The unconscious speaks in a language older than language. It speaks through dreams, and if dreams are ignored it will conspire with our body to use our emotions to get us to act out its messages. You'll become obsessed with an idea which, if examined allegorically, will reveal the true need beneath the desire.
Why does this happen?
It appears to be a consequence of the timescales involved in our evolution. Multicellular life has been on earth for roughly a billion years. Language, on the other hand, has only been around for 200,000 years. This is a 5000:1 ratio. Humans have adapted to think in language in this short period. The unconscious has had to adapt and find ways to communicate to the conscious mind with its newfangled technology. Language has allowed for incredible detail in thought transmission between members of our species. This is another thing with which the mind has had to cope. All this new information - the giant library of language and the innermost thoughts of the species has led to adaptations for mass storage. The most significant and pleasurable of these is the construction of metaphor.
How could metaphor save space?
By seeing the similarities between objects, one can consolidate storage. For example, imagine that you had one file for horse, and one file for zebra. Each takes up the same amount of space. But once you realize that a zebra is a lot like a horse, just with black and white stripes, then you can combine the files into one called 'horse-shaped animals', with an if-then clause attached (If horse shaped animal has black and white stripes, then it is a zebra). This takes up much less space than two separate files. Add to this files for donkeys, ponies, mules, even giraffes (if horse-shaped animal has long neck and stubby horns...) and suddenly you are taking up the space of one file, but allowing yourself to identify dozens of animals. This seems much more efficient. This can chunk up and down conceptually, leading to super efficient storage with maximized identification. The 'horse-shaped animal' file itself could be an addendum to the 'mammal' file, which could be an addendum to the 'animal' file. The more consolidation, the more efficiency and speed in navigating. It is browsing an analog library versus browsing Google. Metaphor allows us to wire our brains to work like Google.
This is why our dreams use fluid images. It appears that dreaming is an effort to take new experiences, information, people, and places and find similar things in our past. It then tacks addenda to existing files to allow us to navigate our fresh experiences. We can't say what a new thing is, but we can say what it is like. That is why sometimes, in dreams, we are in a place that is both our elementary school and family church building. Both are in the 'childhood buildings' file, so the visual representation confirms the potential reality of this storage mechanism.
Is there any way to help our dreams do their job in a better way?
I think so. By studying the meaning of proper names, called onomastics, we can give our unconscious a leg up in communication with our conscious mind. For example, the name Andrew means 'manly', and the name Clement means 'gentle'. Knowing this, these are now associations the unconscious can use to send you instruction in dreams. If a man has a dream that his buddy Andy starts singing "Oh my darling Clementine", and he knows the meaning of these names, the unconscious may have picked them as anthropomorphized principles for the conscious mind to follow. The manly attributes of the dreamer need to give voice to the more gentle and merciful parts.
You begin to see that storytellers around the world choose names which have meanings relevant to their role in the story. I am currently excavating what appears to be a reliably predictable pattern in character names.
Movies from Finding Nemo to Fifty Shades of Grey have revealed some deeper meanings through onomastic examination.
I find my writing style insufferable. I will work to refine it and make it less cumbersome and arrogant. Here's a shorter version:
If you study the meanings of names, your dreams will be easier to examine allegorically using the names of the characters. Dreams are the garden from which the fruit of myth grows. What you learn about dream interpretation can be applied to all human storytelling.
Boom. I am not a scholar. I should stop trying to write like one.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Sophogenic Phrases and Dog-whistles
I made up a word, guys. Is that annoying?
I noticed that there are phrases in English that can instantly reframe a preceding statement. One of these phrases was made annoyingly popular by the television show The Office. You know this phrase. "That's what she said." Immediately upon hearing this phrase, the mind creates a context in which the preceding statement was describing sex. Its irritating quality comes from its relentless ability to produce the desired result in the hearer. It is super effective.
"That's what she said!" is a pornogenic phrase. It immediately generates sexual thoughts.
On a distant part of that spectrum, we have the New Testament. Jesus would teach in parables in order to speak openly about things which, if explicitly taught, would get him censured by the state. He would occasionally end these parables with the phrase "He that hath ears, let him hear." This was a way of letting those in the know that he was speaking in parable. It was an intellectual dog-whistle.
