Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Behavioral Mechanics: Advanced Theories in Human Motivation and Psychology- Jim Marshall #162
4 Plays9 months ago
Unlock the secrets of human behavior as we sit down with Jim Marshall, the brilliant mind behind Septemix. Be prepared to have your perspective on the human psyche transformed by seven-level scales that promise a new understanding of our actions and motivations. Our conversation with Jim, an engineer turned human development pioneer, invites you on a journey that transcends the mere mechanics of existence and ventures into the profound territory of predictive human phenomena.
This episode is a treasure chest of practical wisdom, whether you're helping a friend navigate relationship woes or seeking self-improvement. Jim's Septemix scales offer a tangible toolkit for evaluating and uplifting our daily interactions, establishing a virtuous cycle of insight and growth. The discussion traverses the realms of learning, natural laws, and the vast expanse of literature and spirituality, weaving together the fabric of our collective human experience.
Wrap up with Jim's final reflections on understanding personal motivations and harnessing individual skillsets. His compelling narratives provide a roadmap for personal decisions and growth, avoiding the pitfalls of one-dimensional judgment. And as we conclude, we highlight the rich resources available at Septomics.com, inviting you to continue exploring the patterns of human behavior long after the podcast ends. Join us for an enlightening episode that will leave you equipped with the knowledge to navigate the complexity of being human.
Recommended
Transcript
Special Guest Jim Marshall Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
All right. Hello, everyone. How's it going today? Today we have a very special guest, Jim Marshall, and today we will be having a conversation. So, Jim, how are you doing today? Great. Good to see you.
Exploring Jim Marshall's Online Presence
00:00:19
Speaker
So, you know, Jim, I was sort of looking at your content. You know, you have a pod match, you have, you know, a social media platform, of course, too, and you have a website.
00:00:32
Speaker
When I was looking at your website, you know, I think it's called Septomics, right?
What is Septomics?
00:00:40
Speaker
Septomics. And from what I was understanding after kind of briefly glancing over the introduction, and you clarified too that if anyone were to sort of read this type of book, this was not something that you could read while sipping on some coffee. This is something that you need to sit down
00:01:01
Speaker
with deep in-depth study. And I think what it looks like to me is it looks like almost a unionization of sociology and psychology, which is really fascinating. And you kind of mentioned how these were not, these were almost empirical facts. These were not arbitrary things. They're not ideal. It's not a theory.
00:01:31
Speaker
it's something hard, sort of set in stone, if you will. So can we begin kind of going in depth on what this is and maybe how you sort of, again, you said you never invented it, but how did you become sort of that Christopher Columbus and that man who sort of discovered it?
Discovering Human Phenomena
00:01:55
Speaker
Okay, well, I am the discoverer
00:01:59
Speaker
of hitherto unknown natural phenomena, which greatly aid in the understanding of people, from which I constructed a revolutionary practical philosophic system called Septemex, and published it in the book, Septemex Hierarchies of Human Phenomena. Septemex is a philosophical science based on the fact that many phenomena related to human beings occur in a sequence of seven levels.
00:02:27
Speaker
Literally the word Septemens means of or pertaining to seven. Septemens comprises a collection of scales or sequences, each of which breaks down various human phenomena into a hierarchy of seven steps. There are 35 such scales, each of which is unique, and together they span the spectrum of human experience, by which I mean
00:02:52
Speaker
Any problem, dilemma, situation, difficulty that any person has can successfully be analyzed by one or more of these scales. Now, since you asked, let me tell you how I found this information.
From Engineering to Human Psyche
00:03:09
Speaker
The story really starts when I was accepted to engineering school at age 16.
00:03:13
Speaker
Now, of course, I thought at that time that I was going to be engineering physical things like electrons, airfoils, motors, and so forth, like all the other students. But by the time I had my bachelor's degree, I realized I wanted to engineer the human psyche because it's the area of greatest mystery and unknown, and the area in which we as a race are failing miserably. 95% of the problems where people have an industrialized society is because they don't understand people.
00:03:42
Speaker
Don't understand the wife, don't understand the husband, don't understand the boss, don't understand the president, don't understand, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Career and Client Observations
00:03:50
Speaker
We're not dying of diseases and starvation like we used to. Our problems are because they don't understand people. And this book solves that across 35 axes. So to make a long story short, I had a long career as a human development engineer
00:04:08
Speaker
working one-on-one with hundreds of clients of every description for cumulatively many thousands of hours. And of course, all of my clients improved. And I started to notice just incidentally that I could predict the outcome of the session. Now, I never told this to anyone, but I made notes.
00:04:29
Speaker
And as the decades rolled by, it became clear to me that the client would be at a specific level on a specific scale that I had previously observed. And as a result of our interaction, the client would go to the next level up. This verified my hypothesis thousands and thousands of times.
Journey of Writing Septemex
00:04:55
Speaker
Of course, this only made me better at what I did.
00:04:59
Speaker
Now, by 1995, a couple of things happened. One is I had about 32 scales by then of varying lengths. And also, one day in 1995, I was pondering a difficult client. And I realized this client was at a level on a particular scale that I had not previously observed. That was obvious to me where to insert this level into the scale. So when I inserted that level into this sixth level scale, which I already knew was correct,
00:05:29
Speaker
The scale manifested mathematically, which is to say, all of these data jumped out at me. Now, the whole point of mathematics is you start with a formula or an equation, and you coax data out of it. That is how Einstein found E equals mc squared, by that process. So when I saw all this data, it went from being a seven level scale to a whole plane of information.
00:06:00
Speaker
Well, I said, whoa, whatever this is, this has to be natural law because it has mathematics embedded in it. And anything that has mathematics embedded in it is natural law. For example, the Fibonacci sequence. So then I said, wait a minute.
