Tag: psychology

Rilalities

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Dad and sonTo buy or to buy not.  When I was younger my dad did not buy me everything I wanted, and I hated him for it (hated being the harmless, preteen definition of hate). A part of me still believes that of part of him enjoyed saying no to me. A part of me also thinks that the constant “No’s” I received from him coagulated into the psychosis that plagued me through my teens and twenties. Another part of me wonders what kind of man I would be today if he gave me everything I wanted. Would I be a spoiled brat? Would I have some sort of obnoxiousness about me that expected to be able to buy everything I wanted —to have everything I deserved— regardless if I had to go into debt to get it? Would I be one of these ‘I deserve it’ adult babies that permeate our culture? Another part of me knows that no matter who our parents are, and whatever psychosis they inflict on us, we’ll have to work through it, and we’ll probably end up in the exact same place we’re at now.

Under-Estimate Children! It might be better for our society if we take a collective step back and start under-estimating children again. Rather than express the joy we should that this young mind is able to use their collective knowledge to state something relatively profound, we now say, “We can learn a lot from our children.” If they say something about chemistry, we think they should pursue a career as a chemist. If they say something about the geography of Salina, Kansas, we think they might have a career as a geographer. How about, it’s a kid who had a serendipitous thought in an opportune moment. Some of the people I know re-characterize these moments with the suggestion that they might be smarter than us. To retain my sanity, I choose to believe this is nothing more than a grandiose compliment, for I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that they think children are smarter than adults. It is a neat thing to say that we can learn a lot from their unfiltered view, but I don’t think I’m going to turn to a kid as a life coach any time soon. Therefore, when they say, “Kids say the most amazing things, kids are so innocent, and kids see things without the heavily tinted sunglasses we do,” I take it with a grain of salt. I have had friends further these cliches and leave me with the idea that some part of them believes it (as a result, this humble observer, believes can only arrive after all the other parts have lost so many wars over the years that they’ve simply given up). Kids are sponges and balls of clay. They see things we don’t on occasion, and they’re unflinchingly honest about what they see, but they have very few original thoughts, and the few original thoughts they have are usually gibberish. They know nothing, except what they’re taught, and when they’re caught, and every kid I know now is just as malformed and uninformed as every kid I knew when I was a kid.

Freaks are people too ya’ know. There was a daily parade of freaks that worked with me on an overnight shift. When I watched this parade exit the building one day, it dawned on me that each of these freaks had a story that was aching to be told. Most of them did not want those stories told though. Most of them didn’t think they had stories, or the kind of stories I tell. Most of them suffered from the Pinocchio syndrome, a desire to be normal boys and girls. The further away from normal these people of varying ages were, the more convinced they were of their normalcy. Most people won’t hear their stories, however, because there’s a fear that you’re too normal, and you will judge them harshly from your vantage point. They only tell their stories to their own. Call it a gift, a curse, or a truth that I am as yet unaware of, but I convinced them that I am one of them.

Psychology fills the gap. How do politicians and writers manipulate their audience? They know their psychology, or they hire someone who does. I cannot imagine a writer, or a politician, succeeding in their craft without first knowing a lot about psychology. Maybe a politician can, due to the fact that they’re usually figureheads among an enormous staff that has a finger on who you are and what makes you tick, and they feed that information into the politician’s Tele-Prompter. A big town writer, writing small-time blogs, can’t get away with that though. They have to have an insatiable hunger for what makes humans tock, and tick, and a progression to psychology is a natural one, for in most cases the science of writing, and the science of psychology are much the same science.       

idealisticIrrational Idealism. I was irrationally idealistic. “I agree that America is the best country in the world, but who’s to say that we can’t all make it better?” was one of my favorite replies. Those currently of an idealistic mind approach me in a manner I used to approach traditional thinkers, with the mindset that this is the first, idealistic thought I’ve ever encountered. Most idealistic thinkers believe that their individualistic twist on an issue is one that has never been considered before. Most idealistic thinkers cannot conceive of the idea that they’re wrong, for they’ve conceived of the idea on their own, based upon their relative influences. Most idealistic thinkers believe that the only reason traditional thinkers stubbornly cling to traditional thinking is that they have never truly considered the idealistic thinkers open-minded ideals before. Most idealistic thinkers cannot fathom the idea that you’ve “been there, done that”, and that you don’t believe their ideas and ideals are effective based on your experiences in life.

Money can Buy some Happiness. A 2010 study suggests that $75,000 a year is enough to make a person happy? Why? To be truly happy, the study suggests, a person needs only enough money to be able to afford certain products, a certain amount of freedom, and the ability to avoid worrying about bills. A person that makes $100,000 a year doesn’t necessarily have greater emotional well-being, and they have no extra day-to-day happiness, than a person that makes $80,000 when all of the individual variables are taken out to achieve a general rule. $75,000 appears to be the leveling off point, or what the researchers call a financiohappiness ceiling, at which an individual can afford all of the luxuries of life without worrying about bills. Or, as Henry David Thoreau once said, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”{1} Does this mean that a man should cease striving to be better, with more money in his pocket as a product of that increased stature, no, but the study suggests that his happiness will probably not increase in relation to his pocket book. While that is a provocative idea, some would suggest that contrary to everything Hollywood has ever told you, it is the striving to be better that makes one happy, and money is simply a happy byproduct that defines better. If your driving force in life is attaining more money, and buying certain products, you’ll probably not be happier with more.

