An exchange student from China has been deported from Taiwan after posting a controversial video of himself using an illusion technique to make it look like he is pinching the Taiwanese president.
Lai Ching-te was speaking at the National Taiwan University last week when the student, identified publicly via his surname Wang, filmed the president from the audience.
A screenshot from the Chinese student’s video in which he uses an optical illusion to appear to pinch Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te. (Douyin)
Wang used an optical illusion technique, forced perspective, and put his fingers in front of the camera so it looked like he was pinching the president.
In the caption of the video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, Wang wrote: “Lai Ching-te is right here. Isn’t it your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
FIML clears up communication problems in the moment (at the time they occur and just afterward) while establishing a valuable precedent for clearing up future problems, which are inevitable.
FIML helps partners see their own neuroses (mistaken interpretations) and understand how those neuroses operate in their lives during a real moment of their lives. Each basic FIML discussion is based on a real problem identified by one or both partners.
Being able to efficiently and effectively fix real problems as they occur gives partners a sense of confidence and joy.
If only one partner had a problem with something, both partners still benefit because the second partner will come to understand how the first hears or speaks and why. Partners will increase their understandings of each other as well as of language, semiotics, communication, emotion, psychology, etc.
Each FIML discussion can be extended into other fields (history, science, art, Buddhism, etc.) as much as partners want. This helps both partners increase their awareness of how the large “net” of cultural semiotics is put together and where they stand in relation to it.
Each FIML discussion forms a basis, or can serve as an example, for the next discussion. After a single neurosis has been identified a few times, partners will learn to recognize it immediately and deal with it very quickly.
Fixing one neurosis increases confidence and skill, making it easier to fix the next or to deepen discussions to include other kinds of psychological material.
Once partners are reasonably skilled at FIML, they will find they are able to deal with a much broader range of subjects because they have communication techniques that allow them to quickly overcome misunderstandings.
Once the skills are developed, FIML discussions are a lot of fun. In many ways, there is nothing more interesting.
FIML practice greatly supports Buddhist practice and should serve to help Buddhists gain immediate and very personal experiential comprehension of the Dharma.
Buddhist terms like delusion, suffering, liberation, wisdom, karma, compassion and more will take on new meaning as they become less an abstract code for behavior and more a personally understood aspect of our own behavior.
FIML helps us see for ourselves in real time how our own particular delusions create suffering, and how we can attain liberation from those delusions.
FIML works with very small instances of delusion so it is neither painful nor embarrassing. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to eliminate delusion.
Signals sent between people are almost never simple, single entities devoid of ambiguity.
Indeed, even very clear communicative signals, especially in interpersonal communication, are often fraught with subliminal associations. These “extra” associations are a primary cause of interpersonal error and ambiguity, and deriving from that, of individual, personal discomfort or neurosis.
We have mentioned this general problem many times and claimed that FIML practice is probably the only way to successfully remove the bulk of dangerous ambiguity and misunderstanding that inevitably accrues in almost all interpersonal relationships.
A study on visual perception from the University of Arizona—Your Brain Sees Things You Don’t—reasonably confirms these statements for visual perception. I would argue that many other brain functions work in similar ways, including listening, speaking, and our overall perceptions of human behavior and what it “means.”
The study found that participants subconsciously perceive “meaning” in visual images flashed quickly before them. It took about 400 milliseconds for this perception of “meaning” to show on an fMRI machine.
I have put the word “meaning” in quotes because this word could also be understood as “contextualize,” “associate with,” “frame,” or even “anticipate.” When we listen to someone with any care, our minds are always roving slightly as we adjust, readjust, and anticipate what the speaker means, meant, and is meaning. Listening is a dynamic process that draws heavily—even completely—on semiotic associations that hover and come into view as our sense of what the speaker is saying unfolds.
The UA study provides pretty good evidence that we do something similar visually and that it happens quickly.
Mary Peterson, an adviser on the study, said of it
This is a window into what the brain is doing all the time. It’s always sifting through a variety of possibilities and finding the best interpretation for what’s out there. And the best interpretation may vary with the situation.
Pay close attention to that word best.
Firstly, I completely agree with Peterson’s statement. And secondly, I see a massive problem in interpersonal communication lurking just beneath that word “best.”
