Tag: psychology

Is consciousness continuous or discrete?

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

Is consciousness a continuous flow of awareness without intervals or is it something that emerges continually at discrete points in a cascade of microbits?

The Buddhist answer has always been the latter.

The Buddha’s five skandha explanation of perception and consciousness says that there are four discrete steps that are the basis of consciousness.

The five skandhas are form, sensation, perception, activity, consciousness. A form can arise in the mind or outside of the mind. This form gives rise to a sensation, which gives rise to perception, followed by activity (mental or physical), and lastly consciousness. In the Buddha’s explanation, the five skandhas occur one after the other, very rapidly. They are not a continuous stream but rather a series of discrete or discernible moments. A form arises or appears, then there is a sensation, then perception, then activity, then consciousness. (The five skandhas and modern science)

The first four skandhas are normally unconscious. Buddhist mindfulness and meditation training are importantly designed to help us become conscious of each of the five skandhas as they actually function in real-time.

A study from 2014—Amygdala Responsivity to High-Level Social Information from Unseen Faces—supports the five skandha explanation. From that study:

The findings demonstrate that the amygdala can be influenced by even high-level facial information before that information is consciously perceived, suggesting that the amygdala’s processing of social cues in the absence of awareness may be more extensive than previously described. (emphasis added)

A few days ago, a new model of how consciousness arises was proposed. This model is being called a “two-stage” model, but it is based on research and conclusions derived from that research that support the Buddha’s five skandha explanation of consciousness.

The study abstract:

We experience the world as a seamless stream of percepts. However, intriguing illusions and recent experiments suggest that the world is not continuously translated into conscious perception. Instead, perception seems to operate in a discrete manner, just like movies appear continuous although they consist of discrete images. To explain how the temporal resolution of human vision can be fast compared to sluggish conscious perception, we propose a novel conceptual framework in which features of objects, such as their color, are quasi-continuously and unconsciously analyzed with high temporal resolution. Like other features, temporal features, such as duration, are coded as quantitative labels. When unconscious processing is “completed,” all features are simultaneously rendered conscious at discrete moments in time, sometimes even hundreds of milliseconds after stimuli were presented. (Time Slices: What Is the Duration of a Percept?) (emphasis added)

I, of course, completely support science going where the evidence leads and am not trying to shoehorn these findings into a Buddhist package. Nonetheless, that does sound a lot like a slimmed-down version of the five skandhas. Considering these and other recent findings in a Buddhist light may help science resolve more clearly what is actually happening in the brain/mind.

As for form-sensation-perception-activity-consciousness, you might suddenly think of your mother, or the history of China, or the spider that just climbed onto your shoulder.

In Buddhist terms, initially, each of those items is a form which leads to a sensation which leads to perception which leads to activity which leads to consciousness.

Obviously, the form of a spider on your shoulder differs from the form of the history of China. Yet both forms can be understood to produce positive, negative, or neutral sensations, after which we begin to perceive the form and then react to it with activity (either mental or physical or both) before becoming fully conscious of it.

In the case of the spider, the first four skandhas may happen so quickly, we will have reacted (activity) to it (the spider) before being conscious of what we are doing. The skandha of activity is deeply physical in this case, though once consciousness of the event arises our sense of what the first four skandhas were and are will change.

If we slapped the spider and think we killed it, our eyes will monitor it for movement. If it moves and we are sensitive in that way, we might shudder again and relive the minor panic that just occurred.

If we are sorry that we reacted without thinking and notice the spider is moving, we might feel relief that it is alive or sadness that it has been wounded.

In all cases, our consciousness of the original event, will constellate around the spider through monitoring it, our own reactions, and whatever else arises. Maybe our sudden movements brought someone else into the room.

The constellation of skandhas and angles of awareness can become very complex, but the skandhas will still operate in unique and/or feedback loops that can often be analyzed.

The word skandha means “aggregate” or “heap” indicating that the linear first-fifth explanation of how they operate is greatly simplified.

