Tag: psychology
The role of the ‘truth teller’ in a narcissistic family
I was unfamiliar with the idea of the scapegoat also being a “truth teller” in a narcissistic family. The truth teller might also be called a witness; it’s the child that knows something is not right and thus threatens the vulnerable narcissist. Many if not most traditional cultures have very large narcissistic components. Their moral strictures, religions, duties, values, manners, etc. almost all contain elements of narcissism. So there is an important historical dimension to this diagnosis.
Aspects of Buddhism as it is traditionally practiced even today can also be seen as being narcissistic or fostering narcissism. Same for all the Abrahamic religions, Confucianism, Aztec beliefs and so on across the globe. Just as consciousness is fundamental to our human reality so are the many ways of interpreting it, almost all of which historically have tended toward narcissistic systems.
Truth tellers typically are most likely to escape the web of the narcissistic family even though their role in it was to be the most despised, the scapegoat. Sometimes I see the Buddha as a truth teller who freed himself from his father’s make-believe world despite the power and luxury it offered. In this vein, Jesus can be seen as an outcast black sheep who was tortured and grossly humiliated. Both embody the hardship of earning freedom from delusion.
Poor precision in communication distorts motives
And distorted motives warp human interactions, which in turn degrade individual psychology.
There is no way around it—the ways almost all people communicate are much cruder than their brains are capable of.
And that is the cause of most of what we now call (non-biological) “mental health” problems.
Here is an example: I want to say something very complex to my primary care doctor. I can give her the gist in a minute or two but I do not want to have that go on my medical record.
So I ask her if I can start a discussion that she will promise to keep off my record.
She says, “I’ll think about it.”
A week later I get a letter from her nurse saying she is not willing to do what I asked.
No reason why was given. Do rules prevent her from doing that? I have heard of doctors allowing patients to keep some concerns off the record, but who knows what the reality is? Do you?
If I insist, will that go on my record? Did what I asked in the first place go on my record? My doctor is trapped within or is voluntarily following some guideline that is most decidedly not in my best interests.
This same sort of thing can happen interpersonally. If I raise a topic that is psychologically important to me with even a close friend, I have to wonder will they understand? Will they allow me to expand the subject over a few weeks or months or longer? Will my initial statements change our friendship?
The basic problem is how do you discuss complex psychological subjects with others?
One of my friends works in alternative health care. She knows what I want to bring up with my doctor and admits that even in her professional setting where patients have an hour to open up, there is not enough time.
Back to my primary care doctor. I saw her again a year later and she asked if I remembered her. I said, “Of course I remember you.” She said no more and neither of us raised the off-the-record topic. An intern was with her.
I wonder what she thinks of me. Did she interpret my slightly nervous behavior when I first asked as a “sign” of something? Does she think I am volatile or bipolar or just nuts? (I am not.)
I am 100% sure that she cannot possibly know what I wanted to bring up with her. In this case, I have all of the information and I want to give it to her but she cannot or will not allow that unless my initial fumblings toward a complex subject are made public.
Even a close friend could find themselves in a similar position. And I wonder if I have done that myself to someone. Most people most of the time are not able to scale those walls that divide us.
On either side of the wall is a complex person capable of complex understanding, but one or both persons cannot scale the wall. My doctor is smart enough to have become an MD and yet I cannot tell her about a complex medical condition that is of great importance to me.
I know that I do not want to open the subject and risk a shallow public label (a common hindrance to many potential communications). I honestly do not know what my doctor is thinking. Maybe I will try again the next time I see her.
EDIT 12/16/2020: I didn’t try again. After much thought, I decided to switch doctors. And I will not bring this subject up with my new doctor. It’s a sad reality that trying at all ruined (in my mind) my relationship with my first doctor and convinced me that the topic is not one I can discuss with any medical professional in a professional setting and maybe in any setting.
first posted OCTOBER 10, 2017
FIML over time
Long-term practice of FIML generates deep change in the human psyche.
Social relations, habitual traits and attitudes, as well as ingrained emotional responses may all be subject to profound transformation.
The reason this happens is the basic FIML technique provides consistently good counter-evidence to habitual mental and emotional reactions. In addition, the technique itself teaches the practitioner’s mind–or shows it by example–to apply similar kinds of reasoning to many other situations that are not open to FIML dialog.
