Table of Contents
What is Approval?
Let’s begin with the question, what is approval? What does it mean to have approval?
Do you mean to receive approval from others? Yes.
Other people don’t find you objectionable.
People leave you alone.
You have support.
You measure up to others likes.
This is the common view of approval. Can you function without approval?
Yes, though not as well if you have to be around them.
I have learned to. How so? I have learned to find approval ( perhaps, imagined approval) from nonhuman sources. The brilliantly colored birds in the feeder right outside the window behind my computer monitor approve of me because I feed them sunflower seeds.
In a limited way, perhaps.
Ultimately, you’re locked up without approval.
I see approval as approbation or sanction, and I don’t see it as something you can avoid or function outside of the context of. Everyone has constraints to their behaviour, requirements, prerequisites of one kind or another whether consciously understood and chosen or not. Is this unfair to say?
Not unfair at all. Even hermits have constraints to their behaviour.
Nothing you have ever learned, no experience you have ever shared, consisted of anything other than these structures, these rules of perception, reaction, and reflection. Even a persons memories reflect more their own system of accepted meaning, a form of psycho social agreement than they do any concrete physical stimuli.
You approve of much more perhaps than you are consciously aware of. There are perhaps many things you have unconsciously accepted as meaningful though you consciously deny their validity. You approve of interpersonal turmoil, or am I wrong? If I am wrong, why?
Intrapersonal. Yes, intra-personal, inside oneself.
No you are not wrong, but in some cases it is more like a Civil War than an interpersonal turmoil.
Well, it’s going to happen whether I approve of it or not.
The brain actually fails to make that distinction on a fundamental level. The figures of your subconscious imagination are treated the same as the persons of your waking world acquaintance. They register the same way in your memory, are parts of the same set of associations. You approve of interpersonal drama, because you want the right to produce such drama. Is this unfair to say?
Intra-personal drama? Turmoil, strife, inter and intra. You want to be able to make yourself seen and heard. You want there to be a permissible way to complain. You would lose any sense of personal security if this were not possible.
What you like and what you approve of are not the same thing. Approval is actually much more powerful than preference. You approve of everything you believe it’s possible to understand. You disapprove of the unknown.
Didn’t B. F. Skinner say that positive reinforcement is three times more powerful than negative reinforcement? Indeed and that continues to be experimentally confirmed.
I know a sure fire way to at first bore and then completely alienate you. Do you know how that is? The more I do it, the less you will even be able to direct your attention to my words and behaviour. If the things I do and say contain nothing you feel you can relate to, you will involuntarily begin ignoring me and even screening any of my behavioural output. I could behave in such a way that if you weren’t forced to perceive me or engage me at all, you would be unable to even notice my presence. This shows up in change blindness experiments among other things. There is a reason so many people are uncomfortable with change, even profess to hate it. It is the unknown, beyond their realm of approval.
You cannot approve of success. You can approve of failure.
Why? Success is always an unknown outcome of process, or else it’s an integrated part of the process and not seen as significance success.
Isn’t the future always unknown?
You successfully wake up every morning. That success is meaningless to you. The process is always known. They have even begun to decode how process is encoded in the brain. It’s the dominant function of the human brain, preferred as a rule.
In order to be good at anything, you have to love the process.
You can approve of failure because failure and the understanding of it as a concept is a generalization. You have a habitual experience of failure and behaviours you have built up around it, but you expect failure, you can’t even imagine success, can you?
Not total success, for sure but incremental successes? Tiny ones even?
Not until you have achieved success, then you know what it feels like. I know I can lose weight because I have done it before.
Only in a fantasy kind of way?
The most successful people also find the concept the most meaningless. Why is that?
It’s just process to them?
Success is by definition an outcome, and there is no such thing as an outcome. The concept is fantastical, a psychological construct at best.
They have become inured to approval.
Yes, rich people know how to make money easily, and so its less satisfying to them and they want more and more. Success tastes sweeter if you have to work hard to achieve it.
You can never get anyone’s permission to do anything, because they can neither anticipate what you will do nor predict its outcome.
