Understanding beyond our cognitive conception or physical senses

People have asked me many times how I can be at all religious minded in an authentic way. I'm not going to necessarily defend my spiritual beliefs or thoughts or suggest that they are shared by those who attend the same church as I do, but I do want to defend this idea that it is hubris to believe that everything that is reality can be perceived and understood by us via reason and our five senses. Even if we were to expand to something beyond conscious cognition, e.g. the unconscious which is often the explanation for phenomena like "intuition," I still don't think it's enough. There are some obvious examples of failures of our perception to reflect large portions of reality, e.g. infrared and ultraviolet. But the longer I live the more I realize how many things are at play all of the time in even the simplest thing or interaction. Being spiritually minded helps me to at least keep an open mind. Even if there isn't a "religious" explanation or a "spiritual" reason behind things, as those words are commonly used and conceived of, to understand that in a world in which normal matter (as opposed to say, dark matter/dark energy) consists of only about 4% of the known universe, I think it's a little self-centered to think that we are capable of perceiving and understanding reality based on perception and cognition alone.

Someone either sent this to me or left it in a comment, which I think explains this well:


"People often think of koans as riddles or problems that need to be solved, but this is not the case at all. With every koan the point is not to arrive at an answer through our ordinary conceptualizing minds. Rather, the point is to see for ourselves that our concepts can never provide us with a satisfactory answer.

This is not to say that satisfaction cannot be found.

It can, but not through any concept or explanation."

I think it's an especially interesting application to sociopaths. Because I think sociopaths often want to cut to the chase. I certainly do. In fact, my therapist had to engage in large amounts of obfuscation to keep me from figuring out what he was getting at, cut to the chase, and give him the answer he was looking for. Because he wanted me to learn for myself and go through the journey, not just know the "right" answer to the question he was asking. But I jumped to the "right" answer part of life almost compulsively, commonly missing the lessons that others had learned by going through the whole process.

"If you don't understand the heart of a koan, it will be very clear the moment you're asked a follow up question."

Isn't this so true of sociopaths? They know the "right" answers to certain questions, but when you follow up with them, you often can tell very quickly that they don't understand the answer at all, or maybe even the original question.

"They simply point out that reality is not to be captured in a thought or a phrase or an explanation." Our rational mind can only come up with models for reality, but reality is not a model. The map is not the territory. And for whatever reason, I think having a mind open to "spirituality" is a better way for me to look for aspects of reality that were not otherwise being mapped by my cognitive-only models.

"Our conceptualizing minds are highly dualistic. . . . To such a mind, everything is either good or bad, right or wrong, friend or foe, this or that, or else off our radar completely."

Different lives, different incentives

This is largely unrelated, except perhaps to the extent that it suggests that normal people often suffer from a lack or failure of not just affective empathy for those people that are considered different from them or are considered too remote to somehow trigger an empathetic response, but also cognitive empathy. People apparently have a very difficult time imagining what the lives of other people must be like.

From the Washington Post, "The big problem with one of the most popular assumptions about the poor", a discussion first of the infamous marshmallow experiment, in which child participants were asked to forego the instant gratification of one marshmallow in order to earn an additional marshmallow. The study participants were followed into adulthood and there was a correlation between ability to wait for the second marshmallow and general success, as society typically defines success. Also correlated, poverty and eating the first marshmallow without waiting. But why? Are they poor because they're impulsive? Or are they impulsive because they are poor? From the article:

The realization has sparked concerns that poverty begets a certain level of impulsiveness, and that that tendency to act in the moment, on a whim, without fully considering the consequences, makes it all the more difficult for poor children to succeed. But there's an important thing this discussion seems to miss. Poor kids may simply not want to delay gratification. Put another way, their decisions may not reflect the sort of impulsive nature we tend to attribute them to.

"When resources are low and scarce, the rational decision is to take the immediate benefit and to discount the future gain," said Melissa Sturge-Apple, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who studies child development. "When children are faced with economic uncertainty, impoverished conditions, not knowing when the next meal is, etc. — they may be better off if they take what is in front of them."

***
In some ways, this uncovers a broader problem with how we perceive the actions of people who live very different lives than we do. We brand certain actions and choices as mistakes, when they might simply be developmental adjustments necessary to cope with their environment. For those who don't worry about their next meal, because they never had to, choosing a marshmallow now instead of two marshmallows in a few minutes, all things equal, could only be the result of impulse-driven folly. For those who do have to worry about the next meal, passing up food now for the promise of food later is the misguided move.

