Tag: Neurosis

Repost: Idiolects and idiotics

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An idiolect is the “dialect” of one person. It is unique to that person. We all speak an idiolect unique to us. No one else speaks in exactly the same way as you do. In fact, the varieties of idolects among speakers of even the same dialect can be quite pronounced, to say nothing of speakers who have been acculturated to different dialects.

Virtually, the same thing is true for our use and understanding of semiotics. Each one of us has a unique tangle of semiotics even if we share the same culture. Even if two people were born and raised in the same very strict cult, they will have different takes on their “shared” semiotics; they will see thier semiotics in individual and unique ways.

The term “idiolect” is a blend of the prefix idio, which means “own, personal, distinct to the individual” and the suffix lect, which is taken from the word “dialect.”

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NIMH Delivers A Kill Shot To DSM-5

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From the article:

DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. (Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health)

I think this is very good news. Notice how it changes the semiotics of mental illness. A better paradigm for mental illness is that intolerable stress causes a wide variety of symptoms in people. A major stressor of this type is, of course, interpersonal stress. FIML cannot by any stretch of the imagination fix all mental illness, but it can help suitable partners greatly reduce interpersonal stress.

Edit: Yesterday, I read reasonable objections to Insel’s statement to the effect that we are not able to obtain “laboratory measure(s),” or biological markers, for all mental illness. I completely agree with this objection.

The synthesis of the two points of view (Insel v/ the DSM) seems to me to be that drugs should only be very guardedly prescribed, if they are prescribed at all, in situations where there are no “laboratory measures” or biological markers (both are fairly vague terms).

Does interpersonal stress produce biological markers? I bet it does. Does interpersonal stress of the type that can probably be cured by FIML practice produce biological markers? I bet it does. But I also bet that it would be far better to try FIML, or something else, long before resorting to drug therapy.

Another point: I believe it is probably healthy to feel nervous, anxious, depressed, repulsed, etc. when around people who communicate dishonestly, manipulatively, or with strong ulterior motives. Since I also believe that most people communicate pretty badly, it actually seems to me that many psychological “problems” are thus healthy, valuable responses.

5 Psych Disorders Have Common Genetics

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This article is quite good. It describes a large study that seems to show fairly conclusively that five of our most important psychological disorders have a close genetic foundation. The five disorders are autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia.

This supports the model that nature (genes) when stressed (nurture) can lead to a variety of psychological disorders, which when diagnosed by behavioral manifestations alone may seem to be very different.

In my view, a major psychological stressor that affects virtually all people is the low resolution of the language of interpersonal communication. In sensitive individuals, this stressor can and often does lead to psychological problems.

By “low resolution,” I mean that our language (gesture, symbols, words, semiotics) of interpersonal communication is crude compared to what our brains/minds are capable of. The crude nature of this language forces us to blur subtleties in communication, and this leads to confusion and dissatisfaction, which in turn may manifest as a psychological disorder.

No doubt, some instances of the five disorders described have a strong genetic foundation making them all but inevitable. But all things human can be understood as lying on a spectrum of varying degrees. Thus, most human beings at one time or another will experience aspects of one or more of these disorders due to problems in their interpersonal communications.

Edit. Here is another article on this subject: Same Genetic Basis Found in 5 Types of Mental Disorders.

Peace of mind

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In my relationship with my partner, my peace of mind is very much dependent on her wisdom. And the same is true for her with respect to me.

This is why it is of paramount importance that FIML partners be able to depend on each other to bring up contretemps the moment they occur.

A contretemps is defined in FIML practice as a misunderstanding or potential misunderstanding that arises during interpersonal communication. It is often characterized by an emotional jangle, a sudden feeling of being insulted, demeaned, threatened, lied to, etc.

FIML practice is designed to catch contretemps the moment they happen.

Contretemps tend to happen due to how we habitually listen to other people. When we are able to examine all contretemps that arise in our interactions with our partner, we will soon discover that they tend to be of a few general types. Once we see this and understand that they are arising in our own mind and were not the actual intentions of the speaker, they will begin to occur less often and eventually stop.

Deep peace of mind comes in FIML practice when you are certain that your partner is able to recognize jangles and contretemps the moment they happen and that they will bring them up immediately. This is the wisdom of my partner that I depend on.

