Category: Buddhism

Being normal is boring?

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An interesting Swedish study (described here: Creativity ‘closely entwined with mental illness’) found not that creative people have higher incidences of mental illness, but rather that they are more likely to be related to someone with mental illness.

As a Buddhist, I am inclined to think most people are deluded, crazy if you will. From my practice of FIML, I am certain that most people suffer significant interpersonal stress due to ambiguities in language/communication that are rarely if ever dealt with in a satisfactory manner.

Repost: More thoughts on “Empathy”

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Edit: We are moving, vacationing, very busy right now, so we have less time to write new posts. Please look through our archives for more posts about FIML and Buddhism. Thanks. ABN

It seems that many individuals who self-describe as “empathetic” think of empathy as a talent they have for “reading people”, or knowing what others are thinking without having to ask. I think this is a huge mistake that can actually lead such people to have less empathy over time. To me it seems much more appropriate to think of empathy not as a talent one possesses but as a desire to understand other people. If we think of it this way then the ever-problematic “I know” becomes “I want to know.”

If empathy is conceived as an interest or desire, it is more likely to be developed and pursued. If, however, it is conceived as a static quality or talent, it will be taken for granted, misapplied, and probably warped into just another form of hubris.

Continue reading…

Repost: The human operating system

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Traditional human operating systems include a standardized language, standardized semiotics, and a “personality,” which is generally understood to be a measure of how the individual has adapted to the standardized language and semiotics of their time-period.

Standardized in this context means that the language the individual uses is some version of a recognizable dialect, while their semiotics is some version of a recognizable subculture, which may include such elements as clothing styles, beliefs, goals, expectations, education, mannerisms, and so on.

Continue reading…

How to evaluate something you don’t know

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A fascinating post by Robin Hanson—We Add Near, Average Far—describes some of the difficulty of presenting an idea like FIML to an Internet audience.

The problem is lots of detail and many bits of evidence make it difficult for people to evaluate the overall worth of a complex idea because people tend to evaluate information of that type by averaging the data rather than adding it up.

Should we just say that FIML will make you and your partner smarter and happier? Maybe we should when discussing it online, though of course, we won’t do that.

In person, we have found people quite receptive, but that is probably due to the same effect—in person we focus on one or two results of FIML practice and we only do that if people show interest.

I think Buddhism probably has a similar problem getting it’s message across through books or film. You really have to go to a temple or spend time with people who understand the Dharma to fully comprehend Buddhism as a way of thinking or living. This is why Buddhism is called a “mind-to-mind” teaching.

Up close and personal, most of us realize that we live in a very complex world and that our capacities for understanding our conditions cannot be taken for granted. But when it comes to learning how to hone or augment our skills for dealing with speech and symbolic communication, we tend to look for simple answers, or abstract ones, that do not include the kinds of detail we must pay attention to. Broad extrinsic theories that provide a general picture without essential detail—and these are everywhere in psychology, religion, sociology, the humanities—simply cannot do for you what a technique like FIML can because FIML is entirely based on the actual data of your actual life, and there is a great deal of that.

I do understand why it is hard to see this. At the same time, I wonder why it is so obvious in the physical sciences and engineering that we can’t do anything properly if we don’t make sure of our data.

Why should the humanities be different? We simply cannot communicate well or understand ourselves well without good data. FIML provides good data.

How to observe the semiotics that form the basis of your consciousness

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A few days ago, I posted the essay, How semiotics can help us understand ourselves.

Today I want to discuss how you can grasp the semiotics that form the basis of your consciousness.

I am sure you already understand a good deal about yourself, but my guess is your understanding is probably in the form of a group of abstractions, such as—“my personality is thus-and-so”; “since I had this sort of childhood/education/etc., I am now outgoing/fearful/frugal/etc.”; “I believe in personal responsibility/behavior/etc.”; “my mom was a religious nut so I am an atheist, etc.”

In the post cited above, we used the terms signaling system and semiotics more or less interchangeably. A signaling system emphasizes what the message is and how it is sent, while semiotics emphasizes how the message is interpreted.

If we think of our minds as being signaling systems that are constantly referring to whatever semiotics we interpret as “true” or “real,” we can get a very good idea of how they function in the moment by observing what they are referring to in “the moment” (1-10 seconds, or so). By observing our minds closely, we can learn what semiotics cause us to have emotional responses or to interpret things in the ways we do. We can see how our mental/emotional signaling system builds up within us the appearance of a self with a biography, a personality, needs, fears, desires, goals, and so on.