Seeing the tree

I've been thinking of some of the responses to the most recent post. My personal thoughts are that there will always be aspects of reality that are either difficult or perhaps even impossible for us to explain because of the limitations we have in terms of our limited awareness from moment to moment (limited ability to taken in all information without distortion), limitations in conceptualizing or rationalizing things (limitation on cognition in understanding the information we've received), and the inherent limitations of language (limitations in describing or understanding in a two-part communication). It's interesting the different ways that different cultures attempt to conceptualize, rationalize, or verbalize certain types of experience. I do not denigrate these attempts simply because the use a language to describe them that is not my own and does not jive completely with my experience of reality or what I think I know about reality from my education or other sources.

For example, I was recently exposed to some of the writings of self-described shaman Malidoma Patrice Somé. Short and sweet account -- he was taken from his African village while still a boy and educated in a white man's Catholic boarding school. When he was finally able to come back, he had lost most of his language and way of thinking from the village. The elders decided he had to go through the rites of becoming a man. One of his tasks, of "seeing" a tree, gives him great difficulty. One of the elders remarks:

Whatever he learned in the school of the white man must be hurting his ability to push through the veil. Something they did to him is telling him not to see this tree. But why would they do that? You cannot teach a child to conspire against himself. What kind of teacher would teach something like that? Surely the white man didn't do that to him. Can it be that the white man's power can be experiences only if he first buries the truth? How can a person have knowledge if he can't see?

Frustrated, he keeps at it for all of that day and into the next day. Finally, he sees the tree for the essence of who it is, such that becomes enraptured, consumed by it in a way that seemed pure and profound, an overwhelming love.

"My experience of 'seeing' the lady in the tree had worked a major change in the way I perceived things as well as my ability to respond to the diverse experiences that constituted my education in the open-air classroom of the bush. This change in perspective did not affect the logical, common-sense part of my mind. Rather, it operated as an alternative way of being in the world that competed with my previous mind-set — mostly acquired in the Jesuit seminary.

"My visual horizons had grown disproportionately. I was discovering that the eye is a machine that, even at its best, can still be improved, and that there is more to sight than just physical seeing. I began to understand that human sight creates its own obstacles, stops seeing when the general consensus says it should. But since my experience with the tree, I began to perceive that we are often watched at a close distance by beings we ourselves cannot see, and that when we do see these otherworldly beings, it is only after they have given us permission to see further — and only after they have made some adjustment in themselves to preserve their integrity. And isn't it true that there is something secret about everything and everybody?"

Is his version of a tree more or less real than most people's version of a tree? Each version is obviously affected greatly depending on what sort of narrative each person uses to explain their lives (see last post). To me, the interesting thing is not so much who is right, but how different each version could be and yet with certain advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of functioning in the world.

I once posted about how schizophrenia is dealt with in native tribes differently than we do. This shaman also has a different view of mental illness from the traditional western one:

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.
***
In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

This is obviously a different view from western thought. The western world might explain this by saying things like, people who struggle have more empathy for others who might be going through struggles themselves. I'm not sure which explanation is more correct, but it's interesting that they're so deeply engrained in the different cultures, a cultural blindness that limits one's ability to see or appreciate the different perspective.

I did like this open-mindedness regarding mental illness, though. Similarly:

“Just as we came in this world alone, so we remember alone.  The elders who facilitate our act of remembering do not mind what we remember as long as we do exactly what we are supposed to do, according to our true nature.”

For a ton of related quotes from him, see here.

Quote: Education

“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”

― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

(Not) Dressing the Part

The Wall Street Journal reports on recent findings about how what you wear affects people's view of you. That's not surprising. The finding that goes a little against (most people's) conventional wisdom is that dressing down or dressing eccentrically can often make you look like you are somebody important -- important enough to not have to dress like the rest of the crowd (sheep?). Think sweat pants in a luxury store. Under the headline "Success Outside the Dress Code":

One obvious way people signal what the researchers called "status" is through visible markers, like what they wear and what they buy. Previous research has largely examined why people buy or wear branded items.

