Tag: Communication Errors

Repost: FIML and practical semiotics (with a new intro)

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Intro: We use the word semiotics quite frequently on this site. The basic meaning of semiotics is “the study of signs,” communicative signs. Semiotics deals with how signs are made, used, and understood. Signs can be anything that communicates—language, gesture, expression, writing, photos, movies, music, behaviors, gifts, tone of voice, etc. Anything that communicates.

Semiotics is also very much about what signs mean. When you use a sign to communicate (and you always use signs when you communicate) with your partner it will mean one thing to you and very possibly something else to them. FIML practice is designed to make sure that the signs you send to your partner are understood as you mean them, and vice versa.

When we emphasize the importance of the meaning of communicative signs on this site, we are using the word semiotics in a slightly unusual way. We could use the word semantics or some other word that we make up. But we like the word semiotics because it always implies at least two meanings (the sender’s and the receiver’s, or yours and your partner’s) and the sign or signs that transmits those meanings between you.

Analyzing (the Buddha was an “analyst”) the signs you use with your partner and within your own mind is an extremely worthwhile activity. Basic FIML practice is all about analyzing and becoming crystal clear about how signs/semiotics are operating between you and your partner. Done properly, FIML will show you how to vastly improve communication with your partner.

Since humans are profoundly interactive beings, clarifying communication with your partner will also clarify you to yourself. For Buddhists, I believe FIML will show you with great specificity very important aspects of what the Buddha meant by delusion and how to overcome it. For others, FIML will do much the same though you may think of it in different terms—FIML removes mistakes from communication (and from your own mind) by isolating small incidents and analyzing them.

Below is a post from some months ago that illustrates how a FIML-based semiotic analysis works.

FIML and practical semiotics

Though FIML practice may appear to deal mainly with spoken language, it actually works primarily by stopping language, or the heedless use of language, so partners can observe and consider the semiotics that underlie what they are saying to each other.

A simple way to understand what FIML does is to consider the main components of a typical act of communication between two people. In this case, the components are semiotics, language, and emotion. These terms can be expanded if need be to include other factors such as behaviors, partners’ bodies, instincts, sensations, etc. But for now let’s just consider semiotics, language, and emotion.

Semiotics are like cables or snakes or ribbons of meaning that accompany our uses of language. They underlie our words and weave in and out of them. Words and language can also be thought of as a kind of semiotic, but for now, let’s separate them. Semiotics is the meaning while language is one way of expressing that meaning.

Emotions as they arise in communicative acts can be of many types. In FIML practice, partners will find that they most often need to use FIML techniques to deal with sudden emotions that seize control of the mind and thence influence or determine what it says or does.

Basically, in all interpersonal communication, strong emotions can and will get attached to a semiotic. In normal non-FIML communication, this attachment almost always occurs without conscious control and it is usually not discussed by the people communicating, and almost never discussed rationally.

A mix-up (or contretemps, as we have sometimes called it) occurs between two people when they have significantly different semiotics in their minds and when one or both of them have attached an emotion to their semiotic.

Notice how closely that description fits with Buddhist thinking—when we become attached to or cling to a wrong view, we cause suffering.

When either partner notices a mix-up, they should initiate a FIML query or discussion. The main point of the discussion is to find out how partners’ semiotics are diverging, if they are. The internal sign that this may be happening is a sudden feeling, usually a negative feeling, based on what your partner has said (or what you think or feel they meant).

Mix-ups occur very often. I would say it is normal to experience a few mix-ups per hour of conversation even with a very close friend or partner. The reason this happens is we depend a great deal on semiotics when we speak to each other. With close friends, our semiotics become more intimate, personal, and emotional. That’s the whole fun of having close friends, but that is also where the danger lies. If friends or partners don’t do FIML, their small mix-ups will compound and lead to big mix-ups.

FIML is designed to catch mix-ups right as they happen. The reason for this is if you wait even a few seconds too long, you won’t be able to remember accurately where the mix-up started, what provoked it. And your partner won’t be able to remember accurately what they were thinking when you first felt the emotional jangle that signaled the appearance of a mix-up. If either partner can’t accurately remember what was in their mind at the onset of the mix-up, you can’t fix it at that time. You have to agree to be quicker or more observant next time and move on for now.

