Preliminary Notes Toward
A Method for Increasing Human Effectiveness

By Bill Harvey
Executive Director
The Human Effectiveness Institute

January 24, 2002

Abstract: This paper outlines a method for increasing the effectiveness of individual human beings. “Effectiveness” is defined as the successful achievement of specified goals within specified parameters such as (1) Time Frames (2) Error Rates. Although the accountability of the method depends upon such external quantitative factors, the primary objective of the method is the increase in the moment-to-moment happiness of the individual utilizing the method.

 

Background

Today the human race in aggregate faces the greatest internally generated dangers it has ever faced. Because of the march of technology, relatively small numbers of human beings can and increasingly do threaten millions of other human beings with weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, on an individual level, the great mass of humanity spends considerable time in conditions other than happiness—a situation that has probably not changed substantially throughout recorded history.

Why is this so? Life itself is a wonderful gift. Human civilization on the planet has made continuous upward progress in terms of conquering disease, increasing the average person’s options and ease of living, and adding to the richness of existence. Why then do so many people spend so much time being unhappy, and why are some people driven to threatening and hurting others?

 

First Set of Hypotheses

Based upon certain observations and inferences, we speculate that:

1. The average person’s capacity for enjoyment has been reduced, and his/her capacity to inflict pain has been increased, by a specific mental habit.

2. That this mental habit was caused by the invention of written language about 6,000 years ago.

3. Written language has so massively changed the way humans process information that it will potentially take a longer period of time for this invention to be assimilated to the degree that it does not cause the specified mental habit.

4. The recommended method can ameliorate the harmful effects of the habit, and reduce the habit itself, within current human lifetimes.

 

Definitions

“Consciousness”: The experience of being a “self”. Each human being on a moment-to-moment basis apprehends reality externally through five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste; and apprehends reality internally through four senses: thinking, feeling, intuition, and internal perceptions corresponding to the five external senses (e.g. a mental image, the memory of a smell etc.). All of these types of experiences are events occurring within the field of consciousness. In a human being with a normally functioning memory, the linear string of these experiences occur within the appearance of a continuously maintained point of view or “self”; and even in cases of Parkinson’s disease or other forms of memory impairment the sense of being a “self” appears to be maintained. Consciousness, the sense of being a self, is therefore the most fundamental aspect of human existence.

“Self”: Me, I, the Watcher, the Experiencer (“consciousness” is therefore “the experience of being the experiencer”. The circularity of the definition illustrates how fundamental “consciousness” and “selfhood” are to the natural state of humanity).

“Mind”: The four inner senses (thinking, feeling, intuition, and inner perceptions).

“Condition 1”: The individual is centered within the natural “watcher” aspect of consciousness, observing all five external and four internal streams equally. “Being” in and of itself is enjoyable (as in the feeling of a person who has just escaped death). Actions taken tend to be effective in successfully achieving goals of those actions, tendency to hurt others is minimized. Tendency for events to trigger negative emotions is minimized. Where negative emotions occur, they tend to be truncated by other actions of the mind. Where words in the mind are used, they tend to trail off.

“Condition 2”: The sense of self is shrunken to center in a “defender” syndrome, observing mostly the two internal streams of thinking and feeling. “Being” is not sensed as intrinsically enjoyable (as in the feeling of a person who has to defend himself/herself continuously). Actions taken tend to be less effective than in Condition 1. Tendency to hurt others is greater than in Condition 1. Tendency for events to trigger negative emotions is greater than in Condition 1. Where negative emotions occur, they tend to be dwelt upon. Words in the mind are used almost continuously.

 

Second Set of Hypotheses

5. Information processing within consciousness can be better understood by regarding that subject through the “lens” of information processing in computers.

6. All language functions as a form of “middleware” within consciousness, potentiating certain kinds of “applications”.

7. Oral-only language is a relatively weak form of middleware whereas written-plus-oral language is a relatively powerful form of middleware. Once language evolves from oral-only to written-plus-oral it involves more of the brain i.e. the visual cortex (a large area at the back of the brain) as well as the auditory cortex (a relatively smaller area on the left side of the brain). There is some evidence that among primates (the phylum within which homo sapiens are found) the visual sense is the dominant sense among the five external senses. For example, when the eyes are closed the human brain tends to move from production of beta waves to production of alpha waves. The latter tendency has not been observed when the eyes remain open and the ears are plugged.

8. The middleware of written-plus-oral language tends to cause a substantial increase in the use of words in the thinking process – to a far greater extent than oral-only language.

9. The human race is in a temporary phase or difficulty integrating the new middleware. Records indicate that written-plus-oral language has been around for only about 300 generations (6000 years) out of the 200,000 generations (4 million years) the human race has been around – the new middleware has therefore been around only one sixth of one percent of our time on earth.

10. We are in a temporary phase of being hypnotized by the new middleware into Condition 2, out of our natural state which is Condition 1.

11. Condition 2 is analogous to a condition of information overload in a computer. It is sensed as a threatening situation, eliciting a defense reaction.

12. We are not designed to maintain a continuous defense reaction and doing so is physically, mentally, and emotionally unhealthy.

13. The onset of oral-only language probably caused a similar temporal anomaly wherein some number of generations of humans experienced dropoffs in functional effectiveness while that new middleware was being integrated.

 

Method

1. The essence of the method consists of being attentive to one’s state and thereby continually returning out of Condition 2 into Condition 1.
2. In this process the individual is offered a set of tools which are in the process of being empirically validated (currently at advanced anecdotal stage among several thousand readers of one specific book) to have a degree of efficiency in aiding such retunement. (In the context of the method, each individual determines which tools “work” for that individual, and uses the tools that work until a given tool ceases to work for that individual.)
3. A subset of these tools fall into a category we call “trigger words” meaning words that some individuals have found to be helpful in aiding retunement to Condition 1.

 

Discussion

Within this framework one can fit many systems of thought and ways of being arising in the past 6000 years, suggesting that the theory of two inner conditions, and the general method for retunement into the first condition, is ancient and that the current articulation of that theory is essentially a restatement of it. We are producing such a restatement in the hope that it aids in the process of application of the method.

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