Religions are concept-ularies, vocabularies, tools to speak about spiritual subjects. In this sense, almost all religions are good and say many of the same things.
I read a passage in Epictetus’ Discourses that closely touches Buddhist thinking (as a lot of Stoicism does). He said that friendships based on ‘appearances’ (Buddhist form) are always liable to disintegration. But friendships based on a will that is good and strong can be fully relied on. ‘Appearances’ in Epictetus means external markers like status, money, looks, tribal or familial relations, etc.
The Buddha said that it takes ‘long association’ with someone to fully know them. I am not aware of a Buddhist emphasis on ‘the will’ in the way Epictetus emphasizes that word, but Buddhism does encourage Right Views, Thoughts, Speech, and Action. And it does have a concept that all sentient beings are capable of responding to the Tathagata, being attracted to the Tathagata, the enlightened logos.
I like the word logos because it bridges many apparent gaps between religions. Buddhism is 2,500 years old. The Buddha never asked to be worshipped and asked that no images be made of him. He also asked that his words never be written down and especially not in Sanskrit.
He did not want the deep power of his enlightenment to become a narrow doctrine, a sacred text that would be treated as infallible even when no one remembered any longer what he had actually meant. Buddhism is self-defined as a mind-to-mind teaching, meaning a teacher or ‘good friend’ who explains the Dharma must be sure the explanation has fully penetrated the mind of the person being taught.
This is one reason it is impossible to really get Buddhism from reading alone, though reading is good. I had two very close ‘good friends‘ who basically taught me everything I know about the part of the Dharma that is conveyed through words and concepts.
I encourage anyone who has a Buddhist friend to talk with them as often as you can about the Dharma. So why did I put an image of the Buddha at the top of this post when I know I am not supposed to? Isn’t that a charming side of this beautiful ancient tradition? For many centuries, Buddhists have been unable to resist the urge to portray and honor our original teacher. ABN
…What if forward causality could somehow be reversed in time, allowing actions in the future to influence outcomes in the past? This mind-bending idea, known as retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance, but it is starting to gain real traction among physicists and philosophers, among other researchers, as a possible solution to some of the most intractable riddles underlying our reality.
Buddhist speculation: It has long seemed to me that sometimes (or maybe often, always) future life events have influenced events in the past. In Buddhist philosophy, time is cyclical. Since Buddhism is an always evolving and always deeply personal system of thought, there is no need to accept cyclical time if it does not comport well with other ideas important to you.
Time as it is generally conceived today means that the entire cosmos ‘disappears’ every moment only to ‘reappear’ in the next. In this view, time is not at all like a river since there is no river behind us and no river in front of us.
I like conceiving of the future as having a sort of ‘gravitational’ influence’ on the past, sometimes deeply particular in its details and sometimes (or always) more general. For example, are we heading toward WW3 because collectively we are the same fools we always have been or because WW3 has already happened in the future and no matter what we do it will occur?
Did what led you to Buddhist thought arise solely from past conditions or did some of it arise from what was then your future, your now current understanding of the Dharma? Maybe there is a mix of causation between past and future and something like WW3 is only probable but not definite. ABN
Partners seek the best data available to determine what is being said and/or how they are communicating with each other. Their communication becomes highly objective in the sense that each partner trusts the other’s description of what they said more than their own subjective/emotional impression of what they think they heard. Based on this data, partners are able to continuously upgrade their understandings of each other.
FIML uses an extrinsic formula—the rules of FIML practice—to make this happen, and in this it also resembles science. FIML has an objective, clearly stateable and testable method or procedure for attaining its results. FIML results are also objective in that great satisfaction and better communication are measurable. FIML can be falsified by having many partners do it and not get good results, and in this it is also scientific.
In some ways, though, FIML is turned 180 degrees away from science. This is so because FIML does not have any extrinsic belief or value system that requires submission of the intrinsic, individual, unique mind of either partner. Partners who do FIML can only look to themselves to free themselves from the constraints of extrinsic beliefs, values, semiotics, behaviors, ideas, concepts, and so on. (This does not mean abandon the extrinsic, but rather become free of the constraints of the extrinsic. FIML practice, by paying close attention to speech moments, will help partners do this because they will see precisely where the rubber of extrinsic values meets the road of their self expression and/or listening.)
The FIML method gives partners the tools they need to perceive what Buddhists call the thusness of their unique individualities. The thusness or suchness of being cannot be apprehended through extrinsic semiotics, but can only be experienced by the individual.
