》TOC 》
Where there’s a There
It is not uncommon that I sometimes start with a topic that I think can be decomposed, juxtaposed, interposed, and re-composed to provide a more mosaic picture; but then I get into identifying the dots and unpacking perceptions and realize that the trajectory of my exploration is veering towards a realm too ephemeral, where the dots themselves lack the vibrancy to cast anything more than pallid, spectral impressions.
There’s no There there.
Such was the case with considering consideration and inconsideration, and whether there is such a thing as inconsideration density. Then I realized that that’s the point: for some topics, you have to be comfortable with ambiguity and ghostly shadows. Not everything has hard substance; not everything resolves itself to 100% knowable because, by its nature, it is only an impression of an abstraction.
Being considerate essentially means being aware of and responding thoughtfully to the needs and feelings of others. It is the opposite of unconscious behavior that runs on autopilot and is often unaware of the impact it has in the pond of social interaction. Being considerate results from the transition from self-centeredness to other-centeredness, a flowering of empathy that sows understanding and harmony.
It’s about looking around and reassessing the immediacy of your own personal concerns to recognize and react to the stories and concerns of others. For example, you might notice that a colleague is struggling with his workload and offer help despite your busy schedule. You might also consider that your neighbor has to work tomorrow and that loud music negatively impacts sleep and work performance, and adjust the volume.
So there is an abstraction with enough substance to name. It has features and benefits. But what is considerate or inconsiderate is too relative to paint with thick strokes of bright black or brilliant white. And notice how subtly the shift was made from considerate as an abstraction to considerate as a characteristic of an individual.
I’ve experienced the realishness of this abstraction living between Mexico and the U.S. for the past 20 years. Frequently, the intersection of cultures has prompted me to ponder the notions of cultural relativism — how the values, beliefs, norms, and practices of a culture should be understood within their own cultural context, rather than judged against the criteria of another — and ethnocentrism — the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to apply one’s own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of individuals from other cultures.
Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are just more abstractions. The substance of the abstractions hits, tho, when you cross cultural divides and are forced to face the relativity of consideration, recognizing that it is often tinted by the hues of our cultural background and personal expectations. There’s more there to unpack.
I tried peeling back the layers to explore innate selfishness and the journey through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, individual education and empathy, societal norms and tolerances, situational or contextual consideration, and herd mentality (social proof and normative social influence), which spreads and thickens in/consideration.
Yet, instead of seeing a trajectory toward a handy conclusion that would provide an amazing insight, I found a multifaceted nature of consideration and a spectrum of empathy, which reinforced the idea that our interpretations and responses are deeply embedded in the fabric of our personal and collective experiences.
I decided to not pursue that trajectory, but I did end up sifting out these three points:
- It’s nearly all relative, but it starts with innate selfishness.
- There is a spectrum of empathy.
- There can be in/consideration density, sort of.
Selfishness, our starting point
From the moment we are conceived, we concern ourselves with getting food, being comfortable, and indulging ourselves. The base, of course, is survival instinct and self-interest, a hardwired response geared towards self-preservation and satisfaction.
Abraham Maslow theorized that there is a progression of needs, or fundamental requirements, relative to the self that drive human behavior. According to his theory, humans are driven to satisfy a series of needs that begin with the most basic and physiological requirements for survival and progress to more intricate and expansive desires.
- Physiological Needs: Basic necessities like food, water, and shelter.
- Safety Needs: Security, stability, and freedom from fear or chaos.
- Belongingness and Love Needs: Relationships, friendships, and family connections.
- Esteem Needs: Respect, recognition, and feelings of accomplishment.
- Cognitive Needs: Knowledge, understanding, and the curiosity to explore.
- Aesthetic Needs: Appreciation for beauty, balance, and form.
- Self-Actualization: Realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, and seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
- Transcendence Needs: Helping others to achieve self-actualization and experiencing a sense of connection beyond the ego or personal self.
The assumption is that fulfilling the lower-level needs sets the necessary base and potential for the next level up. Naturally, some empirical examinations have challenged the notion that satisfying lower-layer needs necessarily precedes the availability of higher-level needs, following an inviolable order.
Emergence of consideration
Regardless, consideration in Maslow’s hierarchy can emerge at multiple points relative to an individual’s changing understanding of and engagement with both self and society.