The Pursuit of Happiness.  Hollywood movies teach us to never settle, and that we deserve better. Sports teach us to never be satisfied, and that we deserve more. The pursuit of happiness may break down to focusing on what we currently earn versus what we think we deserve. When asked if he felt he deserved a National Championship after all those years of near-misses, Nebraska Conhuskers coach, Dr. Tom Osborne, said: “There’s no such thing as deserve in college football. If a coach wins a National Championship, he has earned it in that particular year.” When one earns a dollar, there is often little question of its worth. The recipient may believe that they deserve more, but as the old saying goes, “You are only worth what someone is willing to pay.” With that in mind, we have a concretized grasp on that which we’re worth in life, but some part of us believes that we deserve more. Earned is something one works for and is rewarded upon receipt, and deserve is some existential definition of something we feel we should have based on the fact that we’re alive and trying. Controlling for variables in institutions of higher learning, and most union work, it is found that most institutions don’t pay one more for being alive another year. Most raises, given to those in the real world, are meritorious (i.e. earned).

When we see neighbors who don’t work as hard as we do, and we realize that they’re happier, we think we deserve to be happier too. We don’t know what it is that will make us happier, but we’re in a perpetual pursuit of it.  We’re usually unsatisfied with the result, because the relative definition of deserve is relative to that which we seek, which we don’t know and never will.  If a spouse questions this psychosis, we let them know that we aren’t the type to settle.  We also tell them that we deserve better, and we move onto those greener pastures.  In this selfish pursuit of a definition of happiness that we deserve, a definition usually steeped in stupid, self-serving decisions, we incidentally affect the ancillary victims (our kids) of our lives, so that they are perpetually unhappy in pursuit of this definition of happiness that we’ve passed onto them.

The Constraints of Monogamy. I used to claim that I would not conform to the constraints of monogamy, until I began defining myself within “my monogamy”. My monogamy is not your monogamy, and no one else can define it for me. Once I began defining my monogamy, I realized a degree of fulfillment that the single life could never achieve. Once I realized the inner core to my monogamy, I also realized something that couldn’t be defined by anyone else. That cliché that when you fall in love, you think you’re the only person that has ever been in love, is so true, because you get to define it month by month, day by day.

Why does this girl love me? I have no idea, but the inquiry challenges me. I, like most people my age, think of myself as a little, unruly child unworthy of love that will eventually be discovered once she unzips the zipper in the back of my neck to realize the monster that I really am. The truth is that she has defined me in certain ways, and I have evolved myself to meet a new standard. She has deprived me of that sense of emptiness I used to feel every day, that angst that drove me to write beautiful, provocative prose, but in its place is this sense of completion that only I can define.

I used to abhor holidays too, and though I didn’t go so far as to not participate in them, I saw all of them as false and conformist. I wanted something out of holidays and relationships that no one could give me … until I started giving to them. As they say, “It is far more rewarding to give than to receive.” Therein lies the key, once you start giving to a relationship, you start down the road to completion. Once you sacrifice that portion of yourself that used to define you as a strong, single, and rebellious person, you start to realize who you really are, and what you can be. The single life seems so rewarding in the rock star, Hollywood light, until that light begins to expose the underbelly of your empty existence.

I would never claim that my solutions are for everyone, but I can say that you’ll never know yourself completely until you are involved with another person long term. The “constraints” of monogamy actually freed me up more than anything else I’ve ever experienced. Trying to get another person to love me, every day, changed me in ways I couldn’t understand, until I began to experience them for myself. I realized that my definition of the constraints of monogamy were wrong once I began defining my monogamy with “the right person” to assist me through a life of consistency and normalcy.

The Search for Something Shocking. As our culture moves to a more permissive state, I can’t help but wonder if creativity will eventually become a casualty. Television programming is better now than it has ever been. I realize that every person believes in their own superlatives, but it’s my contention that there are numerous mid-level programs on the air now, that are superior in all ways to the top programs of the past generation. Is this a result of more competition, from internet programming and cable, or does it have something to do with the fact that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has loosened the standards on TV? Most TV watchers, of a given age, don’t think it’s even debatable that the FTC has allowed for more coarse language and more violence than they did in the 70’s. The question is if these shows are allowed to be more provocative in these ways, does that provide for more creative writing, or cover for the fact that the writing is not of the quality that existed at one time does it make the writing appear more creative, or is creativity not as necessary as it used to be when the FTC was more constrictive?

This leads us to the question the effect of something shocking. Is something shocking better? I don’t think many would debate that it is. As long as that something is not gratuitous, and it fits the frame of the story, something shocking can capture our attention better than the most creative writing in any venue, and it has us talking about the show the next day at work.  As provocateurs like George Carlin basically said, however, “Be careful what you wish for,” when it comes to tearing down all walls of constriction and small forms of censorship.  “Once they’re gone, they’re gone, and you’ll be left with nothing to rebel against.”  In other words, as the FTC allows for more and more shocking subject matter to be aired in the airwaves, something shocking may not be as shocking as it once was, and we find ourselves playing king of the mountain, until nothing seems as shocking as it once did.

Sprucing and Fluffing.  I got lucky, I say to those that wonder how I met my wife in an online dating forum. I would not say that my approach to her was any more skilled than anyone else’s. I would not say that I used my creative writing talents to appeal to her in anyway.  I would just say I got lucky.

