Xi Jinping caught wearing lifts
Tag: semiotics
This is why you need FIML
FIML not only accesses individual word maps but also the maps of all communicative signs.
Here is the brain model of semantic maps.
And here is the study: Natural speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex.
Here is a brief article about the study: Scans Show ‘Brain Dictionary’ Groups Words By Meaning. From this article:
Gallant says the findings contradict two beliefs nonscientists commonly have about the brain. First, that only the left hemisphere handles language. Second, that the brain has localized regions that handle specific tasks.
Edit: When you frequently access your word maps with the help of your FIML partner, both of you will become much more conscious of how these maps are structured and how they function during acts of communication.
This allows partners to make conscious meta-decisions to change and improve these maps in any way they want.
The meaning held in semantic maps (or semiotic maps) is the very meaning of your life as you understand it.
Not only do your maps form the basis of your communication with others, they also form the basis of how you understand yourself. How you communicate with yourself.
Gaining access to these maps is extremely liberating because it allows a degree of control over your own mind that few of us ever experience.
When we say that FIML has no content, no required beliefs, this can be understood as meaning that FIML gives us access to our own maps and control over them.
What you do with this access is entirely up to you and your partner.
Do we have an inner child or an inner dog?
Inner child is a widely recognized term that implies the presence in adults of unresolved problems or underdeveloped traits rooted in childhood.
Inner child further implies that full development of the adult requires “reparenting” or “retraining” the inner child as a way of resolving juvenile problems and advancing to full adulthood.
My FIML partner has been studying dog training and last night told me how much she thought effective dog training resembled FIML practice.
In a nutshell, FIML practice trains your inner dog, not your inner child.
For example, to stop bad behavior in a dog—say, barking at cars going by—its human trainer has to know how to intervene as quickly and as calmly as possible the moment that behavior arises. Quick intervention ensures that the dog knows what the trainer wants them to do. If you wait too long (as little as a few seconds), the dog won’t know what you want them to do. They will have forgotten the precise source of their behavior and thus any corrections they try to make will not address the root problem, which is they have interpreted a signal in the world (cars going by) as something they must react to.
When the trainer is calm and friendly as well as quick to intervene, they will prevent the dog from reacting to their (the trainer’s) excessive emotion, be it anger, panic, or an unskilled flustered state of mind.
The same sort of thing happens in FIML practice. When one FIML partner queries the other, the first thing they are doing is stopping their (own) inner dog before it starts behaving badly. They are intervening as soon as they feel their inner dog stir and start to rise from the floor (but before it starts barking).
The second thing they are doing is calmly asking their FIML partner a question about a very specific and precisely identified moment. They are gathering good data on that moment from their partner and will compare it to what their inner dog thought it saw or heard.
A FIML partner is in essence asking, should I be reacting right now as my inner dog is telling me or has my inner dog misinterpreted a signal coming from you?
The dog for much of its life has barked at cars going by, while the person for much of their life has reacted with sadness or anger to their interpretation of certain signs or signals (semiotics) coming from other people.
When you query your FIML partner about a sign that you have been reacting to for much of your life and discover that the sign you received was not the sign they sent, you will be like the dog who comes to understand that there is no reason to bark at cars going by, no reason to rise from the floor at all.
People are semiotic animals more than dogs, so we react very strongly to social semiotics. But we are just like dogs in that most of our reactions to semiotics can be changed without much effort as long as we arrest those reactions quickly and replace them with a more reasonable response.
My partner remarked last night especially on how easily a great deal of bad dog behavior can be corrected if the intervention of the trainer is quick and the dog is shown a more appropriate response. Oftentimes, just a few good interventions will correct the bad behavior.
What are some classic mistakes bad dog trainers make? They try to comfort or calm the barking dog by holding it and telling it everything is OK. That is, they treat it like a child. But all that actually does is reward the dog for the behavior they want to stop.
So if you reward yourself (your inner child) by indulging in childish feelings of abandonment when you misinterpret or over-interpret a sign of rejection, you are actually rewarding yourself for being wrong, for having an erroneous (or neurotic) interpretation of communicative signs.
It is better to treat your rapid and unthinking “limbic” responsivity like a dog than like a child. And rather than reparent your inner child, it is better to use good dog training techniques to retrain the actual semiotic responses that are the real roots of unwanted behaviors.
Triggers and microaggression
I greatly dislike the way these two words—trigger and microaggression—are currently being used.
Trigger implies that something inevitable will follow while microaggression outright claims that the other person is at fault.
