Those who mistake the unessential to be essential
and the essential to be unessential,
dwelling in wrong thoughts,
never arrive at the essential.Dhammapada 1.11
Tag: Buddhist Practice
How social rejection can help those who think independently
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.
Suñña Sutta: Empty
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.”
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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
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?”
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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.
Lies and self-deception
Most Buddhist practitioners will immediately understand and agree with the results of a recent study that shows that people feel better when they tell fewer lies. The study (Telling fewer lies linked to better health and relationships.*) is modest but worth considering.
Notice that the improvements found in the study come from refraining from lying.
“We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health,” says lead author Anita Kelly. (Same link as above.)
A good deal of Buddhist practice involves refraining from unwholesome thoughts and behaviors and ultimately eliminating them. Refraining from lying, or “false speech,” is the fourth of the Five Precepts, which are the basis of Buddhist morality. Lies cloud the mind and hinder clear thinking.
Buddhist mindfulness gets us to slow down and question how sure we are of our thoughts, feelings, and judgements. It helps us refrain from willfully lying, and it can help us refrain from unconsciously lying if we have the help of a trusted partner.
Another term for unconscious lying is self-deception. Self-deception may make us feel good for awhile in some circumstances, but in the long-run it is much the same as any other kind of lying. It’s not true. It constitutes inner false speech and causes serious intellectual and emotional contradictions that will almost certainly lead to wrong thoughts, behaviors, and interpretations.
Michael S. Gazzaniga in a recent online essay has this to say:
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….Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly as our brains respond to constantly changing inputs, calculate potential courses of action, and execute responses like a streetwise kid. (Source)
It is our “interpreter module,” to use Gazzaniga’s words, that can and does unconsciously lie to us or allow us to engage in self-deception.
In the same essay, Gazzaniga also says:
In truth, when we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing….The reality is, listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time. (Source: same as above)
FIML practice may not be capable of giving us access to “nonconscious processing,” but it will give us access to what is/was in our working memories while showing us that what we said or heard may have been vague, ambiguous, muddled, or wrong.
With the aid of a trusted partner, FIML helps us catch our minds on the fly. Partners are encouraged to refrain from long explanations and just stick to what they remember having been in their minds during the few seconds in question. This forestalls long, self-deceiving explanations.
Beginning FIML partners will likely be amazed at how often their interpretation of what their partner said is completely wrong.
FIML emphasizes using trivial incidents because partners will be much less likely to self-deceive when the incident is minor. A minor mistake is easier to change than a major one. If partners keep working with minor mistakes and clear them up as soon as they arise, how can major misunderstandings even develop?
In the future, we may have brain scans that can help us separate fact from fiction in our minds, but for now, I know of no better way to do it than with a trusted partner in FIML practice. Your partner will help you see the minutiae of your mind as it actually works and impacts them. This leads to a large reduction in lying and self-deception and an increase in feelings of well-being and mutual understanding.
______________________
*Sorry, could not find the actual study online.
The human operating system
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.
When we speak of a person’s psychology, we usually mean their emotional make-up, their habitual thought processes, their fears or talents, the sum total of their experiences, etc. In this context, a person’s semiotics can be understood to be the signs, symbols, and underlying meanings they see, feel, believe, and respond to. Semiotics, as we are using the term, might also be understood to indicate the distinctive features of a subculture.
For example, the musical semiotics of someone who likes jazz and does not like country will be different from someone who likes country and not jazz. This difference may say something about these two people’s psychologies but in many cases it is much simpler and clearer to just talk about the differences between their semiotics. Similarly, their different tastes in music may say something about the subcultures they belong to, but again it is often much more useful to isolate these differences as different semiotics.
Most people are using a traditional human operating system (THOS). A THOS is defined in the first paragraph above. It is characterized by being largely static and roughly agreed upon by many people.
Personality today is generally understood to be something that is sort of defined or indicated by the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. But how do you measure that? Well, you use tests that explore the standardized language and semiotics that is deemed “appropriate” to the culture to which the testee belongs.