If you keep trying to get to the root of a mix-up whose origin has been forgotten, you will get lost in generalities (general semiotics) and not only not fix the problem but probably make it worse. Just remember that something happened and that it will probably happen again. See if you can catch it next time. It will almost certainly happen again because a mix-up almost always is based on one or both partners having a strong emotional attachment to a semiotic and then associating that semiotic with triggers or cues.

For example, I have a habitual strong emotional attachment to the semiotic that other people do not care about me or what I am saying. If I get that wrong in a conversation—that is, if that semiotic wrongly lights up inside of me—I am going to make mistakes about what the other person is saying or not saying and why. True, sometimes people really don’t care. But if I have that reaction with my partner while she is caring, I have made a huge mistake. I will feel bad about myself and her and I will be completely wrong. I will have taken something good (her caring) and turned it into it’s opposite. That mistake will then cause me to make others. I might speak sharply or start sulking or go do something else, leaving my partner feeling abandoned. How sad that is, but how very, very common.

FIML is designed to prevent that kind of bullshit. From this small example, I hope you can see how serious even a little mistake can be.

FIML allows partners to engage in an entirely different way of speaking to each other. It teaches us how to think differently. Not all mix-ups are serious. Many of them are neutral, some are funny, and virtually all of them are interesting. As you get better at identifying when you and your partner are starting to veer off into mixed-up semiotics, you will find that the range of subjects you can comfortably talk about increase greatly. How you talk to each other will become a normal subject and, with time, you will really feel that you and your partner can depend on each other for good clear speech that arises out of your own unique individualities.

FIML as a “loose” method of control for chaos in interpersonal communication systems

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Interpersonal communication systems can become chaotic when there are misunderstandings. And they can become wildly chaotic when the misunderstandings are serious and/or involve emotional responses.

Normally, in virtually all cultures, out-of-control interpersonal communications are settled by authoritarian decree, by reverting to pre-established roles, by fighting until one side tires, or by ending communication all together.

It is nothing short of tragic when this happens in close relationships during significant or profound communication acts.

FIML is designed to fix communication problems that occur during communications between two (or more) people who care about each other.

FIML is a “loose” method of control in that FIML largely does not have any content. It is a technique that allows partners to discover their own content and their own ways to fix their problems.

As with so many potentially chaotic systems, interpersonal misunderstandings can become wildly unstable for even very small reasons. A single misheard word or a single misinterpreted expression can lead to destructive chaos within the system, no matter how dedicated the communicants may be to each other.

Evidence that supports the use of a “loose” method of control like FIML can be found in this paper: Stalling chaos control accelerates convergence.

To paraphrase from the abstract of that paper and apply their conclusions to FIML, we can say that FIML works “…by stalling the control, thereby taking advantage of the stable directions of the uncontrolled chaotic” system.

By not having a set outcome in mind, by not allowing static interpersonal roles to control the outcome, FIML can succeed in fixing even very serious contretemps between caring partners. FIML accomplishes this by providing partners with a means of achieving a meta-view of their contretemps and from that point of view gently nudging their analysis toward mutual agreement, mutual transformation for both parties based on a complete and completely shared understanding of the unique conditions that generated the problem.

In this, FIML takes “advantage of the stable directions of the uncontrolled chaotic” system. The stable direction is the complete and mutually agreed upon resolution of all aspects of the contretemps. It is a “return” to the stable state of caring that preceded the problem, but a “return” with a significant upgrade because the new stable state will now include the experience of repairing the chaotic state that just passed.

The pleasure in a full FIML resolution can be very great because the semiotic systems of both partners minds will also achieve an upgraded level of stability and awareness. This kind of resolution, clearly, strengthens and resonates with the core of conscious beings who live in the midst of and use (often not so well) semiotics to understand themselves and others.

An article on the study linked above describes the “loose” control method as an “approach that cleverly exploits the natural behaviour of the system.” (See: Control is good, freedom is better)

FIML exploits the natural behavior of two people who seek mutual caring and mutual positive transformation by providing a method that allows them to intelligently deal with the chaos that is 100% bound to arise during some of their acts of communication. Rather than flee from communication due to the fear of chaos, FIML partners have a reliable method of controlling it and reestablishing harmony on a higher, better level.

