I saw a meme today that suggested that since only Republicans in DC are getting Coronavirus, perhaps it is a plot by Democrats to spread Covid among the Republicans.

Of course the more likely explanation is that since the Republicans at these events weren’t wearing masks and didn’t practice social distancing, there was a lot of virus in the air. And that’s why they got sick at Republican gatherings where there were no Democrats in attendance.

Though it is kind of funny for that meme to say, “No Dems got it, therefore they must be behind it,” there’s a danger that some people will actually believe it, and that’s how a conspiracy theory starts.

The people who believe such things don’t accept the simple explanation because they don’t like that explanation. It disagrees with their views, which might make them look foolish because they publicly touted the views that are now in question.

So, they look for another explanation that is more to their liking. And when they find one, no matter how off the beaten track it is, they’ll believe it because it doesn’t contradict their existing beliefs, and they won’t look foolish in their own eyes (or the eyes of others).

It is called Confirmation Bias – rejecting information that doesn’t fit a person’s pre-existing view.

But if you reject the obvious explanation, there’s a big hole – a gap – something that requires an explanation, and these kind of folks have rejected the simple and obvious one.

People want the world to make sense. And they want to be right. Even more, they don’t want to be wrong.

So if you put that all together with Confirmation Bias rejection of the simple truth, folks will go to all kinds of lengths to spin tall tales, no matter how absurd and convoluted to fill that gap with an explanation -just like this meme.

Unfortunately, anyone who sees the meme who has rejected the obvious truth because it flies in the face of what they believe (and want to believe), and if they haven’t come up with their own satisfactory explanation yet, they might well latch onto the meme because it fills that hole and, from their perspective, the world makes sense once again, and they were right all along.

Confirmation Bias complete.

We train our minds every day to either let the facts drive our beliefs, or let our beliefs filter the facts.

Our minds are only truly free when we let them follow all the information and choose that which makes the most sense, regardless of whether or not it matches our pre-existing believes.

Practical Narrative Psychology

Melanie Anne Phillips

In the classes I teach on story structure we often point to Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) in “Silence of the Lambs” as a great example of a Success/Bad story in which the goal (save the senator’s daughter from Buffalo Bill) is achieved, but the personal angst of not being able to save that spring lamb remains, as evidenced by Lecter’s final conversation with Starling over the phone in which he asks, “Are the lambs still screaming?”

Her silence in response (plus the somber soundtrack music even though this he graduation from the academy) both indicate she is still holding on to that angst.

We usually leave it there, having served our purpose of illustrating what Success/Bad means. Sometimes we go on to say that the reason she is trying to save all these people today – the reason she got into law enforcement (besides the fact her father was a sheriff) was because she can’t let go of that one lamb she couldn’t save and keeps trying to make up for it.

But now I’m thinking that while that may be true in an objective sense, nobody would carry that weight in their heart and act out that way for those reasons alone. You’d see it, you’d understand it and move on.

Rather, I think the reason she does what she does is not to make up for that lamb but to avoid having to carry another similar sense of loss.

So every extraordinary effort – even to the extent of putting herself at risk of death – is to keep from adding one more victim to the pain or failure she already carries.

It would seem, then, counter-intuitive to put oneself in a profession where the risk of failure in the exact same subject matter area as your angst.

But consider – most of us need to pay penance when we feel we have screwed up. The risk of hurting herself emotionally even more by her choice of profession, therefore, is penance for the first lamb she lost, while the extra-human effort she puts into each case is the attempt to avoid adding another instance to the pain she already carries.

Pretty screwed up, really, but in actuality the only way a mind, a heart, can make up for failing another in a way that can’t be fixed is to try to help others in a similar way. But then the risk of failure is omnipresent, so we give up a life of our own to excel enough to avoid another failure.

It is a never ending cycle of emotional self-flagellation: trying to make up for the failure by putting oneself in the situation most likely to create a repeat, then devoting one’s life to trying to avoid the failure and thereby punishing oneself for the original failure.

That’s how we think and how we feel. Of course, the only way out of this vicious circle is to accept the original failure, call it a clean slate, and move on. But who can easily do that, and how?

I’ve been reading about the advent of the new programming language, GPT-3.  Very interesting.  But, of course, it continues down the wrong path to create an artificial true self-awareness, and merely approximates human thinking through increasing levels of finer and finer detail.

The point is, the as long as  you see everything in a system as binary, there will be no self-awareness, no matter how fine the details are.  It is only when the details blend together so that they move as a wave, rather than interact as particles, that you get the second have of the Artificial Mind which requires both binary and analog – particle and wave.

This essential relationship is at the heart of the quad – one side blend and the other is discrete.