If the testee is not fitting into the standard mold (the standard semiotics), the tester will probably conclude that the testee is either not agreeable, open, conscientious, or extroverted. If the testee is seriously bothered by the standard semiotics for which he or she is being tested, they may also be marked as “neurotic” by the test-giver.
How would you do on a Big Five personality test given in North Korea by North Korean psychologists?
The problem with standardization of “personality” metrics and/or semiotics is standards only help us delineate ourselves in some ways; they cannot be expected to truly define us.
To define yourself, to know yourself, you need an independent operating system (IOS). Obviously, if your IOS gets too far from reasonable human norms (decent ethics, being rational, respecting evidence, etc.), you will lose the good things that humans have figured out over the centuries.
So how do you get an IOS but remain able to draw on all the good stuff of human history and the culture(s) you know best?
You have to change how you use and perceive language and semiotics. You have to find a way to free yourself from being a standardized semiotic between your ears.
If you read the Big Five personality traits and start measuring yourself according to them, what is the basis for your measurement? What does openness mean to you? Gay sex on a roller coaster? Being open-minded about an essay like this one? If you feel sensitive and nervous in North Korea (neurotic as defined by the Big Five) is that good or bad?
What if the society you live in makes you feel nervous and sensitive because you know it can be violent, greedy, hypocritical, and ignorant? Would you feel secure and confident (the opposite of neurotic) if you were in an office where you knew white collar crime (Libor, say) was being done daily? Would you be open to blowing the whistle and risking ostracism or even jail time?
When language, semiotics, and personality are all defined in more or less standard ways and you think you need to go along with that, you can say good-bye to what the Buddha called the thusness or suchness of your being. Buddhism is all about discovering/uncovering the “ultimate reality” of the “real nature” that inheres within us.
One problem with Buddhism, though, is it has become standardized. If you are nice, trusting, and sweet to everyone you meet, you will have your head handed to you in a matter of days in most US cities. We simply cannot expect to model behavior today according to an ancient monastic ideal that we very probably cannot even understand anymore.
The best way to get an IOS, and I believe practice Buddhism in today’s world, is do FIML because FIML practice allows you and your partner to use all the good stuff from human history to develop your own way of talking to each other and understanding each other. A FIML generated IOS frees partners’ semiotics from extrinsic definitions and this allows both of them to comprehend themselves and each other in unique ways that account for their idiosyncrasies—the suchness and thusness of both of them, taken together and independently.
If an individual pursues thusness alone, they will form many wrong ideas because it is impossible for an individual to check their own work. When FIML partners work together and remain mindful of the good things in human history, they are able to check their work and discover the suchness that underlies them.
As mentioned in other posts, FIML does not tell you what to think or believe. Rather, it provides a method to help you and your partner think for yourselves. FIML will change your THOS to an IOS.
If FIML partners are guided by fundamental Buddhist ideas, they will progress more quickly and be less likely to take wrong turns. Understanding the emptiness of standardized semiotics will make it easier for partners to see how cultural norms can interfere with a deep comprehension of life. Keeping basic Buddhist ethics in mind at all times will help partners avoid moral excess or thoughtlessness. Contemplation of dependent origination will give partners a ready guide to understanding the uniqueness of every communicative event. Buddhist teachings on clinging or attachment, especially when understood as clinging to wrong ideas or wrong semiotics, will greatly help partners discard mistaken beliefs and views that may have been influencing them for decades. The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence will make it easier to see through the long history of THOS and why we need new ways to speak, listen, and think today.
FIML and Bernard Lonergan’s GEM
One aspect of FIML that continues to delight me, even after years of practice, is how so little can give us so much. In a nutshell “all” FIML does is stabilize and clarify our communication with one other person.
FIML does this by removing error and resolving ambiguities between two people. FIML cannot do this perfectly, but it does it well-enough that partners will experience a level of mental and emotional clarity that had not been available to them before.
I don’t believe anyone can know everything and I don’t believe anyone can even know very much. We really do not know if we are in a sim or not, so how can anyone make claims to philosophical certainty about anything, be they physicalist, atheist, religious, or even hedonist claims?
