Our “true self” or, as I prefer, “authentic being” can be revealed through FIML practice, which requires two people each of whom provides a check on the other’s beliefs about what they are thinking or feeling. Personas are for people who have never experienced their authentic being. Without FIML the individual mind is plagued by doubt, suspicion, error, fantasy, conceits and delusions both pleasant and unpleasant. All of us are raised in conditions like that. Our parents, families, caregivers all were like that. FIML will fix all of it and show that your “true self” is not scary. It is simply not known to you. It is also not a self but a state of being, a dynamic state of being. It is much more complex and also much simpler than any persona. The hardest part about FIML is finding a partner to do it with. FIML is something you do. It is not a static doctrine. I am coming to the belief that the West is failing because Westerners see the emptiness of personas but cannot see the fullness of authentic being. It’s quite possible FIML practitioners are the “philosophers of the future” that Nietzsche wrote about, the “free spirits” who go not beyond good and evil but beyond confinement within fallacious personas. ABN
Tag: Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML)
An example of a psychological morpheme
A psychological morpheme is defined as the smallest unit of a psychological response.
This term is used in FIML practice to distinguish psychological micro responses from meso and macro responses which are more general and less amenable to change and productive analysis.
There are many kinds of psychological morphemes and every individual has a multitude of them that are unique to them. Some are associated with personal memories and emotions that were aroused in the past. Others are new and arise in the present moment.
Still others are internalized social responses which at their most basic feel almost like disembodied responses, responses that precede thought, that begin creating the world we live in before we even know it. They are part of us, but can be slightly astonishing when we notice them for what they are.
A good example of one happened yesterday. My partner was away on a short trip and since it was a warm day I was working at home in my birthday suit. At some point I decided to call my partner, who would think nothing of seeing me in my birthday suit, but before I did I found myself reflexively putting on a pair of shorts.
I stopped and wondered why I was doing that and realized I was being “directed” by an almost completely emotionless and thought-less psychological morpheme.
Since I was going to speak, I was going to engage in a social act. And since I was going to engage in a social act, some part of me decided I needed to put on a pair of shorts.
This morpheme is interesting because it is so elementary. I was going to speak over the phone, long-distance to someone I have been living with for many years. And yet even still a very weak and basic sense of propriety that I had learned from my culture arose in me and got me to put on a pair of shorts.
It was like a single cold spark. And yet it was strong enough to move my system. It was a sort of “logic” like the logic of a small pattern in sand, or a twist in a tree’s bark. It was “me” putting on the shorts, but the “logic” of my doing so seemed to belong more to nature or a physical process than “my” being.
Psychological morphemes of this type are wonderful to observe. They belong to an almost blank class of responses that work like directional signs that induce us to move one way or another, to do something or not.
Other kinds of psychological morphemes induce us to feel, think, or believe something with no more “charge” than the single small spark that got me to put on my shorts.
Psychological morphemes are the most basic data of FIML practice. They are the small signs that make up the “language” of our psychologies, our minds. Understanding them leads to a rich understanding of your own and others’ behaviors, feelings, and thoughts.
first posted JULY 19, 2015
Semiotics and stress
A common explanation of human stress includes physical stress (heat, cold, etc.), hierarchical stress (low status, competition, etc.), and lack of social support (horizontal communication, belonging).
Supposedly, humans and other primates tend to stress themselves because we are smart enough to have a lot of free time (time not spent gathering food). As the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky puts it:
“If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don’t mess with you much. What that means is you’ve got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They’re just like us: They’re not getting done in by predators and famines, they’re getting done in by each other.” (Why Humans (and Baboons) Stress So Much)
Sapolsky makes good points but I want to add something to what he says.
Humans are “semiotic primates.” That is, we live as much or more in a semiotic environment as a natural one.
This means that we stress ourselves not just by our place in a natural hierarchy, but also by how we understand where we are, what we are hearing and saying, and what others are hearing and saying when around us.
Since most humans have no way of fully adjusting their interpersonal communication, the semiotic environments they live in are ambiguous, frequently mistaken, sometimes dangerous. Our intimate semiotic environments are typically unsatisfying or stressful because the communication upon which they are based and which defines them is rarely, if ever, optimal.
