Have you ever heard of the old saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease?
If you understand that proverb at it's core and think it's a positive sentiment, think again. That translates to many people as be an asshole until you get what you want.
"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" - Albert Maysles
In a free and open society, we'd love for that to represent it's altruistic definition of speak up and take action assertively with respect for the other components at work. But this isn't the mindset of those you encounter around you, is it?
This all boils down to a fundamental flaw in the ability for human beings to communicate effectively via artificial, remixed, and distilled language(s). Breaking the ice on comprehending this analysis requires a look at semiology. Semiology is the study of semantics; how we derive meaning from the symbols of someone or something else in order to understand them.
Passive versus Active Communication
A professor of mine once said in an advanced film theory class, on the subject of semiology, 'if I were to put us in a vaccum of time, space, setting, and preconceived notions of who we were, our ability to understand each other comes down to the string of words and paralinguistic cues we use to help the recipient understand the idea. The recipient then interpolates said string of words in their mind as you state them; comparatively referencing it against their own knowledge for relatability.
The moment I start my sentence, "That cat...", the recipient is immediately trying to process what's coming at them, so the natural thought for most people would be to assume they are talking about a feline animal that meows.
I continue, "That cat over there..." Ok, that new chunk gives the recipient some spatial and temporal context to know we are talking about something in the now and immediate vicinity.
I finish, "That cat over there is pretty cool." This completely changes the generally conceived notion of what has been processed up to that point. Only then will someone with a culturally diverse awareness and understanding be able to properly decipher the message with the additional components of accent, tone, and inflection, let alone a base understanding of the chosen language, grammar, dialect, and slang.
That leaves some people in murky territory because that doesn't translate for them. For others, they may make the creative deduction of that possibly being speech by someone at something like a jazz club in the southern United States, where one musician recognizes the talent of another, saying 'that cat over there is pretty cool'. But it's still just an educated guess no matter how cleanly you understand the person, their personality, and the other stimulus presented. Having someone finish your sentences for you or claiming to have had the exact same thought you did is the only imaginary example of harmonizing your frequency with theirs.
This one sentence shines a light on the limitations and traps of communication. It's all too easy to lose one piece of context when passing these ideas through mediums (translations, print, video, audio) where interpolation has to devolve into interpretation. This is basically being actively a part of a communication, or passively a part of a communication; dictating how many tools were given to decode a distilled articulation at a moment in time via the massage of your chosen medium.
Something like this begs questions like why the Bible(s) has been translated into 3,312 languages. If the Bible was in-fact divinely inspired, it was not meant to be unpacked with subtext it does not explicitly describe. Sub-text inferred by admittedly flawed human beings is a oxymoronic characteristic. The words as they were originally uttered were meant to stand on their own, with their own rhythm, pacing, and inflection.
Non-Verbal Communication
Examples of this concept are why framing of characters on a film screen are composed in certain styles to signal a non-auditory meaning; why emojis have become an important part of our daily messaging to one another; why 80% of magazine covers have a beautiful woman on them; why click-bait headlines exist; and why automated phone systems exist. We do what it takes to accentuate any communication opportunities in order to convey as much of the intended signal we emit through the prism of the medium to our intended recipient(s).
Marshall McLuhan was innovative in his early 1940's pontifications about how everything effects everything. It's almost as if its a translation of quantum physics, but articulated in an artistic manner because that was his lens for understanding and conveying life in a way that would resonate with others with or without an understanding of the language at the time that perpetuated the use of such words.
There is a field of study called Paralinguistics, which is a psychometric analysis of how you communicate, not what you communicate. Many of the elements that make up the 'how' is a culmination of everything in your life up to that moment, and none of it can be summed up succinctly. Socioeconomic, political, race, and gender factors become the easiest denominators for people to explain why we don't communicate effectively. To me, that essentially points out a problem and doesn't present solutions, and it obfuscates the work done to try to help make quantum physics make sense to the ordinary person.
We've all experienced the sensation of feeling someone looking at you when you were unaware of anyone's gaze or presence initially. Then you turn and see they are there. This is an electrochemical connection you are making with them just by absorbing the light you emit. That's key in the active versus passive elements of communication. Understanding each other is hard enough when we can use all senses to absorb everything coming at us in context, it becomes exponentially more difficult to create solid signals for connection when mediums are between us, but not impossible.
Verbal Communication
While subtle in so many ways, the composition, rhythm and pacing of this text stated here will potentially have different meanings for different people given the multitude of stimuli needed to create the best context. We've already pointed out that non-verbal communication is important, but words on their own have something really special about them; they cast spells.
No, seriously. Why do we define the process of the written word as spelling if such a thing was not true.