I am open to an individual saying he or she knows something through revelation, but their knowing does not help me because how do I know if they are telling the truth? Science gives us truths but many of the most interesting questions are outside of the realm of science. The Buddhist tradition is very good in this context because it asks us to base our understanding of “truth” on our own experience (which can and should include scientific inquiry).
The work of Bernard Lonergan struck me this morning as saying something important about how we know things and how we live in a world that is hugely mysterious.
His “generalized empirical method” (GEM) was designed to help people deal with meaning, ambiguity, and the relative values of ethical and philosophical truths. Lonergan’s theory of cognition, which is part of GEM, describes four levels of consciousness—“experience of data, understanding the data, judgment that one’s understanding is correct, and decision to act on the resulting knowledge.” (Source for this is the link in the paragraph above.)
His theory fits very well with Buddhism and is good way to assess what FIML does.
In FIML practice, partners “experience the data” of interacting with each other; they “understand this data” by doing a FIML inquiry on some part of it; based on this inquiry they are better able to “judge if their understanding is correct”; and following that judgment, they will be in a good position to decide what to do with the “resulting knowledge.”
FIML takes the weakest parts of interpersonal communication—the ambiguous and emotionally difficult parts—and turns them into some of the best parts; parts where understanding and resolution have been deepened even beyond the other parts.
FIML cannot explain the origin of the universe or which philosophy will dominate the world one hundred years from now, but it can provide a very good level of mutual understanding between partners. And this level of understanding will have a beneficial influence on many other aspects of partners’ lives—emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and philosophical.
Both Lonergan and the Buddha described methods that a fragile individual can use to sift through the mountains of data that surround us to find the best stuff. FIML was designed to be a method that helps partners know one another to the best of their human capacities. It is a method that partners can use within a Buddhist, or other, framework to arrive at a better understanding of who and what they are.
Edit: Here’s a good quote from Wikipedia on Lonergan: The key to Lonergan’s project is “self-appropriation,” that is, the personal discovery and personal embrace of the dynamic structure of inquiry, insight, judgment, and decision. By self-appropriation, one finds in one’s own intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility the foundation of every kind of inquiry and the basic pattern of operations undergirding methodical investigation in every field. (Source)
Trust
One of the features of FIML practice that interests me is how it depends upon and strengthens trust between partners.
I cannot think of another system that strengthens interpersonal trust as well as FIML.
My understanding of game theory is not very good, but I suspect FIML could be seen as a game that works with human consciousness to strengthen trust in six ways. If there are two FIML partners—A and B—partner A will strengthen trust in B, in A, and in A and B together. The same is true for partner B. Added together, trust is strengthened in six different ways.
For example, after doing FIML properly for a few months, I will almost certainly trust my partner more than before, myself more than before, and the both of us together more than before. I will be able to trust myself more because I will have a better sense of what to say and why. I will be able to see how my honest answers have a good effect on both my partner and myself. From this, I will be able to quite reliably conclude that my partner is experiencing something similar. And from this we will both be able to see/conclude that the both of us together have a much more trustworthy interpersonal system than we had before we started doing FIML.
A few months of FIML practice will make it abundantly clear to both partners that lying is a huge waste of time. A few months of practice also shows partners how ambiguity and/or soft lies commonly arise in non-FIML relationships. Those same few months will also help partners find many of their blind spots. They will discover how cultural conditioning influences their perceptions and expectations.
Some other systems
Some other systems for establishing interpersonal trust are making vows, getting married, exchanging gifts or confessions, signing agreements, or even spending 100% of your time together.
The best or deepest of these methods is probably the vow, but even a well-meant vow, willingly and mutually undertaken by both parties, will not be all that reliable because it will be stated in general terms and have no way of dealing with the thousands of unique situations that will always occur in all lives. Vows typically have few rules for communication and they rarely, if ever, take into consideration the enormous difficulties all people have with the ongoing details of interpersonal communication.
Vows are general and often highly emotional. Exchanging gifts or making confessions may be slightly more concrete or specific, but there is less obligation. At their best, they are one-time signals of an implied vow. At their worst, they are ways to trick others.