This same relationship is seen at the core of all constructs that have achieved the perfect balance:

Mass, Energy, Space, Time

Knowledge, Thought, Ability, Desire

Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb

Strong forces, Weak forces, Electromagnetism, Gravity

Earth, Water, Wind, Fire

Each of these quads exhibits the exact same interrelationships among the four components, and each set of four will have three that seem like the others, and one that seem the odd man out.

But more important, each set of four divides into two pairs – one part at a given fractal level and a second pair at another fractal level.  Or, more accurately, one pair that creates fractals and a second pair that creates frictals.

More basically, as described at the beginning, one seeing discrete particles and one seeing homogeneous influences.  Translate as digital vs. analog.

In fact, the basic functioning circuit of self-awareness would require no more than to be comprised of one transistor and one tube.  The transistor represents the neural network and the tube represents the biochemistry.

These two aspects of the brain generate, in tandem, the mind.

The neural network sets pathways – obstacles and riverbeds – through which the information energy of the biochemistry  is channeled.  The energy of the biochemistry erodes obstacles and builds up the material of thought to divert channels, block them completely, or carve new ones in the fabric of experience.

Each system informs the other, alters the other, and each operates at a level a magnitude away from the other so that when one sees one system as made of  particles, one sees the other as functioning as a wave.

Could we look deeply enough into the wave media (the biochemistry of the brain) to see the particles (individual ions and neurotransmitters).  Surely.  But from that level of perspective the neuro network will appear as chaos.  Similarly, if we step back far enough so that the digital nature of the synapses blends together to create a wave form, the function of the biochemistry will no longer be visible and will appear to be chaos as well.  Chaos from above, or chaos from below.

But even if we move  up or down in perspective, in the end, we will find there two inter-affecting systems: one digital and one analog.  And one will channel the other, and the other will influence the one.

So, building a self-aware system will never be achieved simply with increasing detail.

However, just as the minimal circuit of self awareness  that I described earlier – a transistor and a tube, can easily be ratchetted up to a supercomputer and a quantum computer, not running in parallel, but sharing the same processing space so that every calculation of the supercomputer is influenced by the tendencies of the quantum computer, and every tendency of the quantum computer is channeled by the supercomputer.

Such a system would not only rival our own intensity of self-awareness, but might very well exceed it, which is, actually, rather disturbing.

But, for a practical example of such a system that already exists, consider the binary connections and neural network patterns of social media as the digital, and consider the direct human interactions of people in the real world as the analog.

An even happens, people report it on social media.  Social media digests it and points of view are formed regarding it.  These points of view channel human energy by organizing protests and gatherings, which grow their own energy, which is then covered in social media, and so on.

Social media channels, and the people in the streets influence.  And so, with billions of people, might not one wonder if we have not now already created a self-awareness a magnitude above our own – one that cannot see us any more than our minds can directly perceive our brains, and one that we cannot see any more than our brains can perceive our minds?

Something to think about.

The following is a rough transcription of audio notes I recorded about story structure and narrative psychology after having completed my work on Dramatica.

Though I have completed a rough edit of this material for typos, misunderstood words and grammatical inconsistencies, I am sure many errors remain.

Use this transcription more as a guide than a gospel, and refer to the original audio recordings if possible.

*******

It’s Monday morning, February 13, 1995. 

I had a dream last night and when I woke up I knew a lot more about the pair relationships, dynamic, companion, dependent, and component.

For a long time, we have known that men and women perceive them differently in terms of positive and negative.  Men will see each kind of relationship as having a positive one and a negative one and they are completely bipolar, so that you end up with a positive dynamic relationship and a negative dynamic relationship in a quad; each of those is represented in a diagonal. 

For example, companion relationships, dependent and component each one will appear to be positive or negative.  However in the first three pairs dynamic, companion, and dependent, from a male stand point, each one of those  relationships can very clearly be described as to which one is positive and which one is negative by nature. 

But when you get to the component relationship at the end, that one – all bets are off. That is the one that has to be the flexible one, that’s the one in their blind spot where they can’t see which one is positive and which one is negative because it changes by context. 

The component relationship is where you’re either seeing all as one group like a family or a team, or whether you are seen as an individual, and trying to determine what’s best for the individual verses what is best for the team is the component relationship.  That is why it is difficult to determine what is positive or negative, by saying it is always better to be an individual or always better to be one of the team, you really can’t look at it that way.

However, women don’t appreciate pair relationships at all like men do, women appreciate them completely differently.  For a long time, we felt that women saw the relationships; one theory that we had was that women would see the relationships, one of them the same way as men, with one being positive and one being negative.  Then they would see another one exactly the opposite of men.  Then another one they would, the other two remaining ones, they would be like the reverse of men because they would see one of them all positive and one of them all negative.

So basically, we would see one, like the dynamic pair for example, I don’t know which pair would be which cause we haven’t calculated out that far, but the dynamic pairs would be see as positive and negative to both men and women. 

