De: Clearing Archive Roboposter Assunto: min0.memo Data: domingo, 13 de Agosto de 2000 11:13 Subject: HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PEOPLE - Part 1 of 9 This is your new anonymously provided copy of HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PEOPLE By Ruth Minshull Originally Published by SCIENTOLOGY ANN ARBOR Ann Arbor, Michigan This book has been out of print for many years now. Since it is no longer in print, and since the information in its pages remain valuable for use as a Clearing Technology, it is being uploaded to this and other newsgroups with the intention of providing Affinity, Reality and Communication (ARC) to a deserving public. It is being uploaded from a temporary account because the Church of Scientology is renowned for their attitude toward those who attempt to disseminate information that they believe is "theirs alone." This attitude is not shared by everyone, particularly those of us who consider that such information as the Tone Scale is a public necessity, a necessity for the well being of the society as a whole. And as a consequence of this societal need, such information must be as freely disseminated as possible. There are a total of 9 more parts to this book being sent to this and other newsgroups. The size constraint for remailing makes this division of this book necessary. If you are unable to obtain all of this book for whatever reason, it is my intention to continue to provide the entire sequence periodically in this and other newsgroups. While some of these newsgroups may appear to consider only the negative attributes of the subject of Scientology, this book may well act as a reminder that substantial good also can come from it. Signed, Anonymous. --------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PEOPLE By Ruth Minshull Originally Published by SCIENTOLOGY ANN ARBOR Ann Arbor, Michigan THE EMOTIONAL TONE SCALE 4.0 ENTHUSIASM (Cheerfulness) 3.5 INTEREST (Amusement) 3.0 CONSERVATISM (Contentment) 2.5 BOREDOM 2.0 ANTAGONISM (Overt Hostility) 1.8 PAIN 1.5 ANGER 1.2 NO SYMPATHY 1.1 COVERT HOSTILITY 1.0 FEAR 0.9 SYMPATHY 0.8 PROPITIATION (Appeasement) 0.5 GRIEF 0.375 MAKING AMENDS 0.05 APATHY 0.0 DEATH Discovered and developed by L. Ron Hubbard Copyright ¬ 1972, by L. Ron Hubbard Permission for Publication granted by Issue Authority, Flag Originally Originally Published by Scientology Ann Arbor P. 0. Box 378, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107 U.S.A. To those at the top Printed in the United States of America based on the Fourth Printing IMPORTANT NOTE In reading this book be very certain you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is that he or she has gone past a word or phrase that was not understood. If the material becomes confusing or you can't seem to grasp it, there will be a word just earlier that you have not understood. Don't go any further, but go back to before you got into trouble, find the misunderstood word and get it defined, using any good dictionary. IMPORTANT NOTE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION - OUT IN THE JUNGLE CHAPTER 1 - THE COMMON DENOMINATOR CHAPTER 2 - THE EMOTIONAL TONE SCALE CHAPTER 3 - APATHY (0.05) CHAPTER 4 - MAKING AMENDS (0.375) CHAPTER 5 - GRIEF (0.5) CHAPTER 6 - PROPITIATION (0.8) CHAPTER 7 - SYMPATHY (0.9) CHAPTER 8 - FEAR (1.0) CHAPTER 9 - COVERT HOSTILITY (1.1) CHAPTER 10 - NO SYMPATHY (1.2) CHAPTER 11 - ANGER (1.5) CHAPTER 12 - PAIN (1.8) CHAPTER 13 - ANTAGONISM (2.0) CHAPTER 14 - BOREDOM (2.5) CHAPTER 15 - CONSERVATISM (3.0) CHAPTER 16 - INTEREST AND ENTHUSIASM (3.5-4.0) CHAPTER 17 - SOME TIPS ON SPOTTING TONES CHAPTER 18 - CLICH+'S TO LIVE BY-OR SHOULD WE? CHAPTER 19 - THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES CHAPTER 20 - MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE OFFICE CHAPTER 21 - GROUPS CHAPTER 22 - THE TONE SCALE AND THE ARTS CHAPTER 23 - HOW TO HANDLE PEOPLE BY TONE MATCHING CHAPTER 24 - RAISING TONE CHAPTER 25 - YOU AND ME INTRODUCTION - Out in the Jungle I don't know what occupied your mind when you were in the early teens; but I was usually engrossed in trying to top insults with my older brothers. When I bothered to think about it at all, I expected that somewhere in the process of growing up I'd learn how to choose people-how to tell the good guys from the bad ones. In the movies it was easy (those white hats); but I wasn't acquainted with any cowboys. Trustingly, however, I assumed that if the movie people recognized the difference, surely my parents and teachers knew all about people and someday would share the secrets with me. But they didn't. I grew up, more or less, and wandered out into the jungle without knowing the difference between a tiger and teddy bear. Probably, I supposed, there aren't any tigers in real life anyway. I fell in love. Ecstatically. Deliriously. This was more exciting than devouring cotton candy or swinging on top of the ferris wheel. One week later (through a friend of a friend) I discovered that my handsome coastguardsman had a girl back home in Chicago. They planned to marry as soon as he was out of the service. I wept the tears that only the young know. How could he have been so deceitful? Why should he do this to me? And worst of all was my own betrayal of myself: Why didn't / know he was that kind of person? It was a dangerous jungle-and