The above explanation of the spider can also be applied to the form skandhas of the history of China or your mother when they suddenly arise in your mind, or anything else.

We can also perceive the skandhas when our minds bring in new information from memory or wander. As we read, for example, it is normal for other forms to enter our minds from our memories. Some of these forms will enhance our reading and some of them will cause our minds to wander.

Either way, our consciousness is always slightly jumpy because it emerges continually at discrete points in a cascade of microbits, be they called skandhas or something else.

_________________

See also: How the brain produces consciousness in ‘time slices’

Psychological optimization

~ ABN ~ 2 Comments

Why settle for not being crazy when you could be going for psychological optimization?

A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a diagnosis of a behavioral or mental pattern that can cause suffering or a poor ability to function in ordinary life.

Why settle for being able to “function in ordinary life” when you could have an extraordinary life?

Why take pills to get by when you could be optimizing your brain?

Humans go for optimization whenever we can. We optimize technology, our diets, our medical treatments, our educations, even our friendships.

Optimization : an act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible.

Hell yeah. That’s what you want for your mind, your life. Why settle for less?

OK, that does read like a sales spiel, but I will deliver.

All you have to do is put time and thought into the process of optimizing your psychology. An optimized psychology is an optimized brain and life.

First, you have to learn how to do FIML.

This requires about as much time and effort as learning to play a musical instrument at a beginner’s level. About as much time as it takes to learn to drive a car. Or to learn to play pool well enough to enjoy it.

FIML takes less time to learn than a semester at school, whatever grade. Less time than most job-training courses. Less time than becoming a decent amateur cook. Less time than buying a house or redoing your kitchen.

The hardest part about FIML is learning the technique through reading. Start here: How to do FIML.

The second hardest part is having a friend or mate who is willing and able to do it with you. Sadly, this is a deal-breaker for too many people.

I hate saying this, but it is fairly normal for people world-wide not to have a friend who is close enough to do FIML with. This is the result of so many non-optimized psychologies in this world.

Many people have five or more “good friends” and a loving spouse, but not even one of them willing or able to do FIML.

Their excuses will be they can’t understand it, don’t want to bother, don’t want to be that honest, don’t want that kind of relationship, don’t have the time, etc.

The result is they and you will continue to languish in less than optimal mental states. Moods, alcohol, pills, arguments over nothing, ridiculous misunderstandings, ominous silences, severance of ties, and worse will rule your world(s).

For most, the best relief they will find are self-help books based on generalities, career books about “getting ahead” as defined by more generalities, nonsense about “loving yourself,” low levels of religious belief and practice, exercise programs, etc.

You didn’t learn to drive a car that way. Driving a car requires interaction, observation, the help of another person.

Your psychology needs similar kinds of input.

Once you have learned to do FIML with a trustworthy partner, the practice will tend to self-generate because the insights gained will be real and have real and deeply felt benefits for both partners.

Besides the “how to” and FAQ links at the top of this page, most posts on this site describe some aspect of FIML practice.

For psychologists, I honestly do not see how you can claim to be able to treat other people if you have not done at least a few years of FIML practice or the like. Human interactions without any technique for consistent meta-control and understanding (which FIML provides) are 100% guaranteed to be riddled with misunderstanding and wrong views.

 

Interview with researcher David Nutt on the effects of LSD

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From the interview:

…Why study the effects of LSD on the brain?

For brain researchers, studying how psychedelic drugs such as LSD alter the ‘normal’ brain state is a way to study the biological phenomenon that is consciousness. (Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness)

The actual study is here: Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging.

Another article on this study can be found here: Brain scans show how LSD mimics mind of a baby.

Current scientific research confirms what many understood in the 1950s and 60s—that LSD used wisely often leads to good outcomes, increasing “creativity,” lessening depression, and removing addictive behaviors.

