Tag: thought

Suñña Sutta: Empty

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Then Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?”

“Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ananda, that the world is empty. And what is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self? The eye is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Forms… Eye-consciousness… Eye-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.

“The ear is empty…

“The nose is empty…

“The tongue is empty…

“The body is empty…

“The intellect is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Ideas… Intellect-consciousness… Intellect-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Thus it is said that the world is empty.”
________________________

Provenance:
©1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Transcribed from a file provided by the translator.
This Access to Insight edition is ©1997–2012.
Terms of use: You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. (Source)

Retail semiotics

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

This short interview is worth reading: ‘What About Tutoring Instead of Pills?’

A quote:

Kagan: I share your unhappiness. But that is the history of humanity: Those in authority believe they’re doing the right thing, and they harm those who have no power.

Semiotics—what we take to have meaning and how we perceive it symbolically—is generally driven by “those in authority.” They may be academics, doctors, media personalities, corporations, politicians, and so on.

We structure our understanding of ourselves and the world around us based on the semiotics we have accepted. Ordinary people accept, almost always unconsciously, “retail semiotics” that are fashioned, marketed, and sold by “those in authority.”

For example, what has happened to our retail understanding of child development and the treatment of mental illness is the semiotics of these categories is dominated by Big Pharma, which pushes expensive drug treatments while at the same time funding research which has been compromised by that funding.

You can see similar retail-wholesale arrangements in many other areas in any society in the world.

Rather than thinking of people as developing psychologically, it can be very helpful to think of them as developing linguistically, emotionally, and semiotically.

Semiotics is not the same as linguistics, but it does develop in rough parallel to linguistics. As our capacities for language mature, so also does our understanding of meaning and the signs and symbols that bear meaning.

If we decide on a practical career and have few other interests, our understanding of the semiotics of other fields (art, sociology, Buddhism, etc.) will probably suffer. If we are raising a child who is doing poorly in school, we may very well just follow along with what is recommended by “experts” who are themselves retail consumers of the “child development semiotic.”

If those “experts”—a pediatrician, say, and a couple of teachers—claim our child “needs” drugs to perform well in school, we will probably accept what they say with few reservations.

It is very difficult not to do this in many areas of our lives.

The Buddha is famous for saying we should not blindly believe him or anyone else but that we should discover for ourselves what is true. In modern terms, this can be restated to mean be careful of retail semiotics, be skeptical of them and where they originate, look to the evidence and who is providing it.

As Kagan says, if your kid is having trouble in school “…what about tutoring instead of pills?”

________________

Edit: 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.

The human operating system

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Traditional human operating systems include a standardized language, standardized semiotics, and a “personality,” which is generally understood to be a measure of how the individual has adapted to the standardized language and semiotics of their time-period.

Standardized in this context means that the language the individual uses is some version of a recognizable dialect, while their semiotics is some version of a recognizable subculture, which may include such elements as clothing styles, beliefs, goals, expectations, education, mannerisms, and so on.

When we speak of a person’s psychology, we usually mean their emotional make-up, their habitual thought processes, their fears or talents, the sum total of their experiences, etc. In this context, a person’s semiotics can be understood to be the signs, symbols, and underlying meanings they see, feel, believe, and respond to. Semiotics, as we are using the term, might also be understood to indicate the distinctive features of a subculture.

For example, the musical semiotics of someone who likes jazz and does not like country will be different from someone who likes country and not jazz. This difference may say something about these two people’s psychologies but in many cases it is much simpler and clearer to just talk about the differences between their semiotics. Similarly, their different tastes in music may say something about the subcultures they belong to, but again it is often much more useful to isolate these differences as different semiotics.

Most people are using a traditional human operating system (THOS). A THOS is defined in the first paragraph above. It is characterized by being largely static and roughly agreed upon by many people.

Personality today is generally understood to be something that is sort of defined or indicated by the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. But how do you measure that? Well, you use tests that explore the standardized language and semiotics that is deemed “appropriate” to the culture to which the testee belongs.