Denial and self-deception

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Robin Hanson has an interesting post—Dark Pain, Dark Joy—about pains and joys “…we don’t let others know, and are often are in denial to ourselves.”

“Why do we hide and deny pain?” he asks. “Some pain makes us look bad. We’d look weak to complain of pains that many folks put up with without complaining.”

Hanson also describes “dark joys”—secret pleasures that would embarrass us if others knew about them.

I am glad to see Hanson expanding our sense of what the “unconscious” may hold and/or what we feel we must repress within our conscious minds. It is important to do this for, as he says, “consciousness…is a matter of degree, and repressed pain [or secret pleasures] can infect our mood and feelings in many indirect ways.”

In FIML practice, partners will discover a great many subconscious and semi-conscious misinterpretations of themselves and others that “deeply infect [their] moods and feelings in many indirect ways.” I would add that they also infect and affect us in many direct ways that can, and often do, have massive consequences.

Most of us are in denial about our misinterpretations of ourselves and others. Our denial is a complex form of self-deception that may be conscious or unconscious. Entire cultures are built upon a foundation of interpersonal misinterpretations. The central misinterpretation is that we understand each other better than we do.

We use very crude and ambiguous signs and symbols (language, gesture, tone, etc.) to communicate meanings that are frequently fraught with ambiguity. Then we pretend that we have been understood and that we understand how we are being responded to.

In a science lab when speaking about an experiment, the technical parts of exchanged messages may get sent and received without too many problems, but once at home, those same scientists will not be capable of communicating with their spouses with anything near the same clarity.

The “repressed pain” that stems from ambiguity and misinterpretation experienced during communications with significant friends and spouses is the herd of elephants in the room of human civilization from ancient times to today.

To compensate for our terribly poor understanding of each other (much of it deriving from inevitable and completely unavoidable ambiguities in communication), we are forced to adopt stock roles, to have unfounded beliefs about our “selves” and others, to make unsatisfying vows, to adhere to public semiotic standards that cannot possibly reflect or embody our authentic beings.

To correct this problem, we have to learn how to communicate with far more detail and far more accuracy than is normally possible in any culture in existence today. If you could communicate with minimal ambiguity (orders of magnitude better than now) and with great clarity with the people you love, would you not want to do that?

The “dark pains and pleasures” described by Hanson are a significant part of being human. But the corrosive and very harmful dark pain that comes from the bad communication of semiotic babies (us) is even worse.

Most people misunderstand everything

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Why?

Because language is necessarily often ambiguous.

So?

The ambiguities are rarely fixed.

So?

Unfixed ambiguities lead to errors in interpretation. The errors accumulate and snowball. All people have been raised in environments like that and continue to live in them.

This causes pain because our minds are capable of communicating unambiguously, but we don’t know how.

We are semiotic animals, beings that live in semiotic jungles.

Our pain and error-ridden communication makes us mean, simple, greedy, stupid, violent, selfish, crazy.

Communication errors, misinterpretations, cause ghosts to form in the mind. We need to imagine a role for ourselves and others, but since we experience so many errors, our imaginings are fundamentally wrong. They are like ghosts in our minds.

We are as ghosts speaking and listening to each other.

Were Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments wrong?

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See this article, Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram’s Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?, for more.

Since so much of our understanding of human behavior is based on Milgram’s experiment, it behooves us to question the experiment.

If Milgram’s experiment was fudged and if its results were exaggerated, as Perry claims, it provides an excellent example of how a false “scientific” semiotic can gain public attention and become a mainstay of our understanding of human psychology.

Identity versus ego

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In this post, I will describe some of the main differences between “identity” and “ego” as we use these terms on this site. One of these days, I will make a glossary of all the terms we use.