Then, the companion pair relationship, what men see as positive, women would see as negative and vice versa. 

Then in the dependent pair relationships women would see that as perhaps all positive and the component pair relationship as all negative.       Well actually I think that is the way women appear to men, remember we’re dealing with four things here; how men see themselves, how men see women, how women see themselves, and how women see men. 

In terms of the relationships we’ve lined out so far, all of that is consistent male bias, where it is how men see themselves.  And when we have women appear in the model, it is always from the perspective of how men see women.  How women see women, is not at all represented in anything we do in Dramatica, as of this point.  We know it is out there and we are trying to document it but since there are all kinds of tools out there for understanding how men see men, and how men see women, but nothing has ever been devised, very little for how women see men, and hardly anything at all for how women see women. 

Those examples are just not there, the tools are just not there, so we have to construct a whole framework of understanding before we can even explore the theory.  Well, the first aspect of this framework came to me last night, after this dream I had and it occurred to me that in looking at the companion and dependent pairs, women see those as favorable relationships, when you have a favorable relationship because those are the ones that they can control, those are the ones that are stretchy, they are the ones that are sliding scale. 

In other words, rather than seeing as two pairs you see two separate areas, the positive ones and the negative ones, you see it as a single relationship, women blend that together – what men would see as a positive and negative companion , and then they –?– separately, in a separate group the positive and negative dependent relationship, so that women are constantly looking at a range and saying well it is a love hate relationship. 

Well that doesn’t mean that it’s got love in it and hate in it, it means that it cycles or oscillates between love and hate, between good and bad.  And the relationships are not judged as being positive and negative, they are being judged as favorable or unfavorable kinds of relationships and then the nature of whether they are more positive or more negative, is what you have to get a feel for. 

This causes women to get into relationship in which they are abused but not want to leave them because they see the relationship as this sliding scale that it’s much better to be in an overall negative relationship as a dependent one or overall relationship as a companion one, then it is to be dealing at all with dynamic relationships or component relationships. 

Now this is the natural tendency of women. Assertiveness training tries to bring women to the point where they can do the dynamic relationship and argue with somebody, and stand up for their rights, and go head to head against them.

This is what happens when women become masculinized in assertiveness training and the other opportunity is to leave, which is what ultimately women need to do in battered relationships, to get out and leave through the component. 

The dynamic relationship is really not the women’s way, that is really not what is going on in their heart.  A women who is constantly in a dynamic relationship with people if she works and functions and has relationships in terms of dynamic relationships, has missed the boat.  That is the exclusive male domain, is that kind of direct conflict.  It is not appropriate to one’s fulfillment, you can do it if you want, it doesn’t mean any women can’t do that, it just means that I guarantee that any women who is living her life in dynamic relationships, is a women who’s not going to be fulfilled no matter what she says.  That is a pretty bold statement, but that is what the theory predicts.  And I believe in the theory because it hasn’t let me down so far.

Now in terms of the component relationships that is the place that women have sort of a major blind spot; the option that you can step out of it, the option that you can stop being a family, the option that you can stop being in a relationship with a guy.  We use it all the time, we do it all the time because we are not looking there, we step on people in those areas, we form little cliques and little groups, we reject men who feel like they aren’t part of our circle, we do it all the time with the flick of the finger because we never even aware we’re doing it. 

It’s not that we are intentionally locking into that, it’s just that, that intrinsically is not an area that we consider.  We step on the flowers as we pass by without realizing that they are under feet, in that area. 

Now the interesting thing about that is because we see two kinds of relationships as being favorable or attractive relationships; and two as being repulsive relationships, not in an “ooh grody” sense but in a “no we are pushed away from those” even if we find ourselves drifting towards them on our own, we’re pushed away from them which are the dynamic and the component. 

Those are areas we don’t wish to tamper in, that are not comfortable for us.  Completely unlike men, who basically have the range of all three of them but they don’t look into the component generally at all.  For women, women have the range of two of them as being favorable, the dynamic as being unfavorable and the component being a shared area of not looking, which is also unfavorable.  So men don’t think in terms are what are favorable and unfavorable relationships, they look at each relationship as having the opportunity as being unfavorable or unfavorable depending upon whether it is positive or negative.  Women never look at the positive or negative nature of a relationship they look at the kind of relationship and try to gravitate towards those that are more favorable, which are the companion and the dependent. 

Now in looking at that, you will notice that the relationship that guys have with women and the relationship that women have with guys  are quite different, because we are using different standards of measurement.  And where as a guy may say, ” Oh, well she depends on me, I am the bread winner, therefore I am in a positive relationship because I have someone dependent upon me.” 