If the testee is not fitting into the standard mold (the standard semiotics), the tester will probably conclude that the testee is either not agreeable, open, conscientious, or extroverted. If the testee is seriously bothered by the standard semiotics for which he or she is being tested, they may also be marked as “neurotic” by the test-giver.

How would you do on a Big Five personality test given in North Korea by North Korean psychologists?

The problem with standardization of “personality” metrics and/or semiotics is standards only help us delineate ourselves in some ways; they cannot be expected to truly define us.

To define yourself, to know yourself, you need an independent operating system (IOS). Obviously, if your IOS gets too far from reasonable human norms (decent ethics, being rational, respecting evidence, etc.), you will lose the good things that humans have figured out over the centuries.

So how do you get an IOS but remain able to draw on all the good stuff of human history and the culture(s) you know best?

You have to change how you use and perceive language and semiotics. You have to find a way to free yourself from being a standardized semiotic between your ears.

If you read the Big Five personality traits and start measuring yourself according to them, what is the basis for your measurement? What does openness mean to you? Gay sex on a roller coaster? Being open-minded about an essay like this one? If you feel sensitive and nervous in North Korea (neurotic as defined by the Big Five) is that good or bad?

What if the society you live in makes you feel nervous and sensitive because you know it can be violent, greedy, hypocritical, and ignorant? Would you feel secure and confident (the opposite of neurotic) if you were in an office where you knew white collar crime (Libor, say) was being done daily? Would you be open to blowing the whistle and risking ostracism or even jail time?

When language, semiotics, and personality are all defined in more or less standard ways and you think you need to go along with that, you can say good-bye to what the Buddha called the thusness or suchness of your being. Buddhism is all about discovering/uncovering the “ultimate reality” of the “real nature” that inheres within us.

One problem with Buddhism, though, is it has become standardized. If you are nice, trusting, and sweet to everyone you meet, you will have your head handed to you in a matter of days in most US cities. We simply cannot expect to model behavior today according to an ancient monastic ideal that we very probably cannot even understand anymore.

The best way to get an IOS, and I believe practice Buddhism in today’s world, is do FIML because FIML practice allows you and your partner to use all the good stuff from human history to develop your own way of talking to each other and understanding each other. A FIML generated IOS frees partners’ semiotics from extrinsic definitions and this allows both of them to comprehend themselves and each other in unique ways that account for their idiosyncrasies—the suchness and thusness of both of them, taken together and independently.

If an individual pursues thusness alone, they will form many wrong ideas because it is impossible for an individual to check their own work. When FIML partners work together and remain mindful of the good things in human history, they are able to check their work and discover the suchness that underlies them.

As mentioned in other posts, FIML does not tell you what to think or believe. Rather, it provides a method to help you and your partner think for yourselves. FIML will change your THOS to an IOS.

If FIML partners are guided by fundamental Buddhist ideas, they will progress more quickly and be less likely to take wrong turns. Understanding the emptiness of standardized semiotics will make it easier for partners to see how cultural norms can interfere with a deep comprehension of life. Keeping basic Buddhist ethics in mind at all times will help partners avoid moral excess or thoughtlessness. Contemplation of dependent origination will give partners a ready guide to understanding the uniqueness of every communicative event. Buddhist teachings on clinging or attachment, especially when understood as clinging to wrong ideas or wrong semiotics, will greatly help partners discard mistaken beliefs and views that may have been influencing them for decades. The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence will make it easier to see through the long history of THOS and why we need new ways to speak, listen, and think today.

Rational actor, muddled actor

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The notion in economics that humans are “rational actors” has been widely and rightly criticized. Here is the basic argument against “rational choice theory” in economics as put by Edward J. Nell and Karim Errouaki:

To make rational calculations projectible, the agents may be assumed to have idealized abilities, especially foresight; but then the Inductive Problem is out of reach because the agents of the world do not resemble those of the model. The agents of the model can be abstract, but they cannot be endowed with powers actual agents could not have. This also undermines Methodological Individualism; if behaviour cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of the ‘rational choices of agents’ a social order cannot reliably follow from the choices of agents. (Source)

The problem is even worse when it comes to linguistics. All people much of the time are neither rational speakers nor rational listeners.