  • Identity is the internal signaling system.
  • Ego is fiction that overlays identity.
  • Identity is clear, practical, ethically sound.
  • Ego is theatrical, defensive and offensive, designed to communicate with other egos and to further ulterior motives.
  • We need an ego in social situations only because that is how everyone is.
  • People communicate through the fictions of their social groups because that is all they know.
  • You won’t get far with nothing but an identity in a world full of egos.
  • But you will get closer to the truth about yourself and others.
  • Two identities can create their own group without ego fictions.
  • The fictions of the ego are tautological or self-referential.
  • It is very hard for most people to see the difference between ego and identity as defined above.
  • The reason is ego is the major way they have learned to communicate with others.
  • You show me your ego and I’ll show you mine.
  • Ego is a story, a fiction.
  • Groups of egos will always have self-referential stories or fictions that identify them.
  • Groups of motorcyclists, groups of Christians or Buddhists—all ego groups have stories, signs, and symbols that identify them.
  • These stories, signs, and symbols are always false, never completely true, always serve the purpose of upholding the group and the egos in it.
  • People without egos or ego groups can communicate just fine, though it will always be hard for people with egos to understand them.

The ego is the “deluded self” or the “small self” of Buddhism. I suppose the “identity,” if it is very pure, is the enlightened mind, the Buddha mind, the Tathagata.

FIML practice greatly helps the identity see the difference between identity and ego. It does this by showing the identity how the ego interprets what it hears and frames what it says.

The ego is like a ghost in the mind, or a collection of ghosts, that distorts reality for its own purposes. It is hard to see by yourself where it starts and where it ends. With the help of a caring partner, the line between ego and identity will become much clearer.

We “need” an ego only because it is the main way that people communicate. We do not need or want an ego when we communicate with our FIML partners. If more people did FIML, there would be less need for egos.

Shared subjectivity

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  • FIML practice can be described as shared subjectivity.
  • The coinage, or units, of basic FIML sharing are microanalyses of communication ambiguities done in real-time, as they happen.
  • This kind of sharing prevents FIML partners from forming subjective views of each other that are based on mistaken interpretations.
  • Mistaken interpretations between partners always lead to subjective separation, unshared and unsharable subjectivity.
  • Mistaken interpersonal interpretations are the source of most, if not all, neurotic thinking and behavior.
  • It is difficult (I believe impossible) to correct neurotic thinking and behavior through generalized analyses.
  • Generalized here indicates analyses that are based on general theories that are applied to individuals, often by professional therapists.
  • FIML is not a generalized analysis. FIML is a communication technique.
  • It has great therapeutic value because it is a technique that will help partners share their unique subjectivities.
  • By sharing their subjectivities, partners will extirpate or extinguish their neuroses, their mistaken subjective misinterpretations of each other and of other people.
  • Neuroses are painful because they cause us to use our minds badly and wrongly.
  • Neurotic communication is painful because at some level we all know that we are communicating badly and wrongly.
  • We persist in neurotic behavior only because we do not know another way to be.
  • FIML shows us another way to be.
  • By slowly chipping away at neurotic (i.e. mistaken) interpretations the moment they arise, FIML frees us from neurosis itself (i.e. long-standing mistaken interpretations).

Semiotics and psychology

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A semiotic analysis of a person’s “internal and external signalling” often can be more conducive to understanding than a “psychological” analysis.

From a semiotic point of view, it is not at all necessary that even a very significant adult behavior will have started with a significant trauma or any other sort of strong influence.

The smallest thing can constitute the start of a “semiotic slope” that, once begun, will tend to persist.

For example, your mom may not have understood that as a three-year-old it was normal for you to prefer the company of your father. Her misunderstanding may then have led to her withdrawing from you very slightly, and this snowballed between the two of you. When, years later, you wanted a closer relation with your mom and were not able to get it, it may have seemed to you that the cause was some trauma in her relation with her mother. But the actual start of the whole thing began with nothing more than your mom never having learned the simple fact that toddlers often prefer one parent over the other for a period of time.

What happened was she misunderstood the semiotics of toddler behavior and many things followed from that. There was no trauma, no ideal state not attained due to some seriously bad thing having happened to her.

Another way to put this is most people do not remember very much before the age of five or so. But didn’t a lot of formative things happen back then? Some probably were traumatic, and we do tend to remember those experiences more clearly than others, but much of what started our paths of development also began with very simple, often accidental, interpretations or misinterpretations of what was said or done to us or around us.