Less work has focused on what others think of those who try to communicate that they are different or worthy of attention. Efforts to be different are interesting because humans are wired to conform and be part of a group.

In a series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research in February, Silvia Bellezza, a doctoral student, and two Harvard professors sought to examine what observers thought of individuals who deviated from the norm in the workplace and in a retail setting. Some of the work was conducted in the lab on students. Other studies took place in the community and involved passersby or attendees of a seminar. Most of the studies included about 150 participants. What they found was that being a little different can socially benefit people—in some situations.

"The problem is that conforming to norms is an easy and safe spot to be in," Ms. Bellezza said. "If you're willing to deviate, there are upsides." It's also long been known that people veer from what's expected after they've built up enough trust within a group. But, she says, acting differently risks losing the benefits that come with conforming, such as shared group identity and automatic group trust.

Interestingly, this nonconformity only works in particular contexts -- when it's obvious that the person has intentionally bucked the norms and where there are enough context clues for the observers to believe that you have high status (e.g. being in a luxury goods store or lecturing at a podium at a university). I often think that people underestimate the role of context in people's perceptions. I have only been treated like I could possibly been a celebrity maybe once, and it was while I was wearing a hat and sunglasses, but was in a particular boutique in a specific neighborhood known for that sort of thing. Similarly, although I know I am not remarkably attractive, I know that the context that I am in and the way I carry myself can make me very desirable to some (does anyone have a crush on Michelle Obama? Any Obama?).

Of course, it's not always desirable to be seen as someone who will buck trends (as rescinded job offers can attest). Sometimes the only thing you want to do is not be noticed or standout in any way.

(Video link if it doesn't show up embedded)


I especially liked the study that found that a professor wearing a t-shirt was rated more highly than the one wearing a tie. I remember when I was first going on the market for professorships, the advice given was to not actually wear a suit for interviews and mock teaching exercises, but rather something more like a tweed jacket and loafers and the equivalent for women. When I taught, I rarely wore actual suits to the point that when I actually did, a lot of my students assumed that I had just come from somewhere else (court, a conference, etc.). But, as I wrote in the book, I particularly pushed boundaries in situations where appearance and first impressions were even more dominant -- academic conferences where I was presenting my research. In those situations I never wore a suit. One time I wore a beautiful silk fitted summer dress with bold colors that my friend had chosen for me. Another time I wore torn jeans and cowboy boots with a masculine looking blazer. At the time I believed that the message I was conveying was that I didn't fit in, but not in a bad way. My research was not traditional and I wanted to portray the image of someone who was confident bucking trends. I attempted to portray this image in more ways than just my fashion choices. I would often portray various slightly outlandish social personas -- the aggressive feminist, the seductive charmer, the too willing acolyte -- all to fit whoever I was talking to. Of course there is such thing as going to far. One of my friends calls my going-too-far-in-social-situations persona "the Hulk", for its outsized social gestures. Of course at that point I just come off as creepy.But it's charming to see my intuitions backed up by research.

Some of the best advice from the article: "Don't talk a lot if you have high status. People will assume you're competent and when you talk, they will listen to you."

Manipulation 105

How to turn a hater into a fan, Benjamin Franklin style, from David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart: A Field Guide to the Brain's Guile". First he talks about how our flawed perception of the world provides ample opportunity for us to be fooled:

The last one hundred years of research suggest that you, and everyone else, still believe in a form of naïve realism. You still believe that although your inputs may not be perfect, once you get to thinking and feeling, those thoughts and feelings are reliable and predictable. We now know that there is no way you can ever know an “objective” reality, and we know that you can never know how much of subjective reality is a fabrication, because you never experience anything other than the output of your mind. Everything that’s ever happened to you has happened inside your skull.