Science, in general, does not give us insight into our suchness. Yet FIML practice and Buddhist practice, by using methods that are similar to those of general science, can. FIML differs from science in that it does not make any claims about what is objectively true “out there.” But FIML does claim that partners will vastly improve their communication with each other, and following that vastly improve their understanding of their existence, the suchness of their unique being.
FIML may constitute an improvement on traditional Buddhist practices because FIML uses objective rules to unite two people in the pursuit of truthful communication. It is different from the traditional practice of one person pursuing “truth” alone in that FIML provides the means for each partner to constantly check his or her work against the other partner. An individual alone is easily subject to fantasy and illusion. FIML is also different from traditional group practices where a group is led by a master or guru. In these practices, the master may be subject to the limitations of solitary practice while the group may be misled by that. Additionally group members will have a very strong tendency to base their understanding on extrinsic semiotics provided by the master, not the true suchness of their individual being.
Atwo-year-old toddler flashes her toothy grin as she catches sight of her reflection in a mirror and watches as the image in front of her mimics her every move. Unbeknownst to her, she has passed a major developmental milestone called mirror self-recognition or MSR, which indicates an advanced level of cognitive capabilities in both human and non-human animals.
A new study shows that in addition to other non-human animals like dolphins, elephants and several great apes, fish can recognize themselves in mirror reflections and photographs. What’s more, they can even distinguish between photographs of their own images and that of their companions. Researchers studying the cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) have now added their findings to a growing body of evidence that points to fish having a sense of self, indicating a higher depth of awareness than previously known.
Mirror self-recognition has been used to study self-awareness and visual recognition in a wide range of human and non-human animals. Developed for primates in the 1970s, the test begins by allowing the individual to familiarize herself with her mirror image.
I have to admit I am tired of this world. All three Abrahamic religions and all, or most, of their sects are fighting over how to kill or save as many Palestinians as they can, many favor killing.
American and Western neocons are vying with other top players for control of the world. Gaza and Ukraine are stepping stones in that contest.
The low-mindedness and vulgarity of this, both the dramas and the ludicrous rationalizations, are unbearably self-limiting, inexorably destructive.
As individuals we have almost no say in any of it. Social media is a dead zone for thought, truth, decency. The best ideas or inquiries are shadow-banned into a silence worse than death. It’s the neocons doing that as well.
In the Abrahamic traditions there is actually a scriptural basis for genocide dating back some 3,000 years. In this crazy world, actual fighting and killing today in Gaza and Israel is actually based on those scriptures. Doesn’t that actually refute the whole religion, all three branches of it?
Christians run and hide from that conclusion because they have no other vocabulary or conceptual network to fall back on. Faith is good but not blind faith.
Too many voices I had respected are complacent, if not complicit, with the neocon slaughter. I am not surprised. I knew they would be.
Until the MIHOP raid on October 7, they had seemed to me to be maintaining an appearance of diplomacy, preserving their ability to speak to the public as best they could.
I viewed that as a kind of Buddhist upaya, a means to a worthy end.
But when the means are grotesquely disproportionate and violate all moral standards except the most severe, I can’t take it anymore. It’s definitely not a worthy end anymore.
In Ukraine, I read another 100,000 men have been killed over the past months in the obviously futile counteroffensive forced on them by neocons. That too is genocide.
Ukraine has been destroyed by neocons. Half the population has fled forever and many hundreds of thousands, especially young men, have been killed. The neocons provoked that war too and everyone with a brain knows it.
A recent scientific study has unveiled promising news for individuals recovering from alcohol abuse. Researchers discovered that the brains of those who abstained from alcohol for approximately 7.3 months exhibited significant improvements in brain structure, suggesting a remarkable potential for recovery. This new finding, published in the journal Alcohol, provides hope for people with alcohol use disorders and underscores the importance of sustained abstinence.
Alcohol abuse is a widespread concern globally, and its adverse effects on health are well-documented. Long-term alcohol consumption can lead to cognitive impairment and structural changes in the brain. Prior research has indicated that some brain regions may recover during abstinence from alcohol, but the extent and patterns of recovery have remained unclear. This uncertainty prompted scientists to embark on the current study, aiming to shed light on the brain’s remarkable capacity for self-healing during sobriety.