In a semiotic analysis, we recognize that a good deal of what we think/feel/believe began with a small thing, a random or accidental interpretation that got us going in some direction that we likely today see as a major component of our “personality.”

Semiotics can be defined as “the science of communicable meaning (including internal communication).”

Once your mom began to interpret, even very slightly, your toddler behavior as “meaning” that you did not love her as much as your father, many things followed for all of you. But there was no trauma, no glaring formative event, no Freudian ghost from her past coming to haunt your life. Rather, she simply made a mistake due to her ignorance of toddler behavior.

Ironically, the fact that many of us still today tend to understand much of human “psychology” as being determined by unconscious Freudianesque forces is a good example of how a “semiotic slope” once begun tends to continue. Freud started us down a “semiotic slope” that still shapes much of our world today.

The persistence of what is simply a wrong interpretation in an individual can be compared to what happens in cultures. Something begins, then it snowballs, then it becomes a tradition or an established idea. The semiotic network that is culture is hard to change once it is established. Something very similar is also true for individuals.

I am not claiming that emotional traumas do not happen and that they do not affect people. I am claiming that what we are is often due to small accidents as much as large traumas. And that people who are “resilient” after having suffered significant traumas may be so because their semiotic development led them to view the “meaning” of their trauma in a more “resilient,” or useful, way.

Signaling as a basis for understanding introversion and extroversion

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Basing our understanding of human “psychology” on signaling and signaling systems—essentially seeing people as complex signaling systems—can make many aspects of being human clearer.

For example, rather than analyze “introversion” versus “extroversion,” we can use terms that work better with the signaling model—introspection versus extrospection.

Extrospection is a made up word. In this context it means someone who looks (spec, specere) outwardly for the establishment, maintenance, and validation of their identity.

In the signaling model, identity can be defined as “the (somewhat) complex nexuses of meaning/signaling that ’embodies’ our comprehension of the semiotics of our cultures and experiences.”

An extrovert is normally seen as someone who likes people and wants to spend time with them, as opposed to an introvert who prefers spending time alone.

There is probably some value in this distinction. But all introverts know that we also like people and want to spend time with them; the problem is spending time with strongly “extroverted” types is not fully satisfying.

Similarly, extroverts are generally not as satisfied with the company of introverts as they are with other extroverts.

It may be hard to see why this is until we use the terms “introspection” and “extrospection.”

A person whose identity depends heavily on the opinions of others—one who favors extrospection—will tend to spend more time with other people than alone. They will be good at getting along with other people of their type because “extrospectors” value the mutual validation they offer each other.

To a person whose identity depends heavily on introspection, the “extrospector” may be fun to be around for a while, but will probably become tiring because the “introspector” does not want the same sort of validation required by the “extrospector.”

In terms of signaling, the introspector relies on internal signaling while the extrospector relies on external signaling. The introspector can and does enjoy other people, but they are far more likely to be satisfied with other people who share their tendency for internal signaling.

The signaling systems of introspectors with introspectors and extrospectors with extrospectors mirror each other much better than when the two types are mixed.

Extrospectors tend to form groups and have a much easier time finding each other than introspectors do. This is why extrospectors control so much of what happens in the world.

Moreover, extrospectors also tend to base their opinions of themselves and each other on external, measurable things—property, money, status symbols. To the introspector, these things are not as valuable to their identity as depth of analysis, depth of internal signals, depth of communication.

Extrospectors are great and we need them. But if you are not one, it might be good to realize that it is not people per se that you want to avoid, but rather the tedium of extrospectional values, aims, and beliefs.

Find another introspector with compatible interests and there is a good chance you will become highly “extroverted” toward each other.

UPDATE 02/02/21: Since introspection produces an identity that is grounded more on internal signals, self-generated or discovered signals, introspectors tend to be more different from each other than extrospectors within the same culture.

Semiotics are social

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Near the end of a very long drive the other day, my partner and I got stuck in a traffic jam. The day was hot and the jam went on and on and we felt frustrated.

It didn’t happen, but as we sat and waited in the car I did get close to becoming irritated at my partner though our delay was not in any way her fault.

Ironically, had I been driving alone, my frustration at the traffic jam would have been even worse because the delay would have been preventing me from seeing her sooner.

