Well-meaning but flawed leader sets up a system or culture that has blatant holes that allow abuse to happen. This was unintentional but they were careless or blind or ignorant, and this resulted in harm. (In this case, the leader should be held accountable, but there’s decent hope for correction.)
Of course, some of the ‘flawed’ thing might be shadow stuff, in which case it might be slippery and difficult to see, and the leader may have various coping mechanisms that make accountability difficult. I think this is often the case with leaders, and as far as I can tell, most leaders have shadow stuff, and it negatively impacts their groups, to varying degrees. (I’m worried about Geoff in this case because I think intelligence + competence + shadow stuff is a lot more difficult. The more intelligent and powerful you are, the longer you can keep outmaneuvering attempts to get you to see your own shadow; I’ve seen this kind of thing, it’s bad.)
The leader is not well-meaning and is deliberately exploitative in an intentional way. They created a system that was designed to exploit people systematically, and they lack care in their body or soul for the beings they hurt. They internally applaud when they come up with clever systems that avoid accountability or responsibility while gaining personal benefit. They hope they can keep this up forever. They have a deep-seated fear of failure, and they will do whatever it takes to avoid failure. (This feels more like Jeffrey Epstein.)
You could try to argue that this is also ‘shadow stuff’, but I think the intention matters. If the leader’s goal and desire was to create healthy and wholesome community and failed, this is different from the goal and plan being to exploit people.
But anyway, point is: I am wanting discernment on this level of detail. For the sake of knowing best interventions and moves.
I am not interested in putting blame on particular individuals. I am not interested in the epistemic question of who’s more or less responsible. I am interested in group dynamics without the question of who’s more or less responsible.
I’m not sure about this, and I don’t think you were trying to say this, but, I doubt that the two categories you gave usefully cover the space, even at this level of abstraction. Someone could be “well-meaning” in the sense of all their explicit, and even all their conscious, motives being compassionate, life-oriented, etc., while still systematically agentically cybernetically motivatedly causing and amplifying harm. I think you were getting at this in the sub-bullet-point, but the sort of person I’m describing would both meet the description “well-meaning; unintentional harm” and also this from your second bullet-point:
They created a system that was designed to exploit people systematically, and they lack care in their body or soul for the beings they hurt. They internally applaud when they come up with clever systems that avoid accountability or responsibility while gaining personal benefit. They hope they can keep this up forever. They have a deep-seated fear of failure, and they will do whatever it takes to avoid failure.
Maybe I’m just saying, I don’t know what you (or I, or anyone) mean by “well-meaning”: I don’t know what it is to be well-meaning, and I don’t know how we would know, and I don’t know what predictions to make if someone is well-meaning or not. (I’m not saying it’s not a thing, it’s very clearly a thing; it’s just that I want to develop our concepts more, because at least my concepts are pushed past the breaking point in abusive situations.) For example, someone might both (1) have never once consciously explicitly worked out any strategy or design to make it easier to harm people, and (2) across contexts, take actions that reliably develop/assemble a social field where people are being systematically harmed, and not update on information about how to not do that.
Maybe it would help to distinguish “categories of essence” from “categories of treatment”. Like, if someone is so drowning in their shadow that they reliably, proactively, systematically harm people, then a category of essence question is like, “in principle is there information that could update them to stop doing this”, and a category of treatement is like, “regardless of what they really are, we are going to treat them exactly like we’d treat a conscious, malevolent, deliberate exploiter”.
I appreciate the added discernment here. This is definitely the kind of conversation I’d like to be having. !
someone might both (1) have never once consciously explicitly worked out any strategy or design to make it easier to harm people, and (2) across contexts, take actions that reliably develop/assemble a social field where people are being systematically harmed, and not update on information about how to not do that.
Agree. I was including that in ‘shadow stuff’.
The main difference between well-meaning and not, I think for me, is that the well-meaning person is willing to start engaging in conversations or experimenting with new systems in order to help the problems be less. Even though it’s in their shadow and they cannot see it and it might take a lot to convince them, after some time period (which could be years!), they are game enough to start making changes, trying to see it, etc.
I believe Anna S is an example of such a well-meaning person, but also I think it took her a pretty long time to come to grips with the patterns? I think she’s still in the process of discerning it? But this seems normal. Normal human level thing. Not sociopathic Epstein thing.
More controversially perhaps, I think Brent Dill has the potential to see and eat his shadow (cuz I think he actually cares about people and I’ve seen his compassion), but as you put it, he is “so drowning in his shadow that he reliably, systematically harms people.” And I actually think it’s the compassionate thing to do to prevent him from harming more people.
So where does Geoff fall here? I am still in that inquiry.
I wanted to immediately agree. Now I’m pausing...
It seems good to try to distinguish between:
Well-meaning but flawed leader sets up a system or culture that has blatant holes that allow abuse to happen. This was unintentional but they were careless or blind or ignorant, and this resulted in harm. (In this case, the leader should be held accountable, but there’s decent hope for correction.)
Of course, some of the ‘flawed’ thing might be shadow stuff, in which case it might be slippery and difficult to see, and the leader may have various coping mechanisms that make accountability difficult. I think this is often the case with leaders, and as far as I can tell, most leaders have shadow stuff, and it negatively impacts their groups, to varying degrees. (I’m worried about Geoff in this case because I think intelligence + competence + shadow stuff is a lot more difficult. The more intelligent and powerful you are, the longer you can keep outmaneuvering attempts to get you to see your own shadow; I’ve seen this kind of thing, it’s bad.)
The leader is not well-meaning and is deliberately exploitative in an intentional way. They created a system that was designed to exploit people systematically, and they lack care in their body or soul for the beings they hurt. They internally applaud when they come up with clever systems that avoid accountability or responsibility while gaining personal benefit. They hope they can keep this up forever. They have a deep-seated fear of failure, and they will do whatever it takes to avoid failure. (This feels more like Jeffrey Epstein.)
You could try to argue that this is also ‘shadow stuff’, but I think the intention matters. If the leader’s goal and desire was to create healthy and wholesome community and failed, this is different from the goal and plan being to exploit people.
But anyway, point is: I am wanting discernment on this level of detail. For the sake of knowing best interventions and moves.
I am not interested in putting blame on particular individuals. I am not interested in the epistemic question of who’s more or less responsible. I am interested in group dynamics without the question of who’s more or less responsible.
I’m not sure about this, and I don’t think you were trying to say this, but, I doubt that the two categories you gave usefully cover the space, even at this level of abstraction. Someone could be “well-meaning” in the sense of all their explicit, and even all their conscious, motives being compassionate, life-oriented, etc., while still systematically agentically cybernetically motivatedly causing and amplifying harm. I think you were getting at this in the sub-bullet-point, but the sort of person I’m describing would both meet the description “well-meaning; unintentional harm” and also this from your second bullet-point:
Maybe I’m just saying, I don’t know what you (or I, or anyone) mean by “well-meaning”: I don’t know what it is to be well-meaning, and I don’t know how we would know, and I don’t know what predictions to make if someone is well-meaning or not. (I’m not saying it’s not a thing, it’s very clearly a thing; it’s just that I want to develop our concepts more, because at least my concepts are pushed past the breaking point in abusive situations.) For example, someone might both (1) have never once consciously explicitly worked out any strategy or design to make it easier to harm people, and (2) across contexts, take actions that reliably develop/assemble a social field where people are being systematically harmed, and not update on information about how to not do that.
Maybe it would help to distinguish “categories of essence” from “categories of treatment”. Like, if someone is so drowning in their shadow that they reliably, proactively, systematically harm people, then a category of essence question is like, “in principle is there information that could update them to stop doing this”, and a category of treatement is like, “regardless of what they really are, we are going to treat them exactly like we’d treat a conscious, malevolent, deliberate exploiter”.
I appreciate the added discernment here. This is definitely the kind of conversation I’d like to be having. !
Agree. I was including that in ‘shadow stuff’.
The main difference between well-meaning and not, I think for me, is that the well-meaning person is willing to start engaging in conversations or experimenting with new systems in order to help the problems be less. Even though it’s in their shadow and they cannot see it and it might take a lot to convince them, after some time period (which could be years!), they are game enough to start making changes, trying to see it, etc.
I believe Anna S is an example of such a well-meaning person, but also I think it took her a pretty long time to come to grips with the patterns? I think she’s still in the process of discerning it? But this seems normal. Normal human level thing. Not sociopathic Epstein thing.
More controversially perhaps, I think Brent Dill has the potential to see and eat his shadow (cuz I think he actually cares about people and I’ve seen his compassion), but as you put it, he is “so drowning in his shadow that he reliably, systematically harms people.” And I actually think it’s the compassionate thing to do to prevent him from harming more people.
So where does Geoff fall here? I am still in that inquiry.