Why We Crucify Truth Tellers (and Why They Deserve It)

You're in a theater viewing a gripping horror movie. You turn around and peer at the audience. Everyone is in the familiar transfixed state of cinematic hypnosis. They're not them, sitting with those bodies in those chairs in this theater. Rather, they've framed themselves into the movie. They're the protagonist. And, because it's a horror movie, they're horrified.

You feel special/superior because you see “the truth,” while they seem lost in delusion. That’s wrong (it’s your first mistake). They, like you, are simply making choices. Framing choices. In fact, if anything, they’ve made the smarter choice, whereas you’re the kook perversely ignoring the show you chose to attend.

One audience member seems particularly aggrieved. Tears stream down his cheeks, his face is beet red, and his eyes bug out in sheer panic. You tap this stranger on the shoulder.

Tap tap tap.
"Buddy."

Tap tap tap.
"Buddy."

Startled, he pivots his head to gape at you.

"It's just a movie, buddy. You're okay."

He has three possible responses. One is insane but common, and the other two are sane but rare (and one might lead to your crucifixion).

Insane but Common Response:

HOW CAN YOU SAY EVERYTHING'S OKAY WHEN THE MONSTER'S IN THE NEXT ROOM?

An obvious framing error. Some people have less pliant perspectives. Insanity is the inability to reframe despite clear environmental cues.

Sane Response #1:

Oh. Wow. Right. Phew. Thanks! [returns attention to movie and starts getting worked up again - hey, his choice!]

Sane Response #2:

I PAID $15 TO BE HERE AND YOU, ASSHOLE, ARE RUINING THE MOVIE!

In case you didn't realize, this isn't about movie theaters. It's a parable about people needlessly stuck (frozen perspective, remember?) in a hyper-dramatic mind frame while living comfortably in Utopia, and the perils - and improprieties - of trying to help them.

In the above parable, you've only irritated one single person. But if you try this, loudly, in the world at large, you'll be ruining the show for a large crowd. People will be enraged and they're not wrong. You know full well that show-spoilers are hateful creatures (the very definition of "impolite"). You broke that covenant.

Self-destructive people, for example, may seem irrational, but they're not. They're acting out a drama, just as we all are, but tweeking parameters for more challenging gameplay. They're working on a more advanced level, that's all. You can get away with helpfully tapping their shoulder once, but, if you persist after they've waved you off, you're deliberately ruining the movie...and deserve their wrath.

Here's how truth tellers reach this point. Having forgotten yourself in the pretending (like everyone else), your grippy identification with fake drama leads to trauma, and you find yourself tossed awake by the tumult, as sometimes happens during nightmares. You suddenly Remember - briefly, before turning back to the dramatic narrative. Your first impulse is to look around you, and you observe that people are needlessly gripped by fictional self-concocted trauma. Having recognized this, clear-eyed for just a moment, the next observation is that everyone seems to need everything more than you do.

So you see the problem and you want to help. Cool! But it’s a dangerous error to assume that people - even traumatized people - want to be reminded that they're pretending. It's one thing to ruin the 7:35 screening of “Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child”, but it's quite another to ruin the painstakingly crafted epic story of "My Life and Victimhood and the Weighty Burden I Bear Despite Being a Really Nice Person."

Never forget that human beings choose to ride rollercoasters. Human beings pay to ride rollercoasters (here's the broad view on rollercoasters and drama and movies and pretending).

Epiphany, Eureka, and Inspiration

Epiphany, eureka, and inspiration are the peakest experiences a person can enjoy in this world. They dislodge stuckness and open up fresh insight, leaving us euphoric. Who wouldn't want that? They arrive, famously, in a flash, via a mysterious channel that's clearly distinct from everyday thinking.

These blessings stem from reframing, that’s all. Blind to our infinite freedom to shift perspective, we enjoy the beneficial aftermath of inadvertent shifts with befuddled gratitude. Since we haven't, as a species, fully framed our framing, major shifts seem to manifest as a thunderbolt from heaven; a gift from the muses. “What the hell was that?!?”


Feel free to exit here. That was quite enough to chew on, and below there be dragons. Please take your personal belongings with you. We know you have a choice of blogs, and we appreciate your business. Have a pleasant afternoon here or wherever your Internet surfing might finally take you.