When interpersonal stress is relieved through one of the three ways mentioned in the first paragraph above, people may exercise more, work harder to climb the hierarchy, or seek out more horizontal support from a club or temple.
Exercise is good, climbing the hierarchy is OK if that’s what you want, and adding social support never hurts. None of these methods will optimize interpersonal communication, however. They are substitute semiotics of a different kind.
The reason this is so is the core stress-inducing problem most people have is poor intimate interpersonal communication with their primary interlocutor.
It’s not bad to think of yourself as having a psychology and a psychological history, but this line of thought rarely, if ever, leads to optimal communication with your primary interlocutor. When we psychologize ourselves, we tend to generalize ourselves and others. We see ourselves as defined by theories (extrinsic semiotics) rather than by the the dynamic reality of our moment-by-moment interactions with the person(s) we care about most.
FIML optimizes communication between primary interlocutors and in so doing relieves some of the most deleterious human stressors by removing them as they arise. If your intimate interpersonal communication is good, you won’t care very much about where you are on the hierarchy.
first posted OCTOBER 30, 2015
The importance of analyzing tone of voice
Tone of voice is difficult to define clearly or control. It can also be very seriously misunderstood.
Nonetheless an algorithm designed by researchers has succeeded in predicting the outcomes of marital counseling with 79% accuracy, which is better than what human counselors predicted.
The study shows that tone of voice is measurable with decent accuracy and thus is an objective aspect of language to a point. I qualify that statement because tone of voice can also be misunderstood and misunderstandings can become habits and/or become serious hindrances to understanding if they are not properly analyzed.
One of the researchers had this to say of the study:
Psychological practitioners and researchers have long known that the way that partners talk about and discuss problems has important implications for the health of their relationships. However, the lack of efficient and reliable tools for measuring the important elements in those conversations has been a major impediment in their widespread clinical use. These findings represent a major step forward in making objective measurement of behavior practical and feasible for couple therapists. (Source)
Note the line: “…the lack of efficient and reliable tools for measuring the important elements in those conversations has been a major impediment in their widespread clinical use…”
This is good news for clinics, but what do you do at home years before you need to seek counseling for a rocky marriage?
What you can do is analyze at home using FIML techniques.
When FIML partners focus on analyzing tone of voice long before they are experiencing problems in their relationship, I am confident most of them will not develop problems, and surely most will never develop problems related to tone of voice.
Tone of voice is accessible to rational analysis and understanding if partners make FIML-type agreements to do so. Besides avoiding marital discord, FIML analyses provide many other insights into the idiosyncrasies of partners’ unique relationships and circumstances.
The study can be found here: Still Together?: The Role of Acoustic Features in Predicting Marital Outcome.
An article about the study can be found here: Words can deceive, but tone of voice cannot.
first posted NOVEMBER 26, 2015
Why you can’t fix it with generalities
Psychological, cognitive, emotional, or communicative problems cannot be fundamentally corrected by using general analyses or generalized procedures. You can teach someone to think and see differently, even to behave differently, by such procedures, but you cannot bring about deep change by using them. The reason this is so is change through generalizations does little more than substitute one external semiosis for another. The person seeking change will not experience deep change because all they are essentially doing is importing a different explanation of their “condition” into their life.
This happens with Buddhists who remain attached to surface meanings of the Dharma as well as to people seeking mainstream help for emotional problems. Any change will feel good for a while in most cases, but after some time stasis and a recurrence of the original problem, or something similar to it, will occur. You cannot become enlightened by importing someone else’s ideas. You cannot achieve deep transformation by replacing one inculcated semiosis with another. You cannot find your authentic “self” by using the static ideas of others.
The way around this problem is to use a technique that is at its core entirely dynamic. Buddhist mindfulness, which stresses attentiveness in and to the moment, is a dynamic technique. The problem with this technique in the modern world is it is not well-suited to the cacophony of signs and symbols that surround us almost all the time. Mindfulness too often entails being mindful of a cultural semiosis that is itself a tautology, a trap that does not contain within itself an obvious exit.