I know am a bit of a Buddhist heretic when I say that I am pretty sure the Buddha would have approved of or not disapproved of LSD. I say this because the fifth precept does not mention the abuse of any other drug but alcohol. For more on this topic see: Are We Misunderstanding The Fifth Precept?

Repost: Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice

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By analyzing minute emotional reactions in real-time during normal conversation, FIML practice disrupts the consolidation, or more often the reconsolidation, of “neurotic” responses.

In FIML, a neurotic response is defined as “an emotional response based on a misinterpretation.” The misinterpretation in question can be incipient (just starting) to long-seated (been a habit for years).

The response is disrupted by FIML practice and, thus, tends not to consolidate or reconsolidate, especially after several instances of learning that it is not valid.

A neurotic response is a response based on memory. The following study on fear memories supports the above explanation of FIML practice.

Memories become labile when recalled. In humans and rodents alike, reactivated fear memories can be attenuated by disrupting reconsolidation with extinction training. Using functional brain imaging, we found that, after a conditioned fear memory was formed, reactivation and reconsolidation left a memory trace in the basolateral amygdala that predicted subsequent fear expression and was tightly coupled to activity in the fear circuit of the brain. In contrast, reactivation followed by disrupted reconsolidation suppressed fear, abolished the memory trace, and attenuated fear-circuit connectivity. Thus, as previously demonstrated in rodents, fear memory suppression resulting from behavioral disruption of reconsolidation is amygdala-dependent also in humans, which supports an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism. (Source: Disruption of Reconsolidation Erases a Fear Memory Trace in the Human Amygdala)

FIML practice works by partners consciously and cooperatively disrupting reconsolidation (and initial consolidation) of neurotic memory (and associated behaviors). FIML both extirpates habitual neurotic responses and also prevents the formation of new neurotic responses through conscious disruption of memory consolidation.

FIML probably works as well as it does because humans have “an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism” that favors more truth. Obvious examples of this update mechanism can be seen in many simple mistakes. For instance, if you think the capital of New York State is New York City and someone shows that it is Albany, you will likely correct your mistake immediately with little or no fuss.

Since FIML focuses on small mistakes made between partners, corrections are rarely more difficult than the above example though they may be accompanied by a greater sense of relief. For example, if you thought that maybe your partner was mad at you but then find (through a FIML query) that they are not, your sense of relief may be considerable.

Foundations of psychology: what they should be

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Human psychology should be separated into two basic categories:

  • biological
  • experiential

Biological psychology can be either good or bad. It includes the psychological effects of genes, brain health, health of perceptual and other organs, trauma or its absence, disease, extreme experiences that profoundly affect how the brain and body function at biological levels, etc.

Experiential psychology can also be either good or bad. It includes acculturation, training, childhood development, education, parenting, interpersonal experience, language use, and so on.

These two categories are often mixed together. This affects how we understand psychology and how we treat it or deal with it.

In this post, I am going to ignore biological psychology.

The foundation of experiential psychology should completely recognize and be based on the fact that virtually all human psychological interactions are fraught with error.

After years of studying and doing FIML, I am 100% convinced that human psychological communication is so fraught with error that the very foundation of human experiential psychology as it is recognized in the DSM, in academia, and in culture generally is rotten.

Another way to say that is we don’t even know what human psychology is because virtually all experiential psychology is a dysfunctional mess due to the presence of massive amounts of experiential error in all people, including psychologists.

Our brains are working overtime with deeply erroneous psychological data, producing terrible results.

We cannot correctly understand the human body if all of our specimens are riddled with parasites and disease. Similarly, how can we study human psychology if the data being processed by the brain (and body) are riddled with error?

Even if you have never studied FIML, you should be able to see that humans in the privacy of their own minds are like little zoos filled with shadowy monsters that have arisen due to the plethora of error each and every individual has experienced.

Human responses to these shadowy monsters are varied—some act on them, some fear them, some hide them, some expose them.