One day, I noticed that "He that hath ears, let him hear." has a similar effect as "That's what she said." That phrase had the ability to immediately take my mind somewhere it had no intention of going moments before. But instead of suddenly thinking of sex, I was suddenly thinking of hidden wisdom.
"My boss is really getting on my nerves." said I.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." said my inner voice.
That phrase instantly makes you look for deeper meanings in whatever was just said.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." is a sophogenic phrase. it immediately generates a search for a deeper meaning, leading to wisdom.
Sophogenic as a word, though, is cumbersome and distracting. In future posts, I will refer to sophogenic phrases as dog-whistles. They are short phrases that help orient the mind in the direction of wisdom.
Other dog-whistles include phrases like "Truer words have never been spoken" or "Thus saith the Lord."
If you value wisdom and self-knowledge, try this experiment. The next time you find yourself complaining about something, say it again, then follow it up with "He that hath ears let him hear." It's fun! It feels like solving a riddle, or discovering a conspiracy. If you make a habit of this, you may find yourself gaining wisdom from even the most unlikely sources.
I noticed that there are phrases in English that can instantly reframe a preceding statement. One of these phrases was made annoyingly popular by the television show The Office. You know this phrase. "That's what she said." Immediately upon hearing this phrase, the mind creates a context in which the preceding statement was describing sex. Its irritating quality comes from its relentless ability to produce the desired result in the hearer. It is super effective.
"That's what she said!" is a pornogenic phrase. It immediately generates sexual thoughts.
On a distant part of that spectrum, we have the New Testament. Jesus would teach in parables in order to speak openly about things which, if explicitly taught, would get him censured by the state. He would occasionally end these parables with the phrase "He that hath ears, let him hear." This was a way of letting those in the know that he was speaking in parable. It was an intellectual dog-whistle.
One day, I noticed that "He that hath ears, let him hear." has a similar effect as "That's what she said." That phrase had the ability to immediately take my mind somewhere it had no intention of going moments before. But instead of suddenly thinking of sex, I was suddenly thinking of hidden wisdom.
"My boss is really getting on my nerves." said I.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." said my inner voice.
That phrase instantly makes you look for deeper meanings in whatever was just said.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." is a sophogenic phrase. it immediately generates a search for a deeper meaning, leading to wisdom.
Sophogenic as a word, though, is cumbersome and distracting. In future posts, I will refer to sophogenic phrases as dog-whistles. They are short phrases that help orient the mind in the direction of wisdom.
Other dog-whistles include phrases like "Truer words have never been spoken" or "Thus saith the Lord."
If you value wisdom and self-knowledge, try this experiment. The next time you find yourself complaining about something, say it again, then follow it up with "He that hath ears let him hear." It's fun! It feels like solving a riddle, or discovering a conspiracy. If you make a habit of this, you may find yourself gaining wisdom from even the most unlikely sources.
Skeleton Keys
In order to streamline the process of applying and communicating the Allegorical Imperative, I will be applying some heuristic tools. One of those tools will be called Skeleton Keys.
Skeleton keys will be short blog posts wherein, rather than write extended examinations of a subject, I will simply list the comparison points I find relevant to the AI. These lists are meant to convey the AI insights in as concise a manner as possible, while making the metaphors clear.
Examples:
Skeleton Key: Guardians of the Galaxy
Peter - Ego, Conscious Mind, Mercury, Hermes
Gamora - Anima, Imagination, Venus, Aphrodite
Rocket Racoon - Mammalian brain, fight or flight, Earth (Kindom Animalia)
Groot - Flesh, Earth (Kingdom Plantae)
Drax - Nietzschean Ressentiment, Emotion, Will, Mars God of war
Nova Corp - immune system, white blood cells
Ronan - Cancer
Planet Xandar - the body
Infinity stone - cell division, life
The Collector - memory
and so on.
Skeleton Key: Pop Music Song Structure
Intro - birth to age 5
1st verse - K-12
Chorus - College
2nd verse - Career, starting a family, kids in K-12
Chorus - Kids go away to college, empty nest
Bridge/Solo - Midlife crisis
3rd verse - Kids get married, start careers, approaching retirement
Chorus repeating to fade-out - retirement and death
These will be posted a lot because I'm lazy.
Skeleton keys will be short blog posts wherein, rather than write extended examinations of a subject, I will simply list the comparison points I find relevant to the AI. These lists are meant to convey the AI insights in as concise a manner as possible, while making the metaphors clear.