00:06:20
Speaker
I wonder how many of these other scales that I have are actually seven level scales that had not been developed all the way because I wasn't developing anything. I was just helping my clients and making notes. So knowing what I was looking for, I inspected all of these scales. And in a short period of time, they each went to seven levels. And as each one did, it manifested mathematically. So it went from being a scale to a plane of data.
00:06:50
Speaker
So then I said, wait a minute, this looks like a new subject to me. I could go from helping people by the hundreds, which is what I had been doing as human development engineer, to helping people by the millions, if I put this in a book and get it out to people. So I'll have to write a book. So the first draft of the book was completed in the summer of 95. And I sent it to colleagues of mine, all of whom had graduate degrees in a variety of subjects.
00:07:17
Speaker
They all responded very positively. They had different responses,
Septemex and Natural Law
00:07:21
Speaker
but distinctly positive responses. That told me, okay, this is exactly what I think it is, a whole new subject that could really help people. I spent the next 25 years of my life writing this book, because you have to realize first, I had to discover the data, the phenomena,
00:07:42
Speaker
which I sort of told you already how that was done, although I did find three more scales while I was writing the book. Then I had to use this data to craft a workable philosophic system. Now you have to understand as an engineer, I'm only interested in facts and results. Two engineering opinions and beliefs are irrelevant. So simply having
00:08:07
Speaker
32 scales or 35 whatever was at a certain point in time. That's not enough to make a workable philosophic system So I had to work with this data to develop a foolproof system that will work for everybody and back took 20 years Then the most time-consuming part of this was I had to express this in a way that would make sense to the average reader Because my intent from the beginning was to help the average person
00:08:37
Speaker
And I can tell you right now, I've been watching people respond to this for 28 years. And what I know is that anybody who can read English reasonably well and wants to improve himself or others can benefit from this book. It's universally applicable. And the reason it's universally applicable is because it's natural law. We have to understand
00:09:04
Speaker
I took 26 semesters of math and loved every minute of it. So to me, math is a very real thing. So when I saw math embedded in this, I knew I had something big. The reason why this works so well is it's natural law. It's natural just like Newton's three laws of motion or
00:09:29
Speaker
the periodic table of elements, it's natural law. Once you see it, you get it. It's not hard to get this. So people open up the book. I'm talking about a new person who looks at it and says, wow, yeah, I see this. And let me explain why that is. A couple of people said to me, what book is your book like? And I have to tell them, having gone to school for 28 years, I honestly don't think there's ever been a book like this before.
00:09:56
Speaker
Each one of these scales is expressed in what you might call a table or a spreadsheet. So there's a whole body of data about the corresponding subject. So it's like a periodic table for each of these 35 subjects.
Analyzing Human Phenomena with Scales
00:10:15
Speaker
Well, the periodic table is for matter.
00:10:18
Speaker
the elements. This is for these 35 subjects. Now, if you allow me, I'll tell you the names of the 35 scales, and then you'll see exactly what subject matter is covered in this book. Please, please. OK. So there are 24 individual scales, meaning they apply primarily to an individual, and 11 group scales, which apply primarily to groups.
00:10:41
Speaker
So, these are the individual scales. The scale of basic purposes. The scale of personal influence. The scale of choice. The scale of permeation. The scale of thought. The scale of identity. The scale of evaluation. The scale of motivation. The scale of control. The scale of stopping. The scale of scholarship. The scale of illiteracy. The scale of human ability. The scale of memory. The scale of spiritual identity.
00:11:07
Speaker
the scale of mental deletion, the scale of aberration, the scale of physical fitness, the scale of justification, the scale of belief, the scale of equanimity, the scale of attack, the scale of conflict, and the scale of reaction. And these are the group scales.
00:11:22
Speaker
the scale of relationships, the scale of life spheres, the scale of government, the scale of civilization, the scale of survival, the scale of management, the scale of exchange, the scale of communication, the scale of allegiance, the scale of sexuality, and the scale of politics. Now, you sort of suggested that this was kind of a mixing of sociology and psychology. There's some truth to that. But let me parse that a little bit further.
00:11:52
Speaker
This is a new subject. So this book is a textbook on an entirely new subject. Now I tried for years to fit this into some pre-existing niche. It cannot be done.
00:12:07
Speaker
So for example, let's take psychology. There are elements of psychology in this. I know psychology, it's valuable and useful, but this is not psychology. For example, this has a scale of government, a scale of civilization, a scale of management, a scale of politics. That doesn't exist in psychology. So there's all kinds of things. There is a scale of spiritual identity.
00:12:35
Speaker
That doesn't exist in sociology. So this is a new subject. And I have had a lifetime of helping people. I went on my way to write this in a way that works for people. And since the first
00:12:51
Speaker
Transcript of it was released 28 years ago. I've been seeing people get this. They read it and they say, yeah, I get this. It's not obscure and it's not difficult to understand because it's natural law. So for example, about 22 years ago when I was working on this, I'm talking to a friend of mine one day about politics and government. There's two guys talking. And I had completed the scale of government.
00:13:20
Speaker
I said, let me show you something. So I pulled out the scale of government. He didn't even know I was writing a book, and I handed it to him. So he took it. I didn't say a word. He took it. He looked at it for about one second, and he pointed. He said, there, I'm right there. He found his level on that scale without my even suggesting that that's what it was for. He didn't know that.
00:13:45
Speaker
So this is really user-friendly. I'll tell you something else that happens with this all the time.
Applying Septemex to Relationships
00:13:50
Speaker
The guy's reading his scale. It can't be any scale, right? And he gets down to a certain level. Like, let's say, level four. He says, wait a minute. This is my mother-in-law. She's exactly like this. I don't know this guy's mother-in-law, but the phenomena is there. And it's specific, and it's precise. So when you see it, you say, oh, yeah, this is how my brother Joe is. He's just like this.
