they’ve written their poem, who are in attendance, by baring her soul. She hopes to gain the respect of the members of the audience, by tying her own struggle to topical narratives within the feminist movement. However, she fears that her friend will find it tiresome to listen to her feelings about him, and that the audience at large will find the depth of her feelings for him objectionable in light of feminist doctrine. She seeks to pursue her desires while avoiding her fears by assuring her friend that the poem represents the height of her artistic achievement, and by aligning it with feminist values by employing terminology the audience should feel compelled to recognize and support. So doing, she hopes to gain a degree of intimacy with the friend whom she’s confronted with these feelings, and for her poem to be discussed widely as the best entry in the reading. However, her male friend feels hurt that she didn’t simply speak to him directly about her qualms, rather than wrapping them up in the form of a poem; and the audience finds her appeals to doctrinaire feminism so banal that the vulnerability and ingenuity of her work is obscured.

Conversational Affect

As a double disposition composed of strongly repulsive pathologies, 2o3cs experience a great degree of inner turmoil. This inner turmoil often manifests in intense artistic expression, and 2o3cs more than any other disposition are drawn to art and artifice both in their manner of self-expression and in their professional lives.

As a full instantiation of both Thannatic 2o and Erotic 3c, 2o3cs instantiate a number of contradictory conversational tendencies; generally, 2o wins out in the manifestation of their affect, because as the lower disposition it is felt more urgently. They are generally quite loud, and interrupt people frequently. They seem to feel bound to assume provocative stances, but they are liable to retreat from this provocation quickly if they sense they have violated a commonly held boundary. They voice their assumptions cautiously but consistently, often through verbal gymnastics calculated not to offend. They rarely operate on unvoiced assumptions. They display little tact, though they are liable to castigate themselves for this lack of tact continuously. They are highly willing to assume authority over a group should a void in it occur. They are extremely distractible.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter.

2o3cs engage in both smalltalk and interrogation with equal facility. They use the former to support the latter; if personal questions begin to offend their interlocutor, they will happily retreat to the safer ground of smalltalk. Conversely, if smalltalk seems to be boring the other party, they will delve into more personal territory. They are content with either mode, and feel no pressure to move from one to the other.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. When engaged in smalltalk, 2o3cs will persist in it for as long as it proves congenial.
2. Effusive praise is liable to draw out a 2o3c’s curiosity. They will be confused at what motivates it, and will simultaneously sense a vulnerability behind it which renders the deliverer less threatening.
3. 2o3cs feel a keen responsibility to take up the defense of the status quo when approached with argument, and will gladly step up to bat in lieu of acquaintances they know to agree with them.
4. 2o3cs react very poorly to interrogation, evincing a spasm of reflexive guilt that causes them to squirm and attempt to shift the conversation onto another subject or end it entirely.

As a double disposition which is open on the 2nd level and closed on the 3rd, 2o3cs exhibit open characteristics where conversation touches upon the 2nd level and closed characteristics where it touches upon the 3rd. On collective-action-problems playing out over timescales of weeks to months they are straightforwardly Thannatic, and on those playing out over timescales of months to  years they are straightforwardly Erotic. Their Erotic and Thannatic conversational traits across the 2nd and 3rd sublimation levels are as follows:

1. They are very expressive about capital-E Emotional issues, and will share their thoughts and feelings forcefully on any such topic. However, they are very reserved about issues that play out at the 3rd level, and don’t discuss their reasoning freely.
2. They are very disagreeable, even contrarian, when interacting with small groups of people with whom they can infer some intimate basis. However, when interacting with larger groups of people in a more public mode, they conform strongly to the group standard.
3. 2o’s give advice extremely freely— compulsively, even— regarding emotional issues, an extension of emotional authority they wish deep down that other people would extend over them in turn. However, they are very careful to avoid giving unwanted advice regarding 3rd level issues, and when they do give advice they seek to do so only as an equal representative of a group consensus, and never as an external authority figure.
4. In discussing emotional issues they are highly devoted to logical rigor, and will never let an error of judgment, misconception, or miscommunication persist between themselves and others, no matter how trivial. However, when discussing social issues, 3cs consider rigor and consistency a useless impediment to consensus.
5. 2o3cs lie frequently and impulsively. Their relationship to honesty differs from that of purely closed individuals, as their lies are less frequently pragmatic and more frequently impulsive, provoked by the difficulties inherent to balancing an emotional imperative to self-expression with a social imperative to please the crowd.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing an open disposition on the 2nd level, 2o3cs experience the “right now” which encompasses weeks to months as a transient, destructible, doomed thing. They are massively predisposed to immediacy and are always in a rush to get things done as fast as possible, because they carry with them a constant unrealized expectation of their own death. They have trouble conceiving of any state of affairs as permanent or investing in any repetitive activity along emotional timescales which lacks a payoff within the current period of weeks to months.

