Steven Hall wrote:arcman564 wrote:Hello Steven! Thanks for having this forum. I'm curious about a lot of the elements behind the creation of TRST, but some main curiosities are: anything in the "real" world that inspired any of the incredibly creative ideas in TRST, in any way? Also, given the amazing psychological concepts you've presented, do you have a background in psych studies at all? Such a great book! And, I'm not sucking up here, but I have to say it's some of the best writing I've ever read, period.
Hi Arcman,
Welcome to the forum & cheers for your kind words :)
No, I don't have a background in psych studies - I guess I think a lot about thinking, if that makes any sense. I'm really caught up in ideas about memory, communication, language, reality and our collective, cultural and personal perception of it. The ways we come to think what we think and also the way we can think things without even knowing that we think them, what is a mind and what goes in to making one - all that stuff.
Something I've said a lot before is that the Ludovician shark was partly inspired by observing language and being fascinated by how often water imagery seems to appear when we talk about the mind, thought and language -
stream of consciousness, the unconscious depths, flow of conversation, ebb in conversation, muddied or clear thinking... the list goes on. Why water? Why is it there? I'm fascinated by these clues to deeper processes (
deeper processes!) that we're barely aware of.
I guess I've also always been drawn to idea that our definition of life could be seen as quite narrow and carbon-centric. Look at something like a bank or a corporation - in many ways these institutions behave much like multi-cellular organisms. They are created, they die, they have sense of self preservation, they make decisions (yes, you could argue that it is the people in the corporations that make the decisions not the corporations themselves, but this is nothing new - a specialised team of braincells also make the decisions for the body/cell-collective that makes up 'you' after all). All this is something I'll certainly be coming back to.
I'm not sure if any of this answers your question - just observation, lots of reading and lots of thinking I guess is what I'm trying to say.
As for your other question re referencing - I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, I'm afraid - you'd like to use extracts from my book to illustrate your theories, do you mean? I'd like to know more about your ideas. Can you say more?
S
Steven –
Thanks for the shout back, and for sharing the fascinating stuff that sounds actually rather similar to my own process of “thinking about thinking” as you put it. I rather suspected as much, that you were creating from your own thoughts in the innovative ideas you’re putting forth, since so much of the existing science out there is also kind of the same boring and tired science that isn’t doing much cutting edge stuff at all anymore, using the same old scratched and worn out lenses to look at the world. Even just in a writing sense, that’s so much of what I enjoyed in your book was the innovation of it, the fresh take on story telling. I mean, who gets away with blank pages as part of the text??? But, you did it – blank pages, hyphenated word concepts (really liked that) textual and conceptual fish, etc.
I was listening to a talk you gave that was broadcast on YouTube, about the book having something for everyone, that it could hopefully touch multiple genres and speak to a lot of people from a lot of angles, but what made it great for me was that the whole mix, together, made for a full package deal. Like many readers, I tire of “genre” books that seem so narrow in “fulfilling” a marketing obligation, so as to fit where put on the proper shelf in the bookstore. But, TRST was like a really great (and so seldom made) video game that doesn’t have to try to be just one thing, but rather is a whole lot of things, and, taken collectively as such, becomes far more entertaining.
As requested, I’m going to post most of what I emailed to you, and I hope that folks do find it interesting. In any event, I welcome your comments and thoughts on it. Apologies this is late in coming – life is far too busy these days.
So, on to the commentary…..
First off though, yes, the whole “water” thing is interesting, and I never noted it, but, yeah, in hearing you put it that way, what IS the deal with it??? Interesting too that water has often been described as a bridge of sorts, between realms, worlds, whatever, in a supernatural sense, in fiction, as if it acts as some kind of greater medium for unseen forces. And then there are the Biblical rituals of course, with such thoughts that getting dunked in H2O by a religious type works wonders for the human soul.
Perhaps we allude to water because of our nine month in utero swim that likely remains with us on some level of sub-basement processing, or maybe it reaches back even farther if we believe we all walked out of the oceans in the way, way back. Hard to say, I guess, but it worked incredibly well in TRST, obviously.