Whose best? During interpersonal communication, if the listener does not have the habit of directly asking the speaker what is meant, then the listener’s brain will decide the issue on its own based on its own autocthonous “best” sense of what the speaker “means.”
How often can anyone be right under those conditions? This is why FIML practice micromanages some aspects of communication by requiring quick interventions to be sure the deep meaning is being transmitted correctly. If partners do not do FIML, they will be forced to do all of the following—make many wrong assumptions about what is being communicated to them, rely on general rules of listening (the bane of authentic individuality), rely on statistical assumptions about how the speaker “generally” more or less “is.” That is a formula for interpersonal disaster and likely a major factor in the very high incidence mental illness in industrialized societies.
FIML demands some effort and it takes some time, but I prefer it any day of the week over the static role-playing and error-prone guessing that is the only other alternative.
Another way of saying all of the above is this: when we communicate we often send and receive ambiguous messages. Our minds handle ambiguity (often subconsciously) by choosing what they perceive as the “best” interpretation. But this “best” interpretation happens very quickly and is frequently wrong. Nonetheless, this “best” interpretation if accepted, which it often is, will get fed back immediately into the communicative exchange, quickly (or gradually) distorting everything that is happening.
Unemotional visual perceptions, such as those used in the linked study, will not be problematical for the participants. But analogous psychological brain functions will be and are problematical in all of their interpersonal relationships. There is simply no way around the fact that we rapidly perceive and misperceive “best” interpretations, especially since we are accepting them based on subconscious processes.
A good way to think about FIML practice is to think of yourself as looking for the smallest communication errors you can find. These tiny errors might be called morphemes of error. A morpheme is the smallest semantic unit (meaningful unit) of a language. Thinking in terms of very small mistakes can help partners because these tiny morphemes of error are where larger errors originate. If we are able to observe a tiny error the moment it happens and fully discuss it with our partner, we will prevent a larger error from coming into being. If we fail to catch the small error as it arises, it will be much harder to correct the larger error later on because by then we will never remember when and where it started.
In the early days of doing FIML, I used to call the practice of looking for small errors “catching mice”. I took great delight in finding the next little mouse/error because I knew that the benefit of catching it would be quite large compared to the little thing I had caught. (Note: I was and am involved mostly in catching mistakes in my own mind. It is my partner’s responsibility to catch the mistakes made in her mind. It is usually the person who initiates a FIML query who is the one concerned that a mistake may have arisen in their own mind. And this is why it is so important to ask as much as you are asked.)
Thinking of yourself as catching small errors and discussing them with your partner may add a level of interest to your FIML practice. This approach also allows us to be very detail-oriented without feeling petty. I guarantee that after you have caught a few of these little mice and fully discussed them with your partner, you will see the benefits for yourself. Small communication errors are the basic units of FIML practice. FIML partners can work with larger units (generalities, psychologies, philosophies, etc.), but it is best to spend most of your time just catching the small errors that inevitably arise in all communications.
An interesting example of this happened this morning. The mouse I caught was not involved directly in my communication with my partner, though I told her about it right afterward and we discussed it extensively. What happened is this:
I have been trying to follow a low-carbohydrate diet, but somehow gradually always start eating more of them till I am back to where I began. Well, I started being more strict a week or so ago. Today I went into the refrigerator to get something to eat and saw some boiled potatoes in one bowl and some vegetables in another. In my head a small tug-o-war ensued. I chose the vegetables, but as I turned away from the refrigerator and put them on the counter, I noticed that I felt slightly guilty. What was interesting is I was feeling guilty for doing the right thing. But some part of my mind was telling me, almost subconsciously, that I was actually being selfish because the potatoes should be eaten, they are cheaper, and maybe my partner would want the vegetables.
I could go on about this but to keep it short, let me just say that none of it was true. I had nothing to feel guilty about. Just to be sure, I asked my partner if she wanted the vegetables and she said no, she had already eaten. So that little piece of false-guilt was a mouse. It was a mistake, an error that was occurring in my own mind, probably to satisfy that part of me that still craves carbohydrates. In catching it, I had caught the smallest unit of eating-too-many-carbohydrates that I had ever seen. This first success will likely lead to my catching this same mistake (or something similar to it) again fairly soon. (These small mistakes almost always occur more than once or twice.) After a few more successes at catching my own mind while it is making a small mistake about my diet, I may succeed in fully defeating that part of myself that reaches for carbohydrates when I know I should not.
