I don’t want my articles here to get repetitive, but my most recent read was “Buddha’s Brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom” by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius. I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who wants a neuroscientific breakdown of important concepts in spirituality, Buddhism, meditation. One of my favorite things was how it explained how dopamine is a gateway to the regulation of working memory. When dopamine levels are steady,  the “doorway” of working memory is closed; when they are low, the “doorway” opens, when there is a spike, the “doorway” opens. Why is this?

When you are feeling bad, (low dopamine), your attention is scattered so you can find things in the environment that will spike your mood: you are going to be more likely to be able to find food, sight potential mates, etc. When there is a spike in dopamine, you need to open your attention to be alert to the new threat/opportunity. Otherwise you can let the contents of your working memory remain constant so you can work on whatever problems are currently on your mind.

Remember the concept of “flow” by Mihali Csikszentmihalyi? “Being in the zone?” This may operate through similar principles. When a task is too easy for you, there will be low stimulation, so you will be easily distracted. When a task is too hard for you, you will not be able to solve it. But when it is sufficiently hard and when your skills are sufficiently trained, there will be a steady flow of dopamine, leading you to be “in the zone”, happy and undistracted and fully engaged in the problem. (Your working memory won’t flow open and you won’t be prone to random distractions.) Many psychologists, including Martin Seligman, believe that regular experience of “flow” is an important component to long term happiness, and I’m inclined to agree.

How about meditation? Breathing is important to Buddhism. The reason for this is because exhaling invokes the parasympathetic nervous system – the branch of your autonomic nervous system that “slows you down”. By the way, I know that “parar” means “to stop” in Spanish, which is how I distinguish between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.

Another ideal of Buddhism is “no-mind”: to stop thinking. We know that thinking is often non-deliberate, and stresses us out, such as when we are trying to fall asleep. What the authors of Buddha’s Brain insightfully point out is that when one area of the brain is engaged, other components/processes will not be used. So if talking/thought loops operate through the left hemisphere, then we should engage the right hemisphere if we want to relax and stop thinking. An excellent way to engage the right hemisphere is by trying to feel and experience the body as a unified whole… this is called proprioception.

Many helpful concepts are detailed alongside their neuroscientific mechanisms. You’ll get a great explanation of how the Prefrontal Cortex, Basal Ganglia, Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis, and autonomic nervous system all operate in concert to create your experience of consciousness. If you enjoy the hand-wavey feel good books like Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” but get frustrated when grandiose claims of peacefulness are invoked without any material grounding, you’ll LOVE Buddha’s Brain. It explains the theory and then uses the theoretical framework to produce practical tips that anyone can use – even if you are a regular person living a hectic life and don’t have the luxury of a monastery. (For example, it tells you exercises that will invoke the parasympathetic nervous system, or that will release oxytocin, or dopamine… it even contains an appendix of vitamin supplements that affect the production of neurotransmitters! I’m going to try an experiment of taking Vitamin E (gamma-tocopherol), DHA/EPA, Vitamin B-6 (as P5P), and 5-Hydroxytryptophan in the morning. I’ll let you know how it goes

I also learned some two VERY helpful ideas that help me understand “living in the now” even better, from a practical perspective.

1. The Two Dart System. When something bad happens, it as if we are hit by two darts. The bad thing, the pain, is often very real… we can call it the first dart. For example, if we stumble and hit our head, it probably hurts. This is the first dart. If we then think about how unlucky we are, and why couldn’t we have known better, and keep replaying the incident in our head, this is the second dart. The second dart is insidious because we don’t realize that we have control over it. We can structure our life in a way to minimize the chance of getting hit by First Darts, but we can deliberately practice not being affected by Second Darts. The best way to do this is probably to practice being conscious of when we are indulging in self-pity and replaying – and realize that this is a kind of pain that is within our locus of control. These are the second darts.
2. Feeling Tones. Apparently there’s an idea in Buddhism called feeling tones: in our head, things can be subjectively experienced as positive, negative, or neutral. When things get really positive or negative, our ego (“self”) gets involved, attaching a story to the experience: this probably helps us strive towards more positive things and away from more negative things. However, equanimity (another important component), mind-balance in the face of nettlesome (or exceptionally positive) circumstances, encourages us to practice renouncing ownership over positive or neutral experiences. Equanimity leads to an enduring tranquility.

Anyway, “Buddha’s Brain” is available from Amazon for only $12.21. So far, it is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year.

Update 09/27/2010. A reader writes in with these thoughts:

I’ll probably eventually read Buddha’s Brain as that brings together my interests in neuroscience, evolutionary theory and zen (I use lower-case ‘zen’ to refer to, let’s say, the ultimate basis rather than the Zen sect, the boundaries between the two admittedly blurred for me). The writer, Zachary, seems thoughtful and intelligent, but also naive in his certain of his renditions of zen. I realize that my quibbles may be akin to, say, the nitpicking an architect may do in r/t a presentation about architecture, but first I’d want to say, zen is not really about stopping thinking. I think it would be better to say it’s about being more skillful with one’s thinking. Initially, zen practice is–inevitably?–about improving one’s ability to concentrate (lit. ‘coming to center’), which entails the ability to not get hooked by each thought that comes along (in an endless string of association). Thoughts at this juncture seem to be the Enemy, the less thinking the better!  The capacity to concentrate, ’tis said, enables one to approach the source of thoughts (which is not a thought). As my old teacher used to say, “clear mind is like a mirror: red comes–red; white comes–white; if somebody hungry comes, give them food.” So, this mirror-like mind perfectly reflects* trees, persons, and, I dare say, thoughts. Here it might be said that thoughts are OK, if you don’t get hooked by ‘em. And yet again, another perspective in Buddhist teachings has it that each appearance, whether of sensory perception or thought, is an expression of the absolute, the relative and the absolute being essentially non-dual (a nice job if you can get it!).

2nd quibble: Zach dismisses Tolle’s ‘Power of Now’ as so much “handwaving” compared with the material grounding in ‘B’s Brain’. My bias–because, my experience–is that the most telling thing is to try whatever practice and see if it seems helpful. But different arguments will appeal to different persons. For me, it was the ‘philosophical’ (existential?–ideas tied to the experiential)) that got me interested. It’s been said before that we live in an extremely materialistic culture: it doesn’t ‘matter’, it’s not ‘solid’, unless it’s matter; reality is cold and hard.

3rd quibble: When things are really positive or negative, Z says, the ego gets involved and makes a story about the experience. But ‘ego’ has no fundamental existence and cannot ‘do’ anything. Rather, the term is shorthand or code for ‘making’ or grasping a separate self. The stories one makes–the ones that cause, or in a sense ARE, the most suffering–are those populated by an idea of ‘me’. Co-arising with ‘me’ is a separate ‘other’. My observation has it that the ‘me’, the ‘other’, the ‘stories’ may arise at any time, not just during extremes of pos. and neg. (My old teacher would say, “take bad–make correct; take good–make correct”). Note that as soon as we talk about ‘an experience’ it becomes a story. I liked Z’s “two darts”, wherein one might experiences pain–and then goes on to make something of it.

I recently went to go see the movie Robin Hood with my friend Josh. Since we saw it opening day, we figured the theater would be packed. Accordingly, we decided to buy tickets online. I was first to arrive to the theater, Regular Union Square Stadium 14 [NYC], so I phoned Josh to get the confirmation code so I could pick up the tickets from the machine and save us a spot in line.

Now, at my movie theater, they don’t scan the tickets for a barcode: they look at them, and then they tear them, and then you get directed to the appropriate screen.

Can anyone guess the exploit before I tell you?

Josh printed out the tickets at home BEFORE giving me the confirmation code. The machine didn’t realize that he had printed tickets, so it spat out two pretty-looking movie tickets for me. In total we had four movie tickets. Nice, huh?

We could probably achieve similar results by photocopying the print-at-home tickets (hoping that the clerk wouldn’t notice that they were all the same: in the above exploit, we would present two sets of ticket-pairs, and the clerk would have no way of remembering having seen a previous pair of sequential serial numbers).

I don’t know the legal ramifications of engaging in this kind of behavior – it might be illegal to trick the movie theater. I don’t plan on doing it. But it’s fun to play with these things. As far as Robin Hood, I do enjoy seeing directors’ depictions of day to day life in past centuries – so I will give it one thumb up (out of two).

Recently I have been exploring the topic of “Forgiveness”. Forgiveness is the antidote to many forms of enduring anger and depression, which may manifest as grudges. Grudges and grievances are detrimental for many reasons:
1) They take up valuable mental energy.
2) They encourage you to focus your life around circumstances that serve to avenge the wrongdoer rather than circumstances that maximally serve you.
3) They’re just not fun.

Nursing grievances drains our energy, and such draining perhaps continues to serve the person who did us ill in the first place. A note about enduring anger and depression: these often may actually be more accurately described as wallowing in pity (though it never feels like that at the time to the angry or depressed, so we must be compassionate).

Two books have sincerely informed my exploration of forgiveness: “The Art of Forgiving” by Lewis B. Smedes and “Forgive for Good” by Fred Luskin.

Luskin suggests that nursing grievances is akin to writing out tickets. Kind of like a traffic cop, whenever we nurse a grudge (feeling angry, hurt, sad, upset, disappointed), we are basically writing the person who wronged us a “ticket” for wronging us. Unfortunately, writing tickets that we can’t cash is frustrating… the practical thing to do is to let them go. Frustration stems from trying to enforce unenforceable rules.

What I’m really trying to say is that anger and sadness are both useful emotions when experienced in the right context. Anger alerts us that one of our boundaries has been crossed, and sadness alerts us that we need to change our direction in life – to let go of whatever we had been holding on to. However, in practice these should really be temporary emotions: they should alert us to what we need to change, and then we should change that thing, and then the emotions should go away. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens in practice, the most of the time – it’s not what’s been true in my experience.

So if we’re angry, and it’s not directly related to a situation relevant to the present moment, then perhaps forgiveness is the right strategy. Forgiveness helps us accomplish goals instead of nursing anger. When exactly is forgiveness appropriate?

According to Smedes, it’s
1) We need to bear the wounds ourselves
2) We need to know we have been wronged
3) We need to have an inner push to forgive

According to Luskin, it’s
1) Know what your feelings are
2) Be clear about the action that wronged you
3) Share your experience with one or two trusted people

Reconciling the two,
1) Know what you want to forgive and how it made you feel
2) Want to forgive, and be ready to move on. Get the “story” out of your system (by sharing it). Otherwise, when you’re ready to forgive, your story will resist because it feels it hasn’t had sufficient time in the spotlight. Really, it’s very difficult to let go of any kind of story. Spiritual new-age people talk about “letting go the stories”… and while that is all well and admirable, I’m not yet certain if we can ever escape the ego (i’m equating the “ego” with a “story” and “identity”). The ego is there, and as Greg Slepak so deftly articulated in the comments of my last post, the ego definitely exists as a set of neurological pathways. It may not be “reality” in the sense that it gives us distorted perceptions of reality, but it is “real” in the sense that, like it or not, it is there. So the question is not “how do we remove the ego” but instead “how can we make the ego serve us better”. Indeed, as Eckhart Tolle himself says, “The mind is a powerful tool when used correctly. However, when used wrongly, it is not you who use your mind. Your mind uses you!”. What a goofball But he’s right.

Luskin’s approach is that we want to transition out of a victim identity and instead create a story in which we are the hero. Smedes sharply observes “If we wait too long to forgive…We become the pain we feel. We cannot cleanse ourselves of it without loss to our own identity.” And in my opinion, if something violates the boundaries of your identity, it won’t come into fruition. This may be a concept closely related to “The Law of Attraction”, which at some point I would love to dissect from an intellectual bent, since there’s so much (frustrating!) hand-waving nonsense in the new-age community.

It’s important for me to clarify some things about forgiveness. When I told somebody I was working on forgiveness, he replied “Here’s my approach on forgiveness: three words. Absolutely not. Never.” This attitude is understandable: after all, if you have been wronged, you don’t ever want to have that sort of wrong repeated against you. Moreover, all negative and stressful experiences are routed immediately from perception (eyes, ears, whatever) to the thalamus then through the amygdala, and the amygdala (supposedly) never forgets anything. But forgiveness is about you, and not the person whom you’re forgiving. It doesn’t convert something intrinsically intolerable into something intolerable, and it doesn’t signal that you are willing to put up with it in the future. It allows you to become at peace with the past so you can become at peace in the present. You don’t even have to tell the other person that you forgive them… it can just be internal.

And what are the main steps of forgiveness?

Lewis Smedes says that they are:
1) Rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt us
2) Surrender our right to get even
3) Revise our feelings toward the person we forgive

Fred Luskin presents many techniques for forgiveness… among them are “Breath of Thanks”, “Heart Focus”, “PERT”, “Changing the channel”, and “HEAL”. Of all these, “HEAL” resonated the most with me. Also, the HEAL process is very much a practical application of the theory presented by Lewis Smedes in the previous paragraph. So…

HEAL stands for Hope, Educate, Affirm, and Long-term. I’ll explain.

“Hope” is what you wanted… and what you were not given by the person whom you need or want to forgive. For example, a proper hope statement might be “I wanted a strong and lasting marriage.” or “I wanted a loyal and honest and loving partner.” or “I wanted a strong and compassionate father.” Hope statements should not be steeped in the negative – such as “I hoped that Raymond wouldn’t cheat on me”, or “I hoped that Jerome wouldn’t sell me out for improved popularity.” No, they should be positive.

“Educate” is about reality. There are limits to your control over other people, yourself, or life events. With “Educate” we acknowledge the reality of not having gotten what we wanted, and we fully accept that. We acknowledge forces that resist our control; we try to become stepped in realism. We acknowledge the impersonal nature of the universe. Moreover, we acknowledge that the person who wronged us was a human being, and they were doing what they thought to be the best course of action. Socrates believed that “all vice is the result of ignorance, and that no person is willingly bad”; everyone always does what they perceive to be good. (c.f. Plato’s Meno.) When we educate ourselves in reality, we drain the ego of its power. The ego thrives off of misery and suffering; such unpleasantness is fuel, for it is evidence of one’s “uniqueness”, of how you are “special”. When operating from this perspective we are often emotional, and emotionality is one of the best ways to distort reality (when we are in a state of heightened arousal, we no longer maintain our sober risk profile [Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational]; when we are overly happy, we become inaccurately optimistic [Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism (summary of learned optimism)]).

The more we distance ourselves from the distortions of the ego, and the more we increase our level of consicousness, the better grasp of reality we have. This is not just “Knowing” in the new-age/Eckhart Tollean sense, but indeed a better grasp of material reality. In David Hawkins’ paradigm, rationality is one of the steps on the stairway to enlightenment – and it’s a step that’s way, way up there.

Another really important thing is that when we become more realistic, we learn to evaluate all of the good things about the person that we are forgiving. Of course, this may be really difficult when we’re forgiving a serious wrong, such as the murder of our child, but when forgiving a disloyal friend, we might remember all of the good times we shared with that person. Or when we’re forgiving a parent for not being there for us, we can now remember that they gave us the gift of life, and provided us with meals, shelter, and clothing.

Back to the HEAL acronym/HEAL method: “A” stands for affirm. This means affirm our positive intention. For example, “to use my experiences to become a stronger person”. Another good example is “to find a friendship with a loyal, honest, caring friend”. Luskin provides an excellent six-step exercise for discovering our positive intentions:

1. Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed for about ten minutes
2. Practice PERT once or twice to get yourself into a relaxed frame of mind
3. Ask yourself, “What was my reason for being in the grievance situation in the first place? What was my goal, expressed in positive terms?”
4. Think about your response until you have a one- or two-sentence positive intention
5. Promise yourself you will not tell the grievance story any longer.
6. Practice telling the positive intention story to a handful of trusted people.

To make use of this technique, you have to understand PERT, Positive Emotion Refocusing Technique
1. Bring your attention fully to your stomach as you slowly draw in and out two deep breaths. As you inhale, allow the air to gently push your belly out. As you exhale, consciously relax your belly so that it feels soft.
2. On the third full and deep inhalation, bring to your mind’s eye an image of someone you love or of a beautiful scene in nature that fills you with awe and wonder. Often people have a stronger response when they imagine their positive feelings are centered in the area around their heart.
3. While practicing, continue with soft belly breathing.
4. Ask the relaxed and peaceful part of you what you can do to resolve your difficulty.

Note: stress and anger come through the amygdala. By breathing, we trigger a relaxation response. I’m not sure why this happens, precisely. I ordered a couple books off Amazon recently, “Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom” and “Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity”. As soon as I’m done reading them, I’ll review them, and the new knowledge will definitely imbue my future posts. Anyway, the very hand wavey explanation is that meditating makes us calm, and more rational; it brings us closer to our higher Self that knows our desires and can lead us in the right direction through its intrinsic intelligence and wisdom.

Finally, L stands for long-term commitment to forgiveness. We’re human. We’re animals. And while we can transcend the animal components to our existence, the truth of the matter is that it’s very easy to recede into previous patterns. After all, we’re creatures of habit, and our habits are represented by neural pathways. Of course, this would delight the behaviorists, but what can we do? They paved the way, had a lot to say, and I think there’s much to be said for an enlightened revival of behaviorism. We’re addicted to neural pathways; whatever we do, we do repeatedly. If we’re happy, we’re typically addicted to being happy. If we’re sad, we’re addicted to being sad. This is probably very similarly related to “the ego” to which I often refer. So how long does it take to change a habit? According to Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz says it takes 21 days. The ultimate takeaway is that if we want to effect a change, we have to persist with *intent*, face obstacles as they come, and periodically renew our intentions and commitment.

I hope that this post has been helpful. If you want to learn more, you can get “The Art of Forgiving” from Amazon for only $10.04, and you can get “Forgive for Good” from Amazon for only $10.19. A note on the books: I found Smedes’s text to be more practical, and down to earth, and humble; Smedes’s book is more human and it reads like wisdom from a friend. There is a religious tonality in the Smedes book, but I benefited immensely from the book, so I would caution against dismissing it simply because it makes occasional references to Christian ethics. Forgive for Good has some excellent exercises, and I recommend it as well (3 stars out of 5).

I recently read “Games Criminals Play” by Bud Allen and Diana Bosta. It’s a very interesting work that uses the context of the prison institution, and the ways inmates strive to manipulate corrections officers, to explore the nature of manipulation.

In prison, inmates will slowly develop relationships with guards, get them to bend the rules in seemingly minor ways, and then use those violations as leverage against the guards to force the guards to bring in contraband or submit to sexually acts (in the case of female C.O.s.)

BTW, CO = correctional officer = guard. Background music for this post: Officer Ricky by G-unit.

Allen and Bosta say there are 12 stages to the setup, which often take place over the course of 6 months to a year.

1. observation

Inmates look at the guards’ body language. Everything says something, even if it’s not explicit, because information is contextual. For example, if my shirt is ironed, it might indicate that I care about my appearance, and that I am meticulous. If my shirt is ironed but my appearance is otherwise haggard then it might indicate that I have a specific important occasion today.

They examine the nervousness/ease through which the guards roam the world: they deliberately violate minor rules, and then they look for guards that are either “soft” (willing to let rules be bent all the time out of desire to avoid confrontation) or “hard” (ruthlessly enforcing all rules and never using judgment for leniency where appropriate): softness or hardness is indicative of covering up some sort of mental/emotional weakness. People who aren’t emotionally resilient are more easily manipulated. The cardinal principle of manipulation is that a manipulator succeeds by providing the manipulated with positive emotions (subsequent to negative emotions). If someone has positive emotions ALL THE TIME, then the influence of an outside tinkerer is irrelevant.

The perps also learn their victim’s likes and dislikes and personal history, so that they will be able to forge a more “authentic” bond with the victim. Keep in mind that the inmates often work in large cabals, colluding in their informational exchange. A casual conversation overheard by the lunch cook (Guard A to Guard B: “I hope the Dolphins win this weekend!” or “My wife’s being such a bitch!”) might be relayed to another inmate, and the guard would never think to conceive that the two knew each other.

2. victim selection

Perps like to select victims based on their gullibility or weakness or being “hard” or “soft” instead of “mellow”. Another victim archetype that they prefer to choose is the newly transferred employee: this employee is unlikely to be familiar with local customs and to be prepared to deal with the devious nature of the criminals. Therefore they’re more susceptible because they are less prepared: they haven’t been inoculated with defensive skills.

3. test of limits.

The next step is testing: violating minor rules, asking for things that are not supposed to be given. They test for the resilience of the guards and are also playing to what in psychology is called the “foot in the door phenomenon”: people who do a small favor for you are more likely in the future to do larger favors for you. This phenomenon can be explained through the principle of cognitive dissonance; our minds are very reductivist in nature and conflicting/competing concepts tend to cause pain. So if you do a small favor for someone (which requires a small level of interpersonal compliance [to be expanded on in a future post]), when asked for a larger favor, we say to ourselves “well, I did this other thing for that person, I obviously like them”.

4. support system

The inmates then proceed to “support” their chosen CO “Duck”. (Cons use the condescending term “duck” to refer to mark COs. It all sounds very 1950s to me though, so I guess that makes me kind of a “square”. The book was published in 1981 though.) They offer to help the CO with their work-chores (evoking a reciprocity response), and in doing so they often become indispensable to the guard, performing work in such an excellent fashion that the CO begins to depend on the inmate: they will often deliberately fake an absence so the guard will realize how useful the inmate is. The same principle applies to picking up chick, by the way: when things are going really well with a girl you’re talking to, if you suddenly become unavailable (walking away and talking to someone else; not picking up the phone when she calls after you’ve been bonding) the girl will rationalize how attracted she is to you. The character Dennis from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” demonstrates this vulnerability in the episode “The D.E.N.N.I.S. System”.

One other tactic they use is to compliment the guard. Compliments are actually a devastating manipulative tool, because they enhance the ego of the complimented. because the ego is false, and impermanent, whatever goes up must necessarily come down; and then the complimented becomes less grounded in reality and more likely to gauge their opinion of themselves on temporal circumstances (this is opposed to real, enduring self-esteem, in which a person has an inventory of their strengths [and positive sense of self] that is not subject to the emotional vicissitudes inspired by the whims of an external environment.) This is why it is so important for ego-based individuals to become “validated”.