Those who got rich by their own efforts, realize that having gained the money actually gained them nothing. It left them on an open road, with nothing proven, no permanent legacy or lasting solutions. The only thing they may actually have more of than most people, is perspective. Having had access to more vantage points and wider ranges of experience to frame their outcomes in. The reason the rich become numb to the concept of success, is not because they are inured to approval, but because they are very sensitive to it, perhaps more sensitive than anyone else.
This is why successes don’t matter on the death bed.
So are you saying that some people’s vantage point send wider ranges of experience are greater than others? Doesn’t everyone have a full range of experiences? Whether they are rich, successful, or what ever?
This web of approval actually shapes everything, dictates the meaning and value of everything. They are so successful so to speak, because they understood very well what people approved of, not what they wanted. They often ignore what people want. They understand what is expected.
What determines someones range of experience?
Places gone, activities. People met?
Subtleties perceived.
I consider range of experience to be like vocal range. Any single experience only provides as much range as the person can express in their connection to the experience, and both can be shallow experiences or deep. its not the physical circumstance than dictates that, is it?
Skiing in Aspen and being homeless are both experiences.
The physical circumstances? Of course not.
It’s how much of you is present or invested? Yes. Successful people are very invested.
But there is also a qualitative entity. Do tell? I have experienced both overwhelming approval and disapproval, both leave their mark on your psyche.
Well, as I watch these birds outside the window, I could say well there just birds! But when I let myself see the subtleties of the experience, it is an absolute heaven! A wonderment!
I still see that as quantitative. The qualia were always there. What differs is not what you are seeing, but how deeply you are invested in seeing it. We have a finite amount of time and energy, and we as much as its commonly thought otherwise, we don’t exercise any power of censorship over our experience. What you do have is range of perception, range of depth in contact, conscious and unconscious.
I have known people who as a rule prefer to be very conservative with their psychic resources, make contact with the world only as deeply as they minimally have to.
Uninvolved? Un engaged? Uninvolved is how others often perceive them, yes. Unengaged even in their personal lives, their very own affairs let alone anything broader than that. Relationships break up because of this behaviour very often. It’s not really rare.
But the “over-engaged” are judged to be fundamentalists. The over engaged fundamentalist still exhibits a restricted range. That’s the definition of fundamentalism. Restricting your investment to elements considered fundamental, sacred cows.
And the restricted mental state, alas.
So why do people become so unnaturally constricted?
Because investing too much emotionally makes you vulnerable.
Driven with single minded focus/vision?
The un-vulnerable life is not worth living.
They see something they have to create?
Let’s say I want to be conservative with my blood, so I store away as much as I possibly can, and still survive. What would be the consequence of that? Weakness, fatigue, vulnerability to illness, impaired mental function.
How is the energy of attention any different than blood? Why is it at all sane to try to conserve it? Is the disengaged person any different than the person suffering from marked blood loss?
Ahhh! It is about transference of energy, not conservation of energy. We give — we receive — and so we are. Not about holding onto anything.
So we have some bad habits, but perhaps an important point. We need to make a distinction, so let’s use the terms approval and sanction.
Approval vs Sanction
Approval is agreement. You are in agreement with anyone whose innate nature you are not violating, anyone you permit to be who they are, and anyone who is permitting you to be as you are, and who you permit to be as they are, this is approval.
Equanimity. No preferences, no prejudices.
My wife has my complete approval. I know this is a strange question, but what is my approval like? What is having my approval like? Is it the same as love?
Sometimes I guess my questions are too broad. They make sense to me because my brain models these concepts and experiences as physical forces or objects.
From how you describe it, I’d say yes.
I fully approve of venomous animals. I acknowledge and accept them as they are. I have no interest in ignoring that or resisting it in any way.
The second term is sanction, which could be thought of as disapproval. No one has ever acted on their approval of you. They can’t. Approval is not an action. When approval mattered to their behaviour, it was because they were acting on disapproval.
You have never directly experienced anyone’s approval. You have experienced their friendship, alliance or love, but not approval. Even they themselves have not experienced their own approval. It’s a characteristic of their inner nature like liking to breath, not something they choose, especially not to express or withdraw.
So hardwired? Yes. It could be argued to take shape during the formative years, but likely has roots far deeper than that. You are concerned about approval, only because you are aware of the ability to enact sanctions. The cop can pull you over for speeding, or shoot you for brandishing a gun at them.