If, for example, at some point in your life you learned and accepted as real a semiotic that you are stupid, you can spend hours, even decades, analyzing your feelings without getting any results. But if you can actually watch your mind as it signals to itself the semiotic “I am stupid,” and if you can see while that is happening that the signal is a mistake, then your mind will tend to stop sending you that signal.

If you can repeat that experience a few times—that is, catch that same mistake a few times—your mind will almost certainly stop wasting its resources thinking you are stupid. It will do this almost effortlessly because the mind is efficient and won’t waste time doing something it knows is a mistake.

So how do you do that, how do you catch the mistakes? You probably have already tried to catch them through introspection, reading, or discussing them with friends with less than satisfying results.

And what’s even harder to do is catch mistakes that you are not even aware of. How do you catch them?

I don’t think you can do it all by yourself. And I don’t think you can make satisfying progress by discussing these matters even with very wise friends. You can’t do it yourself because you can’t see yourself, and you can’t do it through long discussions because the signalling system works too quickly for that.

If you don’t cut in quickly and observe what it is doing, you won’t be able to change it easily.

Here is a way to look at that. Have you ever had a clock or mirror on the wall that was removed; maybe the mirror fell or the clock broke. At some point, the object that you had been used to seeing for years was gone. For some time after that, you probably turned unconsciously more than a few times to look at the now absent mirror or clock. That gives a strange feeling because at moments like that we see how deeply unconscious signs (the clock or mirror) affect our sense of who we are.

After a while we get used to the bare wall, but the lesson in how deeply signs operate within us should be clear. The other lesson of how we can indeed change our reference or expectation from a wall with a clock or mirror to a wall without either should also be clear.

At first, the mind is surprised, but after a while, it accepts that there is no clock on the wall with little fuss.

When two people do FIML practice, they help each other remove broken clocks and mirrors from the walls of their minds. FIML strongly emphasizes catching the signal and the semiotic it is referring to as quickly as you can. If partners can isolate their signals quickly, they will find that they are dealing with very small and discrete signs that very, very often are not true.

Normal people live in vague worlds where they grope toward each other like ghosts in the fog. How can we understand each other or ourselves if we do not pay attention to the small signals that are, arguably, the most important units of interpersonal communication?

And how can you pay attention to them if you don’t catch them quickly in the moment? If you try to understand yourself through long explanations and stories, you will only be understanding the underlying semiotic library that your moment-by-moment signals are referring to. If you catch those small signals as they happen in the moment, though, you will come to understand how and why that library is being accessed and how that affects you.

When your partner shows you that one of your signals was wrong and that it was referring to a part of the library that had no proper bearing on that moment, and when they show you that again, and again, that particular signal will stop firing. And there is a very good chance your library will change as well. It will change you deeply to see that.

How semiotics can help us understand ourselves

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Why are people greedy?

Besides the usual answers, a succinct and very useful answer to this question is that greed is part of a semiotic system, a signalling system. Having a lot of money lets people buy good things—houses, cars, clothes, memberships, etc.—and these things send a basic signal to other people that is easy to understand. If you have a nice house, car, and good clothes people will tend to see you as being reliable, “normal,” familiar, worth knowing.

Why do people hate?

People hate those who do not accept their semiotic system. If someone is sending most of the same signals as you are, there is no way you will hate them unless they make you jealous, in which case they are probably just signalling better than you. If someone harms you, thus earning your ire, if not hate, it is often due to their jealousy.

Why do people have egos?

We need to signal to others. To communicate we must send a coherent semiotic package to the people we know. This need to send a neat package forms the basis of our ego, our biographical-actorial “self.” Depending on conditions, we internalize those standards that we think exemplify what we want others to think of us. Of course, the ego always gets mixed up with greed, hate and/or pride to make the picture more complex. But if you look at the signalling systems—the semiotics—much of it can be teased apart.

Why do people have personalities?

Or do we? “Personality traits” can be described in much the same way as we described the ego above. Sometimes people’s personalities seem to me to be something they have imagined, a standard they have adopted like an astrological sign or a pumped-up allegiance to a fantasized ethnic or religious “identity.”

What is “identity”?

