# negativity lock

> I'm thinking about things like homeostasis and change, order and chaos lately, and it will be interesting to revisit TA and make a list of quotes on how such emotional habits, "games" and "scenarios" form (to look from a new perspective and reintegrate).

We didn't have much time yet to review the TA literature in that light, but we had a session with Dark Eclipse today on that matter and charted from memory what we remember from TA and outside of it. The subject is how the negative emotional habits form and sustained. (Panksepp identified seven primary affectional networks, CARE, LUST, PLAY, SEEK, PANIC/GRIEF, RAGE, FEAR - of which the last three might demonstrate what we mean by negative emotions; anxiety is negative emotions related to future, guilt is negative emotions related to past).

What we remember from TA: Berne noticed how children deprived of social interaction might be less healthy and even die. (Which resonates with John Cacioppo's [“lethality of loneliness”](https://youtu.be/_0hxl03JoA0)). On this he puts forth a hypothesis that social emotional interactions (“strokes”) are a biological necessity, not dissimilar to hunger or need for sun and air.

(We might comment, that a psychological configuration that requires “strokes” is likely present in most people of our culture “by default”, but it is also likely possible to change this configuration by using a different self-hypnosis, similar to how the stress configuration can be adjusted or changed, cf. https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend)

From “stroke hunger” it follows that when a person doesn't have access to positive emotions, they begin to “feed” on negative emotions and consequently their “taste” for emotions changes.

(In TS, who had a very toxic setup in the Russian branch of Microsoft but didn't change her emotional “tastes”, because she has this skill of getting the positive emotions out of people with ease, we see a good example of Michael Yapko and Aaron Beck and Jean Becchio approaches to treatment - largely by teaching new (social) skills; then again, her preference to remain in these toxic working relationships might indicate a certain “taste” for enduring negativity that she acquired prior to that at home).

This “taste” is then codified and persisted in patterns of behavior (TA “games” and “life scripts”) and in identity (TA “existential position”).

This might be where our latest thoughts on chaos and homeostasis kick in. Namely, we know that identity is very well defended (Любовь Леонидовна has taught us, more than a dozen years ago, that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms are largely triggered by challenges to self-identity). Per Taleb's Incerto, neither the evolution nor society are interested in the survival of the individual human being. Because to society the individual is like a cell to a body. We can drink a very hot tea, almost a boiling one. One way to explain this is that the cells that weren't resistent to high temperature has died out, and were replaced by the replication of the surviving cells, those which are more resistent to heat. This possibility of local evolution, on the level of cells and of proteins withing a cell, is fascinating, expanding the practical applications of gene methylation and epigenesis. But it is widely known to work on the level of society and species. Difference in individual human beings allows the society and the species to survive. This might hint why from the evolutionary standpoint the formation and defence of the static identity is preferential. A person must persist in their delusions even onto a death, for a chance that these delusions would be a new truth (a fitting adaptation to a changing environment), for a chance that they were needed for a species to survive.

Outside of TA, or at least of the portion of TA we remember, we have a complementary model. A person behaves in accordance to their reality map (in Peterson's terms, a person develops an implicit understanding of the rules for a “set of games”). Of which identity is a most precious part. This reality map is largely based on memory (as demonstrated by Cialdini, when he shows how it's possible to retune the identity by changing the immediate memory of it, with the help of the “positive test strategy” for example). And memory is a function of emotions (Amygdala is known to strenghten the emotional memory somehow; evolutionary benefit might be in that emotional memories are more likely to be pertinent to survival; Freddy Jacquin developed a corresponding hypnosis technique: “engage emotions, make a suggestion”). Strong emotions reformat a person more easily, changing the memory-based reality map. (A hostage is in a lot of stress and is reformatted by it, contributing to the Stockholm syndrome). A toxic work environment might thus disproportionally change the reality map. Especially if the number of strong positive emotions in memory is lacking, in which case the reality map will be dominated by the negative memory.

Once a cluster of negative memory is formed, there's a risk of it spreading over the rest of the memory, even onto the memory of the future. Gary 'Smiler' Turner draws the diagrams of such spread in http://bit.ly/g-smiler-fb. This is how in PTSD a former combat situation begins to affect the veterans in their post-conflict life.