Bearing a closed disposition on the 3rd level, 2o3cs experience the “right now” which encompasses months to years as an abstract eternity. They conceive of themselves as having forever to solve problems on this level, and infer permanence in any conditions that arise within this timescale. They are slow to change circumstances and pursue their goals gradually on this level, and are liable to forgo opportunities which pay off on a social time scale due to a misapprehension that all such opportunities will recur.

Demographics

2o3c is one of the three dispositions which has been adopted as the default conditioning of an extant society. Black Americans are inculcated 2o3c by default; this is true for both male and female black Americans, as they underwent the same gender revolution regarding the status of housewives that white America did. 2o3c conditioning seems nowadays to be near-universal among black Americans, and can be observed both directly, and abundantly in the manifestations of their culture. As a result, 2o3c is one of the more frequently encountered dispositions in America, with both a disparate suite of family circumstances and black culture giving rise to it. It is the 2nd most common disposition, and up to 20% of Americans are 2o3c.

Common Life Circumstances

2o3c commonly results from the collision of neglectful parenting with the American public school system. Because America is a 2n3c society, its public school system has been constructed such that pressure on children is ratcheted up around middle school. Many parents who have inadvertently raised 2o3x children are shocked awake by the warnings of guidance counselors and teachers that their child is too inattentive and independent-minded to succeed at the higher stakes of adolescent education, and harshly overreact by imposing strict discipline throughout their child’s adolescence. It can also be the result when a “normal” 3c American family faces some early difficulty such as a parental illness or a particularly acrimonious divorce. The end of these trials coincides with a return to the 2n3c cultural milieu, and a person whose childhood and adolescence hinges along these changes will often wind up 2o3c.

2c3o

2c3o stands for “2nd Level Closed, 3rd Level Open”. This means that a person possesses a pathologically erotic disposition on the emotional level of sublimation, and a pathologically Thannatic disposition on the social level.

Desires, Fears, Duties, Privileges, Constraints

The desires, fears, duties, privileges, and constraints experienced by 2c3os pull them in two greatly diverging directions. They experience all aspects of 2c and 3o. These dispositions frequently conflict, and where they conflict 2c, as the lower, more urgent disposition, generally wins out. Because 2c and 3o are “strongly repulsive” in terms of their pathological compatibility, 2c3os often experience a great degree of self-hatred.

A 2c3o’s parents are strict during childhood and neglectful in adolescence. During childhood, they force the child to do the things they consider important, and punish them when they seek to pursue their own course. During adolescence, they are unwilling to give their teen guidance, and react with hostility or annoyance when compelled to do so. As a result, during childhood a 2c3o’s self importance rises, as they perceive their actions and words as having an outsize effect on the people around them. Conversely, their self esteem falls, as they are constantly berated for their failings and successes which can be attributed more to themselves than to their parents are minimized or devalued.

In adolescence, this relationship is flipped. Their self importance falls, as their actions and words provoke little reaction from their authority figures. Their self esteem conversely rises, as they negotiate situations and solve problems under their own supervision and with recourse to their own abilities. These seemingly contradictory transmutations of SE and SI coexist simultaneously on separate levels of sublimation, and coexist without internal conflict; conflict occurs only in the operation of these opposed tendencies on the outside world.