I wasn't yet prepared for it. I went to college. I learned four or five big words. I learned to give a speech while concealing the jellyfish tremoring inside me. I learned something important (I forget just what it was now) about a thing called "pi." And I learned how to balance a teacup on my knee while mouthing inanities. But even here, among the most well-meaning and erudite, no one could tell me how to choose my people-the people to love, hire, fire, follow, avoid, befriend, leave or trust. Out into the sophisticated world-business, social life, suburbia-still no answers, only questions all around me: Is this really love? Which club should I join? Do I want to work for this company? Should I support this charity? Is he a true friend? How can I get the customer to buy? Will he betray me? Is this a worthy cause? Should I take this teacher's advice? At the same time, my friends were stumbling along too. Mark meets Kathy. He falls in love. She's cute, smart, sexy. She never wears too much makeup; she's into his kind of music; she likes the same things on her pizza. Everything's going for them. Should he marry her and make little pizzas together? It appeared to me that if any tiny voice inside him posed these questions, no voice replied: How will she withstand future family crises? Will she ooze into a puddle or keep her strength? Will she stage tearful scenes when he must work late? Will she be afraid to move out of town if he's offered an attractive transfer? Will she become a nagging harridan if he doesn't make enough money? Will she ruin their children? Mark's dad is no help. He's preoccupied with his own troubles at the office: Should he hire this man? He dresses well, he's not a communist, his sideburns are no longer than the company president's and he's the nephew of an old fraternity brother. On paper, he looks good. But how will he perform on the job? Can he work on his own initiative? Is he an idea man or a plodder? Will he inspire people or crush them? Can he follow through? Will he carry out orders correctly or make costly bungles? Will he pull or drag? I wasn't the only one wondering: How do you figure people out? Early in 1951 a close friend gave me a book called Dianetics: The Modem Science of Mental Health, by an American writer and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard (who later founded the international Church of Scientology). This enlightening book exposed the major cause and remedy of man's miseries. In addition, however, Ron Hubbard also reported his first research in an entirely new field of study: the classification and prediction of human behavior. Later in 1951 he published Science of Survival in which he expanded on this new science. Reading the book, I was amazed to learn that this man stripped off all social veneer and predicted exactly what to expect from any individual. He so thoroughly unmasked all the beasts of the jungle (yes, even the tigers in teddy bear clothing) that I was shaken and gratified at the same time. I've been acquainted with this material now for twenty-one years (a nodding acquaintance for the first seven years and a close one for the last fourteen). I use it in business and in personal life and find it consistently accurate and reliable. The only times it "failed" me were when I failed to use it. In this book I'd like to share my experiences in using Ron Hubbard's data. When you finish you will know how to evaluate people correctly, what you can expect of them, and what to do about it all. Of course, you are already sizing people up (with greater or lesser success), so much of the material will be no surprise; you'll recognize it. Other ideas, however, depart so radically from accepted social theories that even if you discovered them yourself, you may have repressed them. They don't quite conform to what we heard in Sunday school or at Mother's knee. They puncture some of our most comfortable, but weary, platitudes. I found out (and so will you) that the sweet, smiling person who never, never loses his temper is in worse shape than the man who occasionally flies into a rage, that the compulsive do-gooder is more destructive than the aggressive scoundrel who only looks out for himself, that the person who never cries (but accepts every loss as his "cross to bear") is nearer death than one who sobs. Don't take my word for all this. Read the material. Observe for yourself. When you finish, I hope you'll agree that once we possess adequate equipment to survive, exploring the jungle can be quite fun after all. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1 - THE COMMON DENOMINATOR "The basic nature of Man is not bad. It is good. But between him and that goodness are fears, rages and repressions." -L. Ron Hubbard, "The Free Man," Ability 232 A wise person once said that no two people are exactly alike. For this we can be eternally grateful. People come in tall sizes, short sizes and assorted colors. There are varied backgrounds, experiences and people who enjoy molded plastic flamingos perched in their front yards. Despite obviously unique personalities, however, Ron Hubbard encountered one common denominator in everyone: emotions. Emotions! He must be talking about that neurotic woman screaming at the mouse, the child throwing tantrums when he can't have a cookie, the frightened soldier who won't go back to the battlefield, the wife sobbing hysterically that her husband doesn't love her. What's that got to do with you and me and the mild little bookkeeper down the street? We're not emotional. That's a derogatory word. As I read Ron Hubbard's work, however, I began observing all the people I knew (when unavoidable, I even looked at myself). His statements all appeared to be true. Every person is clinging to some attitude about life-he finds it grim, frightening, regretful, maddening or wonderful-but his viewpoint is not governed by reasoning or intellect. It is determined by emotion. Ron Hubbard's significant discovery revealed three important facts about emotions: 1. There's a package of fixed responses that goes with every emotion. 