1/16/22: The Third
Sender <> Receiver <> Observer
Turn Your Brain Off
I have been captiv-ated these last few weeks with a video game I mentioned previously, called Binding of Isaac. The story in the game is that Isaac’s mother hears a voice from God and decides to kill him, so he hides in his room, where he finds a trapdoor and begins to explore the caverns beneath. He is in captivity, and he’s trying to escape.
My own mother, when I tell her how I have trouble sitting down and just watching TV, would tell me I need to find an activity where I can “turn my brain off”. I finally found that activity, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I haven’t been reading or writing, just gaming, like back in my World of Warcraft days. I’ve even dreamed about it.
The game requires a lot of focus, though, so it’s not like my brain shuts down completely; what she meant was to find some way to distract myself from my own thoughts, to escape from my fantasies. The tool that allows one to escape from one’s own fantasies is precisely how the book I mentioned last week, Sadly, Porn, defines pornography.
I sometimes remember a tweet from a long time ago, which went something like “monkeys only masturbate in captivity”. Perhaps we can generalize that to “humans only use porn in captivity”. And some times I do feel like I’m in captivity, I wrote a thread about it earlier (accidentally…). I’ll excerpt the relevant bits:
Let’s say someone tells you "Thinking is bad. You should stop doing it.". Like, wtf u want me to do, switch off the thought-button? Some of you will say "yes" and to them I say "you can't make me".
Let's continue the dialogue:
"You're hurting yourself, by thinking."
"I know."
”Why are you doing it?"
"I want to."
”Why do you want to?"
"It feels good."
"You can feel good without hurting yourself."
"Yes but that would require changing myself, and that's the hardest thing of all."What a twist! Who would've thought that's where we'd end up. Yet that's where it always seems to end up. Sadly, Porn was right, all these thinking-techniques are defenses against change. we can't think our way out of thinking. but we can act (speak) our way out.
Of course, we don't want to get out, because local maxima. "This may not be the best position, but it's better than taking the first step toward the better position, so I'm gonna stick it out". That's why ignorance is a passion, says Lacan, we want to know nothing about the higher peak.
Even this post is a defense against my own change. I could quit my job, stop posting on twitter, and travel around, but I know I'm not going to do that. So instead I can write a post to absolve myself of responsibility by blaming it on external factors. Owned!!!!!!
In other words, I am in captivity, a captivity of my own making, and I'm gonna stick it out until the term is over, even though there's nothing *real* stopping me from hopping right out and getting on my way toward my desire. This is neurosis.
Anyway that was fun, time for some gaming l o l
The key here is that real change means changing my habits, and by habits I mean how I spend my time, and by how I spend my time I mostly mean my job. I can tweak around the edges but there’s no getting around that nine-to-five. But I “can’t” do that, so instead I’ll take a “vacation”.
I identified three types of vacations: physical vacations, social vacations, and mental or intellectual vacations. Each vacation involves going someplace “new”, but within a different type of space. It needs to last just long enough so that the end is not in sight from the very beginning, but not too long or it becomes the new normal and makes everyday life hard to return to. There’s a reason most employees take two week or ten day vacations. Here’s what Eric Berne (author of Games People Play) says about vacations, from his book What Do You Say After You Say Hello?:
Reach-back is defined as that period of time during which an impending event begins to have an independent influence on the individual's behavior. It is most dramatically seen in people with phobias, whose whole functioning may be disturbed for days ahead at the prospect of getting into a feared situation, such as a medical examination or a journey. Actually, however, phobic reach-back is less damaging than the reach-backs of everyday life, which may in the long run (I think) result in "psychosomatic" physical diseases.
…After-burn is defined as that period of time during which a past event has an independent influence on the individual's behavior. In some way, each past event does influence behavior, but after-burn refers only to those occasions when it disturbs normal patterns for an appreciable period rather than being assimilated into them or excluded from them by repression and other psychological mechanisms.