Speech arises out of complex mental, emotional, and environmental conditions. As speakers, we are often not aware of many of those conditions. The same is true for listeners. When the muddled aspects of speaking and listening are added together, the problem is made worse.

An even deeper problem is most muddled speech and listening never gets figured out. In place of clear mutual understanding, we normally go with muddled interpretations of what people are saying and how they understand what we have said.

Be mindful of what you say and how you are being understood. Listen carefully to others and notice how you are understanding what they are saying. It’s a very messy process even when topics are concrete and carry little or no emotional valence.

If basing a model of economics on “rational actors” does not work, the situation is far worse for psychology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, and more. The problem is worse because economic behavior is simpler than linguistic behavior, which underlies all of these subjects.

A good model of sociology might say something like this: People are emotionally and mentally muddled and they communicate very badly with each other except in simple situations or on the basis of simple semiotic models they already agree on and have been trained in. Culture, therefore, is little more than the simple semiotic models people use to communicate because they don’t know how to communicate in any other way.

A model for psychology might say something like this: Most people have profound emotional problems because they cannot communicate with others except in simple situations or on the basis of simple semiotic models they already agree on and have been trained in by experience. This is a disaster in intimate interpersonal relationships, often leading to anger, sadness, alienation, and depression.

A model for history might say: The above two paragraphs describe major historical forces that are as significant as economic and environmental forces. (This is why ‘history’ is so easily rewritten by those in power.)

We won’t fix the world just yet or change the course of history, but as individuals we can do something about this with our best friends and life partners. FIML corrects these problems because FIML exposes communication errors and corrects them while they are happening. If communication errors are not caught while they are happening (at least a good deal of the time), partners will be forced to rely on simple semiotics, simple extrinsic cultural norms, to conduct their emotional lives together, and that is a recipe for disaster.

People are muddled actors when it comes to communication and this is a serious problem when it comes to intimate interpersonal communication. But we can become much more rational and communicate much more clearly with at least one other person by using FIML techniques.

FIML and Bernard Lonergan’s GEM

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

One aspect of FIML that continues to delight me, even after years of practice, is how so little can give us so much. In a nutshell “all” FIML does is stabilize and clarify our communication with one other person.

FIML does this by removing error and resolving ambiguities between two people. FIML cannot do this perfectly, but it does it well-enough that partners will experience a level of mental and emotional clarity that had not been available to them before.

I don’t believe anyone can know everything and I don’t believe anyone can even know very much. We really do not know if we are in a sim or not, so how can anyone make claims to philosophical certainty about anything, be they physicalist, atheist, religious, or even hedonist claims?

I am open to an individual saying he or she knows something through revelation, but their knowing does not help me because how do I know if they are telling the truth? Science gives us truths but many of the most interesting questions are outside of the realm of science. The Buddhist tradition is very good in this context because it asks us to base our understanding of “truth” on our own experience (which can and should include scientific inquiry).

The work of Bernard Lonergan struck me this morning as saying something important about how we know things and how we live in a world that is hugely mysterious.

His “generalized empirical method” (GEM) was designed to help people deal with meaning, ambiguity, and the relative values of ethical and philosophical truths. Lonergan’s theory of cognition, which is part of GEM, describes four levels of consciousness—“experience of data, understanding the data, judgment that one’s understanding is correct, and decision to act on the resulting knowledge.” (Source for this is the link in the paragraph above.)

His theory fits very well with Buddhism and is good way to assess what FIML does.

In FIML practice, partners “experience the data” of interacting with each other; they “understand this data” by doing a FIML inquiry on some part of it; based on this inquiry they are better able to “judge if their understanding is correct”; and following that judgment, they will be in a good position to decide what to do with the “resulting knowledge.”

FIML takes the weakest parts of interpersonal communication—the ambiguous and emotionally difficult parts—and turns them into some of the best parts; parts where understanding and resolution have been deepened even beyond the other parts.

FIML cannot explain the origin of the universe or which philosophy will dominate the world one hundred years from now, but it can provide a very good level of mutual understanding between partners. And this level of understanding will have a beneficial influence on many other aspects of partners’ lives—emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and philosophical.