00:14:16
Speaker
So when you do that, you're actually spotting him on a scale. You're saying, yeah, he's at that level. Now, let me tell you concisely how this benefits people. I've been helping people my whole life. I wrote this to help people. Each of these 35 scales provides the user with an infallible way of determining the salutariness or beneficialness of any group, individual or activity.
00:14:43
Speaker
If the group individual or activity moves persons up the scale, it's beneficial or positive. If it moves them down, it's detrimental or negative. So I'm giving you a yardstick by which to measure human activity, which is very useful. More importantly, just finding out what level you or another person is at on any scale is by itself enlightening and beneficial. Every time
00:15:10
Speaker
We correctly spot a level. We say, oh, now I understand why I can't get along with Joe. I'm at this level and he's at this level. We have an epiphany. That's how you know you found the right level. If you say this is the right level and you don't have an epiphany, it's not the right level. So this is really useful because what's happening here is it requires a certain amount of insight to use this.
00:15:41
Speaker
But more importantly, it develops insight, because every time you use it, you have a realization. So then you have more insight. So then your capacity to use the subject is improved. We use it again, and you have another realization, and you have more insight. So this is a virtuous circle, where the more you do this, the easier it is to use it. And the easier it is to use it, the more you use it, and the more you use it, the easier it is to use it. So you just get into this work,
00:16:10
Speaker
It becomes really easy to understand people.
00:16:14
Speaker
Now, let me give you an application, a real world application, how you could use this right now. Let's say you have a buddy, and he's having romance problems. We have this friend Fred, and he's complaining to you about his girlfriend. I don't know what I'm going to do about Mary. She's driving me crazy. She wants to break up. She's going to have another guy, blah, blah, blah. He's playing, playing. So you say, OK, Fred, look. Let me help you with this. Come here. Look at this. And you open up the book to the scale of relationships.
00:16:44
Speaker
Now, he's going to say, you mean there's a scale of relationships? You say, yeah, this relationship that you've been complaining to me about for six months, where is it on this scale? He's going to want to know that because you just opened the door for him. Oh, yeah, let me see. So he looks at it. And what's going to happen is, in a matter of seconds, he will find a bracket.
00:17:10
Speaker
reading something like this will happen. We'll say, well, I can see right away. We're definitely not at levels one, two, or three because we're having a lot of trouble. So you got it down to four. So then you say to him, OK, go ahead and read the text. And then you'll be able to get it exactly.
00:17:29
Speaker
You can help him as a tutor with this if he has any trouble. What does this mean? You can explain. And then he reads it, and he comes back, and he's, OK, now look at it again. What level is this relationship at? And he will find it. He will say, well, now that I've read this, I can see we're at level five. No wonder we're having trouble. This explains it. We're all the way down to level five. See? I think it's saying, great.
00:17:54
Speaker
You and she could move this up to level four because it's the next level up. Because it's the next level up, it's accessible to you. You can reach it.
00:18:09
Speaker
If you're at level five and you try to get to levels one, two, or three, you will fail because it's too steep a gradient. But you will be able to get to level four because it's the next level up. Just like you're on a train, you're at 34th Street. The train next stop is 42nd Street.
00:18:26
Speaker
You can get to 40 Second Street because you're at 34th Street. See? What's the next thing? Now we say to him, all right, let me show you something else. And you open it up to the scale of sexuality. He says, you mean there's a scale of sexuality? Yeah. You don't have to tell me, but for your own illumination, where are you on this scale?
00:18:47
Speaker
He's going to want to know this. And he'll look and he'll say, well, I can tell right away. It's definitely not six or seven. That has nothing to do with me. And it's definitely not one or two of a dot. They're way over my head. It's probably two, two, or four. He'll say, great. Go ahead and read the text. Then you can know this exactly. So he reads it. He comes back. And he'll be able to find it. Now, since you're his friend, he might want to tell you. But the idea here is not to tell people.
00:19:17
Speaker
The idea is to figure it out yourself. So if a little kid will say, well, I can see him on level four, and he will have a realization. Well, that explains why he didn't get along with Betty Sue. She was on level five. That's not compatible. If you look at that scale, it's obvious at first blush that some of those levels are incompatible. I mean, there's one level called can have sex, and there's another level called can't have sex. Well, duh. Those are obviously incompatible.
00:19:48
Speaker
But it's not just those two. That whole scale is like that. So this is why sometimes you see two people. They're smart. They're attractive. They like one another. And they can't have a romantic relationship. It just doesn't work. I'm very open to this because there are different levels on this scale.
Jim's Early Passion for Learning
00:20:06
Speaker
These are the type of people who break up and stay friends for the rest of their lives. Because they like one another. See?
00:20:15
Speaker
Then you can say, all right, let me show you something else. Look at the scale of allegiance. What's that? Well, look at it. Okay, so he looks and says, oh yeah, allegiance. Yeah. And see, you can explain. Well, if you're going out with Mary and then you cheat on her and go out with Betty Sue, that's a failure of allegiance, isn't it? You went behind her back. So you went down the scale. So I already know.
00:20:41
Speaker
Anytime the relationship deteriorates, it's because allegiance has deteriorated. So people look at this and say, by that same process, yeah, I am down at level four. And you'll be able to see that he fell down to level 40. And we'd say, OK, let's improve you up to level three, and then your relationship will be better.
00:21:07
Speaker
Now I could keep going like this and do another half dozen scales because when you're talking about something complicated, like a relationship between a man and a woman that has many dimensions to it. But I think you get the idea. That's how this works. So that's excellent. But let's sort of take a backtrack now to who Jim. So what harbored your initial love for things like math?
00:21:37
Speaker
drew in that math as a child. Did you love math as a kid? Did you pick up on time stables very quickly? Like how was it like sort of growing up loving math or did you ever love math when you were not sure? Well, first of all, I always loved math, but that's not the answer to the question.
00:21:57
Speaker
I have no memory chains of a time in my life when I was not intensely interested in learning everything that's taught in every university. I was a type of little kid when I was three years old saying, how does the radiator get hot? How does the car work? How does the refrigerator get cold?