Wow, I just noticed that could be the word “trust” and I have no idea why I just clued in to that, but trust certainly plays a big factor in TRST, doesn’t it. Hmmm. Must be one of those Jungian collective unconscious kinds of things going on there….
But, back on track. My reference to referencing was in relation to how TRST relates to what I’ve been working on, and, specifically, how elements of the story provide excellent analogy for concepts of behavioral change we’re working on at our agency, with respect to developing new approaches to self-empowered change. We deal a lot with reality, how to control it, how it becomes “structured” in our lives, and therefore how we can “re-structure” it in order to achieve a desired change objective.
So, with respect to referencing your work, I was thinking along the lines of something like this (although maybe not exactly like this, since I’m just penning this now, but it gives an idea of the kind of reference I was hoping to use):
“How much stronger is the ‘truth’ of a thing, as compared to what, over time, can easily become only a watered down or even hopelessly inaccurate ‘impressionist’ picture of that thing? Is there a reality of ideas behind concepts that is worth understanding, and would such an understanding yield a greater use and control of what that idea can accomplish in our lives? What greater weight could such ‘true’ ideas have, as opposed to a mere ‘representative’ understanding of those notions?
Steven Hall, in his groundbreaking fictional work, The Raw Shark Texts, relates a very compelling story of an ancient Japanese monk, who defeats three very well-trained young swordsmen, brothers all, with, in the first case, a calligraphy brush, in the second, a single bristle from said calligraphy brush, and, in the third, with nothing at all. In each successive instance the monk faces a supposedly more technically proficient opponent, yet defeats his opposition, in each instance, with a successively decreased requirement of visible tools or fighting moves. The first man, who claims to be quite skilled, is beaten with the brush, in three moves. The second, who claims to be greater than the first, is conquered with only the bristle of the brush, in two moves. And the third son, claiming to be the greatest swordsman in all of his father’s lands, the monk overcomes with nothing, not even the lonely brush bristle, and the monk does so in a single move. When the father of these three sons asks how this feat was possible, the monk remarks that, while apparently the sons were using skill, the monk was utilizing a deeper knowledge – the idea of skill itself, or what could be called unskill, in the words of the venerable monk.
Fiction often reveals great insight with such stories, analogies, or ‘parables’. And what we can infer from Hall’s fictional monk warrior is that the idea of skill holds greater power than the mere fundamentals of skillful swordsmanship.
How does this relate to our discussion in this lesson?
Consider that we’ve been talking about the inherent power found in knowing the ‘reality’ or ‘true name’ of an objective we are attempting to achieve in our own lives. We used the example of what it ‘really means’ to be a parent, or to be a friend, or even to be happy, or successful, or sober, or financially solvent, or whatever it is that you want to create within your own process of change. We noted also that society’s definitions are sometimes wildly off-base with respect to what is actually produced, versus what the idea is supposed to bring to us. We practice the ‘accepted’ definition of parenting, for example, and we find that we become the typically frustrated parent with the typically alienated child. But, is that ‘true’ parenting? Is parenting honestly meant to be what one popular parenting magazine refers to as ‘the seven levels of hell?’ Do we really even want to accept such a debilitating standard of failure as the definition of what we want to create? If not, then perhaps it is time to do as Hall’s monk would suggest, which is to stop practicing skill, and start practicing the idea of it. In the parenting example, that would mean to stop trying to practice the common definition of accepted parenting, and instead begin to learn the idea of parenting itself, which one might call un-parenting. Real change, beyond what has become the talk-show, store-shelf, political-platform version of it, is the truth of change, evidenced by a measurable difference in the state of things. It is not talk of change, nor debate of change, but rather it is actual change, a term Hall’s monk might describe as un-change. These ‘truths’ of reality are what we are seeking to achieve.”
So, yeah, something along those lines, although, at the end of the day, of course, I don’t know that any of that is what you really even “meant” or even if that’s what the fictional monk was “trying to say” but that’s what I got out of it in relation to my research and this new approach to personal change.
And, good heavens this is REALLY long. Sorry.