- Belongingness and Love Needs
At this level, individuals seek meaningful interpersonal relationships that foster a sense of belonging and love. The seeds of consideration are sown as individuals begin to value the feelings and needs of others within their social circles. It’s a stage where reciprocal respect and understanding start to flourish, paving the way for considerate behavior. - Esteem Needs
We all seem to crave recognition, respect, and appreciation from others. In this stage, individuals learn considerate behavior is transactional, where mutual respect and consideration are part of the machinery that feeds esteem for both self and others in a virtuous cycle of social circles and clicks. - Self-Actualization
Once we let go of our apparent dependence on others for our measure and worth, we can start focusing on what makes us unique and strive for personal development to realize our full potential and achieve our own objectives. To reach the boundaries of what defines us. Here, consideration may expand beyond immediate social circles to include broader societal or even global concerns. We recognize a broader interconnectivity and how our actions impact others. Of course, it could mean that our social circles and clicks have merely expanded to tribes and larger affinity groups, such as political parties. - Transcendence
At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, we arrive at Transcendence. Here, individuals realize that their personal concerns are banal and that there is a state of being above the mundane that involves the betterment of others and forging connections beyond the self. This is the zenith of personal development, where consideration reflects a profound understanding and concern for the collective wellbeing, aka, altruism,
And yet, there is no guarantee of progress or fulfillment at each level. We might do just enough to be at a level and get our toes wet in the higher echelons of the hierarchy without any real understanding of any of them. Or what we do learn at each level may not seamlessly transfer across all areas of life, like crossover skills that we fail to recognize in different circumstances.
By that last point, we can consider consideration to be situational. Not static but dynamic, influenced by our comfort and familiarity with our surroundings and situations. It’s easy to be considerate in environments where we’ve learned consideration. But in new or challenging ones, especially where survival needs surface, can instinctively draw our focus self-ward.
It’s a teeter-totter of personal growth and situational responses, with our capacity for consideration adapting to the immediate circumstances we face — never fully divorced from the broader journey of our personal development (or lack thereof).
Sifting self-interest
As with anything, self-interest is more nuanced than normally characterized. Even actions that appear selfless on the surface can, when you look deeper, be linked to the self in intricate ways. The dichotomy between selfishness and selflessness blurs when factoring in the many facets and variable development of humans.
There are 2 basic philosophies about whether any action can be genuinely altruistic or whether all actions are ultimately self-serving.
Psychological egoism posits that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even when they seem altruistic. Even the most noble deeds are driven by personal gratification, whether it be derived from the happiness in helping others, the avoidance of distress from seeing others suffer, or the social and psychological benefits that accompany altruistic behaviors.
At the lofty level of self-actualization, for instance, people are supposed to be motivated by values like truth, justice, wisdom, and meaning. Yet, they may find contributing to the welfare of others aligns with their pursuit of a purposeful life and the fulfillment of their personal potential. At the same time, altruism can lead to social recognition, which may reinforce lower-level needs such as a need for esteem and a sense of belonging and community in a transactional sort of way. So altruism could be just another, albeit more expansive, way to fulfill needs at different levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, not just at the apex.
Thinking in a less hierarchical way, at the other philosophical pole is ethical altruism, which argues that people can act from a genuinely selfless concern for the well-being of others. They set aside their own interests regardless of lesser needs, such as safety and belonging.
From these perspectives, it seems clear that self-interest is not the sole motivator of our actions or the arbiter of our thoughts. Whether acting as an individual at a personal level or in concert with societal constructs, various factors, including formal empathy (laws, cultural norms, religious beliefs) and substantive empathy (innate tendencies toward empathy and compassion), can provide individuals with a sense of purpose, community, and connection, which are essential at every level.
Spectrum of empathy, by law or nature
So, I just referred to empathy. That notion plays a nuanced role at a fundamental level of human interaction, affecting consideration with degrees of its presence (or absence) and the place in one’s development from which it emanates. These degrees and locus describe a spectrum of empathy that ranges from mere semblance to profound resonance.
And as with any fundamental I’ve pondered, this spectrum maps to similar spectrums in other areas of our lives. For instance, the consideration spectrum maps to what we see in jurisprudence with topics like equality, where at one end, the equal application of law equates to equality, while at the other end, changes in societal perspectives make equality something people can experience.
This comparison exposes a shared mechanism for how we humans establish spectrums. And while this point is just a footnote observation, it serves to connect a significant dot in the human experience.