00:22:21
Speaker
You know, how does the TV work? How do we get these pictures? I always wanted to know. You know, how does the voice get into this piece of plastic? We put on this plastic and we hear somebody singing. How does that happen? And that's just how I was. I can still remember the exact moment when I first discovered that some kids didn't like school. It was a shock to me. I loved school.
00:22:47
Speaker
Believe me, every morning, yippee, I get to learn long division today, or whatever it was. I get to learn about Abraham Lincoln. I was induced from standing at the Blackboard, 10 years old, doing division on the board, right? The kid I was working with was the Wilson teams. So it's something that suggests that he didn't like school. I said, wait a minute. We don't like school. He said, no, I hate school. I was shocked.
00:23:18
Speaker
How could that be? But then I said, oh, that explains a lot. There are kids who don't like school. I didn't even know that. I can still remember that because it was a turning point for me because I realized I was different from other people. So nobody had to tell me to do my homework. I was one of those irritating kids who not only did all the assignments, I would do the extra credit assignments too.
00:23:48
Speaker
So I loved school. I won scholarships. I get into elite schools. And I was an inherently poly-mathic person. So I wanted to know everything about everything. So for example, in study physics, we learn about the three laws of motion. They're still being used today from 400 years ago, from Newton, a genius. So I said, who's this fine Newton? I haven't figured this out when he was 25 years old.
00:24:17
Speaker
This must be a special. So I started studying Isaac Newton. See, we find out this is a very interesting guy. He was devout Catholic. He was into alchemy. He invented or discovered all kinds of interesting things.
Septemex and Universal Applicability
00:24:32
Speaker
So you see, now I'm reading biography. You see, so whatever I was studying, I always would want to go into the adjacent subject. So I'm studying history. I'm learning about Thomas Jefferson.
00:24:45
Speaker
Oh, what an interesting guy. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a lawyer. He was a gentleman farmer. So I've read several biographies of Jefferson. Very interesting guy. Brilliant. So you see, I'm not studying history now, I'm studying Jefferson. So with me, that happens with everything.
00:25:10
Speaker
Everything. So now you could imagine what Google means to me. I mean, when search engines came out, you could just lock me in a room with food and a search engine, and I would just be there looking up things, looking it up, finding out all about interesting things, interesting people. Like if you study Jefferson Lincoln in history,
00:25:34
Speaker
He's a very interesting guy. He did what was thought impossible in his day. He freed the slaves and he saved the union. Nobody thought that could be done. So, well, who is this guy? You find out all kinds of interesting things. He had at most 12 months of schooling in his whole life. And yet he became the best lawyer in the state of Illinois.
00:26:01
Speaker
And if you read his writings, which we have, they're brilliant. How did this happen? See, this is very interesting to me. And I'm sort of like this with everything. So I read the Aeneid, which was written by Virgil, a contemporary of Caesar Augustus, one of the greatest works ever written. So I want to find, who is this guy?
00:26:31
Speaker
Who is this Virgil guy? How did he do this? So if you read it, it's a 12 book epic poem and it's awesome. So then I want to find out about it. His name is Gaius Virgilius Morrow, and he probably was gay. And he was a friend of the emperor. So that's sort of how my mind works. I'm interested in everything. So what happened was,
00:26:59
Speaker
Because of my unusual career of working with people and my hard science background, when I saw this data, I just wrote it down. That's what we do in science. We write things down. We observe and we record. Observe and record. Then, when I realized at first scale that it was
00:27:22
Speaker
had mathematics embedded in it, and I said, whoa, I found something here. Because I knew it was natural law. Because I understand natural law. Like Fibonacci sequence.
00:27:35
Speaker
There's all kinds of living creatures that have been constructing themselves according to Fibonacci numbers for millions of years. And they do it generation after generation. You don't have to take my word. Look at a sunflower. You count the seeds in one way, they go one Fibonacci number, you count them another way, it's another Fibonacci number. How does that work? It's natural law. It just exists. They don't know anything about numbers, let alone Fibonacci.
00:28:04
Speaker
So that's what this is about. I found this natural law. And because it's natural law, anybody who can read English, who wants to improve himself or others, which I'm sure includes you, from my observation of you, gets this. They say, yeah, this is cool. Now, why do I improve self or others? So let's say a guy gets this right, and he uses it to straighten out his marriage.
00:28:32
Speaker
Okay, that's helping himself, but it's also helping his wife, isn't it? And then he might see that that kid is having school trouble. He's having trouble as a student. Well, there's a scale of scholarship. He says, Junior, come over here, let me show you this. And Junior looks at the scale of scholarship. He says, you mean there's a scale of scholarship? And dad says, yeah, where are you on this scale? Junior's gonna wanna know that.
00:28:58
Speaker
See, he'll find a bracket. He'll say, well, I'm obviously not a one, two, or three because I'm not a good student. Okay. So read the chapter and then you can nail it exactly. So he reads it and he comes back and says, well, I can see him on level five. And don't think he'll be bummed out by that. He will not. He'll be happy because he has a realization. He says, ah, now I see what's going on. See?
00:29:23
Speaker
And so then the dad says, let's move you from level five to level four, and then you'll be a better student. And I tell you in that chapter exactly how to do that. So the dad helps the kid. The kid becomes a better student. Now instead of getting C's and D's, he's getting D's and C's.
00:29:46
Speaker
So dad did this without hiring a tutor, without spending any money, without sending the kid out to any extra classes. It's just the two of them. That's how this book is. I went out of my way to write this book in a way that would help people without resorting to anything else except perhaps a dictionary. But I would say that for every book in existence.
00:30:11
Speaker
I started school when I was three, and I'd been involved in education to this very day. I would never teach anything to anybody without having a dictionary, Andy. I don't care what subject it is. Now, some people say, well, I'm a math major. I don't need to addictions. Oh, really? What's the definition of absolute value? What's the definition of minus? What's the definition of variable?