I bet stuff like that happens frequently with people who are addicted to anything or who keep making bad or immoral choices when, for the most part, they know they should not. We can feel guilty without having good reason to do so. Some other examples of this might be soldiers who do what others are doing even though they know it is wrong; police who do the same; employees who do the same; Buddhists, psychologists, scientists, mechanics, carpenters, etc.–we are all susceptible to making moral mistakes because we will feel guilty if we don’t.
Hence the Buddha saying:
One is one’s own protector, one is one’s own refuge. Therefore, one should control oneself, even as a trader controls a noble steed.
It is not linear, though a spoken sentence has conspicuous linear features and can often be profitably analyzed linearly.
It is a network where many parts connect robustly with other parts and where some parts connect only weakly. Unconnected parts can arise but usually they are rapidly incorporated into the network, even if only weakly, even if only to be rejected from it.
The mind in many ways resembles the system of language. Add semiotic codes and the resemblance grows stronger. Add random and not-so-random associations between semiotic and linguistic elements and the resemblance seems even better.
Emotions, except in their most primal form, have to be defined by language, semiotics, or associations to have impact or “meaning.”
Charles Peirce doubted the value of linear logical notation, preferring notation employing two or three dimensions. His existential graphs became the basis of model theory. (Interestingly, his work in this area was ignored until 1964, long after his death.)
While the human mind may be more than just a network, much about it can be explained by thinking of it as an associative network. While many mental associations are not logical, or even rational, in a formal sense, virtually all of them make subjective sense to the mind experiencing them. My associations with snow will be different from yours, but if we cared to we could compare them and come to a better understanding of each other.
A key to grasping how our minds work is to approach the very rich subjective network of mental associations—both logical and not—through the linearity of language, especially short bursts of language spoken in real-world situations.
Grasping our minds in this way probably cannot be done in a laboratory and outcomes will rarely, if ever, repeat themselves even outside of the lab.
Most science is based on repeatability and controls, such as a laboratory setting. Yet, clearly, not all investigations—even very rational, logical ones—can be pursued in those ways.
FIML practice uses the linear “logic” of short bits of real-world conversation to access the large associative network of the mind as it is actually functioning in a real-world situation.
In this sense, FIML practice does something that cannot be done in any other way. No theory can embrace everything you say and no theory can capture the complex interplay of feeling, speech, meaning, biology, and circumstances that actually comprise the most significant moments of our lives.
FIML, thus, is a sort of science of the moment, a shared science that allows two people to analyze their minds as they actually are functioning in the real world.
In FIML practice, partners learn that even very small misinterpretations that arise within a few seconds of communication can seize the mind and grow into big mistakes. Mistakes about the other person(s), mistakes about the “self,” and mistakes about how the world is. FIML practice is designed to catch these mistakes and eliminate them as soon as they appear, within seconds of their appearance if possible. FIML is designed to prevent false micro-interpretations from becoming huge mistakes that distort human experience.
In a somewhat similar fashion, FIML practice can also show us how macro-interpretations, or macro-explanations or stories, can be deeply mistaken and what to do about that.
Our macro-explanations tell us who we are, what we are doing, and why. Some of our macro-explanations were established long ago and seem to be part of the very fabric of our being and some of them are acute. That is, they arise in moments of crisis when we are suddenly thrown into turmoil by events beyond our control—financial hardship, divorce, serious misunderstanding with a friend, etc. At such times, we often flail around like a swimmer drowning in a whirlpool as we grasp for some explanation or story that will give us secure feelings and a secure sense that we understand what has happened and what to do next.
Sometimes we do arrive at a good understanding and a reasonable sense of what has happened and what to do next, but often we do not. In our emotional turmoil we may be strongly tempted to choose mistaken macro-explanations or stories that answer our (also mistaken) emotional needs at the expense of a more reasonable and more profound understanding of our situation.