Formal empathy is at one end of this spectrum. It is a socially learned response that reflects the expected rather than the felt — like a polite nod or a scripted apology. It’s empathy by the book, an emotional protocol that maintains societal decorum but may not touch the heart. It is an artificial and mechanical behavior that fulfills basic societal functions without the need for depth in personal development.
Among any group of people, there is no homogeneity of empathy, sense of right/wrong, or consideration. That’s where the law comes in: to establish a level playing field. It does this by encoding a form of empathy by prescribing actions or prohibitions of actions that mimic empathic behavior without demanding the emotional investment that underpins it. The mechanism of law, then, uses civic responsibility to set up guardrails for behavior that functions like empathy.
Disturbing the Peace is an example: it is something that is usually defined to happen after 10pm and consists of depriving people of “peace” (in particular, the ability to sleep, which is a medical necessity). The law sets a baseline to balance civility with freedom, fun with safeguarding health and harmony. With homogeneity of consideration regarding “peace,” we wouldn’t need this law.
‘Just enough empathy‘ occupies the middle ground of this spectrum, displaying a balance of societal expectations with individual emotional capacities and development. It’s a level of empathic response that meets the basic needs of societal interaction to ensure cohesion and identity, like the conscious choice to offer one’s seat on a crowded bus below the sign that recommends yielding seats for the elderly, pregnant, handicapped, etc.
While not deeply sacrificial, such actions signal an awareness of others’ needs and a willingness to act for the collective good. ‘Just enough empathy’ is the modest yet critical social glue that acknowledges some shared humanity.
At the other end is substantive empathy, which is organic and more profound. It’s the unprompted tear for another’s sorrow, the help offered without expectation of return, or the genuine laughter in shared joy. Substantive empathy isn’t about fulfilling rules, scripts, or standards; it transcends formalities and connects individuals authentically. It is the manifestation of a deeply rooted recognition of our interconnectedness, where one’s joys and sorrows are not solely one’s own but part of a larger human condition.
As we evaluate the facets and sources of empathy, we can see it is not simply an innate trait or a societal imposition but a spectrum that is as diverse as humanity itself. It is shaped by a complex alchemy of expectations, nature, nurture, and circumstance each individual dynamically embodies.
But what are the forces that draw us together or push us apart within the gravitational field of societal norms? How, then, do we perceive density?
The perception of density
The term “density” in a general sense refers to the degree of compactness or concentration of a substance or quality within a defined space or context. In the realm of social dynamics, the term can be metaphorically employed to gauge the prevalence or concentration of certain behaviors or attitudes within a community or society.
Using in/consideration as our context, let’s evaluate what contributes to our notion of density:
- Perceptual Lens
Our perceptual lens is subjective, crafted from a patchwork of personal experiences, cultural norms, emotional maturity, and the educational scaffolding we’ve each constructed (perception set, or expectations). Through this lens, we evaluate the social behaviors around us, often measuring them against our psychological frameworks and biases.
- Limen and Perception
In both the broader psychological and perceptual senses, a limen is the threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived or is not distinguishable from another. In the context of in/consideration, a limen refers to the point at which a behavior is just noticeable enough to be classified as considerate or inconsiderate. It’s similar to distinguishing between two similar but distinct phonemes, like the initial letters of “bat” and “pat”, where the only distinction is the use of the vocal cords for “b”.
- Measuring Density
While measuring such a nuanced and subjective quality might challenge traditional quantitative methods, qualitative assessments through surveys, anecdotes, and observational studies can provide insights into the prevailing “density” of consideration or inconsideration within a community.
Bringing this back around to Limens, in/consideration density, then, would be how often behaviors cross the perceptual threshold to be noticed and categorized. A high density of consideration would imply that considerate behaviors are frequent and noticeable, crossing the liminal threshold into conscious recognition often, thus shaping the social “language” or norms of a community. Conversely, a high density of inconsideration suggests that inconsiderate behaviors are common and prominent, influencing the community’s interactions and perhaps even its structure and cohesion.
- Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism play a pivotal role in interpreting the “density” of consideration or inconsideration. What I might perceive as a high density of inconsideration in one culture, due to different social norms, might not be seen the same in another culture.
- Thresholds and Tolerance
On the other side of the fence, communities operate within their unique bandwidths of tolerance, setting distinct thresholds that define the spectrum from consideration to inconsideration. The thresholds of tolerance within a community will significantly influence the perceived density of consideration or inconsideration. Communities with higher thresholds of tolerance may perceive a lower density of inconsideration even if the behaviors are similar to those in other communities.