The basic FIML technique is a deceptively simple stop-and-query technique designed for use in conversations between close friends or partners. In our How to do FIML post, we have described the basic technique as clearly and simply as we could. This description should work as an effective model for beginning FIML practitioners, but it is a bit like describing in words how to hit a baseball or dive into a pond. The experience of actually doing FIML in a real-life, dynamic, emotionally-charged conversation will draw on a wide variety of skills and emotions from both partners. These aspects of FIML cannot be well-described in words because they will be different for different people and in different situations.
FIML does not tell anyone what to think or feel, but rather provides a method for clarifying thought and feeling as they occur in real life.
FIML practice allows partners to expand their senses of who they are and access these areas through speech. Correctly done, FIML will keep partners from becoming lost in side-issues or emotional traps. FIML gives partners access to a shared meta-perspective that will help them gradually rediscover or redesign how they think of themselves and each other, and how they react in many different kinds of situations.
FIML is like yoga in that it uses no props. Yoga uses the body to exercise the body. FIML uses two minds working together on the basis of shared rules. With practice, FIML partners will find that they are able to leverage or gain access to many areas of themselves that cannot be reached by other means. After several years of practice, partners will discover that they have gained levels of mental and emotional strength and freedom that had been barely imaginable before.
The basic FIML technique depends on partners clearly remembering everything that is/was in their mind(s) at the moment a phrase in question was spoken and/or heard. By honestly comparing the contents of their minds under these circumstances, partners will gain access to the rich realm of secondary and tertiary meanings that accompany all utterances. At the same time, they will free themselves from habitual mistaken interpretations whenever they arise.
Their minds, thus, will gradually gain freedom from error (mental and psychological) while broadening the range of subject matter they are capable of entertaining. And this will have a far-reaching influence on both behavior and perception in many other areas.
Once partners are skilled in the basic FIML technique, they will find that it need not always be done immediately upon noticing an emotional or judgmental reaction. After a few months of successful FIML practice, partners will probably find that they can bring up events from hours before and both will still have a reasonably accurate memory of what was said and heard.
It is important not to jump to this level too quickly, though, because if the basic technique has not been mastered, partners will lose sight of the meta-perspective, without which deep understanding and transformation will not be possible. Experienced partners will know when they have good data and can proceed with a FIML dialog and when they don’t. If you don’t have good data (both partners remember exactly what was said and what they were thinking), don’t do a FIML dialog. Just drop the subject. Though retain the general sense of something having happened because the subject will almost certainly come up again. When that happens, try to get good data you both agree on and then proceed with a FIML dialog.
In Japan, Jōhatsu ( 蒸発) refers to people who disappear due to pressures like failed marriages, debt, and job loss
In Japan, Jōhatsu ( 蒸発) refers to people who disappear due to pressures like failed marriages, debt, and job loss.
They abandon their lives and live anonymously off the grid. Specialized companies, called “night movers”, assist them in vanishing completely.
Muddled intentions, specific intentions
One important thing FIML practice has showed me is that people very often—more often than they realize—attribute specific, clear intentionality to the speech of others when that speech actually originated out of a muddled state and was not clear or specific at all to the speaker.
I think we do this because as speakers we have better knowledge of the rich ambiguity that is our mind, while as listeners we know, for the most part, only what the speaker has said, or rather what we think we heard them say.
In many other posts we have discussed hearing words incorrectly and the consequences that can follow from that. In this post, let’s confine ourselves to a listener’s attributing a more specific intentionality to the speaker than the speaker intended.
A crude example might be a drunk at a bar mumbling to himself. Another drunk walks by with his girl on his arm. Hearing the mumbling, he asks, “Did you say that to her?” In saying that, he is attributing intentionality where there was none.
Sometimes, the drunk at the bar will explain that he was just mumbling. And sometimes he will own the intentionality being attributed to him.
In that case, he might say, “Yes, I did. What are you going to do about it?”
Misconstrued intentionality surely leads to many fights.
But those of us who don’t get drunk in bars like that never do anything similar, right?
Not so. We do it all the time. We frequently hear the speech of others as having more specific intent than they meant.
Whenever we listen, we do so with the network of semiotics and language that subsumes our perceptions. Thus, whatever we hear will tend to confirm or be contextualized by that part of our subjective network that is most active at the time or that seems to apply best to what we are hearing.
Our use of that network for understanding the speech of others is hurried, quick, and often wrong. Our listening makes sense to us, but is almost never in full accord with what the speaker said, especially as so much speech initiates in vague or muddled states of mind. Speech is often groping while listening often is less so.
For example, if someone expresses a political view that we have recently been thinking about and that irritates us, our listening will very likely attribute a more specific or pointed intentionality to the speaker than is justified.