This same basic scenario also describes how groups of people tend to react in times of crisis. Groups, cultures, nations, religions, clubs, and societies tend to react emotionally to crises and seize on mistaken macro-explanations in much the same ways as individuals. Like individuals, groups tend to favor explanations of difficult events that make members feel good about themselves and that provide a cohesive sense of how to move forward, what to do next. If we are born into or brought into an existing group, some of its macro-explanations will be quite old, even ancient. It is difficult for groups to eliminate false macro-explanations and stories without disturbing group bonds.
For example, in some parts of the world, even today, people are burned to death due to superstitions, which are fundamentally very bad macro-explanations. Once a superstition is invoked by a group, it is all but impossible for an individual to go against it lest they also be caught up in the madness.
If your community decides that someone is a witch who must be burned, you may be burned along with them if you try to defend the accused.
When Tony Blair claimed that Saddam Hussein had WMD that could strike London within forty minutes, many of us howled with dismay at his obvious lie, but many of us were caught up in a war-fever which was as superstitious as belief in witches, and far more destructive. Other “evidence” that promoted the war in Iraq were the yellow cake forgeries (which have never been seriously investigated), Iraq’s fictitious connection to 9/11, and mobile weapons units that were falsely presented as missile launchers. If you doubted a single part of these dangerous explanations, you would not face much criticism, but if you doubted the whole story—the macro-explanation that constituted an excuse for war—you risked condemnation from many in the American community.
Once Bush’s basic macro-explanation of the world after 9/11 became an all but required belief, Americans were forced to accept a slew of further consequences that stemmed from it. New laws, new security departments, and new ways to search our private lives followed upon the basic macro-explanation that “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.”
FIML practitioners will recognize how it happens that huge consequences can and will flow from a single misinterpretation, a single failure to ask the right questions at the right time.
Some other examples of bad macro-explanations that hinge on narrow emotional “evidence” are:
Any explanation based on the need to be right as opposed to the desire to search for what is right (which is often very complex and not as emotionally satisfying initially).
Explanations that involve “value reversals” that accuse others of what we are doing or preparing to do. These are very effective rhetorical devices that confuse the emotions of listeners. Some examples are:
“They are terrorists so we must shock and awe them!”
“You are a kook if you want more evidence!”
“Anyone who opposes our idea of what is best for us clearly must hate us!”
Attributing a complex problem to a single cause often indicates a false macro-explanation.
A simplified story about the history of a group commonly emphasizes only one side of complex events.
It is sad but true that a great deal of human history is filled with and flows from false macro-explanations, which are hardly distinguishable from superstitions.
The deep problem is humans are emotional animals. We bond with each other emotionally and are strongly motivated to work together based on emotional bonds that flow from false stories. The simpler the stories, the better. “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists!” “Whatever is best for us!” “My country right or wrong!” “Shoot first and ask questions later!” “God will sort it out!” And so on. There are so many of these, you have to marvel that humans can ever behave rationally.
Basic FIML practice, and the cognitive experience it brings, can be a great help in removing erroneous macro-explanations.
In basic FIML practice, partners learn to notice the emotional or sensory signs that a micro-misinterpretation may suddenly be arising. Not all micro-misinterpretations carry an emotional charge, but most of the serious ones do. Emotion is an important clue that a misinterpretation or a bad explanation is forming in your mind.
Similarly, erroneous macro-explanations can be analyzed and successfully replaced with more truthful ones by looking for emotional clues.
To use the first example mentioned above, if you feel a strong need to be right and/or an unwillingness to consider that you might be wrong, you may have trapped yourself in an erroneous macro-explanation and are guarding yourself from the need to reevaluate your feelings.
If you find yourself attacking people who disagree with your position by using “value reversal” arguments, you may be using strong language and simplistic arguments to dominate or drive away people who disagree with your position.
If you find that you are emotionally attached to a simple and/or deeply emotional history of your people, your religion, your nation, your gender, and so on, you may very well be using emotion to bolster your explanation of who you are and your justification for what you are doing.
If you claim, after reading this, that everyone does that, you may be using an erroneous single-cause explanation to protect a position that deep down you know is wrong.
In basic FIML practice, partners learn that even very simple misunderstandings can be extremely complex and that they often lead to long analyses, which completely change our understanding once they have been completed.
The way to fix false macro-explanations is similar: start by looking for the emotional attachment and then analyze the factors that have produced it and that maintain it. What you will very often find at bottom is a profound need to make emotional sense of whatever the issue is.