00:30:42
Speaker
I can tell you how many people I've done this to, and they go, hama, hama, hama, hama, like Jackie Gleason does, you know, in the honeymooners. They don't know what to end. I say, okay, let's look it up. And we look it up. Oh, I see, that's what a variable is. Okay, so now I'll read the chapter, read the sentence again. All right, now it makes sense to me. See, so that's one of my tricks as far as, as a tutor helping people to understand things, because
00:31:11
Speaker
That's something that is not stressed in our education. There's a definite lack of stress on vocabulary. And that's why people don't understand subjects. They don't know the words. Like we talked about emancipation, proclamation. How many students know what emancipation means? How many students know what proclamation means? I'm sorry, I'm getting something on my screen. So I'll say to students all the time,
00:31:41
Speaker
What is the word emancipation means? If I don't get a correct answer in one second, I say, OK, that's right. Let's look it up.
The Role of Vocabulary in Understanding
00:31:48
Speaker
It takes 10 seconds. Read this. Oh, I see what it means. Freeing people. Oh, good. Now read it again. Oh, I see the proclamation that freed people. OK.
00:32:02
Speaker
You have to realize, there is not only a glossary in front of every chapter of this book, there's even a glossary in front of the introduction. Because I want people to know what these words mean. And let me be more specific. There's a scale of communication. If you look up the word communication, depending on what dictionary you look it in, look at it, it has about 30 definitions. So I could reasonably say, well, what definition is this guy using?
00:32:30
Speaker
That's a good question. So I give one very specific brief definition of communication right out of the dictionary. It's not 30 definitions. It's one. So he reads it. He says, OK, I see what he means. Now he knows exactly what I'm talking about. So the book is full of that. It's very, very user friendly, because with my experience as a tutor, I'm used to how to get people to understand things.
00:33:00
Speaker
And so this is really a user-friendly book. And the best way to think of it is, each one of these 35 scales is like a lens. But you can hold up to a mirror and look at yourself. You know, like when you take a selfie in a mirror,
00:33:17
Speaker
You hold this up and you say, oh, now I see myself. Or you hold it up to your wife or your neighbor or your son. And then you see them clearly. It's like Sherlock Holmes went around with a magnifying glass all the time looking at things. That's what this is like. But it's across 35 axes of human phenomena. And because of that,
00:33:42
Speaker
It's universally applicable. So if you're talking about human phenomena, this book applies. Now, if you're talking about fixing the engine in your car, no, it's got nothing to do with that. But if you're talking about human phenomena, which is more than just human behavior, like how do civilizations evolve? I explained that. What are the seven levels of spiritual identity?
00:34:09
Speaker
There are seven levels. And when you look at it, you'll see, yeah, I can see I'm here and Joe is here. And it really helps you to understand people, including yourself. So you mentioned a verge and sort of this poem. Do you think that, what resonated you with you about that poem? And another thing that I find interesting in order to understand a lot of poetry
00:34:39
Speaker
there needs to be a vivid understanding of vocabulary in some situations, because I would find myself reading poetry. And I wouldn't understand the poem, but it was more so necessarily that I wouldn't understand certain words that were great, even when, you know,
00:34:59
Speaker
Things like the Odyssey. There's certain terminology like hubris. I don't think most people know what hubris is. To the Greek word. Well, to answer your question about the Aeneid, I studied Latin for four years and I was very good at it. And in my fourth year, I read the Aeneid. That was what we did that year. We read the whole thing.
00:35:30
Speaker
You have to understand, I was reading it in Latin. Okay. This is not a translation. I had translations of it, which I would use for reference. You know, like if I want to say, what's he really getting at here? You know, sometimes you could, it's hard to parse how the words fit together to make sense. So I would read the English passage. It's not the same thing. Reading something in translation is a good thing, but it's not the same thing.
00:35:59
Speaker
I've read an enormous amount of foreign literature in translation, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, et cetera, in translation, because I don't speak those languages. But Latin, I knew. So I read it, and the beauty of it just came across to me. And it's really about this demigod named Aeneas,
00:36:26
Speaker
who in a sense is like Hercules. His mother was Venus. And he is leading the people out of Troy who then eventually went to Italy and founded Rome. That's what the story is. That's one sentence reduced from a 12 volume poem. But
00:36:52
Speaker
His interaction with the gods is a big thing. That's a major... He had one God who loved him and protected him.
Historical Figures and Spiritual Themes
00:37:07
Speaker
But there were other gods who didn't. So this gets into what's really going on in life.
00:37:16
Speaker
You see? What's this thing we call luck? Where does this come from? And so it really opened up my mind in a spiritual way that nothing else did. Because it got me into that way of thinking, the way the Romans thought about the gods, the gods interceded. Now, it's not only the Romans. All kinds of religions think that. The Romans were pantheistic.
00:37:46
Speaker
as opposed to Christians or monotheistic, but still there's the idea of divine intervention. I mean, George Washington absolutely believed in that. And if you look at the facts of his life, how can you not believe that? His cloak would be full of bullet holes. His hat.
00:38:09
Speaker
He would ride out in front of the troops with the bullets flying, with a sword saying, fight men, fight. And he didn't get hit. How does that happen? He said, it's providence. That's the word he used. So there's something to that, regardless of what religion you're in. Now, George Lucas came along with, may the force be with you.
00:38:38
Speaker
Well, what's that all about? You see? And that's a lot of what that movie was about. You know Han Solo, the cynic saying, there's no force, right? But then Luke gets into the ship and he hears the voice of the dead Obi-Wan Kenobi comes to him and says, turn off your computer. He turns it off and he drops the bomb right down into the target.
00:39:07
Speaker
which is a mystical thing. He did it without the computer. So that's why that really had an impact on me. And eventually I studied many of the world's religions. So theology is one of my main areas of expertise, but it's not just one religion, it's many religions. It's world religion.