I much prefer my own neutral term for those small stimuli that might cause emotional discomfort.
My term is psychological morpheme, which is defined as:
The smallest meaningful unit of a psychological response. It is the smallest unit of communication that can give rise to an emotional, psychological, or cognitive reaction.
I strongly believe psychological morphemes exist and that they arise at distinct moments and that these moments can be perceived by the owner of them and that that owner of these moments can and must learn to control them, analyze them, learn from them.
It is a huge mistake to automatically blame another person for our own psychological morphemes. From a FIML point of view, there is almost nothing worse.
The reason this is a really bad thing to do is you are very likely wrong.
Even if you are wrong only one out of twenty times, the consequences of your mistake can be very large. I guarantee you are wrong much more often than that.
I say this after doing years of FIML practice during which I have discovered in myself and my partner hundreds of wrong psychological morphemes, most of which were connected to subjective networks that had grown large over many years.
Most psychological morphemes arise due to habits of subjective interpretation.
Rather than let these subjective interpretations have their way, a far more profitable and much wiser course of action is to stop that process at the initiating morpheme. Stop it before it gets going and fills your mind.
If you can stop it at the psychological morpheme and analyze it with the help of your FIML partner, those morphemes will not become mindless triggers that you wrongly interpret as microaggression, but rather opportunities to see and understand how your brain is actually functioning in real-time.
Psychological morphemes are also commonly misinterpreted as signs that reside in the other person of boredom, anger, contempt, arrogance, insecurity, optimism, happiness, pleasure, and so on including as many states as you can imagine.
Idiolects and idiotics
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.
Meaning and existential networks
The FIML approach to human psychology considers humans as existential networks of signals, some internal and some external.
A core concept in FIML is that cognition relies on semiotic networks. Semiotics are meaningful or communicable signals.
The purpose of FIML practice is the optimization of interpersonal communication. An important part of this process involves removing what we usually call “misinterpretations.” Some synonyms, depending on context, for misinterpretation are neurosis, emotional suffering, emotional confusion, disordered thinking, wrong views, and so on. The main point is that the sufferer of a misinterpretation is making some sort of mistake in how they perceive, cognize, or react to the world around them.
Misinterpretations are fundamentally rooted in meaning. A misinterpretation is not fundamentally emotional, but meaningful. From the mistaken meaning flows emotions, perceptions, reactions, psychological confusion.
A friend sent me a fascinating Wikipedia entry on ideasthesia:
Ideasthesia (alternative spelling ideaesthesia) is a neuropsychological phenomenon in which activations of concepts (inducers) evoke perception-like sensory experiences (concurrents). The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἰδέα (idéa) and αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), meaning ‘sensing concepts’ or ‘sensing ideas’. The notion was introduced by neuroscientist Danko Nikolić, but can be seen in examples in the Ethics of Spinoza (especially in the third part of the Ethics[1]), as an alternative explanation for a set of phenomena traditionally covered by synesthesia.[2]
While synesthesia meaning ‘union of senses’ implies the association of two sensory elements with little connection to the cognitive level, empirical evidence indicated that most phenomena linked to synesthesia are in fact induced by semantic representations. That is, the linguistic meaning of the stimulus is what is important rather than its sensory properties. In other words, while synesthesia presumes that both the trigger (inducer) and the resulting experience (concurrent) are of sensory nature, ideasthesia presumes that only the resulting experience is of sensory nature while the trigger is semantic.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
Note this from the section above—‘the linguistic meaning of the stimulus is what is important rather than its sensory properties… ideasthesia presumes that only the resulting experience is of sensory nature while the trigger is semantic.
“However, most phenomena that have inadvertently been linked to synesthesia, in fact are induced by the semantic representations i.e., the meaning, of the stimulus rather than by its sensory properties, as would be implied by the term synesthesia.”
If ideasthesia happens with simple perceptions, imagine how often it happens in our existential networks of cognition, semiotic perception, semiotic response and interpretation.
By correcting the core meanings of core misinterpretations, FIML practice corrects maladapted existential networks, thus relieving suffering while optimizing communication.
How delusions are formed
Delusions must start somewhere.
A recent study (Emoticons in mind: An event-related potential study) convincingly demonstrates that our responses to emoticons as simple as a colon next to a parenthesis :) are similar to our responses to real human faces.
Clearly, this response has been learned. No infant is born with that response and no one anywhere had it just a few decades ago.