Prenuptial agreements, or other contracts, can limit damage from fake vows or real ones that cannot be kept, but they are actually based on a sort of mistrust and won’t do much to strengthen trust. Some people have actually tried spending all their time together, but all this assures is that partners can’t say or do anything that violates their vows. It doesn’t mean they are telling the truth to each other or even know how. Maybe it would work. I don’t know. I respect people who do this, but it would drive me nuts.
FIML as a game
FIML can be thought of as a game in many ways. Here is one basic formula for FIML as a game that may stand in for many others. It’s very basic, so enhance it or add to it as you see fit or as fits your circumstances.
The formula deals with semiotics by grouping the ongoing semiotics of a conversation between two people into three parts. The first part (the first semiotic grouping) is the context in which the conversation is occurring. The second is the semiotics in the mind of one partner, and the third is the semiotics in the mind of the other partner.
Generally, the context in which the conversation is occurring defines many aspects of the conversation. If partners are in a museum, the museum displays and the need to be quiet will determine a good deal of what is said and how it is understood. If partners are at work, the context will be different.
If partners are relaxed in their own home and with a decent amount of free time, the context will be perfect for a FIML discussion, should the need arise.
No matter what the context, partner A will speak with some sort of semiotic in their mind. It might be very specific or it might be vague. Partner B will listen in much the same way—they may be hyper-attentive to one aspect of what A is saying or they may be in a relaxed state or even daydreaming.
There are many ways that the semiotics of A and B can and will be different. In most cases, these differences glide along and resolve or are ignored in common ways without causing problems. You can’t possible monitor everything that happens in your minds.
But, if the semiotics in the minds of partners A and B get too far apart—if they diverge from each other too much—misunderstandings and mismatched feelings will begin to arise.
This is when you do FIML—when the semiotics in your mind and your partner’s mind are no longer referring to the same thing and one or both of you notices, either by feeling the mix-up or by other signs.
The game is to see the mix-up right when it happens, then to discuss how and why it happened, appreciate that it is very common for stuff like that to happen, figure out what to do about it (if anything), enjoy what you have learned, and then keep doing what you were doing.
The value of this game is you will not only keep doing what you were doing but you will enjoy it even more. If you don’t do the game, you won’t get that added level of fun and you won’t see more deeply into your shared awareness.
FIML as mindfulness
A friend yesterday said in an email that FIML was working well for him and his fiancee. He also referred to it as Buddhist mindfulness. FIML is greatly enhanced by Buddhist mindfulness, but it is not exactly the same because FIML involves two people being mindful (and honest) together. Having a second person do detailed mindfulness with you is different from doing mindfulness alone. When you do mindfulness or introspection by yourself, you have no way of checking your work. When you do it with an honest partner, you can check your conclusions, and very often find out why you were wrong.
The value of FIML lies in being able to check our mindfulness with an honest partner who is also being mindful. Doing this corrects interpersonal mistakes as well as individual idiosyncratic ones. FIML also increases trust and honesty while improving communication overall between partners.
the ill-directed mind
Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy,
or a foe to a foe,
the ill-directed mind
can do to you even worse.
Udana 4.33
Identity and semiotics
Mental (unemotional) identity is almost always a mix of public semiotics. Mental identity defines, conditions, and guides emotional identity.
Raw emotion might be thought of as a limbic response. The term limbic response will probably be replaced one day, but for now it is a recognized way to refer to strong emotional responses that happen suddenly and can often seize control of an individual’s thoughts and behavior.
Mental identity as a composite of public semiotics indicates the communicable beliefs of the individual—their religion or lack thereof; their sense of history and their place in it; their ethnic, racial, or national identity; their career and the specialized knowledge and attitudes that go with it; the intermingling of their beliefs with those of their friends, etc. If the person can more or less communicate it, or more or less find it outside of themselves, or more or less be able to alter it through communication with a trusted other, it is a public semiotic.
Mental identity defines, conditions, and guides emotional identity. In turn, emotional identity guides, conditions, and either restricts or expands mental identity. A person raised to hate some “other”, for example, may overcome their mental identity through feelings of compassion. The same person may overcome their feelings of hatred through reason. These are just crude examples.