Both Lonergan and the Buddha described methods that a fragile individual can use to sift through the mountains of data that surround us to find the best stuff. FIML was designed to be a method that helps partners know one another to the best of their human capacities. It is a method that partners can use within a Buddhist, or other, framework to arrive at a better understanding of who and what they are.

Edit: Here’s a good quote from Wikipedia on Lonergan: The key to Lonergan’s project is “self-appropriation,” that is, the personal discovery and personal embrace of the dynamic structure of inquiry, insight, judgment, and decision. By self-appropriation, one finds in one’s own intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility the foundation of every kind of inquiry and the basic pattern of operations undergirding methodical investigation in every field. (Source)

FIML is a specific semiotic

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

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.

Notes

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment
  • Made some changes in How to do FIML. Mainly removed the word neurosis from the explanation. Using that term was convenient but also became confusing because our definition was quite specific; that is, by neurosis we only meant “ongoing mistaken interpretation.” I think we have also become less “neurotic” due to FIML practice and so feel less need for the term.
  • The other change in the How to do FIML article involves explaining that the basic explanation of FIML is deceptively simple. You could say a computer is very simple because it works with 0s and 1s, but that doesn’t say much about computers. Similarly, basic FIML can be seen as a very simple practice, but as soon as it is undertaken during a real-life exchange with someone you care about, it will quickly expand into something very complex that is wholly unique to you and your partner.
  • We use the word semiotics a good deal because it suits FIML practice. We could even call FIML Dynamic Interpersonal Semiotics, or DIS.
  • Semiotics has a long history, but basically it is the science or art of interpreting signs, symbols, and language. Many semiotic interpretations are formal; that is, they classify signs and symbols and seek to determine relations among these categories.
  • In FIML practice, our main semiotic focus is on how partners interpret each others’ signs, symbols, and language.
  • This is a dynamic practice as opposed to a strictly theoretical or classificatory one in that the meaning of the semiotics as they are discovered in practice between partners is the subject.
  • This subject can only be reliably interpreted if the mental state of each partner is clearly remembered; that is, if each partner can clearly remember the semiotics in his or her mind at the time of speaking or listening.
  • If their mental/semiotic states are clearly remembered, then both partners will have good data that is worth analyzing.
  • Discussion and analysis of this data provides partners with very reliable insights into how they are actually functioning together, how they are understanding each other.
  • Rather than rely on psychological theories or other generalities, FIML partners are able to work with reliably objective interpersonal data.
  • This helps them avoid long detours into ambiguous discussions that often are counterproductive.
  • To understand, we must have a “prior category.” If you have never seen a hammock (if you have no prior category of hammock), you won’t know what one is upon first seeing it.
  • In this vein, much of what we hear is understood by “prior categories” in our minds.
  • FIML helps us check our prior categories. If one or more of my prior categories is mistaken, I will mishear a great deal of what is said to me.
  • If my trusted partner tells me that the prior category that I used to interpret her statement is wrong, or not applicable to what she just said, I must accept her data. Her assessment of her state of mind is better than my assessment of her state of mind.
  • Once partners get used to this, they will find it is a great relief. Who wants mistaken prior categories that cause needless suffering?
  • When we clear away dysfunctional prior categories through FIML practice, we will notice many beneficial changes in our mental and emotional make-up.
  • The core of all our behaviors, beliefs, motives, and emotions is meaning and how we interpret it.
  • If we can see that an emotional prior category is dysfunctional (i.e. it is getting used when it does not apply), we will find it fairly easy to discard it.
  • Having a good partner that you trust and that trusts you is essential for FIML practice because the quality of the data you will be working with depends entirely on mutual trust, mutual caring.

Trust

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

One of the features of FIML practice that interests me is how it depends upon and strengthens trust between partners.

I cannot think of another system that strengthens interpersonal trust as well as FIML.

My understanding of game theory is not very good, but I suspect FIML could be seen as a game that works with human consciousness to strengthen trust in six ways. If there are two FIML partners—A and B—partner A will strengthen trust in B, in A, and in A and B together. The same is true for partner B. Added together, trust is strengthened in six different ways.