“Just about every guy claims to be as adventurous as Bear Grylls, with Brad Pitt looks, and has a workout regimen that would cause Arnold Schwarzenegger to blanch,” says a friend of mine regarding some of online dating site profiles she’s viewed. She then goes onto provide hilarious examples of the attempts some guys have made to “spruce” up their profile. The import of her message was we’re all onto you fellas, and we think that you’re absolutely ridiculous. The jig is up, she basically says, so why are you continuing to make utter jackasses of yourselves? The answer: it works.

Why do politicians run negative ads every election cycle when everyone and their brother knows that negative ads don’t work. How many politicians say that one of the goals of their campaign is to avoid negative ads? How many polls state that “People don’t care for negative ads,” yet just about every political campaign runs them. How does the notion that “negative ads don’t work” persist? Perhaps it’s because losing politicians run negative ads too. Perhaps it’s because most election analysts don’t focus on the fact that our current leaders ran negative ads in their elections too, and perhaps that has something to do with the fact that we don’t like to be reminded about what that says about us. Some may say that this is a simplistic explanation of modern politics in America today, and it may be, but I would counterpoint with the question: “Which part of you are negative ads trained to appeal to? The complex??”

How many of us would tell a pollster that we want more infighting, more partisanship? What kind of person would say, “I love negative ads! I think that the polarization clarifies matters for me.” No, we prefer that that pollster consider us a wonderful person by saying, “I wish that we could end all this partisan bickering, and get back to creating jobs for the American people.”

How many of us have scrolled through Yelp postings to find what that one negative comment had to say? How many of us have read through positive reviews of products on Amazon.com with the mindset that all of the positive reviews seem to run together after a while, until we find that one negative one that seems to stand out? We all know that one negative comment is far more effective than one hundred positive ones, but when that pollster comes up to us and asks us what we think of one particular negative ad, we respond that we need to get them out of politics.

The point is that we want politicians to appeal to our better half, but other than the politician’s research team knowing that this is not a fundamental truth of human nature, they also know that positive ads can only take them so far, that they all begin to run together after a while, and negative ads about an opponent do provide an excellent distraction away from their politician’s limitations. Negative ads also feed into notion in the zeitgeist that going negative is being real and being more honest with the voters.

So, online dating girl, you go on believing that you know more about these unemployed, overweight guys that live in their mother’s basement posting positive ads about themselves that make them sound like Bear Grylls, and look like Brad Pitt, and they’ll go on posting these ads, because they work, and you will continue to fall for them. And the fact that you keep falling for them, and falling prey to the subject matter in negative ads, says more about you than it does them. The jig is not up, and as David McCraney said, “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

The Power of Forgetting

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The tenets of psychology, namely those of Sigmund Freud, teach us that we must deal with every tragedy, and every moment of despair, if we ever hope to get past them.  If we ever hope to move beyond them we must be honest about them, confront them, and analyze them ad nauseum, until we achieve greater mental health.  Some of the times, that’s not true.  Some of the times, it’s better to forget.

ForgetAre you a bad person?  Most people don’t think that they are, and if they did they probably wouldn’t tell you.  But how does one become a bad person?  What’s the difference between a fully formed, moral adult and a bad one?  Some would say that a bad adult is created through a series of events that have happened to them, or the way in which they dealt with them, or remember them.  Some would add that it’s the decisions that we have made in life, based on the series of events that we have experienced.  Others would say that it’s a great stew of the conscious and subconscious decisions we make on what to remember, and what to forget, and that that forms the core of who we are?

This relatively new belief in the healing powers of the mind to forget seems to go against one hundred years of psychological teaching, particularly those involving the philosophies of Freud.  Freud taught us that the path to mental health involved remembering every excruciating detail of our lives, until we reached a point of exhaustion where those details could be properly analyzed and interpreted.  He then wanted us to focus on why we remembered these details, how they should be remembered, and when they should be remembered most often.  Anyone that has visited a counselor, of any stripe, has experienced this concentration.  Most of us have wanted the counselor to move on, but the counselor decided that that the particular event in question was crucial to our growth, and it may very well be the case, but we’ve decided to move beyond it to some degree.  We decided, whether consciously or subconsciously, to forget the event and its effect on our lives.  The psychological community is now correcting itself and realizing that there may have been an element of truth to our complaints.

The psychological community has, in fact, become so entrenched in this apparent evolution of thought, that when they now run across a patient that is not able to forget certain events, after extensive counseling and other treatments, they now believe there may be something fundamentally wrong with that patient’s brain.  It’s an almost complete reversal of everything Freud, and the 100 years of psychology that followed, theorized.

If you’ve ever been under the influence of a heavy drug, say morphine, as a result of an injury or surgery, chances are you’ve relived a horrific moment of your life in explicit detail.  You always remembered that horrific incident on a certain level, as it affected everything you did in its aftermath, but you didn’t remember it on that “enhanced” level, with that kind of detail, until your mind was brought to another state.  Those of us that are blessed, and cursed, with excellent memories found it a little troubling that we forgot anything involving that horrific incident.  If you’ve ever experienced such a moment, you’ve experienced this idea that the mind is keeping certain secrets from you, to protect you from the life you may have lived if you were cursed with living with these details at the forefront of your mind every single day.