God (or Spirit, or Muse, etc.) seems to deliver epiphany/eureka/inspiration because these things appear out of the blue, unrelated to - even disruptive of! - our thought-stream, which we falsely assume to be who/what we are. We forget that we are both thinkers and framers. So if we don't think it, it must be coming from someone else!

Highly creative people, with some inkling of their own reframing latitude, are sometimes deemed "touched by God" because they can periodically pull off small magic tricks, i.e. epiphany/eureka/inspiration. The faculty is notoriously fickle because, again, humanity hasn't quite framed its framing. Once you've framed a process, a clarity arises to make everything feel easy. And it's coming. The messiah will soon arrive, and he will be you.

The connection between reframing and epiphany/eureka/inspiration explains why this Slog belches up more insight than the average blog. I have a naturally lithe perspective, and am increasingly able to frame my framing - it's a work obviously in progress - making these outcomes more easily available (if there were some way to explain this stuff without seeming to boast, jesusfchrist I would do so in a millisecond, and thank goodness for sparse readership so I don't draw my deserved snark).

Epiphany, eureka, and inspiration are a whole other thing from the everyday, that's for sure. Everyone agrees on that. The flavor is utterly different from normal cognition. For one thing, this stuff arrives far more swiftly than thought does (contributing to the "thunderbolt from the blue" impression). As I once wrote,

Perceptual framing is instant. It can expand from microbe to Milky Way without the slightest latency. Once we make the flip, it always happens instantly.

A visceral experience of simple reframing can be had by "flipping" between the two views of this optical illusion:

You’ll notice there’s no lag whatsoever. It's not a process, which takes time and uses resources. It's an instant shift (once it happens), effected by the subtlest possible exercise of subjectivity. A choosing, nothing more (and it’s utterly monogamous; we can’t span multiple perspectives any more than we can simultaneously see both faces and chalice in that optical illusion).

The really big question is: who makes the choice?

I'll direct your attention to the noticeable fact that both options in the optical illusion pre-exist. The whole universe works like that, in fact. All notes are pre-struck, all options pre-exist, and we create the impression of external dynamism via an internal movement of attention. This entire big flashy show we find ourselves in is instigated and animated by the subtle exercise of subjectivity - by ceaseless internal framing. We select.

Per that last link (here it is again), this is also how we traverse/unfurl the multiverse. Each framing choice branches to a fresh parallel universe (did you really imagine we'd go to parallel universes via, like, spaceship?).

We become depressed when perspective freezes. The world appears to stall in a state of monotony. Fluidity is necessary for humans to enjoy their lives, and it’s generated by freely dynamic framing (never blame circumstance; it's all in your perspective!). Perspective freezes because we get lazy, and/or forget that it's we who choose; we who frame; we who shift. We forget we’re free. Freedom’s like a smartphone feature we’ve forgotten about.

Standard note: I'm working on a book of exercises to re-establish the ability to freely shift perspective; I'll need beta testers, so watch this space.

Not to further overload this brutally bottom-heavy posting, but here's a strange truth: you will become depressed even if perspective freezes on a spectacularly lovely framing. This is why very advanced meditators (and, come to think of it, new lovers) often become lethargic. Their bodies are depressed even though their minds relish unwavering delight. Bodies don't do well with unwaveringness of any sort, including "delight" (that's why we insatiably crave widely diverse experience, including so-called negativity). As perspective freezes, the world loses its worldliness.

Again, the big question is: who makes the choice?

Obviously, it's you. But is it the you with a name and a body and a back story? You were framing before you had a name, when your body was completely different and you'd accumulated none of the back story. Here I'm coaxing the reframing of all reframings, if only you'd care to shift. Again: who makes the choice? Here's a hint. The "you" with name and body and back story is a framing, not the framer.


None of this can be adequately explained in a 900 word essay, so the links are not pro-forma. They explain the assumptions underpinning these supremely counterintuitive conclusions. I've chosen to develop and explain these ideas - which are way more than dry philosophy (everything that makes your head throb isn't pointy-headed navel-gazing abstraction; this stuff is the key to being happy and creative and evading depression and understanding how the world actually works) - via the medium of blogging because it allows me to leave a breadcrumb trail. The breadcrumbs are essential!