(In “Unspeakable Acts” Doug Pryor has found a pattern: the majority of child abuse perpetrators had a reality map that allowed or even encouraged the act: they were themselves victims of the abuse and/or seen their network defend or encourage it. In terms of Lucas Derks “social panorama” we could, perhaps, say that behavior is picked from the map of social role models, and that the people who elicited an unhealed trauma are getting “under the skin” and crowding out the horison. In game theory terms, a person who expects to be cheated is prone to cheat in turn. In Peterson's terms, “the rules of the game” has changed - towards the negative and toxic behaviors)

When the memory of the past is thus linked with the memory pertaining to the current situation and to the future, anxiety follows.

In the presence of anxiety we oft find a need to control the situation, and see other people as dangerous to that control. Per Panksepp, the FEAR affective network is tied closely to RAGE. Ronald Markman, in “Alone with the devil”, has a good piece about it: “*The heart of the issue is control. Power. Both Camacho and Sweeney simply could not handle the loss of control over their women - which was equated in their minds with power over the 'situation' of their own lives. Sweeney and Camacho had made Dominique and Elizabeth into such integral parts of their lives that when the women threatened to break free the danger was not one of loss of love, but a loss of control that was psychically interpreted as as a potential loss of life itself. The anxiety created by this anticipated loss could not be dissipated by running away or 'letting go'. In fact, both of these steps would only heighten the anxiety. / Unfortunately, violence usually is just what is needed to dissipate the anxiety as well as restore control*”.

Gary 'Smiler' Turner, in the lecture mentioned above, talks a while on how the anxiety, violence and guilt form a positive feedback loop.
(cf. David Cole Gordon: “There is a principle that is called the bipolarity of psychic phenomena in which the inhibition acts as a stimulant and the stimulant, in turn, acts as an inhibitor”)

The guilt might happen because of the “disagreement” between the RAGE affective network and the other parts of the psyche. RAGE steps in to defend a person (sometimes from the very guilt it causes), or to help them clean a path to their goal, but when later it steps down the other parts of the “I” might feel wrong about the methods employed.
(This is also where the [defence mechanisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms) often kick in, protecting self-identity from the fallout).

In [“toxic positivity”](https://youtu.be/EIg7TPEm2BE) Adam Eason mentions how negativity can be paradoxically increased when a person tries to be positive (which might be in turn related to [inner conflict](https://hackmd.io/FT16zCkMS9acSrXfb5EVbg) and “reactance”).

In terms of homeostasis and chaos we might say that the negativity lock is a form of a “local minimum” in a (machine) learning algorithm and that random adjustments are needed in order to escape such. It has been long our theory that LSD is a way to randomize the brain, and hence a way to advance the learning process past a local minimum, which might explain why LSD and similar drugs has been found, for a number of conditions, to be much more effective than the modern psychotherapy. The so-called “ego death” and “identity dissolution” experiences, available through psychedelic therapy and to a lesser extent through certain semi-religious practices (tantric mantra and such), are tantamount to re-entering a configuration section of an OS.
cf. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-08-ego-dissolving-psychedelic-drugs-mental-health.html
cf. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-psilocybin-inhibits-negative-emotions-brain.html
cf. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-doses-psychedelic-drug-erases-conditioned.html

The “chance operations” of John Cage (which are in a way similar to practices of divination used throughout the history) are a way to randomize the system from the other end, to experience new behaviors, in turn allowing them to be persisted in a modified version of identity. (“try everything, stick to the good stuff”, [1 Thessalonians 5:21](https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_thessalonians/5-21.htm)).

P.S. We've mentioned how a stressfull situation might reformat a person, rewrite their reality map (in TA terms known as the change of the existential position from “ok” to “not ok”, for example). This change of identity is a useful adaptation to a crisis (https://i.imgur.com/8dNlzyD.png). The problem is usually in rewriting them into a non-crisis version afterwards.

P.S. There are, of course, other paths where the risk of a negativity lock is present and should be accounted for. Affective networks are sources and capacitors of mental energy (aka motivation). And when we have to do something and there's a lack of energy from other sources, the RAGE affective network is often employed (“anger makes things done” - American Gods) to provide the necessary boost. This is very useful, but can lead to a habitual activation of the RAGE network at work, and through the close link between the anger and fear might lead to anxiety, paranoia, guilt and to the negativity lock.
It is also possible to contract negative emotions from other people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_degrees_of_influence, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-05-transmission-individuals-counteracted.html), from our parents and from their environment (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-aggression-womb.html), from colors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X31K6jammH0) and even from the sun (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-01-sun-induced-frowning-aggression.html, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-circadian-clock-daily-rhythms-aggression.html). Large areas of our brain are dedicated to negative emotions, so they are likely to activate endogenously now and then. Owning these and carrying them in our brain is like owning a gun, a degree of education and practice is oft necessary in order not to shoot ourselves in the foot.

