The Flowster (glossary entry)
(NOTE: This article may be renamed at some point in the future.)
Roles and Behavior Strategies in Folk and Professional Psychology
(formerly titled Commitment to Purpose over Task)
This article concerns each of the following inter-related ideas. Which do you agree with?
A flow-ster is somewone who "goes with the flow"
The feminine lets the masculine make decisions
Sticking to your plans means having no choice but to do as you planned
Having decisiveness means sticking to your original decisions
Sticking to original decisions means not listening to others
Adherence to not changing your decision is itself a decision
Choice-Roles in Sex and Relationships
David Deida, in his 1999 Telluride lectures entitled "The Nuts and Bolts of Spiritual Intimacy", uses the term "flowster" in a discussion about relationship dynamics to refer to the partner who allows certain types of decisions to be made by the other person — the flowster is someone who "goes with the flow".
When Deida calls the "flowster" role "feminine", he basically means they are letting someone else decide. This is evident in all four levels of the archetypes (the Maiden lets the Warrior decide; the Mother lets the Lover decide, the Crone lets the Magician decide and the Queen lets the King decide).
It is important to notice that one can be the decider in one type of decision while letting one's partner be the decider in another type of decision. This is sometimes related to the fact that different people have different amounts of all eight archetypes.
If sticking with your plans means not having to decide anything new ("having no choice" in Sterling Men's Weekend terminology), then one could easily say that the person who does not change plans is abstaining from making a new decision which would make them a "flowster". But of course that is not what is intender — by "sticking to it" he has to exercise decisiveness.
Alternatively, the man who sticks to it might be misguided by ego or ignorance — see the confidence and commitment articles.
So, the "flowster" does not relate to a discussion about whether to be the decision-taker in a given situaation, because decision is required in any case. To cope with change, one must decide how to deal with the change, and if that involves changing plans, then one must decide on the specifics of any new plan.
Let's go back to Deida's "Nuts and Bolts of Spiritual Intimacy" lectures. He uses "flowster" to describe a man exhibiting a feminine behavior role. As he describes in "The Red Realm" (a 1999 book focused on sexuality) in the "Crimson" chapter:
There may be reasons for a masculine person's need to submit to
domination. He may be acting on a spiritual desire to contact a
higher feminine archetype to which he can devote himself. He may be
healing — or wallowing in — the wounds of childhood abuse. He may
simply want to shift from being stuck one-sidedly in his masculine
at the corporate office all day.
David Deida, The Red Realm, Chapter 19 "Crimson", section
"The Obsessive Need to be Dominated"
This illustrates a few of the complex situations that lead to role reversal in sex, and they are analogous to the larger topic of role choices in any life-situation. This is related to the general principle that the archetypes are independent of gender identity.
Roles and choices thereto are a pretty big topic. Suffice it to say that mature, functioning individuals will choose the appropriate role based on the situation and their abilities.
Returning to sex for the moment: as listeners to "Nuts and Bolts" were advised, extending one's sexual role behavior to other aspects of one's life makes sense whenever possible. For "the masculine" (and for any persons or groups who consider Deida's style of masculinity and masculine atmosphere to be part of their purpose), Deida means taking charge and being the more committed element (of a partnership, group, etc.).
In "Red Realm", Deida has to address the question: what happens when both partners are male? In this question "male" was taken to mean cisgender male, i.e. a relationship between two people who idenify as men and are attracted to each other. As psychologists have found, in such "homosexual" relationships, most of the time there is a diversification into specific roles, which apply in the bedroom and do not necessarily reflect the individuals' behavior elsewhere in their lives. This gives another example of role choice based on situation and ability.
Regarding a non-sexual partnership, such as most workplace relationships, two people can be in a situation where it is pragmatic for one to be the decision maker for some decisions and the other to decide the rest.
Consider two men in the army, with one reporting to the other (who has higher rank). Most of the time it is simple, each man is making promises and keeping them. However, war is famously FUBAR, and plans change. When a new order is given that contradicts a previous one, the lower-rank man copes by abandoning the earlier task and switching to something new. This does not make the commander or the follower any less of a decision-maker.
Choice-Roles in Life
Returning to the original topic: In general, what should one do in the realms of decision-making, planning, coping with change, balancing priorities, keeping promises, persuing goals and serving a life-purpose?
Roles are chosen based on ability, aptitude and effectiveness: they are a strategy. So we have to look to variations in ability, and in this case there are two faculties involved:
- the ability to make the right plans from the start,
- the ability to revise and adapt to changes in the environment and other new information
These are a matter of individual temperament (a predisposition to behaviour styles, in the sense of the Myers-Briggs temperaments). They derive from mental capacities for intuition, awareness, analysis, deduction, and so on. There are two dimensions, typically referred to as intuition or "common sense", and "intelligence". Each individual is endowed with a certain amount of each. Both play a role in the two faculties I just cited (planning and adaptability).
As I mentioned before there are two strategies that can be used to deal with change:
- Stick to the original plan
(advantages: no need to re-think; save face; learn how to take a loss)
(disadvantages: poorer results, or outright failure to get any results)
- Change plans and do something else
(advantages: new plan is better thought-out; better chance of success; higher purpose over ego)
(disadvantages: original effort and time may have gone to waste; people call you a quitter)
A Difficult Choice in the Office
It is useful to note that if you your decision skills are poor then the "something else" is just as likely to be worse than the "original plan" as it is to be better.
Back to temperament: children, usually at a very young age1, experiment with planning and adapting. Each discovers if they are more or less successful at either of the two strategies. This depends on both intuition or "common sense", and on the various types of intelligence. Both intuition and intelligence are required at both points in the strategy (the initial plan, and the decision about how to cope with change).
After childhood an individual has usually developed a personality that incorporates a preference for one strategy over the other. But this is still only a preference, and as with any role-choice situation, people will choose one strategy or another based on the situation (as in Deida's example of sex role reversal).
In social organizations, there is usually a group belief-system that reinforces a "Stick to the original plan" strategy. This is part of a general social pressure to conformity, and placing perceived needs of others ahead of other ideals. Sticking to plans is useful for coordinating actions, whether they relate to schedules, the allocation and cooperative use of resources, and so on. This bias towards inflexibility is evident in corporate culture, military campaigns, and men's groups such as MDI.
footnotes
1 : "as a child" : Exceptions occur in individuals with delayed development disorder, qualities related to autism spectrum, etc. Such people in many cases will find themselves still engaged in this work well after they have reached puberty.
This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2023 Mar 01.
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