Mindfulness coupled with FIML practice overcomes this problem because the interactive dynamism of FIML gives partners a tool that strengthens mindfulness while at the same time affording them the opportunity to observe in the moment how their habitual semiosis operates, and why it operates that way. FIML gives partners the means to create a rational leverage-point that they can both share and use to grapple with neurotic issues that have always eluded generalized treatments.
FIML does not tell partners how to be or what to think. It describes nothing more than a technique that gives partners access to their deep “operating systems.” If you hack your “operating system” with FIML practice, you will find that you are able to eliminate neuroses (kleshas in Buddhist terms) and replace them with a semiosis (subculture) of your and your partner’s own choosing. To do FIML, partners must have a deep ethical, emotional, and intellectual commitment to each other, but it is important to recognize that these are not static or generalized ideas. They are dynamic principles upon which the transformational behaviors of FIML are built.
first posted APRIL 26, 2012
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.
first posted JUNE 15, 2012
FIML and Symbolic Interaction Theory
Symbolic Interaction Theory, also called symbolic interactionism, provides the best large-scale framework I have found so far for explaining FIML practice.
Three basic premises of symbolic interactionism are:
- “Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.”
- “The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society.”
- “These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters.”
These basic premises have been taken from the Wikipedia article linked above. I tend to agree with most of the general framework, as I understand it, of symbolic interactionism and believe that FIML practice can reasonably be understood as a method that can fit fairly comfortably within that framework.
FIML differs from symbolic interactionism in that FIML is much more a form of interpersonal psychotherapy than a sociological theory. FIML is a communication technique that focuses on meaning as it arises and is apprehended during short periods of time. FIML’s focus on very small units of interpersonal communication is what allows partners to understand how their sense of meaning intertwines with their emotional responses.
From a FIML point of view, society does not appear very well structured in many of its contexts, especially interpersonal contexts involving emotions, friendship, and intimate bonding. From this point of view, a great deal of social structure appears to be a substitute for authentic interaction between individual minds.
FIML seems also to show that a great deal of human suffering arises from the paucity of meaning that can be exchanged between individuals in most social contexts. Indeed, even in intimate contexts, most individuals, if not all of them, have great difficulty in attaining profound mutual understanding. This happens because our perceptions of our selves and others—due to how we use language and semiotics—are too crude and vague to allow for communicative complexity equal to the complexity of our minds/brains.
FIML corrects this problem by focusing on the details of interpersonal communication. Incidentally, FIML theory/practice can be falsified by having many couples do FIML practice and measuring the results. A criticism of symbolic interactionism is that it is not falsifiable. FIML differs from symbolic interactionism in that it is a practical technique that uses objective data (agreed upon by both partners) to optimize communication and improve psychological well-being.
I am pretty sure I will have more to say about symbolic interactionism in the days to come. A friend just sent me the article linked above, so I put down a few thoughts after one reading. FIML partners may find that symbolic interactionism helps with a general understanding of FIML practice.
first posted JUNE 26, 2014
UPDATE 01/13/22: The Wikipedia page has been updated since the excerpt above. I found this update interesting:
[Symbolic interactionism] is a framework that helps understand how society is preserved and created through repeated interactions between individuals. The interpretation process that occurs between interactions helps create and recreate meaning. It is the shared understanding and interpretations of meaning that affect the interaction between individuals. Individuals act on the premise of a shared understanding of meaning within their social context. Thus, interaction and behavior is framed through the shared meaning that objects and concepts have attached to them. From this view, people live in both natural and symbolic environments.
I agree with this and would add that the the shared understanding and interpretations of meaning that affect the interaction between individuals occurs all-importantly and very profoundly on the level of intimate interpersonal relationships. What FIML does is discover, foster, and create a much more accurate shared understanding and interpretations of meaning between FIML partners. The benefit of this is enormous since it has an extremely profound effect on individual psychology and all other shared understanding and interpretations of meaning encountered in society everywhere. ABN
Big mistake: We often own what we didn’t mean
A fascinating study from Sweden confirms something that FIML practice has shown us to be a fairly common occurrence and a potential source of serious interpersonal problems.
