Seeing in 3D

How Idea Labs affect individuals

Cultures use incentive systems too. Instead of physical shocks or jail time as penalties, cultures enforce their values with social and psychological punishments like criticism, ridicule, shame, and ostracism. Instead of Snausages or money, they use rewards like praise, acceptance, approval, respect, and admiration.

As always, the power struggle exists on a spectrum, not as a binary switch—and cultures, like people, can often be somewhere in the middle. But in groups, where this kind of “coalition” can form, one mind gaining control over the culture is like an extreme home-field advantage in sports. Control over the electrical charge of the air and power over... See more

In a negatively charged culture, the Primitive Mind is on its home turf. Conversations are pettier, values are more superficial, conformity beats individuality, and things tend to feel a lot like middle school. A culture like this speaks directly to the Primitive Minds in the heads of its members, continually stoking their fires and forcing their... See more

Culture is the collection of unwritten rules, norms, and values around “how we do things here.” Every human environment—from the two-person couples to the 20-person classrooms to the 20,000-person companies—is embedded with its own culture. We can visualize a group’s culture as a kind of gas cloud that fills the room when the group is together.

When we’re focusing on what goes on in our heads, we’re thinking about the very bottom of Emergence Tower—the ground-floor slice—which is the realm of individual psychology.

A human society is a rich tapestry of overlapping and sometimes sharply contradictory cultures, and each of us lives at our own unique cultural intersection.

When the Higher Mind is in control of a single human’s intellect, the human becomes a high-rung thinker. When a group of Higher Minds band together to take over a group of people’s intellectual culture, they form what we can call an Idea Lab. An Idea Lab is an intellectual culture where high-rung thinking thrives and where it can be done well... See more