Our tendency to respond to :) as a face arose with its use in email and texting. This response is now a well-established “public” response to a “public” semiotic. In this context, public means “understood and shared by many people.”
A public semiotic is a sign with wide currency. It is a unit of culture and often of language itself. We can see in the case of the emoticon :) that a new sign can arise due to unique circumstances and that that sign can come to have a deep meaning for many people.
The sign :) seems quite beautiful to me because it is very simple, very easily produced, and very telling about how our minds work. If the elements of the sign are reversed (: people no longer respond to it as a face, though of course we could learn to do that if the reversed sign were used that way more frequently.
I remember the first time I saw a derivative sign ;) and wondered briefly what it meant. If you had a similar experience, you may be able to remember how such a simple sign can bloom in your mind and go from something that is unknown to something of considerable significance in just a few seconds.
That is an example of the birth of a sign, the birth of a semiotic in your mind.
When the semiotic is public, we strive to learn what other people mean by it. When it is private—that is, with a meaning known only to us—there will be other, often very significant, implications.
What would a “private sign” be like? A straightforward example might be a code we use in a diary. Such a code would have at least one visual sign whose meaning is known only to us.
Another kind of private visual sign might be a facial expression that we have come to interpret differently from other people. My guess is everyone has a good many of these. That is to say, the “idiolect” of facial expressions we each use to understand other people is at least as various as different idiolects within a spoken language.
Now add tone of voice, posture, accent, word choice, topic choice, and so on to this mix. Each of those areas of communication uses signs that can and always will be interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including private ones.
Now, consider how an individual may get lost in all this. If someone ever smiled at you as they hurt you, you may have learned to be suspicious in your interpretation of human smiles. Or you may employ your own smile in ambiguous ways.
Now consider all the signs of communication and how many possible interpretations there are. Then consider the study linked above which shows how deep our responses can be to something as trivial as the sign :).
One way we form delusions occurs when our interpretations of communicative signs become too private and/or do not correspond well with the interpretations employed by other people. The other way we form delusions occurs when our interpretations of signs does correspond well with the interpretations employed by other people, but those other people are wrong.
In “public” situations—professional, commercial, business, school, etc.—it is fairly easy to communicate well enough based on established norms. But in interpersonal communication, you can only take “established norms” so far. At some point, you will have to understand your partner and be understood by them in much greater detail than “established norms,” or public semiotics.
Here is a newspaper article on the study linked above: Happy days: Human brain now registers smiley face emoticon as real facial expression.
Status as a fetish
Fetish can be defined as “a part standing for the whole” or “one thing being made bigger than it is by having become a psychological fixation.”
A good example of what I mean is pornography. Insofar as a mere image can stand for or replace instinctual sexual objectives, it is a fetish.
A sign (pornographic image) is as strong or stronger than the animal instinct. Or a sign can direct or redirect the animal instinct. That is a fetish.
Secondary sex characteristics do the same thing. You could call them nature’s fetishes but that would be stretching the concept. Human utilizations of makeup, clothing, and grooming could be said to stand “halfway” between the basic sexual instinct and the fetishized porno image.
Let’s apply that reasoning to status.
Two social psychologist I respect—Jordan Peterson and Kevin MacDonald—have both claimed many times that status is a fundamental human instinct and that it drives human behavior in many ways.
In posts on this site, I have disagreed with these ideas several times. I just don’t see it that way. Here are two of those posts: Status and hierarchy are as fundamental to human life as murder and Jordan Peterson on the gender pay gap, campus protests and the patriarchy.
In the second link just above, I said:
…I do not believe that social status is any more fundamental to human nature than murder is. Humans also possess reason and spiritual inclinations both of which can guide us away from status competition if we decide to do that and/or our conditions allow.
I still think that but over the past day or two a new understanding of the importance of status and human hierarchy has dawned on me. In essence, I think I have come to see that status really is a huge deal for many people; a much bigger deal than I had ever realized.
My explanation for that is people like me (and there are many of us) during childhood and adolescence see the “status game” as a choice. And we decide not to play it.
My SO made that choice. When we talked about this subject this morning, she said people like us are more open to art (in a broad sense) and less concerned with social hierarchies. I think that’s true. One good friend years ago used to call me a “now person,” meaning I am always living in the here and now and not doing a lot of planning for the future. I think she also meant or implied that I am not doing any thinking about my social status or the human hierarchies that surround me.
A Buddhist nun who is a close friend has often described mundane human behaviors as being motivated by jealousy. I have often disagreed with her, believing that her emphasis on jealousy was influenced too much by her culture (Chinese) or by the innocence of her monastic lifestyle.