For the most part, all people have problematical mental and emotional identities. The reason this is so is it is very hard to honestly access the kinds of semiotics and emotions that comprise the amalgam of emotional and mental identity.
Why is that? That is because public semiotics almost by definition cannot fully allow the individual to redefine him/herself. If you are a traditional anything (Catholic, Buddhist, atheist, crime boss, ethnic chauvinist, capitalist, etc.), once you start questioning the public aspects of your mental/emotional identity, all you can normally do is adopt some other version of public semiotics. You may become a lapsed Catholic, or a weekend Buddhist, or a soft versus hard atheist, a reformed crime boss, a tolerant ethnic chauvinist, a reform-minded capitalist, etc.
These changes will produce changes in your emotional identity, but you will still be hooked into a public semiotic and the emotions it defines and conditions. Maybe you will feel more doubt or uncertainty; maybe you will become apathetic; maybe you will get fired up about making reforms. It’s hard to say exactly what will happen, but at the core there will still be a public semiotic and an emotional conditioning closely related to it.
Buddhism, as I see it in this context, is designed to dig deeper into that mixture of mind and emotion and remove all thought and emotion that is not supported by profound inner experience and reason. Buddhism removes clinging to all thought and feeling that is false, deluded, and/or empty. Buddhism teaches us that clinging to things that are false, deluded, and/or empty causes suffering.
Thus, deep mindfulness coupled with years of contemplating/comprehending the emptiness and impermanence of “mental dharmas” (public semiotics in this context), leads to liberation from the core cause of suffering.
A few paragraphs above I said “…public semiotics almost by definition cannot fully allow the individual to redefine him/herself.” I said “almost by definition” because Buddhist practice, which we first learn as a public semiotic, does indeed allow individuals to redefine themselves.
Sometimes, it’s hard to do this in traditional Buddhist settings because the public semiotics can also get in the way. The temples and statues and quiet rooms are wonderful for beginners because they allow them to get a feeling for where Buddhist practice will take them. Intermediate practitioners, though, may get tired of the symbols and want to take a break from them. But after a time, they usually come to realize that the symbols and public semiotics (basic Dharma) were essential for their development and they will probably want to help others by donating time, money, or deep service to a temple.
It’s important to recognize where you are in all that. Surely you can guess that your initial enthusiasm may not last or that it will change. Surely you can see that becoming tired of the symbols and semiotics is not the end of Buddhist practice; it just shows you are starting to really get the idea. When you feel like going back to the temple and helping, you will know why.
Now what about private semiotics? Private semiotics are the signs, symbols, and language that we hold as idiosyncratic individuals and can communicate with others only with significant difficulty if at all.
Traditional Buddhist practice may not work well with private semiotics because traditional practice is, by definition, a public semiotic. So how do you get to your private semiotics? Contemplation, meditation, and mindfulness help, but you will always have problems with a sort of solipsism. How can you know that your analysis of something is right? You can’t unless you check it with other people. But as soon as you do that, you are back to public semiotics. The other person really won’t understand you all that well and/or you will end up revising your insights to look and feel like something more public.
I think the above basically describes why so many Buddhists kind of fantasize having a perfect teacher, a guru who will know how to guide them at all times. I am not going to say whether that is even possible, but for most of us, it won’t happen.
So what can we do? I propose in this context that Buddhists undertake FIML practice. I say this because FIML practice deals directly with the complex inter-workings of interpersonal semiotics and emotion. There are many links on this site describing how to do FIML and what it is.
The great highway of conformity
I was wondering this morning why people are so afraid of being misunderstood or of being caught saying the wrong thing. A similar question is why do we find it so difficult to change our views, especially in public?
Consider, for example, how hard it is for a politician to change views even after twenty or thirty years.
“Being in the role” is an expression used in acting circles. As an actor, you might be “in the role” of the project you are working on or, if you are famous, you probably will be typed into a certain role for life—you will always be expected to be likeable, or tough, or sexy, etc. Once you are typed with a public role, you pretty much have to stay with it for the rest of your life.
