Communication Basics: My Manuscript for My Book has Been Submitted

I have not been writing as frequently on this blog or my other major blog due to my needing to complete a book manuscript for publication.  It will hopefully be out by the end of the year.

The book's title is: Mental Health for Everybody: A Field Guide.  I don't think I have to argue for its relevance.  I might have to argue for its content.

It is a book that will bring basic scientific studies (including psychology) down to the average person's level (but not by bypassing, but by using high level expertise).  I can't wait to hold the first copy in my hands.

It will define the meanings of words like teaching, coaching, schooling, and educating in ways that will foster people's basic mental health.  Remember, it is a field guide.

I did my best to follow the rule of K.I.S.S.  It means "Keep it Simple Silly".  Take care.  I will give updates as good new arrives on my book.


Sincerely,


Jon

Communication Basics: Starting rather than Waiting

Double-blind studies are great, but there are problems with them as well.  First, they are in short supply compared to the wealth of all knowledge.  Second, double-blind studies change their minds a lot.  So while the goals are admirable:  1) we need to raise the quantity of things studied this way, and 2) we need to raise the quality of studies; we can't entrust all of knowledge to them.  I say this tongue in cheek, but if we relied only on them for our physical health, we might starve while waiting.

I have people every day come into a nutritional store where I work and they are confused and befuddled by the latest double-blind or not so double-blind studies. Peer-reviewed is also an admirable goal, but still that leaves a lot that we know that is unstudied.  So what should we do?  Should we wait?  Should we ignore their impact and race ahead?  Should we through all the studies into the Boston Harbor since they can't agree?

Double-blind is good to eliminate the placebo-effect.   But that doesn't mean that all previous results in tests were wrong due to a placebo effect.  It means some of them were.

Likewise, peer-reviewed is an excellent quality, but peers can mess up.  That is why we have jury trials.  Because the peers of law professionals sometimes mess up.  So what should a person do?

There is good evidence to show that a lot of knowledge has been tested and tested and tested over generations and is still holding up pretty well.  For me, the past yields a lot tests as well.  You just can't turn a blind eye to the failures along the way.  You need to re-test those.

But also whey look for problems where there are none?  Are we going to throw aside the insights of a successful coach like John Wooden, because he didn't double-blind study all his ideas and peer review after every game?  Sports psychology is a great branch of further study, but it is in no place as a Johnny Come Lately to replace everything.  It is though in a place to look at the cracks or fault lines with due humility.

When I first met John Wooden, he first gave me a copy of his success pyramid.  He also gave me his personal phone number and said he would be swilling to talk with me as a younger coach.

He taught me two great things.  Start at the beginning and don't run from the calling you have been given.

The lesson here for us is that even double-blind studies and peer-reviewed studies have a starting point.  You have to begin from somewhere.at sometime.  We don't have all day for all decisions.  That is why we add clocks at sporting events and at work and at school.  The thing to do during a time block is to determine what puts you at the best starting point of all your options.  I would choose Wooden's base over sports psychology's base at the moment.

The point is to both start closer and to start faster.  To have no starting point is to start further from the starting point.  That is the danger of studies.  It is that no one finds a closer place to begin.   Remember, somewhere is always better than nowhere and now is always better than later, when it comes to starting. That same advice does not necessarily apply to finishing.  

Sports psychology has already begun to study Wooden's insights.  I just hope his being rated as the number one coach by ESPN and be other polls will still count for something.  His teaching and his coaching were tested over and over many times.   Let's remember that a double-blind study and a peer-review paper a full test does not make.every one a teacher or a coach.

What do think the sports psychology people could help with is studying his leadership idea "The Emotions Are Your Enemy". My SWOT analysis says that is a possible weakness in his approach alongside his strengths.  But before that study is done, I think a person has to do their own trial and error in life to some degree and get started.  To start with Wooden's base in his success pyramid seems to be a safe place to start.  Take care.


Sincerely,

Jon

Communication Basics: The Blind leading the Blind

The issues right now following my discussion with a fellow minister is that we've got the blind leading the blind.  People are not seeing.  People are associating emotions with relationships and not with all things and the nervous system as a whole.

They are also not seeing that what is foundational is only on a psychology 105 level and an eighth grader ought to be able to understand.   That bottom level is what I am trying to provide and strengthen rather than trying to strengthen the top of the pyramid of learning.

The bottom line problem still remains a problem of seeing or rather a problem of not seeing.  Good teachers help people see.   Bad teachers conceal what should be visible.  If you read my other posts you will see the basic 5 emotions, the basic 5 logics, and the 5 altogether combinations from the first two.

Keep searching and studying till you have those 15 down.  When you do you will be smarter than a PhD.   By the way, I still regard the goal of PhD education highly.  They should have the opportunity to lead.  But if they are blind about the basics, how can they lead?