Getting Out of the Way

Do you ever get out of the way of people who need something more than you do?

The guy who's got D-Day stress levels in his eyes because he needs to make a tight flight connection. You let him pass so he can get off the plane. You'd love to get off ASAP, yourself, but he clearly needs it more. So you get out of the way.

A blaring ambulance appears behind you. Though you're within visual range of sorely-needed coffee, you get out of the way.

A kid really really needs ice cream, in a way you haven't needed anything since the 1980s. You're certainly not going to compete with her. It's not that you don't like ice cream - or wouldn't prefer ice cream sooner rather than later. But you know you don't need it as much as she does, so you get out of the way.

If you develop a courteous habit of getting out of the way, you will eventually observe that everyone needs everything more than you do.

Conclusions:

1. They don't actually need it either, but they don't know this. Need stems from ignorance.
2. If needing is ignorance, not needing is wisdom.
3. Stepping out of the way is an expression of strength, not weakness.
4. Not needing + stepping away = wisdom + strength.
5. This equation explains Asceticism - which is so ridiculously out of style that westerners drop their jaws at the befuddling mystery of it, deeming it self-abuse (which is, not coincidentally, precisely how you, in getting out of the way, look in the eyes of needy, ice cream-grubbing little kids).


Three clarifications:

1. Ascetics aren't just naked wanderers with leathery skin or dour self-flagellating monks. Anyone who gets out of the way with any regularity is an ascetic, whether they know it or not.

2. I'm not saying asceticism is always about taking less so everyone can have more. I'm just describing how self-denial feels. The truth is topsy-turvy: neediness is deprivation, so who's actually deprived?

"Needing/Having" isn't winning, it's endless entrapment in a humiliating and senseless Skinner Box. "Not-Needing/Not-Having" is freedom and happiness. It's possible even to Not-Need/Have, but that's so beyond Western sensibility and understanding - super zen or whatever - that people have written impenetrable books to try to explain it.

3. Anticipating pushback re: the word "needs"....

When people in the First World talk about "needs", we are really talking about preferences. 90% of us have our basic needs met as a foregone conclusion 90% of the time. As I once noted, America is so rich that we mistake mere discomfort for bona fide poverty (which has led to an aberration I've termed Liberal Materialism).

But all the above applies to genuine need, too. Ascetics don't need their needs until the tank's pretty close to empty. Why? They've reframed to a broader view (which gives them character). And as I said in my previous posting, "Once you've framed something...a clarity arises that makes everything feel easy. It helps immensely to have a framework for understanding who you are and what you do." Kids (and most adults) view ice cream, et al., in extreme closeup, and can't imagine any other framing.


Note: I'm coming at this from a slightly different angle from two previous efforts:
An Adult View on Preference
The Inside Story on Asceticism

Lose Weight by Reframing!

Ice cream is sweetened butter.

It's absolutely true, but we don't frame it that way. We think of ice cream as its own food group, a happy wholesome treat. That's how it imprinted when we were children, and while our adult minds recognize it as pure animal fat (aside from the gobs of sugar), it still viscerally strikes us as a visit to some bright candyland universe with vague consequences, rather than a nutritional bear trap.

I've never been drawn to large servings of ice cream. After mulling it over, I figured out why. Ice cream is sweetened butter, and I wouldn't want to scarf down like a pint of cold butter. I'm grossed out by the thought! And now that I've consciously staked out my position - my framing - on this, I find that I'm happy with smaller and smaller portions. A tablespoon of butte....I mean ice cream seems like plenty. I have reframed it!

Another reframing was what I called "The Best, Easiest, and Most Sustainable Diet Tip:

At some point in every meal you've ever eaten, the following mental question has arisen: "Do I want to eat some more?" It's always asked quietly - so quietly that it may not consciously register. And our reaction is, nearly always, to shrug and eat a few more bites. What the hell!

1. No one in the history of the human race has ever asked themselves this question while still hungry. Genuinely hungry people just eat! The fact that you're asking means that you have, in fact, eaten enough!