Second, the Benjamin Franklin method of messing with another person's mind:

Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without “paying any servile respect to him.” Franklin’s reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”
***
When you feel anxiety over your actions, you will seek to lower the anxiety by creating a fantasy world in which your anxiety can’t exist, and then you come to believe the fantasy is reality, just as Benjamin Franklin’s rival did. He couldn’t possibly have lent a rare book to a guy he didn’t like, so he must actually like him. Problem solved.
***
The Benjamin Franklin effect is the result of your concept of self coming under attack. Every person develops a persona, and that persona persists because inconsistencies in your personal narrative get rewritten, redacted, and misinterpreted. If you are like most people, you have high self-esteem and tend to believe you are above average in just about every way. It keeps you going, keeps your head above water, so when the source of your own behavior is mysterious you will confabulate a story that paints you in a positive light. If you are on the other end of the self-esteem spectrum and tend to see yourself as undeserving and unworthy [and] will rewrite nebulous behavior as the result of attitudes consistent with the persona of an incompetent person, deviant, or whatever flavor of loser you believe yourself to be. Successes will make you uncomfortable, so you will dismiss them as flukes. If people are nice to you, you will assume they have ulterior motives or are mistaken. Whether you love or hate your persona, you protect the self with which you’ve become comfortable. When you observe your own behavior, or feel the gaze of an outsider, you manipulate the facts so they match your expectations.

This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one. That’s the cycle of cognitive dissonance; a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way.

By the way, a while ago I posted something about Benjamin Franklin possibly being a sociopath, and people vehemently disagreed:

Like many people full of drive and intelligence born into a low station, Franklin developed strong people skills and social powers. All else denied, the analytical mind will pick apart behavior, and Franklin became adroit at human relations. From an early age, he was a talker and a schemer, a man capable of guile, cunning, and persuasive charm. He stockpiled a cache of secret weapons, one of which was the Benjamin Franklin effect, a tool as useful today as it was in the 1730s and still just as counterintuitive.

Maybe he was not a sociopath, but he certainly had many sociopathic traits. 

Shifting perception

This NPR post is a good follow-up to the previous post about certainty -- how and why people change their minds about something. The set-up is simple, a man shot photos of huskies playing with migrating polar bears. In 1994 he published the shots in National Geographic, but people hated the photos and the photographer:

[The] photographer Rosing "was besieged by angry faxes and phone calls," from people who thought the photos couldn't be real, that the dog was probably put in the bear's path, "chained up as bait for the white monster." This wasn't play. This wasn't innocent. This was the prelude to a kill — "a sinister trap." The bear, they said, was about to spring and bite the dog; when the pictures stopped, the bear pounced. The dog, they imagined, was probably terrified. No one wanted to look at these photos, Rosing told Jon. "People just couldn't believe it," so he didn't try to sell them. He just stashed them away.


In 2007, the photos were reposted online. The reactions were flip-flopped. More modern audiences were enchanted:

What happened? How could people, maybe the same people, just 13 years later stare at the same pictures and feel so differently about them? Mooallem has a theory. In 1994, he thinks, polar bears were still thought of as proud, dangerous, scary animals. A decade earlier National Geographic put out a polar bear video called "Polar Bear Alert" that begins with a young couple pushing a stroller through Churchill, while Jason Robards, the narrator, describes the town as the "one place in the world where the great white bears roam the streets, dangerously immune to the presence of their only enemy ... man." The dad had a rifle around his shoulder. He needed to, because these bears attacked.

NatGeo's film was rich with bear clawings, bear murders. . . . This film made a particularly deep impression — that these animals were instinctive killers. Knowing that, feeling that, the sequence in Brian Ladoon's backyard made no sense. Vicious Lords of the Tundra don't nuzzle dogs.

Thirteen years later, polar bears hadn't changed, but our sense of them had. By 2007, most people had seen scenes of weak, starving bears struggling to stay on shrinking hunks of melting ice. The earth was warming and polar bears had no place to go. Suddenly, they were vulnerable, heading to extinction. Animals, says Mooallem are "free-roaming Rorschachs." We see them through the heavy filter of our own feelings, our own needs. And our filter for polar bears had flipped. Animals who'd once been proud and vicious had become "delicate, drowning" victims, lonely animals — who now just might need the companionship of a friendly husky — who might come to a backyard, looking for a hug.

Jon Mooallem believes that the stories we tell ourselves about animals totally color how we see them. "Emotion matters. Imagination matters, and we are free to spin whatever stories we want about them." The wild animals, he says, "always have no comment." 

Sociopaths have long had no comment either on the way they are portrayed. I wonder what will change now, if anything, about the public's perception of them. From the comments section of the NPR post:

"Seems to me that MOST hatred.................is based on ignorance."