Peace of mind is knowing that your partner is not thinking some weird stuff about you, and knowing that they know neither are you thinking some weird stuff about them.

You can assert that you don’t think weird things about each other, you can vow not to do it, you can feel that your partner is not doing it, you can trust them, but there is no substitute for knowing that your partner is not doing it and knowing that your partner has the means to deal with any weird thought, no matter how trivial, the moment it arises.

Signal quality

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Schizophrenia is characterized in part by difficulty in telling the difference between internal and external signals. My guess is that virtually all “normal” people are characterized by their difficulty in telling truthful signals from bullshit.

Normal interpersonal relations are conducted with signals that have low resolution. By that I mean, signal references are rarely unambiguous. In fact, they are very often not even truthful. An ambiguous signal will frequently be interpreted wrongly and lead to problems as serious as those that result from untruthful signals.

The same is true in the public sphere.

Because low signal quality in the social/interpersonal realm is so common, we typically do not identify it as a problem. Furthermore, because we don’t know what to do about it even when we do notice it, we largely ignore it. But that does not mean it isn’t a huge problem.

FIML practice can fix this problem for participating partners. In the future, brain scans may help fix it in the public sphere.

Psychopathy and brain scans

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I believe that many institutions/societies are controlled by psychopaths.

A recent claim by the psychologist Oliver James, supports this belief. In his words:

This dark triad of characteristics is very likely to be present in that person in your office who causes you so much trouble. Whether you work in the corporate sector, a small business or a public sector job, the system you are in is liable to reward ruthless, selfish manipulation.

The likelihood of your daily working life being sacrificed by a person who is some mixture of psychopathic, Machiavellian and narcissistic is high. If you do not develop the skills to deal with them, they will eat you for breakfast. (Source)

Psychopaths can act as individuals or in groups. We would do well to re-purpose the word sociopath to mean simply “a group that is made up of psychopaths or that behaves toward other groups in a psychopathic manner.”

James says that the rest of us need to develop skills to deal with psychopaths. The science is not there yet, but I hope the day will come when brain scans are good enough to help us detect psychopathy and lies. Then, if used properly, there would be far less lying and cheating in government, science, academia, the corporate world, and so on. My guess is that if psychopaths and liars can be reliably identified and/or prevented from lying, society in general will become many times more efficient than it is today. That would mean much less work with much better outcomes for all, psychopaths included.

Ask your partner, ask yourself

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Ask your partner: “How often do you deliberately send me ambiguous messages?”

If you have a good relationship, their answer will be “rarely if ever.” Some people may interpret humor or banter as a type of ambiguous message and answer differently.

To control for that ask your partner: “How often do you deliberately send me ambiguous messages that could reasonably be interpreted in a negative or unpleasant way?”

I hope that your partner will answer “very rarely, if ever.” If they don’t, maybe you two should pay more attention to the messages you are sending each other.

Let’s say that your partner answered “very rarely, if ever” to both questions, and especially the second one.

Now ask yourself: “How often do you receive messages from your partner that are ambiguous and could reasonably be interpreted in a negative or unpleasant way?” Or, more to the point: “How often do you receive ambiguous messages from your partner and interpret them in a negative or unpleasant way?”

You have to be honest with yourself and a good observer of your own quiet mind to answer that question accurately, truthfully. I bet most people are burdened with a fairly large group of ambiguous messages from their partner that they have interpreted in a negative or unpleasant way. You may not recall the actual message, but you will recall the interpretation.

Compare your feelings about those interpretations with your partner’s answers to the first two questions above. They told you that they “rarely, if ever” send you ambiguous messages that could reasonably be interpreted in a negative or unpleasant way.

And yet your mind holds many such interpretations. Either your partner is lying or you are doing too much misinterpreting.

Now turn the tables and take them through the same line of thought. I am quite sure that if they are honest, they will confess that they, too, are burdened with a fairly large group of ambiguous messages from you that they have interpreted in a negative or unpleasant way.

If you two have a good relationship, you should be able to get to this point, but even if you can’t get there with your partner, you as an individual, may be able to get there alone.

Now what do you do? If both partners see the problem, it’s easier to fix. If only one partner sees the problem, the fix is more difficult but still eminently doable.

What is the fix? Why do we have a problem like this?