A quick stab at describing the theory – this all came out of my frustration with the accepted failure of traditional psychology, and my research into why the hell such a potentially well-intentioned field is doing so much damage in people’s lives. I mean, good grief, psych is supposed to be about understanding the mind in order to advance the species, and instead it’s devolved into a veritable horror show where the outcome is far too often the utter antithesis of human betterment. While it took some doing to dig up the real history of how it all came about (which is information that was NOT taught to me in any of my university psych courses, oddly enough), essentially I came to discover is that, because psychology was born out of “world is flat” thinking, the poison fruit of the poison tree problem is what plagues the field – no matter how “innovative” psychology has tried to become, its roots are hopelessly mired in a muck of misconceptions about human thinking and behavior. The starting point was flawed, and so every tangent leading from that point is, ultimately, and not surprisingly, also headed off course.
Looking back on the sciences that spawned the study of the mind (and I’m trying to make a very long story short here – long, as in, a story more than three thousand years old in the telling of its full history), the fact of that matter is that the “parent” disciplines of psychology have long since moved on to better understandings, including conclusions revealing that earlier held conclusions were quite wrong, but the “child” of those now-modified fields is still running with the same clothes it had on when it first started walking, and no one has bothered to consider that a fashion update might be in order, let alone consider that the primitive trappings of psychology’s youth are a complete blunder when compared to what we know today about how things work.
The most relevant aspect of what has changed in the rest of the world’s thinking, but hasn’t changed in the mind of psychology? Many key aspects shaped psychology’s strange trip to the Freudian couch, and many of those founding ideologies are no longer considered valid in “modern” times, but this contribution from the old physics, of the Newtonian model of the universe as a completely mechanistic and utterly predictable design, is, in my consideration, the most damaging bias from those early days that has since been proven to be incorrect.
And so, that’s where I started, trying to understand the new physics because, as the Greeks pointed out lo those many, many years ago, we cannot observe the observable universe without eventually observing ourselves. If certain patterns seem true for stars and galaxies and plants and puppy dogs, there is merit in considering that such patterns might also have relevance for that other animal humming with the same molecular energy as space dust – homo sapiens.
Me being me, I decided to make that comparison, and see what psychology might look like if we started from scratch, based on a more current view of the universe than the one based on Newton’s headaches from a falling apple. The crux of the theory I’ve written is simply to identify the means of “capturing” the instant between cause and effect in our lives. As we all know, cause leads to effect, and effect becomes its own set of causes, in turn. But, if we can freeze the instant between what MIGHT happen and what DOES happen, as a result of our own choice-making process, we gain a degree of substantial control in our lives when we learn to intervene within the pause of silence we have created – a space in which we can stop and consider what we are about to do, and why, and decide if it’s really in our best interests to do so.
Having been in the field of behavior change for quite a while now, I’ve noted that standard methodologies, from traditional psych to self-help, seem to focus almost exclusively on either cause, or effect, but don’t seem to take the whole spectrum, as a process, into account. Neither extreme presents a successful solution. Centering on the force of cause, a patient is summed up as being merely a product of childhood woes, brain chemistries, or even genetics. Centering on the force of effect, a patient is summed up by his or her state upon arrival in the therapist’s office, with little or no interest in how the person came to be in that condition. Both extremes ex out the most important factor in a person’s life – THE PERSON! Yes, cause is a force, and, yes, effect is a force, but I suggest a third (mostly overlooked) force, which is the force of self. What am I doing with the causes that come in to my life? What am I doing with the effects that I produce from those causes? How can I stop the ceaseless flow and start responding, instead of reacting, to alter the stream in a chosen direction? How can life stop living me, so I can start living life?
I think Eric Sanderson deals with that, and clearly there is a shift in his reality when he decides he’s had enough of living the quiet, “expected of himself” life, and instead takes the plunge into becoming the dominant player in his own life drama. For better or worse, Eric decided to live, to stop merely existing within a sleepy trance, and instead become awake to whatever was waiting for him. He chooses this again, and again, throughout the book, and such is what makes this story so inspiring for those who wish to “un-plug” as the first Matrix film might put it, waking up from the dream world to embrace the beauty and ugliness of a truly wakeful existence.
Somewhere between cause and effect, I am – and my program works to teach people to find, and utilize, that instant of personal awareness.