00:39:33
Speaker
And I sort of got to the idea of sort of seeing what they had in common, how different cultures looked at the same thing in a slightly different way, which is not news. Most people know that Chinese people think differently from American people. That's not news. So when you go around people from different cultures, they approach things differently. So they'll look at the same thing and have different ways. In English, we say fork.
00:40:00
Speaker
Ferg is a description of how the thing looks. In Spanish we say tener dor, which means holder. It's a functional description. You see? It's a different way of looking at the same implement. The Spaniards call it a holder. So that's true with all language, and when you read something in the original, you get the impact of
00:40:24
Speaker
What were these people really saying? What was Virgil like?
Self-Improvement with Septemex
00:40:28
Speaker
What did he really think? What were the Romans about as people? Because we started them kind of on a superficial level. There was this emperor and then this emperor and they fought this battle. So many people. But there's a lot more to all of this. And that's sort of who I am as a person. I always want to know what's going on here. What's underlying this?
00:40:54
Speaker
You know, like, for example, when Einstein figured out the theory of relativity, that was a moment of creative thought. Most scientists don't think that way. He had some epiphany where he was able to go beyond what anybody had done before and see this thing. And then he was able to explain it in a paper to other physicists and mathematicians. Now, they didn't know he'll get it right away. That is a historical fact.
00:41:25
Speaker
It took a while, but eventually, an experimental physicist proved it to be correct many times. So now it's considered reliable scientific fact. But when he thought it up, it was just a creative moment in his mind. It's like when Chicory would play the piano. I saw him play many times. It's like, he's just making it up as he's going along.
00:41:55
Speaker
I like watching Eric Clapton play a guitar solo. He never played that solo before and he's never gonna play it again. This is a moment of creation. Okay? So that's something that's discussed in some of the skills. So that type of thing is very interesting to me. How that works. You know, why people do what they do and more importantly, how do you improve a person? How do you take a guy who's got a bad relationship and fix it?
00:42:26
Speaker
And that's what this book is about. Because basically, once you know the correct level, you can improve yourself by going up to the next level.
00:42:39
Speaker
Because one of the axioms of this subject is you can never skip a level. That is impossible. Think of it this way. If you're on the first floor and you want to go to the fifth floor, one way or another, you're going to have to go through the second, the third, and the fourth. Whether you take the elevator, the escalator, the stairs, or go outside the building and use a rope ladder, we're still going through the second, the third, and the fourth to get to the fifth.
00:43:02
Speaker
That is why you can only move to an adjacent level. And that is good news because I'm giving you the gradients. See, most people have problems and don't know how to fix them. That's because they don't know the gradient. So you'll have a guy, let's say you have a guy who's 100 pounds overweight. He's upset about it. He's self-conscious about it. He can't fix it, right? So I've worked as a trainer. If he came to me and said, Jim, would you train me? I'd say, sure.
00:43:30
Speaker
Now, I have to find a gradient for this guy. I'm not going to say go out and run five miles every day. First of all, he's not going to do it. Secondly, if he did do it, he would be sore and he would be mad at me. That's not good training. That's malpractice.
00:43:44
Speaker
And I'm not going to give him a hundred pound barbell and say, lift this. Same reason. I would say to him, do you think you could walk one mile every morning? Right. And he's probably going to say, well, I think I could do that. I might miss a day or two. Yeah. Okay, good. So walk a mile every morning and at the end of the week we'll talk again. So when I say to him at the end of the week, how did it go? And if he says to me, this is tough. I say, okay.
00:44:12
Speaker
Just keep going, just keep going ahead. Now, if you said to me, this is easy, I got it. I could do this anytime. Let's say great, let's go to y and f. So that's finding the gradient.
00:44:25
Speaker
That's what I did with my clients. I would pick up the level the guy was at and move him to the next level up. And that's how I discovered Septemex. I used Socratic dialogue. If you've ever read the dialogues, the Socratic dialogue is written by Plato. There are many of them.
00:44:43
Speaker
The way Plato shows Socrates, his teacher, his working is, he would have a conversation with the guy. He wouldn't tell him anything. He would say, well, what about this? And what about this? Who do you think of this? How do you define this? And eventually, the guy would come to his own realization. It's horrible. Yeah, now I see what's going on here. That's Socratic dialogue. That's what I used. But I was aided by biofeedback.
00:45:10
Speaker
which is where the engineering comes in. And there's a lot to know about that if you don't know about it. So that's how I found this data. There's no theory of subchemics. It's just empirically observed. And that's why people dig it. Because we look at it and they say, yeah, I see this.
Avoiding Pitfalls with Septemex
00:45:29
Speaker
It's like looking at the periodic table. Anybody who looks at the periodic table, first thing in chemistry class, you come in and you look at it and say, yeah, this makes sense.
00:45:39
Speaker
You know? Get it. Because it's a natural world. So the way I think of it is, your success is my reward. That's how I operate. That's where I wrote this book. And there are people all over the world using this book. Now, I'm never going to know them. I don't even know their names. We're straightening out their relationships, we're straightening out their businesses, we're straightening out their relationships with their parents, whatever. That's what I want. That's where I wrote this book.
00:46:10
Speaker
Because if you think that the institutions of Earth are going to help you, you're going to be in for a rude awakening. The government's not going to help you. The churches are not going to help you. The universities are not going to help you. The schools are not going to help you. Corporations are not going to help you. Are there exceptions? Of course there are exceptions. But generally speaking, all of these things have their own agendas.
00:46:36
Speaker
They have corrupt people and you have good people. Yes, they have good people, but not all of them are good. I've noticed something with governments. Sometimes you go to a government agency and you want to get a paper or you want to file something and the person is just not going to cooperate. You can see they have a bad day and they're not going to give you what you want. They give you some phony reason. You know what I do? I come back the next day, go to a different guy. Same paperwork, goes right through. Different guy.