The reason we have this problem is we do not pay enough attention to the minute bits of information that make-up all communicative acts. The fix for this problem is to pay attention to those minute bits of information.

How do you do that?

To answer, first let’s determine what we mean by a minute bit. Definition: A minute bit of communicative information in this context means the smallest discernible unit of psychological communication. Let’s call these units “psychological morphemes.” (In linguistics, a “morpheme” is the smallest semantic unit of language.)

A psychological morpheme is the smallest unit of communication between two or more people that carries an emotional charge, or that leads to an emotional or psychological interpretation. It is the smallest unit that can be interpreted by the hearer as either “positive,” “negative,” or “neutral.”

These units move between people very quickly. Within just a few seconds a psychological morpheme can move out from one partner, generate a new morpheme in the other partner, and get shot right back for a third interpretation. This is the primary origin of the vague and unreliable underbelly of so many interpersonal relations. If this underbelly is not addressed, it will grow and cause partners to suffer. The underbelly is the result of misinterpreted psychological morphemes, probably a great many of them. They tend to grow quickly and compound if they are not addressed.

How do you address them? How do you fix the problem?

The way you fix the problem is both partners must agree to pay close attention to all psychological morphemes. Both must agree to pay close attention to very small units of communication, units that are measured in seconds. If you hear something your partner said and notice that your mind is interpreting it as unpleasant, negative, or ambiguous, you must ask them immediately for clarification. If you wait, the psychological morpheme will lodge in your brain and you may not be able to remove it later. Sometimes you can, but don’t count on it. Ask immediately.

It is of great importance that both partners understand this and make a prior agreement to allow each other to ask as often as they like. Both partners must also make a prior agreement to be honest about what they meant. Once you get used to it, you will find this practice to be very beneficial and a much better way to talk as it allows you to take up a great many new subjects that will touch both of you deeply. More information on this technique can be found on our How to do FIML page and elsewhere on this site. This practice greatly supports Buddhist practice.

Sociopathy versus truth

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This video* is fascinating. It shows a deluded martial arts master in Japan being summarily defeated by a real MMA (mixed martial arts) expert.

The first part of this video shows some footage of the deluded master’s students being thrown around by his “ki” alone, without being physically touched. To me it appears that the student are in a sort of “sociological hypnotic state” in that they want so much to believe in their master’s abilities, they will consciously or not fake being impacted by his ki. The students and the master are all self-deluding; they are all in concert deluding each other.

The next part of the video shows an MMA expert coming to fight the master, who has made a public bet of $5,000 thatt he can beat any MMA expert in the world. This shows that the delusion of the master’s students has fully reinforced his own delusions to the point that he believes he can beat anyone in the world.

The next part of the video shows the master being badly beaten by the MMA expert. In their first exchange, the MMA expert lands a blow to the master’s face and then politely, respectfully asks him if he wants to quit. The referee repeats the offer, giving the master a chance to bow out. He chooses not to and is more seriously beaten in the next part of the video.

The fight proves decisively that the master and his students were deluded.

I want to coin a new word here. We all know that a psychopath is an individual who lacks empathy and reasonable behavior toward others. The word sociopath is often used as a synonym. I want to repurpose the word sociopath to mean any group of people that lacks empathy toward other groups, or that lacks a rational basis for their behavior. In this sense, the master and his students are sociopaths—their beliefs are not true and can lead to their members or members of other groups being harmed.

If you were in the master’s group before the fight shown in the video and if you had said that you thought his ki powers were bull and continued to argue the point, you would have been rejected by the group. In psychological terms, that group would have branded you as someone with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The truth, of course, would have been that you were right and the master’s group was wrong. They were actually suffering from what might be called antisocial sociology disorder (ASSD) because their sociology was based on harmful lies.

This distinction can be found all over the world. Throughout history most groups have had ASSD. That is, most groups are selfish and harmful. Their core beliefs cannot be justified in an objective way and their core positions cannot, to them, be falsified. In short, most groups in history do not adhere to a Rawlsian ehtical position.

I do not see any other rational, ethical or reasonably justifiable foundation for any group of people except a Rawlsian one. Only a Rawlsian social basis can be reasonably called rational, objective, and falsifiable.

