Do FIML practice successfully 25 times and you will understand how wrong the notion of micro-aggression is. Not only wrong but also destructive to self and other. Rather than have us probe own minds, micro-aggression asks us to assert a false interpretation of someone else’s mind. From a Buddhist point of view, micro-aggression turns us 180 degrees away from wisdom and enlightenment.
Category: Buddhism
A crucial mistake in Jordan Peterson’s philosophy
A crucial mistake in Jordan Peterson’s philosophy is his oft repeated false dichotomy between identity politics and individualism. He never considers the third option of a polity of individuals wisely aware of the danger of identity politics and able to craft policies to guard against it.
From a Buddhist point of view, identity politics is akin to a deluded self drunk on greed, anger, pride, and ignorance. Wisdom always counsels against passionate egotism, whether of individuals or groups. This is not complicated. It’s not hard to see this.
Peterson has presented this false dichotomy many times. The video below is an excellent example. It might also be an example of high-flying rhetoric sometimes bearing more weight than it can support.
Peterson is a great speaker. I support him and wish him the best. I hope he fully recovers from his benzodiazepine illness and look forward to more of his work.
Scant physical evidence for Big Five personality traits
Collectively, these results indicate that if there are associations between the Big Five personality traits and brain structure, they are likely of very small effect size and will require very large samples for reliable detection. (Little evidence for associations between the Big Five personality traits and variability in brain gray or white matter)
I like Buddhist reasoning on the mind better. Are you thoughts wholesome? Are they conducive to enlightenment? Are your behaviors wise and kind? Are you trustworthy? Do you trust yourself?
Be mindful of how your mind works as much as you can. Personality is impermanent, subject to change. Do your best.
Doctor Simone explains herself and why she is being censored and now fired
Fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy
The third wave of cognitive behavior therapy is a general term for a group of psychotherapies that arose in the 1980s, inspired by acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
To me, third wave therapies seem more realistic than older therapies because they accept emotions as they are and pay close attention to how they function in the moment.
The link above is well-worth reading. The frames of these therapies are also well-worth considering.
FIML, which I am calling a “fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy,” differs from third wave therapies in that FIML does not use a professional therapist. Instead, partners become their own therapists.
Moreover, how FIML partners frame their psychologies or generalize their behaviors is entirely up to them. Similarly, their psychological goals and definitions are entirely in their own hands.
At its most basic, FIML “removes wrong interpretations of interpersonal signs and symbols from the brain’s semiotic networks.”
This process of removal, in turn, shows partners how their minds function in real-time real-world situations. And this in turn provides the tools and perspectives to reorganize their psychologies in whichever ways they like.
FIML is based on semiotics because semiotics are specific and with practice can be clearly identified and understood. They give partners “solid ground” to stand on. Words, tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions are some of the major semiotics partners analyze.
Using real-world semiotics as an analytical basis frees FIML from predetermined frameworks about personality or what human psychology even is. With the FIML tool, partners are free to discover whatever they can about how their minds communicate interpersonally (and internally) and do whatever they like with that.
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The invented God argument
The invented God argument is similar to the simulation argument, but does not have to be earth-based or limited to historical sims.
Our universe is some 13.2 billion years old. Somewhere in that universe, maybe within our own galaxy, there likely is at least one civilization with technological capabilities that are many millions of years more advanced than ours.
A civilization of that type would be something like a Type V or beyond civilization. Their powers would be God-like. We may be part of their “world” or they might be us far in the future, able to reach back to us now.
In this sense, even a strong atheist is forced to admit that there may indeed be God, gods, higher realms, divine intervention, immortality, heavens, hells, reincarnation, karma, ghosts, visions, divine forgiveness, divine laughter, effective prayer, and so on.
The Buddhist tradition has six realms, billions of world-systems and Buddhas, Buddhas and bodhisattvas with “supernatural” powers, Dharma protectors, demons, rebirth, enlightenment, karma, and much more.
The usual way Buddhism is understood today by “educated” people is little if any of that stuff is true; it’s just the beliefs and superstitions of people of yore that have accreted to the tradition or that were used by the Buddha (who thought like us, of course) to make his points to “uneducated” audiences.