2. Emotions fall into a certain order-going from grim to great. 3. There are layers of restrained emotions, formerly unrecognized. THE EMOTIONAL PACKAGE Accompanying each emotion is a complete, unvarying package of attitudes and behavior. Therefore, once we recognize that a person is in grief (whether temporarily or chronically), we can expect him to be lamenting: "I was betrayed. Nobody loves me. Things used to be better." We also know how he will behave in most situations. The rich and beautiful actress who takes a bottle of sleeping pills feels the same overwhelming hopelessness as the skid row bum sitting in the gutter hugging his empty bottle. Although using different stage settings and different costumes, they're both reading the same lines. The person who's looking at the world through apathy-colored glasses is close to death, no matter what his background or his present environment. Every comment, every decision, every action is colored by his apathy. THE ORDER OF EMOTIONS It was while researching methods for improving mental health that Ron Hubbard encountered a consistent pattern of responses as people advanced. Helping individuals erase the effects of painful past experiences, he found they often manifested apathy at first and as the work proceeded, they moved through certain emotional stages that always occurred in the same unvarying order for every person: grief, fear, covert hostility, anger (or combativeness), antagonism, boredom, contentment and well-being. This change from painful emotions to pleasant emotions was such a reliable indication of success that he began to use it as the basic yardstick of his progress with each person. He next found that he could plot these emotional responses on a scale, with the happier ones on the top and the miserable ones on the bottom. Soon it was apparent that every person is somewhere on this scale at all times, although he moves up and down as he experiences fortunes and misfortunes. It also became evident that the higher a person's position on the scale of emotions, the better he survives. He's more capable of obtaining the necessities of living. He's happier, more alive, more confident and competent. He's winning. Conversely, the lower the person drops on the scale, the closer he is to death. He's losing, more miserable, ready to succumb. If we are planning a difficult camping trip through wild, uninhabited country, the emotional scale tells us we should not choose a companion who mopes around complaining that it all sounds too hazardous. We should take the fellow who's looking forward to the trip. People low on the scale don't look forward to things. The less willingly a person contemplates the future, the lower are his chances of surviving. For identification, Ron Hubbard gave the various emotions a name and a number as he arranged them in order. He called his final sequence The Emotional Tone Scale. Each emotional position is called a "tone." Just as every musical tone is a sound of definite pitch and vibration, so each tone on the emotional scale contains its unique identifying characteristics. It would be hard to play a piano if the keys were intermixed rather than in succession. Similarly, it's nearly impossible to understand people and help them improve without an accurate scale to tell us exactly how high or low a person is on the emotional keyboard. The dividing line of the tone scale is 2.0. Above this point, the person is surviving well. Below this level, his life expectancy is much poorer. Using this line, we refer to the people above it as "high-tone" or "upscale. People below 2.0 are "low-tone" or "downscale." Whereas a high-tone person is rational, the low-tone person operates irrationally. The lower his tone, the more a person's decisions and behavior are governed by emotional feeling, regardless of his education or intellect. RESTRAINED EMOTIONS When we hear of the staid, "respectable" bank president with a devoted family who unexpectedly embezzles a hundred thousand dollars and absconds to South America with a young belly dancer, we may ask: "What-ever was he thinking of?" That's the trouble, of course. He wasn't thinking. He was feeling. Emotions ruled him as they do almost everyone. Likely such a person would take us by surprise only because his emotional tone was a restrained one. Some emotions are obvious because they're expressed. But Ron Hubbard observed that beneath every expressed emotion there lies a band of restrained emotions: ((Enthusiasm) 4.0 ) ENTHUSIASM-expressed ((Interest) 3.5 ) ((Conservatism) 3.0 ) ENTHUSIASM-restrained ((Boredom) 2.5 ) ((Antagonism) 