Do your best. Speak the truth.
Antifa means “anti-fascist,” which is a European term with a severe PC SJW connotation. Or at least that’s how I understand it from an American point of view. For an English translation, be sure the CC/subtitles feature has been enabled. ABN
Update 7/17/19: The version with English subtitles was removed from YT. Could not find a replacement.
The New York Times led the propaganda behind 9/11 and the 9/11 Wars. It did so by ignoring many of the most relevant facts, by promoting false official accounts, and by belittling those who questioned the 9/11 events. The Times eventually offered a weak public apology for its uncritical support of the Bush Administration’s obviously bogus Iraq War justifications. However, it has yet to apologize for its role in selling the official account of 9/11, a story built on just as many falsehoods. Instead, the newspaper continues to propagandize about the attacks while putting down Americans who seek the truth about what happened.
It has always amazed me that the NYT, which is based in NYC, has not produced a single decent investigative report on 9/11. It is alarming that this one paper is still the main “official” arbiter of what issues are important for the USA and how they should be interpreted. The NYT is the paper that is read by members of Congress and largely provides them with a scripted “reality” they are all but forced to support. The NYT script is also largely followed by all other mainstream news outlets in the USA, so no matter what you read or watch in mainstream journalism, you are getting a good deal of NYT spin.
I am solidly in the camp that 9/11 has never been honestly investigated by any “official” US institution or pursued even close to adequately by mainstream media. Kevin Ryan, and many others, have done a great deal of the investigative work on 9/11 that the NYT has failed to do. His blog and books are all well-worth reading. There are hundreds of fascinating 9/11-related stories that could fill the pages of the NYT for years, but that is not going to happen any time soon. I also recommend looking into the anthrax attack that happened shortly after 9/11. Graeme MacQueen’s The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy is an excellent summary of that event. ABN
In this post, I want to avoid words like psychology, personality, instinct, normal, abnormal, etc. to describe human beings. I want to throw out all of those usual ways of thinking about people and replace them with just three terms–semiosis, symbiosis, and optimization.
In this context, semiosis means all symbols, meaning, language, philosophy, belief, value, etc. An easy way to grasp semiosis is to equate it with the way an individual’s culture, or subculture, works within their mind. Symbiosis denotes relations to other people. An easy way to grasp symbiosis is to equate it with an individual’s social group(s)–their marriage partner, family, friends, clubs, religious groups, job, etc.
All humans are a combination of some sort of semiosis and symbiosis as defined above. What we want to aim for in our lives is optimization of our semioses and symbioses. The only way I know how to do this is with FIML practice because only FIML practice gives partners the tools to grasp and manipulate—to understand and improve—their semioses.
The main area where this optimization occurs in FIML practice is in the symbiosis of partners’ semioses. Semioses are shared. Partners share in a symbiotic relationship the semioses they both carry around in their heads. FIML partners must become conscious of this level of human interaction because it happens whether you are conscious of it or not. If partners are not conscious of it and/or can’t deal with it, they will not be able to optimize their relationship (or their own lives). Rather, they will be forced to cling to public semiotics, private neuroses, or most commonly both.
If partners are optimizing the symbiosis of their shared semioses, their core behaviors will spring from dynamic principles rather than static codes, vows, or agreements. FIML is nearly contentless in that it does not tell partners what to think but rather how to observe and analyze their shared semioses.
Now, as an example, let’s say you experience a mix-up with your partner. Something didn’t go right; one of you misspoke or did something bothersome; then you had an argument or at least difficult emotions arose. So what should you do? At times like these, many people will separate for a while to cool down and then gloss over whatever it was when they get back together later on. At that point they will rely on some sort of static notion of their relationship and on that basis try to recapture good feelings. This technique works to a point, but it is not the best because it does nothing to optimize the relationship. It just covers up the problem. When you avoid a problem, you underscore your inability to deal with it while allowing it to grow.