The reason that’s so new in this country is simply because the existing model is mostly based on an idea of powerlessness, requiring either a “higher power” for one to achieve change (which, of course, is the 12 Step Model), or else describing a “disease” concept, in which, once again, the patient is powerless (this time because the patient supposedly suffers from an actual disorder). In the latter case, the cure is not to turn one’s will and life over to a mythical supernatural being, but rather to submit to a set of curative applications, which very often involves cheap little plastic bottles filled with very expensive little pills. So, the idea of self-empowered change (while not at all new, in and of itself) is very novel within an industry which widely holds the prejudice that damaged goods can’t repair themselves. That’s a blunt and inadequate statement, of course, but I’m trying (although not succeeding) to be somewhat brief here. I’m glad to explain more, if anyone asks.
Jumping to a summary then, a new foundation gave way to a new structure, and, to avoid the usual disconnect between theory and application, I wrote an applied version of the theory, and further wrote direct curriculum based on the form of therapy which I developed. In essence, what it all boils down to is realizing that we are both the primary producer and consumer of our own reality, and within that process, we can (and do) exist in one of two modes. Mode one is auto-pilot mode, where life just happens, and most everything beyond wondering if we should have coffee or tea seems beyond our ability to really control. In this mode, life seems to “happen” to us, and it’s where a lof of folks live, sadly. Mode two (the mode we teach) is a responsive mode, in which we apply methods to live responsively, understanding that the other side of life happening to us is that WE are happening to LIFE. Discovering the WHY of it all is the discovery of the mechanism that yields control of how reality is built – and therefore how reality can be re-built, to effect desired changes.
Does it work? Well, yes, it does actually. Far better than anything out there that I’ve come across, in fact, and my “evidence” of that is simply to point to the continued mess of behaviors within a world where we are more blessed by psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health practitioners, counselors, therapists, life coaches, experts, advisors, consultants, pastors, priests, and even talk show hosts than ever before in our history. When we’re not getting the right results, we’re not doing it right. Thus far, this new approach is getting the right results, so the “rightness” of it is revealed in the results, not to mention that many studies now being done confirm the validity of individual methods we’re using, although, so far, our is the only approach to put things together as we’ve done, combining disparate elements that are not so effective in isolation, but, used in tandem, are quite potent.
The core of the theory, and therefore the tenets of the therapy, as well as the applications within the curriculum, can be broadly housed under a basic change in psychological thought: instead of a patient being seen as predictably diagnosable (hence the use of the Diagnostic and STATISTICAL Manual, the bible of present-day psych), and in need of external treatment to address permanent internal conditions, my approach views people as dynamically changeable, and in need of internal knowledge to address transitory external situations. Short form: with the proper knowledge for change, tools for change, and resources for change, change is achievable.
So far we’ve worked successfully within populations long-considered “resistant to change” (translate to: people the experts have given up on) and the outcomes were startlingly effective. My program was then promptly shut down by those no longer getting their dollars from the return business of recidivism (translate to: people the experts usually get paid by), and so I shelved it for a number of years while fuming about the fact that those who could do something to make things better invariably make things worse, and those who actually would make things better invariably can’t do much at all. Then along came this opportunity to become involved with a drug and alcohol treatment center, and, well, put me in a lab coat and call me Trey Fidorous, but I dusted off the old box of materials and decided to have a fresh go of it.
That’s what led to the writing of this new curriculum, targeted specifically for the clients coming through my agency, bringing something quite new to the field of chemical dependency care. And, believe me, around here, it’s needed. As much as psychology misses the mark, chemical dependency care, as a long-neglected kind of “pseudo-clinical” branch of the psych profession, with even less scrutiny given to its mechanics, has wandered even further from any semblance of a beaten track, employing methods that are heralded by its own industry standards to be more prone to make a patient’s life worse, than better. So, that’s not good. And, with recidivism rates reported as high as 70%, it’s high time for change, especially given that, true to form, the field continues to blame the “disease of addiction” as less and less treatable, instead of admitting that no one really knows what the hell they’re doing.
And, that brings us to today, more or less, and my re-read of TRST, and my thought that there are great elements in there that could help to illustrate some of the points I’m trying to make in reaching these folks in need, and so this book-length email (now a post of epic proportions) to you, which is likely going to require more e-space than is available in all of Unspace.