For example, after doing FIML properly for a few months, I will almost certainly trust my partner more than before, myself more than before, and the both of us together more than before. I will be able to trust myself more because I will have a better sense of what to say and why. I will be able to see how my honest answers have a good effect on both my partner and myself. From this, I will be able to quite reliably conclude that my partner is experiencing something similar. And from this we will both be able to see/conclude that the both of us together have a much more trustworthy interpersonal system than we had before we started doing FIML.

A few months of FIML practice will make it abundantly clear to both partners that lying is a huge waste of time. A few months of practice also shows partners how ambiguity and/or soft lies commonly arise in non-FIML relationships. Those same few months will also help partners find many of their blind spots. They will discover how cultural conditioning influences their perceptions and expectations.

Some other systems

Some other systems for establishing interpersonal trust are making vows, getting married, exchanging gifts or confessions, signing agreements, or even spending 100% of your time together.

The best or deepest of these methods is probably the vow, but even a well-meant vow, willingly and mutually undertaken by both parties, will not be all that reliable because it will be stated in general terms and have no way of dealing with the thousands of unique situations that will always occur in all lives. Vows typically have few rules for communication and they rarely, if ever, take into consideration the enormous difficulties all people have with the ongoing details of interpersonal communication.

Vows are general and often highly emotional. Exchanging gifts or making confessions may be slightly more concrete or specific, but there is less obligation. At their best, they are one-time signals of an implied vow. At their worst, they are ways to trick others.

Prenuptial agreements, or other contracts, can limit damage from fake vows or real ones that cannot be kept, but they are actually based on a sort of mistrust and won’t do much to strengthen trust. Some people have actually tried spending all their time together, but all this assures is that partners can’t say or do anything that violates their vows. It doesn’t mean they are telling the truth to each other or even know how. Maybe it would work. I don’t know. I respect people who do this, but it would drive me nuts.

FIML as a game

FIML can be thought of as a game in many ways. Here is one basic formula for FIML as a game that may stand in for many others. It’s very basic, so enhance it or add to it as you see fit or as fits your circumstances.

The formula deals with semiotics by grouping the ongoing semiotics of a conversation between two people into three parts. The first part (the first semiotic grouping) is the context in which the conversation is occurring. The second is the semiotics in the mind of one partner, and the third is the semiotics in the mind of the other partner.

Generally, the context in which the conversation is occurring defines many aspects of the conversation. If partners are in a museum, the museum displays and the need to be quiet will determine a good deal of what is said and how it is understood. If partners are at work, the context will be different.

If partners are relaxed in their own home and with a decent amount of free time, the context will be perfect for a FIML discussion, should the need arise.

No matter what the context, partner A will speak with some sort of semiotic in their mind. It might be very specific or it might be vague. Partner B will listen in much the same way—they may be hyper-attentive to one aspect of what A is saying or they may be in a relaxed state or even daydreaming.

There are many ways that the semiotics of A and B can and will be different. In most cases, these differences glide along and resolve or are ignored in common ways without causing problems. You can’t possible monitor everything that happens in your minds.

But, if the semiotics in the minds of partners A and B get too far apart—if they diverge from each other too much—misunderstandings and mismatched feelings will begin to arise.

This is when you do FIML—when the semiotics in your mind and your partner’s mind are no longer referring to the same thing and one or both of you notices, either by feeling the mix-up or by other signs.

The game is to see the mix-up right when it happens, then to discuss how and why it happened, appreciate that it is very common for stuff like that to happen, figure out what to do about it (if anything), enjoy what you have learned, and then keep doing what you were doing.

The value of this game is you will not only keep doing what you were doing but you will enjoy it even more. If you don’t do the game, you won’t get that added level of fun and you won’t see more deeply into your shared awareness.

FIML as mindfulness

A friend yesterday said in an email that FIML was working well for him and his fiancee. He also referred to it as Buddhist mindfulness. FIML is greatly enhanced by Buddhist mindfulness, but it is not exactly the same because FIML involves two people being mindful (and honest) together. Having a second person do detailed mindfulness with you is different from doing mindfulness alone. When you do mindfulness or introspection by yourself, you have no way of checking your work. When you do it with an honest partner, you can check your conclusions, and very often find out why you were wrong.