Today, I think she was influenced by the status-conscious world she had grown up in and as a young adult renounced for Buddhism. But I also think she was able to see something I have been almost completely blind to. For me status has always been a very small cloud on the edge of the sky, not a major thunderstorm in human motivation. For her it is, or was, a storm in the human mind.
Status is a fetish. And fetishization does explain a lot about it. But if lots of people have that fetish or have that strong understanding of status, that’s how it is. As a social construct the status fetish can be even bigger and more imposing than the basic instinct it rests upon.
I hope this post helps people who see status as important understand people like me and my SO, and vice versa.
From a Buddhist point of view, I think it is important to fully understand the entire status spectrum—from instinct to fetishized sign—and to understand where you are on that spectrum and where the people you deal with are on that spectrum.
My guess is that most people reading this blog do not think of status as being very important. People like us need to appreciate that status is probably largely what motivates good people like Jordan Peterson as well as bad people like Bernie Madoff.
Might also be good if status-conscious people would understand that people like us are not all slackers or losers, nor are we seething with envy over your status. We mostly do not even see the game you are playing.
first posted SEPTEMBER 10, 2019
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UPDATE: I am not as respecting of Peterson as I was when the above was written. He is ill right now, so that’s all I’m gonna say on that. This post is just six years old and even that short time can date it a bit, but the plandemic has intervened and slight time shifts can be interesting in and of themselves. ABN
The limits of general semiotic analyses as applied to human psychology
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. ABN
UK goes full madness
Besides being totally crazy, this vid shows the power of semiotics. It’s a glaring example of what semiology is all about. The girl, the uniform, his gait, the flag, the voices. ABN
Games as semiotic focus
Define a game as “a set of rules that focuses and directs thought, feeling, intention.”
Most human games are overwhelmingly involved with human semiotics. Human feeling, thought, and intention overwhelmingly operate within and are defined by human semiotics.
Humans are semiotic animals who live within semiologies as much or more than their natural environments. Few of us can even comprehend our natural environments save through a semiotic system.
A semiology is a signal system, a system of signals. Humans need and want their signal systems to be organized; from this arises culture and psychology.
From this arises the many games of human semiotic organization. Humans crave meaning—a synonym for semiotic organization and focus—and thus play games (as defined above) with their intentions, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, instincts, perceptions, desires, and so on. Without meaning, focus, purposive semiotic organization, life is dismal and many humans destroy themselves and others for this alone.
Human semiotic organization can be beneficially reorganized in two basic ways:
- Through general thought, which mainly changes how we focus and what we focus on. This region of organization includes all culture and science, including mainstream psychology and its treatments.
- Through analysis of the most basic elements of semiotic organization, individual semiotics and semiologies. To do this at the individual level, two individuals are needed because you cannot successfully analyze your own semiotics by yourself. This is so because a great number of human semiotics are fundamental to both psychology and communication. They do not exist independently.
The goal of reorganizing individual semiologies is to optimize them. As individual semiologies optimize, individual psychologies inevitably optimize apace. Much is possible at this level that is not possible at the general level of psychological theory.
Reorganization at this level is done through individual semiotics, the actual signals of individual communication and psychology alike. To play this game—the game of semio-psychological reorganization and optimization—you have to have rules. Here they are.
Fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy
The third wave of cognitive behavior therapy is a general term for a group of psychotherapies that arose in the 1980s, inspired by acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
To me, third wave therapies seem more realistic than older therapies because they accept emotions as they are and pay close attention to how they function in the moment.
The link above is well-worth reading. The frames of these therapies are also well-worth considering.
FIML, which I am calling a “fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy,” differs from third wave therapies in that FIML does not use a professional therapist. Instead, partners become their own therapists.
Moreover, how FIML partners frame their psychologies or generalize their behaviors is entirely up to them. Similarly, their psychological goals and definitions are entirely in their own hands.
At its most basic, FIML “removes wrong interpretations of interpersonal signs and symbols from the brain’s semiotic networks.”
This process of removal, in turn, shows partners how their minds function in real-time real-world situations. And this in turn provides the tools and perspectives to reorganize their psychologies in whichever ways they like.
FIML is based on semiotics because semiotics are specific and with practice can be clearly identified and understood. They give partners “solid ground” to stand on. Words, tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions are some of the major semiotics partners analyze.