A-bra-ca-da-bra - "I create what I speak"
The composition, formation, aesthetic, and grammatical meaning of any one word is deliberate. We already know that we have had language passed down to us and we continue to evolve it for our current lives. The ingorance of root words and their meaning and purpose to deviate from synonyms has become less nuanced over time.
Many people may conflate the words human-being and person. Those two words are not synonymous at their root, yet modern culture has deemed it acceptable to interchange those two words.
For many of you, this may be abstract already, but get ready to go to outer-space. Energy, vibration, and frequency can be most easily quantified as sine waves on an electromagnetic spectrum. Human beings can generally only access less than 1% of any given sensory spectrum (audio, visual, taste, touch, and smell). Your voice emits a frequency. The light that hits your eyes in combination with your understanding of the shapes and meaning of this text emits a frequency into your retina that is then interpolated via the frequency produced by your brain to see how well it resonates and harmonizes with you, or agitates and disturbs you.
I'm sure that we've all had experiences where we were mesmerized, enchanted, and soothed by the sound of someone else's voice. That's for the reason above. Like it or not, you, through a combination of your mental and physical state, produce an electrochemical frequency (technically, a multitude of frequencies, but referred to here as a singular for simplicity of explanation) that your brain emits like an antenna. That frequency is the gateway to others being able to communicate effectively with you, and your attitude amplifies and morphs the size of the gateway, or shrinks it.
Setting the Tuner to Gamma and Theta
Controlling your attitude is one of the two things in this world you have control over. Fluctuating your attitude results in fluctuations in your electrochemical frequency, and thus, your ability to communicate. The second is your effort. That's the hard part, but you only get to maximize effort when you have the right attitude.
The human brain can operate in at least 5 wave spectrums as you can see above. The 'problem-solving, memory, and focus' range of Gamma waves takes effort to use. It doesn't just happen. You can think of the spacing between the waves as being your mental engagement level to receive and sort stimuli, while the vertical amplitude of the waves would indicate processing and interpolation of the stimuli. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
Understanding how the psychological components influence these brainwaves is what scientists are still trying to nail down, but it's fair to say that since psychopaths lack empathy, they have bandwidth limiters on the waves emitted by any of the 5 brainwaves. This means that if you were to take a brainscan of them in comparison to other 'normal' brains, it would show that some parts of the brain won't light up, or a different zone entirely would light up.
Even down to the ordinary person, we can at least primitively see that our brain lights up in different ways depending upon our thoughts and mood.
Dendritic Spines and Geometry of Neural Networks
Creating memories is like popping corn in your brain. When you impair your brain, say, with alcohol, it doesn't pop as well, which explains browning and blacking out. This is what a brain cell looks like; see the dendrite:
When you create that memory, you are using all of the frequency and stimulus your taking in at that moment to form the dentrite. It's shape can look like that of the image, but when things are 'harmonizing' and you make a 'beautiful' memory, it could look something like this:
This is a result of the harmonization of frequencies all the stimulus produces to pop like a lightning bolt on a beach and make the memory in your brain. More amazingly, everything interconnects to that memory through pathways of previous association. Not only does a memory live in the cell of the brain, it is imprinted onto the RNA that is then transmutable via your DNA.
Conceptualizing this is best done by looking at how much 6hz makes a difference:
440hz vs 432hz is an entire subject unto itself [which I'll cover at a later time], but it's quickly representative of tuning to the right signal being a beautiful thing. This converges with the overall motivations of music as an artform. Uniquely harmonized frequencies that sing to us. My mother says that certain electronic music I listen to is too 'driving' or 'angry'. That's the emotional resonance that gives her. For me, its a different emotional resonance, articulating why we all work on different wave lengths. One thing is for sure though, we all have frequencies that resonate with all other beings.
All of this energy is hard to quantify upon first revelation. But to stay on 440hz and 432hz briefly, 432hz was the musical standard prior to 1939. Third Reich Head Nazi Propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, promoted the idea changing the standard to 440hz. If you believe in brainwashing at all, this is more than a brief footnote in history. The thought among many is that 'classical' behemoths like Beethoven, Bach, Chopen, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and other great musicians of their time persist and influence because of the that standard resulting in a more 'pure' sound. Post-change to 440hz, we have heard more claims of music being more chaotic, angry, aggressive, repetitive, primitive, and basic. Cymatic demonstrations are a great visual aid to understanding this.
Going back to attitude and effort, a lot goes into those two things in order to produce frequencies in your brain that will produce a beautiful kaleidoscope of memories and neural networks.
Unfortunately, beautiful memories are one of many varieties, molded by effort and engagement to shape the cell's dentrite. Sometimes chaos, sadness, and aggression rule the brainwaves for periods of time in a life and thus imprint themselves on the neural network.