2.0 ) ((Pain) 1.8 ) HOSTILITY-expressed ((Anger) 1.5 ) ((No Sympathy) 1.2 ) HOSTILITY-restrained ((Covert Hostility) 1.1 ) ((Fear) 1.0 ) FEAR-expressed ((Sympathy) 0.9 ) FEAR-restrained ((Propitiation) 0.8 ) ((Grief) 0.5 ) GRIEF -expressed ((Making Amends) 0.375 ) ((Apathy) 0.05 ) GRIEF-restrained With the discovery of these subtle, restrained emotions, fitting like layers of a club sandwich between the expressed emotions, we now have a new classification of man's many attitudes about life. None of this means that a person is locked permanently into any particular position. People can change. And sometimes a high-tone individual can fall sharply for a brief period. But if he is high-tone enough, he will bounce back. HOW YOU CAN USE THIS MATERIAL Once we know the basic characteristics of each emotion, we can meet a person for the first time and, within minutes, we can understand his present frame of mind. Longer observation will show us his most frequent (habitual) emotion. We will then know how well he's surviving and whether he will be an asset or a liability in our relationship. We will know how well he can execute a job, how truthful he is, how accurately he can relay a message or follow orders, how he feels about sex and children and whether or not we would want to be stranded on a desert island with him. This is better than relying on whims and folksy prejudices handed down from Grandma. Actually, its the only possible way to choose your people. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 2 - THE EMOTIONAL TONE SCALE If you already despise somebody, you don't need the tone scale to tell you there's something wrong (with him, naturally), but it will give you a good reason for your feelings and provide an excuse for not inviting him to your next party. There are certain people we insist we love despite the fact that they continually disappoint us. As dinner congeals on the stove and the soufflT quietly sinks into a gooey mess, we wonder, dejectedly, how we ever got mixed up with someone who doesn't even think to call when he's going to be late. It seldom occurs to us that we just might be expecting too much from those on whom we bestow our priceless affection. There are people who dwell in the twilight zone of our friendship. They seem nice enough-they always remember to send a birthday card and to wipe their feet at the door-but there is no joy in spending an evening with them. In the next few chapters we're going to climb up through each level of the tone scale. With any luck, we should discover the entire cast of characters in our lives, and (at last!) we'll know just what to expect from them (For quick reference there's a condensed description of each tone inside the back cover). Before we get to the individual tones, let's cover some general information about the scale. SOURCES Since every book must have a last page, and preferably one that is within comfortable shooting distance from the first page, I won't try to include everything there is to know about the tone scale and emotions. The basic data in this book as well as the quotations (except where otherwise indicated) come from "The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation," "The Hubbard Chart of Attitudes" and Science of Survival, by L. Ron Hubbard. I recommend them all for further study (see list in the back of the book). The examples are from my own forays into the jungle. UPS AND DOWNS People experience an emotional curve. That is, everyone fluctuates on the scale from hour to hour, day to day. He goes up if he wins the office pool. He slumps when he loses that big sale. He falls in love and soars to the top. His girl leaves him for another man and he drops to Grief. Young children often travel up and down with the speed of light. As they grow older, the high peaks are cropped off, the curve widens and they often settle into one tone (or narrow band) where they remain a large share of the time. Once in a while they drop and resettle as life bumps them about. The person we call high-tone doesn't settle down on the scale. He maintains a high interest and enthusiasm for living. Although he may become upset and drop down-tone in a lowscale environment, he is resilient and recovers quickly once he is free of the influence. The high-tone person displays the emotion called for by the occasion. When he suffers a deep loss, he feels Grief. If he's the victim of some underhanded trickery, he usually gets angry. He experiences the right emotion at the right time. So, the person who is surviving well fluctuates all over the scale; he's volatile. The better his condition, the more mobile he is. When he gets mad, he's really mad, but he gets over it. When he gets scared, he'll get unscared. He may be unaccountably depressed once in awhile, but he'll recover quickly. If you're trying to improve a person, you're not trying to take him off the scale (the so-called "emotionless" person is definitely on the scale). We improve someone most when we enable him to gain control, action, ability and experience with all of the tones. Whenever we mention a high-tone person having control" over his emotions, there is always somebody around who insists: "Emotions are only true when they are spontaneous. Controlling emotions just wouldn't be honest!" On the contrary, it is the low-tone person who is the real phony; he