Using real-world semiotics as an analytical basis frees FIML from predetermined frameworks about personality or what human psychology even is. With the FIML tool, partners are free to discover whatever they can about how their minds communicate interpersonally (and internally) and do whatever they like with that.
AI Summary of FIML
Key Points
- Research suggests FIML, or Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics, is a communication technique to improve relationships by addressing misinterpretations in real-time.
- It seems likely that FIML involves partners interrupting conversations to clarify emotional reactions, aligning with Buddhist principles of mindfulness.
- The evidence leans toward FIML supporting advanced Right Speech and Right Listening, potentially transforming lives by enhancing understanding.
Description
What is FIML?
FIML, or Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics, is a method designed to optimize communication and psychological well-being between two people. It’s described as a form of analytical psychotherapy that doesn’t require formal training, focusing on clearing up misunderstandings as they happen.
How It Works
Partners agree to interrupt normal conversations when one feels an emotional reaction to something said. The reacting partner asks the other about their state of mind at that moment, and the other responds honestly. This process helps identify if the reaction was based on a misinterpretation, with follow-up questions for clarity. Repeating this frequently can develop better communication skills.
Connection to Buddhism
FIML aligns with Buddhist teachings, supporting advanced forms of Right Speech and Right Listening. It’s seen as a practical application of mindfulness, based on impermanence and emptiness, potentially leading to personal transformation by freeing individuals from ordinary speech constraints.
Unexpected Detail: Precision Comparison
Interestingly, FIML is compared to the James Webb Space Telescope for its clarity in communication, suggesting it offers a much sharper understanding than typical conversations, likened to using an old Hale telescope.
Survey Note: Comprehensive Analysis of FIML Based on American Buddhist Net
This note provides a detailed examination of Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML) as presented on American Buddhist Net, focusing on its description, practice, and relation to Buddhist principles. The analysis aims to offer a thorough understanding for readers interested in communication techniques and their philosophical underpinnings.
Background and Definition
FIML is defined on American Buddhist Net as a technique for optimizing communication and psychological well-being between two people. It is described as a form of analytical psychotherapy that can be practiced without formal training, emphasizing real-time analysis to clear mistaken psychological interpretations. This approach is particularly noted for addressing both recent and long-held miscommunications, enhancing the relationship dynamics between partners.
The site compares FIML to advanced scientific instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, for its clarity in communication, contrasting it with normal speech, which is likened to using the older Hale telescope. This analogy underscores FIML’s potential to provide precise, high-resolution insights into interpersonal interactions.
Practice and Methodology
The practice of FIML involves a structured process, detailed in How to do FIML. Partners must first agree to interrupt normal conversations when needed, creating a foundation for open communication. The process unfolds as follows:
| Step Number | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Partners agree to do FIML and can interrupt normal conversation as needed. |
| 2 | One partner feels a sensation or emotional reaction within one second after the other says something. |
| 3 | The reacting partner asks, “What was your state of mind when you said X?” seeking the other’s short-term memory contents. |
| 4 | The other partner answers honestly, describing their state of mind during the few seconds surrounding the statement. |
| 5 | If the reacting partner finds no justification for their reaction, they realize it was a misinterpretation, trusting the other’s honesty. |
| 6 | Follow-up questions, e.g., “Are you sure you were not implying boredom when you said X?” may be asked for clarity. |
| 7 | The reacting partner discusses the new understanding with the other, briefly or at length, as chosen. |
| 8 | The process is repeated frequently; after a few hundred successful instances, metacognition may develop, reducing the need for frequent interruptions. |
The term “sensation” is clarified as an emotional, physical, or hormonal response occurring soon after something is said, starting at a discreet moment, and can be negative or positive. Mindfulness is crucial, with partners encouraged to observe these sensations within one second and make queries in a neutral tone to avoid further reactions.
Additional resources on the site, such as FIML and practical semiotics, Advanced FIML, and FIML FAQs, provide further guidance on refining the practice, addressing issues like snowballing in practice and disruption of neurotic responses.
Relation to Buddhism
FIML’s integration with Buddhism is a significant aspect, as outlined in various articles on American Buddhist Net. It is described as supporting advanced Right Speech and Right Listening, aligning with Buddhist principles of impermanence and emptiness. This connection is detailed in What is FIML?, where it is noted as a method or process, not formalities, meeting requirements for creating Right Conditions for these advanced practices.