That concept sort of explains why politicians (who are all actors) have to be in the same role for decades. If they step out of it even once, it will make the news and tarnish their reputations. This is really bad for politics because people should be able to grow and change in public. Some politicians do pull that off, but not many.
Sadly, many of us ordinary people behave in similar ways in our private lives. We fear being caught in contradictions that may span decades or being reminded of indiscretions even years later and even if they were no big deal even at the time. It’s the appearance that matters; if we got drunk or smoked pot in college it may not look good years later if we become a lawyer or town mayor.
But why doesn’t it look good? We all have stuff like that. I wouldn’t trust anyone who claimed they didn’t. Why do we feel the need to be in the role of our fake selves all the time?
One reason I can see is we need to guard our reputations. If you are a dentist, say, in a small town, your reputation is what allows people to trust you. Makes sense for dentists, and now that I think of it, this is probably why dentists need to take so many long vacations. They need to go somewhere where they can let their hair down for a while.
Another example with a different twist might be a Buddhist monk. Let’s say you decide to go visit a Buddhist temple for the first time. Are you really going to expect the monk to act like a normal person (which he or she really is) or are you going to expect them to fulfill some idealized role of a Buddhist monk? I bet most of us will judge them not on their humanity (which cannot possibly be discovered in a short visit), but rather on how well they fulfill our expectations of what a monk should be like.
That makes some sense, too. It’s not the same as the dentist example, but sort of along the same lines. We cannot possible expect to know their full humanity within the span of a short visit, so we judge them on their demeanor, tone of voice, what the temple looks like, etc. Good enough, but also pretty bad when you think about it. You go to the temple (I hope) to deal with human truth and reality but you settle for role-playing.
I do it too, so don’t get me wrong.
The big problem in all this is how this role-playing system works with close friends. Seems very sad to me if you feel that you have to play roles with your friends, but I know this is quite common. In fact, depending on where you draw the line, role-playing even with close friends is probably the norm for most people at all times in history.
If you don’t cleave closely to the public semiotics of your time and place, you will look out of place, dubious, possibly someone that can’t be trusted. Makes sense if you are a dentist or the monk in new temple in town, but with friends, even family?
Why are we so afraid to be embarrassed by something we said or did? And why do the consequences of misspeaking have to be so severe?
The reason is we don’t want to be criticized or seen in a bad light. And the result of this is most of us feel the need stay on the straight-and-narrow. We get on the great highway of conformity and remain watchful of what we say all of our lives.
Once we do that, we start wanting not friends, but people who appear to be friends, people who play roles that suit the role(s) we are playing.
Well, whatever. We can’t change the world, but maybe we can change ourselves. How can you make progress in Buddhist practice if you are playing a role along with other people who are also playing roles?
Buddhism is all about seeing beyond appearances and illusions.
Brain plasticity and “critical periods” for learning
Neurodevelopment: Unlocking the brain
This is an interesting article on brain plasticity and “critical periods” for learning some skills (e.g. stereo-vision, language acquisition, etc.). It seems there may be ways to reset or reopen critical periods through chemical or behavioral interventions.
Vision therapy, which aims to correct adult amblyopia and other eye conditions, already has shown that basic visual skills can be relearned and some visual problems corrected by proper training.
Incidentally, FIML practice retrains us to listen, speak, and think differently. In doing this, FIML may be reopening a critical period for language/semiotic processing or even for the fundamental organization of consciousness itself. Once acquired, FIML skills have far-reaching effects on virtually all aspects of human social and psychological awareness.
If Buddhist practice is thought of in a light like this (that new cognitive skills are learned as some old ones are unlearned), it may remove some of the mystical aspects of how people understand the Dharma while also making Buddhist teachings more appealing to people with science training or an affinity for objective science.
FIML and “sins of omission”
By “sin of omission” I mean refraining from doing a FIML query because you feel it will be too much trouble, seem contentious, take too long, expose a failing or weakness in yourself, hurt your partner’s feelings, and so on.
Some time ago we came up with the slogan: “It is always cheaper to do a FIML query than not do one.” This slogan is meant to help us guard against “sins of omission.”