Or rather, a limited perspective, which we all have. It isn't such a broad term or loaded phrase, but is the same idea. Comes from the popular wisdom that hate comes from fear, which in turn comes from a lack of understanding, especially when we are talking about people fearing/ hating other people. I agree that this is in large part the problem, a human problem. We all have a limited view of the world, and try to judge based on our understanding of our own reality. It takes someone, not necessarily with charisma, or money, or a great idea, but someone with a deep understanding of people, who can be the type of leader to bridge us past this hatred to empathy and understanding instead. Only then can we move on to solutions.


I, too, wondered if the polar bear in the first photograph was going to eat the dog, but it didn't fill me with hate. That would be totally natural. But seeing it in context with the playing is pretty phenomenal.

Being seen

I've written before about how sociopaths have an uncanny ability to see, understand, and predict people's likes and behaviors. I've also suggested that if people are trying to throw a sociopath off their scent, they poison the well of information. But even if there isn't a sociopath specifically targeting things, people have mentioned that there is something unsettling about being seen for what you truly are. A reader writes:

I read a blog entry from July 2011 from a reader who is married to a sociopath and is herself an 'uber-empath'.  Her comments and your response resonated with me a great deal.  You said:

I think it's really interesting that him being able to see you to your core is a plus in your eyes. Do you think that is atypical for empaths? Don't they like to hide certain parts of them. Isn't that what I sometimes hear marriage self-help types preach? That there should be mystery in marriages? I have sometimes wondered whether that ended some of my relationships. I am always fine seeing people in all their imperfection, but sometimes I think the people I was with were not fine -- did not feel comfortable being laid bare like that.

I don't think 'regular' people do want to be seen so clearly at all, but that it's not something they consciously contemplate or contrive.  Life is mostly about being accepted and I think there is a great deal of fear-driven, unconscious shaping of personality in order to avoid rejection.  If someone is truly balanced, they will let others 'in' over time and with trust, which is a healthy protective mechanism.  They don't have a need to hide parts of themselves but nor do they need to be exposed unnecessarily.  People 'just know' when the boundaries of thought processes they are willing to share with others are being intruded upon and will move away from that.  

Why don't people want to be seen?  I'd guess at vulnerability.  For the same reason people don't reveal all their personal information and thoughts to say coworkers or people they've just met, they don't want someone to come along and just 'take' that information from them.  I'm just guessing but that may be how people feel if they sense that you know a lot about them that they haven't revealed at will.  I'd probably feel that way if I felt that someone who could be a threat to me did it.  Someone I shared an apartment with who has many sociopathic traits once told me that "he knew a lot more about me than I thought".  At the time, I didn't really know what to make of it and didn't worry too much because I didn't see him doing anything harmful.  But when I have thought back to that comment, I find it revealing that he felt the need to let me know that.  Only someone wanting to assert power would make such a comment.  It was a fairly innocuous attempt at letting me know that he was in charge of things... but some subsequent behaviour revealed that he had a pretty serious sense of grandiosity.  Perhaps people feel a loss of control if they feel that you know things about them?  

As a uber-empath myself, I do want to be seen in my entirety, flaws and all.  Otherwise my relationships are unfulfilling; not complete.   

I thrive in emotional environments like funerals and heated arguments, when others don't know what to do.  When I saw a friend last week and asked if she was ok (she clearly looked upset to me), she was surprised that I could tell that she was upset and said that no one else seemed to notice. I've heard this before . I can clearly see people's strengths and weaknesses, why they have a certain perspective, and what piece of the puzzle they are missing.  But I have no desire to use this against them and feel a much greater degree of responsibility to others than the average person.  

I don't know whether my interactions with sociopaths have helped me gain a sense of people. I'd say they've encouraged me to want to understand more and to seek out knowledge about the variety in the emotional lives of others and how they think.  As long as I can remember, I always wanted to understand my own mind, because I knew my perspective of things was different from those around me from a young age.  This has a lot to do with the family and community I happened to grow up in, which was very bourgeois.  I believe my parents are narcissists and that I learned to cater to their emotional needs, so there was training there. Then the efforts to understand my own resulting feelings.  But I'd say it also has a lot to do with nature too.  

I'd say that in the past, sociopaths have been attracted to me because of my openness, flexibility, willingness to be seen and vulnerability.  I was attracted to the intensity I felt and what seemed like deep connections.  And to 'being seen'.  But the on and off nature of those connections is what can be damaging to empaths, and was to me.  