This brief incident shows how closely connected our emotions are to our social circumstances. Since my partner was in the car with me, I came close to becoming irritated with her. Had she not been in the car, I would have missed her tremendously and wished she was with me. I bet many can relate to this sort of experience.

Consider that something similar often happens with speech. Our inevitably sloppy ways of speaking and listening produce an ineluctable muddle and rather than know this and compensate for it, we can and do get irritated when meanings get crossed.

There is no way that your meaning will always be understood or that you will always understand the meanings of others. To form a judgement or make an interpretation of what someone is saying without checking with them is a fool’s errand. You will be wrong again and again. And just because you can get someone else to agree with you, won’t make you right.

Our emotions are closely connected to our semiotic proprioception. It is very important to realize how often serious mistakes arise from this fact.

Notes

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  • Semiotics is “the science of communicable meaning.” It is this much more than “the science of communicable signs.”
  • My position on human cultures is they all suck. They’re terrible because each of them is fundamentally based on lies and bad communication. That’s why virtually all of them are hierarchical and violent.
  • Only FIML, or something very much like it, can correct mistakes in interpersonal communication. Thus only a FIML subculture can avoid the problems of all other cultures.
  • Be a “semioclast”; don’t stop at being a mere iconoclast. Deconstructing a handful of public symbols is nothing compared to fully analyzing the semiotics that underlie everything you think and feel, everything your personal version of your culture is based on.
  • Why don’t more people realize how ambiguous our communications are and how often we misunderstand and that those misunderstandings can be very serious? The reason is probably that most people are still living in cultures rooted in the past—hierarchical, role-based cultures that do not permit the sort of communication used in FIML.
  • Humans are semiotic beings and thus we have a basic urge to seek and create meaning and to communicate that meaning.
  • In most cultures, the assertion of fundamentally empty meaning (social formalities, cliches, polite conversation, etc.) is all that people do.
  • Many psychological problems arise due to the misuse of the semiotic urge, the urge to seek or create meaning.
  • People understand meaning “loco-centrically”; that is, they understand it based on their own semiotic proprioception. This is a technical way of saying we understand meaning in a self-centered way, a self-centric way. This natural and unavoidable self-centeredness of all people explains a great deal of communication error. You speak from your point of view while I hear from mine; they two will rarely even be close.
  • Yet we pretend we understand or have been understood.
  • All communication is constantly establishing and reestablishing itself. Communication, just like the meaning(s) contained within it, asserts itself.
  • Non-FIML communication asserts many static kinds of meaning—roles, beliefs, values, fake history, fake agreement, etc.
  • FIML communication, in contrast, asserts a procedure, a way of making sure that real, unambiguous communication is happening and has happened.
  • North Korea is an example of an extremely bad static, hierarchical non-FIML society. Notice that within this society the individual is robbed not only of any semblance of a decent culture but also of the possibility of deep introspection, individual introspection. When the culture is absurd and violent, the individual cannot even see inside himself.
  • But all cultures are like that to a greater extent than we normally realize.

Paradigms and problems

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One of the problems in transmitting FIML practice to others is no one has a paradigm for learning that includes a friend saying to them “I have something good to tell you, but it will take a fairly long time for you to understand what I mean and learn how to do it.”

People are used to getting small bits of information from friends, not large, wholly new ways of seeing themselves and the world around them.

This problem in FIML transmission is compounded by the need for FIML practitioners to speak to each other in a way that is taboo in almost all cultures and subcultures. FIML partners must be able to thread a communication needle, the eye of which lies very close to a common human flash point.

The flash point is our “identity” as it is actually functioning in a real-world conversation in real-time.

I don’t know of a single culture anywhere (except those of FIML partners) that allows real-time queries of the sort that form the basis of FIML practice. In all cultures that I know of, queries of that type are seen as rude, petty, carping, nasty, distracting, lacking proper decorum, weird, and most of all, threatening.

Culture supports identity and vice versa. This makes the culture-identity matrix a very difficult entity to analyze in real-time.

To touch on it or even near it is to touch that flash point that tells people they are being threatened, that they must defend themselves against a dangerous assault on their sense of who they are.