My only criticism of the PhD level isthat many of them are not getting a foundationally strong first-rate basic education before they reach that level.  Be smart and seeing and then you will take care.


Sincerely,

Jon

Communication Basics: Making it Silly Proof

There was a saying when I was in school that a teacher or a coach needed to make things "moron-proof". This type of language doesn't pass the grade any longer.  But I do think that it is important to make things "silly proof".  We should simplify things (not too far to the point of being naive) in most cases down to a level where silly mistakes can be avoided.

You can have a PhD from Harvard or Yale or even Stanford and still fail the silly proof test  If I were to ask you right now the big five kinds of categories and the big five emotions, you would likely fail the test.  [Take a moment and write them down].   If you look elsewhere into this blog you will find all ten.  What was your score out of 10?  Unless you cheated, I know you did not score well.  That goes for those with PhDs.

This is purely silly.  Shouldn't every speaker of English know the basic 5 of each and possess the ability to add the next five as well.  But we don't.

We continue to practice education that is not silly proof. We tolerate silly answers to silly questions.  My question is not silly.  I am asking you, "What are your basics in intelligence?"  What is silly is that you can go through 5 levels of education (each about 4 years long) and so put in nearly 20 years of school education and still make silly intellectual errors.

Let's start producing silly-proof intellects in the United States at least and watch the silly mistakes melt before the mind's ability to do its job.


Sincerely,

Jon

P.S. The Dummy and Idiot series of books proves my point, if nothing else does.  They are insulting titles that people still need at the PhD level.  That's silly.

first noted probably around April 2014

Communication: Basing the Basics on Common Sense

I am NOT opposed to people having a good technical sense.  The race to get to the moon using the heightened abilities of electronic invention was a great thing.  It helped give birth to the microprocessor that drives so many technologies today like the cell phone.  As a result, most of us have heard of an Intel microprocessor.  But I think there is an invention that could eclipse this improvement of electronic devices.  I think it lies not in the direction of an external electronic device, but in the direction of improving our ability to use the minds each of us are equipped with as standard equipment. 

The human mind is still a wonder.  It has incredible capacities.  But lately, I am noticing that technical sense does not mean common sense.  Many people have high technical abilities, but their minds have little common sense.  Here lies the tragedy, because the mind is capable of both. 

I think common sense is greater than the lesser ability of technical sense, but it is when the two are combined together that the greatest ideal is achieved.  We seem to have come out of the 20th century with lots of the latter and few of the former.  We need now common sense to match our technical achievements. 

This is what I believe the majority of people yearn for, when it comes to even technology.  I like to call my under-developed smart phone a "dumb phone".  More times than not it fails to demonstrate smarts.  Rather it shows a great lack of common sense features.  It can make a pocket call right after I shut it down.  It can start up by simply bumping another object in my pocket.  It has immense capabilities, but few of which follow even the most basic common sense. 

My goal on this blog in this year will be to lay out what I consider to be a common sense approach to communication based on the very common words that we use to communicate every single day.  I hate to state the overly obvious, but the common is found among the very common, and not among the unique or exceptional. 

I saw this in a commercial: "Great minds think alike" followed by "Great minds think differently".  These slogans in the commercial were meant to be mutually exclusive of one another.  But I think they are not.  The ideal is common sense, where great minds think alike, and technical sense, where great minds think differently. 

I recently realized that my communication basic method of "ARWAT" is not common sense enough.  The categories of: 1)Amount, 2) Relationships, 3) Wholes, 4) Actions, and 5) Things are not on a list of most frequent words in English.  They are closer than the word categories that I had previously used called "TEAR" with the categories of !)Thing, 2Event, 3)Attribute, and 4) Relation.  Recently, I took the final step toward "very common".   That is where I found common sense!  It is alive and well once you know where to find it. 

[Sorry, I have to come back and finish this later.  You can contact me if you like to learn more sooner.  Thank you.]

Sincerely,

Jon

 

Communication Basics: A Fun Analogy at the Cellulor Level

I have written before about what I consider to be the whole of four essential things in communication:

1) Amounts,
2) Relationships,
3) Actions, and
4) Things.

I ran across today a fun analogy that goes beyond the surface level of these obvious things to the cellular level that is beyond my expertise.  But what I did find there is a fun example of how the essentials of communication work for our cells. 