A much better way for partners to deal with a problem like the one above is recognize that it is definitely going to affect your shared semiosis. Once you both accept this fact, you will probably find it easier to stick with the issue. Rather than separating for a while, face the issue and start a FIML discussion by analyzing what has happened and why. Even if it takes you an hour or more to reach a resolution, it will be well worth it because you will be optimizing your relationship. By doing a FIML discussion, you will avoid hiding from a problem while profoundly increasing your mutual understanding.
This is how mutual transformation often works in the real world. If you do small things like this enough, both you and your partner will become convinced that you can really live and interact on a higher level than what you probably had thought possible before.
A common explanation of human stress includes physical stress (heat, cold, etc.), hierarchical stress (low status, competition, etc.), and lack of social support (horizontal communication, belonging).
Supposedly, humans and other primates tend to stress themselves because we are smart enough to have a lot of free time (time not spent gathering food). As the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky puts it:
“If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don’t mess with you much. What that means is you’ve got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They’re just like us: They’re not getting done in by predators and famines, they’re getting done in by each other.” (Why Humans (and Baboons) Stress So Much)
Sapolsky makes good points but I want to add something to what he says.
Humans are “semiotic primates.” That is, we live as much or more in a semiotic environment as a natural one.
This means that we stress ourselves not just by our place in a natural hierarchy, but also by how we understand where we are, what we are hearing and saying, and what others are hearing and saying when around us.
Since most humans have no way of fully adjusting their interpersonal communication, the semiotic environments they live in are ambiguous, frequently mistaken, sometimes dangerous. Our intimate semiotic environments are typically unsatisfying or stressful because the communication upon which they are based and which defines them is rarely, if ever, optimal.
When interpersonal stress is relieved through one of the three ways mentioned in the first paragraph above, people may exercise more, work harder to climb the hierarchy, or seek out more horizontal support from a club or temple.
Exercise is good, climbing the hierarchy is OK if that’s what you want, and adding social support never hurts. None of these methods will optimize interpersonal communication, however. They are substitute semiotics of a different kind.
The reason this is so is the core stress-inducing problem most people have is poor intimate interpersonal communication with their primary interlocutor.
It’s not bad to think of yourself as having a psychology and a psychological history, but this line of thought rarely, if ever, leads to optimal communication with your primary interlocutor. When we psychologize ourselves, we tend to generalize ourselves and others. We see ourselves as defined by theories (extrinsic semiotics) rather than by the the dynamic reality of our moment-by-moment interactions with the person(s) we care about most.
FIML optimizes communication between primary interlocutors and in so doing relieves some of the most deleterious human stressors by removing them as they arise. If your intimate interpersonal communication is good, you won’t care very much about where you are on the hierarchy.
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.
The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question is best described as raw semiotics. That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question. This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on. When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness and gives rise to it. Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do. It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only. The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself. In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy. Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity.
Notice how recent refugee migration into Europe is being symbolized by an image, as if imagery tells all: A dead baby becomes the most tragic symbol yet of the Mediterranean refugee crisis.
This is a reification of the migration event.
Use of semiotics happens daily, but sometimes they are stronger, as with the Confederate flag just over one month ago and this baby.
Semiotics like these are powerful appeals to emotion. They are a type of argument, a defining symbol of an event that often determines what will happen next, or foreshadows it.
Sometimes they rise out of the culture and sometimes they are knowingly placed into it. Most often both happen at once.
Much of the work done in human semiotics involves analyses of semiotic codes.
Semiotics and semiotic codes are often treated like language or languages for which a grammar can be found.
One obvious problem with this sort of approach is semiotics indicates a set that is much broader than language. Stated another way, language is a subset of semiotics.
Human semiotics also include music, imagery, gesture, facial expression, emotion, and anything else that can communicate either within one mind or between two or more minds.
It is very helpful to analyze semiotic codes and it is very helpful to try to figure out how cultures, groups, and individuals use them. We can compare the semiotics of heroism in Chinese culture to that of French culture. Or the semiotics of gift-giving in American culture to that of Mexican culture. We can analyze movies, literature, science, and even engineering based on semiotic codes we have abstracted out of them.