“There is very limited information in the alcohol use disorder field regarding how human brain structure recovers over longer-term abstinence after treatment,” said study author Timothy C. Durazzo, a clinical neuropsychologist at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. “Our study is the first to demonstrate significant recovery of cortical thickness in multiple regions in those seeking treatment for alcohol use disorder over approximately 6-7 months of abstinence after treatment.”
In a speech in Hebrew on October 28, Netanyahu justified the Israeli slaughter of civilians in Gaza with a biblical reference to Amalek.
You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we fight. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining the chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun, until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the October 73 War, and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy, and to guarantee our existence in this country.
In Netanyahu’s Holy Bible, God gives his chosen people Palestine, and the same God commands them to exterminate the Amalekites, an Arab people that stands in their way. Yahweh asks Moses to not only exterminate the Amalekites, but to “blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
It was left to Saul to finish them up: “kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” Yahweh instructs him (1Samuel 15:8). Because Saul spared the Amalekite king Agag, Yahweh withdrew the kingship from him and drove him mad: “I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders” (15:11). The holy prophet Samuel, who had a direct line of communication with Yahweh, had to butcher Agag himself (“hewed Agag in pieces,” in the Revised Standard Version). Yahweh then gave the kingship to David, who proved a more obedient exterminator, for example when he put the people of Rabba “under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:31).
I hope this essay will inspire Abrahamic readers to reflect on the actual words and meanings in the Old Testament. I respect all moral religious peoples of all faiths but am also aware that for many religion is a cult, sometimes a dangerous cult of Satanic violence. The ancient Greek, then Christian, and sometimes Jewish term that most unites the Abrahamic traditions with Buddhism is logos. If we see God as logos we can also see the Buddha as logos realized on earth and the Buddhist path a kind of worship or reverence for logos. ‘Theologically’, Buddhists are sentient beings who are attracted to the Tathagata-logos. It is their good karma to be drawn toward logos. Others are blind to logos and sometimes repulsed by it.
A core Buddhist teaching is clinging to words is dangerous. The Buddha prohibited writing his teachings down because he did not want them to turn into scriptures that would be worshipped without being understood. This is why Buddhism defines itself as a mind-to-mind teaching. Buddhists who understands the Dharma well enough transmit it mind-to-mind to others who want to learn it. Buddhists do not proselytize or believe others are lost for having different practices. Buddhists respect and support all traditions and practices that encourage wholesome, ethical thoughts and behaviors because they all lead to logos. ABN
A 17th-century Spanish nun is said to have appeared to members of the Jumano tribe, who lived in present-day Texas. The Lady in Blue was said to have the power of bilocation.
One of the most important figures in Texas’ religious history never set foot in Texas at all. She never in her life traveled beyond her tiny village in Spain, yet she stirred religious fervor from the Concho River to the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
Our story begins in 1602 when Maria was born in the pueblito de Ágreda. She was a lovely child born to Catholic parents of noble rank. Barely beyond her toddler years, Maria showed an unusual devotion to a life of prayer and piety.
When she was ten, she already wanted to join a convent. When she was 12, her parents finally blessed her wish to join the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Tarazona. Before that could be arranged, though, Maria’s mother had a vision in which God instructed her to convert their mansion into a convent. She and her daughter would both become nuns. Her father would join a local monastery, following in the footsteps of his sons who were already friars. In four years, this all came to pass.
At 18, Maria took her vows and became Maria de Jesus – Mary of Jesus de Ágreda. The habit of her order was a dark cobalt blue. Now a nun, she spent more time than ever alone in prayer. Maria’s religious devotions intensified. Her sisters worried about her frequent fasting, frail health, and life of extreme deprivation. Yet for her it was a glorious time: she said God had given her a divine gift. It was the gift of bilocation. She could be in two places at once. Through meditation she could appear to God’s children in faraway lands and teach them about Jesus. She said she first appeared to the Jumano tribes of present day Texas in the 1620s. She did this for about ten years, from the time she was 18, to 29. And according to legend, the Jumano Indians of the time confirmed that the Woman in Blue, as they called her, had come among them.
The first proof is offered in the story of 50 Jumano Indians appearing on their own at the San Antonio de la Isleta Mission near present-day Albuquerque, asking the Franciscan priests to teach them about Jesus. When asked how they knew of him, the men said that the Lady in Blue had come to them and taught them the gospel. She had instructed them to go west to find holy men who could teach them more about the faith and baptize them. They, as the legend goes, pointed to a painting of a nun in the mission and said, “She is like her, but younger.”