The foundation of the 2c3o bargain is this: they learn that deference and obedience to other people is essential in shielding them from hate and mistrust, and that asserting their right to belong to networks of support will frustrate and annoy people. These are the terms of that bargain:

1. 2c3os desire to be admired by the people close to them, and to belong to networks of support which are bound to take care of them by default.
2. They fear being hated by the people close to them, and to be excluded from the groups to which they belong because they are perceived as unhelpful.
3. To pursue their desires while avoiding their fears, they feel a duty to be obedient to the people closest to them and to be devoted to the care of the people around them.
4. In fulfilling their duty, they hope to gain the privilege of dependability which leads other people to seek out their advice and approval, and to create a community to which they can belong by default.
5. They are constrained from telling people what to do or asserting their right to belong.

Example— The Duel proposal

At a party, a 2o3c man is competing playfully with a friend for the attentions of a female companion, and he therefore proposes that they settle the matter with a duel to first blood. He hopes  that this duel will impress the woman with a show of athletic skill, and bring his friends into a relationship of masculine camaraderie. He fears that professing his affection for the woman outright would cause her to perceive him as weak, and that asking his friend to defer his romantic aspirations out of respect for their friendship would impose an undue burden on him. He therefore settles on the duel as his device, which would demonstrate his capability to the woman while creating an athletic rivalry amongst the men who participate in and watch the duel. He hopes thereby to gain the woman’s admiration for his daring and athletic talent, and to create a tradition of dueling among his male acquaintanceship, which he would organize. However, the other two participants in this discussion see no advantage in their participation: because he was constrained from expressing his true feelings to the woman, she feels that he was using her as a tool of self-aggrandizement; because they felt threatened by the prospect of a violent competition, the male onlookers began to paint the 2c3o as a colorful, inhuman character outside of their circle of acquaintance. As a result, the woman remains unaware of the depth of his feelings, and he is excluded from the possibility of masculine camaraderie with his friends.

Conversational Affect

As a double disposition composed of strongly repulsive pathologies, 2c3os experience a great degree of inner turmoil. This inner turmoil tends to express itself in terms of a profoundly chivalrous self-abnegation, an impulsive need to put themselves at the service of anyone and everyone they meet.

As a full instantiation of both the Erotic 2c and the Thannatic 3o, 2c3os instantiate a number of contradictory conversational tendencies; generally, 2c wins out in these struggles, as it is the lower and more urgent disposition. They tend to be quiet, unless they have been provoked by others to speak at length, and interrupt people very rarely. They are reflexively provocative, but moderate this provocation with assurances that their interlocutors in particular no doubt know better than they themselves do. They rarely voice their assumptions, and often operate on unvoiced assumptions, of which they are willing to give a full account should they be demonstrated to differ markedly from reality. They display a great deal of tact, unless they have been moved to speak at length on some subject in which they consider themselves an expert. They are highly willing to assume authority over a group of people should a void in direction occur, though they will never contest for authority with a determined contender. They are not easily distracted.

Each of the four basic dispositions has a “dominant affect”, a conversational strategy which they engage in by default in the absence of more pressing concerns. The reactions of each pathological disposition to the conversational strategies of the other 8 are the basis of how well people get along with one another, a system which can be described through the Alchemy of Pathological Compatibility explored in the next chapter. 2c3os engage in effusive praise and argument with equal facility. When the latter is met with objection or offense, they will remediate things with the former. When the former is viewed with suspicion or doubt, they will employ the latter to restore their reputation for honesty.\

2c3os engage in both effusive praise and argument with equal facility. They will use the former to charm their interlocutor, but, if they encounter someone who reacts to their praise with skepticism or offense, they will pivot to the latter in order to justify themselves. They are content with either mode, and feel no pressure to move from one to the other.

On the receiving end of Dominant Affects:

1. When met with smalltalk, they endure it patiently, seeking to escalate it in more provocative directions but content to wait as long as it takes for such an opportunity to present itself naturally.
2. They will reject effusive praise of themselves as irrelevant and unnecessary, and immediately turn that praise back on their interlocutor with double intensity.
3. They meet argument with more argument, though they tend to display discomfort if and when such arguments verge on hurt feelings and will be quick to frame their disagreements as a matter of intellectual duty but not personal animus.
4. They find personal interrogation exciting as a chance to reveal something of their inner selves, though they tend to constrain inquiry to areas of agreement and are unwilling to admit to any inconsistencies in the substance of their rationality.

