Tag: Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML)

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.

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).

The reason we use the term semiotics on this site

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Semiotics can be defined as “what we take to have meaning and how we perceive it through signs and symbols.” It can also be defined as “the science of communicable meaning.” Or “the science of communicable signs.”

The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question are best described as raw semiotics. That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question. This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on. When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness and gives rise to it. Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do. It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only. The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself. In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy. Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity.

Meaning and identity

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words 654

  • Meaning can be defined as two or more signaling systems connecting. Connecting means “sending and receiving, receiving and sending.”
  • To visualize this, think of Newton’s every action produces an opposite and equal reaction; thus sending (action) produces receiving (reaction), which in turn sends a message back. For example, a photon hits a hydrogen atom; the photon “sends” while the atom “receives”; by receiving, it also sends a message back and out; it affects the photon and more.
  • Space is the foundation of the plethora of signaling systems. Time is the foundation of their activity and extent.
  • Meaning is the most basic word in language.
  • When you look at it “psychologically,” it’s not what the sign is but what the meaning is. Thus, meaning is a deep basis of semiotics.
  • In this context, it makes sense to say that time and space are the sine qua non of signaling systems. This “defines” time and space in terms of signaling systems.
  • Identity depends on meaning as defined above.
  • Our identities are (somewhat) complex nexuses of meaning/signaling that “embody” our comprehension of the semiotics of our cultures and experiences. They lie at the center of how we understand ourselves. Identity signaling occurs internally as well as externally.
  • In non-FIML social intercourse it is normal for people to assert/display the props/symbols of their identities, as they understand them.
  • People who do FIML also need identities, but they do not need the social props that help non-FIML people define each other.
  • You really do not want to be defined by props and symbols. It’s a static role that leads away from authentic being.
  • People do not truly belong to a culture. Rather they maintain the illusion that they belong to a culture. This is clear when we think and analyze identity in terms semiotics, which here means “the science of communicable meaning.”
  • Having a weak or confused identity can be a very good thing as this may prompt you to learn how identities are made and maintained.
  • No Buddhist should want an identity defined by props and symbols.
  • Buddhism is about authentic being, the “thusness” of being, the experiential existential being that you really are, the one that occurs before there are definitions, props, and symbols.
  • This being can be hard to see because humans are semiotic entities; that is, we are entities that seek, create, and communicate meaning. This causes us to look within semiotics for the definition of our authentic being, a place where it can never be found. You have to look outside of semiotics.
  • But you can’t look outside semiotics unless you know how to look inside. You have to fully understand how the “language” of your semiotics works to be able to step outside of it.
  • Your semiotics is your unique take on the semiotics of your culture(s) and experiences.
  • You cannot fully explore your semiotics, your identity, your nexus of individual meaning alone because there is no way you can check your work. You cannot see yourself.
  • Each of us is a social, interactive, communicative being. You can only fully explore your unique semiotics/identity with a partner who wants to do the same.
  • Two people working together are able to stop the flow of conversation to analyze the semiotics of how they are hearing and speaking. One person working alone is only guessing.
  • Find a partner and do FIML. You will learn a lot from it.
  • Do not expect FIML to give you new symbols or props or tell you how to be. FIML is only a procedure. It is empty, almost devoid of its own content. It is a process that will help you see and recreate your identity.
  • Do not expect your FIML teacher to be an example for you. Do not expect your teacher to be impressive or to project signs and symbols at you. Do not expect to follow your teacher.
  • Just learn how to do FIML from them.

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.

Identity as a vortex or tautology

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Our identities are fundamentally made up of semiotic matrices. That is to say, in part, that our identities have meaning; they mean something to us.

Often they mean a great deal to us and from them we derive the semiotics of motivation, intention, life-plans, many of our central interests, and so on.

Identities have strong emotional components, to be sure, but our emotions are ambiguous or diffuse if they are not positioned on a semiotic matrix and focused or defined by that matrix.

Identity is usually tautological in that its components, interests, and associations tend always to lead back to a few central elements. Often these elements have been inculcated in us by training. Some, we learn on our own. These elements are our values and beliefs, and also how these values and beliefs are understood and pursued.

The semiotics of identity must mean something to the person identifying with them. In this sense, they are almost always tautological. I do what I do because that is how I learned how to do it, think it, feel it, perceive it.