It’s a semiotic system, often a system we have consciously chosen for ourselves. Identity compliments ego and personality, allowing the individual to take on ready-made feelings, a history, customs, and behaviors that send powerful signals to other people. When many people identify with the same symbols, they often gain political power; this is “identity politics.” Identity signals to others and to ourselves that we belong to something, are part of something. Identities are powerful group signals and they often can become violent or aggressive.

What is suspicion?

Suspicion is fundamentally not being sure what someone means. Since we all know how hard it is to know what others mean, it is no wonder that there is so much suspicion in the world.

You can go one and on like this. Many human behaviors and ways of “understanding” ourselves and others can be neatly analyzed as semiotic systems, signalling systems, that have recognizable signs and symbols that are often surprisingly simple.

Look around you—everything is signalling. Insects in the trees, hormones in your blood, road signs, clothing, and on and on. The sun signals the earth with gravity.

Human beings are complex signalling systems. To communicate with each other, we streamline and make static most of our signals. This is good and necessary in many situations, but it is not you.

In many ways, we can say that delusion, as defined by the Buddha, means to believe that a signalling system is completely “real,” that it is all that there is. Liberation from delusion begins with understanding how semiotics—signs, symbols, signals, and their meanings—actually work in our minds.

Consciousness, Big Data, and FIML

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Modern neuroscience does not see humans as having a discrete consciousness located in a specific part of the brain. Rather, as Michael S. Gazzaniga says:

The view in neuroscience today is that consciousness does not constitute a single, generalized process. It involves a multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes, the products of which are integrated by the interpreter module. (Source)

Computer and Big Data-driven sociology sees something similar. According to Alex Pentland:

While it may be useful to reason about the averages, social phenomena are really made up of millions of small transactions between individuals. There are patterns in those individual transactions that are not just averages, they’re the things that are responsible for the flash crash and the Arab spring. You need to get down into these new patterns, these micro-patterns, because they don’t just average out to the classical way of understanding society. We’re entering a new era of social physics, where it’s the details of all the particles—the you and me—that actually determine the outcome.  (Source)

Buddhists may recognize in these insights close similarities to core teachings of the Buddha—that we do not have a self; that all things arise out of complex conditions that are impermanent and changeable; that the lion’s share of “reality” for any individual lies in being attentive to the moment.

Notice how similar Pentland’s insights are to Gazzaniga’s—the whole, or the common generalities (of society), can be far better understood if we can account for the details that comprise them. Is an individual mind a fractal of society? Do these complex systems—societies and minds—both use similar organizational processes?

I am not completely sure how to answer those questions, but I am certain that most people are using similar sorts of “average” or general semiotics to communicate and think about both minds and societies. If we stick with general averages, we won’t see very much. Class, self, markets, personalities don’t give us information as sophisticated as the detailed analyses proposed by Gazzaniga and Pentland.

Well then, how can individuals cognize Gazzaniga’s “multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes” in their minds? And how can they understand how “the products” of those processes are actually “integrated” into a functional “interpreter module”?

And if individuals can cognize the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter,” how will they understand traditional psychological analyses of the self, personality, identity, biography, behavior?

I would maintain that our understanding of what it is to be a human will change deeply if we can learn to observe with reliable clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” That is, we will arrive at a completely new understanding of being that will replace the “self” that truly does not exist in the ways most societies (and people) understand it.

FIML practice shows partners how to observe with great clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” Once these process are observed in detail and for a long enough period of time, partners will realize that it is no longer necessary to understand themselves in the “average” terms of self, personality, identity, biography, behavior, and so on.

Partners will come to understand that these terms denote only a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is. Most psychology is largely a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is.

We see this in Gazzaniga and Pentland’s findings that are derived from complex analyses of what is actually happening in the brain or in the multitude of real transactions that actually comprise a society. We can also see very similar insights in the Buddha’s teachings.

It is my contention that FIML practice will show partners the same things—that their actual minds and actual interactions are much more complex (and interesting) than the general semiotic averages we normally use to understand them.

From a Buddhist point of view, when we “liberate” ourselves from “attachment” to “delusive” semiotic generalities and averages and are truly “mindful” of the “thusness” of the ways our minds actually work, we will free ourselves from “suffering,” from the “ignorance” that characterizes the First Noble Truth.

What conversation are we in?

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In a large sense—macrocosmically—are we engaged in a Buddhist conversation? In a semiotic one? A psychological one? An anthropological one? An uncategorizable, open, Internet one?