For example, if you strongly identify with an ethnic group or a religion, you will probably be very reluctant to give up the false stories they use to explain their understanding of who they are and what they are doing.
Another kind of macro-problem occurs when we are in the midst of a difficult and complex life situation. We may lie awake at night wondering what to do, what to think, and most of all what to feel. More often than not it is the need to feel right about the situation that drives our explanations. Since none of us are all that smart, we frequently make mistakes in this area by taking on feelings before we have a good explanation.
If you find this happening, take the time to speak at length with your partner about how confused you are, how you don’t know what to think. Describe the various aspects of the problem as honestly as you can. Don’t be afraid to admit you feel like a jerk, a worm, an idiot. It is very hard to admit that we are feeling like a worm or a jerk, so look for those feelings. They can often be found at the core of erroneous macro-explanations.
With the help of your partner, you will almost surely gain a much deeper appreciation for the complexity of the problem, its multifaceted nature. Analyze it from as many angles as you can. Consider the perspectives of others and how some of the conditions that brought the problem about cannot be changed and that they may not originally have been anyone’s fault.
Eventually, you will feel better about the problem. The resolution you arrive at with your partner will contain a wholesome emotion that follows reason and sober analysis, not an unwholesome one that precedes it.
The key to eliminating both micro and macro false interpretations can often be found in the underlying emotions from which these interpretations have stemmed. Basic FIML practice makes it fairly easy to deal with mistaken micro-interpretations because basic FIML is designed to work with very small incidents. It is easier for partners to analyze small mistakes, understand their origins, and admit them openly than it is for them to deal with large mistakes.
Nonetheless, basic FIML practice also provides a reliable guide for how to prevent, correct, or eliminate erroneous macro-explanations, which may arise suddenly during times of crisis or which may be part of a traditional culture to which we belong. Needless to say, false macro-explanations are often a driving force behind false micro-interpretations.
Note: In semiotics, a macro-explanation can be understood as a “library” that is called up by a micro-interpretation, which is itself an “index.” An index is a sign that references something else, usually something much larger (a library). Of course, libraries can also influence or determine indexes.
Notice how easy it is to change an explanation—macro or micro—if there is no emotional charge attached to it. If you have always believed a wrong explanation about how electricity works, for example, and someone tells you the right explanation, you will probably feel grateful to that person and find it easy to change your understanding. In fact, you may also experience a sense of wonder as you contemplate the new explanation. Contrast this to the emotions that may be generated by being supplied with solid facts that disprove your position on the gun debate or some other burning issue of the day.
Macro-explanations in politics and public life often acquire cult-like features, if they do not actually originate in cults. Mass media generally treats hot issues as being little more than debates between diametrically opposed cults. I doubt there are many of us who do not enjoy hearing someone who supports our position let loose with a scathing attack against the other side. This is an example of how emotion can become a central part of an otherwise rational position. We do this in the sphere of public semiotics and we do this with our private semiotics—our idiotics. From the point of view of semiotics, there is much that is similar in the public and private realm with regard to how we engage emotion and get it mixed up with reason. Psychologically, it is probably more true most of the time that emotional suffering is best dealt with by examining semiotics and idiotics, rather than spending long hours generating and/or revising macro-explanations based on hypotheses about what may or may not have happened to you as a child.
This project has taken me 3 months to complete, combing through over 50,000+ arrest records and mugshots.
I’ve found what appears to be massive fraud.
Thousands of Hispanics have been labelled as “WHITE CAUCASIAN” in the arrest records… THOUSANDS.
In fact, I found over 500 cases where Hispanics who were arrested more than once… had their “Ethnicity” CHANGED from “Hispanic” to “Caucasian” from one arrest to another.
Horrifyingly, I found HUNDREDS of these “White Caucasians” were actually ILLEGAL ALIENS from foreign countries with ICE detainers.
Perhaps most disturbing…
Many of the illegal aliens who were labelled as “WHITE CAUCASIAN” had already been released back into the public, DESPITE the ICE detainer requesting they stay in prison.
FIML is a specific semiotic, but it also says interesting things about the general semiotics of all languages and communication systems.
As a specific semiotic, FIML influences individual psychology, behavior, and thought. Since FIML rules can be generalized and taught, FIML also shows something about all languages and their uses.