As a double disposition which is Erotic on the 2nd level and Thannatic on the 3rd, 2c3os display closed characteristics where the conversation touches upon emotional Issues and open characteristics where it touches upon social ones. On collective-action-problems playing out over timescales of weeks to months they are straightforwardly Erotic, and on those playing out over timescales of months to  years they are straightforwardly Thannatic. They instantiate the following Erotic and Thannatic characteristics across the 2nd and 3rd levels of sublimation:

1. 2c’s are very reserved about issues that play out at the 2nd sublimative level, and don’t discuss their reasoning freely. Conversely, they are very expressive about social issues, and feel that their obligation to truthfulness requires them to speak their mind loudly and accept the scrutiny of others freely.
2. They are highly agreeable when faced with small groups of people, and will refrain assiduously from offending anyone by disagreeing too firmly. When faced with larger groups of people, they will often find themselves playing devil’s advocate compulsively.
3. They refrain from giving advice about emotional issues unless they are compelled to do so, but give advice freely where conversation encounters the 3rd level,
4. 2c3os prize rigor very highly in the abstract, but are quick to let a dangling line of inquiry drop whenever pursuing it risks personal offense.
5. 2c3os are very honest in their inexpressiveness, and will often be forced to admit to inconvenient truths where a lie of omission will not suffice.

A pathological disposition distorts a person’s conception of time— how long things will last, how much time they have to work with, how likely their time is to be cut short. Bearing a closed disposition on the 2nd level, 2c3os experience the “right now” which encompasses weeks to months as an abstract eternity. They conceive of themselves as having forever to solve problems on this level, and infer permanence in any conditions that arise within this timescale. They are slow to change circumstances and pursue their goals gradually on this level, and are liable to forgo opportunities which pay off on an emotional time scale due to a misapprehension that all such opportunities will recur.

Bearing an open disposition on the 3rd level, 2c3os experience the “right now” which encompasses months to years as a wasting, uncertain period. They are consistently predisposed to immediacy and are always in a rush to get things done as fast as possible, because they carry with them a constant unrealized expectation of their own death. They have trouble conceiving of any state of affairs as permanent or investing in any repetitive activity along social timescales which lacks a payoff within a period of months to years. .

Demographics

There are no extant cultures which condition their children 2c3o; the only civilization which I’m aware of ever having done so is Japan prior to the Meiji restoration. Much of what is distinctive about Japanese culture is the downstream result of this internal turmoil.

As 2c3o represents a double failing of the traditional 3c inculcation system— an unreasonably strict childhood, and a neglectful adolescence which is anathema to 3c society— the numbers of 2c3os are vanishingly small; I’ve met only 3 in my life. They are the least common disposition, making up less than 1% of the American population.

Common Life Circumstances

Only one set of life circumstances consistently results in the inculcation of a person with 2c3o— the incapacitation of an extremely strict parent at the margin between childhood and adolescence. This can come about through illness, death, or divorce, and the result is more a question of timing than cause. It’s the timing question that makes 2c3o so rare, as generally the removal of the too-strict parent will be countered by the pressures the school system puts on the remaining parent to inculcate their child 3c, or will result in the guilt-stricken parent being sufficiently attentive to the child’s actual preferences that they are inculcated 3n. It’s only when the remaining parent— due to overwork, most commonly— is unable to fulfill the parental void left by the incapacitated parent that a 3o disposition emerges.