In reference to the bit I wrote, as an example of possible referencing of TRST, as you can see from where I’m going with it, a lot of what we talk about in restructuring one’s own life is determining what you are trying to achieve, making a plan to achieve it, and then working that plan, and assessing your outcome to see if the results match up with the original vision, or do you need to make some adjustments. All of that begins (or ends, or goes sideways) with the baseline vision of what it is that the client is trying to achieve, which is why we spend a lot of time looking beyond the social catastrophes of how lives are often lived in this country, looking past ridiculous prejudicial (and just plain stupid) definitions provided by religion or law, and trying to find a “reality” that is even worth trying to create, based on an outcome that is worthy of being realized.
That’s why I loved the story of Tekisui, and the concept that the idea of skill was able to defeat skill. The “less” applied that was “learned”, the “more” that could be applied that was actually “known”. The sons had learned to be skillful, but Tekisui knew the truth of skill, or at least that’s what I got out of it. In each case, as the next opponent put forth more SKILL, Tekisui’s preparation was to fight with even LESS of what could traditionally be seen as SKILL, relying ever more heavily on the IDEA of skill itself, to the point that, with nothing, and with only a single move, he defeated the most “skilled” of the three sons.
Okay, so that was a long story I didn’t keep short! As you can see, it’s not really a “short answer” kind of thing, so thanks for bearing with me.
I’ll shut up now. :)
Hope this fits in your email….
Oh, last thought – yeah, I have ALWAYS been fascinated with language too, and just how it is that mere words, these blow darts of sound with assigned meaning, can be so powerful in our lives, and in the lives of others. How does language shape our world? How does the world shape our language? Can I even access the same planes of perception that are accessible to someone who speaks a language that is different from mine? My wife is from Ukraine (we’re still fighting paperwork to get her over here) and we have found language endlessly amazing, seeing how things change between her native Russian and my native English language and vice versa.
It’s a trip, because there are things she can “only say” in Russian. Why is that? Do we need to make up new words in English to capture those ideas??? And then stupid little English phrases or idioms that just get a complete blank stare from her. I remember telling her once that I had a lot on my mind, and she asked, “What lot? You sell a lot? Where is this lot?” Funny.
So, yeah, we deal often with that too, in my program, how reality is created, what creates it, how much we are created by it, in turn, and the attempt to engage and respond to the flow (water again!) going out from the choices we have made, which becomes part of the range of choices from which our next set of choices can be made. Like planting a harvest that yields the seeds for what can be planted next time around, meaning the goal is to become the responsive farmer who responds to what is sown, what is harvested, and what is reaped, to create a “conscious” garden as opposed to one that just grows wild and haphazard, where the farmer stares dejectedly, watching what seems to be a life that runs itself without any measure of real influence or control.
And, speaking of making choices, what is the YOU that makes those choices, and can YOU see yourself independently from how you see yourself??? How much is reality what we make of it, and how much of reality can be “re-made” by us?
I have theories on that….
Does it mean we could graduate to a point of drinking water from what was once a glass filled with paper strips marked with the word “water” on each strip? I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe we can’t create oceans from ideas, find islands on conceptual shores, or bring back the loved and lost. Not yet, at least. But maybe that’s a good thing, because maybe that’s what keeps Ludovicians at bay, as well. For now, at least. Maybe there’s a fearful edge we shouldn’t cross until we’re more ready to cross it, and maybe there are new challenges waiting to be faced by a graduated human being. But, then again, it would be better, I think, to worry about how not to get killed by a conceptual shark, rather than worrying about how not to get killed by each other.
We’re just so petty, aren’t we?
So, yes, it could be a scary world if we graduated as human beings, if we evolved into something more. But I think it’s a much scarier world if we never graduate at all, if we only continue to devolve into less than we even are today.
So, yeah, seems like we think about a lot of the same thinking. Cool.
Okay, and I now I keep promising to shut up, but I really will this time!
Write me back – if you can stand the thought of me replying!
Much respect.
*** Okay Steven, and so there it is, the post from hell! Hope all is going well with you and yours. Will be glad to be in touch.