The value of FIML lies in being able to check our mindfulness with an honest partner who is also being mindful. Doing this corrects interpersonal mistakes as well as individual idiosyncratic ones. FIML also increases trust and honesty while improving communication overall between partners.

Identity and semiotics

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Mental (unemotional) identity is almost always a mix of public semiotics. Mental identity defines, conditions, and guides emotional identity.

Raw emotion might be thought of as a limbic response. The term limbic response will probably be replaced one day, but for now it is a recognized way to refer to strong emotional responses that happen suddenly and can often seize control of an individual’s thoughts and behavior.

Mental identity as a composite of public semiotics indicates the communicable beliefs of the individual—their religion or lack thereof; their sense of history and their place in it; their ethnic, racial, or national identity; their career and the specialized knowledge and attitudes that go with it; the intermingling of their beliefs with those of their friends,  etc. If the person can more or less communicate it, or more or less find it outside of themselves, or more or less be able to alter it through communication with a trusted other, it is a public semiotic.

Mental identity defines, conditions, and guides emotional identity. In turn, emotional identity guides, conditions, and either restricts or expands mental identity. A person raised to hate some “other”, for example, may overcome their mental identity through feelings of compassion. The same person may overcome their feelings of hatred through reason. These are just crude examples.

For the most part, all people have problematical mental and emotional identities. The reason this is so is it is very hard to honestly access the kinds of semiotics and emotions that comprise the amalgam of emotional and mental identity.

Why is that? That is because public semiotics almost by definition cannot fully allow the individual to redefine him/herself. If you are a traditional anything (Catholic, Buddhist, atheist, crime boss, ethnic chauvinist, capitalist, etc.), once you start questioning the public aspects of your mental/emotional identity, all you can normally do is adopt some other version of public semiotics. You may become a lapsed Catholic, or a weekend Buddhist, or a soft versus hard atheist, a reformed crime boss, a tolerant ethnic chauvinist, a reform-minded capitalist, etc.

These changes will produce changes in your emotional identity, but you will still be hooked into a public semiotic and the emotions it defines and conditions. Maybe you will feel more doubt or uncertainty; maybe you will become apathetic; maybe you will get fired up about making reforms. It’s hard to say exactly what will happen, but at the core there will still be a public semiotic and an emotional conditioning closely related to it.

Buddhism, as I see it in this context, is designed to dig deeper into that mixture of mind and emotion and remove all thought and emotion that is not supported by profound inner experience and reason. Buddhism removes clinging to all thought and feeling that is false, deluded, and/or empty. Buddhism teaches us that clinging to things that are false, deluded, and/or empty causes suffering.

Thus, deep mindfulness coupled with years of contemplating/comprehending the emptiness and impermanence of “mental dharmas” (public semiotics in this context), leads to liberation from the core cause of suffering.

A few paragraphs above I said “…public semiotics almost by definition cannot fully allow the individual to redefine him/herself.” I said “almost by definition” because Buddhist practice, which we first learn as a public semiotic, does indeed allow individuals to redefine themselves.

Sometimes, it’s hard to do this in traditional Buddhist settings because the public semiotics can also get in the way. The temples and statues and quiet rooms are wonderful for beginners because they allow them to get a feeling for where Buddhist practice will take them. Intermediate practitioners, though, may get tired of the symbols and want to take a break from them. But after a time, they usually come to realize that the symbols and public semiotics (basic Dharma) were essential for their development and they will probably want to help others by donating time, money, or deep service to a temple.

It’s important to recognize where you are in all that. Surely you can guess that your initial enthusiasm may not last or that it will change. Surely you can see that becoming tired of the symbols and semiotics is not the end of Buddhist practice; it just shows you are starting to really get the idea. When you feel like going back to the temple and helping, you will know why.

Now what about private semiotics? Private semiotics are the signs, symbols, and language that we hold as idiosyncratic individuals and can communicate with others only with significant difficulty if at all.