In a small sense—microcosmically—we would do well to ask ourselves this question every time we interact with anyone. Points to consider in these cases are: how much time do we have; what factors are we considering and how are we weighing them; are we understanding each other well; why are we talking at all, and so on?

The URL of this site is americanbuddhist.net, so I suppose we are engaging in a Buddhist conversation. With American characteristics, whatever that means.

We’ve had this site for a few years, and in the early days got so many comments about how there is no such thing as “American Buddhism” that I felt the need to define it as a largely geographical term.

Most “modern Buddhists” living outside of traditional Buddhist areas would probably agree that Buddhism itself is really a conversation, an ongoing research project, a way of actively thinking, a participatory tradition that is not written in stone and never has been written in stone.

This is surely the position of American Buddhist Net and I am all but certain the Buddha himself would agree with us. Maybe he would not agree with the specifics of everything we say, but he would surely support our wish to think for ourselves and apply the Dharma to the world and lives we are now living.

So, I suppose this is largely a Buddhist-oriented, open Internet conversation that often brings up semiotics and, to a lesser degree, psychology and anthropology. The more I think about semiotics, the more I see it as a very valuable modern angle on Buddhism. More on that in a moment.

The more I think about Buddhism and semiotics, the less I seem to think about psychology. For example, I hardly use the term personality anymore because it just doesn’t say much from either a Buddhist or a semiotic point of view. In the first place, from a Buddhist point of view, anything we might call personality is always changing; it’s impermanent, empty, transformable. True, Buddhism does recognize “persistent traits,” but this term is not used often and it is rarely, if ever, used to define someone in the way our current sense of personality defines people.

FIML practice will show partners fairly quickly how much of their thinking about each other is based on unsupportable notions concerning personalities and what they are and how they function.

From a semiotic point of view, especially one informed by Buddhism, we can see much the same thing—as soon as you try to say what someone’s personality is, you will generate a new sign that needs further analysis, and so on ad infinitum. The fact that we will be faced with an “infinite interpretation,” an “infinite continuum,” where we will never be able to find an “absolute individual” very much recalls Buddhist thinking on emptiness.

I first encountered the idea that semiotics shows us that there are no “absolute individuals” in Umberto Eco’s excellent The Limits of Interpretation, which I recommend.

In place of personality, I now see individuals as more or less manifesting cultural or anthropological characteristics which they communicate as semiotic signs, symbols, and “meanings.”

When you talk to close friends or partners, you have to do a good job at microcosmic, real-time, semiotic analysis. If you don’t, you will make many mistakes and soon come to feel estranged from your friends and/or be forced to relate to them in static ways. If you don’t do FIML or something very much like it, you will be all but forced to cling to static semiotics. FIML could be defined as “microcosmic, real-time, semiotic analysis” between friends.

So far, in my readings on semiotics, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, or Buddhism, I have not seen anything that asks people to engage in “microcosmic, real-time, semiotic analyses” with each other. Nothing like FIML.

Maybe there is something, but I haven’t seen it. That’s the reason I started this post the way I did. What kind of conversation are we having? Is it possible for one person to read that widely in so many subjects? I don’t think it is. I probably know more about Buddhism, or have read more widely and thought more about it, than the other subjects. So, for me, this conversation is centered in Buddhism more than the other subjects. I like the way Buddhism is grounded in morality, so that’s another reason.

Semioticians tend to talk a lot about philosophy and literature, while Buddhism centers us more in the lives we are living as we perceive them, however fallibly.

Here are a few terms from semiotics that will be helpful to Buddhists: fallibilism, synechism, vaugeness or indeterminacy.

Fallibilism is the philosophical principle that human beings could be wrong about their beliefs, expectations, or their understanding of the world.

Synechism holds that the essential feature in philosophic speculation is continuity. It denies that all is merely ideas, likewise that all is merely matter, and mind-matter dualism. To my understanding, synechism denies in principle the “absolute individual,” or in Buddhist terms the “own being” of anything, which is another way of saying all things are empty.

Vagueness or indeterminacy, especially with regard to speech acts, mean that we can never be completely certain of what others mean or what we are hearing.

Semiotics is at the center of some other modern major innovations in how we think, such a deconstructionism, relative frames theory, and the vague, propositional indeterminacy that underlies multiculturalism. I often wonder how much semioticians and modern philosophers have been influenced by Buddhist ideas.