Examples:
Skeleton Key: Guardians of the Galaxy
Peter - Ego, Conscious Mind, Mercury, Hermes
Gamora - Anima, Imagination, Venus, Aphrodite
Rocket Racoon - Mammalian brain, fight or flight, Earth (Kindom Animalia)
Groot - Flesh, Earth (Kingdom Plantae)
Drax - Nietzschean Ressentiment, Emotion, Will, Mars God of war
Nova Corp - immune system, white blood cells
Ronan - Cancer
Planet Xandar - the body
Infinity stone - cell division, life
The Collector - memory
and so on.
Skeleton Key: Pop Music Song Structure
Intro - birth to age 5
1st verse - K-12
Chorus - College
2nd verse - Career, starting a family, kids in K-12
Chorus - Kids go away to college, empty nest
Bridge/Solo - Midlife crisis
3rd verse - Kids get married, start careers, approaching retirement
Chorus repeating to fade-out - retirement and death
These will be posted a lot because I'm lazy.
What is the Allegorical Imperative?
Humans generate and commit to emotionally compelling ideas. Sometimes these ideas produce enjoyable and preferable results. Other times, these ideas can justify killing millions of people.
How can we prevent this terrifying potential for error?
I propose the application of what I have been calling The Allegorical Imperative (AI), which is the application of emotionally compelling concepts to the biological systems within an individual human. This is to be done through metaphorical interpretation.
Rather than explain the AI further, I will demonstrate it using the classic political struggle: workers vs. owners.
Why were the works of Marx and Engels so compelling? How did they spur revolutions around the world which ended with disastrous results and millions dead? Why would people be willing to die and kill for this idea?
To discover the source of communism's conceptual power, we could apply the AI, looking for parallels between the arguments of communism and the systems within the body of the individual human.
Who are the owners within the community of the individual human? The foot? No. The pancreas? Probably not. The brain seems to be the obvious candidate, for many reasons which I will go into in another post. For now, I'll just point out the command center nature of the brain, telling the body what to do, while claiming ownership of all of it and taking credit for its accomplishments via the ego.
What then are the workers? This should be obvious as well. Your heart beats while your conscious mind sleeps. You take no conscious effort to facilitate mitosis, breathing, balance, immune defense, healing wounds, digestion, blinking, etc. Your body is the working class, your mind is the owners.
How about the means of production? That seems like a parallel of the various organs within our body.
Workers taking control of the means of production? This seems to be a metaphor for illness. Various diseases. Prolonged stress has deleterious effects on health and well-being. Often people will neglect their bodies for the sake of their minds. Workaholism, stressful commutes, emotional eating, coping behaviors, self-harm, drinking, drug use, dangerous sports, promiscuous sex, plastic surgery, insomnia - all of these behaviors are exploitation of the body by the mind. Eventually, these behaviors are met with resistance from the body in the form of illness, disease, pain, infection, organ failure, etc.
Do you see the parallels? Here's a summary of the insights gained from applying the AI to the emotionally compelling idea of workers vs, owners.
The brain exploits the body to acquire resources and manage emotions. This produces stress which exhausts the body. The body responds to this exploitation by taking control of the various bodily systems. This manifests as pain, fatigue, illness, occasionally debilitating and fatal illness, such as organ failure. Often this leads to reforms on the part of the mind. Early retirement, disability claims, dietary changes, meditation,seeing the world in a different way, reevaluation of priorities, and so on.
Do you see it? It's there. Even in this rather light treatment, it's there. See for yourself. Apply the AI to all the principles in Marx's writings. Suddenly, Das Kapital becomes a self-help book. A very useful one at that. It is ahead of its time as far as health and well being go.