In FIML terms, the mistake is that we own something we didn’t mean. Or we take on an attitude, mood, or belief that we did not hold after we have been misheard or misunderstood.
In the study from Lund University in Sweden—How to confuse a moral compass—researchers found that:
People can be tricked into reversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions…
I was not surprised at all to read that because FIML practice has clearly shown my partner and me that it is really easy to fall into the trap of owning what your partner erroneously thinks you meant.
Continue reading “Big mistake: We often own what we didn’t mean”Fabula and semiotics
Fabula are “the raw material of a story or narrative.”
I want to borrow this term to denote the raw material of a purposive conversation. For example, if I say to my partner that I want to have a salad for dinner, the notion or idea of that salad is a fabula that we can now discuss.
Our discussion of this as yet non-existent salad, this salad fabula, will include particular items, acts, and visualizations. For example, I may want sliced tomatoes in the salad, my partner may mention some olives in the refrigerator. We may both visualize our salad bowl and kitchen while we decide who does what.
Before the salad is made it is a fabula. The particular elements that go into getting the salad made while they are still only in our minds are semiotic elements.
In this sense, semiotics can be defined as the units or parts of a conversational fabula. We use these semiotics to discuss how to make what kind of salad.
We do the same thing with virtually all other conversational subjects. That is, we declare or grope toward determining what our fabula is and use semiotics to further clarify our vision of it. While doing this, ideally, we will remain open to real-time alterations and misunderstandings about both the fabula and the semiotics.
In these terms, most reasonable (and many unreasonable) conversations can be understood as two (or more) people negotiating* the “meanings” of their imperfectly shared fabula and semiotics. The fabula is a sort of context that defines the semiotics used in the discussion of it.
When the conversation is about salads, much of the process of going from a salad fabula to a real salad is straightforward and unproblematical.
When a conversation is about matters that are more ambiguous, subjective, emotional, or existential, there may be more problems because the fabula often will not be as clear as a salad to both parties. Or if it is, it may lead parties to quickly cleave to cliches or obvious explanations, thus limiting fresh responses or creative insights.
FIML practice can fix these problems by getting partners to clarify their fabula while also allowing them to alter it, or even change it entirely, as their discussion progresses.
The same is true at a different level for the semiotics they employ in their discussion. With FIML practice these semiotics often can be adjusted and clarified as soon as diverging understanding is noticed in either person’s mind.
Even if diverging understandings persist for some time, experienced FIML partners will be better prepared notice them when the opportunity arises.
A more complex example of this is an ongoing discussion my partner and I have had for several years. The basic discussion involves a strong reaction I sometimes have to cosmetic surgery. I admit that my reaction can be irrational and I can’t quite explain it. My partner frequently makes the point that I do like cosmetic surgery as long as I don’t notice it and/or like the results. We have gone back and forth on this quite a few times without ever getting a really good resolution, until a few days ago. The core problem had been that I do dislike the idea of cosmetic surgery, period. And also, I do recognize that it can be necessary and that if I like the results, I may be able to accept it even when it is not necessary.
We had never been involved in a simple dichotomy—like versus don’t like—but we both had been speaking as if we were. This was mostly my fault as I sometimes expressed revulsion at some forms of cosmetic surgery, but it was also not true that I actually liked the surgery if I liked the results or didn’t notice it.
________________________
*I mean the word negotiating not so much as making a deal but more as negotiating a narrow foot bride across a stream or negotiating a turn in an automobile. Negotiation in this sense is an effort between two or more people to make many small adjustments to arrive at a mutually satisfying result, the “meaning” of which is understood in roughly the same way by all parties.
first posted JANUARY 8, 2014
UPDATE 12/12/23: Wow, did I have a huge misunderstanding of a conversational fabula last night. I had trouble falling asleep over it and woke up ruminating on it. My partner is a genius and all I did was bring it up and describe exactly what I had thought and within minutes, everything was cleared up. I can’t go into it because it is too complex. But I can say that this kind of mistake is what causes neurosis, emotional agony, even mental illness. This is the kind of mistake FIML was designed to correct. Usually, FIML mistakes are small and involve semiotics but a huge fabula mistake is always possible, as I saw very clearly over the past 12 hours. I cannot thank my partner enough for having such deep understanding of me, herself, and what we had been talking about and how we generally talk. FIML is a profound training exercise. If you have ever gotten anything from this site (or not), please try FIML. It is by far the best unique thing I have to offer. ABN
Signals and subliminal signal associations
Signals sent between people are almost never simple, single entities devoid of ambiguity.