- Evolution of Density
As a community evolves, so too does its behavioral density. Social proof and normative social influence — elements of herd mentality — can shift these thresholds, as behaviors are modeled and remodeled through the force of collective action, where lack of enforcement, accountability, or social disapproval allow for baser behaviors to be ok. What was once an outlier act of inconsideration may become part of the norm and thus alter the perception of “density.”
》Social Proof and Normative Social Influence 》
How do social traits become dense? One way is that inconsiderate behavior becomes normalized within a community, leading individuals to unconsciously adopt such behavior. Sort of related to concepts like the “tragedy of the commons” and the effect of “herd mentality.”
The basic notion, however, closely aligns with “social proof” or “normative social influence,” which are terms used in social psychology.
Social proof refers to the idea that individuals will conform to what they perceive to be the behavior of the majority. In the context of inconsideration, if people observe that others are being inconsiderate without facing consequences, they might conclude that such behavior is acceptable, even preferable, in that community.
Normative social influence involves conforming to the expectations of others to gain social approval or avoid social sanction. If inconsiderate behavior is not socially sanctioned within a group, individuals may engage in it more freely to blend in or avoid being the outlier.
The influence of these two factors may exacerbate the proliferation of inconsideration. In environments where inconsiderate actions are commonplace, individuals often, albeit unconsciously, align their behaviors with this observed norm, perpetuating and reinforcing a culture where thoughtlessness becomes the status quo. It’s akin to a contagion of inconsideration, where each act serves as a tacit endorsement, emboldening the cycle to continue and spread throughout the community.”
Envision a society as a grand, ever-evolving mosaic — a tableau in motion where each individual represents a vibrant, animated tile contributing to the overarching design. Within each of these tiles lies a miniature mosaic, reflecting the individual’s personal journey, values, and interactions. These personal mosaics are dynamic, shifting with life’s experiences and growth, colored by moments of deep empathy and occasional inconsideration.
Now picture these individual mosaics coming together to form a larger image that pulses with the collective rhythms of communal values. The pattern of this grand mosaic is never static; it’s shaped by the subtle undercurrents of cultural shifts, the soft murmur of societal norms, and the thundering tides of transformative events. Each tile, with its unique animation, plays a role in this greater dynamic, perpetually influenced by and influencing the community’s shared ethos.
This visualization captures the concept of a society where the constant interplay between the personal and the collective paints a living picture. It is a depiction not merely of static existence but of fluid reality, where each contribution is both a product of its context and a force for future change.
It’s also a heat map. A way to see concentrations of in/considerate behaviors and perspectives.
By way of example, the heatmap image to the right depicts transport trips to and from the City Campus construction site.
Imagine instead that this heat map shows that the consideration density is highest (yellow) in the center of the community, and it decreases as you move towards the edges. This suggests that people in the center of the community are more likely to engage in considerate behaviors, such as helping their neighbors, volunteering, and donating to charity.
The heat map also shows that there are a few “cold spots” in the community, where the consideration density is lower. These cold spots could be areas with a lack of community cohesion, more frequent occurrences of anti-social behaviors, or lower levels of public engagement and mutual assistance.
Conclusion
There are behaviors that we can say with some pseudo-objectivity are “considerate” and “inconsiderate” depending on some limen, or threshold, in the criteria for measuring awareness of, and a thoughtful response to, the needs and feelings of others and of the consequences or impact of our behaviors on others.
And that these behaviors have impacts ranging from inconvenience to annoyance to irritation to threatening to physically dangerous. Still, what we perceive on that spectrum and how remain rooted in the abstract realm of perception and subjectivity. Behaviors and their perception are not merely black and white, but a spectrum of grays, constantly shifting based on personal biases, cultural norms, and societal pressures.
The idea of “density” captures this dynamism, offering a lens through which we can discern the prevailing wind of behaviors in a community. But more than just a measure, it serves as a mirror, reflecting back to us and our own measures and judgments.
Ultimately, the process of understanding in/consideration density is less about arriving at a definitive conclusion and more about embracing the ambiguities and fluidities of human nature. It’s a call for introspection, a plea for empathy, and an invitation to continually refine our perceptions in pursuit of a more harmonious coexistence.
Because, in the end, while the dots in the grand mosaic of existence may sometimes seem elusive, it’s in the attempt to connect them that we truly find meaning.
Talking on the Think 
3 thoughts on “The Consideration Continuum”