修行会

There are quite a few things going on here, and these conversations have been addressed and discussed in countless tomes, journal articles, books, poems, and passages in and through many mediums. It’s already started. Move from here. Ichi-go, ichi-eh. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. This is it.

Tokenization by Functional Fixation on Minority Feelings

I cannot really say that there had been a feeling (i.e., affect) of selection bias, because feeling is concomitant thought (i.e., cognition) and behavior. I find the social framing a bit reminiscent of indexing on feelings for women and gay workers as opposed to indexing on cognition/intelligence of heterosexual males. This wouldn’t be the first time this was experienced, and this reality was shared between peers at the Women in Tech (WiT) conference aforementioned. This indexical language approaches tokenization as put forth by Kanter (1977). So please do not minimize the cognition and behavior of marginalized socially constructed groups with oversampled focus on feelings (it makes sense due to the saliency of minority emotion driven by dominant obstruction giving way to psychological reactance; see Brehm, 1966). Besides, most of the time, I live in flow state, which is highly correlated to joy, and this is evidenced in neuropsychological assessment, self-report, observational surveys, and psychological assessments reliable and valid.

Another way to say this in the old language is, “don’t infantilize me by minimizing my thoughts and behaviors by focusing only on my feelings”. This refrain has been discussed in many situations, and I’ve seen this treatment of tokenized groups become internalized/introjected such that the individual took on an identity projectively identified by the dominant group. In psychodynamic theory, the dominant group is projectively identifying their behaviors they don’t like onto the other group culturally devalued (in this case, projecting “feeling”‘s phenomenologically related category onto others²) leaving culturally valued rationality and behavior (i.e., productivity) safely attributable in social situations. This leads to the concept of conditional communication.

Marginalization of Cultural Diversity Through Conditional Communication

Conditional communication seems to result in selection bias and survivorship bias. Selection bias is not giving an equal shot at random selection thus to see that in the long scheme of things, any kind of condition may lend toward stellar communication.¹ Carl Rogers (1956) was a principal psychologist who championed unconditional positive regard rather than conditional regard. I’ve personally experienced very beneficial conversations with individuals crossing many spheres of life, identities, classes, cultures, ethnicities, races, ranks, language communities, to entire communities of practice with diverse backgrounds. By conversation, I don’t mean lectures though in asynchronous communications such as this, dense packets of communication may seem more lecture like and most likely contributed to the objectivation (i.e. social production) of lecturous communications (ha!).

Unconditional Communication

Since communication is in part informed by and informs ecology, I think efforts to become aware of the context is of utility, though do not wish to influence the context for doing so would reconfigure situational identities and multiple selves (Markus & Kunda, 1986;  Markus & Nurius, 1986; Markus, 1977; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; McConnel, 2011; Scott et al., 2022). Not only that, this invites social desirability bias (Edwards, 1953) and is curiously correlated to hopelessness and suicide (Lineman & Nielsen, 1981). Therefore it seems that artificial conditions for communication may construct a reality that may draw on dominant interactions with tokenized individuals to create a situation of hopelessness in conditional situations historically favoring artificially selected individuals due to sociological effects in group formations.

Detokenization

Principally, I recognize that psychological flooding to overcome maladaptive cognition etc. is not for everyone, nor is it for the world at large, though right now there is a [redacted] kind of flooding in operation. There is good faith, nearly reminiscent of organismic theories of psychology (e.g., Rogers etc.), though I recognize changing contexts that may sunset or call for sunsetting naturally and artificially selected thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Regarding contexts and aspects of attitudes (i.e., thoughts, feelings, and behaviors), we can turn briefly toward the comment about antagonism.

Please do understand, what is antagonizing to one culture based in belief systems developed in collective effervescence (Durkheim), crystallized in group labors toward ideologies (Marx & Engels), and situated ecologically in thought styles (Fleck) may protagonize in another culture of similar macro- to micro- level mechanisms (for social order mechanisms, see Hechter & Horne; Coleman). Group behaviors etc. also play, and so much more. I remember experiencing white male dominant heterosexual peers in leadership teams argue that female, homosexual, and young generations were “emotional” and language overindexed on “feelings”. In fact colleagues tried so hard to manage female, homosexual, and younger feelings that a backlash ensued, because the absense of respecting their intellectual and behavioral productivity leading toward a self-fulfilling prophecy; enter the centipede dilemma.

Centipede Dilemma

I am sure that you are aware of the centipede dilemma (Craster, 1871; Humphrey, 1923), a situation wherein calling attention to how a centipede walks interrupts the centipede’s ability to walk. Now this can be abused, and it is done in martial contexts continually. The instructor points out behavior, creates excessive attention to that behavior (changing context), student attention leads to altered saliency maps, altered saliency maps leads to changes in regulation, and suddenly the student is issued a litany of corrections by an instructor as how to best behave. This happens quite often, and can in many cases, if the instructor is clever, abuse this reality. Often it is not intentionally abused, but it is serendipitously collapsing reality in favor of an instructor to the detriment of the student. This can be seen in families when children visit as adults, or long time students visiting teachers only to repeat the same patterns over and over that they had moved on beyond in adulthood.