But few escape them because you cannot escape them by yourself. Those monsters arise out of decades of communication error and they will not go away until the communication errors have been removed.

You cannot remove those errors in normal psychotherapy. A therapist can only show a client what they are and how they arise., if that

The client must remove them through a practice like FIML.

Our current understanding of human psychology is largely delusional

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Human psychology is formed through interactions with other humans.

In both complex and simple interactions with others, we often are forced to imagine what is happening. This is especially true in complex interactions.

Since what we imagine is often wrong, or wrong often enough to matter, our sense of who we are and who others are is largely deluded.

Humans do well enough in simple interactions involving formal rules. These are our public interactions that rely on the rules of our professions, clubs, churches, workplaces, etc. Even still, we are often wrong about what is happening in these settings, what our roles are, what others are thinking.

Complex interactions—that is, complex psychological interactions—are even more fraught with error than simple interactions. Indeed, they so fraught with error we can say that their very basis is riddled with error. In this sense they can be defined as delusional.

Complex psychological interactions are the principal interactions that form human psychology and our understanding of it.

Very complex psychological interactions that involve a method like FIML can eliminate most error, though even FIML cannot remove all of it and even FIML requires years to achieve this end.

Complex psychological interactions (psychological interactions that do not use FIML or something similar) can only reduce error by pretending they are simple interactions (ones involving formal rules).

These interactions “pretend” they are simple for convenience or to avoid ambiguity and argumentation. No person can develop complex psychology without complex psychological interactions.

Since our current understanding of human psychology is based on simple and complex interactions (plus biology), its basis is fundamentally riddled with error and thus delusional.

Human psychological delusion must be removed (by FIML or similar) before we can even begin to understand human psychology. I would go so far as to say that no psychologist can possibly understand or competently treat another human being if they have not practiced complex and very complex psychological interaction for many years.

The lion’s share, if not all, psychological problems (if they are not biological) are caused by the aggregation of error that comes from psychological interactions that fall short of very complex interactions as described above.

The difference between being offended and not trusting someone

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In this post I will argue that suddenly being offended by someone and suddenly not trusting someone are different responses to similar underlying primal emotions or instincts.

Both reactions, though sudden, typically occur after a build-up period of doubt or suspicion.

An “offense” can occur for many reasons but usually it is due to words, lack of words, behaviors, or something a third-party said.

The same is true for a sudden loss of trust.

Though these two responses have underlying similarities that are primal—a sudden feeling of revulsion or disgust—they produce different effects.

If one feels offended or insulted a small war may ensue. This war may be open or hidden. It may be brief or long. The “offender” may or may not be aware that any offense occurred and, even if they are aware, that a war has begun.

Similarly, a sudden loss of trust is a primal response that arises from the same conditions that give rise to feelings of being insulted.

Avoidance seems to be the main strategy of people who interpret the same “offensive” words or behaviors as sign of untrustworthiness instead of offensiveness. Why go to war with someone we don’t trust? It’s better to avoid them.

Some people who feel offended, may also decide simply to avoid the person they perceive as having offended them, though I believe this response is less common among this type than rankling feelings that may give rise to acts of malice.

Being offended or insulted is a form of disgust or revulsion that cues in aggressive cultural or idiosyncratic thoughts and behaviors.

Loss of trust also arises from feelings of revulsion or disgust, but cues in different cultural or idiosyncratic behaviors, principally avoidance.

For myself, subjectively, if someone insults me or I perceive their words or actions to be insulting, I almost never become angry but rather stop trusting them.

I think, this person is not a friend because they are attacking me, or competing with me, or trying to harm me. I might still spend time with them, but will no longer feel an intimate bond with them. The trust has been broken.

Ideally, when primal feelings of disgust or revulsion are generated in these ways between friends, we should be able to discuss the matter and fix the problem, if there was one. In reality, though, this rarely happens.

In this, we can see that our primal emotions are incommensurate with our brains.

