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The Mental Relativity Tapes

Transcripts of the personal tapes recorded by Melanie Anne Phillips while continuing to develop the Mental Relativity theory of mind.

8/9/94

"More on Symbols"

The concept of creating different symbolic representations to create emotional needs, emotional moods, can be looked at as supplying different keycaps on a computer. Whereby, you would press a particular key and a whole different set of symbols will pop up on each of the keys when you change the keycap you are using. When we are creating these overlay templates, we might be able to supply three or four different kinds of symbols in order to access the Dramatica engine for each of the perspectives we are dealing with.

In other words, there would be the subjective story perspective, and that would have maybe four different choices. They conceivably could be mixed and matched, but probably it would be better initially to have each set be a completely different set of symbols, trying to accomplish the same task. Our purpose in creating these alternate symbolics would be to realize that when we are trying to get to the heart of the matter, and be very definitive about emotional responses, non-verbal meaning, what we need to do is tap into something that is nearly universal in it's representation in our culture. As a result, these are floating meaning symbols. If you only had a peripheral exposure to them, you may not know the context that they are intended to represent. If you are highly familiar with them, you may know precisely what they are intended to represent in terms of emotional response. The key is to be able to provide alternative symbolic representations so that if you have not been exposed to the one we present initially, you could then sift through two or three other choices and find one that is more attuned to your personal experience.

Again, there are at the height of our cultural intersection among individuals, certain symbols that mean exactly the same thing to every person that you might ask. But, as you begin to get into the breadth and range of symbols necessary to describe an entire superclass, we would find that there are not enough symbols to go around that are universally accepted and understood. At least that's my expectation. As a result, we come up with different sets of symbols to go across the entire breadth of the superclass -- from that which is most commonly appreciated, to the areas that are more rare, and less ventured into. We can tap a wide range of audience participation in terms of our authors. They can jump in and pick the symbols which are most meaningful to them.

The danger arises if we mix and match between symbol sets. The consistency provided by Dramatica is somewhat lost. Each individual could mix and match symbols to their hearts content, and create a completely unbiased representation, if they understood the consistency that was necessary. But, this would work only for them, because it would counter their own personal biases. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of training, self-awareness, and objectivity.

So, for the time being at least, we will need to make all of these symbols as being of all one set or all of another , with no mixing and matching. Perhaps later on we may be able to mix and match sets or to create a completely user definable symbol set through the use of colors and responses. Something like word associations or ink blot tests. That way we could provide a set of colors or tonalities, or melodies and each time you shift to another it would create a new context through taking the original colors and have another color follow which would have a different meaning, had the order been reversed.

If we then ask a series of choices where the author would then pick a certain other color to be correspondent or should be next in the sequence to make them comfortable or completely out of whack. We may be able to create within the program, an analysis of the individual user and once we have established just a few touch points, we would be able to understand their individual biases. Then allowing them to choose the beginning point for a set of symbols, knowing this information about them, Dramatica could then generate the entire symbol set that would have the proper touch points to give the proper emotional meaning.

Obviously, this is pretty sophisticated, polling our users to respond to how they feel about certain colors, by choosing other colors or sounds. Developing a profile of them, essentially a mind-set in the Dramatica engine and using it to begin with a particular color or set of sounds, and have the Dramatica engine generate keycaps or a semantic template that would have the intuitive impact on that individual that would be a consistent emotional understanding of the model from one side to the other. Certainly, it's not out of the question, it's just a matter of doing a lot of work -- the technology already exists.

However, as we begin to work with these new symbolic, non-verbal representations, we should strive to begin with the universally accepted symbols, and not allow mixing and matching between sets. It won't work all the time for everybody, but that's already the case with the semantic template. This problem can only be overcome ultimately with an interactive polling of the users to develop a profile of each that can create a tailored symbol set. It would be consistent though, only in terms of their individual perspective. Anyone else using that set would find it quite warped.

Copyright Melanie Anne Phillips


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