Romantic populists provide us with powerful conceits: “I think about the Holocaust every day!”  While most of us think that’s a bunch of hooey, it does give the provocateur a degree of cache we’ll never know.  “How do you know I don’t?” they might ask defensively.  We don’t, of course, but we do know that doing so would make them incredibly miserable people to be around.  We could tell them that they’re probably doing a disservice to the memory of those survivors when they don’t move on and live the lives the Holocaust victims had unceremoniously, and horrifically, taken away from them.  We could say that relatively few of them would’ve wanted to see our lives so burdened by their demise.  We could say that at some point, they would’ve wanted us to just move on.  The truth, for most people, is that they don’t dwell on the negative as often as they purport.  The truth is that the brain works in its best interests, as all organs do, to remove those toxins that might hinder peak performance.

The mind is a powerful tool.  The mind can juggle a multitude of memories.  Some have guesstimated that we can quantify the number of memories any brain can hold at three trillion, others gauge their guesses in terabytes and petabytes, and others say that it’s not quantifiable.  Whatever the case is, most people agree that our resources for memory are limited.  The mind can remember the Pythagorean Theorem, Walter Payton’s career rushing total, Eisenhower’s farewell speech on the military industrial complex, your distant cousin’s birthday, or that wonderful time you spent with your family at the lake, but it can also forget.  It can purposefully forget.

This power to forget can, at times, be as powerful a tool to your furtherance as the power to remember.  To those of us that live relatively happy lives, it could be said that the mind provides the soul a crucial ingredient that it needs to move on, when it decides to forget.  To say that the mind is simply blocking out certain memories seems a bit simplistic when it comes to forgetting those moments of despair, where all hope is lost, and where a person believes that they can no longer go on.  It seems the mind is making crucial, and subconscious, decisions to simply filter out such information to provide the soul some relief from all the guilt and sorrow of the event.

“It is surely human to forget, even to want to forget.  The Ancients saw it as a divine gift. Indeed if memory helps us to survive, forgetting allows us to go on living. How could we go on with our daily lives, if we remained constantly aware of the dangers and ghosts surrounding us?  The Talmud tells us that without the ability to forget, man would soon cease to learn. Without the ability to forget, man would live in a permanent, paralyzing fear of death.  Only God and God alone can and must remember everything.”{1}

The mind also juggles inconsequential items.  Some of us remember all the lyrics of the Britney Spears songs from 1999, but most of us have forgotten them.  Most of us only remember the video, the skirt, and the ponytails.  Very few of us remember the role Archduke Ferdinand played in the outbreak of World War I, but when we had to remember it for the test, it was at the forefront of our minds.  It could be said that the mind only has so many resources –like any laptop, cell phone, or camera only has so much memory– and if we want to add new applications we must clear some extraneous information that we no longer use to provide room for it.  Most of us have forgotten more than we remember about the trivialities of life.  But, the psychological community is largely unconcerned with these occasional slips of the mind.  They’re far more concerned with the remembering and forgetting of crucial information of their patients.  Both, they feel, are mandatory for mental health and vital to mental hygiene.

Are you that annoying type of person that just keeps bringing a horrible memory up to your loved ones?  Have you ever heard the phrase: “Isn’t it time we moved on?” from them.  They say this with loads of sympathy and empathy, but they also say it with some degree of determination.  Those of us that have been hit with this question were almost as devastated by the question as we were the actual event.

“How can you move on?  How can you just forget something like this?” You ask.  “How can you not want to talk about it nonstop?  How can you not want to get to the core of this matter and how it affects every day of your life?” 

You want to deal with it, get to its inner core, and learn that all of those affected are just as affected as you are?  They aren’t.  They’re saddened by it.  They’re lives will never be the same as a result of it, but their mind is telling them to clear the resource pool for an eventual return to happiness, and you just keep bringing them back.  Repeated requests to remember are rejected, until one person gets angry.  They’re tired of you bringing it up at every get together.  They want to move on, but you won’t let them.  The mind has a lot of power invested in remembering, but it has as much power invested in assisting us to forget.

Are you that bad person we discussed earlier?  Are you generally mad?  Suspicious?  Distrustful?  Sad?  Are you someone that cannot let go of the fact that you weren’t raised in a happy, functional home?  Are you someone that feels that you were not afforded the luxuries that most of the people around you took for granted throughout their youth?  Are you someone that dumps a prospective lover before they can dump you?  Are you haunted by the fact that you didn’t spend enough time with a recently deceased loved one?  Or, are you a good person that is generally happy?  Do you consider the path to happiness trying to be better today than you were yesterday?  And is all that defines your demeanor based on your memory of a life well-lived, or could it be said that you’ve forgotten a lot of the events of your life that could be making you a miserable person to be around right now?

Social Psychological Operations

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“Excuse me,” I told the 7-11 coffee guy, “could I get in there?” I knew this guy. I was in line behind him twice before. I knew his routine, and I knew it was not courteous. The last time I was behind him, I swore that I would say something next time. I knew he would fill his cup, sip on it, and fill it again. I wondered if he was the type to calculate how much free coffee he attained in those little sips over the years. Once the cup was finally full, he would grab a sugar packet, tear it open and fill the cup with it, without taking the obligatory step to the side.

I put some of the blame on 7-11. They should put the sugar packets in a location that required a step to the side. Numerous other franchises do this for their impatient customers. This 7-11 did not.