What was pointed out is that at a cellular level cells communicate to each other a series of things:

1) Feed me
2) Cleanse me
3) Defend me
4) Repair me
5) Regulate me
6) See me, and
7) Help me*

The last is my own add to fill out what two others are essentially saying already.  Here is how I see these communications on a basic level:

1) Feed me is a communication about the essential needs of the whole cell
2) Cleanse me is a communication about amounts that are purified down to the cell only
3) Defend me is communication about relationships that go before the cell rather than after the cell
4) Repair me is communication about the whole cell, if parts have been left out or damaged
5) Regulate me is communication about action that should or should not happen
6) See me is communication about a thing being noticed rather than being ignored
7) Help me* is communication about the whole again just to close with the whole after beginning there and middling there.

So even at the cellular level communication tends to continue to be quite basic, getting at the needs for the whole of:

1) Amounts,
2) Relationships,
3) Actions, and
4) Things. 

So if you want to communicate well, you might want to try with someone the basic messages of your cells.  You especially might try it at your favorite nutrition store.  Remember too, to listen to your body at the surface level.  What is it saying?  Is it saying "Feed me!" or something else.  Have fun with it and remember all communication can eventually be broken down into the essential parts.  Don't leave any of them out and don't feed yourself a part after your body says it is full.  I imagine another cell knows that when it stops saying, "Feed me!".  Take care.


Sincerely, 

Jon

* I added help me as just another take on "Feed me".  I see both as dealing with the whole like "Feed me", but I am not saying that at a cellular level there is another message.  That is for the experts to determine.  I just wanted to balance the opening communication with a closing communication.  . 

Communication Basics 101: Why Grammar isn't the Place to Begin

Alan Greenspan once said: "To succeed, you will soon learn, as I did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy, both verbal and numerical, and communication skills".  One of the main purposes of this blog is to point the way back to the basics.  Grammar is one of the most hated topics of private or public education.  Just ask junior highers and senior highers.  Why is that?  I think it has to do with the idea that grammar is supposed to be basic, but it doesn't look basic.  

Here is what I mean.  When each of us begins to learn language at home, there might be hardly a hint of instruction in the topic called "grammar".  We might have never heard the notion of "the parts of speech" as one part of grammar and yet we might be quite capable speakers before our junior high teacher begins to teach us the parts of speech.  So the question arises as to how they then can be basic?  I agree with the question.  How can the parts of speech (as one part of grammar) then be called basic?  

If something is basic, then you would think that even a child might begin to grasp the ideas.  A child might not be able yet to handle solid food, but they certainly can handle baby food.  I think the parts of speech should be handled as the beginning of adult speech, not the beginning of immature speech.  In other words, it has to be taught by the mature to those who are becoming or already are mature.  In other words, while it is not so basic as to be grasped by a very young child, an adult is able to grasp it.  So what should be taught before the parts of speech or grammar/letters (as a whole) that is basic?  

I believe there is something that all adults make known to their children from the earliest stages of learning to use language.  It is the universal classes of meaning.  They precede the parts of speech, but they are also followed by the parts of speech.  They are referred to as meaning classes or meaning categories.  They consist of:

Parts and Wholes (ex. the tail of the kitty)
    Amounts (ex. the doggy has four legs)
    Relationships (ex. mommy and daddy)
    Actions (ex. go)
    Things (ex. stick)

A child is taught by an adult to distinguish between things and nothings, etc. The examples abound (ex. this is a dog, that is a cat [so that is not a dog])!  The child's sentences may not be grammatically correct, but they are early on able to communicate the basics to those who are adults and even other children.  

What is also favorable toward calling these meaning classes basic is that they also have proven through practice by translators all over the world to be universal classes of meaning.  Trying to prove that there is a universal grammar is much more controversial.  Many have tried to prove this idea and have failed.  That includes specialists in language called linguists (the formal studiers of language).  Not even all the Indo-European languages have 8 parts of speech that are the same as those found in English.  

So for me a good user of language can be a child.  They may be immature, but they can use language in a good way or they can use it well.  A good and mature user of language is an adult that can first grasp the meaning classes of language that the child can handle: 1) parts and wholes, 2) amounts, 3) relationships, 4) actions, and 5) things; and also the major parts of speech (as a part of grammar) that vary from language to language.  In English grammar, this means: 1) nouns, 2) verbs, 3) pronouns, 4) adjectives, 5) adverbs, 6) interjections, 7) prepositions, and 8) articles.  Two things need to be specifically addressed to clarify my point further.  

The first is that only the classes of meaning are universally basic (though the names in each language may vary).  The second is that while grammar is not basic, it is mature.  In other words, if you want to sound like an adult and not a child in your speech, then that part of grammar called the parts of speech will be seen by mature adults as a adult or mature thing.  Very young children can rightly object that it is not basic.  But maybe it will be easier to swallow, if we adults tell the children that learning the parts of speech is like moving from being immature (a child) to being mature (an adult).  No more jamming the mature down the throat of the immature, but also no more immature children telling adults that maturity is optional when they are coming of age either!  That sounds far more real to children, parents and teachers!