The Rat and the Rose Blossoms
Scientists have shown how evolution works on a practical scale. An experiment was ran where a lab rat was shocked each time it was introduced the smell of rose blossoms. The electrodes were removed and when the smell of rose blossoms were introduced, the rat became anxious, fearful, and in full fight or flight mode. They bred that rat. Without electricity, the smell of rose blossoms were introduced to the offspring, and fight or flight was triggered. The DNA, encoded by the emotional and physical trauma of it's experiences, was passed down to the offspring who instinctually knew that rose blossoms were a bad energy.
Think about for that a moment and translate it to humans. It says a lot about who we are based upon who are parent were (or still are) at the time of our conception.
Amplify the Love
This ultimately brings us to love. Love is the frequency that binds us together and gives us the universal pathway to understanding. We know when we are in the presence of love. It has a real feeling to it. And it is something you can willfully emit as a broadcast; you don't have to hold it to yourself for only those who promise to give some back.
Willfully choosing to be a loving human-being has nothing to do with pacifism, altruism, contentment, or anything that could conceivably be derived as negative. If love is in fact a frequency like I believe it to be, then everything else in life and the universe makes sense and our consciousness rides the spectral resonance of the earth, stars, and universe. Telepathy wouldn't exist as a plausible concept if it weren't.
Based on the image a few paragraphs up, the brain on Love shows a clear sign of geometry by activating 3 parts of the brain instead of just 1. It's almost like the process of ordering and/or offsetting atoms to produce a signal on the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. maser, laser, x-ray, ultraviolet, gamma, etc.). A laser, for example, doesn't always have to be a singular beam of continuous atoms, it can be refracted into a prism and emitted like a helix, double-helix, cone, or like a lightning bolt and everything in between. Of those potential shapes, the most beautiful ones people would most agree is the double-helix (coincidence with DNA; absolutely not).
If you can tap into Love to harness that frequency within you, broadcast it to everyone. Many things in life manifest themselves like an infection, and ideas and love are no different. Beautiful things in life manifest themselves through a beauty in the process of making said things happen.
Conversely, being an asshole is something that can be broadcasted far easier than love because it's a 'closed circuit'; it takes no effort. It's a my-way or the highway mindset that is conundrum because of it's perplexing success. Maybe like the laser analogy, a singularly focused beam may be more powerful method of achieving quick results.
The may come down reductionism and the evolutionary socialism that drives us all to tribalism and hierarchy to be around a resonance chamber that harmonizes with you. The pitfalls lie in the disgust we have for things that don't harmonize with us. There is no easy reception of ideas that don't immediately harmonize with you. It takes effort, which is practically the only other thing in life outside of your attitude that you can directly control.
The Loving Asshole
Humor and comedy probably represent the premise of the attitudinal spectrum being a circle rather than a straight line. Comedy lives in a space where out-of-the-box observation and hard truths resonate best because of the attitude in which it's presented. Curmudgeons can love, as long as you understand their reason for cynicism.
Court jesters existed for a very real reason during their time; they were beneath contempt of the ruler. They were able to speak the truth without generally fearing repercussion due to them operating outside the realm of respect. Jesters still manifest themselves in today's culture, but in the form of comedians. We don't have to like or agree with what a comedian says or how he says it, we give them a lane, a channel, to access our psyche, uninhibited, until the punchline.
So was Bill being an asshole for stating that, or did he express it from a place of love?
The most common type of asshole-dom is the kind that's right in your face. Rude, abrasive, and jarring. It's a result of nuance not working when intended, so powering through is modus operandi, resulting in a lack of care for how the signal broadcasted is received by others.
Simply put, it depends on you. To me, I can see where some people would state that's just Bill being a cynical asshole, but I personally find that he loves humanity so much and is so disheartened by the state we have put ourselves in as a whole, he expresses himself with a statement that makes a geometrically beautiful memory in my brain, because of the things that memory is connecting to is. As a result of processing his signal, I feel the love, it just may not resonate in the same way with you.
Static on the Lines
Communication in active form is always a 2-way street. In order to make a connection with someone, you have to be able to cut through the static and noise emitted from the recipient. Static and noise being the artificial construct of you being formed by the recipients brain as they are first introduced. So, for instance, if you and I are put into an empty room together, you're going to see and smell me (not in a bad way silly :-P like pheromones).
Before I even say anything, you're brain is compiling and reconstructing the light signals I'm emitting into something 'sensible' to your understanding of all reality experienced to that point. My height and relative size to others humans is somewhat abnormal; I'm very tall and that's usually something people will notice first about me. And already from something like this, you're brain subconsciously interprets what that means (even if it's worth nothing to you materially, it still gets processed).
Next, based upon numerous features that are of similar pattern to the social norms we construct, I assert myself as male. My hair is styled like many other men would present themselves. I have and wear facial hair, which is uncommon for females to have. Furthermore, from a biological perspective, I show to have a broader brow and nose, however, I very effeminate eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows.