As for the 7-11 coffee guy, I considered him a narcissist. For who, other than a complete narcissist, has no awareness of the people around him? I guess that’s the question isn’t it, I thought staring at his back, is a narcissist aware of his surroundings, and he chooses to ignore them, or is he blissfully unaware?

He has to be aware that others are waiting behind him, I thought, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t consider us in anyway. Maybe he’s not a narcissist. Maybe he’s just inconsiderate. Is there a difference?

In the midst of his sugar pouring, I hit him with my request that he step aside, and I was astounded by his response. He said, “What? Oh sorry,” as if it never occurred to him that people might be behind him in line. I was ready for a confrontation. I was ready for him to consider me rude. I had two to three lines ready for him. He didn’t know. I was so ready for what I felt sure to follow that I was a little disappointed. What really got to me was that there were three people behind me and two of them were chatting, making noise that should’ve made this man aware that other people were waiting for him to finish.

I wondered if the others in line considered this man rude, inconsiderate, or narcissistic. I wondered if any of them thought this might be some sort of psychological game this man played to achieve some sort of subtle dominance in our little 7-11 world. Most people don’t wake it this far, and even fewer would suggest that it was a psychological operation on par with that military term. Anyone who thinks this way should probably be checked out, is something the three of them might say. If a person goes that far, and they have all of their facilities, they might have way too much time on their hands, they may think too much, and they might overanalyze simple situations too much. It is an overreach to illustrate a point, I decided, but how many of these naysayers get obliterated in the psychological field of battle without recognizing that a shot was even fired?

When my turn to fill a cup finally arrived, I couldn’t keep my mind’s eye off that guy now stirring sugar into his coffee. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the man’s deliberate actions should be penalized. Our anti-climactic conclusion left me with the thought that I should add something more confrontational, just to have the exchange live up to the billing. ‘Well, be more considerate of others,’ is something I thought of saying, ‘from now on.’ I thought of two or three more things to say, as I poured my sugar in, but I decided to just let it die. The guy obviously didn’t mean to be inconsiderate, I realized, and there was nothing to be gained from further confrontation.

“Could you at least step aside to pour your sugar in,” one of the guys behind me said, “so we can get our coffee?” The irony of that question didn’t hit me in the moment. I was so focused on the first guy that the third guy in line woke me out of my thoughts.

It wasn’t until I said, “What? Oh sorry,” as I stepped to the side that the full breadth of the irony struck me. It dawned on me that the most vociferous complaints I heard about narcissists were often made by those who are so narcissistic that they never flirted with the idea that they might be a narcissist. This hall of mirrors was, at the very least, embarrassing, and at most a worrisome display of contradictions that could lead to a full-blown identity crisis. I didn’t have time for an identity crisis, I was late for work.

The moment wasn’t dramatic enough for an identity crisis either. It was just a couple of guys who were impatient, and once the matter was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction we all moved on without another word. I would’ve been able to put the matter behind me as quickly as it confronted me, were it not for the two men chatting. Those two men, number four and five in line, who were chatting so much that I couldn’t believe the first coffee pourer didn’t acknowledge their presence, were still chatting. That wobbled me a little more, as I stood there, but I knew I couldn’t stand there forever contemplating my place in the world, because I was late for work. Actually, I realized, I was on schedule for being on time for work, with what I considered enough time to allow for traffic delays.

Before entirely putting the matter behind me, I wondered how many identity crises are averted because a person is late for work. Is this why so few people are reflective, I wondered, while putting my keys in the ignition. Is this why so many people are so much happier than me? Is this how a narcissist misses their own narcissistic tendencies when they complain about another’s narcissistic characteristics? Is it psychological projection, or is it easier to spot another’s faults when we suffer the same? Do we need to be more reflective on matters such as these, or am I too reflective? Do I sweat the small stuff too much? These people don’t care about your contradictions, or that you may be hypocritical, they just want you to move aside, so they can get some coffee. Is there a fine line between being reflective and too reflective, and how many reflective types are so reflective that they’re almost afraid to leave their homes, lest they reveal a contradiction? If reflective artists like Kurt Cobain picked up a part-time job working the drive-thru at Arby’s, might he still be alive? Does a busy work schedule fill the empty spaces in one’s soul in such a way that they don’t obsess over obvious contradictions in their character?

Social Psychological Operations

Regardless how such moments play out, there are often some sort of psych ops (psychological operations) games at play in even the most mundane interactions.

The term psych ops is most notably associated with military operations, but it could be said that we engage in various forms of psychological operations every day. For the purpose of distinguishing the two, we’ll call the latter social psych ops, as opposed to military psych ops. This allows us to distinguish day-to-day, conversational psych ops from those that may eventuate in death.

If the third customer’s complaint affected us in such a way that we recognize the contradiction in our being, how do we react? In the interaction with the third guy, I was as nonplussed as the first guy, and I was as genuinely as apologetic. That’s really all you can do. The alternative is cleanse our soul and provide a detailed account for the how he revealed our contradiction on this subject. His response would probably be something along the lines of:

“Listen, I don’t want to get physical here, so I’m going to ask you once again to please step aside.”

The genuine apology allows everyone to move on. No harm no foul. Unless we happened to notice the clothes number three was wearing, the manner in which he parted his hair, the way he tied his tie, the way he licked his lips before speaking, or the brand of coffee he chose. If we noticed any of the above, we did so to counter their brief evaluation of our character, and the points we gained by noticing their flaws are often innocuous, and they do little-to-nothing substantial for our psychology, and we forget all about them the moment our coffee cup is full, because the likelihood of running into any of these 7-11 customers again is negligible.