^— This requires more exploration in a further blog post, too, but it’s so deep and I’m still unraveling the mystery/nature for myself, so …

5. empathy/sympathy

Inmates try to talk to guards as much as possible and learn about their personal lives. Remember, in an earlier step they tried to learn as much information as possible about their victim. That way, they can claim they suffer from the same problems and successes as the victim. Empathy and sympathy are another way inmates bond with the guards/COs. I hypothesize that exchanging of emotions causes bonding for two reasons:

1) it may be human nature for “pair bonds” to form after serious emotions are shared
2) by sharing deep feelings with another person who accepts you fully, you and your ego structure become validated, so you become dependent on that person
Also, we are more likely to become comfortable around people who have similar interests and likes as us. This may be because of the amygdala which is the source of liking/disliking–as well as fear. When there is a low level of fearful amygdala activity, our ability to trust is high (as are our levels of oxytocin, which is a bonding chemical).

6. plea for help

The con will then begin a plea for help: saying they need to change their lifestyle, they want to change their lifestyle, and make it honest. A big theme of the book – though it is inadvertently a great exploration of manipulation, it is also a manual for Corrections Officers and civilians on how to avoid being taken advantage of by cons – is that the guards are there to serve as honest role models, and criminals respect guards whom they cannot push around, for they are a testament to the possibility of honest success in society. Those curious more about the nature of prison as well as “fun” (interesting) stories about time inside can check out “Inside” by michael santos, reviewed on my blog here.

By asking the guard for help, they improve the bond (after all, to help someone is to be of higher status than them – and this nurtures the illusion of the guard that *they* are the ones in charge of the relationship/situation). But one thing they might be doing is feeding the guard bad information in order to get extra leniency. To that end, the book advocates bringing in more guards to help assist with advising the inmate on their difficult personal situation. By spreading information to others it is more likely that a set-up plot could be caught by someone with wary eyes and a cautious mind. An inmate who is truly suffering will typically not object to the extra help and community support, whereas an inmate who is faking will often object violently.

Incidentally, honesty is a very important step for the healing of humanity (Steve Pavlina calls this “Truth” in his personal growth paradigm).

7. we/they syndrome

An excellent tactic also employed by the con is evoking the “we/they” syndrome. They learn of the guard’s personal vulnerabilities and leverage them to enhance the guard’s ego. More on the ego because this is so essential to understanding:

The ego is in essence a false separation from the rest of humanity. It’s fake. It’s not real. Enhancement of the ego means a “stronger” (as in foundation, not as in strength in any noble sense of the word) ego – more well articulated. More chiseling away at the statue. The ego is false in nature, and therefore is a lens of distortion. If you wish to distort someone’s sense of reality in order to manipulate them, you should play to their ego: this does not necessarily mean making them feel better, but instead making them understand why they are different from everybody else. (Through compliments, insults, subcultural stereotyping…)
It’s one of the reasons that HATE is such a powerful tool for control. For a great example of this, see the film American History X.

So the inmates will discuss their similar ethnic/neighborhood/circumstance background, or they will separate the victim from staff. Separating the victim from the staff is essential. For example, they will be less likely to seek out social support when the inmate eventually blackmails them; they will be less likely to bring in other staff to help validate the accuracy of the inmates’ claims; they will live in their ego-based reality, distorting truth to fit their carved-out identity.

8. offer of protection

The inmates are sure to offer to protect the guard: if the guard violates a rule, the inmate will “take the heat”; if the guard becomes intimidated by threatening inmates, then the inmate will offer to protect the guard in the future. (“You don’t need to worry about them.. you’re with me.”) Causing this follower behavior (ego-based) is essential to the manipulation of the guard. In fact, many of these threats are staged by the inmate, working with others in a cabal.

9. allusion to sex

Female CO victims are often used for sex, whereas male CO victims are more likely to be used to bring in contraband (alcohol, marijuana, porn). In manipulating a female guard, the male will often bring up sex or sexual remarks, but then distance himself from them: for example, inmate A will say that a fellow inmate was making sexual talk about a female guard, but then inmate A stepped up and “put the other inmate in his place”. This brings up the notion of sex in the presence of the female, while making the inmate himself appear non-threatening. The way to nip this in the bud is for the female guard to say that any sexual talk in her presence is neither appreciated nor appropriate. However, in prison as in real life, if someone doesn’t actively speak up and say something, silence is taken as assent.

10. touch system

Touching in the context of prison manipulation is a slow process: the con will first touch the duck accidentally, then more often, lightly, then deliberately, in a friendly way. This operates through the “foot in the door phenomenon”; in sales it is known as a “Yes ladder”, and it also involves principles of compliance. When human beings touch each other, if the touch is not aggressive, oxytocin is often released, causing a bond to form. (also, cognitive dissonance: why would I let this person touch me if I didn’t like them? of course, human mentation is almost always rationalized… emotions first, then logic to explain the emotions in a socially acceptable way. the oxytocin release probably causes the emotions, which catalyzes the explanation through cognitive dissonance.)

11. rumor clinic

Rumors are a devastating step in the process of converting a duck. By planting a rumor seed with other employees, it will spread, and often create dissonance in the duck’s relationship with his coworkers. People are inclined to believe rumors: maybe this isn’t because we are weak-minded, but because “if there isn’t any truth to it, why would people be saying it?” Or maybe because we are weak-minded, and inclined to believe the worst; because we are living through our egoic superstructures, and any “negative” behavior on the part of another human enhances our position in opposition: “I’m not like that”. I put the word negative in scare quotes because it’s a duality judgment requiring: things aren’t negative, or positive; they just are. The ego (and the amygdala, with positive or negative emotions) makes things “good” or “bad”.

Anyway, with the rumor breeding, the already-low-self-esteem employee is likely to become further distanced from his peer group, and more likely to bond with the inmates who have so slowly insinuated themselves into his life: they are his only friends. Compliance is increased.

12. shopping list.

The next step is for the inmate to present the employee with a shopping list of contraband. This may be something minor, like cigarettes, or something more serious such as drugs, alcohol, money, or sex. This is often a “one-time-only” sales pitch. This is the step where the inmate goes all-in: there’s no turning back after this point.

13. lever

If the CO complies with the “shopping list” demands, the inmate now has a lever to use against the CO…creating LEVERAGE: continue with your compliance, or I will report your past indiscretions to the prison warden/administration, and you will lose your job/wife/family. The duck, now all alone (in his mind/ego), is unlikely to be rational, and will often comply.

In the course of life it is important to avoid letting people get levers on you. One great way to avoid it is to never do anything illegal; another one is to be honest (to not lie and to not cheat) and to live with integrity. In our modern world, these are very difficult tasks, but for the good life, free of worries and constraints, we should endeavor to stick to this path. Unfortunately, we often have relationships with people who aren’t fully accepting of us, yet the relationship is still important to us, and even if we don’t do anything illegal, the knowledge of our behavior, which may be a reflection of integrity, yet still unacceptable to someone, can create a lever. One example is homosexuality: we’re gay, but our parents would never accept that, but we still value the relationship with our parents.
There is probably an integrated solution to the above dilemma, but I don’t have all the answers. If you have one, please chime in with a comment at the end of the article. (All comments are always encouraged and welcome.)

14. sting

And if the CO refuses to comply, the inmate will often threaten the CO with force. There are many documented instances of a CO being slaughtered for refusing to comply with inmate demands.

Preventing a setup is possible though.
1) gut check / listening to intuition
If your gut/intuition tells you something is wrong, or off, or that someone is lying, then it probably is. As I mentioned in my article on Learned Optimism, this is one of the few cases where it really does pay to be as pessimistic as possible!
2) avoid suspicious behavior
If you don’t do anything illegal or break any rules, people won’t have leverage against you
3) tell other people
If you tell other people, there is more social momentum behind you
4) nip bad behavior in the bud
If someone does something that crosses the line, then if you nip it in the bud then you will avoid that kind of behavior in the future: they will learn what you stand for. Hence the classic prison advice “Kick someone’s ass on the first day” from the movie Office Space, also comically demonstrated by the behavior of Shane Botwin in the show Weeds.
5) document everything
If something is amiss, leave a written record of it. This is what happened in the movie The Departed (sorta. If you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it for you. but go buy it!!! It’s so awesome and available from Amazon on DVD for only $8.49)
moreover, when it’s the con’s word versus yours, his credibility will be threatened by his history of misbehavior.

I’ve been scammed in the past. It’s always stemmed from me trying to do something illegal (e.g., exploit a glitch in an MMO), and then getting punished for being out-goaled by the scammer. If you want, I can go into further detail on this. I don’t want to incriminate myself, but as a result of this and other past behavior I try to be as legal as possible (while still exploiting [legal] loopholes for personal gain).

A note on being out-goaled: if you don’t have very very clear goals for yourself, then if someone else has clear goals, if they are resourceful, they will take advantage of whatever in the environment they can in order to achieve the goal. And someone who doesn’t know what they want, and can’t refuse a great opportunity, is an excellent resource! I myself was victim to being out-goaled when I was recruited to work for the NHL– prestigious name, great salary (so high that I couldn’t refuse it, and while that much money would have been great in THEORY or for someone else, though for myself in actuality I didn’t want it), … all ego, and unrelated to my goals.

Back to manipulation. Realize that these concepts don’t just apply to prisons, they also applies to the workplace, people testing your limits in social situations, and whatever else you can think of.

If you are interested in learning more about manipulation, I also recommend Influence by Cialdini, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and watching some movies by David Mamet (such as The Spanish Prisoner). The show “The Office” is great as well, and if you’re already a fan of the show, I recommend Venkat Rao’s post “The Gervais Principle” – which is VERY interesting and thought provoking. Alternatively, you can stay tuned to this blog, and I promise I will continue the exploration.