The invented God argument could also be called the invented Buddha argument or anything else that pushes the limits of our imaginations. I take this argument seriously and find it well-worth contemplating as doing that forces us to shift off the narrow seat of materialist/physicalist complacency and the fake sense of certainty that goes with it.
I don’t think we need to buy everything in every religious tradition from the past, but we can with little effort today see that the real state of our universe and our knowledge is complex and that we do not know its limits. Why wouldn’t having a pure mind, a developed moral sense, openness to visionary insight and higher realms be valuable skills?
One of the best Buddhist sayings, which I heard from Master Hsing Yun some years ago, is simply “make your mind bigger.” This saying can be applied to any problem, including the problem of unnecessarily narrowing our understanding of where we are and what is going on here.
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Interview With Bernardo Kastrup
The agony of speaking
words 351
My SO and I are doing some painting. Mostly it’s fun, but as we discuss colors and color combinations, it has become glaringly obvious that it can be extremely difficult to talk about what we want but easy to convey our ideas by showing an example of what we want.
I wanted to do something in brown. Words flew all over the room but got us no closer to mutual understanding, let alone agreement. We looked at color charts on the computer but couldn’t agree on what we meant by saturation, muted, lighter, or darker.
My SO, who is much better with color than I am, thought the meanings of those terms were obvious. “You’re overthinking this! You must know what lighter and darker mean!”
“Not when I consider luminescence or saturation, I don’t. I really don’t.”
Is a red-brown lighter or darker than a blue-brown? More or less saturated? I honestly was lost in the terminology and was driving my poor SO crazy.
After several days of this, at some point I noticed my wallet lying on the table. “This is what I mean,” I said. “I want a color like this.” The wallet was a well-worn, dark, leathery brown.
She immediately knew what I was talking about now. “What you want is a really dark brown… that’s almost a black.”
Excited, we went back to the color chart (which has 3,500 color variations) and looked into a different classification of browns. Low and behold, the darkest one available—Tarpley Brown—is exactly what I wanted.
So, I had something in my mind’s eye but failed repeatedly to convey it to my SO through the use of language. She tried to figure out what I meant but kept searching for a more woody sort of brown while becoming increasingly confused by my groping attempts at description.
From this, we can see how difficult it is to understand other people or even ourselves. Many important aspects of being human simply do not have clear examples in the world around us and are much more difficult to put into words than a color.
Very serious times right now, today, this week… Gordon Chang on China
To vent or not to vent?
Venting is a common concept in American English.
It is a metaphorical word connoting other metaphors with similar meanings: blowing off steam, getting something off your chest, getting something out, getting it out there, clearing the air, etc.
I think it would be much better if we greatly demoted these small metaphors and replaced them with plain speech, such as: I want to speak about something with you and hope you will listen to me and provide some feedback.
Speech is sacred. Speaking honestly to someone who listens honestly is always transformative. Our common metaphors for needing or wanting to speak with someone too often obscure the beauty and profound potential of these important speech acts.
Another distantly related point to this is all the deconstructing going on right now in American society.
What I want to say to you about this is simply: any technique used to deconstruct America can very easily be used against any society anywhere in the world during any period of time.
All groups can be deconstructed easily because all groups are fundamentally simple. They are lowest-common-denominator communication systems shared by their members.
A little deconstructing and intelligent analyzing can be good, but too much is destructive. It’s much easier to destroy something than build it. And building new or better things does not always mean destroying established things first; in fact that approach rarely works.
Must watch. Do not miss this interview
This may be the most important worldly message you have ever received.
Edit 7/1/20: This video provides good information about the origin of the virus in China and how the outbreak was covered up by the CCP: The Coverup of the Century.
Plants filter out green light to protect photosynthesis from “noise”
Plants are able to make photosynthesis more efficient by filtering out spectra of solar light that change most rapidly in their environments.
Protecting themselves from such “noisy” input allows them to obtain “quiet” outputs of energy.
