"Mental Models for Human Experience" PRINT by DSS (r)Evolutionary Stephen Bau

There are three models for human experience, based on the values and aspirations that are at the core of each social system:

1. Collaboration
2. Competition
3. Utopia

These models combine UX designer Jesse James Garrett’s conception of human experience with cognitive science and design process to illustrate how values are the inputs and social systems are the outputs. A social system’s core values determine the social architecture. Colonialism, capitalism, and climate change are logical conclusions if the values are based on the self, fear, and greed because of a perception of a world that is a brutal, dangerous, and life-threatening environment where people are in an existential competition for scarce resources in a social Darwinian fight for survival and dominance.

Stephen is exploring how we imagine, design, and build the future together. He founded Builders Collective to build leaders to design a resilient society. He writes about the evolution of design at stephenbau.com. 

"As a social architect, I am observing the metaphysical and linguistic connections to the physical infrastructure of our living systems. By understanding the connections between perception, cognition, emotion, and action, we can become aware of the metaphysical limitations, abilities, and responsibilities within the physical environment that defines our interdependent relationship to Universe. By naming and visualizing Universe’s properties and processes, we create mental models as prototypes of adjacent possibilities in order to build regenerative processes for living systems."