I have complained about the faults of the Abrahamic religions as they are manifesting in the Middle East today, but many aspects of all of them are worthy and this story of Mary of Jesus de Ágreda is a good example. Buddhism has many stories like this as well. This shows, to my eye, that there is a ‘ground’ for all or most religions that is more fundamental than their doctrinaire teachings, than unquestioning loyalty to clergy or rigid credos. I am a Buddhist because it has a rich and very practical philosophy which also wisely and explicitly teaches that even the Dharma must not be clung to. Even the Dharma can prevent enlightenment if our attachment to it is unwholesome. Long before I became a Buddhist, I had profound spiritual experiences that did not in my mind fit into any tradition I knew. This made me realize, even when I was very young, that religious traditions do not and cannot describe or include everything. They are like cliff notes on the spiritual reality of living in the human realm. Some of those notes are beautiful and worthy, some are not so good. This story of Mary of Jesus de Ágreda is one of the beautiful and inspiring ones. ABN
The conflict is tribal, involving three Abrahamic religions, each of which claims exclusive knowledge of God’s will.
Human tribes + God’s will + conflicting human interpretations of God’s will based on ‘infallible’ scriptures = an agonizing moral conflict that cannot be resolved within the boundaries that delineate it. Reason has no place here save to figure out how to destroy the other tribe(s). All words are fighting words. All statements are inflammatory.
In Buddhism, these are glaring examples of the First & Second Noble Truths. These two truths describe the core mundane reality of the Human Realm. The Third & Fourth Noble Truths describe what we can do about it.
The strong Buddhist answer is the best thing you can do is become a monk; remove yourself from the insoluble moral agony of human greed, pride, anger, ignorance, and doubt (in a higher reality).
The less strong Buddhist answer is mostly remove yourself from the tribal fray but make an effort to raise public awareness of the depth of the predicament; share the Dharma. That’s what I am doing on this site. In that spirit I present the video below. It has been taken off Instagram after receiving some 12 million views. It does provide valid information but if the information inflames you, one way or the other, it will only contribute to the problem. I present it in the hope that more understanding leads to better understanding and eventually moral clarity, at least for people enlightened enough to see beyond the fray. ABN
The case for removing concepts from cognitive science and AI research
It can be difficult to convince someone that concepts don’t exist. Everyday experience appears to provide overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Concepts are not only intuitively perceived to be active in daily life, they are also a widespread feature of theories across AI and cognitive science, where they are assumed to be necessary for symbolic and logical thought¹. Most who read the title of this post would be tempted to brush off the argument as patently, demonstrably absurd. It’s akin to trying to convince a European 500 years ago that God doesn’t exist, when everything around them appears to be evidence of, and indeed presupposes God’s existence. Any contrary argument is likely to be taken as the result of sophistry or word-wrangling, or because some critical piece has been neglected.
Despite their seeming obviousness, it is worth noting that there is still no complete and unambiguous explanation for what concepts are, or how they work on thoughts —and indeed how to program them into AI. The human ability to learn and create concepts is multifaceted and complex. AI theories and implementations generally only touch on one or two of its features, while neglecting large numbers of counter-cases. This has lead some researchers, notably Lawrence Barsalou, to suspect that the way we think of concepts is flawed. Perhaps the whole notion of concepts — as a native mechanism for grouping experiences — is untenable.
This article is well-worth reading. Below, I have made a few notes based on my reading of it. To my eye, it demonstrates the existence of consciousness as a thing, the existence of a very real subjective world, the high probability that this subjective world is not entirely confined in your head, that consciousness is a primary of existence and not confined to our brains, and also, importantly for this website, why FIML works so well.
(The sections in quotes are from the article.)
Firstly, concepts: they exist within consciousness and are used to reason, analyze, communicate, organize, and so on. They are probably a features of consciousness itself, depending on how you define them. They need not be stable.
Secondly, FIML:
To begin with, there is no scientific experiment or empirical observation that can be used to prove that any given concept “exists”, and by extension that concepts exist at all.
No. FIML practice provides unlimited empirical observations that concepts exist. FIML is a scientific experiment and can easily be repeated as many times as you like.
To objectively prove that any given interpretation matches reality, you would somehow have to compare your subjective mental concepts against an objective view of the real situation. But the latter isn’t possible.
Yes, it is possible. FIML is precisely that—a means ‘to compare your subjective mental concepts against an objective view of the real situation’.