This provides “…a unified theoretical basis for the experimentally observed wavelength dependence of light absorption in green plants, purple bacteria, and green sulfur bacteria.”
That quote is from the study: Quieting a noisy antenna reproduces photosynthetic light harvesting spectra.
Nathaniel Gabor, one of the authors of the paper, said of it: “Our model is the first hypothesis-driven explanation for why plants are green, and we give a roadmap to test the model through more detailed experiments.” (emphasis added)
This general principle—turning noisy inputs into quiet outputs—can probably be applied to many other systems, including human psychology. In this respect, many human behaviors could be viewed attempts to achieve quiet, steady, or consistent outputs by reducing noise.
FIML is a super efficient noise reducer.
Personality disorders and signaling
In my opinion, “personality disorders” are more easily understood as signaling problems.
All types of personality disorder involve dysfunctional signaling with other people. Signals are both sent and received in ways that result in suffering.
As currently defined, personality disorders “develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability.”
Thus, if there are no significant brain injuries or other biological problems, all personality disorders (PD) develop through experience.
This means that during childhood the PD sufferer has received many bad signals (and/or interpreted many signals badly) resulting in their failing to form a coherent well-functioning internal signaling system.
The way to fix this is work with the signals. And the best way to do this is FIML practice. A professional psychotherapist cannot possibly provide this level of treatment.
This brings me to a second point: is there anyone who would not benefit from improving their signaling?
Why do we view psychotherapy as treatment designed merely to make us look and feel “average”? Why don’t we instead work to optimize our psychologies every day?
The Buddha said we are all crazy. We are. We all need to work on our signaling—our personality disorders—all the time.
The distinctions between one PD and another and those who have PDs and those who don’t are vague. This is because all PD problems (absent significant biological deficits, which may include intelligence) are idiosyncratic varieties of signaling malfunctions.
If signaling is the core problem, it should follow that all acquired PD will be classifiable as some kind of signaling malfunction. And that is precisely what we see.
Narcissism is a too simple signaling system. Borderline is an unstable signaling system. Compulsive, passive aggressive, histrionic, avoidant, and so on all are variations of a poorly formed internal signaling system.
The way to study this is through interpersonal semiotics; that is interpersonal semiotic analysis of real-time, real-world communicative signs and symbols.
All people need to do this to optimize their psychologies (their internal signaling systems). Why would anyone not want to do this? Maybe not wanting to do this is the surest sign of PD there is.
The hardest part about doing FIML is finding a willing and able partner. To me, this shows how pervasive bad signaling is. Most people will do almost anything but examine their own signaling with the help of another person.
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Dangerous times, dangerous thoughts, dangerous acts
This fictional exercise appeared over three years ago but it rings even truer today. We are living in dangerous times. We’ve seen what China has done. We know what Antifa is doing. Here’s something else that might happen.
“Seven”.
The earpiece crackled in Jake’s ear from one of the handheld radios they were each tuned to. They’d picked up a couple of dozen surplused Motorola LE-only encrypted radios on eBay, and after a lot of work, Gene had programmed them all to use a normally unused simplex channel reserved for the authorities for tonight. All anyone else would hear was a brief bit of static with the factory encryption, but they still stuck to brevity codes.
Jake calmed himself. He knew the signs of buck fever, and he took a few moments to stretch his whole body, starting with his toes, and ending with his fingers. It wouldn’t be long now, and he didn’t want to be fighting adrenaline when the moment came.
The van he was in was non-descript. It was the twin of one belonging to a local business the next city over, and the plates on it would be back in the morning, with any luck at all. Inside was dark and quiet, but he could already hear the noise of the protesters as they moved down the main street, closing at the speed of a 6000-footed caterpillar, fueled by youthful exuberance, and a healthy amount of stupidity. Well, they were about to get a lot more education than what they’d gotten at U Cal, and he was happy to be a teaching assistant tonight.
He focused on the intersection, and checked over his gear one last time inside the darkened vehicle, as the sounds of yet another leftist temper tantrum grew louder by the moment. (Tomorrow)
American Buddhist Net 