Communication Basics: My Common Sense Foundation and My Path to It

The foundation for my communication basics is in common sense that is not very technical, but my journey has taken me through some of the technical materials and I just want to share some of that journey that might provoke discussion among the specialist and the experts.  The main thing is to follow the common sense argument.  But before it developed, I learned quite a bit from the following teachers (only 2 -3 I never met or talked directly to) at higher levels of learning.

In the 80s, there was first John S. Piper, Tom Steller, William A. Smalley, Lois Malcolm, Donald N. Larson, and James Hurd.  Later came B. Wayne Johnson, Claude Bowen, Dale Carnegie, Paul J. Meyer, and Peter F. Drucker.

In the 90s, it was Drucker (again), Daniel P. Fuller, Robert "Bobby" Clinton, Eugene A. Nida, Rick Warren, and Wooden.  Later came David Schierenbeck, Robert Stein, Gary A. Smith, Thomas A. Schreiner, David Clark, and James Brooks.

In the 2000s, it was David Sulack, Galen Call, Rick Thoman, Roger Lutz, Millard Erickson, and Nils Friberg.  Later it was Dwight Perry, Roger Buck, Tom Collins, Darrell Amacker , Steve Pedersen ,and Walter Kaiser.

Since 2010, it was Kaiser (again), Arnold Klukas, Allen P. Ross, Garwood Anderson, Stephen Peay, and Thomas L. Holtzen.  The later remains to be seen the future.  It will likely include Hopp, etc.

In 2010, I first began to use materials directly addressing the issue of emotions.  Before that time, I was mostly familiar with Dan Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence.  In 2010, I began using the emotion wheel developed by Plutchik and even tried to develop my own emotional charts based on my logic tool that I learned over a period from the early 80s and began to use very frequently from 2004 forward.

Here is how I viewed the emotions in 2010:

[intentionally left out until after my book is published later in 2014]

Here is how I would chart them today:

[intentionally left out until after my book is published later in 2014]


It is in late 2013, that I realized the common sense level support for my ideas.  It was November 18th, 2013 to be more exact.  The idea is that the greatest words are in one sense the least when it comes to foundational support and that the least words are the greatest whose very high frequency we take for granted makes them the real basis especially for the logic of language, but also for the emotions.

 For the emotions a great example is that of anger and our use of the words "let" and the words "not ... let".  For any one of the emotions there are basic words like these that show the great importance of addressing not only the logic of the brain, but also its emotion.

So the next time someone says that this is all so simple, or why didn't I see it sooner, they need to consider sometimes you travel through the complex and high level to reach the simple and low level.  I only hope that from this point forward more can find the simple and low level road first.  I took the high road, but taking the low road first is the best way to learn.  The other route nearly killed me a few times!  Take care.

Sincerely,

Jon

Communication: Basing the Basics on Common Sense

I am NOT opposed to people having a good technical sense.  The race to get to the moon using the heightened abilities of electronic invention was a great thing.  It helped give birth to the microprocessor that drives so many technologies today like the cell phone.  As a result, most of us have heard of an Intel microprocessor.  But I think there is an invention that could eclipse this improvement of electronic devices.  I think it lies not in the direction of an external electronic device, but in the direction of improving our ability to use the minds each of us are equipped with as standard equipment. 

The human mind is still a wonder.  It has incredible capacities.  But lately, I am noticing that technical sense does not mean common sense.  Many people have high technical abilities, but their minds have little common sense.  Here lies the tragedy, because the mind is capable of both. 

I think common sense is greater than the lesser ability of technical sense, but it is when the two are combined together that the greatest ideal is achieved.  We seem to have come out of the 20th century with lots of the latter and few of the former.  We need now common sense to match our technical achievements. 

This is what I believe the majority of people yearn for, when it comes to even technology.  I like to call my under-developed smart phone a "dumb phone".  More times than not it fails to demonstrate smarts.  Rather it shows a great lack of common sense features.  It can make a pocket call right after I shut it down.  It can start up by simply bumping another object in my pocket.  It has immense capabilities, but few of which follow even the most basic common sense. 

My goal on this blog in this year will be to lay out what I consider to be a common sense approach to communication based on the very common words that we use to communicate every single day.  I hate to state the overly obvious, but the common is found among the very common, and not among the unique or exceptional. 

I saw this in a commercial: "Great minds think alike" followed by "Great minds think differently".  These slogans in the commercial were meant to be mutually exclusive of one another.  But I think they are not.  The ideal is common sense, where great minds think alike, and technical sense, where great minds think differently. 

I recently realized that my communication basic method of "ARWAT" is not common sense enough.  The categories of: 1)Amount, 2) Relationships, 3) Wholes, 4) Actions, and 5) Things are not on a list of most frequent words in English.  They are closer than the word categories that I had previously used called "TEAR" with the categories of !)Thing, 2Event, 3)Attribute, and 4) Relation.  Recently, I took the final step toward "very common".   That is where I found common sense!  It is alive and well once you know where to find it. 

[Sorry, I have to come back and finish this later.  You can contact me if you like to learn more sooner.  Thank you.]

Sincerely,

Jon