Taken together, the study of semiotics and Buddhism deeply changes the way we see the world and live our lives. They affect how we understand what it is to be human, how we communicate, and what we communicate. Buddhism is an excellent foundation for semiotics, while semiotics can extend Buddhist concepts into a more detailed, modern idiom.

How social rejection can help those who think independently

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This article is interesting: Social Rejection Can Inhibit Cognitive Ability Or Fuel Imaginative Thinking.

Lead author of the paper, Sharon Kim says:

“For people who already feel separate from the crowd, social rejection can be a form of validation.Rejection confirms for independent people what they already feel about themselves, that they’re not like others. For such people, that distinction is a positive one leading them to greater creativity.” (Source in above link)

The actual paper can be found here: Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought?

In the Buddhist tradition, there is the idea that “negative conditions” can inspire us to move forward. For people who tend to think independently, having  a few doors slam can be a good thing.

Roger Williams

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Roger Williams (c. 1603—1683) was an English Protestant theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence. He was a student of Native American languages and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans. Williams was arguably the very first abolitionist in North America, having organized the first attempt to ban slavery in any of the original thirteen colonies. (Source)

This Wikipedia article is worth reading. Williams was a strong and early advocate of freedom of religion and separation of church and state. His ideas probably influenced the principals expressed in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Buddhists, and others, would do well to reflect on the great importance of the First Amendment, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

“Religion” means something different today than it did during Williams’ life, but Williams’ underlying belief that each individual must be free to follow their own religious convictions is as fundamentally important today as was back then.

American Buddhists obviously benefit from these protections, but even hard atheists and those who dislike all religions should ponder the profound importance of the individual right to believe what you want and to profess your beliefs without interference from the state.

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

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…the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates. (Source)

This declaration was made on July 7, 2012.

Here is a report on the declaration: Scientists Finally Conclude Nonhuman Animals Are Conscious Beings.

Suñña Sutta: Empty

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Then Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?”

“Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ananda, that the world is empty. And what is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self? The eye is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Forms… Eye-consciousness… Eye-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.

“The ear is empty…

“The nose is empty…

“The tongue is empty…

“The body is empty…

“The intellect is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Ideas… Intellect-consciousness… Intellect-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Thus it is said that the world is empty.”
________________________

Provenance:
©1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Transcribed from a file provided by the translator.
This Access to Insight edition is ©1997–2012.
Terms of use: You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. (Source)

Retail semiotics

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This short interview is worth reading: ‘What About Tutoring Instead of Pills?’

A quote:

Kagan: I share your unhappiness. But that is the history of humanity: Those in authority believe they’re doing the right thing, and they harm those who have no power.

Semiotics—what we take to have meaning and how we perceive it symbolically—is generally driven by “those in authority.” They may be academics, doctors, media personalities, corporations, politicians, and so on.

We structure our understanding of ourselves and the world around us based on the semiotics we have accepted. Ordinary people accept, almost always unconsciously, “retail semiotics” that are fashioned, marketed, and sold by “those in authority.”

For example, what has happened to our retail understanding of child development and the treatment of mental illness is the semiotics of these categories is dominated by Big Pharma, which pushes expensive drug treatments while at the same time funding research which has been compromised by that funding.

You can see similar retail-wholesale arrangements in many other areas in any society in the world.

Rather than thinking of people as developing psychologically, it can be very helpful to think of them as developing linguistically, emotionally, and semiotically.

Semiotics is not the same as linguistics, but it does develop in rough parallel to linguistics. As our capacities for language mature, so also does our understanding of meaning and the signs and symbols that bear meaning.

If we decide on a practical career and have few other interests, our understanding of the semiotics of other fields (art, sociology, Buddhism, etc.) will probably suffer. If we are raising a child who is doing poorly in school, we may very well just follow along with what is recommended by “experts” who are themselves retail consumers of the “child development semiotic.”

If those “experts”—a pediatrician, say, and a couple of teachers—claim our child “needs” drugs to perform well in school, we will probably accept what they say with few reservations.

It is very difficult not to do this in many areas of our lives.

The Buddha is famous for saying we should not blindly believe him or anyone else but that we should discover for ourselves what is true. In modern terms, this can be restated to mean be careful of retail semiotics, be skeptical of them and where they originate, look to the evidence and who is providing it.

As Kagan says, if your kid is having trouble in school “…what about tutoring instead of pills?”

________________

Edit: The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question is best described as raw semiotics. That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question. This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on. When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness and gives rise to it. Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do. It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only. The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself. In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy. Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity.