Nurture Culture relies on participants having the social skill to model each other’s minds to a further extent and execute more complicated social routines.[2]
This is an excellent point and one worth emphasizing. Nurture culture only really works with people capable of modeling each other in sufficient detail that they can really see the world from each others perspective. To use some jargon popular around here, they have to be able to pass each other’s intellectual Turing test.
To go a step further, I think this is tied in with psychological development. If we were to think of this in terms of Kegan, I’d predict nurture only really works in cases where either everyone is at least at the third stage AND sufficient mentally similar that they can model each other as being essentially like themselves only with a different flavor, or where everyone is at least in the fifth stage (removing the need for a qualification about level of similarity). To speculate, this probably makes nurture unappealing to many people because it places demands on them about their ability to model others that they can’t fulfill, assuming we ignore here the degenerate case of nurture that is just about being nice and polite rather than actually understanding each other.
Also, in the context of discussion and debate, Nurture Culture is a stance of:
“What you’re saying sounds alien and crazy and wrong, but I will operate as though you have something valuable to say and I will orient towards you with openness, curiosity, and patience. Even though I don’t understand what you’re saying or think it’s wrong, I still welcome you. We are not fighting.”
This stance is warranted precisely when similarity is low and ITT-passing is a distant possibility (although this it is this attitude which could move you towards it).
Edit: Plausibly what I’m describing here is what you call a “degenerate case of nurture that is just about nice and polite” but I think there’s a lot more to it than common notions of niceness and politeness. 1) In the ideal case, it’s motivated by real caring, not social convention. 2) It’s more demanding than mere pleases and thank yous.
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I think you have something different in mind by “Nurture Culture” than what I do (possibly quite real, but still something else). For what I’m thinking of, ITT is two to three orders of magnitude more modeling than required, and probably the wrong kind of modeling, i.e., of beliefs rather than of feelings.
Here’s a slightly longer example of what I was thinking of as Nurture Culture:
Bob: *Is at employee at Ad Corp. He enters the conference room to present the budget figures he’s calculated to his manager, Alice, and some other colleagues.*
Alice: *Notices several bad mistakes in the budget.*
Alice: “Thanks Bob! We appreciate you putting in the long hours to get this done before the deadline. Okay, hmm. I like how you’re breaking down ad spend across channels, that seems right . . . . can you walk me through columns F and G? Those aren’t clear to me.”
Alice isn’t doing anything profound here, she isn’t scrying Bob’s soul or getting at any deep, difficult understanding of a complicate worldview that he has. She’s just making a few assumptions about how someone new might feel and acting on them:
a) recognize that even if he made mistakes, Bob put in hard work, wants to do a good job, and probably wants her (his manager’s approval).
b) although the mistakes were most immediately salient to her, she models that Bob might be hurt (and poorly conditioned) if she zeroes in them first. Instead, she starts by thanking and validating Bob so that he knows the overall context is one where’s valued and is getting approval.
c) Once she’s gone through the process of getting Bob comfortable, she starts to gently bring his attention towards the mistakes and surface them for discussion in a way that doesn’t shame him.
This takes some skill and practice and effort which is why it gets taught in management books and feedback training courses HR runs at workplaces, but it’s not beyond most people. I don’t know the Keegan levels, but I don’t think it should take a high one? When I say “more complicated social routine”, I just mean it’s more complicated than “say exactly what you’re thinking and feeling with little filter.”
[I’ll also note that whatever the culture, if Bob is a new employee, then he might be right to be justifiably doubtful about he and his work are judged from the outset such that he benefits from being Nurtured rather than having his mistakes placed front and center in his first week on job. Though once this scene has played out fifty times and Alice and Bob deeply trust and respect each other—whatever the baseline culture was—I imagine that Alice will be a lot more direct because she doesn’t need to freshly establish the trust and respect.
It seems that one the one hand you are making the case that there are basically two kinds of cultures and on the other hand you think it’s meaningful to tell examples as being representative.
The example in particular needs no modeling of beliefs because it’s a simple situation that assumes that giving Bob the ability to see his mistake is trivial and the subject is one in which nobody of the involved people has a deep personal investment.
Edit: Plausibly what I’m describing here is what you call a “degenerate case of nurture that is just about nice and polite” but I think there’s a lot more to it than common notions of niceness and politeness. 1) In the ideal case, it’s motivated by real caring, not social convention. 2) It’s more demanding than mere pleases and thank yous.
I’d agree with that: I think what you are pointing at with nurture culture has to be much deeper and richer than you are saying before it’s useful for more than just people getting along nicely while doing other things. Nurture culture is capable of the same kind of cutting, deep engagement that you are seeing with combat culture, but to do that it requires much more than shallow modeling of other people.
I completely agree that Nurture Culture has capabilities far beyond getting along without conflict.
When I think of examples of Nurture Culture at its most powerful, much of what comes to mind is the mode of relating used in Focusing, Internal Double-Crux, and Internal Family Systems. There’s a mode of relating that facilitate hazy, not-necessarily articulate, reticent, even fearful parts of oneself to voice themselves by being open, encouraging, validating, and non-judgmental (i.e., traits which are not particularly the hallmarks of Combat Culture).
I’ve found that increased skill with “advanced” Nurture Culture helped me relate to parts of myself far better alongside relating to others better.
At the risk of being a little repetitive , I’ll think the modeling required for this mode of relating is not that of beliefs but of feelings. You model (and are attentive and responsive to) the feelings of the other (internal or external) in the context: continuously gauging their comfort, willingness, and needs within the conversation. Pushing and giving space as required.
This is an excellent point and one worth emphasizing. Nurture culture only really works with people capable of modeling each other in sufficient detail that they can really see the world from each others perspective. To use some jargon popular around here, they have to be able to pass each other’s intellectual Turing test.
To go a step further, I think this is tied in with psychological development. If we were to think of this in terms of Kegan, I’d predict nurture only really works in cases where either everyone is at least at the third stage AND sufficient mentally similar that they can model each other as being essentially like themselves only with a different flavor, or where everyone is at least in the fifth stage (removing the need for a qualification about level of similarity). To speculate, this probably makes nurture unappealing to many people because it places demands on them about their ability to model others that they can’t fulfill, assuming we ignore here the degenerate case of nurture that is just about being nice and polite rather than actually understanding each other.
Also, in the context of discussion and debate, Nurture Culture is a stance of:
“What you’re saying sounds alien and crazy and wrong, but I will operate as though you have something valuable to say and I will orient towards you with openness, curiosity, and patience. Even though I don’t understand what you’re saying or think it’s wrong, I still welcome you. We are not fighting.”
This stance is warranted precisely when similarity is low and ITT-passing is a distant possibility (although this it is this attitude which could move you towards it).
Edit: Plausibly what I’m describing here is what you call a “degenerate case of nurture that is just about nice and polite” but I think there’s a lot more to it than common notions of niceness and politeness. 1) In the ideal case, it’s motivated by real caring, not social convention. 2) It’s more demanding than mere pleases and thank yous.
===
I think you have something different in mind by “Nurture Culture” than what I do (possibly quite real, but still something else). For what I’m thinking of, ITT is two to three orders of magnitude more modeling than required, and probably the wrong kind of modeling, i.e., of beliefs rather than of feelings.
Here’s a slightly longer example of what I was thinking of as Nurture Culture:
Alice isn’t doing anything profound here, she isn’t scrying Bob’s soul or getting at any deep, difficult understanding of a complicate worldview that he has. She’s just making a few assumptions about how someone new might feel and acting on them:
a) recognize that even if he made mistakes, Bob put in hard work, wants to do a good job, and probably wants her (his manager’s approval).
b) although the mistakes were most immediately salient to her, she models that Bob might be hurt (and poorly conditioned) if she zeroes in them first. Instead, she starts by thanking and validating Bob so that he knows the overall context is one where’s valued and is getting approval.
c) Once she’s gone through the process of getting Bob comfortable, she starts to gently bring his attention towards the mistakes and surface them for discussion in a way that doesn’t shame him.
This takes some skill and practice and effort which is why it gets taught in management books and feedback training courses HR runs at workplaces, but it’s not beyond most people. I don’t know the Keegan levels, but I don’t think it should take a high one? When I say “more complicated social routine”, I just mean it’s more complicated than “say exactly what you’re thinking and feeling with little filter.”
[I’ll also note that whatever the culture, if Bob is a new employee, then he might be right to be justifiably doubtful about he and his work are judged from the outset such that he benefits from being Nurtured rather than having his mistakes placed front and center in his first week on job. Though once this scene has played out fifty times and Alice and Bob deeply trust and respect each other—whatever the baseline culture was—I imagine that Alice will be a lot more direct because she doesn’t need to freshly establish the trust and respect.
It seems that one the one hand you are making the case that there are basically two kinds of cultures and on the other hand you think it’s meaningful to tell examples as being representative.
The example in particular needs no modeling of beliefs because it’s a simple situation that assumes that giving Bob the ability to see his mistake is trivial and the subject is one in which nobody of the involved people has a deep personal investment.
I’d agree with that: I think what you are pointing at with nurture culture has to be much deeper and richer than you are saying before it’s useful for more than just people getting along nicely while doing other things. Nurture culture is capable of the same kind of cutting, deep engagement that you are seeing with combat culture, but to do that it requires much more than shallow modeling of other people.
I completely agree that Nurture Culture has capabilities far beyond getting along without conflict.
When I think of examples of Nurture Culture at its most powerful, much of what comes to mind is the mode of relating used in Focusing, Internal Double-Crux, and Internal Family Systems. There’s a mode of relating that facilitate hazy, not-necessarily articulate, reticent, even fearful parts of oneself to voice themselves by being open, encouraging, validating, and non-judgmental (i.e., traits which are not particularly the hallmarks of Combat Culture).
I’ve found that increased skill with “advanced” Nurture Culture helped me relate to parts of myself far better alongside relating to others better.
At the risk of being a little repetitive , I’ll think the modeling required for this mode of relating is not that of beliefs but of feelings. You model (and are attentive and responsive to) the feelings of the other (internal or external) in the context: continuously gauging their comfort, willingness, and needs within the conversation. Pushing and giving space as required.