We can do something similar for human psychology.
Analyses of this type are, in my view, general in that they involve schema or paradigms or grammars that say general things about how semiotic systems work or how individuals (or semiotic signs themselves) fit into those systems.
This is all good and general analyses of this sort can be indispensable aids to understanding.
General semiotic analyses are limited, however, in their application to human psychology because such analyses cannot effectively grasp the semiotic codes of the individual. Indeed general analyses are liable to conceal individual codes and interpretations more than usefully reveal them.
This is so because all individuals are always complex repositories of many general semiotic codes as well as many individual ones. And these codes are always changing, responding, being conditioned by new circumstances and many kinds of feedback.
Individuals as repositories of many codes, both external and internal, are complex and always changing and there is no general analysis that will ever fully capture that complexity.
For somewhat similar reasons, no individual acting alone can possibly perform a self-analysis that captures the full complexity of the many and always-changing semiotic codes that exist within them.
Self-analysis is far too subject to selection bias, memory, and even delusion to be considered accurate or objective. The individual is also far too complex for the individual to grasp alone. How can an individual possibly stand outside itself and see itself as it is? Where would the extra brain-space come from?
How can a system of complex semiotic codes use yet another code to successfully analyze itself?
Clearly, no individual human semiotic system can ever fully know itself.
To recap, 1) there is no general semiotic analysis that will ever capture the complexity of individual psychology, and 2) no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of the semiotic codes that exist within them.
Concerning point two, we could just as well say that no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of their own psychology.
We are thus prevented from finding a complex analysis of human psychology through a general analysis of semiotics and also through an individual’s self-analysis when acting alone.
This suggests, however, that two individuals acting together might be able to glimpse, if not grasp, how their complex semiotic codes are actually functioning when they interact with each other. If two individuals working together can honestly observe and discuss moments of dynamic real-time semiotic interaction between them, they should be able to begin to understand how their immensely complex and always-changing psycho-semiotic codes are actually functioning.
An approach of this type ought to work better for psychological understanding of the individuals involved than any mix of general semiotic analyses applied to them. Indeed, prefabricated, general semiotic analyses will tend to conceal the actual functioning of the idiosyncratic semiotics and semiotic codes used by those individuals.
The FIML method does not apply a general semiotic analysis to human psychology. Rather it uses a method or technique to allow two individuals working together to see and understand how their semiotics and semiotic codes are actually functioning.
I love outsiders, different viewpoints, personal liberty, end-runs, and anything at all that rocks the American media-political boat, which is even worse than Gore Vidal’s “sinking ship” because it is even more boring.
Ilana Mercer’s essay, Trump Should Triangulate, says much of what I would say about Trump, though I would add a simplification: I honestly hate almost all American politicians. They have sold this country down the river and I hate them for that and for their sleaze. To me, that is the basic reason people like Trump.
Naturally, I am a good Buddhist so I hate their sins and not them. But I hate the news media for the same reasons and with similar qualifications and I know I am not alone in this.
As a good Buddhist I also know that the US political scene is no different than the world political scene and I do appreciate how easy it is to understand the First Noble Truth from watching the sleaze-mongers slime all over each other as they prey upon the public, so I am sort of grateful for the entire mess as well, in some ways.
Edit 8/12/15: Trump is continuing to expose the game of pay-to-play politics in Washington. And the power centers that benefit from that game are going after him for it. Let’s see what happens next. Ron Paul was destroyed by those power centers. Notice, though, that Paul did vow not to run as an independent, a major bargaining chip Trump has not surrendered. Trump showed a lot of savvy by keeping that chip. He remains an interesting candidate in what is otherwise always a super-boring “contest” for the presidency.
Semiotics can be large or small in our minds.
We must be aware of this and also be able to change their sizes and positions when warranted.