Of course, FIML does not actually assault or threaten anything, but as mentioned, very few of us have a listening/learning paradigm that will allow FIML to be given a proper hearing.

One day, I imagine, FIML will be taught in classes where students will have desks and chairs and white boards and where they will be given handouts and lessons will proceed gradually and logically from point to point until the whole is revealed to them with a nicely prepackaged smile.

That day has not come yet (and I hope I am doing something else when it does). For now, all we have (and all you need) is the raw idea, a willing partner, and a paradigm shift that allows you to undertake a new way of communicating.

Do you realize how ambiguous you are when you speak?

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And how bad you are at interpreting what others say to you?

If not, you are living in a very muddled world that is probably “anchored” to nothing more than your “feelings,” your “identity,” or some form of extrinsic “belief” or “faith” in your nation, group, religion, career.

Either you are a sort of slave to a public semiotic (religion, ethnicity, career, etc.) or you are a sort of slave to your muddled interior—your volatile emotional sense of “who” you “are.”

The only way I know of to fully comprehend how badly you speak and listen is to do FIML practice.

You may understand in the abstract how wrong and ambiguous speech and listening frequently are, but if you don’t do FIML you won’t be able to see with any specificity  how wrong you are and where and why. If your understanding is only general or abstract, it will function as just another level of ambiguity, another source of mistakes.

Mildly sorry for being so blunt, but it’s true. Only FIML, or something very similar, can give you and your partner real-time access to objectively agreed upon communication mistakes being made between you. And there is no general or abstract substitute for that.

Even a single mistake can have massive consequences. But we all make dozens of mistakes every day.

Malignant narcissism and identity

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Malignant narcissism is an extreme form of narcissism characterized by aggression against people who threaten the narcissist’s narcissistic supply.

A malignant narcissist sees the other person as the threat, not just what they say or do.

This makes sense in that a narcissist has at some level concluded that they as a person are the standard for all things; thus, other people are blamed and attacked far out of proportion to whatever the narcissist believes they have done.

In Christian terms, the malignant narcissist blames the sinner not the sin and thus attacks the sinner, even when the sin may be as mild as a withheld compliment or a deserved rebuke.

I think all narcissists behave in a manner similar to this, though the ordinary type, which is very common in this world, is less aggressive than the malignant type.

Since narcissism is so common, one can say that in some ways narcissists have good reason to be suspicious of others and take revenge on them. There really is a good chance that they are dealing with another narcissist, who will do the same to them if they get the chance.

In a previous post, I wrote about the vortex or tautology of identity, the tautology of basing our identity on a semiotic matrix that, by its very nature, always refers back to the same “identity.” A malignant narcissist is an extreme example of this problem.

The semiotics of malignant narcissism are such that the narcissist sees his or her identity as being the person they really are. Seeing themselves in this way, narcissists apply a similar logic to others—at their core they are people who must be opposed or attacked for even the slightest perceived offense.

A group example of extreme malignant narcissism might be North Korea. If an NK citizen makes a single mistake—even a slight verbal mistake—they run the risk of being executed and also having three generations of their family sent to prison for life. The reasoning is that the original offender is a very bad person, which can be known from what they said. And since they are very bad, they must have influenced every person in their family who is younger than them and been influenced by every person in their family who is older than them.

If that isn’t hell on earth, I don’t know what is.

It is my belief that most groups, even very cute and nice ones, tend toward narcissism and many of them tend toward and become malignantly narcissistic. This happens because groups form and maintain themselves on the basis of shared semiotics, which necessarily are formulaic or simplistic.

We can see malignant narcissism in many religious, political, nationalist, or ethnic groups. The clearest sign is a disproportionate response to criticism—banishment, murder, violence, loss of employment, etc.—but narcissistic groups can also be clever and hide these responses or delay them long enough that the connection to the “offense” is hard to see.

Just as narcissistic groups cannot bear criticism, even self-criticism from within, so individual narcissists are bad at introspection. For either one, to honestly view and assess the core value (me!) is to destroy the false identity. For either one (group or individual) this would be a wonderful thing for them and others, but it is hard to do because their semiotic matrix is a tautology and they cannot admit this, or usually even see it.