Indeed, even very clear communicative signals, especially in interpersonal communication, are often fraught with subliminal associations. These “extra” associations are a primary cause of interpersonal error and ambiguity, and deriving from that, of individual, personal discomfort or neurosis.
We have mentioned this general problem many times and claimed that FIML practice is probably the only way to successfully remove the bulk of dangerous ambiguity and misunderstanding that inevitably accrues in almost all interpersonal relationships.
A study on visual perception from the University of Arizona—Your brain sees things you don’t—reasonably confirms these statements for visual perception. I would argue that many other brain functions work in similar ways, including listening, speaking, and our overall perceptions of human behavior and what it “means.” (Study: The Ground Side of an Object: Perceived as Shapeless yet Processed for Semantics)
The study found that participants subconsciously perceive “meaning” in visual images flashed quickly before them. It took about 400 milliseconds for this perception of “meaning” to show on an fMRI machine.
Continue reading “Signals and subliminal signal associations”The Buddha and mindfulness
UPDATE: I originally had a video on mindfulness in this spot but decided to take it down because it is not very good. ABN
The biggest mindfulness bang for the buck you can get is FIML practice because FIML shows you through your own effort how to listen and speak realistically and accurately with your partner. When you do FIML, both you and your partner will discover many mistakes in how you speak and how you hear. This will provide many insights into how both of you use your minds and how your minds work. At the same time it will greatly improve your relationship and give you many insights into it. FIML practice will also greatly inform and improve your other relationships.
All Buddhist practice can be placed at least in one of three categories. These are: 1) morality or ethics; 2) concentration, mindfulness, or meditation; and 3) wisdom or insight. FIML practice is extremely valuable for Buddhist practice because it prevents solipsistic understanding, unrealistic idealism, ungrounded thoughts and behaviors. FIML practice provides each partner with an accuracy check on what they hear, say, and think. It provides a kind of intellectual or spiritual parallax that helps us locate ourselves much more accurately in reality — however you conceive of that — than when we do mindfulness practice without this kind of input.
FIML practice is an excellent model for all mindfulness. It may even be the best model possible. The reason for this is when you do FIML you are working with your closest friend, your best friend, the person who trusts you the most in all the world and whom you trust the most in all the world. This is the best person in all the world to help you become more mindful, more ethical, more insightful and wise. I might add that in the Buddha’s day, monks traveled together in pairs for most of each year. FIML can be fully explained by using the Buddha’s Five Skandha explanation of how the mind works. See the note at the end of that link for how to apply it to FIML. ABN
Ep. 1 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Introduction ~ John Vervaeke
I watched about one-half of this and stopped. I will watch at least one more in this long series. For now, I just want to say that for meaning or meaning of life or meaning in life, there is nothing better than FIML practice which is designed to secure solid, agreed upon meaning between you and your partner. This ensures that your most important relationship is grounded solidly on objective shared meaning with nothing left out. FIML is not abstract. It has almost no content. It does not tell you what to think or believe. It is entirely a technique that will massively help you discover how you and your partner’s minds work, what is in them, where it came from, what it means. FIML is a dynamic method for finding objective data within real-world, real-time experience. It provides a living existential basis for all other forms of meaning. ABN
Please discuss mimesis as a psycholinguistic phenomenon
[I posed this query to ChatGPT after asking a basic question about mimesis. The reply below was returned almost instantly and has not been edited in any way. We learn almost everything we know through mimesis. Language and culture are built on it and by it, but mimesis can also trap us in gloomy enclaves of inescapable conformity, such as the pseudoscience of covid or a communist dictatorship or celebrity worship. It can also trap us inside our own personality constructs, leaving almost no way to escape. FIML practice works with real time mimesis during interpersonal communication. In this context, FIML can be understood as a way to fully understand our own idiosyncratic mimesis as well as our partner’s. And then to lead us away from what is harmful in mimesis toward what is good. Mimesis is a key to delusion and enlightenment both. It is very good for Buddhists and others to pay attention to it, to be fully mindful of its processes. ABN]
Mimesis can also be understood as a psychological and linguistic phenomenon, in which people imitate or mimic the words, actions, and behaviors of others in order to understand and communicate with them. This kind of mimesis is often referred to as “mirroring” or “echoing,” and it is a natural and important part of human social interaction.