For a man to be dependent upon someone else is not a comfortable thing.  For there to be a unity of opposites, that is a dependent relationship where men realize the value of working together – Brain and brawn, for example – a partnership, learn that they will watch each other’s back, and together they can accomplish something and so in that nature there is a mutual need that is going on.  

But in a dependent relationship for women, women are not looking at it as a mutual need, women are looking at it as providing something that is of assistance and in return they get something that they desire.  It is more of a transactional relationship, which essentially is the difference in the way men and women view prostitution, is that women see it as a transaction and men see it as this is something that someone will do to fulfill their needs for money. 

It’s different  – the concept of fulfilling one’s needs for money as supposed to as the concept of it being a transaction because then a transaction is two people involved  in something in which two people provide something the other wants.

In a need kind of situation is where I, you are fulfilling what I want for a price.  The aspect of what the price does for the other person is really not considered, it’s just a requirement rather then a balanced trade off.

That is why it is usually a win / lose situation when dealing with men, is women try to go for the win-win in negotiations. 

Beyond this you end up with the companion relationships being quite different for men and women as well.  Men are looking at it as saying, what are the cost of having this relationship verses the benefits that I get, the positive things verses the negative things and women are just saying, oh we’re close to each other. 

That is what leads to the grouping mentality, is just to be close to the action, just to be close to somebody, just to be near it.  Is quite different than looking at as being part of the family or just being an independent unit. 

Men might have trouble blending those two things in the companion and the component.  If they were to look at women, when they see women they say oh they are trying to be part of the group. 

No, they are not trying to be part of the group, they are trying to be close to the center, so that there is more fall out, more positive fall out.  And this is what also leads women, when they are dealing with companion pair relationships, to look at things in terms of the warmth of an atmosphere.  To look at things in terms of being around friends who do interesting things, that’s a very positive attractive kind of relationship for women and even being around friends who do negative things because then in effect you are participating without being a participant.  You are not dealing with the companion relationship, yes this is how you are yourself, you’re part of the group, you’re responsible for things, from the female perspective.  Instead, you can say I can be there and enjoy all this negative, evil, terrible stuff that is going on without really being the one who is doing it, just because I happen to be in an area where I can pick up that signal and resonate with it. 

Well, that’s quite different then it is for men, men are dealing with it more in terms of logistics.  But this again is an interesting situation.  I said that women were looking at relationships as being favorable kinds of relationships whether or not they were positive or negative overall.  Women of course are going to be looking at the relationship as being favorable, they are going to take a momentary value and say it’s favorable and right now it is also positive.  But then if it is negative, they’ll say it is a favorable relationship but it’s negative and they will feel that just have to get through things until they get better again, sensing intuitively the cyclic nature of relationships. 

What they do not see in their blind spot, is that these relationships may be overall to the point that the bad far out weighs the good, and yet women are always looking at there being an up swing, that it is always going to be better because the relationship itself is favorable, so how can it ever turn out to be negative? 

Well, favorable and negative are two different things.  A favorable relationship just means, the kind in which you are comfortable with the relationship nature, but it doesn’t mean that the relationship itself, this particular relationship, is a positive one of that kind. 

This is an important thing for both men and women to remember is, just because there is a relationship that is positive for men, does not mean that it is a favorable relationship, that is where they get into trouble. And for women, just because the relationship is favorable doesn’t necessarily mean it is positive, this is where women get into trouble.  Interesting thing about that, is that the same kind of thing that’s going on in terms of looking at the relationships as being favorable because men don’t consider the favorable, and women don’t consider the positive or negative. 

Look again at how men or women pick out cars and things.  It’s funny that men are always complaining that women are the one’s who go off and do things frivolously, and yet then they have women coming out and picking out cars because they’ve got the right number of doors for the family and good trunk space.  And guys are out there picking out cars because they’re fast and sleek and all kinds of things that aren’t, what’s the word, practical. 

Women are more practical, but how can men be more analytical and logistic and women be more practical?  Because the relationship of practicality to logic, is the same as the relationship of favorable to positive and negative.

When men are dealing with being logical, logical has nothing to do with practicality.  See practicality is looking at things holistically, it’s saying what will cover most of the needs for all of the different things that are going on, it’s very non-linear.  Whereas men are dealing with logistics, they’re dealing with, if this is a particular need this is what I need to get there, these are the steps I have to take, these are the resources I’m going to have to have.  But that is a linear approach, a straight line approach and for men it is appropriate. 

For women the practical approach is more appropriate, to say how can I cover as many bases as possible so that the overall situation is as positive as possible or as favorable as possible.  And men will be looking, plotting the path way that they have between where they are and what they need for their goal, trying to come up with a path way that is as positive as possible.  So a positive path way would be the most efficient path way, whereas a favorable situation would be the one that creates the least problems, fulfills the most needs even if they are not tied into a specific purpose even if they have no relationship to what’s going on, immediately in the for front. 