Traditional Buddhist practice may not work well with private semiotics because traditional practice is, by definition, a public semiotic. So how do you get to your private semiotics? Contemplation, meditation, and mindfulness help, but you will always have problems with a sort of solipsism. How can you know that your analysis of something is right? You can’t unless you check it with other people. But as soon as you do that, you are back to public semiotics. The other person really won’t understand you all that well and/or you will end up revising your insights to look and feel like something more public.

I think the above basically describes why so many Buddhists kind of fantasize having a perfect teacher, a guru who will know how to guide them at all times. I am not going to say whether that is even possible, but for most of us, it won’t happen.

So what can we do? I propose in this context that Buddhists undertake FIML practice. I say this because FIML practice deals directly with the complex inter-workings of interpersonal semiotics and emotion. There are many links on this site describing how to do FIML and what it is.

Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Cognition materializes in an interpersonal space. The emergence of complex behaviors requires the coordination of actions among individuals according to a shared set of rules. Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping one’s mind, most cognitive studies focus on processes that occur within a single individual. We call for a shift from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of reference. We argue that in many cases the neural processes in one brain are coupled to the neural processes in another brain via the transmission of a signal through the environment. Brain-to-brain coupling constrains and shapes the actions of each individual in a social network, leading to complex joint behaviors that could not have emerged in isolation. (Source)

Very much agree with this statement, which is the intro to a short scholarly opinion piece on interpersonal cognition.

The very basis of FIML practice is the interaction of two people. The FIML technique is designed to allow two people to become deeply aware of the (normally) elusive, idiosyncratic, and highly complex signalling mechanisms that are always functioning whenever they interact.

As partners become richly aware of this dynamic system, they will find they are able to change it for the better by removing mistakes and ambiguity. Mistakes and ambiguity are prominent—indeed, characterize—virtually all normal interpersonal communication. By largely removing these factors from their interpersonal communication, partners will experience significant improvements in communication, general awareness, and feelings of well-being.

The linked essay asks the following question: How to further develop principled methods to explore information transfer across two (or more) brains?

One answer is do FIML practice. Rather than study themselves from outside, FIML partners will study themselves as they are in all of their own unique complexity as uniquely “coupled brains.” In the terms of the linked paper, FIML practice is “brain-to-brain coupling” that leads to “complex joint behaviors” that cannot possibly “emerge in isolation.”

FIML practice provides a general “shared set of rules” that allows “complex behaviors” to “emerge” between two (or more) people. These “complex behaviors”, in turn, give partners the opportunity to control and transform how they “shape” their minds.

Belief, knowledge, and well-being

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Belief means you are mostly convinced but not completely sure. Knowledge is more certain. These two words can be used as follows—I believe the universe probably started with the Big Bang, but I know the earth revolves around the sun.

We derive a degree of intellectual well-being from the beliefs and knowledge afforded us by modern science and engineering. But knowing that the earth revolves around the sun or that the Big Bang is the most likely explanation we now have does not provide us with very much emotional or psychological well-being.

We need more, or we need something different, to achieve a deep state of emotional well-being.

To achieve a deep state of emotional well-being we need to know that we can really believe at least one other person. That person should be our primary interlocutor, the person we deal with the most. If we cannot believe that person and/or they cannot believe us, we can’t achieve a deep state of emotional well-being.

To the best of my knowledge, there exists no common communication system (or even uncommon one) that allows us to deeply know and believe someone else, except the FIML system.

The reason this is so is all other human communication systems rely too much on implication, interpretation, and assumed shared beliefs.

When you do any of those things with your primary interlocutor you will necessarily make mistakes and/or be uncertain about what they are saying or how they are understanding you. Mistakes and uncertainty create shadowy feelings and wrong or multiple interpretations in the mind. Rather than have a clear knowledge of what your partner thinks or understands, you will be guessing.

Even if you are right every time you guess (and this is not possible), you will still have no way of being certain. You will not know if you are right or not. And your partner will have the same problem with you.

Emotional well-being depends on the quality of our communication with our primary interlocutor. There are substitutes—careers, religions, political causes, money, power, sex, etc.—but none of these will ever equal the emotional well-being that comes from very high-quality communication with your primary interlocutor. To have high-quality communication, you and your partner must have a system that removes doubt and uncertainty and replaces them with knowledge and belief.

the absent voices here are academic and organized medicine

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

This link is to a good post about misdeeds in Big Pharma and the absence of any serious push-back from psychiatrists.