You can get “Games Criminals Play” for $17.59 on Amazon, here.

Martin Seligman was the president of the American Psychological Association and is one of the emiennt leaders of the “positive psychology” movement, which focuses not just on making ill/depressed people feel beter, but make OK people feel even greater! His book, Learned Optimism, was recommended to all by Karl Bunday of Hacker News. So I read it.

Seligman anchors his argument in the context of Learned Helplessness, a concept he helped pioneer. From Wikipedia:

learned helplessness refers to a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected.

Seligman says that depressed behavior is often a symptom of learned helplessness.

It turns out that not everyone reacts the same way to negative external events. Some people bounce back after a bout of depression (which almost everyone experiences in the face of adversity), others wade, marooned in their sadness, fits of despondency. People who are resilient are more emotionally intelligent – and they tend to be optimists. People who wade are pessimists.

Seligman attributes these categorical differences to what he calls “explanatory style”. If you have an optimistic explanatory style, you “explain” away negative events with positivity; if you have negative explanatory style, you explain them with negativity. There are three dimensions to your explanatory style: permance, pervasiveness, and personalization.

Permanence means saying things like “You always nag” instead of “You nag when I don’t clean my room”, or “I’m all washed up” instead of “I’m tired.” To think about bad things in always’s and never’s is pessimistic; to think with sometimes’s and lately’s, and blaming bad events on transitent conditions, you have an optimistic style. The converse, however, is that optimists explain GOOD events with permanence, whereas pesimists attribute good events to temporary conditions. A pessimist might say “It’s my lucky day”, or “I try hard”, or “My rival got tired” instead of “I’m always lucky”, “I’m talented”, or “My rival is no good.”

Pervasiveness is about universal vs specific. For example, in bad events, a pessimist might say “All teachers are unfair”, “I’m repuslive”, or “Books are useless”, whereas an optimist might say “Professor Seligman is unfair”, “I’m repulsive to him”, or “This book is useless”. The converse holds as well: optimists explain good events with unviersal style wheras pesimistis use specifics. For example, a pessimist says “I’m smart at math”, “My broker knows oil stocks”, or “I was charming to her” instead of “I’m smart”, “My broker knows wall street”, or “I was charming”.

Aside: seligman claims that people who make permanent AND universal explanations for their troubles tend to collapse under pressure. He calls this dimension “hope” and he says no other “score” is as imporant as your hope score, and he operationally defines hope as a combination of your negative-permance and negative-pervasiveness.

Personalization is about how much you attirbute negative events to your own causality versus bad external events. When bad things happen, we can blame ourselves (internalize) or we can blame other people or circumstnaces (extenralizae). Low self-esteem usually comes from an internal style for bad events. A pesimist might say “I’m stupid,”, “I have no talent at poker”, or “I’m insecure”, wheras an optimist might say “You’re stupid”, “I have no luck at poker”,  and “I grew up in poverty”. Similarly, a pessimist might explain good events ith “A stroke of luck” or “my teammates’ skill” as opposed to “i can take advantage of luck” or “my skill”.

What about responsibility? You don’t want people ot turn into self-aggrandizing blowhards, but if they are depressed then they can’t change their negative behavior. Better to be happy than to be miserable. There is a time and place for pessimism which I will describe later in the essay.

Seligman provides what in my opinion is way too much evidence for the benefits of optimsim. Optimists live longer; they’re happier; they have better survival rates for cancer; they perform better in sports; they make more money. If you want to see all the specifics, buy the book. I understand that as a scientist (especially in something like psychology, which a lot of ignorant people dismiss as “not a real science”) he has to back up his claims with evidence, but whatever, yo.

Speaking of studies, one cool scientific technique he employed was CAVEing. Seligman and his research cohorts invented a technique called CAVE: Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations. They could determine how optimistic or pesimistic someone was based on their quotes, even if they were uttered half a century ago. The team would analyze them on the dimensions of permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. Then they  could go on to CAVE their public-record commentary (e.g. newspapers) in order to study the long-term effects of optimsim or pesismism.

Optimism is especially valid in sports. It seems that optimists and pessimists don’t fare the same – pessimists tend to perform poorly after negative performances, whereas optimists don’t let past performance affect future performance.

How to become an optimist? Change your thoughts!

But pessimism has a place! If there are long-term consequences involved (e.g. money, health), then it pays to be pessimistic. Otherwise, one should be optimistic!

If you want to buy a copy of Learned Optimism, get it from Amazon for only $10.20.