00:47:04
Speaker
The first guy was not cooperative, and the second guy, oh, yeah, OK, here, stamped. So that's true for everything. There's good Christians, there's bad Christians. There's good white people, there's bad white people. There's good Chinese people, there's bad. The whole world is like that. So if you go into any big group, I don't care what it is, any university, any church, any government at any level, you're going to find good people and you're going to find bad people.
00:47:32
Speaker
Catastrophes coming out come about when you get a bad person in there like Hitler Running a government you see what he did to his country When you get somebody good in there who knows what he's doing like Abe Lincoln You get good results so But you can't rely on any of these things because you don't know who you're gonna run into But I will tell you this if you use this book you can spot these people
00:48:02
Speaker
Because you can see, oh, this guy is low on this scale. See? You know that's going to be trouble. When I run into somebody like that, I just say, thank you very much. Have a nice day. Goodbye. I don't deal with it. That's why I know that this book
00:48:21
Speaker
If you study it, it will prevent catastrophes, dilemmas, divorces, bankruptcies, fistfights, indictments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because you understand people. You understand the good ones and the bad ones. Sometimes I meet a person, I say, oh, this is a very upscale person. See, I can see they're upscale on these various scales. Well, this is someone I want in my life.
00:48:48
Speaker
So I go out of my way to keep that, and if I see this person is a little bit lower on some skills, I just sort of tiptoe around it. You know, there's some people who are very nice people just don't talk to them about politics. Don't do it. It's a mistake, you know? It's all right, so you tiptoe around it. You know, I have three sisters. One of them is a liberal, and two of them are conservatives. I get along great with all three of them. You know why?
00:49:18
Speaker
I don't make it an issue. I just go around it. And I pretty much do that with everything. And the book helps you with that. It helps you to see, to parse what's going on. Like, you see a guy who's low on a certain scale, you're not going to be able to do much with that. Because the reason that the person is low on the scale is because he lacks insight in that area.
00:49:44
Speaker
And the reason a person is high on a scale is because he has insight in that area. So when a person is low on a scale, he lacks insight. There's not much you're going to do about it. He's just dopey on that subject. I'll give you a perfect example. Bill Clinton. Everybody knows Bill Clinton as a smart man. He was a Rhodes Scholar. Even his opponents admit he was a smart man and a shrewd politician.
00:50:14
Speaker
He left office with a high approval rating, even though he was impeached. He was smart enough to bring in Dick Morris, a very shrewd political analyst, to consult with him. And he was smart enough to listen to Morris. And he was able to get reelected because of Morris. So we're talking about a smart man here. If I wanted to discuss politics, I would love to talk to him. However, everybody knows that Bill Clinton is a serial abuser of women.
00:50:44
Speaker
This is no secret. He got sued by a lot of women. He had women come out and say on video that he raped them with specificity on this date at this place. So if I had a daughter or a sister, I would say to them, don't go out with Bill Clinton. See? That's a different thing. It's a different axis. Now, I love to listen to him talk about
00:51:14
Speaker
politics and government. The man is smart. If you watch him, he'll get a question. He really thinks about it. And he gives you an insightful answer.
00:51:28
Speaker
You know, it's not like you ask Biden a question, he goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You see, you get anything insightful from him. The best you're going to get is what he was told to say. They're both from the same political party. You see, this has nothing new in politics. Different guy. So, you know, there are just some people who are good at some things and other people good at other things.
00:51:55
Speaker
If I wanted a consultant about politics, I would love to talk to Bill Clinton. But I'm not going to take dating advice from him, because he obviously has something wrong with him, because you can see the way he treats
Septemex in Romantic Relationships
00:52:08
Speaker
women. It's not normal. And I don't mean to knock the guy, but everybody knows this already. OK? So this is true for most people.
00:52:20
Speaker
And most people, like if you look at Jimmy Page, Jimmy Page was a genius. If you look at the songs he wrote, he produced all their records, he selected those three musicians himself. We're talking about a brilliant guy. I saw him play Madison Square Garden for 20 minutes by himself, no band. Think about that. It was awesome. You have to be a genius to do that. The man was a heroin addict.
00:52:51
Speaker
All right, again, I don't mean to criticize him. This is all known. But am I going to take advice from him about whether or not I should use drugs? No, I'm not going to take his advice. But about music, everything he says about music I want to hear. He's very insightful in that area. So that's the way people are.
00:53:16
Speaker
So let me give you an example. Let's say you have a couple that's talking about getting married. Wouldn't it be smart for that guy to know why this woman wants to marry him?
00:53:25
Speaker
I mean, wouldn't that make sense? Right? So let's say he knows her. He's been going out with her for two years. He thinks about it. He says, yeah, I can see she wants mommy because she loves me. That's a good reason to get married. He says, great, let's get a license. But maybe he looks at the scale and he says, you know, now that I look at this, I can see she's at level four. Level four is money motivated.
00:53:48
Speaker
She wants to marry me because I drive a maserati. I have a 60-foot yacht. I fly my own Learjet. I live in a $10 million condo. That's a different motivation. Now, he might say, I don't want to marry a gold digger. I want to marry somebody who loves me and break off with her. And don't think he'll be upset about that. He will not. He'll be relieved. Boy, am I glad I got out of that.
00:54:15
Speaker
Right? Now, wait a minute. I'm not saying that's true for everybody because, you know, there's a lot of rich, unattractive, elderly guys with young, beautiful wives. How does that work? Right? So you have this 55-year-old guy who's 50 pounds overweight, never was good-looking even when he was young. Right? He's got $50 million in the bank. So he meets Miss Texas, who's 23. Right? They get married.