Most people are more adept at moving the parts of language around than they are at moving semiotic elements around. When semiotics are unconscious, they act like a vortex pulling perception, emotion, and understanding always toward the center of the identity. I think this is another way to say, in the Buddhist sense, that the self is empty; that it has no “own being.”

We can pursue an understanding of an empty self through Buddhist thought and practice, but we will get better results more quickly if we add a practice that deals directly with the semiotics of our identities.

Since there is no book you can go to to look up how your unique semiotics of identity works, you have to see for yourself how it works. You can do much of this on your own, but eventually you will need a partner because there is no way you will be able to get an objective perspective on yourself acting alone.

FIML practice is the only way I know of to fully see into and through the semiotics of your “identity.” Beneath identity there is a sort of artesian well of pure, undefined consciousness. FIML helps us experience that well while keeping us from rushing back into the tautological matrix of identity or static self-definition and clinging to it.

FIML is able to do this because FIML is process. FIML itself has no definition, only a procedure. It is not a tautology because it has no semiotic boundaries.

Semiotics, FIML, and identity

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After you have a done a good deal of FIML, you will start to see semiotics as things, similar to words or memories.

FIML facilitates this process by forcing us to pay close attention to the ways we use semiotics and the ways they affect us.

Our identities, such that they are, are based on our closeness to or need for semiotics that define us, assure us, make us feel at home, tell us who we are.

Our use of semiotics in that way is very common but it is hard to grasp if we have no other basis for our identity, which few of us do.

FIML practice provides a different basis for identity than “extrinsic” semiotics, the conscious and unconscious semiotics of culture, upbringing, media, advertising, schooling, what we may think others think.

FIML partners, by constantly paying attention to the play of interpersonal semiotics, gradually will shift the bases of their identities from largely static extrinsic signs to dynamic intrinsic, or interpersonal, processes. This is what makes semiotics start looking like things rather than abstract elements of linguistic analysis.

Semiotics are things as much as words are. They differ in that there is no dictionary of them; we have to see them for ourselves and understand how they have been formed and why they affect us as they do.

Once partners do this through FIML practice, they will eventually notice that their habitual extrinsic semiotics will start to slough off, to fall away from them. This happens very naturally as a rich dynamic realm of largely error-free communication develops between them.

The falling away of habitual extrinsic semiotics that had been used to define or maintain the identity is accompanied by delightful feelings of freedom and lightness, independence and assuredness that one’s being is better served by the intimate communication of FIML than the inculcated beliefs and values of the past.

Semiotic proprioception in dreams and waking

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Proprioception means “one’s own” or “ones’ individual” (Latin proprius) “perception.”

We normally use this word to refer to our physical position in the world—whether we are standing or sitting, how we are moving, and how much energy we are using.

When we dream, our capacity for physical movement, with rare exceptions, is paralyzed. But we still do a sort of proprioception in dreams—a semiotic proprioception, or proprioception within the semiology of the dream.

In dreams, we grope through semiotic associations and respond, gropingly, to them. People and things often look smaller in dreams, or distorted, because we do not have either the need or the capacity to calibrate our physical proprioception as we do in waking life.

Dreams move from one semiotic proprioception to another via our individual four-dimensional (3D plus time) groping/associative function. In one short segment of a dream we are at home, then we go through a door only to find ourselves on a boat in the ocean. Our 4D semiotic proprioception within dreams readily accepts groping, associative shifts like this.

Much of what we perceive when we are awake is memory. We glance at a room we know well and call up our memory of it rather than actually look closely at the room.

I am fairly sure that the memories we call up to aid perception while we are awake are much the same as the groping proprioception we experience in dreams. A major difference is when we are awake we can and do check our waking proprioception with the people and objects around us, while in dreams the associative function has a much freer range.

Notice how dreams move from scene to scene rather slowly. Things can go quickly, but normally dreams grope somewhat slowly along the 4D path of semiotic proprioception.

In waking life, our dreamy use of memory and association to aid perception of the world happens constantly.

When we speak with another person, we use this function to make groping associations concerning what we think they are saying. We grope and respond to them as in a dream while at the same time searching for clues that indicate we are both in the same dream.