P.S. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip has a part, from the middle and to the end of it, that shows in a way both poetic and succint how fear might sometimes oppose the freedom of positive emotions.

cf. 2020-08-01 & `# known bad VS unknown`

P.S. Self-love by David Gole Gordon on page 31 mentions the psychoanalytic hypothesis that “suicide is a device that is used by the victim to punish the parents who originally deprived him of his pleasure and prohibited it”. This vengeance theme can also be found in Claude Stainer's description of the “prick”, “sulk” and “jerk” personality types. It is, of couse, natural for the parents, as the first significant others, to be interiorized and remain in the person's social panorama, and the plot of the internal conflict might develop in relation to these spirits

P.S. In `2020-08-13` we explore the subject of homeostatic *safety lock*, and the negativity lock might sometimes be a subset or contributed from the *safety lock*:

## from journal: 2020-08-13
A few years back we came up with a discovery and hypothesis that a sex drive (Genesis 1:22, 2:18) is backed to a large degree by a need for safety. Then Cacioppo' research into loneliness has confirmed and expanded on this
A few days back we had a similar revelation about water. Why do we like open water, feel centered and elated around it? One way to understand this is again through evolutionary gauge of safety. When we see open water, we are in a priviledged position of the access to a major resource
(Related sources are, for example, https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-019-0103-7 and https://news.usc.edu/144479/vagus-nerve-research-gut-instinct-may-have-been-gps-of-early-humans/)
The practice of Evocation might have a similar emotional effect, of having access to a major safety resource
In Tantra we might see at times the safety of a spiritual access combined with the safety of a sexual access (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anuttarayoga_Tantra#Mother_Tantras ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Dharmas_of_Naropa#The_Types_of_Karmamudr%C4%81s)
A cat purring, because she has access to her human owners, and a software developer having access to a gratifying level of technology - might have the same emotional basis in safety
So there might be on the level of neuroeconomic machinery a correlation between feeling good and having access. https://www.harvbishop.com/neville-goddard-a-cosmic-philospher/ explores a bit on whether the actual access is required. “*I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams*”. Access is not required for a good feeling, but good feeling might be helpful in achieving a network resonance (2020-08-12) that manifests (directs us towards, facilitates) access. It is also a magick of [past and future past](https://youtu.be/FQxZGsJvuG0): timeline and network might influence one another in a positive feedback loop; forging one's past and future past might help with finding a network, finding a network might help with changing the timeline
*Homeostasis* might be seen as a “local minimum” of safety. A local minimum brings a paradox: for staying in it might be less safe then burning bridges and moving on. A typical human being is usually a *unit* of evolutionary adaptation: there seems to be a general design in the human architecture towards a gradual shift, with age, from the risky “search for solutions” mode in the young towards a safer “stay where you are” mode in the adulthood (though New Passages 1995 claims that a longer lifespan have confused these things a bit). If this hypothesis is correct, then we might see the corresponding age differences between the proponents of aspiration-focused programming languages and proponents of prevention-focused ones. A major theme in Christianity as we've seen it is rewinding this clock and going through a second childhood/novitiate
P.S. So the [negativity lock](https://hackmd.io/7kMPBjykRNOZR98DarKpwA?view), the switch from positive strokes to negative ones when only the negative are accessible, might be happening because access to caregivers and significant others is evolutionary important - a person adopts to the environment. And it is then persisted as a “local minimum” by what we might call a “safety lock”

P.S. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/everyone-dissociates-ebefb732b83b might as well be related to the *safety lock* (e.g. “Belonging = Survival”)

P.S. There might be a link between the “network lock” and the “negativity lock”. Compare these quotes:
“*All of these long-established organizations... with time, their practices always degenerate, start draining everything out of the participants, turn into a cycle of abuse aimed at at no one in particular / But the funny thing is, if the victims aren't allowed into positions where they can perpetuate the abuse, they feel the abuse is aimed specifically at them. There's no winning move here*” (Vampire - Shadows of New York, 2020)
“*cultures perpetuate… software developers are a lot like bacteria… you’d rarely see a project from more agressive to more peaceful and quiet*” - Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, https://youtu.be/q-7l8cnpI4k?t=10m4s, `10:05-12:50`
One way to explain this “red shift” (cf. Stanisław Lem - Как Микромил и Гигациан разбеганию туманностей начало положили) towards negativity is that an old *network* tends to be heavier and slower than a member, it works hard on pushing its goals and works much less on maintaining a fleeting win-win balance between the goals of a *network* and the goals of a member. The more a member is ingrained in a *network*, there more they risk loosing their https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology), their foundational [capacity for independent action](http://pogoarchives.org/m/dni/john_boyd_compendium/destruction_and_creation.pdf), and feeling this they start to accrue the negative affect and frustration
As greeks have noticed of old, even the master thus becomes a slave of their slaves