If you refrain from saying something because you are afraid it will cause one of the problems mentioned above, you are right there causing a worse kind of problem in that you are assuming something about your partner that may not be (probably isn’t) true.
Even worse, you are refraining from informing your partner that you have concluded that some kinds of speech acts are not safe or pleasant to engage in with them.
It would be far, far cheaper for both you and your partner to deal with whatever you think the problem is the moment it arises.
This is so because small matters are much easier for us to understand and deal with than large matters. When we deal with small matters as they arise in normal conversation,we are doing at least two very important things: 1) we are dealing with the matter and its ramifications and 2) we are learning something very important about how we speak.
FIML changes the way we think not just what we think. If we fully understand that our understandings of each other can be very far off and if we fully understand how serious these misunderstandings can become, we no longer will see discussing minor mix-ups as a waste of time or something to be avoided.
I saw a post the other day by a beginning Buddhist who was confused about his mindfulness practice. He asked: “Every time I try to be mindful, my mind seems to fill with thoughts, words, and feelings. How do I stop that?”
Mindfulness is about being clear about what your mind is really doing. It’s not about pretending you have an ideal mind, or acting as if you do. If that Buddhist has a partner and if they both do FIML, they will experience the value of mindfulness in a very direct and beneficial way.
Human languages have evolved within violent hierarchical social systems that exploit our normally poor abilities to understand each other.
FIML practice allows us to be mindful of these limitations and go beyond them to achieve real understanding with our partner. The deep reward of FIML practice lies in that and in the profound feeling of resolution you will reach with your partner each and every time you carry a FIML discussion through to a mutually satisfying resolution.
Why Smart People Are Stupid
This short article by Jonah Lehrer shows yet another reason that FIML works so well.
From the article: “The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.” (Emphasis added.)
Be sure to read the whole article as that is just a piece of the argument. I chose it because it is relevant to the introspective aspects of Buddhist, and other, practices.
For the record, I am very fond of introspection. But introspection, as we have said many times on this site, without a way to check our work has a strong tendency to lead us astray.
FIML practice helps us correct our very numerous mistakes in assessing the thoughts and stories of other people. At the same time, FIML practice disabuses our own minds of the many errors we hold about ourselves based on our mistaken stories about others.
We have claimed many times that FIML practitioners will be amazed at how often they are wrong about the thoughts and intentions of their partners. The linked article well supports this assertion.
The psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, as quoted in the article says: “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.”
I believe him. This is how our minds (don’t) work.
FIML will probably not correct your general tendencies toward bias and misplaced confidence, but it will vastly reduce the number of mistakes you make about your partner (and thus yourself). This may not seem like all that much, but it is actually a huge benefit because when you have clarity with your partner, you gain a kind of emotional and psychological security that is deeply satisfying.
Humans are social beings, interactive social beings. When you gain verifiable clarity with your FIML partner you upgrade this fundamental aspect of your being far beyond what is possible by any other means I know of. FIML practice greatly reduces our need to rely on mistaken interpretations of our own making as well as the mistaken interpretations of the cultures to which we belong.
For Buddhists, this helps us to avoid the mistakes inherent in pure introspection as well as the mistakes inherent in accepting the generalities of the Buddhist tradition as it has come down to us today.
Why generalities don’t work
You cannot achieve satisfying communication by using general ideas or general role models.
For example, many Buddhists use a general sense of “compassion” or a vague understanding of “Buddhist wisdom” to get along with other people. This strategy can work for light duties at a Buddhist temple or for projecting a basic sense of who you are to other people, but it won’t be deeply satisfying.
The problem is very simple to state but harder to fix. The problem is we misunderstand each other very often and in very significant ways and these misunderstandings cannot be simply smoothed over with generalities.
Humans are deeply affected by their interactions with other humans. All those little mistakes in speaking and listening lead to big misunderstandings in our relationships, often rather quickly.
I cannot think of another way to deal with this fundamental problem except through FIML practice or something very much like it. When we communicate with people we care about, we have to have ways to restate our meaning, take it back, query each other, probe relevant semiotics. If we don’t, we will misunderstand each other in serious ways.
American Buddhist Net 