For example, my partner and I are looking for a home to buy. All of my life I have loved square houses. They always did something special for me, so we tended to look at more square houses than we would have if the square-house semiotic had not be so prominent in my architectural semioitc network (all the things I group together as desirable architectural features).
The other day we viewed a square home that came off as cramped and boring to me. After viewing it, I told my partner that I am done with square houses being a thing for me. I spent a couple more sentences explaining my change of heart to her and now she knows and we are both done with that.
Recently, something similar happened to her, or my understanding of her concerning shakes. We both thought (for slightly different reasons) that she liked them more than she did. She explained to me that she thought that the shake semiotic had grown too big—become a thing—and that we should demote it. We both did that quickly and now both shakes and squareness occupy different places in our individual and shared semiotic networks involved with home-buying and architecture.
I would maintain that if you can’t make semiotic changes like the above as an individual and with important friends, you aren’t using your mind properly.
The architectural examples cited above are easy to understand because they have a clear material foundation and because they do not elicit passionate feelings.
But just because strong feelings may be elicited by semiotics and semiological manipulation does not mean they should not be similarly amenable to analysis and change.
Politics is a good example of a field that runs almost exclusively on semiotic manipulation. Is McCain a hero or a coward? Is Trump strong or bull-headed? Is Hillary a progressive or a crook?
Arguments like those have already begun and will continue to go back and forth during the presidential campaign. We have shallow politics largely because semiotic manipulation is always the rule in politics.
Here is an example of an in-depth semiotic analysis of one aspect of the current state of American politics: The Cuckservative Phenomenon.
Without ever using the word semiotics, the author consciously wields a very sharp semiotic sword that amply reveals the power of signs and symbols over our minds. Whatever you think of the linked essay, it should be clear that it is often simpler to conquer a people with semiotics than with actual weapons.
Now, I would further maintain that semiotic analysis and manipulation must not stop with simple architectural examples or end at the the public sphere with analyses of political symbols and their uses and abuses by media and prominent figures.
Semiotic understanding and the ability to manipulate signs and symbols is also essential to interpersonal communication and psychological analysis.
You cannot possibly form a deeply satisfying intimate relationship with another human being if you cannot analyze and manipulate your individual and shared uses of semiotics. You also cannot possibly fully understand your own or others’ psychologies if you do not understand their idiosyncratic semiologies, what they are, how they are formed, how “meaning” is appended to them.
A psychological morpheme is defined as the smallest unit of a psychological response.
This term is used in FIML practice to distinguish psychological micro responses from meso and macro responses which are more general and less amenable to change and productive analysis.
There are many kinds of psychological morphemes and every individual has a multitude of them that are unique to them. Some are associated with personal memories and emotions that were aroused in the past. Others are new and arise in the present moment.
Still others are internalized social responses which at their most basic feel almost like disembodied responses, responses that precede thought, that begin creating the world we live in before we even know it. They are part of us, but can be slightly astonishing when we notice them for what they are.
A good example of one happened yesterday. My partner was away on a short trip and since it was a warm day I was working at home in my birthday suit. At some point I decided to call my partner, who would think nothing of seeing me in my birthday suit, but before I did I found myself reflexively putting on a pair of shorts.
I stopped and wondered why I was doing that and realized I was being “directed” by an almost completely emotionless and thought-less psychological morpheme.
Since I was going to speak, I was going to engage in a social act. And since I was going to engage in a social act, some part of me decided I needed to put on a pair of shorts.
This morpheme is interesting because it is so elementary. I was going to speak over the phone, long-distance to someone I have been living with for many years. And yet even still a very weak and basic sense of propriety that I had learned from my culture arose in me and got me to put on a pair of shorts.
It was like a single cold spark. And yet it was strong enough to move my system. It was a sort of “logic” like the logic of a small pattern in sand, or a twist in a tree’s bark. It was “me” putting on the shorts, but the “logic” of my doing so seemed to belong more to nature or a physical process than “my” being.