FIML accomplishes this by allowing two subjective consciousnesses to objectively compare their mutually ‘subjective mental concepts’ against each other. To claim that ‘an objective view of the real situation’ can only be achieved by some other means is absurd. The very best means to objectively compare subjective states is to have two honest informants compare them based on a shared micro unit of communication in the real-world in real-time. This is what FIML does.
The discreteness of concepts is a built-in requirement of language itself, one that does not necessarily reflect what an individual mind is doing.
Elon Musk has offered $1billion to the owners of Wikipedia if they change its name to ‘D***ipedia’.
The billionaire – who has accused the website of showing its ‘non-trivial left-wing bias’ in the past – was responding to Wikipedia’s donation appeal for the year.
‘I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to D–kipedia,’ Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.
He then jokingly asked to add that to his Wikipedia page, which he said includes the cow and poop emojis after he criticized the Wikipedia Foundation.
‘Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia,’ he said. ‘You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone!
Mind-control works because everything is or can be made to be ambiguous. And thus everything can be subverted, altered, even completely made up if there is a concerted effort at the top and money to fuel the lie. This is why even academia is filled with so much garbage, you need a super-duper-degree to separate out the lies. The key problem in our world today is mind-control and the vulgar responses it always elicits. The entire Ukraine War and now the looming war(s) in and around Israel are based on lies and the vulgar reasoning and emotionality that follows from them. This situation is sooo Buddhist delusion writ large. Our world today from almost all angles proves the First Noble Truth of Buddhism so well, it’s time the Abrahamic religions concede the superiority of the Buddhist analysis. The principal flaws of the Abrahamic religions are unreasonably strict adherence to scripture and the absurd belief that clergy is capable of knowing God’s will through their human interpretations of those scriptures. The Abrahamic religions are also far too resistant to change, largely due to the scriptural thing. For the most part Buddhists do not say stuff like this out loud, but as we hurtle toward yet another Abrahamic war, I am making an exception. Another Buddhist criticism of the Abrahamic religions is they weaken our spirits and reason by subordinating solid human thinking to myths from thousands of years ago. ABN
UPDATE: I highly recommend this video discussion for all Buddhists and all practitioners of FIML. Barrett describes the fundamental reality of human consciousness as it grapples with emotion, sensation, bodily feedback and general states of physical being. Her insights are 100% consonant with Buddhist philosophy and FIML practice. Both FIML and Buddhism differ from what Barrett is saying only in that in addition to the emptiness, impermanence, and vagueness of human emotional states they also see human thought, belief, interpretation, perception and comprehension in the same way. In FIML practice, these deeply important uncertainties also include language, semiotics, communicative acts, and the psychologies associated with them.
At one point, Barrett says she is not saying there is nothing there or no truth to emotional states. She is just saying they typically are not clearly definable and often mistaken. Exactly right. I would add that Barret sees a very important part of the underlying problem of human psycho-spiritual existence but she only sees that one part and offers no more than a description of it.
FIML practice provides not only a more accurate description of the problem but also a method to greatly enhance our understanding of all human states of being as they occur in real-world, real-time situations. FIML differs from traditional Buddhist practice in that it offers a robust practice for two people to use together.
To emphasize a major point: Barrett has caught a very big fish but is holding it by the tail only. Buddhism is based on the whole fish as is FIML. Both Buddhism and FIML offer deeply important ways to deal with the whole fish. FIML adds a precise practice between two people that speeds up understanding. Buddhism claims there is an ‘ultimate reality’, a Buddha mind above and beyond the ‘relative reality’ of mundane uncertainty and clinging. FIML provides deep psychological understanding and correction of the mundane problem while also allowing glimpses of Buddhist ultimate reality. Barrett, Buddhism, and FIML all are addressing the same thing from different points of view. ABN
UPDATE: This video is a delightful 2+ hours discussion, not to be missed. Buddhists will enjoy how it elucidates Buddhist teachings on the Five Skandhas and how they underlie Buddhist understanding of human psychology.
It is also an excellent description of why you must do FIML. It provides a detailed and nuanced picture of why FIML practice is essential for full optimization of human psychology, language use, semiotics, and mental functioning. FIML has no content and does zero to define you or anyone. FIML shows you how to gather information and discover for yourself.
FIML is a method that allows partners to isolate significant (or not) moments during real-time, real-world communication that can be identified and agreed upon by both partners and thus become objectively analyzable (in the sense that both partners agree on what the moment was or what it entailed). That is how language can greatly help us understand how our speech, sensations, emotions, bodily states are functioning in the real-world in real-time.
