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The Goal of Reevaluation

+ Simplicity
– Withdrawal

1% of the
population

Inspiration

BY PHILLIP WITTMEYER

The Ordinal Inspiration Goal is Reevaluation (Reduction), and it is the "pessimistic" Goal. A good way to explain this Goal is in terms of money. The analogy of behavior in times of economic recession is very similar to the situation with people in the Reduction Goal. Just as people during a depression are thrifty and want to spend their money wisely because they have so little of it, so a person with the Goal of Reduction wants to be frugal with everything in his life. He is a "bargain hunter". He always lives as if he were in hard times and needed to get "the most value for his dollar" — but not just in monetary realms. He is continually asking the question, "Is this really worth it?". He evaluates everything to make sure it is actually necessary. He does not feel comfortable with excess of any kind. He wants to live a plain and ordinary life. In many cases, people with this Goal have a "domestic" urge, and they become "homebodies". In the home they need face fewer demands than in confronting the outside world with all its problems and complications and challenges. Here they can also avoid distractions and extremes. They certainly respect other people's privacy, so they are never nosy or prying.

People with this Goal have a value system hierarchy for everything in their experience. It is as if they have a priority list with the most important things at the top and the least significant at the bottom. They naturally assign a value of relative importance to everything. The object of this Goal is to find ways to shorten the priority list. Even if they are not overloaded, they will still be asking themselves, "Is this really necessary, or can I do without it also?" They "weed the garden" of their life. The desire is to cut out all nonessentials. They seek what is elementary, fundamental, and basic. They do not like to carry around any "excess baggage", so they "sift the wheat from the chaff" in every thing they do. Even in their speaking they do not elaborate or embellish any more than they have to.

In employment, a person with the Goal of Reevaluation is suitable for quiet and well organized situations that are not very demanding: nothing that taxes the resources of the person. If there is too much going on at once, or there are deadlines to meet, a person in this Goal will likely feel uncomfortable: he does not like intense input in his life. Nor can an employer expect a prolific output from him. The good thing about this Goal in employment is that people with it are usually single-minded in their pursuits, and can concentrate on the task at hand. They get to the heart of the matter and stay there, not dabbling in the extraneous and peripheral issues. You can count on them to take care of things in the order of their importance.

The original name of this Goal was "Retardation", but to me this seems to have too negative a connotation. The Goal has nothing to do with mental or retardation or physical handicap as one might suppose from such a name. It is true that in the worst instances it can manifest as arrested development and emotional immaturity. Many people with this Goal avoid situations and circumstances which would help them to "grow up". The reason for this is that they typically lack what others call "ambition". People with this Goal feel they do have ambition — their ambition is the desire to find what is truly essential, and eliminate all the rest as superfluous. However, this does limit the development of what others consider "maturity". People in Reduction rarely stretch themselves to the limit, and so they rarely reach their full potential. They will also often do something only if it is convenient and does not cause them any hassle — so they are often considered lazy. They dislike the "hustle and bustle" that is a part of modern civilization. Some have trouble getting up in the morning because they do not want to face the numerous challenges of another day.

The original name of the Positive Pole of this Goal is "+Atavism". This word is not familiar to most people. According to the dictionary, it means a throwback to a more primitive state, or a reversion to traits of a remote ancestor. Indeed, people with this Goal often long for "the good old days". Life was supposedly better then, back when things didn't seem so complicated. They often prefer old homes to new homes, and antique furniture to modern furniture. They may like old automobiles better than the newer models. It frustrates them that the world seems to be getting more complicated because this is against their nature. "Recapture traditional values" is a good motto for this Pole.

Regardless of what the dictionary says, the original definition of atavism was "a return to complete simplicity". The ultimate simplicity is of course to reduce everything down to one thing at a time. People with this Goal often pare down their options so they can concentrate on one thing. They seek continually to narrow their range of involvements. They want situations such that they can cope with them easily and without stress and confusion. They avoid circumstances that are demanding or intrusive.

I like to refer to the Positive Pole as "+Efficiency", a word more familiar to most people than atavism. Efficiency is doing things with the least effort. People in this Pole are seeking to "trim the fat" from whatever they are involved in. They avoid intricacy. They hate waste, so they are very economical in their lifestyle. It also means they shy away from ostentation, ornamentation, fancy or gaudy frills, and other such "excesses". Because of their desire for simplicity and avoidance of complexity, they are often very tidy and neat in their personal lives. "A place for everything and everything in its place" is an appropriate motto for this. They are also inclined to stick with the familiar, to go over the same paths again and again to see if they can make it even more efficient.