In the early stages of language acquisition, children learn to imitate the sounds and words of their caregivers in order to communicate with them. This process of imitation is essential for language learning and development, as it allows children to learn the conventions and rules of their language.
Mimesis also plays a role in the way that people interact with one another in social settings. For example, people may mimic the body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions of their conversation partner in order to show agreement, empathy, or solidarity. This kind of mimicry can facilitate communication and social bonding, as it helps to establish a sense of connection and understanding between people.
Mimesis can also be observed in the way that people use language to convey meaning. For example, people may use figurative language or rhetorical devices such as metaphors, similes, and rhetorical questions in order to create a more vivid or persuasive image or argument. These forms of language use rely on the reader or listener’s ability to understand and imitate the speaker’s intended meaning in order to fully appreciate the message being conveyed.
Overall, mimesis is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that plays a central role in human communication and social interaction. It is an important aspect of language learning and use, and it helps people to understand and connect with one another in a meaningful way.
Semiotic codes
Simply stated, semiotic codes are the conventions used to communicate meaning.
Codes can be compared to puppet masters that control the words and semiotic bundles that people use when speaking and listening. For many people, semiotic codes are largely unconscious, functioning mainly as limits to communication or as givens.
Some examples of codes might be the ready-made formulas of politics or the ordinary assumptions of any culture anywhere.
Codes work well in most cases when we do ordinary or formal things, but they inhibit thought and communication when we want to go beyond ordinary or formal interactions and behaviors.
Unconscious, unexamined, or strongly-held codes can be a disaster in interpersonal relations if one or both (or all) parties are rigid in their definitions and understanding of the codes being used. These are the sorts of conditions that lead to absurd exchanges at the dinner table and are one of the main reason most of us learn never to talk about politics or religion at most gatherings.
Gathering for dinner itself is a code. On Thanksgiving we are expected to break bread without breaking the code of silence on politics or whatever else your family can’t or won’t talk about. There is not much the individual can do to change this because the harder you try—no matter how good your intentions—the more it will seem that you are breaking the code, being aggressive, or threatening the (probably fairly weak) bonds that hold your dining unit together.
Many years ago, Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese proposed a theory about communication known as the Uncertainty Reduction Theory. This theory deals with how people initially get to know each other. It proposes:
…that, when interacting, people need information about the other party in order to reduce their uncertainty. In gaining this information people are able to predict the other’s behavior and resulting actions, all of which according to the theory is crucial in the development of any relationship. (Source)
The basic idea is that we humans need to reduce uncertainty in order to understand each other well-enough to get along. If we succeed at reducing uncertainty sufficiently, it then becomes possible to continue to develop relations.
The theory works pretty well in my view, but the problem I see with it is reducing initial uncertainty is much the same as feeling out semiotic codes, discovering which ones both (or all) parties subscribe to. As mentioned, this works well-enough for ordinary and formal relations, but what happens next? For the most part, most people then become trapped in the codes they seem to share.
What happens next can even be seen as sort of comical as people over the weeks or months continue to reduce uncertainty while confining themselves even more. Very often, if you try to go a bit deeper, you will be seen as breaking the code, disrupting convention, even threatening the group.
This is the region in which intimate relationships can be destroyed. Destruction happens because the parties involved are trapped in their codes and do not have the means to stand outside them and analyze them. Obviously, this leads to either reduced or turbulent speech.
I think the Uncertainty Reduction Theory might be extended and amended to include a stage two theory of uncertainty reduction. FIML practice would constitute a very reasonable stage two as FIML is designed to remove uncertainty and ambiguity between close partners.