This is why men and women in business get into arguments all the time, is because of that nature that men are looking for, here is what we are trying to accomplish and here is the fastest way to go to it and once we’ve set ourselves a goal than we are saying that this takes priority over everything else.  In other words, not only does this take priority but everything else is shut out of the picture. 

Once you define the scope of your goal and –?– you can define a goal as being a pleasant environment or a pleasant working environment but once you’ve defined a goal, anything that falls outside the scope of that goal id no longer considered. 

Men throw themselves, then into creating the most efficient path to get to that goal and arrive at it.  That kind of approach is very satisfying to them, but it’s not very fulfilling to women. 

Women are not concerned with just having one particular thing you’ve achieved going through life in a linear pattern, one foot in front of another, one step after another, that is not what has fulfillment and meaning for women, but it does for men.  But when you have women in life, looking towards what will make them happy, they want to create a holistic environment, where everything within the range of their perception is balanced as positively as possible or as favorable as possible.  And so, women are constantly fine tuning things, moving furniture, trying on new clothes, joining new social organizations, watching new programs on television, exploring these areas.  Whereas men will usually find a new direction they like to go, one particular hobby, one particular approach, one particular activity and they will go with it a long time, until it stops doing it’s job for them and then they will select something else. 

Women are usually apt to bounce around a lot of different things and balance them off.  When they become single-minded that’s when they find that they are not being as fulfilled as they would like to be, because all the other things they are not considering are slowly detuning through the effects of chaos. 

Of course, they might not detune, in which case we end up with women being very fortunate because they are lucky, they’re simply lucky.  They go off and follow a single-minded purpose and everything else around their life just gets in order by itself, that’s great.  That’s like having a house you don’t have to dust, but the point is, when most of us focus on one thing and leave the infrastructure to itself it begins to crumble around us. 

In the end, if we had any kind of order in our life, that order will react with chaos to form an equilibrium between –?– and –?–, and we’ll end up with something that is neither good or bad, neither favorable or unfavorable rather neutral.  So then we have to put all our eggs in one basket and fallow this linear path that means nothing as women in terms of fulfillment and when we are all said and done we accomplish our goal, and we’re left with what neutrality.  It’s as if we got no reward because we’ve worked all our lives and gotten back to zero, of course for some people getting back to zero can be an improvement. 

Anyway all these things not withstanding we are able to look briefly at the difference between those relationships.   We talked about heterosexuals looking at homosexual relationships.  Relationships that are of a homosexual nature are different for men and women. The relationship between lesbians is different then the relationship between gays. 

It’s going to be a very hard thing for men to try and understand because men are going to be looking at the relationships in terms of maybe being in a companion relationship with somebody, or maybe in a dependent relationship with somebody and if it’s a positive one or a negative one. 

But women are going to be gravitating towards a certain kind of relationship and in fact, when women get into relationships with men or with women as being straight women or gay women, lesbians, than the relationship shifts between the dependent and companion.  It’s the type of favorable relationship that is the difference, in that kind of sexuality. 

It’s very, very interesting, you have women who are just good friends, have no sexual interest in other women between them, they give themselves hugs, they hold each other tight and have feelings for each other, and those feelings are feelings of proximity, feelings of being close to someone else, that’s the companion relationship that is doing that.  The companion relationship has a closeness, and there’s really when you have a lesbian relationship that is based on love, it’s a companion relationship.  It’s where the women have become so close to each other that they share everything, that is a positive lesbian relationship, if you would look at it completely positive. 

But if you have a lesbian relationship that is a dependent relationship, that is negative lesbian relationship, where each one is dealing from the female perspective in terms of their needs.  And because they are dealing in terms of their needs, then you end up with each other not being able to trust each other one, constantly checking your security, constantly being insecure, constantly wondering what the other person is up to, where you are trying to divide up territory, where you are trying to separate yourselves one from the other, and so that would be a negative lesbian relationship. 

You see when women are dealing with other women, in a straight sense, they are dealing with companion relationships and when they are dealing with men they are dealing with a dependent relationship, they are not companions with men.  But because companion and dependent are both favorable relationships, women can empathize with either men or women, because men will fall into the dependent category in all of relationships and women will fall into the companion relationship in all relationships that are of a favorable nature. 

But see if you flip, where you put men and women, and you start putting men into a companion relationship, that is a very negative relationship for women.  And so if you have a heterosexual relationship that falls into the companion relationship area that is not really very favorable for women to put it that way.  You see the interesting thing about it is that these relationships for women, depend on whether it’s men or women in terms of what is favorable and what is not favorable.  And it turns out that the favorable relationships, the most favored relationship for men is the dependent pairs for a women, and the most favorable relationship with a women is a companion pair.  And that is why you end up with having a relationship between women either as friends or intimately as a lesbian relationship.  Or with men, the concept of having a male friend it just doesn’t quite work out well, there has to be a dependency in there some where, in order for it to be a favorable relationship. 