If we agree with what the speaker said under the circumstances described above, much the same thing will happen though our attribution of specific intentionality will be favorable rather than unfavorable.
These examples are the polite forms of the barroom brawl versus barroom camaraderie.
Notice also, the tendency we humans have to frame these sorts of errors as dichotomies. Either you are insulting my girl or we are all best friends.
Furthermore, notice that we also have a strong tendency to own the more specific intentionality being attributed to us by the listener. In the bar, you might decline the fight, but in another location you might lock horns with someone who attributed a specific intention to your muddled or idle expression of a vague political “view.”
Next time you think you heard a specific intent in the words of a friend, ask them if that was indeed their intent. Be careful when asking because if they are not experienced FIML practitioners, they may agree to own an intention they never had or that was far more muddled than it had seemed to you (or them in the moment of speaking).
My guess is a great deal of what we say is sloppier or more muddled than even we ourselves realize. This is simply how we are and how we really use language. You can’t make speech perfect.
Hierarchies evolve to reduce connections (and confusion)
Large social systems, especially those with many members who do not know each other, evolve into hierarchies because the number of connections is reduced.
When the number of connections that hold a group together is reduced, it is less costly to maintain the group and thus such groups are more likely to survive.
Military organizations, companies, religious organizations and schools are usually organized into hierarchical structures. Creative, independent modules can relieve some of the formalism of hierarchy but these modules will still fit into the hierarchical structure somewhere.
Hierarchies are (always?) organized around a purpose—money for corporations, winning for militaries, belief and organizational systems for religions, food for animals and so on.
You can even see the hierarchical principle in plant structures.
A research project on this topic as it applies to artificial intelligence demonstrates that biological networks evolve into hierarchies:
…because hierarchically wired networks have fewer connections. (Research showing why hierarchy exists will aid the development of artificial intelligence)
If we accept this principle behind the development of hierarchies, I would submit that we can also apply it to how language has developed as a hierarchy in and of itself and also as a support system for the social hierarchy within which it is used.
Language and culture are held together by a system of hierarchical categories.
These categories are what we think of as beliefs, values, codes, stories, political systems, who’s who in the group, and so on.
Hierarchical systems based on general categories of that type typically also exist between individuals within any society. Indeed, we can find the same sort of hierarchical system within the individual.
This is an efficient and very reasonable way to maintain a society and a language.
Problems arise in this system, however, when the individual does not know any other way of organizing themself or of communicating with others.
An individual who exists and communicates only within a hierarchical structure will be alienated from the great mass of idiosyncratic perceptions, responses, thoughts, and emotions that exist within them and others. I think that this causes a great deal of psychological suffering and is a major part of what the Buddha meant by delusion.
FIML is designed to fix this problem between individuals.
Sizes of social groups
Social groups can be said to be of five sizes:
- One person
- Two people
- A few people
- Many people (all of whom know each other)
- Many people (many of whom do not know each other)
- New groups based on new definitions
Social groups can be defined in many ways. In this post we will loosely call something a group if it has some effect on the individual member. Comments will relate to Buddhism, human psychology, and how these relate to FIML practice.
One person
A “one person” group is one of the ideals of Buddhist practice. Milarepa is an example of a single person who lived alone for years until he became enlightened. The Buddha himself also spent years in solitary pursuit of enlightenment. Some monks and some recluses today live in one person groups. From a FIML point of view, a single-person group can work only insofar as the person doing it is able to reflect on FIML interactions they have done before or if they are unusually self-aware and honest. The problem with one person doing FIML alone is they do not have a second source of information; there is no one to check their work, and so they can easily delude themselves.
A single person working alone on anything will still have some sort of relationship with the semiotics of a larger group–be it Buddhism, some other religion, science, literature, music, etc.
Two people
Two people are the ideal number for FIML practice. Two people can still delude themselves, but this is far less likely than a single person practicing alone. Two people who care about each other and who care about what is true will have the flexibility and focus needed for successful FIML practice.
Two people will also be exposed differently to the semiotics of the larger culture(s) in which they live, providing a sort of parallax view of the society beyond them. This gives each of them a second pair of eyes and ears and a second opinion on what they encounter.
In the Buddha’s day monks generally traveled in pairs and gathered in large groups during the summer. Why did the Buddha have them travel in pairs? Is it not because this small unit is best for profound interpersonal communication and sharing?
A few people
Three or even four people could do FIML together, but in most cases it would probably be more difficult than just two people because it would take more time and be more difficult to balance all views.
