First, let’s understand why we look at a person as a platform?
Adults don’t appear out of nowhere. They are created. Family, school, social environment, culture, and even social media play a part in that process. At a certain age when people are thinking consciously, they try to improve themselves and to help people work on themselves or literally build themselves, let’s break down the engineering approach to “making” a person as a platform system.
Why consider the human being as a system and how do we relate human development to the word “platform”?
A platform is a system with its own special internal structure. Considering the human being as a system made it possible to study their internal structure. Science knows what parts (organs) a person consists of and what functions each organ has. This understanding of the internal structure of the human being as a system and subsystems, for example, helps doctors to work wonders by reconstructing the human body. Cyborgs are created from a purely biological system using non-biological prosthetic parts. Doctors use special methods to work with the damaged human body to restore basic human functions: breathing, moving, speaking, being conscious, etc.
The systems view applies not only to the internal structure of the human being but also extends to the human ability (mastery) to perform complex movements and create complex objects. That is, not just walking, but dancing, not just writing and speaking, but also fitting into teams and projects, mastering and using new technologies, and creating high-tech systems. In order to approach in a systemic way the “making” of a person who could do more than breathe and speak, we will need the concept of a “platform”.
Looking at the person as a platform first helps to make sense of what one needs to develop in themselves and second responds to the requirements for life mastery discussed in previous posts.
To learn more about the main requirements for life mastery read the following article.
In addition, the platform view helps to understand the order in which one needs to learn or create different levels of the platform.
The concept of “platform” can be considered using the example of a car. An automobile platform is a set of common parts from which different cars of the same or even several brands are assembled. That is, engineers first create a universal platform, and then this platform is used as part of different models and brands of cars. Volkswagen was the first company to develop the Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB) platform. It is used to manufacture 40 car models of such brands as Seat, Audi, Skoda, and Volkswagen. The model platform consists of the following components: transmission, suspension, steering, engine, and electrical equipment.
The idea of the platform is that it is developed once, but it allows creating cars of different classes and configurations based on unified modules. This reduces the cost and time of development and production, but it makes it possible to subsequently create vehicles based on different customer requirements and use scenarios. Civilian and military vehicles, passenger cars and trucks, economy, and luxury cars can be created on the same platform.
The idea of the human platform is to develop the parts of the brain and body to a level that will allow in the future easy and quick retraining to the desired level of life mastery. In life, a person often relearns and plays multiple roles, fits into work and social teams, and has to meet different requirements. The concept of the human platform allows us to distinguish between special (applied) and universal mastery (thinking mastery and self-collectedness) of the person who during their lives will have to be a husband or wife, father or mother, educator or manager, entrepreneur or engineer and perform roles in a work project.
Systemically speaking, a developed platform will allow a person to be part of an organizational unit that is organized to do some form of work. The simplest organizational unit is a person in a role, along with the technology to fulfill that role. A software engineer with a computer or a lathe operator with a CNC machine are examples of a simple organizational unit. The organizational unit can also be a team, a division, or an enterprise. Similar to the automobile platform, we would like to create a human platform that allows us to quickly and easily fit into different organizational structures (organizational units).
A well-designed platform allows for the demonstration of good life mastery, which determines a person’s future. In particular, life mastery will allow for good performance in multiple roles and thereby meet the human needs (dissatisfactions) of the doer.
What does a human platform consist of?
The example of a car shows that the platform consists of certain physical modules, which can be conventionally divided into platform levels. When we consider the level of the engine and its surroundings, it is important how the engine is connected to the other modules of the platform, but we do not consider the internal structure of the engine at the same time. The specialists who deal with the level of interaction of the engine with the suspension and other parts of the platform, and the specialists who deal with the creation of the engine itself, are different specialists.
Doctors and neurophysiologists are concerned with their own level of human structure. But due to the complexity of the brain’s structure, it is still impossible to single out individual parts of the brain that are responsible for different competencies (mastery) of a person. Therefore, speaking of the human platform, we will not be able, as we do in the automobile, to identify precisely all the modules of the human platform. We will say that there is a part of the brain that is responsible for a certain function of life mastery.
We identified three platform levels of life mastery:
- Self collectedness mastery is the ability (competence, knowledge, skill) of self-control and the ability to pull oneself together at the right moment to perform a certain action. The ability to collect oneself, the ability to manage attention, the ability to cope with emotions, and self-discipline as well as a developed body are the basis for the further development of a person. Unfortunately, the lost time to build this level of the platform in childhood is difficult to make up for in adulthood. The platform level of self-collectedness consists of the part of the brain that is responsible for self-control and also consists of a developed body;
- Thinking mastery is the ability to quickly find solutions to new problems, integrate into new projects, choose new roles, and master applied practices. Thinking mastery is represented by a part of the brain called the intellect. The intellect is responsible for role acting skill, for the ability to think logically and communicate, for systems thinking and ontological thinking, for scientific and computational thinking.
- Applied mastery is the ability to create work products or directly produce work. Applied mastery is reproduced by some part of the brain and body. Good applied mastery is done automatically (for example, a pianist doesn’t think about which note to play at a particular moment in time). Applied mastery can be formed unconsciously, but it develops faster through conscious study of applied practices.
Mastery itself (competence, human function/service) is demonstrated by a person’s external behavior, but the specific module (part of the brain) that is responsible for this behavior is not important at our level of consideration. Therefore, in the human platform we are talking about the part of the brain that outputs a certain behavior (service) to the outside environment. For example, the service of getting oneself together before an exam. It doesn’t matter which part of the brain is responsible for each of these behaviors, as we can’t change it yet like a module in a car. But we do know how to “create” this part of the brain.
Making car platform modules and human platform modules is done differently. Parts of the brain and body cannot be manufactured by assembly from smaller models. Therefore, instead of the word “manufacture,” when dealing with humans, we speak of upbringing, training, teaching, etc. The human platform is created by studying certain theories, constant training, and implementing real projects (you have to put “skin in the game”). That is, the brain needs to be loaded with the consumption of the right information, thinking, action, and action analysis, and the body needs to be loaded with physical activity.
The concept of “platform” allows us to understand what we need to pay attention to in order to improve our life mastery throughout life. The following principles can be identified in the creation of a human platform:
- Each lower level in the platform is involved in creating the next level. To begin developing thinking mastery, the part of the brain responsible for attention, emotion management, and elementary practices of organization and discipline must be formed. That is, without a certain amount of self-collectedness, there can be no training in thinking mastery;
- The formation of all platform levels is cyclical. Continuous learning is a never-ending development and regular improvement of mastery on all platform levels. The doer consciously learns more and more complex disciplines and technologies at each platform level. As children, we just knew how to read and write. That was enough to master the transdiscipline of arithmetic. But now it is almost impossible for many adults to master the thinking transdiscipline of systems thinking without establishing the practice of thinking by means of writing.
Thus, from the systems approach point of view, a person as a performer of multiple roles can be “manufactured” by analogy with an automobile platform. The complex personality can be represented by three platform levels. The development of these levels indicates the caliber of personality (breadth and depth of interests). The engineering approach shows how adults with strong intelligence can be produced, who are able to play different life and work roles, as well as create complex successful systems.