Neither response—being offended or ceasing to trust—is a good one. Both disrupt relations and cause suffering.

With a close friend, a technique like FIML can deal successfully with primal feelings, but with others it is all but impossible. And how can we get close to people anyway if it is so easy to feel insulted or mistrustful?

Huge cultural differences swing on and around these different perceptions of primal feeling. A culture than supports or encourages avoidance rather than violence may work well for the members of that culture.

But if someone from that culture is dealing with someone from a culture that encourages violence rather than avoidance, avoidance may be interpreted as a further offense, inciting even more violence.

Study shows “ego depletion” may not be a thing after all

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This appears to be an important finding, overturning years of research and practice.

Everything Is Crumbling: An influential psychological theory, borne out in hundreds of experiments, may have just been debunked.

If “ego depletion” goes the way of salt, butter, Freud, BMI, and lobotomies, it will show yet again that widely accepted consensus, even in science, can be profoundly and fundamentally wrong.

How long before the science supporting the benefits of diversity and multiculturalism is honestly confronted by the science that shows opposite effects?

Brain in a box

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We put our brains in a box when we adopt a limited view of any subject.

Once we adopt a limited view, it tends to self-propagate, to attract secondary and tertiary views as if the box were a magnet.

This is why so many subjects—both public and private–are polarized. You have this religion, therefore… You have this political belief or personality, therefore…

Rather than converse about the many nuances of any view or topic, most people tend strongly to categorize people, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and so on. That is, put them in a box.

We all do this, but like anything we all do, we are also capable of seeing through it.

An excellent large-scale example of this principle was reported today: Japan very nearly lost Tokyo.

The whole article, which is not long, is super worth reading because of what it says about the Fukushima disaster and also because of what it says about our tendency to put reality in boxes and talk about them rather than reality itself.

From the article:

Dramatic CCTV footage from the plant showed a skeleton staff – the Fukushima 50 – struggling to read emergency manuals by torchlight and battling with contradictory, confusing instructions from their superiors at Tepco. Total disaster was averted when seawater was pumped into the reactors, but the plant manager, Masao Yoshida, later said he considered committing hara-kiri, ritual suicide.

If readers recall, at the time the two main boxes in currency were:

  • the politically-approved box: “it’s serious but not to worry” and “the alarmists are crazy and also anti-nuclear and thus anti-science.”
  • and the alarmist box: “could mean the evacuation of Tokyo” and “nuclear power can never be safe.”

Turns out the second box—the “alarmists”—were closer to the truth. And worse, the important information and discussion of what was in-between those boxes was largely neglected or kept out of sight.

Additionally, the linked article reveals that incompetent officials were in charge of the plant, and that as the disaster unfolded few had any idea what to do.

That’s another box or a symptom of boxes. You donated to me or supported me or are my friend, how about being Japan’s nuclear safety advisor? Sure why not?

This is why:

…”very shocked” by the performance of Nobuaki Terasaka, his government’s nuclear safety adviser.

“We asked him, ‘Do you know anything about nuclear issues?’

“And he said, ‘No, I majored in economics’.”

If you look around, you will see boxes everywhere. A box that was first applied to anyone who questioned the JFK assassination story—“conspiracy theorist”—is one of the most long-lived.

“Alarmist,” “tin-foil hat,” “nut-job,” “kook,” “anti-science,” “anti-religion,” “racist,” “anti-racist,” and so on are other examples.

We should have gotten all the facts about Fukushima at the time, just as we should have gotten all the facts about WMD in Iraq before that war, which may have been caused by acts of treason.

If you asked for the facts, though, you would have been put in a box, your voice silenced.

If you can see these kinds of boxes in large events, they should also be findable in the smaller boxes of your life.

The small boxes of interpersonal communication and individual psychology are things like set views on personalities (yours or theirs), using “signs” about what someone thinks or believes without actually asking them in-depth, being intolerant of nuanced views or not even being able to hear them, categorizing people based on generalities, having a complex view of yourself but simple ones of others, or the other way around, etc.