Now a lot of women have men as friends and the men come to them and ask for advice, they talk to them about this and that, that is the relationship that women have with their male children is a dependent one and the dependency turns around. 

And that’s the problem that a lot of mothers have is, their children grow up, is that it starts out with the man being dependent upon the women so there is a love hate relationship between the child and the mother when they are younger.  And at that point though the mother is there, is always providing positive if she is a good mother, and therefore the young man grows to love his mother, because even though he doesn’t want to be dependent from the get go his reliance on her is not violated, is never violated, or is seldom violated and therefore he comes to trust her. 

But when it turns around the other way, then here is a dependent relationship that he has with her, and in having that relationship with her then, now she is dependent upon him.  And in being dependent upon him, she just becomes a drain, and he has this terrible conflict psychologically with in himself because, he loves her because when he was dependent upon her, she never violated that. 

He now feels an obligation to her because she is dependent upon him, but she is not providing anything to him anymore, she is merely a drain.  That is the kind of relationship with a man that he would sever immediately, but  he can’t sever it with his mother because of an obligation and love turns to obligation. 

The best thing a mother could do is set up her own little nest egg, so that when she is older, she is in the position where she can take care of herself.  But she doesn’t want to move into a position where she seems completely independent because the component relationship will bite her son on the ears, and when that happens he will feel that she no longer needs him at all and if she no longer needs him, then he has no function or purpose with her because he certainly doesn’t want to have to need her, which is the only other kind of relationship he can have with her. 

So generally the dependent relationship is the one where men will always place women, and men will always strive for the companion relationship with men, but dependent and companion are the types of things that (end of side A)

            OK, I only have a few minutes here, I was losing track of what I was saying at the end of  that because I got interrupted by running cats through the living room, it disturbed my train of thought.  It is time I have to get ready for work anyway, it’s nine o’clock, I’ve got to get in and get some stuff done.  But anyway just to put a –?– on that thought, clearly the relationships that men and women have with their same sex or the other sex, in a intimate and non-intimate sense can be catalogue in a way, as long as we change the meaning of the terms we are looking at.  So we have to look at terms of practicality verses logic, because logic has no meaning, linear logic has no meaning to women, practicality does. 

Linear logic is something that, yes we can do but if we do it, it brings us no fulfillment, which is very important to us, although it would bring us satisfaction but satisfaction is not important to us, but that is important to men.  So the differences between how we break down, what relationships are attractive or not, well men don’t even use the concept of what relationships are attractive they look at all relationships at which are positive and which are negative within each kind of relati0onship and categorize them according to which kind. 

Women basically categorize them according to kind for determining what is favorable relationship, regardless of whether it is positive or negative.  This kind of differential is going to lead, what does lead to all that confusion between the sexes because we are not looking at the same things at all, from the same perspective. 

When we look at our inner selves, when we try to find out what is really going on inside the first thing we do, is we perceive relationships differently and then we measure them differently on top of it.  Meaning that what we are looking at, and where we are looking from, both of those things are at odds. 

This is the area in which the paradox exists, this is the area in which men and women are one-hundred and eighty degrees opposed, even though in the process of creating these evaluations of relationships, they are really only ninety degrees out of phase at any given point.  But since they’re ninety degrees out of phase on how they look at relationship, and ninety degrees out of phase in how they measure relationships or where they are looking from, it comes to an entire one-hundred and eighty degrees out of phase in terms of relationships in general. 

It’s a combination of the two ninety degrees movements out of phase and they don’t cancel out, that’s the thing of it they don’t cancel out.  It always works around the clock in the direction to go one-hundred and eighty degrees out of phase.  If they could cancel out, that would be a wonderful thing and we can find in real life these kinds of relationships and they cancel out through training, but if you train yourself to get to the point where you undo or adopt the opposite –?– for half the equation, wither how you look at the relationships, the way you evaluate relationships, the way you see them being, or the way you evaluate them, if you move one of those one-hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, then you could cancel out the way men are looking at it and be more in tune with them, which is what happens to a lot of business women but you’re never going to find fulfillment because you’re putting yourself out of phase with yourself. 

So the real key is to be true to yourself, and find something that accommodates both.  Much as you would look at a photon of light and say it has a particle and a wave nature, so it doesn’t matter whether you look at it as a particle or a wave, you might not be able to do some things when you look at it as a wave that you could do when you look at it as particle and vice versa.  But if you only have need for looking at it, or desire for looking at it as a wave than that is fine for you.  But if somebody else wants to look at is at a particle they can do that and it works fine for them.  So it doesn’t matter that it has a duel nature, if you’re using only half of that nature, then it only appears to have on nature to you.  And as long as you’re dealing with the same object, it’s equally useful to both parties.