P.S. The [fundamental attribution error (FAE)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error) might be a major contributor to negativity accrued over text. It might be one of the “elephants in the room” in modern internet communication, leading to neutral communication, because text containing emotions results in a stronger negativity when mis-attributed, which in turn leads to members of a community loosing emotional tethers, a “positive feedback loop” of [loneliness](https://youtu.be/_0hxl03JoA0) and negativity
Our theory goes that non-verbal communication somehow offsets this, provided the network would have a good [starter](https://youtu.be/q-7l8cnpI4k?t=10m4s). On the other hand, if there is already a formed culture of (inner) negativity, then psychological immune system that defends this homeostasis will very likely show a marked resistance to non-verbal contact, as challenging to the negativity status quo D

P.S. So Lucas Derks notes how in the “social panorama” we can see sometimes a defensive personality that is grown over the original one in order to protect it. (https://youtu.be/urnI6q2sOww at 47; In terms of Affective Neuroscience we might say that the RAGE network sometimes goes first in the line of cathexis). Now, that configuration might lead to something that was originally taught to me, in the context of psychiatry, as the “вязкий аффект” - emotion that clings for a prolonged period of time and is being hard to lay off: there is simply no other way to engage with the outer objects as the RAGE has formed an armor around the other brain agents. Per Michael Yapko, Aaron Beck and Jean Becchio, for example, we can approach this from the angle of training new skills: by growing the positive Affective Networks, building ways and habits of cathexing them. And then we see them peeking out from behind the armor and giving a person the alternative ways of awareness and engagement, which effectively dispells the “вязкий аффект” phenomena. It is important to remeber that the protective ANGER is a good and useful adaptation, but that also the meaning of it is borne out of protecting something else, and that this something needs to get out sometimes, in order for it to thrive and develop. That being said, access to altered states of consciousness (Wark, 2006, Alert Hypnosis: A Review and Case Report) is immensely useful in facilitating this and affecting the affect. Hypnotic phenomena (and their spiritual counterparts) are the Thread of Ariadne to consciousness
The armor of ANGER might be compared to a cellular cyst perhaps, in its purpose and diversity

P.S. (from `2020-09-24`) A “sunk goal” of maitaining a (Keith Johnstone) status homeostasis might be a source of passive agression, gaslighting, of undermining others (unconsciously) in order for them not to get ahead. Dr. Gabor Maté would say that it is a “learned defensive mode”, but “defensive” implies that a person is reactive and/or suffering, whereas the negativity might just as easily stem from goals that are positive and proactive. Isaak Asimov played with these when he explored the Laws of Robotics, how they can lead easily to Skynet, Terminators and stuff
Any offence can be framed as defence, so “defensive” here is mostly a way for Dr. Gabor Maté and others to cope with the fact that some of their “sunk goals” has gone awry

p.s. Going farther into bouncing/[redirect](https://hackmd.io/VCtPKkG4TDylOHuKyBf1MQ) we might find *faith* (2020-06-22)
Letov's “Бери шинель”, [after Gogol's](https://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Шинель_(повесть)&oldid=113665470#Превращение), hints at the transformative power of anxiety. “Negative” emotions are upscaled to memory by default, as relevant to survival, with occasional benefits like the “[Goldilocks zone](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-house-mystery.html)”. Directed, this combustion-like energy can help escape some “local minimums” or reach some remote mindsets

p.s. A fundamental mammalian patern is to feel anxiety until someone is struck down nearby: “*predators usually attack the isolated members of a group, and the rest can then relax, matching the sacrificial victim of religion*” (trialogues_98-1.mp3). This might well be a fuel for [mass formation](https://youtu.be/IqPJiM5Ir3A). Ian Lurie: “*people love beating bad guys and slaying monsters. And telling a story about it!*”. Being a part of a group that is killing someone, or else observing them being killed - brings a relief.