Transactionalism is a pragmatic philosophical approach to questions such as: what is the nature of reality; how we know and are known; and how we motivate, maintain, and satisfy our goals for health, money, career, relationships, and a multitude of conditions of life through mutually cooperative social exchange and ecologies. It involves the study and accurate thinking required to plan and utilize one's limited resources in the fundamental mechanics of social exchange or trans-action. To transact is learning to beat the odds or mitigate the common pitfalls involved with living a good and comfortable life by always factoring in the surrounding circumstances of people, places, things and the thinking behind any exchange from work to play.
In our complex, ever-changing society with its indifferent marketplace, we cannot thrive without requesting or inviting the help of others and offering help to those around us. To co-create a healthy exchange of value for all involved, we must understand and apply the fundamental mechanics of transaction. [This is not to be confused with the favor or advantage of quid pro quo.] Without cooperative exchange, we resist transacting to survive the unavoidable biological, societal, and environmental threats that can prevent us from comfort and ease in any of the multiple conditions of life we labor to maintain (cf. Hannah Arendt's philosophy of labor, work, and action).
In this philosophy, human interactions are best understood as a set of simple to complex transactions. A transaction is a reciprocal and co-constitutive cycle of moves (what to do) and phases (or implemented tactics) aimed at satisfying (or at learning to become fit) in the multiple and interlocking conditions of life including health, work, money, knowledge, education, career, ethics, and more. If we work ourselves to death or ignore accurate thinking about our relationships, without help those conditions of life will eventually threaten our health, career, and money, for example. We must transact to maintain multiple and unavoidable conditions of our lives.
A transactionalist approach demands an "un-fractured observation" of life as an organism that is influenced by and is influencing its environment or ecology. By considering the self as an organism inseparable from its environment, hyphenated as "organism-environment,"[1] we begin to recognize that any outcome is "determined by prior causes and articulated ends" not merely the intention or the end goal of an individual.[2] This philosophical approach has correlation to Hannah Arendt's notion of human being as "political animal" ("Zoon Politikon") that should attend to the "labor, work, and action" beyond merely articulating an aspiration or a goal.[2]
It is critical that an organism-environment keep in mind how "consequences and outcomes"[3] determine the satisfaction of any human endeavor. We must take into account that we, as a human being in transaction, are embedded in and constituted by not only our intentions, but simultaneously by the specific circumstances of our biology, our narratives in exchange, and the social situation that includes tangible resources like tools and settings, intangible resources like time and meaning, and the human resources of other people and their personalities and roles within a transaction or social exchange.
Beyond our conscious awareness, three aspects of experience — the observer, the process of observing, and the thing observed in a situation— are all "affected by whatever merits or defects [the organism or environment] may prove to have when it is judged".[4]
A transactionalist holds that all human acts, including learning,[5] are best understood as "entities" within a larger, often under-examined, transactional whole. The transactional whole is shaped by our health as an organism as well as the health of others (e.g., our biology as a living organisms), for example. Transactional competence is shaped by language and communication with others (e.g.,linguistic narratives). It is shaped and affected by one's fitness in satisfying an ethical exchange of business or education in certain conditions of life, such as reputation, politics (small and large), and ethics—how we treat one another or regulate our behavior and feelings.
Human satisfaction is shaped first and foremost by our body's state of wellness or disease, which is inescapably linked to the ecology, shared and/or invented norms and values, and the fitness of our ability to understand the mechanics of trans-acting. We must make real the conditions and accept the consequences of what it takes to live a satisfying life in an ever-changing body and world.[6]
Transactionalism functions as a means of "controlled inquiry" into the complex nature and interactions of daily life.[6]
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