Each of the features that you use to build the construct of my person in your brain are taken in at lightning speed. Each one of those things has a signal attached to it, singing a song to you in your brain.
I haven't even spoken a word, but in order for us to be able to share a material space within the purview of your visual cortex, your brain has to be aware and tune itself to its surroundings, which includes me.
This brings up a fascinating analysis of how prejudices become a factor in the connection to another human being.
Let's assume you're a racist (I know you're not; you're a loving human being like myself, but for the sake of discussion) and you think white people are evil, have a built in superiority complex, and wish to make sure they maintain a club for themselves. Or, maybe you have a distaste for Spanish and Mexican. Maybe you don't like Jews; whatever. Try to imagine the thought process of a racist for a moment.
You'd be evaluating me with those signals strongly resonating in your mind as you construct me. Funnily enough, I've been 'assumed' to be Spanish or Jewish based upon some of my features and the complexion of my skin; I'm not. I'm really just a well-rounded ethnic mutt, but identify mostly with my Sicilian heritage. But that wouldn't come up unless it were clarified like it was just now. This is just an extreme example of the noise that you could conceivably be emitting as you try communicating with someone new. What is the practicality of valuing that tribalism?
Before I've even uttered a word, you may have preconceived notions of who I am and what I'm about. That's instinct kicking in because our brains don't voluntarily leave out stimulus. It is stated that telepathy occurs at a brainwave of 4hz (that means just above a dreaming sleep state). Our first interaction where you are building me in your brain won't operate on such a basic level. For most of us, probably just operating our visual cortex alone produces 4hz, then all of the involuntary neurobiological systems that produce the other 4 senses and beyond are effecting stimulus that result in additional hz in the brainwave function.
It becomes a voluntary task to cut out your own noise in order to simplify your own signal that gets emitted to me. It's coincidentally stated that 4hz is also the signal that produces 'seduction'. Seduction can almost be described like magnetism or gravity; it's a force. So upon both parties being on such a simple connection (even if only one party emits it), they are attracted to one another. The more noise and hz, the greater the chance of dissonance.
Voluntarily Controlling the Involuntary
If one thing can be extrapolated quite simply in all of this, it's no simple task to be a loving human being all the time. Heck, our bodies only produce Oxytocin (a hormone that 'forces love') when we produce offspring. It prevents us from killing our children when they drive you nuts while they grow up. We can all relate; we were all assholes as children at some point, no matter how you want to spin it.
So since oxytocin doesn't provide the crutch we all want, it become a chore to not subscribe to tribalism. Because life has evolved to the point that the current generation of humans living right now is experiencing 10x the stimulus per day than the previous generation, it becomes imperative that we cut out noise by respecting our own capacity to love, rather than offloading it onto an ideological platform that routes your thinking for you. This concept is most analogous to 'identity politics' in the socio-economic spectrum.
Compartmentalized thinking like this says that if I assert myself as a "progressive liberal", those two words just sang a song of thinking that reinforces binary results of complex ideologies. It distills the stimuli into something a bit more comprehensible for the limited bandwidth our brain is working with; yet like code, its either 0 or 1; black or white. And like code, if compiled in a compatible and rigid architecture, it will open a program or application.
Quantifying and being able to comprehend the principles of quantum physics (the space that is both 0 and 1 at the same time, and everything in-between) may be the requirement needed to get our brains to calm down. We live in a time were we so desperately want to be understood, that we try too hard and ultimately put noise on our own signals (maybe I'm doing that by making this a long-winded discussion rather than a shorter, denser one). The end result is looking like an asshole to some (or lots) of people. Just know that despite this result, your attitude and effort will always ring true in the end.
A How-to Guide with Only 1-Step: Smile
This may seem a bit basic after all the technical mumbo-jumbo to get here, but if there is 1 thing I have found to be the ultimate starting point to a clean signal of communication, it's smile.
There is something about the alignment and pressure of the muscles in your face that helps reinforce something broad and universal about the signal you emit. It's conscious, you know how to smile, which means you know how to communicate well; and it has the dual benefit of simplifying your signal by having you focus on emitting love and not worrying about the miscellaneous stimuli that helps reinforce preconceived notions.
You may not always be understood (hence being called an asshole), but if you can consistently be loving, people will find the parts that resonate with them to better understand you because there are more notes to latch onto. Furthermore, it's always worthwhile to try communicating with yourself first as a testing ground for everything laid out here (Gary Lite has a wonderful meditation on this).
To keep it within the context of the overall discussion, attitude is a choice, and to love, be an asshole, or anything in-between is an attitude. I'm politely requesting that the next time you interact with another human-being with whom you are having a hard time communicating with, please, consciously express love to them with a smile in an effort to clear your own personal noise and better understand them. It may help you, them, and this world be the place we all want it to be.
Have an awesome day everyone!