Most true points, scored in social psychological operations such as these, involve encountering an opponent more than once, remembering the points we scored in previous encounters and using them in the future.

Let’s say that that the interaction we have at the coffee machine is not at a 7-11 involving complete strangers, but one that occurs in refreshment center of the office. Let’s say the person we encounter is one with whom we have an ongoing, work-related relationship. Let’s say the two combatants know superficial, something somethings about each other, but that they keep that information close to the vest. We might know some things about them, but we would consider it a violation of protocol to use that information against them. If that’s the case, a ‘How you doing?’ intro can take on altogether different meaning. They might say this in a benign manner, but it’s not as innocuous as our brief 7-11 interactions were.

“I’m doing fine,” we say. “Thank you for asking.”

“That’s great to hear,” they say. “How’s the wife?” It’s possible, and likely in most occasions, that these introductory questions are benign. Even the most cynical mind knows that’s possible, but we might also wonder if it’s as strategically innocuous as it appears to be. Why didn’t they choose to speak of the quality of coffee the company offers in the refreshment center, or the pizza they serve in the cafeteria? They could choose to speak about our boss, “I hear you have Mr. Druthers as a boss. I had him once, he’s a real ball buster.” They didn’t chose to speak about any of this. They chose to speak about our wife. Yet, we can’t openly psychoanalyze our interrogators, for there’s no defense to taking umbrage with relatively innocuous questions.

“Hey, I just asked how she was doing,” is what they say. We both know that anytime one assigns motive to a piece of conversation, that’s an excellent out. We all know that most such conversation points are innocuous attempts at polite conversation, but the cynical among us can’t help but think that some statements are strategically placed to put the subject in a place of feeling too sensitive.

Some of us believe that this tactic can be located somewhere in the devious chapter of their social psych OPS playbook, for we know they have no real interest in our wife’s condition. They may think that their wife is better looking, or in some way superior, to ours. They may also know that our wife is something of a nag, and that we have had some resultant, marital problems as a result that permits them some feeling of dominance through comparative analysis. It’s also possible that this is not an overt attempt to be devious, but that they just feel more comfortable discussing wives with us. The question we ask ourselves is why do they feel more comfortable talking about our wife?

“How are the kids?” is another question they may ask. “How’s your kid’s soccer game going?”

All of the same questions and answers apply to this question. They know our kid has had some challenges when it comes to displaying athletic prowess, and they have had no such difficulties with their kid. They know that they have a lot of social psych op points on us on this page, and they enjoy displaying them whenever the two of us interact in the refreshment center. It gives them a little lift for that day to know that while their lives are not what anyone would call intact, at least it isn’t as bad as ours.

Whether the subject of the conversation revolves around kids, or wives, most people do not concoct conversations with us for the sole purpose of proving superiority, and most of them do not take overt glee in whatever causes us stress, but they just feel comfortable speaking to us on certain subjects. They may not want to start a conversation about productivity numbers, for example, because that is where we have proven superiority. We may try to change the subject to productivity numbers, because that is where we feel most comfortable, and we may not take overt glee from their troubles in this area, but we feel that we’re in some sort of psychological arm wrestle.

“What do you think of that Jones fella?” they ask. “He’s such a blow hard, always going off about how great his kids are, and how great his wife is, and how much money he makes.” By saying this, they’re telling us that they like us because we’re humble, self-effacing, and self-deprecating, and they find our comments endearing. Nobody likes a blowhard, who doesn’t know how to laugh at themselves, and we all consider humility a virtue, but why do we prefer humble people? Is it because we don’t like playing these games, or does it have something to do with the idea that we don’t like playing these games with this Jones character, because he defeats us on most of our bullet points?

We tried being self-effacing around this Jones character once. He didn’t get it. He immediately went about telling us that he had no such problems in that area. We said what we said to be funny, but he used that occasion to take a leg up on us. That’s just who that Jones character is, we decide.

“As for that all that money he talks about,” our refreshment center friend adds. “I heard it from a bird, who heard it from another bird that Mr. and Mrs. Jones cannot afford that house they live in. Yeah, everyone thinks he has it all, but I’m here to tell you that the Jones clan is deep in debt, and they’re playing it day-to-day.”

The two of us know that Jones has a beautiful house, and we both hate him for the beautiful, well-rounded family he has. There’s got to be more to it, we say, searching for a taint in the man’s glorious armor. Knowing the man can’t afford the lifestyle he lives gives us both a lift for the day. Even if all we’re doing is speculating with each other about Jones’ situation, we feel a little better about our comparative situations.

“I could live like that too,” we add with a laugh, “if I didn’t mind living in debt.”

The two of us have just compiled some much needed points on the Jones fella that we can keep close to the vest the next time we see him. We thank this work associate for that information, because we needed that lift. We needed the social psych op points.

Strategic Psych Ops

The previous scenarios detail the strategy chapter of the social psych op playbook. In this chapter, the psych ops soldier is involved in information gathering activities on those outside their immediate sphere of influence.

The accumulation might begin with a simple attempt to understand our likes and dislikes, but they evolve this conversation into an attempt to understand why we have these likes and dislikes, until they have a snapshot of our soul, and our sense of life. They may not be engaging in warfare in the truest sense of the word, but the knowledge they gain in this basic training phase will help them establish some form of dominance in preparation for any for social warfare that erupts in the future.