The kiai master in the video above was confident or foolish enough to have his position falsified, but most groups do not have such simple positions and few of them will openly permit anyone to falsify their fundamental tenets.

To take this one step further—I want to propose that any group that does not take a Rawlsian position vis-a-vis other groups is sociopathic, as defined above. The very basis of their group cohesion is harmful to other groups as well as their own members, and therefore other groups and/or outlying individuals have moral license, if not a moral duty, to oppose them in equal measure to the degree that they are sociopathic.

This is easy to see if we are talking about the sociopathy of North Korea, but harder to see if we are talking about the sociopathy of groups closer to home. If any group (and this means almost all of them) bases its existence on unfalsifiable beliefs that are harmful to others, it is a sociopathic group.

Most people in the world are members of scociopathic groups.

It is my belief that the core meaning of delusion in the Buddha’s teachings is not different from what has been said above. If any person believes that their allegiance to a socoiopathic group is justified or necessary, they are deluded.

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*In case the link is lost, it’s title is Kiai Master vs MMA and you may be able to find it through a search on YouTube.

Semiotics

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Biology is the study of living organisms. Yet we also use this term to talk about the biology of the foot, say.

Psychology is the study of the mental functions, behaviors, and emotions. Yet we also use this term to talk about the psychology of employees, say.

In like manner, semiotics is the study signs, symbols, meaning, and communication. Yet we can also talk about the semiotics of automobiles, say. When we do this we mean all the signs, symbols, semantics, pragmatics, psychologies, and so on that can be meaningfully and significantly understood in terms of semiotics.

When we use the term semiotics in this way, we find that we can say interesting things about how people communicate, or fail to communicate. We can invent a term like “semiotic bundle” to indicate the rather messy tangle of signs, symbols, feelings, words, and so on that comprise some identifiable class or type of “meaning.” As in the example above, we can talk about the semiotic bundles that involve automobiles—racing cars, motorcycles, electric cars, small cars, trucks, etc. Each of these entities is a semiotic bundle that has identifiable clusters of meanings and psychologies associated with it.

You can study any semiotic bundle in great detail or you can move the whole mass around in your head in a way similar to how you may move the semiotic bundle of Chinese history around in your head. In Buddhist terms a semiotic bundle is empty, dependently originated, dependent on conditions, impermanent, and subject to delusion.

A problem with semiotic bundles is we become caught in them and can’t escape from them, especially on interpersonal levels. And this happens because the words we speak are always referring to one or more semiotic bundles; they are always right next to semiotic bundles, are generated out of semiotics bundles.

If I am not able to get you to explain what the semiotic bundle that underlies your words is, then I cannot know your meaning reliably. I have to guess. Go ahead and ask your partner or friend a question about the semiotic bundles underlying their words. You will almost always find their their semiotic bundle was not what you had thought. Your guess was wrong. In interpersonal/emotionally-charged communications, this is a crucial mistake.

Even if your guess is only sometimes wrong, it can produce big problems. If your interpersonal communications are not cleared of wrong guesses (mistakes), you will begin to have interpersonal problems based on those mistakes.

It follows, then, that clearing up mistakes as quickly as possible is of vital importance to a successful interpersonal relationship. If we don’t clear up the mistakes quickly enough (usually within a few seconds), we will forget the origin of the mistake. By ignoring small interpersonal mistakes, we force ourselves to depend on unexamined semiotic bundles. These bundles may be public (known to many people) or private (known only to you). Either way, if they are mistaken, the interpersonal relationship in question will become less true, more deluded, less satisfying, more dangerous.

There is no way around this because this is how language and semiotics actually work. They don’t work in some other way.

Repost: How greed is mirrored in social groups

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In my last post, I introduced the idea of mirroring to FIML terminology. Language, semiotics, and mirroring (LSM) can be thought of as a fairly simple set of factors that can help us understand social situations.

Several studies done at UC Berkeley (Unethical Behavior More Prevalent In The Upper Classes According To New Study) have shown that upper-class individuals tend to behave less ethically than others. Of course, any good historian knows this is the history of the world–privileged classes always become locked in a self-referential world that gradually moves far from the reality of the societies that support them.

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Moods and moodiness

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It could well be said that all non-FIML relationships, or nearly all, are characterized by hierarchical rules/roles that are enforced by moods and violence.