Notice that FIML itself is not a semiotic code. It is a tool, a method, a procedure that allows partners to communicate without using any code at all save ones they consciously choose or create for themselves.
It seems clear to me that all established interpersonal codes are ultimately limiting and that people must find a way to analyze whatever codes they hold or have been inculcated with if they want to have truthful or authentic communication with their closest partners.
Most codes are public in the sense that they are roughly known by many people. But all of us have idiosyncratic ways of understanding these public codes and all of us also have private codes, idiosyncratic codes that are known only to us.
Sometimes our understanding of our idiosyncratic codes and/or idiosyncratic interpretations of public codes is not all that clear to us. One reason is we do not have good ways to access them. Another reason is a good many idiosyncrasies are sort of born in the dark. We muddle into them privately, inside our own minds with little or no opportunity to share them with others. Indeed, as seen above, to try to share them all too often leads to disruption of the shallow “certainty” that adherence to the shared code has provided.
What a mess. We need codes to learn, grow, and communicate with strangers. But we have to go beyond them if we want to learn, grow, and communicate with the people who are most important to us.
FIML is a sort of stage two Uncertainty Reduction Practice that allows partners to observe and analyze all of their codes—both public and private—in real-time.
Why is real-time analysis important? It is important because codes can only be richly and accurately analyzed when we see clearly how they are functioning in the moment. The “psychological morphemes” that appear only during brief moments of communication must be seen and analyzed if deep understanding is to be accomplished.
first posted NOVEMBER 28, 2014
Self-deception
Self-deception begins within seconds of listening or speaking.
Once committed to an interpretation or tending toward one, the brain builds on it quickly.
Once an interpretation has been built upon, the brain remembers it as what truly happened even if that is false.
This is normal. The human brain has evolved to use self-deception.
This probably happened because truer forms of communication are complex and use a lot of time. They can also be confusing and difficult.
Confusion, difficulty, and complexity interfere with social cohesion and motivation.
Strong self-deception deceives others better than weak self-deception or no self-deception. In this way, it promotes social cohesion and motivation.
Self-deception can be observed and understood if it is caught quickly. The best way to catch it is through a technique like FIML.
Self-deception is a kind of neurosis, delusion, false cognition. Nevertheless, we are so used to it, we can feel lost without it.
If self-deception is discovered many times through FIML practice, it does not present as a philosophy or attitude or whole picture of the mind. Nor does it present as a neurosis, delusion, or false cognition.
Rather it presents as a composite of many pixels—many small instances—of observed and corrected mistakes.
Thus seen as an aggregation of many small instances, self-deception gradually is lessened.
first posted FEBRUARY 19, 2016
UPDATE 12/10/22: The line above, “Strong self-deception deceives others better than weak self-deception or no self-deception,” reminds me that strong self-deception not only “promotes social cohesion and motivation,” but also if it is very strong, self-deception can become the basis of parasitic behavior either in individuals or groups.
When a culture or subculture becomes parasitic on another culture(s), it will self-deceive by believing it is superior and deserving while the culture(s) being preyed upon is inferior—even offensive, often for imaginary reasons—and thus OK to be abused. I believe we are seeing precisely this in the parasitic behaviors of virtually all woke subcultures; the subculture being exposed at pre-Musk Twitter and the government agencies that fostered Twitter censorship and obviously are doing the same in almost all other social media and MSM.
To join a parasitic subculture, all you have to do is buy the hype, talk the talk, and remain loyal to the group. It is clear that today we are in a battle between people who believe in individual rights versus people who believe in communal authoritarianism. To my eye, the communalists are very often parasites seeking profit from the labors of others and, in true parasitic form, not caring or even taking delight in the ruination of the host culture they are feeding on.
For individuals, FIML provides a way to avoid parasitism and all neurosis. For groups, free-speech with freedom of reach ensures that parasitic subcultures do not arise and proliferate. It is fair to say that anyone who opposes free speech is either a parasite or in danger of becoming one. In my humble view, the West today is riddled with self-deceiving parasitic subcultures and we are fast dying from the infestation. ABN
American Buddhist Net 