These clues that two people may sort of “agree on” while speaking are normally standard public semiotics that belong to whatever culture(s) they share. By “agreeing” on them, we form a sort of agreeable camaraderie with whomever we are speaking, and this can be satisfying, but if we only get this, it can also become deeply unsatisfying.

The four dimensional groping/dreamy function of our mind is far richer than any standard collection of public semiotics. In our public lives—professional, commercial, based on organizations, etc.—we have, at present, little recourse but to accept normal public semiotics, to agree with them and manifest agreement.

We can express some deviation from them and sometimes make jokes about them, but we are generally fairly bound to the semiotics of the culture or organization that generates the context of our speaking. Consider how people in the same church or school are bound by the semiotics of those institutions.

In our intimate relations, however, we do have recourse to investigate and understand how our groping, 4D semiotic proprioception works. This is what FIML does. It allows partners to observe, analyze, and understand the semiotic proprioceptions of their minds as they are actually functioning during interpersonal communication.

If you constantly avoid FIML types of investigations, you will be stuck with a mix of dimly shared public/private semiotics that will tend to become highly ambiguous, even volatile, or very shallow.

Identity and signaling

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Identity is constructed of memories, memories that have to be tended to, and this takes time and energy.

You have to remember who you are and often have to work pretty hard just to maintain that image within yourself, to say nothing of projecting it toward other people and getting them to accept it.

A big problem with this way of constructing a “self,” an identity, is it’s probably based on misinterpretations and a good deal of self-deceit.

Our identities, such that they are, are complex fictions. They are a central flaw in our internal signaling system.

If your identity is large and complex, it will use a good deal of energy. As you signal internally to yourself about your identity, you will also be receiving signals from other people, and these signals will necessarily be processed by your large and complex identity. And that, of course, will lead to serious misinterpretations, both internal and external.

If you belong to a group that defines, or helps you define, your identity, you can save some energy but will have as much fiction, maybe even worse fiction.

Consider the codes of group behavior (group signaling)  for Stalin’s NKVD officers who purged so many millions of innocents in the 1930s. All of those officers had identities that were largely determined by signals coming from the NKVD and Joseph Stalin.

There was a weird sort of ethical behavior among those officers in that they were trying to adhere to a group signaling system and not go their own way. This same problem in less serious form can be observed all over the world in every culture.

One problem with ethics and ethical signaling within groups is ethical questions can be difficult. There are few formulas that will always work, and formulas are what hold groups together.

Back to your identity. I hope it is clear that you have to be careful when you base your identity on group signaling systems. If you are a banker, you might do many bad things out of loyalty to your group. Same for all of us.

While ethics are hard to codify, the will to behave ethically is simpler. I want to do the right thing but I don’t always know what it is or how to do it. That is a good statement to make. If you can honestly say that to yourself, that is good because that means that your internal signaling system is seeking greater integrity, great clarity.

When we seek clarity and integrity within our signaling systems, we are seeking better ethics. We are changing our identities, or allowing our identities to be transformed by a higher desire for clarity, purity, integrity, goodness.

When we seek to improve our signaling systems, our ethics, we begin to abandon static identities and poorly constructed fictions about ourselves by subjecting them to a higher order of thought. If we can take a meta-position on ourselves, we will find the process of improving signaling is easier and more enjoyable than clinging to a static fictionalized identity that may have been constructed years before.

On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences

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…This reassessment of the antiquity of modern language, from the usually quoted 50,000–100,000 years to half a million years, has profound consequences for our understanding of our own evolution in general and especially for the sciences of speech and language. As such, it argues against a saltationist scenario for the evolution of language, and toward a gradual process of culture-gene co-evolution extending to the present day…

Link to the original paper

Repost: FIML is practical semiotics applied to the psychology of intimate human communication

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A “psychological morpheme” can be identified with or stimulated by a “sign” that “indexes” a “library” of “meaning.”

FIML practices interrupts the indexing of the sign before it calls up meaning from the library. This is a technical way to say what FIML practice does.

The terms used above, indicated by quotation marks, can be defined as follows:

A psychological morpheme is the smallest unit of psychological meaning. It is analogous to a morpheme in linguistics, which is the smallest unit of meaning in a language, or the smallest semantic unit in a language.

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