Same thing for men and women in relationships, whether they are same sex or opposite sex.  Is that you have to come up with something that is both positive for men and favorable for women.  In other words, if you had a relationship with a man, you would want  to look for a dependent relationship, where he would look at it and say, is it a positive or negative dependent relationship?   And if he sees the relationship as a positive dependent relationship, than in that case he is able to get more with you than he would get without you, but not in the sense of just saying it adds a little bit.  Saying that he has to supply you with his resources, and in supplying you with his resources then because of what you contribute, he ends up getting more than if he had used those resources for himself alone.  So that is where you end up with, with buying flowers and candy, after all tomorrow is Valentines Day.  That is the concept behind it, is by putting in something that is of X amount of value to him, he gets something much more in value even if it is intangible.  He should recognize that there is much more of value coming for the amount spent, it’s got to be a situation where he is feeling that his needs are being fulfilled, that he is coming out a winner. 

I had a teacher once in economics.  She talked about the concept of economic profit.  One of the most intelligent ladies I’ve ever met in my life.   She had been all over the world, she written a number of books, she was incredible.  And she taught about economic profit, she said if you go to a, she used this example because she was trained in the male mystique, she said if you go to a football game, it’s a hot summer day, you’re thirsty, you’d gladly pay a dollar for a lemonade.  So a vender comes by and sells it to you for fifty cents, you’ve made fifty cents economic profit because that is the money you didn’t spend that you would have in order to get that satisfaction.  That’s how you come out a head of the game. 

She said if you have five dollars?  How do you spend your five dollars?  Do you buy five used paperback books, or buy one new paperback book?  Do you go to a movie with it?  Do you rent a videotape?   What do you do?  When you have five dollars, how you spend it should be determined on bases of economic profit.  Meaning, do you get how the difference between how much pleasure it gives you and how much you’re willing to spend for it?  Meaning, it’s not always this is the thing that will bring me the most pleasure at the moment, but sometimes it’s saying that this is the thing that will bring me the most pleasure for the buck.  Because it may turn out that with five dollars you’re able to get something that would normally cost a huge amount but is only five dollars and  that huge amount that it would cost that you would be willing to pay if you had the money, is something that you don’t have to pay now because it’s on sale. 

This is where the whole sale mentality comes from, especially with women, is that when something is marked down in terms of saying well it’s normal price is X and it’s now selling for this.  Well even if it is something that will not bring you as much pleasure, as spending the money on something else immediately, you want to get this because it is a fleeting opportunity to make that kind of economic profit. 

That is when you’re diluting yourself and misusing it because you’re doing something that you didn’t have a preestablished need for now, but you anticipate a need for later or something that actually doesn’t give you the greatest amount of pleasure because it is something that gives you the greatest amount of economic profit.  So those two concepts of what will make me happiest and what will make me feel like I have the biggest bargain, are two different concepts.

Men want the biggest bargain all the time, in terms of relationships.  Women want the biggest bargain all the time, in terms of material things.  Men want the things that make them happiest immediately, in material things.  Women want the things that make them happiest immediately, in relationships, so in the end there seems to be an opposite in there. 

But the whole nature in all of this is the different ways we look at relationships.  So if we come up with a dependent relationship between men and women, and we have it as a positive dependent relationship, then that is the one in which both the man and the women will be satisfied with the relationship and fulfilled, because the women will find that she can rely on the man and he will take care of her needs and the man will look at that relationship and say that in it the women is supplying something that is of great value to him, greater than the value of the money that he is spending, the emotional money that he is spending on her.

And therefore he comes out with a tremendous whopping profit out of the deal just by being in an association with her, in a relationship with her.  Whereas if you are looking for, as a women, a lesbian relationship, you’re going to want to get into a companion relationship because in a companion, you will both be looking at that as a favorable relationship.  And if you can make it a positive companion relationship, then two of you could make that work. 

But if you put yourself into a dependent relationship, then that is not going to work as a true lesbian relationship.  Now if you put yourself into a dependent relationship that is positive, well then you end up in a relationship that is essentially a male-female relationship between two women, which is not going to be fulfilling, it may be satisfying but it won’t be fulfilling. 

So women who put themselves into relationships as lesbians that have a dependent relationship, have one of the parties depending upon the other one to fill their needs.  And when that one fills their needs, the one who is doing the need feeling has to perceive the relationship as being one that brings them more out of life, then they would have had by using those resources else where, that is what makes it worth will.  If that is not happening, then it appears negative to one side, and positive to the other side. 

I’ll close in a moment here by saying, this has led into the concept of positive and negative, not by looking at the relationship between of two people, but by looking at  how each one sees the relationship  because relationships can be seen as positive or negative from either side. 