In many cases, we do need to use boxes. They allow us to function easily in many situations, but boxes only describe boxed reality and in that prevent complex communication and understanding.

 

Metacognitive clutter

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Metacognitive clutter is stuff that makes higher mental states not work well.

An individual example might be holding a mistaken view of your role in some organization or activity. Your mistaken view causes much of what you are doing to be wrong and to detrimentally entangle other parts of your life.

A national or social example of metacognitive clutter might be the many dumb subjects and shallow statements required of American politicians. See the following for a more detailed analysis: Semiotics in politics and the totalitarianism of PC.

Another area where metacognitive clutter causes a lot of problems is interpersonal relations. If you cannot speak to your SO and/or closest friends from a metacognitive point of view, you sort of don’t really have an SO or close friends.

In this context, metacognition means being able to talk about how you understand each other and why you think, feel, and behave as you do.

Good interpersonal metacognitive communication produces better relationships, happier people, and healthier individual psychologies.

This happens because good communication removes metacognitive clutter, greatly reducing interpersonal mistakes and cognitive entanglements.

I, for one, do not believe you can do really good metacognitive communication without a prior agreement to do that and a technique that reliably works on small details. See this for information on such a technique: How to do FIML.

General discussions on beliefs, biographies, emotions, philosophies, religion, science, and so forth are helpful, even essential, for good metacognitive communication but they cannot by themselves remove the idiosyncratic clutter that has built up in the mind over many years.

Meso and macro level techniques cannot remove micro clutter, especially idiosyncratic micro clutter which we all have a lot of.

Personality as strategy

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Personality can be understood as a kind of strategy or pragmatic functionalism.

This aspect of it can be conscious, semi-conscious, or non-conscious and is most common or apparent in social milieus.

Personality is a unifying principle or unifying group of principles and ideas that guides the individual in all settings.

Personality must also comport with the individual’s understanding of ethics, morals, philosophy, eschatology, and so forth.

While it may benefit me in some ways to lie, lying does not comport with my ethics so I won’t do it in most situations, though I may wander into or toward gray areas sometimes.

A major aspect of personality is how big that gray area is (if the individual perceives it at all) and how often it appears in real-world situations.

The dictates of culture, or cultural norms, are also standards that lie at the heart of how a person’s strategy for functioning in the world works.

In this context, narcissism or narcissistic behavior can be analyzed fairly simply.

A conscious narcissist is someone who uses the unifying principle of self-interest as a strategy or guide, often at the expense of sound ethics and fairness toward others.

A semi-conscious narcissist is one who does this in a more muddled way.

A non-conscious narcissist is one who does this out of training, lack of awareness, or cognitive decline due to substance abuse or injury.

The first kind—the conscious narcissist—can change easily if conditions are right. So can the second kind—the semi-conscious narcissist—though good conditions will be harder for them to find.

The third kind is less likely to change because the cause is organic. This kind illustrates the raw functionalism of personality. A simple principle such as relentless self-interest is easier to hold in the brain than a more complex one that factors in fairness and ethical standards.

Many other personality traits can be analyzed and understood as practical strategies that are used by the brain to guide the organism. In some cases, these strategies are complex with varying ties to ethics and fairness.

In other cases, these strategies are the simple standards that remain after organic damage in the brain has occurred. I am pretty sure this is one reason the Buddha made the fifth precept “refraining from irresponsible use of alcohol.”

Self-deception

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Self-deception begins within seconds of listening or speaking.

Once committed to an interpretation or tending toward one, the brain builds on it quickly.

Once an interpretation has been built upon, the brain remembers it as what truly happened even if that is false.

This is normal. The human brain has evolved to use self-deception.

This probably happened because truer forms of communication are complex and use a lot of time. They can also be confusing and difficult.

Confusion, difficulty, and complexity interfere with social cohesion and motivation.