2n3n

2n3n stands for “2nd level neutral, 3rd level neutral”, and refers to a person without any pathology. By convention, they are generally referred to as Ns

Childhood Circumstances

“Natural Ns” are Ns who are inculcated with a neutral disposition by the circumstances of their childhood; “self-created Ns” are Ns who achieve a neutral disposition through the application of the Framework Process or something like it. They don’t differ in their conversational affect at all, but their childhoods will (of course) diverge. In childhood, Ns receive an appropriate amount of oversight from their parents. They are granted independence and structure in proportion to their needs. As a result, their self esteem accurately reflects their quality as a person and accords realistically with their achievements, and their self importance likewise accurately reflects their influence over other people. Because their minds are not divided into upper and lower selves, Ns do not uphold a foundational bargain which patterns their lives.

Conversational Affect

Ns bear no polarity on the continuum of Eros and Thanatos, but instead draw their limitations reactively according to the imperatives of their situation. They are as loud as they need to be, and  interrupt others only when they need to. They are provocative insofar as there is something to be gained from it. They voice assumptions upon which a great deal depends, and  leave unvoiced assumptions which are ultimately unimportant. They demonstrate consistent tact. They are willing to assume authority for a conversation when such a role is left vacant, or when the other participants are too pathologically addled to lead it productively. They are distractible in proportion to the value in abandoning their current topic.

Ns engage with each of the four Dominant Affects to the extent to which they are appropriate, but they are generally willing to entertain any of them on the terms which their interlocutor imposes, as pathological individuals are under greater stress and are consequently more keenly insistent on particular modes of conversation. When Ns are interacting with other Ns, they alternate between the four dominant affects freely.

Bearing no pathological dispositions on the 2nd or 3rd level, an Ns primary concern is in mediating to the best of their ability the conflictual pathological tendencies of those with whom they are speaking. They will be as expressive or disagreeable as they can be without giving offense, they will give advice such that it is unlikely to provoke hostility, and value rigor and honesty in proportion to the effects these qualities have on the matter at hand.

Bearing no pathologies on the 2nd or 3rd level, Ns are able to reason realistically about timescales from weeks to months and from months to years. Beyond these timescales, however, Ns possess no greater capacity to grapple with time than those of  any other disposition.

Demographics

No extant society inculcates individuals N. The hippie movement, as a mass-movement dedicated to exposing the insufficiencies of 3c civilization, contains the necessary seeds of a 3N adolescence; but if these values have been systematized, it has not been at a sufficient scale to create an independent culture. Between these intellectual seeds, and the tendency of pathologically compatible relationships to provide fertile grounds for dispositionally balanced coparenting, I’d estimate N individuals to be the  fourth most common disposition in America, and to make up  no more than 10% of the population— a critical mass, but not a majority by any stretch of the imagination.

Common Life Circumstances

Generally, N individuals are the result of pathological compatibility between their parents. That is to say, when parents have opposite pathologies, and they address the problems of child-rearing as a team, their combined irrationalities add up to a simulacrum of one N parent. Barring the kind of extensive adversity which would necessitate the reasoning powers of two parents— extreme poverty, what have you— the result will be a child with an N disposition, so long as they allow their combined reasoning to overrule the pressures of the 3c society. They generally will do so, as intimate contact with an individual of the opposite disposition is the most potent means of discovering your own irrationality; generally, one of the parents will be in some measure 3c, and will therefore crack and understand the limitations of the public school system and capitalism at large

Miscellaneous Notes

N is my present disposition, and is the intended, non-pathological outcome for anyone who undergoes the Framework Process.

I hope that you’ve found this overview of the 9 dispositions somewhat helpful in locating yourself among them. Of course, you must keep it firmly in mind that these overviews are not intended as definitions of these dispositions, and must instead be interpreted merely as evocations of them. By no means should you disqualify yourself from having one of these dispositions because it doesn’t completely accord with your experience. In fact, it is necessarily the case that none of these descriptions will fully accord with your experience, so long as you yourself have not completed the solve section of the Framework Process and gained complete access to your repressed contents, and so long as I myself have not experienced all 9 dispositions and thereby gained an internally consistent perspective of them. However, in concretizing a discussion which has up to this point been rooted in extreme abstraction, I hope that this overview has fulfilled its purpose.

With the nine dispositions behind us, it’s time to move on to the next tool of practical solve, perhaps the most directly useful application of the Framework: The Alchemy of Compatibility, or “Why your relationship is failing”.