The site suggests that FIML can transform one’s life by freeing individuals from the constraints of Ordinary Speech, as seen in Notes on semiotics, FIML, Buddhism, and a bit of anthropology. This article highlights how FIML corrects distortions in thinking or feeling that may arise from practicing Buddhism in isolation, emphasizing the importance of truthful interaction with an honest partner. It posits that early Buddhists might have engaged in similar practices during their travels in pairs or fortnightly discussions of failings, a tradition that has declined in many places.
Further, The deep importance of intentional language discusses FIML as a profound philosophical answer to language and communication, revealing real-time speech analysis that moves meaning to true experience, resonating with Buddhist mindfulness. Global Workspace Theory and mistake awareness & correction links FIML to calibrating minds like fine instruments, playing the FIML communication game for precise readings, reinforcing its mindfulness aspect.
Significance and Impact
The significance of FIML lies in its potential to enhance communication precision, as evidenced by its comparison to advanced telescopes. This unexpected detail highlights its capability to offer clarity beyond typical conversational exchanges, potentially revolutionizing how partners understand each other. The site also suggests that FIML can address interpersonal conundrums arising from the Problem of the Criterion, as noted in Buddhism category posts, impacting daily relationships and communication at every level.
Author and Context
While specific author information is not directly provided, the site’s posts, such as About, indicate it is run by ABN, focusing on Buddhism, communication, and FIML. The contact email, realABN@pm.me, as seen in Contact, suggests a personal engagement with readers, reinforcing the site’s role as a platform for sharing and discussing these ideas.
Conclusion
FIML, as presented on American Buddhist Net, is a robust communication technique with deep ties to Buddhist philosophy, offering a practical method for enhancing interpersonal relationships through mindfulness and real-time analysis. Its structured practice, alignment with Buddhist principles, and potential for personal transformation make it a valuable tool for those seeking to improve communication and psychological well-being.
Key Citations
- American Buddhist Net – Do your best. Speak the truth.
- How to do FIML – American Buddhist Net
- What is FIML? – American Buddhist Net
- FIML and truth – American Buddhist Net
- Notes on semiotics, FIML, Buddhism, and a bit of anthropology – American Buddhist Net
- FIML and practical semiotics – American Buddhist Net
- Advanced FIML – American Buddhist Net
- Snowballing in FIML practice – American Buddhist Net
- FIML over time – American Buddhist Net
- Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice – American Buddhist Net
- FIML FAQs – American Buddhist Net
- The deep importance of intentional language – American Buddhist Net
- Global Workspace Theory and mistake awareness & correction – American Buddhist Net
- Does the Universe think? (with Bernardo Kastrup) – American Buddhist Net
- Scott Adams Interview – It’s Okay to Be White – American Buddhist Net
- About – American Buddhist Net
- Contact – American Buddhist Net
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Grok used 45 seconds to deep search FIML and produce the above result, posted in full, minus one short paragraph. It did a good job. I am fine with posting this and encouraging readers to look it over. Done properly and for a reasonable amount of time, FIML is deeply life-enhancing. It probably should become a fundamental part of Buddhist practice. Grok did the summary on 03/07/2025. ABN
Inside analysis of Tyler Robinson’s groyper subculture
What he describes is a subcultural psycholinguistic and psycho-semiotic cage.
It has its own signs and symbols and like most subcultures stands in opposition to their caricature of the larger culture in which they live.
Mind-control works largely through manipulating these and many other subcultures and then manipulating our responses to them.
I hope all FIML practitioners can see this and also see outside of these semiotic cages, something very difficult for all humans to do no matter how smart you may be.
Psycholinguistics and semiotics have an enormous psychological and emotional component, which has a very strong hold on all of us.
Many people who grasp this only understand how to use it to manipulate other people. There are hundreds of books and videos on how to do this.
You can do stuff like that and it sort of works, but it’s horrible morality and goes against Buddhist practice because it is a form of deception, of lying. It’s a cheap exploitation of a universal human weakness.
The big problem here is that while individuals in pairs and small group can free themselves from their psycholinguistic cages, large numbers of people cannot.
I do not know how to fix that. Maybe AI or some other new tech will help.
For now, we are stuck with a variety of metacognitive cages that hold large groups of people together.
These are our religions, ideologies, races, ethnies, and subcultures, like the one described above.
There is no power or authority on earth that can control metacognitive group identity, which is why conflict and war is inevitable.
Humans are too simple-minded to see a way out in large numbers, so large crazy groups will continue to rule the world.
The crazier they are, the stronger their hold on their members because it is very hard to get out of a crazy cage in which you have invested everything or were born into.
Look around you. Is there any culture that is not insane? ABN
American Buddhist Net 