Relationships can be seen as favorable or unfavorable from either side, and depending on whether you are dealing with relationships between women or relationships between men is going to create a very complex algorithm of finding out if they are seen as favorable from one side and negative from one side, favorable from one side and unfavorable from the other side, unfavorable from one side and positive or negative from the other side, or unfavorable from one side and favorable from the other side, so all of these combinations create the wealth and variety of relationships. 

Keep in mind that many of us, most of us have relationships that don’t just focus on one particular kind. That, in other words, when we get closer to people, we are not just operating at one level of relationship, we are actually beginning to stretch into other areas.  So we begin in one of them, perhaps dynamic are arguing and fighting all the time, and maybe that turns into companionship and then dependency and then into a component where you become the same thing.

The journey that we take through these dynamics is one in which we expand our context of relationships and so very often, we’ll find that certain aspects of our relationships are positive and certain aspects are negative, or certain are favorable and unfavorable depending upon the area that we are talking about.  Which is ultimately why men might have a workshop out in the garage and women would have the kitchen as their domain.  It’s a place in which they can turn the tables on other kinds of relationship issues that are less favorable or more negative to be able to define the scope in which contexts carrying a given beyond this instead of just talking about all these four different kinds of relationships that can be rated differently and create the complexity between men and women, women and women, and men and men.  T

Then you end up with the notion that each one of those relationships can be functional or dysfunctional in a different context.  So that when you are talking about relationships outside the house, verses relationships inside of the house, verses relationships when you’re dealing with economic matters, verses relationships that you’re dealing with when planning for vacation, verses relationships in raising the kids; each thing that is identified by the parties in the relationship as a context that is separate can create a completely different kind of pair relationship that is involved in that area and it can also change it’s favorable and unfavorable, and positive-negative nature. 

Then, of course, you run into the relationships where each one is defining context differently, and that is where most disagreements come from.  That’s when you are dealing with apples and oranges, where it is context itself that you see things as different, what is included what is not included in this part of the relationship, in this scope of our discussion here. 

So you add all that together and end up with the different ways men and women see relationships, in terms of being favorable primarily and then seeing what is positive and negative, and seeing that as spot judgments for women.  Or in terms of seeing the relationship as being positive or negative  one across the board, and then seeing what’s favorable or not, out of the most favorable relationships which is a more flexible thing for men.  And then determining whether it’s a relationship between a man and a women, and then determining whether both are seeing the relationship in the same light.  So that one is seeing favorable, the other is seeing positive, for example, or one is seeing unfavorable and the other is seeing negative.  Or if they don’t match up exactly and you end up with one seeing it one way and the other seeing it another, even from their different points of view, then you deal with the terms of context as to what context these relationships are taking place in?  What scope that you have them in?  If they are already –?– on the scope, and seeing how all those views of the relationship change it? 

Then you look at in terms of having different views of the context, so that is how things change.  And finally you end up with the most complex issue of all, which is, how context changes over time, so that nature of the relationships changes over time.  What is seen as favorable and unfavorable, will change for men.  What is seen as positive and negative, will change for women, over time.  The context in which we place things, will change overtime, sometimes in a repeating way were it comes full circle, sometimes in a non-repeating way where it goes off on a tangent.  That’s how relationships sometimes grow together, and sometimes grow apart.  Anyway all of this is material that can easily be put into algorithms.  I think most of them have been described here and from those algorithms, we can create an entire new dynamic engine, that can be used for Alter-Ego and also for Dramatica. 

The terms that we put on these dynamics, once we understand the mechanism of how they all go together are going to be the terms like:  greed, and love, and lust, and hate, and happiness, and sadness; and all of these things are the terms that are going to be hung on this particular model.  But I think, in looking at this dynamic model that’s building with all of these pieces to it, this flexible, fluid dynamic model which deals with things in a frictal sense, that is the other side of Dramatica.  It is the emotional side of story telling, it is the heart side or the heart of Alter-Ego.

The structural elements currently in Dramatica would be perfect for business oriented decisions because that is what you would be looking at, is the logistics and it is a logistics based system.  But in terms of dynamic model, it is not going to be based on logistics, or in terms of practicality women would also look at that structure in terms of practicality. 

But in terms of this dynamic model that we are creating right now, it would be seen as what is favorable, what is emotional aside of the argument to see what is positive or a negative emotional context.  And also what is favorable, as opposed to, I guess favorable and satisfying.  Fulfilling and satisfying is what you get over here on this side, and on the other side of the structural model, you get practical and logistic. 

So in any event, I guess it is about time for me to go take my shower because I’m going to be late for work.  But it is important to have documented this and this tape particularly is going to be the heart of future development in a practical sense.