Unconditional Aiki

In terms of our mutual practice experiencing a dynamic of parallel-perpendicular dimensions of interaction, it would seem the arriving at unconditional positive regard is demonstrated in application of learnings of psychology as of late. Applying Ryan & Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory’s universally recognized needs (i.e., values) of relation, competency, and autonomy may be evidenced in unconditionality of regard in relation, unconditionality of support in competency, and unconditional acceptance in autonomy. Of course this is checked in certain conditions (e.g, trying to murder “me” invites a check on relation, competency, and autonomy).

Discussion

As discussed, the focus on “feelings” tokenizes our entire community’s competencies (i.e., skills) and behaviors (i.e., autonomies) leaving inequality, less diversity, and the consequences of these in outcomes for groups merely socially constructed. As Thomas & Thomas said, “if men define the situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928), and here the situation defined had indexed on feelings of people offering peer review (i.e., critique) of a post that utterly is not self, nor other, nor we, nor they, nor of a brand. Simply peer review, and to be able to think, feel, and behave in unconditionality is to me evidentiary of realization. Yet of what?

What is realized? Just this… and this… and this… and if it seems like a competition, then it’s only because there is a struggle to survive, and thrive in a world difficult and made more so by a Cosmic Plinko Machine of physiobiopsychosocial phenomena in producing social orders disconnecting social goals from institutional means. Understanding this, is empathy. With what? Limitless lifeforms in thought, in feeling, and in behavior. And in this empathy, there is understanding that favoring these beings, over those ones, projecting conflict because resolving conflict is all that had been known, yet no thank you—this is a healthy boundary.

I know it’s not easy, and as Dr. Guralnik mentions when meeting with couples, a basis of care for another is a foundation for relations and their continued healing etc. Yet as we know, and have discovered, recorded in literature: commitment isn’t all that comprises relationships, relationships are also dependent on passion and also intimacy (Sternberg, 1988) where the four-horseman of relationship apocalypse to relational destruction had been proposed as criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling (Gottman, 1993). The conversation continues, it is far beyond starting.

Regarding my perspective, I utterly do not suggest looking for one, for in flow, we work with what’s right here, and that’s unceasingly changing, and is a flow in process, where I think accepting it unconditionally allows for a greater coordination and cooperation are the principal aspects of social order. My perspective isn’t mine at all, but merely aligned as joint attentional frames (Tomasello, 2003) most likely as supported by mirror neurons, as a result of the removal and/or control of biases such that one can experience a random life giving all of samsara equal chances of observation in cognition, in emotional valences of affect, and motivation in behavior such that reality can be seen directly for what it is.

Therefore it is asserted that I do not have a perspective, nor a style, nor an ideology, nor a belief. X is correlated to Y—this is not evidence of causation—and what I think helps more oft (a matter of probability) is X causes Y, at these frequencies, durations, and intensities on these schedules [of reinforcement], where top-down and bottom-up regulation of cognition, feeling, and behavior is seen as evolutionarily selected both naturally and artificially. And now comes speciation…

A Song

You wanted to know what I feel?

Limitless.
Emptiness.
The Beautiful Black.
[REDACTED],
not self,
not other,
not we,
not they…
far far beyond.

“Do you hear that?”
“The stream far off in the distance?”

Beyond antagonism,
beyond protaganism,
“where does the tathagatha go at death”? 

This is it.
Right here.
Right now.

This feeling,
has a name.

It’s called—
doing—
what’s right.

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned from trauma, trauma informed care, and independent research of a peer and their literature reviews on these topics of main concern and respective core categories is that shame does indeed obstruct empathy. And what does the tokenized invite most often in the face of dominant stereotye, prejudice, and discrimination? Dominant Shame.

Shame resilience is key for dominant groups to empathize with tokenized groups.

You’re here reading these words, engaging in asynchronous joint attention (Hodges, 2022), that’s good enough. It’s the stuff societies are built on. Congratulations.

Good luck, I’ve poured more into this discussion than you know and well, as in Irving’s Cider House Rules, the awakened warrior… is… of use.

Goodbye.

🙂

Each letter,
each breath,
a last.

Paired equal chance,
a randomly selected “reckless” abandon
of youth—
dialectic,
inseprable,
unconditional
positive regard. 

I do love you,
but then again,
without me and
you:
love is limitless.

and that,
this,
is supreme.

And now…
here come the effects…

Good luck!

In gratitude,
limitless!
Byeeeeeeeee!

Notes

¹ “conditional communication” (i.e., techniques [implying technological productive ideological [technical sets [(i.e., cultur<e|al[divisional[trolly[kno[sli}c{ing]tting]problem]capture]capital>)]]social graph[ic] mechanic[<]s[|al>]][art]])

² conjecture: possibly related to “othering”

Appendix I: Change Modification Log

05 JAN 26 - Eliminated note on image source; image was removed.