…
Most normal after-burns and reach-backs run their courses in about six days, so that a two-week vacation allows the superficial after-burns to burn out, after which there are a few days of carefree living before the reach-backs begin to creep in in unguarded moments and clutter up the situation again. For the assimilation of more chronic after-burns and deeper, repressed reach-backs, however, a vacation of at least six weeks is probably necessary. This formerly proceeded much more peacefully when the month in Europe was bracketed by restful six- or seven-day Transatlantic crossings, than it does now with jet planes and their time lags, which are in themselves strenuous experiences.
So I’m waiting for my “at least six weeks” vacation, which will be my opportunity to deal with “chronic after-burns and deeper, repressed reach-backs",” but who knows when that’ll happen, and how it will look.
Communication and Manipulation
Here’s the tweet that started the thread I mentioned above:
The context is that my friend Suspended Reason and I have been in ongoing dialogue about his idea that “All Communication is [Behavioral] Manipulation.” He’s written a number of posts on the topic already. I also wrote a post on the topic, attempting to figure out why it sounds weird.
The key points I made were that:
Communication as manipulation sounds sociopathic.
Sociopaths don’t follow the rules of authenticity or of shared humanity.
All communication is really manipulation of the intersubjective space of interaction, i.e. the vibe.
I make the argument in the post itself, I recommend reading it if you want to know more. But my post didn’t cover the “meta-level” critique, where I ask “what is the purpose of this frame?” I’ll try to do that briefly now, going where I didn’t want my original essay to go, because I must.
…or I would, if it didn’t turn out so long, too long and detailed for this post. So I’ve published that elsewhere, and will summarize the main points briefly, as I did with my other long-form post:
The concept of “All Communication is Manipulation” (ACiM) needs to be clarified as to whether it's a literal, factual claim, or an interpretive frame.
ACiM as interpretive frame is a hermeneutic of suspicion, a tool for “decoding” a “disguised” meaning in a text or message.
ACiM as hermeneutic is a rationalizing frame, which produces knowledge in an attempt to maintain control over the uncertainty of human society.
ACiM suffers from the same problem as all hermeneutics of suspicion, which is that it can be used as a defense against culpability or understanding.
ACiM has value as an extrospective tool for self-understanding in terms of one's own desire.
Here’s a paragraph I removed from the bottom, back when it was still inline:
The way out of this knowledge trap, which I started the post with, is to “un-explain”: note the impulses toward action, and then pursue them without needing further explanation. Why did you do that? I wanted to. I thought it was the right thing to do. Why did I write this post? I wanted to. It seemed fun. To go any further would add something “extra” or “meta”, which leads to an endless chain of justification that ultimately ends up at the level of Nature or God or Nature’s God.
Hopefully these two blog posts are sufficient substance to satisfy whomever wrote the following Curiouscat question, which I found very funny and thought about putting in my bio:
Miscellania
I wanted to make this post shorter than last week, and I think I was successful, mostly by moving the bulk of the material into independent essays. Tricked again! Couple more things while you’re here..
Something I wrote back in 2018 on my other account (simpolism) has been going around again, based on an essay about “Preconquest Consciousness”. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then, but it’s still interesting. Thread starts here:
We’ve been talking about narcissism and dating and stuff like that on the timeline lately, as usual. I don’t want to dig into narcissism here, but I wrote a tiny thread about dating, doesn’t seem that new or inventive but it’s a nice thought:
And finally, another thread from last week about why online dating sucks:
Song of the week (starts at 17:52):
Thanks for reading! See you again soon.
> Sociopaths don’t follow the rules of authenticity or of shared humanity.
This theory sounds great and all, have we considered the alternative for the Clueless and Losers as well? https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class/
Possibility:
Clueless are not authentic with the shared imaginary humanity, as they are constantly posturing ("virtue signaling" and "dogwhistle").
Losers are authentic, but has no shared humanity as they are socially apathetic, without a bigger picture.
In Truth, only people who are "outside the system" can be both.