FIML is a way that two people can check the specific semiotics that exists between them. Without FIML, or something like it, individuals cannot do this.
If an individual does not do FIML or something very similar in their primary relationship, that relationship will be characterized by semiotics extrinsic to the relationship and/or by illusions.
I don’t want to overemphasize the semiotic content of FIML practice, but a basic sense of how signs and symbols are interpreted can be a great help to understanding FIML.
In FIML practice, your partner can explain the “text” of what they said much better than you can interpret it. This can only happen if both partners are honest and trust each other and the interpretation/explanation of the “text” is brought up quickly enough that little or nothing has been forgotten by either partner.
As for honesty and trust, it is my guess that these areas can be a problem for people because we humans are almost always required to interpret what is said to us without any possible recourse to a better explanation. There are three major reasons for this: 1) convention, habit; 2) timing; and 3) emotion.
Taking the second reason first, timing makes it very difficult to get good information about what a speaker means because when we ask quickly enough for them to actually still be able to remember, we will appear confrontational or rude. The speaker will become flustered and often answer with an excuse rather than an explanation.
This happens due to factor three, emotion. Language evolved in hierarchical societies. To question someone quickly about what they said is to seem to question them, to doubt them. In hierarchies, we do not question the orders we are given. We wait our turn, we let the speaker finish, we don’t interrupt, etc. Yet, if we don’t act quickly—within a few seconds—the speaker will have forgotten the fullness of their mind at the moment they spoke. Their explanation for the “text,” for what they said, will be lost forever, even if we have a video recording of it.
Due to the quickness of human emotion, virtually all societies everywhere have constructed rules for listening and speaking that completely preclude a FIML-type inquiry. Most beginning FIML partners will, therefore, experience some difficulty getting used to FIML queries. Our moods, emotions, mental states, thoughts, and more have all been long conditioned by social forces that constrain us in the very place where we need more freedom—getting the real explanation from our partner to replace our interpretation.
You would never want to run a business or do an engineering project based on ambiguous interpretations, but most of us conduct our love lives and friendships in just that way.
FIML is a specific semiotic in that it deals with the communications between two specific individuals. FIML does not tell these individuals what to think, say, or believe. It merely provides a technique for them to fully explore the semiotics and all ramifications of those semiotics that occur between them. A general semiotic is one that says something about all languages. FIML fixes a general weakness that occurs, to the best of my knowledge, in all human languages.
Examples of not seeing the trees for the forest are flyover assessments of sociological regions or general assessments of human psychology.
A more detailed example of this pertaining to psychology might be the following description of Borderline Personality Disorder:
People with borderline personality disorder are unstable in several areas, including interpersonal relationships, behavior, mood, and self-image. Abrupt and extreme mood changes, stormy interpersonal relationships, an unstable and fluctuating self-image, unpredictable and self-destructive actions characterize the person with borderline personality disorder. These individuals generally have great difficulty with their own sense of identity. They often experience the world in extremes, viewing others as either “all good” or “all bad.” A person with borderline personality may form an intense personal attachment with someone only to quickly dissolve it over a perceived slight. Fears of abandonment may lead to an excessive dependency on others. Self-multilation or recurrent suicidal gestures may be used to get attention or manipulate others. Impulsive actions, chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness, and bouts of intense inappropriate anger are other traits of this disorder, which is more common among females. (source)
I have no doubt that this general description of the “forest” of BPD is somewhat useful as a flyover take on a psychological region that seems to have its own reality within American culture. The same link concludes that “there is hope” for personality disorders if we come to “understand that they are illnesses.”
Thus, a general remedy is assigned to a general “illness”; a semiotic contortion is assigned to the category “hope.”
As a Buddhist I must say you really should “have difficulty with your own sense of identity” because there is no such thing. Sentience in all its guises is dynamic and ever-changing.
You actually do not need a “self-image” at all. So if the one(s) you keep trying for are “unstable and fluctuating,” you are probably seeing reality more clearly than people whose “self-images” are stable and not fluctuating.
The fundamental problem with BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, two of the most difficult disorders to cure, is in the trees. It is good to see the forest and know where it lies within the terrain of the sufferer’s culture, but the problem of any individual suffering from either of these disorders is always going to be in their trees.