This is the purpose of the blog. I want to demonstrate the power of the AI to extract wisdom in unlikely places. I want this blog to be the compost pile of human error. I want to show that bullshit is amazing fertilizer. I am on to something here and I am excited to show you how widely the Allegorical Imperative can be applied. The structure of pop songs, theoretical physics, dystopian teen action films, pet peeves, DMT trip reports, sexual fetishes, Adventure Time episodes, the Superbowl, fad diets, dreams, internet memes - all of these can become sources of wisdom when viewed through the AI lens. I even hope to tackle some of the more troubling aspects of the human condition with this tool. Obviously,
(Disclaimer: I have no credentials. I have, however, spent roughly 14000 hours (45hrs/wk, 52wks/yr, 6yrs) listening to lectures, discussions, debates, audiobooks, and podcasts while working a warehouse job. The spoken word was my constant companion. I let my curiosity guide me, leading me to learn broadly and deeply. I noticed similarities in disparate fields of study. This began happening at such a constant and consistent rate that it became undeniable. The Allegorical Imperative emerged slowly from those years of pondering. Perhaps I am walking well-trodden territory. Putting this out publicly will make that clear very quickly if it is so.)
How can we prevent this terrifying potential for error?
I propose the application of what I have been calling The Allegorical Imperative (AI), which is the application of emotionally compelling concepts to the biological systems within an individual human. This is to be done through metaphorical interpretation.
Rather than explain the AI further, I will demonstrate it using the classic political struggle: workers vs. owners.
Why were the works of Marx and Engels so compelling? How did they spur revolutions around the world which ended with disastrous results and millions dead? Why would people be willing to die and kill for this idea?
To discover the source of communism's conceptual power, we could apply the AI, looking for parallels between the arguments of communism and the systems within the body of the individual human.
Who are the owners within the community of the individual human? The foot? No. The pancreas? Probably not. The brain seems to be the obvious candidate, for many reasons which I will go into in another post. For now, I'll just point out the command center nature of the brain, telling the body what to do, while claiming ownership of all of it and taking credit for its accomplishments via the ego.
What then are the workers? This should be obvious as well. Your heart beats while your conscious mind sleeps. You take no conscious effort to facilitate mitosis, breathing, balance, immune defense, healing wounds, digestion, blinking, etc. Your body is the working class, your mind is the owners.
How about the means of production? That seems like a parallel of the various organs within our body.
Workers taking control of the means of production? This seems to be a metaphor for illness. Various diseases. Prolonged stress has deleterious effects on health and well-being. Often people will neglect their bodies for the sake of their minds. Workaholism, stressful commutes, emotional eating, coping behaviors, self-harm, drinking, drug use, dangerous sports, promiscuous sex, plastic surgery, insomnia - all of these behaviors are exploitation of the body by the mind. Eventually, these behaviors are met with resistance from the body in the form of illness, disease, pain, infection, organ failure, etc.
Do you see the parallels? Here's a summary of the insights gained from applying the AI to the emotionally compelling idea of workers vs, owners.
The brain exploits the body to acquire resources and manage emotions. This produces stress which exhausts the body. The body responds to this exploitation by taking control of the various bodily systems. This manifests as pain, fatigue, illness, occasionally debilitating and fatal illness, such as organ failure. Often this leads to reforms on the part of the mind. Early retirement, disability claims, dietary changes, meditation,seeing the world in a different way, reevaluation of priorities, and so on.
Do you see it? It's there. Even in this rather light treatment, it's there. See for yourself. Apply the AI to all the principles in Marx's writings. Suddenly, Das Kapital becomes a self-help book. A very useful one at that. It is ahead of its time as far as health and well being go.
This is the purpose of the blog. I want to demonstrate the power of the AI to extract wisdom in unlikely places. I want this blog to be the compost pile of human error. I want to show that bullshit is amazing fertilizer. I am on to something here and I am excited to show you how widely the Allegorical Imperative can be applied. The structure of pop songs, theoretical physics, dystopian teen action films, pet peeves, DMT trip reports, sexual fetishes, Adventure Time episodes, the Superbowl, fad diets, dreams, internet memes - all of these can become sources of wisdom when viewed through the AI lens. I even hope to tackle some of the more troubling aspects of the human condition with this tool. Obviously,
(Disclaimer: I have no credentials. I have, however, spent roughly 14000 hours (45hrs/wk, 52wks/yr, 6yrs) listening to lectures, discussions, debates, audiobooks, and podcasts while working a warehouse job. The spoken word was my constant companion. I let my curiosity guide me, leading me to learn broadly and deeply. I noticed similarities in disparate fields of study. This began happening at such a constant and consistent rate that it became undeniable. The Allegorical Imperative emerged slowly from those years of pondering. Perhaps I am walking well-trodden territory. Putting this out publicly will make that clear very quickly if it is so.)
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