Many people (all of whom know each other)
A group of many people who all know each other is becoming rare in the industrialized world, though it has probably been the most important group size in human evolution and history. Bands of hunter-gatherers all knew everyone in the group, as did (and do) peasants in small villages across the world. Small religious groups or communes in an industrialized society today might be able to do FIML very well if they divided into working pairs or small groups of a few people. These small divisions could easily share information with the whole group formally at meetings or informally as conditions allow. I would think that a commune or small Buddhist temple of 80 people or less might do very well with FIML practice.
Many people (many of whom do not know each other)
This is how most people in the industrialized world live today–within a huge group of people, most of whom are not known to us. Some examples of groups of this type are nations, religions, large religious groups, political groups, unions, professions, etc. People in groups like this can have varying degrees of attachment to the semiotics of their group. TV, news and social media create an illusion of group cohesion that can be, and often is, manipulated by the small groups that control these media. Economic, ethnic, and religious interests also determine the semiotics of many large groups. I don’t think that any large group would be likely to undertake FIML practice today. The day may come when FIML, or something like it, is taught in schools, but for now it is hard to imagine how any nation or large organization would decide to have their members all take up FIML practice.
Buddhism as a coherent tradition is a large group with many millions of members, most of whom do not know each other. This should tell us that all we can expect to get from “Buddhism” is its basic, or general, semiotics. The same will hold true for the large Buddhist traditions that are sub-groups of Buddhism. We can learn a good deal from Chinese, Tibetan, Theravada, or American Buddhism, but will always be limited at those levels to abstract semiotics. When and if we interact with smaller groups of Buddhists, the story changes to be roughly in line with what has been said above about smaller groups. It would be quite possible, and I think highly desirable, for a small Buddhist group to undertake FIML practice by breaking into smaller working groups of two or three people and discussing the findings of these groups as conditions permit. FIML is grounded in Buddhist ideas, and my guess is that partners would quickly begin to see many of those ideas in a new light. Emptiness, attachment, delusion, Buddhist ethics, and so on will take on new meaning when grasped with the dynamic tools of FIML.
New groups based on new definitions
The Internet has spawned a good many new groups that many people seem to be able to identify with in a way that was not possible in the past. Some of these groups with which members identify most strongly seem to be those that are based on medical diagnoses. There are many online groups centered around the diagnoses of autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, cancer, etc. To join a group like this you need the diagnosis or at least a strong suspicion that you have one of these conditions. Since these groups are pretty new, I don’t know enough about them to say how one of them might approach FIML practice. Personally, I tend to think these sorts of groups are a good thing. It is quite natural for people who perceive themselves as somehow different from the mainstream to want to band together and share their experiences. Notice how profoundly different group allegiance is in an online group formed around a medical diagnosis compared to a traditional ethnic, regional, or religious group. This comparison can tell us a great deal about the semiotics of all groups, how group identification happens, what it is based on, what loyalty to the group entails, etc.
Conclusion
From this short outline, I hope readers will see that as individuals we can understand and gain a good deal of control over how group semiotics influence our lives. If you are living in a huge anonymous group (a nation state, say), notice how much of your semiotics comes from TV and the news media. If you work in a large company, notice how much of your semiotics comes from the company. If you feel a strong allegiance to an ethnic group, notice how your group understands its own history and defines group traits. If you are a Buddhist, how do you see yourself as part of that group? How do you understand Buddhist semiotics? The ideal way to deeply understand all of your group attachments is to probe them with your FIML partner(s). FIML partners have the tools to grasp and discuss semiotics in ways that non-FIML couples do not.
Note: One reason I did this post is I want to show that some aspects of FIML practice are that way because that’s how people, language, and groups are. We form groups. One of the best group sizes for rapid and profound interpersonal interactions is two people. This condition can be used by larger groups to good effect if the large group is broken into smaller groups of two (or three) people. A very large group is not likely to undertake FIML practice. A single person living alone is unlikely to make rapid progress in FIML because they have no way to check what they are doing with someone else.
Psychology: a fundamental correction must be made
The correction is: It must be recognized that individual psychological health is based on close interpersonal relations and that when these relations are not honest, individual psychology suffers. Most importantly, valid honesty in interpersonal relations almost never happens.
It almost never happens because people do not know how to do it or what it even is. When people do not know these things, they are forced to interact with each other in terms of personas, egos, and role-based or motive-based personalities. People are forced to define themselves in exoteric terms rather than authentic internal subjective terms.
This means their honesty cannot be valid because it is not based on authentic subjective reality.