So what are the trees? They are the actual signals received by the person, sent out by the person, and used internally by the person.
Those are the units that best describe what a sentient being is and does. If you can’t fix the trees or treat the trees, the forest will never be healthy.
Near the end of a very long drive the other day, my partner and I got stuck in a traffic jam. The day was hot and the jam went on and on and we felt frustrated.
It didn’t happen, but as we sat and waited in the car I did get close to becoming irritated at my partner though our delay was not in any way her fault.
Ironically, had I been driving alone, my frustration at the traffic jam would have been even worse because the delay would have been preventing me from seeing her sooner.
This brief incident shows how closely connected our emotions are to our social circumstances. Since my partner was in the car with me, I came close to becoming irritated with her. Had she not been in the car, I would have missed her tremendously and wished she was with me. I bet many can relate to this sort of experience.
Consider that something similar often happens with speech. Our inevitably sloppy ways of speaking and listening produce an ineluctable muddle and rather than know this and compensate for it, we can and do get irritated when meanings get crossed.
There is no way that your meaning will always be understood or that you will always understand the meanings of others. To form a judgement or make an interpretation of what someone is saying without checking with them is a fool’s errand. You will be wrong again and again. And just because you can get someone else to agree with you, won’t make you right.
Our emotions are closely connected to our semiotic proprioception. It is very important to realize how often serious mistakes arise from this fact.
Short-term memory is where the rubber of human psychology meets the road.
It is the active part of human psychology as it functions in real-time.
New research indicates that the thalamus, which relays almost all sensory information, is central to the operation of short-term memory. Without the thalamus, short-term memory does not occur.
Short-term memory is a changeable “program” that deals with and responds to the world quickly. It is the main determinant of how “you” are in the moment.
Short-term memory maintains persistent activity (in the brain/body) by relaying its components through the thalamus in response to real-time conditions.
If we discover a mistake in our short-term memory, it is typically very easy to change. For example, if you realize you forgot to set your clocks ahead, your short-term memory will quickly adjust. You might feel a little dumb for a moment, but usually it is no big deal.
This example shows how our short-term memory is connected to long-term memories, to planning, expectation, and our general sense of the world around us and what we are doing in it.
FIML is an effective form of psychotherapy largely because it focuses on the short-term memory.
By targeting short-term memory loads, FIML helps partners discover how their psychologies are actually functioning in real-time during real-world situations.
Correcting mistakes in short-term memory immediately changes how we function.
Changing the same mistake several times very often removes it entirely from the long-term memory, from the overall functioning of the individual.
Buddhist mindfulness practice focuses a lot on short-term memory.
In this respect, FIML is a kind of shared mindfulness between two people, both keeping themselves and each other honest and on the same page.
FIML may feel intense for beginners because this kind of focus with this kind of intention has probably never been engaged in before.
With practice, FIML becomes relaxed and pleasant, creating an in-the-zone feeling like you are playing a fun game or doing something important and interesting together.
When done regularly, FIML generates a very sturdy kind of mutual self-respect. ABN
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.”
In that spirit, I want to coin the term “idiotics” to mean “the semiotics unique to one person.” Each and every one of us has a very complex idiotics.
It is profoundly important to know this and to understand it deeply.
We can talk at length about the generalities of our idiotics and profit from discussions like that. But we will never fully grasp what our idiotics do, how they function, and when they come into play unless we tackle them the moment they arise.
This is so because idiotics are very complex, with many parts bonded and tangled together in unique ways. The only time we can really get anything approaching an objective view of them is when they arise as small bits within real-life conversations. We can only see them when they function in the moment, when they touch our emotions in the moment, when they determine how we hear, speak, or respond in the moment.
General discussions lead away from idiotics because general discussion by their very natures (being general) are not unique to the individual. By definition, generalities are not idiotics.
This is one reason it is possible (indeed, common, I believe) for individuals to feel horribly lonely while in the company of other people. Or to feel horribly lonely when trying to explain yourself as you get more and more lost in generalities.
If you are never able to deal with, contend with, analyze, or remark upon you or your partner’s idiotics, you will have a bad time.
FIML practice works because it works with idiotics. Ironically, working with your own and your partner’s idiotics will make you much smarter.