“But I don’t do any of this,” some of our friends will complain, if we present them with social psych ops theories, “and I don’t know anyone who does.” When we hold them to account, by repeating to them some instances where they did, they say, “I wasn’t dressing you down. I just wanted to know how your wife and kids were doing. I was making conversation for the love of St. Francis of Assisi. I just wanted to know how your family was doing. Nothing more. I had no ulterior motives. I just wanted to get to know you better. Sheesh, maybe you need to get out more.”

It is possible that some people think this way. It is possible that their “How is your day?” conversation starter was totally benign? It’s also possible that their search for dominance was occurring on a subconscious level for which they are not even aware, but no one ever considers the idea that this attempt to tell you that they don’t play such games is a game in and of itself.

The follow up sentence to further condemn you to a few moments beneath their heel would be, “And I can’t believe you do … play games like these.”

Such a characterization might be daunting, in that it makes us think we might be an incurable cynic, and we should evaluate ourselves to see if we mischaracterize some comments, but some of the times they use such vulnerable moments to score future points on us.

It’s possible we might never know the difference. It’s also just as possible that they might engage in a similar tactic later on down the road, with the knowledge that we are now vulnerable to the cynicism charge. The latter occurs when we reflect back on the initial charge and realize that they were engaging in a social psychological operation that is foreign to us, one steeped in passive aggressions. We may believe that, on some level, they were lying, and we may believe we have just gained some insight into who they are, and that we have gained some points in the social psych ops playbook with that knowledge.

But, and this is a crucial element to understanding how other people’s minds work, they may not be deceiving us in any way. They may believe that they never engage in social psych ops. They may believe that they’re just nice people working their way through a day, trying to make as many friends as possible, but they might turn around, not five minutes later, and inform us of a conversation they had with Mary in accounting.

Some suggest that only 2% reflect on themselves objectively and that the rest of us have a subjective perspective of who we think we are. Thus, they don’t view their conversation with Mary in accounting the same way we do. They may see it as a simple conversation that the two of them had, and if we see something more in it, that’s on us. They may see Mary in accounting as the hoebag that she is, and the fact that Mary just happened to tell one of her hoebag stories to them was done without any prompting on their part, but the fact that they told us about it means that they think they scored some points on Mary.

The latter description is the true definition of social psych ops, for most of them occur without either party’s knowledge. Most social psych ops occur when we notice the clothes someone wears, the coffee they drink, their inferior hygienic practices, the manner in which they entered into our conversation or exited it, how often they swear, or how they part their hair, how they tell a joke, if they’re hip to the latest music, or if they’re too hip and conformed to marketing manipulation, how they get emotional, or if they do, what they eat, and how they eat, if they’re too random, or too calculating, and where we fit into all those social paradigms. Those are the social psych ops that we engage in every day whether we know it or not.

Like military psychological operations, social psych ops are conducted to convey select information and indicators to an audience to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of groups and individuals.

The mission of these operations is to inform our audience that we are superior to them in some way shape or form, or if that’s not the case, we hope to at least take something away from the interactions. The latter may be more important, for it is in these bumper car-type interactions, with opposing forces that we tend to locate some definition of our character. It is also by engaging in these interactions that we become more equipped to deal with them in the future. They can be practiced in wartime situations, and in peace, and they can be used to define or malign, but best practices dictate that we, at least, acknowledge how often they are in play with everyone from our fiercest opponents to our good friends so that we are prepared.

As with any exercise of this sort, our opponent will attempt to survey the battlefield before engaging. He will try to locate our insecurities and place his best forces there. The best social psych ops general will also have knowledge of his weaknesses, and either place some forces there, or cede ground. There’s nothing wrong with temporary, strategic surrender, as long as we recognize our opponent’s attack strategy for what it is. As with most martial arts training, self-defense is the optimal use of social psychological operations.

Those equipped with a brain that requires more processing, may need to concede ground to those who are blessed with quick-wits for a time. If we are the types who require more processing time, consider the fact that our life will be filled with social psychological operations from all quarters, and we will need to learn how to react to them. Accept defeats for what they are, recognize these psychological ploys for what they are, no matter what excuses are given for deployment –and there will always be excuses given for few openly admit their strategy– and develop counter attacks that may foil or prevent future attacks.

All attacks and counterattacks are situational, of course, but one needs to establish reference points for their opponents that they can use to counterattack. This universal frame of reference is vital to a psychological operations soldier, for once we’ve established ourselves in a given area our antagonists will attempt to switch the playing field on us. They might choose politics or sports, because their team has a recent history of beating ours in these arenas. They may choose the department of the company they work in, or our inferior position in the company. The might speak of the type of dog they own that is superior in a physical sense, or the shows we watch that are not as funny as theirs, or any psychological vine they cling to, as they hang off the cliff with all of their inferiorities dangling out for the world to see because they forgot to wear their psychological support hose.

One might think that those who engage in strategic, information often rely on professorial and clinical psychological study, but most of it relies on the incidental research we perform on friends and family to achieve active dominance on the battleground. It is the latter that we will concentrate on in our conversations here, for if a reader’s interests lie in the more clinical and professorial arenas there are countless books and blogs that will educate and entertain in this fashion, but we know what we know. For the rest, the reader must go … elsewhere.