So self- loathing can be hardwired….? No, self loathing is an investment. It’s still sanction, an action. We enact sanctions when our approval is being violated, when we are lost and frightened by behaviours occurring around us. We are never frightened by conditions, we are only frightened by actions, events. The physical fact that there is a fire in front of you doesn’t frighten you, but if it’s moving too much it might. Quickly moving fire doesn’t fit your pattern of approval, doesn’t fall into the understood domain. Because it doesn’t fit your recognition pattern that can be called approval, you enact sanctions, try to get a bucket of water or sand and put it out, or you flee. Ever notice how well people understand crisis when they experience it? Even after they just experienced it?
It reminds me of when people talk of acting with fear or love as being our two choices. Is fear and love the same as sanction and approval? No, but it is a very good question. Love is it’s own process independent of approval or sanction. Love is motivational, not regulatory. I approve of venomous animals, and my relationship with them is entirely passive.
Yes, can love without approval.
Yes, but it seems there are many levels to our comforts. They can be very subtle.
There are indeed people who very much love things that violate their own range of approval; extreme sports enthusiast, thrill seekers, masochists, narcissists. It’s actually a long list.
Fundamentalists? Indeed them too. Thus I spoke of range of experience, one experience, many shades or layers of depth to them. One can spend their entire life as a cenobite, or some other sort of cloistered seeker, and have more range of experience than the worlds most worldly individual.
Hell, everyone see the movie Hellraiser? The evil beings that served Leviathan in that movie are called cenobites, the most famous of those being the one called Pinhead. They were isolated by Leviathan in a space outside of time and space, and subject to a personalized range of tortures, achieving a sort of negative enlightenment in a sense. This is why they serve and seek to grant the wish of the other seekers who call them, but at the core of their wrecked souls is a single love. Their every pattern of approval has been violated. They have experienced the complete range of personally customized sanctions. They reach a point where Leviathan can no longer make them suffer. Their love is of that peace, and the brief moments of peace between tortures that Leviathan granted them to heighten the suffering. Leviathans attraction to seekers was the offer of the ultimate pleasure, and it always delivered.
This has even been experimentally confirmed. The brain actually reacts the same way to intense pleasure as it does to intense pain, to orgasm as it does to agony.
Approvals and disapproval’s balance out? No, actually they arise from an imbalance, a deeply rooted misunderstanding. Humanity is enamoured of their own wit and wisdom. So deeply invested in their own cleverness and the belief that they can solve everything, that they sharply limit their understanding of process, their range and depth of sensitivity. Too busy thinking to let their minds fully mature.
So, each of us, in her own way, repeats the asymmetry that provoked the Big Bang. Exactly. That point in the middle, attention, the observer, is a deep well of experience, perception, range of understanding and thus responsiveness or reactivity if you must. This is why we so often accidentally discover the answers to questions. It isn’t accidental. The ability was there. It was just the sense of direction, conscious coordination that was lacking.
The worlds greatest geniuses were the ultimate masters of mindlessness. I am using master in a gender neutral sense. This is why they can come to entrance us so powerfully with their activities inventions and achievements. It’s been said that the secret of leaderships is figuring out where everyone else is going, and getting ahead of them.
The great minds in history were not otherwise mindful. Einstein was notoriously absent minded, so was Tesla, Picasso, Galileo. It’s a very long list. The concept is even prominent in eastern mysticism. There is a great deal of talk and even training around achieving a state of no mind.
Be thine own ” leader” — get thee in front of thyself. Ah. that’s what everyone tries to do, and that is why they are stuck in the cycle of approval and sanction, locked in an illusion of intelligibility, rather than engaged in the genuinely experiential. You can’t get in front of yourself, because you are not two dimensional.
Does this come down to a “no-separation” attitude? — I am one with all that I experience both inwardly and outwardly. Actually no, it’s not immersion of the self in the object, or objectification of the object in the self. It’s the understanding that there is no object at all, only subject, only events, dynamics, processes, and these all obey they same set of rules, which though they allow for your pattern of approval are much broader and deeper than that. One errs in seeking omniscience. There can be no object and therefor no omniscience, no absolute understanding.