2. The gratuitous few bites you take after this point will probably add 10-20% more calories to your meal. And most of us are 10-20% overweight, so these are the marginal calories that make us marginally overweight. So drop your fork!

....and yet another was my "Pizza Protocol":

I was ordered on a permanent low fat diet....and I cooked up the following ground rules:
I'd eliminate all bad pizza.
I'd eliminate all so-so pizza.
Really good pizza is permissable, but only one slice.
If really necessary, I could occasionally enjoy two slices.
Since I already cooked healthy at home, I'd cook at home a bit more to offset the errant slices.
This policy eliminates 90% of my normal fat-ingestion-via-pizza, while removing only 10% of my enjoyment:

Dieting doesn't work if you just try to change your behavior. When the diet ends, you will, of course, simply spring back. What's required is reframing. But most people have no facility for reframing (they mistakenly think framing is imposed on them by external circumstances). That's why they can't lose weight. Or change in other ways. It's why adults famously can't learn.

Frozen perspective prevents change, stifles creativity, and causes depression. My framing spiel is not dry philosophy. It's nothing less than salvation, the remedy to humanity's blocks and unhappiness. Plus: it just melts off the pounds!


Many Slog postings - particularly the ones you may have found insightful or clever - are the product of perceptual reframing. That's always been my little trick: a simple flip of perspective.

Until recently, I was fuzzy about my own trick. I hadn't framed my framing! Once you've framed something (as you surely have in some aspect of your life - surely attributing it to "learning", "growing" or "maturing", though framing happens in the blink of an eye whereas those other things are processes), a clarity arises that makes everything feel easy. You don't want to trap yourself in a frozen meta-perspective, nor do you want to be like the centipede who thinks so much about his hundred legs that he's unable to walk. But it helps immensely to have a framework for understanding who you are and what you do.

I often note that I use the Slog not to explain stuff to you, but to myself. I can see now that what I've been doing all along is framing my framing. It's not intellectual philosophy, it's extremely practical. It's everything.

Another Example of Inducing Perceptual Reframing

Earlier this month I published an unconventional eulogy, which I offered as an example of successfully inducing perceptual reframing. The following is another example of induced reframing (also successful, at least for now). Both of these can be read at three levels: 1. uplifting reading, 2. inspiration to unfreeze/shift your own perspective, or 3. a quick-start guide for potential messiahs.


Ten years ago, a musician friend in another country suffered an aneurysm that nearly killed him. He was saved by an improbably coincidental spinal blockage which protected his heart while leaving him without the use of his legs. He'd been permanently paralyzed, poetically, by the process that saved his live.

Having stared down near-certain death, he experienced a profound shift of perception - what I call a "reframing" - leaving him exuberantly grateful to be alive. A shockingly short while later, a friend and I sat misty eyed in a jazz club, watching our friend play his guts out in a wheelchair. He was smiling so hard we thought his face might break.

The exuberance gradually eroded over the years. Then medical errors left him in hospital for the entire past year, fighting horrendous bone infections. Worst of all, sloppy doctoring led to the lost of his use of his hand. No more music.

"Depression" would be an inadequate word to describe his condition. Our mutual friend says "He is tired. Even his body language is different, his head often bent down." He no longer discusses solutions. He just stares at the TV.

Necessity once again mothered invention. I sent him the following. Like my eulogy, it reads like gentle persuasion and reminding, but that's only the surface. Really, it's designed to directly coax a shift of perceptive - a reframing - on its own. It appears to make a proposal, but the proposed outcome is actually executed (it's like launching a computer background process, aka daemon).

This may sound manipulative, but it wouldn't work if the person wasn't fundamentally in agreement (this, interestingly, is also how hypnotists defend their practice from fears of sinister controlling: you can't hypnotize someone to do something they don't already want to do. And, as I noted in the eulogy posting, hypnosis, along with creativity/art and spirituality, are the main repositories of humanity's sparse know-how re: perceptual framing).

I've been informed about your situation. Your friends and I are looking into alternative treatment. Please give us some time, and know that wheels are turning.