Sentient beings constantly probe their worlds, perceiving, predicting, remembering, cogitating, planning, acting. Each sentient being is required to check their reality virtually all the time because we have to be sure of what we are seeing, hearing, feeling, doing.
Can I even believe myself? I make mistakes often. How can I be sure of my decisions?
It is a telling psychological truth that if I have a perfectly honest relation with my partner, I can trust her to tell me accurately what she is thinking more than I can trust myself with many of my own decisions.
My individual operating system gets close to flawless data from my partner. And she gets the same from me. For this reason, both of our individual operating systems are freed from needing external references on which to base our interpersonal reality.
We do not need personas, egos, or role-based or motive-based personalities when interacting with each other.
I can get close to flawless data from my partner because we do FIML practice.
FIML provides a deep reality check and degree of certitude that cannot be achieved in any other way.
Honesty in FIML practice does not mean that you have to expose something you do not want to expose. It just means that you are always completely honest when asked about something you said or did in the long moment of real-time now. (And with practice, at any time.)
For example, FIML honesty can work this way: Your partner asks you why you looked down just now. If you did so because you had an intrusive thought, you can tell that truth without telling them the thought. Be sure to confirm that you had looked down and then say, “I had an intrusive thought but would rather not say what it is.” Perfectly good and honest answer. FIML rules require your partner to accept this sort of answer while also requiring you to not abuse this sort of answer.
For other kinds of thoughts you are not prepared to share, just follow a similar pattern. The most important thing is do not deny you looked down if you did. Do not deny the gesture, tone, or sign your partner noticed. And do not deny its significance.
Always tell the truth about both of those. That way your partner will not have their reality denied. Yes, they had seen or heard you do that. The why is less important.
In time, you probably will not need to do this sort of limited response very often. It rarely happens in our practice anymore. We almost always talk both about what happened and why. That said, it does take time to fully believe each other, fully rely on the practice for giving you an accurate picture of your interpersonal reality. This is so because no culture anywhere does FIML or is based on anything like FIML.
When you first start FIML, you are coming from another place, one that has been defined by other people not you.
After a year or more of doing FIML, partners will come to understand that their individual psychologies—their individual operating systems—are no longer reliant on external references but rather are based on their authentically shared subjective realities. By reorganizing their interpersonal relations toward much great subjective honesty and accuracy, partners will also reorganize their individual psychologies toward much greater authenticity and stable integrity.
If the science of psychology can shift its reliance on abstract personality groupings to verifiably honest interpersonal relations and teach people how to form verifiably honest interpersonal relations, a great deal of chaos and tragedy will be removed from this world.
Neurosis as a semiotic phobia
Human beings are semiotic entities. We largely live in and react emotionally to semiotics. Virtually everything we think, feel, and believe is built on a foundation of signs and symbols—semiotics.
A recent German study elegantly shows that people with arachnophobia see spiders more quickly than people who do not fear spiders.
The study can be found here: You See What You Fear: Spiders Gain Preferential Access to Conscious Perception in Spider-Phobic Patients. An article about the study is here: Phobias alter perception, German researchers say.
The authors of the study say that there probably is “an evolutionary advantage to preferentially process threatening stimuli, but these effects seem to have become dysfunctional in phobic patients.”
I would argue that “these effects” have also migrated into human semiotics and are similarly dysfunctional. That is, humans perceive some signs and symbols as more threatening than they are. For some of us these signs and symbols can seem so threatening we become “phobic” or neurotic about them.
For example, insecure people may become hypersensitive to signs of rejection. People who have been abused or tortured may perceive signs that seem ordinary to others as serious threats. If the person who tortures you also smiles, you will probably see human smiles as being dangerous when to others they indicate kindness.
Once a semiotic becomes associated with strong emotions, and this can happen in many ways, we will tend to see that semiotic as an emotionally charged sign from then on.
FIML practice is designed to interrupt our emotionally-charged responses to semiotics the moment those responses occur. By doing this repeatedly with the same sign, FIML practice can extirpates the neurotic response to that sign.
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Edit: Extirpating semiotic “phobias” or neuroses should be easier to do in most cases than extirpating phobias based on visual perceptions of things, such as the spiders discussed in the linked study. This is likely due to the more direct connection between emotional or limbic responses and the visual cortex. Complex semiotics are signs and symbols built on top of other signs and symbols, and thus their “architecture” is more fragile than direct visual perception and probably simpler to change in most cases. Human facial expressions probably fall somewhere between complex signs and direct visual perception. A good deal of what we call “psychology” are networks of complex semiotics. When a network becomes “neurotic” it is probably true that it contains erroneous interpretations of some or all of its semiotics. That said, a complex neurosis than involves many semiotic networks may be more difficult to extirpate than a straightforward phobia like arachnophobia.