The hard part about FIML is you cannot at the inception of a FIML moment sit back, like Barrett and Huberman, and just wander around pleasantly talking about theories and ideas within a well-defined (and restricted) scientific paradigm.* The first moments of a FIML query are by definition unexplained and undescribed to both partners.
Once identified and described the unique, idiosyncratic import of those moments will be discovered. And often what is discovered will be of next-to-no importance or be some sort of mutual or one-sided mistake or trivial misinterpretation. At other times, deep and deeply interesting patterns or critical associations will be discovered. At those times, you will be able to clearly see how your habitual mind is functioning in a real-world, real-time situation.
Since FIML moments are moments, they are small enough and well-described enough for partners to mutually clearly understand and admit what has happened without reservations. This is extremely refreshing, especially when experienced scores and then hundreds of times. There is no other way to get this information and mutually understand it than FIML practice.
* I do not mean to slight or dismiss Barrett or Huberman here. They have provided a superb description of an extremely serious problem and also illustrated how science today has not solved it. Barrett mentions how serious the problem is but does not provide a solution to it. Knowing the problem is there is a good start. It’s like identifying a disease. Solving the problem as FIML does is the next step. FIML treats the disease and largely cures it. I 100% agree with Barrett when she emphasizes how serious this problem is. I see its seriousness as being even greater than she does. This problem is far worse than a few mistaken convictions in law courts or a persistent fog of interpersonal confusion. It is a constant ever-present demon in all of us and it leads to enormous suffering, sadness, violence, murder, tribalism, worse. As for science, FIML is a subjective science, possibly the realest and most important subjective science there is right now.
In Barrett’s vocabulary, basic FIML works with the very fine ‘granularity’ of emotion/ sensation/ interpretation. A next step after identifying these granular moments during FIML is to analyze/ discuss how they are related to other granularities and also less granular more abstract habits or mental states/ conditions; this is where in Barrett’s terms FIML ‘adds dimensionality’ to our worlds. What is remarkable about FIML is the dimensionality we add is based on mutually agreed objective idiosyncratic data.
Around the 1:30 mark and beyond, Barrett describes what Buddhists know as the Five Skandhas — 1) form/ percept/ stimulus, 2) sensation (bodily action), 3) perception (more detail and feedback), 4) activity (more detail, feedback and abstraction), 5) consciousness/ mental state (delusional, or within relative reality). The Five Skandhas, of course, are fractal, dynamic, fast-moving, multi-granular, and describe/ categorize bodily-mental states at all levels of delusional/ hallucinatory/ relative ‘reality’.
Individual psychology is a locus or node within a larger social system.
More precisely, individual psychologies are particular signaling systems within larger social signaling systems.
It is valuable to see this because general analyses of signaling systems—even those having nothing to do with human psychology—can shed light on human signaling systems, including both individual psychology and many aspects of sociology.
When human psychology is viewed as a signaling system, we can readily see that narcissism is bound to occur because narcissism is fundamentally a simplistic signal system. (See Narcissism redefined (yet again) for more.)
When human sociology is viewed as a signaling system, we can similarly see that parasitism is bound to occur because the exploitation of one system by another is a fairly simple matter. (See Social parasitism in ants and humans for more.)
In like manner, we can see that social hierarchies importantly have evolved because they are simple and decently efficient signal (communication) systems.
We can also see why hierarchical system often are overthrown and why they often do not arise in systems where they are not needed. For example, no hierarchy is needed for a language system once the basics have been established. A parasitic or authoritarian group might impose a hierarchy on a language system, but that’s a different animal.
When individual psychology is viewed as a signaling system, we can see that a great deal of what we consider “disordered” or “ill” within that system is fundamentally a problem of the signal system itself and not the “personality” we have mistakenly abstracted out of that system.
Indeed, most of what we think of as personality is nothing more than an individual signal system attempting to conform to its understanding of the larger social system within which it exists. When science is applied to “personality” erroneously conceived, we arrive at the many psychometric tautologies on personality traits we now have. Psychometrics have limited value for describing societies, but are frequently misleading, even damaging, when applied to individuals. In this, they resemble BMI data which originally was used as a marker for the health of whole populations, not individuals, and which can be misleading when applied to individuals.
When we view individuals as signaling systems rather than personalities, we can immediately see that these systems can and should be optimized for better communication. Indeed, this is the real job of psychology—optimizing individual signaling systems. Not just treating “personality” disorders.
American Buddhist Net 