Neuroplastic Sublimation

A powerful coping mechanism in people that allows transformation of pain points into substantial growth. This appears similar to Ken Wilber's concept of "Transcend and Include". See more at Positive Psychology and Growth Mindset.

Sublimation is related to Antifragility, and in fact Antifragility appears to be the more appropriate term for growth in the OSE context. The only distinction is that sublimation typically refers to psychology, whereas antifragility is a more general term that refers to systems.

Sublimation is a stronger coping mechanism than resilience, which is just recovery from failure - as opposed to growth from failure. And antifragility is different than robustness (resistance to failure).

Note that antifragile is more than adaptive, as adaptive implies learned robustness. However, adaptive systems may not necessarily be antifragile (improved). [1]

These are all great concepts for OSE, since we design for robustness, resilience, and antifragility or sublimation.

Not only does sublimation allow one to transcend pain points - but based on the extreme flexibility of one's neurons - their capacity to rewire - this implies that painful tasks may be turned into tasks of joy.

How do we reconcile 'devloping one's weaknesses' with sublimation? There is no such thing as a-priori weaknesses in one's self. There are only conditions of limited practice - if we follow current scientific notions that character and personality both change over time. We recycle our body, also, on a periodic basis - we get a new skin every 3 weeks [2] Blood is replaced every 4 months [3], bones are replaced every 10 years [4], and even the brain goes through neurogenesis [5] - to an extent currently unknown by science.

In summary - people can transform and rebuild themselves completely if they want. 'Building one's weaknesses' is a completely rational thing to do, unlike what certain enterpise leaders such as Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach says. In a growth mindset, in a post-scarcity mindset - there are no limitations. There is only purpose - and if one has it - then there will be a way. Thus, Strategic Coach appears to embody a certain level of scarcity mindset. I am bringing up Strategic Coach as Dan is a seminal thinker, but I think he's not accurate on the point of developing 'strong weaknesses'.

Freudian Legacy

• Freud had elements of negative psychology in his thinking. Just examine how current psychology - it is about 'defense' rather than 'subliming' - first is more negative and second is more positive [6].'Coping' or 'growth' appear more benign, as interpreted by their life-giving qualities.
• This brings up an interesting question - why do some people tend to explore negatives - and why do some point to the positives? They are both there. The question should be - which leads to more actual growth - a negative or a positive viewpoint? Can it be authentically that a negative view point inspires more growth? What does science and social science say about this?

Howto and Case Study of the Global Village

Sublimation may be achieved in one way specifically - by taking one's struggle - something one is wrestling with and troubled about due to the absence of a readily-visible solution - and converting it to a solution that transcends oneself. Specifically, 'transcending oneself' means that a deep solution is sought - one that not only solves the immediate problem for the person struggling with an issue - which can be any personal, political or enterprise problem - and creating a more universally adaptable solution that many other people can benefit from. That is - 'if I am to solve the problem for myself, why not solve the problem for everyone else who is having the same problem' - as problems are rarely unique and repeat themselves in many situations. The critical process that makes sublimation so life-giving is the idea of 'getting beyond oneself' - to help others. Helping others is rewarding and life-giving - for which reason sublimation is an important concept for the benefit of humankind.

A clear example of this, in the case of Economic Sublimation - is the very nature of the Global Village Construction Set itself. Marcin was troubled that his tractor broke - he paid $2k to get it repaired - and it broke again 2 weeks later. Instead of getting depressed about this - he decided to fix this issue not only for himself - but for the rest of the world: for anyone who is struggling with equipment that is very expensive to maintain in working order. The solution was an open source tractor - that is simple enough for a novice with minimal fabrication skills to build - that would meet or exceed industry standards of performance - and which was documented sufficiently well that widespread replication could occur. In fact - Marcin came up with not only a solution, but an Antifragile solution: machines that are so modular, transparent, and flexible - that one can not only maintain them easily for as long as one likes - but also - to actually improve them by replacing parts and modules to add functionality or improve performance. As such, the Construction Set Approach was born, and the concept of Lifetime Design emerged as a ubiquitous and valuable attribute of open development - a quality that simply is not to be found in standard products. This laid the foundations for Distributive Enterprise replacing proprietary development, and paved the way for the possibility of Disributed Market Substitution.