Cultural semiotics – whatever works is the rule
Cultures are made of and held together by semiotics. They are formed and exist within self-referential semiotic networks or matrices.
Semiotic cultural matrices exist solely because they work. This is why virtually all of the world’s cultures are based on falsehoods.
It doesn’t matter if something is right or wrong as long as the people within a culture keep buying the story. Once they stop buying it, the culture disintegrates or changes.
Disintegration has been the fate of almost every culture that ever existed and there is little or no chance that any culture in existence today will survive for long.
Some culture can reasonably claim contiguity with an ancestral culture dating back thousands of years, but the two are never the same. In that sense, all of us can claim contiguity with “our” cultural pasts, just as we can claim genetic contiguity with the past. It is unlikely, though, that you would recognize any of the cultures of your distant ancestors, let alone want to be part of them or even like them.
The simplicity and falsity of culture can be seen in almost anything that communicates to large numbers of people, but especially when the thing being communicated is emotional.
An example in today’s USA might be the use of the word “offense” or “offended,” as in “I am offended by what you just said.”
If the speaker said something clearly offensive, like cussing out your mother, most of us would dismiss them as drunken fools and be done with it. Some of us might want to fight, but I bet no one would say, “I am offended by what you just said!”
Being “offended” is a semiotic that carries a special meaning and a special charge. It usually comes as a surprise to the speaker, causing them to hesitate and wonder what they have done wrong. It almost always seems to require an apology and the admission that the “offended” party stands on higher ground.
But how can you “offend” without doing so knowingly? I might not like it when you stepped on my toes, but I would be a fool to feel offended if you did it accidentally.
The truth is when most people claim to be “offended” they don’t really mean it. What they mean is “you failed to show me respect in the way I demand.”
That is a very different semiotic. It often works like an ambush or a trump card that gives the listener control of what has happened and will happen next. Reason should prevail in these instances, but it rarely does because the “offended” thing works better.
Rather than “offend” anyone by illustrating this point with some recent examples from the news, please recall your own. Imagine occasions when you have heard or read about someone claiming to be “offended” by what someone else said or did. Short of direct insults, which are rare, the “offense” will almost always reduce to “failure to show respect” for some code of speech or behavior that the speaker did not know.
Being “offended” is a powerful charge that amply reveals the tackiness of cultural bonds, for it works even among people who otherwise think of themselves as reasonable.
Denial and self-deception
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.
LSD microdosing in major depressive disorder: results from an open-label trial
Highlights
- This is the first trial with microdosed LSD administered at home to treat depression.
- Microdosed LSD was well-tolerated, with no serious or severe adverse effects.
- There was a pronounced, long-lasting reduction in depression severity across the intervention period.
- This is the first trial with echocardiography after repeated exposure to a psychedelic.
- There is no indication of induced valvulopathy after 16 microdoses of LSD.
I personally know many friends, relatives and acquaintances who were destroyed by alcohol, but none who were harmed by psychedelics unless alcohol was also involved.
LSD is not a panacea but it can be helpful to many people, including helping alcoholics get off that terrible poison.
Buddhists should recognize that the Fifth Precept for lay Buddhists restricts alcohol and alcohol only.
I am not trying to promote the use of psychedelics but rather want to clear the air on their genuine and provable value.
Of course, when used, they should be used wisely or in micro-doses as in the above trial. ABN
Vaccine misuse will require a transition phase for rational reform to happen — Geert Vanden Bossche
Polarization and the lack of debate about whether it might be wise to explore some middle ground between the ‘black’ or ‘white’ options will leave both sides totally divided, each thinking they’re the smart ones. This can only lead to more mandatory vaccination or a revolution against any kind of prophylactic immune intervention and public health altogether. MAHA won’t be able to sort it out politically. As I previously stated, people who haven’t worked in the vaccine industry or public health institutions simply don’t realize the kind of lobby they’re up against. Lawsuits won’t do the job. There needs to be a transition phase to make things work out differently. That phase can -IMHO- only consist of diplomatic scientific debate between David and Goliath. I don’t see anything like this happening right now.
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So far, I see RFK doing something like this. Vanden Bossche has the experience to offer this conclusion. I can see it from his angle and from the angle of what the public can handle psychologically. ABN
American Buddhist Net 