Strong self-deception deceives others better than weak self-deception or no self-deception. In this way, it promotes social cohesion and motivation.

Self-deception can be observed and understood if it is caught quickly. The best way to catch it is through a technique like FIML.

Self-deception is a kind of neurosis, delusion, false cognition. Nevertheless, we are so used to it, we can feel lost without it.

If self-deception is discovered many times through FIML practice, it does not present as a philosophy or attitude or whole picture of the mind. Nor does it present as a neurosis, delusion, or false cognition.

Rather it presents as a composite of many pixels—many small instances—of observed and corrected mistakes.

Thus seen as an aggregation of many small instances, self-deception gradually is lessened.

Self-deception and communication, a hypothesis

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The hypothesis:

If we accept that humans have evolved to use self-deception in communication

Then self-deception must work within (and through) normal human communication limits

And if this is so, then there must be “smallest units” of self-deception that are accessible to observation and understanding

I propose that one of these “smallest units” is tone of voice and that the other is memory fabrication

Memory fabrication could also be called “reality fabrication,” “insistence on a single interpretation,” or “false assertion” or even “false confession.”

Though false confessions are common, as a society, we are puzzled by them and even have a legal system that puts great weight on them.

The link just given will provide background on this aspect of “reality fabrication.” A strong or clever person can often cause someone to falsely confess even to a serious crime.

A narcissist could probably be defined as someone who is especially susceptible to false assumptions about themself and others. (Themself is a good word, dating back to the 14th century.)

Tone of voice is a communication element that typically produces almost instantaneous reactions in listeners.

When the human capacity for “reality fabrication” meets tone of voice in the moment, self-deception frequently arises.

For example, I cut my finger and speak in frustration to you when I drop the band-aide you handed me. Then you react to my tone of voice.

Most of us most of the time will stop at this point and recognize that any emotions that have been generated are based on a transient problem and are best ignored.

Sometimes, though, a situation like this can lead to further emotional confusion during which one or both parties will begin to self-deceive concerning whose “fault” it is, what happened, why, etc.

I am certain you will be able to find many more example of these small units in your own life if you pay close attention to the moment a discordant tone of voice arises either in yourself or in your partner.

I believe these are some of the smallest units of self-deception. By paying attention to them we can watch ourselves begin a process of more complex self-deception.

Self-deception is an important part of human psychology, but we do not have to allow ourselves to be led around by it. Just as I can control through understanding my instinctual desires for excitement and sexual stimulation, I can also control through understanding and observation my instinctual tendency to self-deceive.

When FIML partners are both able to do this, they will gain great insight into how and why they are the way they are. It will also be much more fun to talk together.

__________________

Here is some more relevant information: The way you sound affects your mood.

Repost: Mr Genness from Worcester Academy

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A reader asked us to put out a feeler for Mr. Genness who taught English at Worcester Academy (in Massachusetts) during the 1968-69 school year.

He was the best teacher I ever had and I think about him often. He taught me things that are still paying-off today. I want to thank him but cannot find out where he is or how to contact him.

The requester does not know his first name and was unable to get any info from the school. Mr. Genness was into theater and had connections with the theater crowd in NYC. The spelling of his name—Genness—is a guess, but likely correct.

If you know or suspect you know Mr. Genness, please send an email to “fimlingo at gmail.com” or just reply to this post.

We read Faulkner, the Iliad, Pirandello, and much more. He was a genius and a superb teacher. Probably saved my life. Definitely improved it immensely.

I know the feeling.

Basic signaling and what it explains

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Basic signaling can be described or explained as follows:

  • A signal is information sent from one place and received at another.
  • A signal can be big or small.
  • A signal can be true or false.*

These are the most basic features of all signals. More complex signals contain these three basic features and also exhibit other features, such as:

  • having complexity or context
  • being conscious or not
  • being consciously designed to have an effect

From the three features of basic signaling, we can say a lot about human signaling.