Eyes wide open

I spent years studying music. After a while my ears got very sensitive to even small differences in pitch. On the good side, I am a better musician because of it. I am more appreciative of people who play or sing truly well. But I am also very acutely aware of poor playing and singing. I hear bad singing on television and cringe. I go to church and hear bad music and lean forward with my head in my hands so no one will see my discomfort. I don't necessarily want to hear these things. Sometimes I wish I didn't hear them, especially when I don't have anything invested in the activity or can't change what's going on. In those instances, the knowledge is just wasted on me.

Sometimes hearing things no one else does even makes me a target of other people's distrust. One time I was involved in a performance using primitive instruments, each with a particular "pitch". The instruments were played as a group to form "melodies". Before the performance, the instruments must have gotten mixed up because when we started playing, parts of the melody were inverted. It nearly drove me crazy and as we walked off stage I immediately remarked to my colleagues on the issue. No one had noticed. They looked at my like I was loony. No one heard it. No one believed me. I don't know why, because they thought they heard something else? My word against what they thought they heard and they trusted their own senses more. A few days later we listened to the recording together. Everyone was watching me as someone pressed "play" -- either I was wrong or they were wrong and pretty soon we would know for certain. I was vindicated, but I wasn't happy about it. Not really. The didn't apologize. They looked at me like I was a witch.

It makes me trust people less too. Once I lost a competition to someone whom I thought was clearly playing out of tune. Because I believed that surely everyone else could hear how badly the intonation was, I thought there must be some other explanation for why his performance beat mine, something nefarious at work. I saw a conspiracy and cover up where there was none. It would be one thing if I could just convince myself that I  have idiosyncratic preferences that aren't shared by many people -- which is better, beer or wine? There's no certain answer in matters of opinion. But matters of pitch are objective. Either you are playing or singing the pitches that are being requested of you or you are not. A tuning machine would be able to make these fine distinctions and so can I, for all the good it does me.

As a child I saw and understood a lot of things that I know I was not supposed to. Even now I see things that I don't necessarily want to see. I see people's fear and their betrayal, how weak and unreliable their love is, how soft their convictions are. And especially when I was growing up I thought that a lot of the world must be corrupt. Because why didn't other people see these things and act accordingly? It seemed like a cover up. And when I mentioned it to people they didn't believe me. They thought that I was making things up, and in blatant bizarre ways. I learned to stop pointing these things out, but I did feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland.

By the way, does any one else hear the wrong notes in penultimate and ante-penultimate timpani pitches in the theme song for Fringe?

Guest quote: expanding consciousness

"If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you'll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness, when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness.

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness."

David Lynch

Volume and nuance of emotions

Once upon a time I was discussing music over lunch with a graduate school advisor. I mentioned to him that my biggest strength as a musician was having a highly tuned ear, being able to distinguish between slight changes in intonation that most people would not be able to perceive, much less know in what direction the pitch moved and by how much. Later in the conversation I asked him to repeat himself and explained that I have a hard time hearing in crowded, noisy places. He looked confused.

"I thought you just told me that you have good hearing."

I was about to explain when I saw him understand, "Oh, you have bad hearing, but it is nuanced." 

Yes! Exactly. I have bad hearing but it is extremely nuanced. In fact, sometimes I have wondered if my hearing became nuanced to compensate for my hearing being bad. 

I was remembering this story recently and thinking, maybe this is a good analogy for how I interpret emotional cues. People always wonder, how is it that sociopaths are so mind-blind about somethings but can be so uncannily perceptive about others. I've had a hard time explaining it myself. But maybe it is just this: that it's difficult for me to hear certain things and not others because they are actually unrelated in a way that is not obvious to the average observer. Maybe the emotional cues I am picking up on use a different sort of perception, like less empathy, more sheer observational skills. Or it's more something that can be learned with practice, like reading people's microexpressions? 

Or maybe it's hard for me to pick up on big picture things, like which emotion, and it's easier for me to pick up on small emotional nuances, like how that emotion is affecting a person's motivation in that moment. Maybe it's like Newman says, that sociopaths can do quite well with emotion as long as their attention has been directed to it (e.g. talking with a person one on one), but if there is too much background noise distracting, it will go completely over my head? 

I haven't refined the theory yet, but I feel there is something to it.