Psychological morphemes of this type are wonderful to observe. They belong to an almost blank class of responses that work like directional signs that induce us to move one way or another, to do something or not.
Other kinds of psychological morphemes induce us to feel, think, or believe something with no more “charge” than the single small spark that got me to put on my shorts.
Psychological morphemes are the most basic data of FIML practice. They are the small signs that make up the “language” of our psychologies, our minds. Understanding them leads to a rich understanding of your own and others’ behaviors, feelings, and thoughts.
The various arguments and passions today concerning the Confederate flag are good examples of how emotionally-charged semiotics (the signs and symbols of communication) can be.
Flags are often used as examples of how simple signs can arouse strong feeling. The arguments about the Confederate flag are arguments about how to define a symbol, which of its many possible meanings is the one.
A more important point to be made here is that each of us has a myriad of semiotic symbols in our minds and emotions can be touched off by any of them at any time.
If you don’t know ho to communicate about these kinds of explosive symbols/signs—many of which are idiosyncratic—you will have problems, some of which will get defined as “psychological” when they are not.
It is beneficial for Buddhists (and others) to contemplate the emptiness of semiotics like the Confederate flag and then apply this understanding to how we think, perceive, feel, and communicate about other signs.
Edit: Concerning the flag, notice that the community (whichever one) is forced to come to some sort of “decision” about the flag’s meaning. This is so because the flag has to mean something since it is a prominent public sign/symbol. The “community” can’t avoid ascribing some meaning to it. Notice also that that is what Obama and many others have been doing, ascribing meaning to the flag. This is how elites (and the media that highlights or ignores them) influence culture, by influencing how we react to symbols and what those symbols are and/or mean. Disputes over semiotic meaning are very common in both the public and private spheres.
Edit 2: Just because the community is forced to give the flag meaning doesn’t mean it will give it the right meaning. And it also doesn’t mean that any of the widely available meanings are right.
Our identities are fundamentally made up of semiotic matrices. That is to say, in part, that our identities have meaning; they mean something to us.
Often they mean a great deal to us and from them we derive the semiotics of motivation, intention, life-plans, many of our central interests, and so on.
Identities have strong emotional components, to be sure, but our emotions are ambiguous or diffuse if they are not positioned on a semiotic matrix and focused or defined by that matrix.
Identity is usually tautological in that its components, interests, and associations tend always to lead back to a few central elements. Often these elements have been inculcated in us by training. Some, we learn on our own. These elements are our values and beliefs, and also how these values and beliefs are understood and pursued.
The semiotics of identity must mean something to the person identifying with them. In this sense, they are almost always tautological. I do what I do because that is how I learned how to do it, think it, feel it, perceive it.
Most people are more adept at moving the parts of language around than they are at moving semiotic elements around. For many, semiotics are either an unknown, unconscious level of being or abstractions that belongs in scholarly journals.
To think like that is a big mistake. Semiotics are very real and they affect us constantly on many levels.
When semiotics are unconscious, they act like a vortex pulling perception, emotion, and understanding always toward the center of the identity. I think this is another way to say, in the Buddhist sense, that the self is empty; that it has no “own being.”
We can pursue an understanding of an empty self through Buddhist thought and practice, but I believe we will get better results more quickly if we add a practice that deals directly with the semiotics of our identities.
Since there is no book you can go to to look up how your unique semiotics of identity works, you have to see for yourself how it works. You can do much of this on your own, but eventually you will need a partner because there is no way you will be able to get an objective perspective on yourself acting alone.
FIML practice is the only way I know of to fully see into and through the semiotics of your “identity.” Beneath identity there is a sort of artesian well of pure, undefined consciousness. FIML helps us experience that well while keeping us from rushing back into the tautological matrix of identity, or static self-definition.
FIML is able to do this because FIML is process. FIML itself has no definition, only a procedure. It is not a tautology because it has no semiotic boundaries.
American Buddhist Net 