Alcoholism is a type of relationship of this sort. Alcoholism can be seen as a caricature of all, or nearly all, non-FIML behavior. The enabler of the alcoholic is just as “guilty” as the alcoholic, and in a very deep sense neither of them is guilty of anything because neither of them knows of any other way to conduct a relationship.

If you find yourself feeling afraid of your partner or doing too much to accommodate them, your FIML practice needs work. Somewhere, somehow either you or both of you are letting small contretemps slip by without discussing them. This allows them to snowball and turn your relationship into one that caters to moods, moodiness, and ultimately control by moods.

If you find yourself feeling afraid of your partner, it is as much your fault—indeed, more your fault—than theirs. Why? Because you are not bringing up the small contretemps before they snowball.

Alcoholism, with its increasing cloudiness caused by booze, is “merely” a very obvious version of normal non-FIML dysisfunctionality. Much the same could be said about most/many “abusive” relationships, but more discussion is needed on that subject than can be done in a blog post.

AA recognizes in its twelve-step program that the “enabler” (the enabling partner) is as much a part of the problem as the alcohol-addict.

In like manner, in FIML, we can clearly and resolutely say that if you are enabling or feeling afraid of or accommodating your partner’s moodiness for pretty much any reason, you are just as much a part of the problem as them.

When is it OK to feel afraid of your partner? There are normal limits here that a reasonable person should be able to see. If you lie to your partner, cheat on them, do drugs behind their back, talk behind their back, etc. you ought to feel afraid of them because you are behaving badly and you know it. If you think that you have to do any of those things because that’s how the world is, you are participating in a classic non-FIML abusive or dysfunctional relationship.

FIML practice could be described as a technique for preventing the formation of relationships characterized by hierarchical rules or roles that are enforced by moods or violence.

Clear signs that you are in a dysfunctional non-FIML relationship are lying or feeling afraid of your partner. If you feel the need to lie or are being lied to and/or if you are afraid of your partner or they are afraid of you, you are in a very normal non-FIML relationship. It is as much your responsibility as theirs—no matter which role you are in—to correct the problem. FIML practice will correct it if you can get your partner to do it.

Being normal is boring?

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An interesting Swedish study (described here: Creativity ‘closely entwined with mental illness’) found not that creative people have higher incidences of mental illness, but rather that they are more likely to be related to someone with mental illness.

As a Buddhist, I am inclined to think most people are deluded, crazy if you will. From my practice of FIML, I am certain that most people suffer significant interpersonal stress due to ambiguities in language/communication that are rarely if ever dealt with in a satisfactory manner.

Repost: The human operating system

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Traditional human operating systems include a standardized language, standardized semiotics, and a “personality,” which is generally understood to be a measure of how the individual has adapted to the standardized language and semiotics of their time-period.

Standardized in this context means that the language the individual uses is some version of a recognizable dialect, while their semiotics is some version of a recognizable subculture, which may include such elements as clothing styles, beliefs, goals, expectations, education, mannerisms, and so on.

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Repost: When is a FIML discussion finished?

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A FIML discussion is initiated when one partner (or both) experiences an emotional jangle. It is finished when both partners experience a profound resolution.

A FIML discussion begins when one partner feels that something in what the other has said or done has caused them to begin to have an emotional reaction. Before that reaction becomes very strong, we want to stop ourselves and observe its cause while asking our partner what was in their mind at the moment they said or did whatever it was that caused us to react. Ideally, we will be able to quickly stop ourselves, monitor our response, and calmly query our partner, who will answer our questions clearly and neutrally. With practice this is not as difficult to do as it may sound.

So then, when is a FIML discussion finished? How do we know when to stop?

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How social rejection can help those who think independently

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This article is interesting: Social Rejection Can Inhibit Cognitive Ability Or Fuel Imaginative Thinking.

Lead author of the paper, Sharon Kim says:

“For people who already feel separate from the crowd, social rejection can be a form of validation.Rejection confirms for independent people what they already feel about themselves, that they’re not like others. For such people, that distinction is a positive one leading them to greater creativity.” (Source in above link)

The actual paper can be found here: Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought?

In the Buddhist tradition, there is the idea that “negative conditions” can inspire us to move forward. For people who tend to think independently, having  a few doors slam can be a good thing.