The first feature of basic signaling simply defines what a signal is. I can signal to myself or I can signal to you. A simple example is I check my hair in the mirror (signal to self) and then present myself to you (signal to you). Insofar as my hair signal to you has a conscious element of how my hair looks or doesn’t look (sloppy, messy), the hair signal I sent to myself via the mirror is now being sent to you via my imagination.

This hair signal can also illustrate the second feature of basic signaling—how big or small the signal is. My hair signal may be important to me while I am looking in the mirror (big signal) or not very important (small signal). In like manner, my hair signal may be big or small in your mind.

This hair signal can also illustrate the third feature of basic signaling—its truth or falsity. If I have dyed my hair, in some sense I am sending a false signal. If I have not dyed my hair but you think I have, then you are receiving a false signal.

One could also say that dyed hair is not a truly “false” signal because it is common for people to dye their hair. Similar arguments can be made for combing or cutting hair or anything we do with our hair. The truth or falsity of many human signals is open to interpretation in this manner.

Normally, we use the three basic features of complex signals described in the second bullet list above to decide which interpretation to use. Changing the context and complexity upon which our interpretation is based will tend to change our interpretation of the signal.

Notice how many signals achieve their effects primarily by being big. Big signs, bright lights, loud music, heavy make-up, loud sexual signals, perfume, odor, big muscles, fake boobs, expensive cars, big houses and yachts, etc. all work in part by being big signals. Bigness or smallness is point two in the list above.

Bigness alone can explain why people lie, slant, or falsely accuse. As long as a signal is big, some people will be attracted to it and come under its spell. If someone accuses you falsely of something and spreads their accusation around, you may be faced with a big problem. If the lie is big enough and artful enough, you now are forced to defend yourself. If you do not even know what is being said about you, you can’t even do that.

Another version of the effectiveness of a big false accusation is one made to your face. As soon as it is uttered, the scene and context will shift dramatically. You are normally required to immediately defend yourself, derailing whatever rational exchange of ideas preceded the accusation.

We can see how this works in interpersonal communication and we can also see how it works on a larger scale. When nations go to war, they invariably lie about each other. Politicians lie, cultures lie, groups lie, religions lie, sports fans lie, and so on.

Lies or false accusation work because they send big signals that require a defense and, since they are lies, can be hard to defend against.

To me, this is a depressing side of human communication. Lies and false accusations very often win against the truth.

Simply stated, false accusations are aggressive lies, but we also know them in milder form as spin, slanting the facts, one-sidedness, tailoring the message, and so on.

Note: I got the idea of the importance of false accusations from a book I am reading on alcoholism: Vessels of Rage, Engines of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism.

The author of this book, James Graham, makes the claim repeatedly that alcoholics very often engage in false accusations. In discussing this book with my partner, we came to conclude that Graham is right about this—false accusations do seem to be common among the alcoholics we both know.

Since I like to break things down into basic principles, my partner and I came up with the principles outlined above.

A false accusation sends a big signal into a social group while at the same time protecting the alcoholic from criticism. It allows them to say, “You see it is not me or my drinking that is the problem here, she is the one who is crazy!” Or, “Can you believe what he did to me?” Of course, he didn’t do anything but to a drunk, the accusation feels good and often works with others because it is big.

On a larger scale, false accusations in public today often take form as PC dictates. That’s “racist,” “sexist,” “micro-aggressive,” “privileged,” “homophobic,” etc. Just knowing that we might be accused of one of these attitudes has been enough to keep most people from saying anything that could even be tangentially interpreted in that way.

Note two: FIML practice entirely removes false accusations and any basis for them between partners. No FIML partner should ever say, “You did too mean that!” Or “I know why you did that!”

Partners who have established a habit of frequently checking their interpretations of each other should experience very few occasions to feel that their interpretation of something their partner signaled is better than their partner’s interpretation.

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*A false signal that is not conscious might be a non-poisonous snake or insect that has evolved to look like a poisonous one.