I for one don’t think there is any idea or any professional or governmental approach that can fix the greed and self-deception inherent in virtually every social system ever devised by human beings.

The only hope I see will come from technology. We are getting close to having brain scans that are able to discover human lies and self-deception with 100% accuracy. Will humans be able to use them to eradicate fraud from government, finance, and science?

Repost: What is FIML? Part 1

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

FIML is different from anything you’ve done before. Our society, as well as probably every other society that has ever existed, offers no real encouragement or training in this type of communication. Consequently, when you first read about FIML you may struggle to fit it into some familiar category. Well, here are some:

Science – FIML can be conceived as a sort of interpersonal scientific method.

Like science, the process is rational and can be explained to, and practiced by, anyone. It is not the exclusive property of some esoteric priestly class.

FIML is based on data. In this case, the data is the contents of your mind and that of your partner. You and your partner will attempt to be objective about these data and check your interpretations against each other.

Continue reading…

FIML over time

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Long-term practice of FIML generates deep change in the human psyche.

Social relations, habitual traits and attitudes, as well as ingrained emotional responses may all be subject to profound transformation.

The reason this happens is the basic FIML technique provides consistently good counter-evidence to habitual mental and emotional reactions. In addition, the technique itself teaches the practitioner’s mind–or shows it by example–to apply similar kinds of reasoning to many other situations that are not open to FIML dialog.

The basic FIML technique is a deceptively simple stop-and-query technique designed for use in conversations between close friends or partners. In our How to do FIML post, we have described the basic technique as clearly and simply as we could. This description should work as an effective model for beginning FIML practitioners, but it is a bit like describing in words how to hit a baseball or dive into a pond. The experience of actually doing FIML in a real-life, dynamic, emotionally-charged conversation will draw on a wide variety of skills and emotions from both partners. These aspects of FIML cannot be well-described in words because they will be different for different people and in different situations.

FIML does not tell anyone what to think or feel, but rather provides a method for clarifying thought and feeling as they occur in real life.

FIML practice allows partners to expand their senses of who they are and access these areas through speech. Correctly done, FIML will keep partners from becoming lost in side-issues or emotional traps. FIML gives partners access to a shared meta-perspective that will help them gradually rediscover or redesign how they think of themselves and each other, and how they react in many different kinds of situations.

FIML is like yoga in that it uses no props. Yoga uses the body to exercise the body. FIML uses two minds working together on the basis of shared rules. With practice, FIML partners will find that they are able to leverage or gain access to many areas of themselves that cannot be reached by other means. After several years of practice, partners will discover that they have gained levels of mental and emotional strength and freedom that had been barely imaginable before.

The basic FIML technique depends on partners clearly remembering everything that is/was in their mind(s) at the moment a phrase in question was spoken and/or heard. By honestly comparing the contents of their minds under these circumstances, partners will gain access to the rich realm of secondary and tertiary meanings that accompany all utterances. At the same time, they will free themselves from habitual mistaken interpretations whenever they arise.

Their minds, thus, will gradually gain freedom from error (mental and psychological) while broadening the range of subject matter they are capable of entertaining. And this will have a far-reaching influence on both behavior and perception in many other areas.

Once partners are skilled in the basic FIML technique, they will find that it need not always be done immediately upon noticing an emotional or judgmental reaction. After a few months of successful FIML practice, partners will probably find that they can bring up events from hours before and both will still have a reasonably accurate memory of what was said and heard.

It is important not to jump to this level too quickly, though, because if the basic technique has not been mastered, partners will lose sight of the meta-perspective, without which deep understanding and transformation will not be possible. Experienced partners will know when they have good data and can proceed with a FIML dialog and when they don’t. If you don’t have good data (both partners remember exactly what was said and what they were thinking), don’t do a FIML dialog. Just drop the subject. Though retain the general sense of something having happened because the subject will almost certainly come up again. When that happens, try to get good data you both agree on and then proceed with a FIML dialog.