I'd like to remind you about something important. When you were first paralyzed, you were not depressed. You were euphoric. This was because you experienced a change of perspective. You saw the truth of the world, and it shifted you into a clarity where you understood that simply being here is a profound gift. Your heart (metaphorically) expanded, and everything was perfect, even though you had just gotten some extremely bad news.

When I saw you for the first time after you left the hospital, I asked you several times to try not to forget. Perspectives are habitual. It is very easy to fall back into an old perspective. And in the time since, I have watched you slowly forget, and return to your former perspective, where your life is a challenging drama and not a euphoric gift.

People don't get sad and negative because of what happens to them in their world. We are sad and negative because of our perspective on what happens in our world. We don't suffer because of what happens to us. We suffer because of our REACTION to what happens to us. The world is fine. It's all fine. The only problem is in our interpretation (and we have infinite options of interpretation).

This is demonstrably true. You know people with terrible narratives who are happy, and  MANY people with fantastic narratives who are miserable. What matters is viewpoint. You shifted to the optimal viewpoint for a year or two. You can recover it! 

The world - even your world - is delightful. You just forgot. There is no level of bad dramatic narrative that makes the world not delightful. It's 100% perspective. You yourself learned this once when you discovered you’d never walk again yet your spirit was completely dancing. You will dance again; I won't let you pretend you can't.

Explaining Celebrity Perversion

It's pretty widely accepted that Jeffrey Epstein is a dam, and when his case breaks, all sorts of famous, powerful people will be publicly embarrassed (at the very least). It seems reasonably clear, though not yet conclusively proven, that he's been running a massive extortion racket around a massive child prostitution operation, with his clients/blackmail-ees paying millions into his "wealth management" service in exchange for provision of pleasure + avoidance of pain (a perfect carrot/stick ploy).

The question, of course, is why so many rich/powerful people would be titillated by child rape. Are the rich and powerful extra perverted?

My take is that wealth and power is all about whim fulfillment, so a mere latent whim can easily become lifestyle. For example, a normal person might have reveries about unattainable girls he crushed on in junior high, while billionaires can go out and buy one of those.

I wouldn't be in that market even if I could afford it. However, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to deem my infrequent steamy recollections of lovely Dorothy G back in eighth grade tantamount to thought crime, given that I'm remembering as a 56 year old.

Thinking and acting are different things, but those who spend their lives machinating to be in a position of easy whim fulfillment (i.e. the rich and powerful) tend to have poor impulse control. That's what drives them in the first place. Me, I don't need a billion dollars because my whims are pretty tamped down...a situation that happens not to strike me as a screaming injustice.

Finally (courtesy of Dave Halpern), if you live The Big Life, quotidian pleasures no longer suffice. Bigger thrills are eternally sought.

When I sold Chowhound, and it was widely assumed that co-founder Bob™ and I were swimming in dough (we wound up decently recompensed for our years of unpaid work with no bonus for the risk or deferment), a Chowhound regular who'd made hundreds of millions from some crazy deal emailed me some advice. He suggested that I "enjoy the money; it stops meaning anything pretty quickly." Oddly, all these years later I still thrill whenever I take a paid tunnel into NYC or order multiple side dishes or use a parking garage (rather than endlessly circle for parking). I go Cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs every damned time. I honestly believe there's something structurally wrong with my brain (I've also never taken a single kiss for granted, even with long-term girlfriends).

Tick Tips

Some follow-up to my big tick primer from last year:

I explained to my doctor that I am immense (at 6 feet and 200 lbs my skin could upholster an Italian sports car), hairy, and near-sighted, so being told “inspect yourself for ticks” is basically demonic cruelty. She had a smart suggestion: shower when you get inside going over yourself thoroughly with a loofa. I’m gonna buy one of these or else one of these.

Problems:

1. Must inspect loofah after shower for any embedded ticks.

2. Ticks might go down drain and (yikes) climb back up.

BTW, best way to kill a tick (I love this!) is to trap it in an inch of tape stuck to itself. This also preserves the specimen if you need it checked by a lab for Lyme virus. Crap, I already wrote this .

Slog Commenting Note

Sorry to Slog commenters, but I've reconfigured comments so you need a Google account to post (compensating some for the hurdle, I've also removed the Captcha...though Blogger may disregard that choice).