So you must not seek approval. It’s an object you will never find. You must experience the self. Self knowledge is approval. Self knowledge is gods love, if you will. You come to understand that your understanding arises not from any seeking, but from fuller being, exploration of your range and depth of being, as well as expression of your rhythms and cycles of enaction. Not action, action is passive, codified, objective. Enaction is meta-conscious. That basis by which any concrete action is understood and expressed. Your way of cooking and your way of sleeping stem from the same source, are the same thing. Your way of reading and your way of petting a dog are the same thing.
It makes perfect sense. if only I could remember that or maybe I don’t need to remember. Just be it. You remember things in many ways. The more deeply associated my statements are with your personal experience, the more fully and deeply you will remember them with no effort on your part. This is my personal test of wisdom. The wisdom of any statement can be gauged by the depth of integration it sinks to. How much it meshes. Is it not your experience that most conventional thinking is divisive? Categorical? Broken and incomplete? Superficial by design? If so then why is it that way?
There is a deeper logic we can access. As Sting sings there is a deeper way than this.
Need for Approval
So about approval, do you like anyone? I like many people, some especially well. If you like anyone, then you do indeed need their approval. If you love anyone, love is a need, vital for your well being, and their approval is part of being in a relationship with them. As much as you do need their approval, you do need to understand and be understood by them. You do not need their sanction, or to be the recipient of their sanction. They do not understand their approval, so they do not know how to give it to you or to deny it to you, but their effort to understand it is what leads to their efforts at sanction or disapproval. You can circumvent their disapproval the same way all the big wigs do. As much as they may not understand their approval, you very likely do. Have you ever noticed how often their anger at you has anything to do with something they want?
Yes. Is it often? Always I think. In my experience it’s never. They become angry because they have lost sight of what they want. They have become confused and distracted by something they have been taught was important, something they have been trained to react to. They never have a clue what will make them happy, what will satisfy their expectations, when they are angry. People get angry because they expect problems, and they don’t understand problems, and while angry they don’t understand themselves or how they feel let alone understand you. They believe the problem is real, and they never are. The problem is a problem because of it’s unreality, it’s incomplete status, the shallow degree its been engaged with.
No wonder you see people as crazy, this is nuts. To understand this and notice it in people would drive me crazy. Even worse, it would drive you sane. Crazy allows the suspension of disbelief, allows you to act as if it were true. It is empowering. It is challenging for me. This is why I delve into religion and philosophy and memetics and art, every frame of conceptual reference, at least anything that is at all holistic. I need an interface in order to make sense of all this.
I suppose if you’re living in an insane asylum it might be easier if you’re crazy too. Those that are called insane are easier for me to understand, because their resources are diminished. Rather than being invested in all this stuff, they revert to some core processes that actually make intelligible sense to me. As Jung said, insanity is a sane response to an insane situation. I totally understand AAAAAH! Face in mashed potatoes is entirely reasonable to me, if not actually useful. I do have a preference for the useful.
Ha ha ha! And spaghetti thrown at the walls! Yes, I understand that as well. The reason I don’t behave that way is because of my preference for the useful, and my disconnection from others, the rocking and flapping and droning are habits I never got into, because I was never subject to the efforts to integrate me into society, not in the way they were.
Normal brains are much too loud. It’s tempting to drone in order to drown it all out. Your body language, tone of voice changes, rapid changes in behaviour and volatile so called planning, rapidly changing rules systems and the Swiss cheese network of rationals used to exploit them in a supposed fair and reasonable way. Calendars are down right comforting by comparison. One of the most reasonable things neurotypicals ever invented, and they are really strange. I guess is what makes them interesting to some people.
Calendars? Literal calendars, those things hung on walls.
My own fascination is with language, all language, math, music, pictorial representations, neuromotor planning. It’s all language, optical pulses, signaling patterns in human information systems and their contrast to naturally occurring cycles. How those merge and diverge over time. Language offers the vast range I crave in exploration. The human error margin. I have begun mapping the algorithm, I guess you would call it, that governs the shared consensus perception, that so called reality. I have begun predicting deviations in human behaviour that allow me to be much more comfortable with people. Some say I am more centered now.
Non linear formalism in language fascinates me. They call it improvisation. That cognitive geometry makes much more sense to me than the supposed rules based thinking we function under.
You stimulate and engage so much of what is happening in my own life. The synchronicities are amazing. Your experiences are a part of a wider world. It is perceivable, just as real as anything else.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~