Exosocial Expansion

This is the movement the whole framework is organized around, and the definition names both its mechanism and its objects. The mechanism is the continual establishment of euphoric conduits, so expansion is not a feeling of openness but the building of channels, and it is continual rather than episodic. The objects are wide and the etcetera is doing real work, since relationships, discovery, creation and spirituality are examples of primary anima sources rather than an exhaustive list. Marsh treats the drive as physical. The experience of life is an opposition of two forces, one following the egalitarian, exosocial, second law of thermodynamics and one seeking to create and preserve order, which is endosocial power, and the drive to interact is the first of these. That places expansion alongside entropy rather than alongside ambition, which is why it needs no motivating and only obstruction can stop it. Obstruction is catalogued precisely. Three social coercions operate against expansion: association of endogroup guilt with it, association of negative image status with it and restriction of opportunities. Alongside them sit violations of autonomy and dignity working to the same end, including the manufacture and enforcement of busywork, attacks on health, attacks on the shared environment and the creation of interpersonal conflict. What supports expansion is correspondingly small and daily, since teaching people to keep their own guilt on their own plate and to acknowledge the gifts of others with gratitude is what the movement is made of.

Humanistic psychology has the closest positive counterparts, with Maslow's self-actualization and Carl Rogers' actualizing tendency both positing an innate drive towards growth that only obstruction prevents. Self-determination theory grounds a similar claim empirically in autonomy, competence and relatedness. Peter Singer's expanding circle describes a widening of moral concern rather than of self. Marsh's version differs by specifying what expands and by what means, since her self grows by acquiring channels to energy sources rather than by realizing a potential, which makes the movement measurable in principle and locates every failure outside the person rather than in an unmet need.