You may have noticed that we have a new troll here in Slogland. A very old acquaintance (to whom I've always been kindly supportive) had been posting anonymous snark and potshots, eventually growing so infuriated by my failure to courteously respect his anonymized snarky sock puppet that he flipped his gourd and went into embittered war mode. In his framing, he's bringing down The Man. In my framing, I cringe for him (no biggie, he knows I can expose him and his long-standing nom-de-flame to the Internet and to his employer if he escalates to actual threats).

I easily identified him, and would have preferred to preserve this as an outlet for him to blow off steam, but I don't want to repeat the pattern. So...if I know you, post as you, and I'll treat you like you. Simple! This new setting won't guarantee identity disclosure, but it will reduce the spray of Anons blasting away with typical anon brio. I'd rather avoid seeing other friends snapped into poor mental health via their unwise choices and bad behavior.

A hot microphone on the Internet is like leaving one's swimming pool un-gated; they shouldn't have been there, and can blame only themselves, yet it's nonetheless unpleasant to stroll into one's backyard and discover floaters.

If you don't have a Google account and would like to comment, please 1. let me know (so I can understand the problems I'm causing) and 2. send me your comment via email and I'll post it for you myself, just as a stopgap.

Fake Review Mystery Solved

So, regarding yesterday's quizzler (and thanks to Ken, Barbara, Tucker, Max, Flithrandra, Vanessa, Vanessa2, Vanessa3, Little Timmy, Anon3023, Vanessa4, Dave's Daughter Dave, The ICEman Goth, "Mogen" David, Newzealandpithicus, Teen Spirit, Anonymous Frank Nesbitt, and all the other Vanessas for posting their guesses)...


Inevitably, Chowhound attracted dishonest guerrilla marketing. Business owners or their relatives, friends, or publicists would post a profusion of rave reviews under different aliases. We called this "shilling". When we caught them, we'd erase it all and suggest that they direct their energy toward making their restaurant so good that real people have no choice but to rave about it. You can't con people into liking your restaurant.

But here's the surprising thing: good places shilled, too. Including some famous beloved good places. When we caught on, the response from the restaurateur was inevitable: we have all the customers and reputation we need; we don't need to stuff your ballot box.

If only.

It boils down to this: shmucks gonna shmuck. Restaurateurs - even really good ones - are like any other group; some are fine upstanding people, while others are dishonest. And the deceptive/dishonest ones can't help it. That's their approach, and it doesn't shut off just because their short ribs are scrumptious and the seats are full. Success and honesty are unrelated parameters.

Counterintuitively, restaurants don't shill because they suck and feel the need to compensate. For one thing, sucky restaurateurs don't recognize that they suck; they all think they're nailing it. They shill because they see a publicity avenue, and publicity's like profit: you can never have too much.

So when Fakespot finds a shilled Amazon product, discounts the fake reviews, and offers an adjusted star rating identical to the original, it's because the product is both good and shilled. And that's so surprising to our assumptions of how we imagine things work that just about everyone will find it mystifying.

Fake Review Mystery

Fakespot.com examines Amazon reviews for honesty, grading every product's star rating for honesty/reliability.

Chowhound's moderators and I did this same work day in and day out for the better part of a decade. It wasn't an automated process; we relied on deep experience hosting a forum that many characters found attractive for marketing purposes as a way to guerrilla market and foment word-of-mouth via fake testimonials. If the operation was going to have any value, we needed to weed that stuff. So we got good at it. Work hard/long enough on something - even something seemingly impossible - and you'll get good at it.

In addition to grading reliability, Fakespot readjusts the Amazon rating, disregarding the phony ratings and re-averaging the remainder. Here's an example, where Fakespot adjusted Amazon's 4.5 star rating down to 2.5 stars:

But there's a mystery: very often Fakespot's adjusted rating is exactly the same....even though the product was heavily fake-rated. Two examples:

How can a rating be fraudulent yet also accurate?

It's a deep question. I suspect that even Fakespot can't explain it. But I can, after spending a decade immersed in this extremely thin slice of human experience.


I'll give the answer tomorrow [here it is]. Feel free to guess in the comments.