The need for this framework was not primarily intellectual. Over twenty-five years I watched a pattern accumulate that my existing understanding of the world could not explain. Clear misrepresentations by public and private figures. Institutional behaviors that the institutions' own stated values made incomprehensible. The interesting thing was that almost no one around me seemed nearly as concerned as I was, and eventually I understood that seeking other people's approval for my thinking was going to make it impossible to follow the thinking where it led.
I found a therapist I thought might be open to the kind of deeper questioning I was doing, and over several years those conversations gave me space to follow the thread. I came with a specific goal: alignment. I wanted my feelings and my thinking to be in enough harmony that I was not constantly at war with myself. I had a strong suspicion that the misalignment was structural, that it was the kind of thing that could actually be worked on.
That suspicion turned out to be correct. The framework in this book is what I found while working on it.