00:54:43
Speaker
The girl gets a diamond ring, a pearl necklace, a fur coat, a Corvette, and a credit card. So she's happy. The guy's happy because he has a 23-year-old wife. You see? So for him, he doesn't care if she's a gold digger. Oh, you want $10,000 to go to Paris for Easter? Great. Here's 10 grand. Have a good time. See?
00:55:07
Speaker
So for him, it works. So this is all very personal. I never tell anybody what to do about these things. I just get them to see what's there. Some girl will say, you know, I can see on the scale of sexuality. I'm at level three. He's at level four. OK, I'm going to help him move up to level three.
00:55:31
Speaker
See, she could get him to look at it. And I'm not saying she should tell him. Look at it himself. And if he's honest with herself, I say, yeah, I see him. I'm on level four. Okay, well, let's move you up to level three and then we'll have a better relationship. But let's say she spots that he's at level five. She might say, I'm done with this guy. I don't want to mess with this. Even if I get him to move up a level, he's still a level below me. We're done. Goodbye. Here's your ring back.
00:56:00
Speaker
Either way, she's going to be happy because it's the truth. And the truth makes people happy. That's why therapy works. The guy gets in therapy and he says, you know, now I can see what really went on between my dad, you know? Maybe it's not a pretty picture, but it's the truth. And so he's relieved. See, he understands.
00:56:23
Speaker
So this is essentially the same type of thing. Only all you need to do it is the bottom, because I'm giving you the yardsticks. I'm giving you 35 yardsticks. I may say something else. Some of these are general scales, and some of these are specific scales. And what that means is, in a general scale, you find your level, and you're done. On a specific scale, it's context-driven. So for example, the scale of motivation.
00:56:53
Speaker
You could say, what is my motivation toward my wife? What is my motivation toward my son? What is my motivation toward my boss? What is my motivation toward my next door neighbor? Et cetera, et cetera. You could use this hundreds of ways. And then you can reverse the vector and say, what is my father's motivation toward me? What is my mother's motivation toward me? What is my girlfriend's motivation? You see, you're doing the opposite. So you could take this one scale and do a complete analysis of all the motivations of all people in your life, both ways.
00:57:22
Speaker
and be greatly clarified as to, okay, now I understand. This is why when I say this, he doesn't like it. But when I say that, he does like it. Tell me, he's got a different motivation. So this is really helpful in dealing with people. It's good in getting rid of the people who are down the scale who are going to hurt you if you get involved.
00:57:47
Speaker
And it's good in finding the upscale people who you want around you. And again, it could be the same person. Let me tell you what I mean. Let's say you have a car dealership and you need a new salesman. So you bring some guy in, you're talking to him, and you can hear in what he says that he's money motivated. That's what you want.
00:58:07
Speaker
You want this guy out there selling your cars. That's why you're hiring him. He gets a cut from everything he sells. He's going to be out there pitching because he's a money motivated person.
Septemex in Business Environments
00:58:18
Speaker
That's completely different from the guy who's saying, I don't want to marry a gold digger because she's money motivated. You see, maybe the same guy owns a car dealership and he hires a salesman who's money motivated. Different context, same level. So this is very personal and that's how you use it. So in a few brief ways, how do you think he's going to get
00:58:48
Speaker
apply to business, or maybe a person who wants to go more into science, or maybe scholarly academic ventures. Just for the people out there that might be interested. OK, well, this is analysis of human phenomena. It's not about hard science. I mean, look, if you're trying to
00:59:17
Speaker
learn the theory of relativity, it's not going to help you. It's got nothing to do with it. That's clients. That's hard science. That's not what this is about. But if you're trying to understand, why doesn't my boss like me? Why doesn't my secretary like me? Why does my wife, one of the, you can figure that out with this book. That's what it's for. Why would my professor write me a proposal? Right.
00:59:45
Speaker
You're not going to figure out how to fix the engine in your car. It's not what it's about. There's a million books about those things. That's not what this is about. This is about people. Now, look, if you said to me, Jim, come to my house. I want to show you my garden. I'd say, OK, James. So I come over to your house, right? And I look at your garden, and I see you've got tulips, roses, forget-me-nots, hydrangeas, peonies, violets. Of course, I know flowers.
01:00:13
Speaker
Right? If you bring some five-year-old kid in that little button, he's going to see the same thing. He's not going to say that. He's going to say, oh, these are pretty and they smell nice. That's all he knows. Now, most people are like that little kid when it comes to people. But I don't know what they're looking at. That's why
01:00:36
Speaker
37% of the German voters voted for the Nazis in 1932. They didn't realize what they were seeing. They didn't understand what they were looking at. If they had my book, they'd say, wait a minute. This guy is destructive. I don't want to vote for this guy. You see, it would have helped them. And to be very specific, when Obama was running for president, most of us had no idea who he was.
01:01:04
Speaker
Because he'd only been in the Senate two years. He had this funny name. Who's this guy with his funny name running for president? So I said, well, I better find out. Because I'm going to vote, and I want to know who to vote for. So I conducted a septemic analysis of him. I listened to him. I observed him. And I was able to determine his basic purpose.
01:01:28
Speaker
But what could possibly be more important than knowing some invasive purpose? It's what the person is trying to do all the time. And so that informed me for how I will frame my mouth.
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:01:41
Speaker
So that's how you use this. Thank you. So this has been a very informative dinner. Now, if anyone wants to sort of look at these resources that
01:01:55
Speaker
You know, Jim has, it's Septomics.com, correct? Septimics. Septimics.com. Septimics.com. And again, please look at his website, look at his content, and please really focus on, you know, looking at this video, kind of reading his book, if you want to sort of get into this as well.
01:02:21
Speaker
I would like to thank you for being on the show. It really has been a pleasure. Are there any closing words you'd like to give to the audience? Yes, just one sentence. I just want to say that the data in this book are vital for every person and can help you to achieve your goals faster and easier by explaining what might otherwise seem to be inexplicable or random.
01:02:48
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you again, Jim. And I'll see you all next time. Thanks, James.