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.
Childfree people—people who do not have children and do not want to have children in the future—represent and large and growing percentage of the population in wealthy countries. However, less is known about childfree people in developing countries. To facilitate this research, we developed software to identify childfree people in data from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Using this software, we estimated the prevalence of childfree people in 51 developing countries. Among single women ages 15–29, we found substantial cross-national and within-region variation in childfree prevalence, ranging from 0.3% in Liberia to 15.6% in Papua New Guinea. We also estimated the association between being childfree and country-level indicators of human development, gender equality, and political freedom. Results suggest that the prevalence of childfree people in a country is associated with the country’s level of human development, and to a lesser extent their gender equality and political freedom. These results suggest that some developing countries have large populations of childfree people, and thus that being childfree is not a choice restricted to those living in the West or in wealthy countries. As developing countries evolve in terms of their human development, gender equality, and political freedom, it will be important to continue studying their childfree populations, both to understand demographic transitions in this part of the world, and to support its members’ reproductive health and other needs.
Prince Leo von Hohenberg is the great-grandson of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the son of Prince Albrecht of Hohenberg and Rosalind Roque Alcoforado. He delivered a speech on November 16, 2024, at Castle Artstetten in Austria, commemorating the assassination of his great-grandfather, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which triggered World War I.
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This is a member of the Western elite I can support. His speech was given one year ago today. I would imagine any progress he has made would be quiet. I hope he is not all-talk and no-action like so many. A year is not a long time for meta-politics, so I believe he deserves the benefit of the doubt. ABN
He is an independent voice, pro-Chinese and popular on TikTok. What he says here is fairly common and worth hearing if you are unfamiliar with this angle. ABN
A Chinese diplomat has sparked a diplomatic firestorm in Japan over a statement widely seen as threatening toward Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, following her recent remarks on Taiwan.
The controversy erupted after Takaichi, who was sworn into office last month, told a parliamentary committee on Friday that a Chinese military blockade of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, would likely create a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan—one that could force Tokyo to respond by deploying its Self-Defense Forces.
Xue Jian, the Chinese consul general in Osaka, fired back on social media platform X in a now-deleted post, which read: “That filthy neck that barged in on its own—I’ve got no choice to cut it off without a moment’s hesitation. Are you prepared for that?”
In Poland, government protects citizens and Polish culture. In Sweden, government neglects citizens and invites invaders hostile to Swedish culture. Pathological altruism and psycholinguistic stupidity combined. ABN
In this case, the interviewer is deliberately using psycholinguistics to insinuate an insidious undertone, which Owens disambiguates deftly.
Deliberately misusing words in this fashion is a very common political and journalistic trick.
Words and psychology are always intertwined and thus words are always susceptible to being used maliciously; they can provide an appearance of plausible deniability.
In the past week or so we have seen numerous Jewish Supremists, closeted or not, employ these techniques in addition to their typical name-calling and screaming while denying the obvious.
In this context, it is worth noting that misuse of language can happen in friendly, intimate conversation between good friends nearly as often as it does in political dialog.
It is common for psycholinguistic misunderstandings to happen for completely innocent reasons, with profoundly sad effects for all parties involved, which often snowball.
FIML practice will show all practitioners how insidious the misuse or mishearing of words can be and how to prevent it.
One of the reasons I like Owens is she has a very good understanding of language and psychology and generally uses words very well, with nuance, humor and accuracy. ABN
Revolutions are funny things. They start out almost imperceptible. The final straw itself may be as inconsequential as a single voice in the crowd whose words unleash a tidal wave that sweeps aside the seemingly intractable old order forever.
Even as the cracks in the Eastern Bloc began to materialize in 1989, starting in June in Hungary, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu’s Romania seemed impervious to the winds of change. They maintained a cult-like grip on power aided by the notorious and ubiquitous Securitate, the secret police.
On 21 December 1989 Ceausescu decided that the best way to quell a bubbling cauldron of unrest in Transylvania over the past several weeks was to appear, himself, with his wife Elena, above Bucharest’s Palace Square. Workers were bussed in and given red banners to wave in support of the regime. It was to be a show of force that would solidify the existing order.