The Negative Pole is -Withdrawal. This is expressed when the person seeks to reduce his experience even below the efficiency of oneness — down to nothing. In the Positive Pole the person will extract a lot of value from the few and the meager, but in the Negative Pole he leaves everything alone, confronts nothing, and shrinks from all life experience. He prefers to "get away from it all", and he copes with problems by escaping into isolation. Interestingly enough, such people prefer dimly lit, enclosed areas. They feel uncomfortable in bright and open places. There is almost a "back to the womb" feeling here. Such people prefer to retreat to the wilderness, and they may even be reclusive, like a hermit. In any case, they are secretive, mysterious, aloof, and hard to get to know. They dislike people who invade their psychological privacy ("Mind your own business") or intrude on their physical space ("Leave me alone"): they repulse intimacy. They seek seclusion when life gets too confusing ("I can't deal with that"). They don't want to know what is going on out there in "the big, bad world", and they don't want others to know about them. At minimum, they pull the window shades, and avoid the neighbors. The way to overcome -Withdrawal is to consider and apply the Positive Pole of Growth, which is +Unfoldment (also called Comprehension): to open up to interesting things, to be all that one can be, and to become intimate with the world and with other people.

Reevaluation is the Counterpart of the Reserve Mode. Both result in behavior which is less than enthusiastic or optimistic. A person with the Goal of Reevaluation would like to have his life as efficient, orderly, and limited as a person in Reserve has himself. In other words, a person in Reserve applies the principle of conservation to his own actions, feelings, and thoughts, rather than seeking this in the outer world as does the person in Reevaluation.

The Goal of Reevaluation is the Complement of the Goal of Growth. That is, each avoids what the other seeks. People in Growth want to experience everything they can. They thrive on complicated and demanding situations. They almost never turn down an opportunity to develop their potential. On the other hand, people in Reevaluation often avoid experience if they feel it is too intense or confusing. They seek quiet, comforting, close and familiar situations. They start looking for a way to cut back when too many things are happening at once. Whereas people in Growth are always trying to improve things and make them better, the person in Reduction is inclined just to "leave well enough alone". After all, why mess with something he can get by with just as it is. The person in Reevaluation will do the minimum required to get by. The person in Growth will extend himself to the maximum and beyond. People in Reevaluation do not value variety for its own sake as do people in Growth. They avoid redundancy and superfluity.

-- Phil Wittmeyer

Representing only 1% of the population, the goal of reevaluation is extremely rare. [fix]...The opposite of growth so it is possible to slide to growth when the demands of a new challenge must be met.

People in reevaluation commonly suffer from a disability, which rather conveniently helps them avoid intense experiences from the outside world. They shun complications and are generally disengaged from life, shying away from "having too much on their plate" or any potential for karma.

This is often a life in review with a rumination on questions from the past that are not always consciously clear, which may mean facing the same issues over and over again.

In the negative pole, people in reevaluation are withdrawn and can become reclusive and shut-in, trying to remove themselves from a life where the signal-to-noise ratio is bewildering to them.

-- David Gregg

In reevaluation, our lives are quiet, or we seek that, at least. We eschew stimulation. It's about simplicity, tending to the mundane. Reevaluation pulls us inward; growth thrusts our internal experience outward.

Clients in reevaluation tell me things such as “My dream is to have a cabin in the mountains (or a cottage by the shore) where I can be alone.” However, wanting to escape from the “big, bad world” is not the same as being motivated to reevaluate. Those with a goal of growth are prone to overstimulation, and often slide to reevaluation in order to “catch up” on processing all the input they have received. People who are autistic or who are institutionalized much of their lives sometimes have this goal; it appears that nothing is happening with them, but they may actually be unconsciously processing a lot of unresolved experiences from past lives. Of course, when processing is conscious, it can be accomplished more quickly and efficiently, but not everyone is capable of conscious processing.

-- Shepherd Hoodwin

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Phil Wittmeyer is a longtime Michael student and scholar of the teachings. He can be reached at: wittmeyer@hotmail.com