Operational Psych Ops

To this point in our psych ops training, we have focused on some unknown strategic ploys and information gathering exercises of social psych ops warfare. All of this is key to understanding how these psych ops are employed, of course, but no amount of theoretical discussion will help a reader understand what they’re up against better than witnessing these practices deployed in live action.

Operational psych ops involve putting that which was gathered during the information gathering exercises of social psychological operations into play. It is an informed approach that the social psych op soldier uses to attack fellow psych op soldiers in what could loosely be termed a training exercise.

Have you ever confided a weakness to a friend? “I have a fundamental weakness about me that no one knows about, but don’t tell anyone else about it.” We provide these people excruciatingly painful details about our weakness, only to have them divulge it. We’re angry and vulnerable. “I confided that information to you in strict confidence!”

“If I knew it meant that much to you, I wouldn’t have said anything,” they say to our surprise. If you have been in this situation a number of times, you know the U-bend pipe defense that psych ops soldiers employ in a manner Buggs Bunny did against Yosemite Sam did to return gunfire.

“I told you that in strict confidence,” we say. “I said the words don’t tell anyone too.”

“Don’t be so sensitive,” they might say, or “Don’t be so defensive.” They may word their responses a number of ways, of course, but the point of their responses is that it’s incumbent on us to get over their violation of our trust.

Inherent in such messages is this idea that we’re naïve. “So, you can lie to me, break my trust, and twist my mind up with your tactics, and I’m the one who needs enough cultural awareness to accept these things for what they aren’t?” These responses are the type we don’t think of in the moment. Too often, we accept these evaluations at face value, and we walk away feeling too defensive and too sensitive.

The idea that a strategic operational campaign can occur without our knowledge is not only possible, it is likely, for they will often occur in pot shot fashion, similar to guerrilla warfare. This may appear to be a training exercise to all parties concerned, but watch what is said during training exercises, for they can evolve into a live-fire training exercise when we least expect it.

Tactical Psych Ops

Tactical psych ops are the culmination of all that was learned in the previous two phases of the social psychological operations, in that they are conducted in an arena assigned by the individual across a wide range of psychological operations to support the tactical mission against opposing forces. When the psych ops soldier exploited our weakness in the training exercises, they were testing our vulnerabilities, and gauging our reactions to see if the material could be used later, before the opposite sex, or in any arena that involves an individual that the psychological operations soldier is trying to impress.

One may not experience tactical operations from their closest friends for years, until such time that the individual uses all that they have learned in live exercises to impress that one person who means something to them. The victim might be surprised by an attack that appears to come from nowhere and didn’t appear to establish anything beyond what could be termed humorous and insignificant. For the operational soldier, however, the tactical use of psychological warfare is the end game. It’s the reason they invited you to this particular outing, it’s the reason they engaged in all those private, training exercises with us, and it’s the reason they continue to call us a friend.

One popular tactical psych ops weapon is the Dumb-Fire Missile. The Dumb-Fire Missile has no targeting or maneuvering capability of its own, and it is often used to counter attack a counter attack. It can be something as relatively benign as:

“But I was only kidding,” they say when we effectively counter their assault with the meanest thing we can possibly think of to counter their act of revealing information about us. A fight starts of course, and during the aerial assault, they say, “You meant it, but I was only kidding. Sheesh!”

The stealth effectiveness of the Dumb-Fire Missile occurs when it goes beyond dismantling the defenses of its opponent to persuasively encouraging popular discontent against our counter attack. The interpretation is that when they engaged in a powerful attack against you, they were only kidding, or they weren’t aware that it meant that much to you. “You can call me dumb for not knowing that it meant that much to you, but your counter-attack was just mean.” When you counter-attacked, it was obvious to all that your comment was the result of wounded soldier, laying on the battlefield, desperately trying to salvage their standing. Used often enough, the Dumb-Fire Missile can effectively degrade an adversary’s ability to conduct, or sustain, future operations against them in the future.

The Dumb-Fire Missile is similar to the U-bend pipe defense in that it returns fire, but it is more effective in disrupting and confusing the adversary’s decision-making process by undermining their command and control with the idea that we might never know when they’re truly serious. Most of those who don’t regard normal human interactions as social psychological operations think that these soldiers aren’t serious, and they will attempt to laugh as hard as others, because they don’t take themselves all that serious, and they’re perfectly capable of laughing at themselves, because they’re wary of being perceived as too defensive or too sensitive.

A successful deployment of this strategy, followed by the Dumb-Fire Missile, has the potential to procure enjoyment of foreign forces to a point that the social psych ops adversary loses the will to fight. By lowering the adversary’s morale, and then its efficiency, these operations can also discourage aggressive reactions by creating disaffection within their ranks, ultimately leading to total surrender.

The integrated deployment of the core capabilities of social operations warfare, involve psychological operations, personal deception, and a display of security in concert with providing support. These attacks can be launched under the guise of the aggressor pretending that these attacks are performed in a humorous vein, and you shouldn’t get so upset at that which they deem to be insignificant. It is a passive-aggressive approach that they use to undermine our base that makes us feel foolish for believing that we see ulterior motives. Once we understand that this is not so serious, any furtherance will influence us to side with them while they are attacking us, in a manner that will disrupt our normal reactions, and corrupt or usurp our normal adversarial decision making processes all while protecting them from current or future attacks on the topic in question.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Operations_(United_States)