After all, no one would dare challenge Ceausescu to his face.
As he confidently approached the microphone from the balcony and began mechanically repeating the tired old slogans of communism, suddenly a voice broke through with a high pitched scream, followed by an increasing din. The discordant sounds of protest rendered Ceausescu speechless and confused.
That second, when the false edifice of his rule was punctured and the impossibility of his position exposed, communist rule died in Romania.
Something like America’s ‘Ceausescu Moment’ is definitely happening.
I am not so sure the query pictured above is that ‘moment’. But at some point recently, the tide has turned, deeply and cannot be called back.
Many of us have been hoping to live during this moment, some of us for many decades.
Many smaller tides have contributed to this momentous tide — the collapse of the climate hoax, the covid hoax, the vax hoax, the woke hoax, the MAGA failure to avoid entanglement in the Gaza slaughter and more.
The mind-control machine has broken.
Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes are the immediate manifestation of the broken machine.
But many tens of millions stand with them and behind them. The lies cannot continue and many of us know this.
Time will tell how matters develop from here.
The people and their voices are always the bottom line, which even the ruling elite cannot ignore. ABN
In this post, I want to avoid words like psychology, personality, instinct, normal, abnormal, etc. to describe human beings. I want to throw out all of those usual ways of thinking about people and replace them with just three terms–semiosis, symbiosis, and optimization.
In this context, semiosis means all symbols, meaning, language, philosophy, belief, value, etc. An easy way to grasp semiosis is to equate it with the way an individual’s culture, or subculture, works within their mind. Symbiosis denotes relations to other people. An easy way to grasp symbiosis is to equate it with an individual’s social group(s)–their marriage partner, family, friends, clubs, religious groups, job, etc.
All humans are a combination of some sort of semiosis and symbiosis as defined above. What we want to aim for in our lives is optimization of our semioses and symbioses. The only way I know how to do this is with FIML practice because only FIML practice gives partners the tools to grasp and manipulate—to understand and improve—their semioses.
The main area where this optimization occurs in FIML practice is in the symbiosis of partners’ semioses. Semioses are shared. Partners share in a symbiotic relationship the semioses they both carry around in their heads. FIML partners must become conscious of this level of human interaction because it happens whether you are conscious of it or not. If partners are not conscious of it and/or can’t deal with it, they will not be able to optimize their relationship (or their own lives). Rather, they will be forced to cling to public semiotics, private neuroses, or most commonly both.
If partners are optimizing the symbiosis of their shared semioses, their core behaviors will spring from dynamic principles rather than static codes, vows, or agreements. FIML is nearly contentless in that it does not tell partners what to think but rather how to observe and analyze their shared semioses.
Now, as an example, let’s say you experience a mix-up with your partner. Something didn’t go right; one of you misspoke or did something bothersome; then you had an argument or at least difficult emotions arose. So what should you do? At times like these, many people will separate for a while to cool down and then gloss over whatever it was when they get back together later on. At that point they will rely on some sort of static notion of their relationship and on that basis try to recapture good feelings. This technique works to a point, but it is not the best because it does nothing to optimize the relationship. It just covers up the problem. When you avoid a problem, you underscore your inability to deal with it while allowing it to grow.
A much better way for partners to deal with a problem like the one above is recognize that it is definitely going to affect your shared semiosis. Once you both accept this fact, you will probably find it easier to stick with the issue. Rather than separating for a while, face the issue and start a FIML discussion by analyzing what has happened and why. Even if it takes you an hour or more to reach a resolution, it will be well worth it because you will be optimizing your relationship. By doing a FIML discussion, you will avoid hiding from a problem while profoundly increasing your mutual understanding.
This is how mutual transformation often works in the real world. If you do small things like this enough, both you and your partner will become convinced that you can really live and interact on a higher level than what you probably had thought possible before.
Basic anthropology — tribal beliefs and behaviors migrate along with the tribes. Not difficult to discuss at all unless your tribe (Europeans) have been mind-controlled into not seeing the painfully obvious, which they have been. I highly respect the young speaker above, as saying what she is saying actually takes courage in Europe today. ABN
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