doesn't even experience the right emotion for the occasion. This objector is the same person who will likely weep at a wedding or laugh madly when someone falls down and breaks a leg. That's honest emotion? When we call a person low-tone, we're not talking about the boss who got mad the other day when he found the unfilled customer orders thrown into the wastebasket. This doesn't make him a 1.5 (Anger tone). The 1.5 is a person who's mad almost constantly. When we mention Fear, we don't mean the hunter who runs when his gun jams as the bear charges him. We're talking about a fixed condition-the inability to change one's attitude and one's environment. The able person can act and react; but the low-tone person reads the same lines for every scene in the play. This is aberration. All that's wrong with a low-tone person is his inflexibility. When he gets frightened, can he let go of the fear? If a man gets mad and tells someone off, can he let go of his grievance? High-tone people bounce back upscale. Low-tone people stay chronically settled. Although they may shift a notch up or down, they never move out of the lower ranges for long. A NEW LOOK AT THE MEANING OF SANITY It's easy to say that a man is mad if he insists he's Napoleon or if he runs amuck in the streets killing people. But there is little doubt in the minds of intelligent people (particularly those in our young reform movements) that a more subtle madness permeates our whole culture today. We see a society that permits the indiscriminate destruction of people and environments (through wars and pollution), a society that pours millions into mental health "research" while institutions fill to overflowing and suicides increase. We see government agencies that confiscate honey off health store shelves because of "mislabeling" while condoning the label "enriched bread" on a product containing mostly unpronounceable chemicals, whipped and baked into a foamy, plastic lump. Legally a person is considered insane if he doesn't know right from wrong; but this is hardly a guide we can use in our delicate daily judgments and choices. Along with its other helpful offerings, the tone scale gives us a reliable scale for measuring sanity. The lower a person is fixed on the scale, the less sane he is. There is no sharp division between sanity and insanity. A person is more or less sane at any given minute. In fact, he may be rational in one area of living and nutty as a pecan pie in another. It's mostly the volume of a tone that provokes society to lock a person up. That is, when someone is caught in a low tone with the volume turned on full, he's generally considered insane. This means that one angry person may beat his wife with a baseball bat while another (at lower volume) destroys her with words. They're both insane; but society recognizes only the first one as dangerous. SOCIAL TONE Most people wear a pleasant social tone layered over their chronic emotion, and they use this to handle the superficial exchanges in daily living. The store clerk smiles politely even when he'd prefer to kick our teeth in. When we meet a casual acquaintance on the street, we generally say we're fine even though we're miserable. With a little practice, however, you will be able to identify the chronic tone quickly despite this protective covering. MISSING EMOTIONS Likely you'll think of some emotions not shown on the scale. Most of them will fall somewhere on the levels either as synonyms or as another depth of a tone. For instance, anxiety, embarrassment, worry, terror and shyness all represent different shades and depths of the Fear band. There are other feelings such as love, hate and jealousy, which come through a person's tone. A Sympathy person loves much differently than an angry one. A jealous husband might shoot his rival or he might get quietly drunk, depending on his tone. Some of these extra feelings will be discussed more in a later chapter. OTHER FIELDS OF RESEARCH Bits and pieces about emotions turn up in any research on human behavior. Without the use of the tone scale, however, material on the subject seldom aligns into workable form. Any person counseling, advising or attempting to assist people (providing he actually wants to help the individual) will welcome and accept the tone scale because his own observations will indicate its validity. There's an interesting example of a professional study which confirms the arrangement of emotions on the scale. A psychiatrist in a large Midwest university hospital recently conducted a five-year research program in which she interviewed over four hundred terminal patients in order to find ways of helping the dying patients face their predicament. From her research, she discovered that most people go through "five psychological stages before death: denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance." During the first four periods, the doctor said, the patients still have a glimmer of hope for life. In the final stage, "for the most part, he is ready to face the end in peace." After you read the next few chapters, you will recognize that the five stages the doctor reported are: Antagonism, Anger, Fear (in the form of Propitiation), Grief and Apathy. SUMMARY Low-tone people will give you many articulate reasons for their attitudes; they will use their intelligence to justify their convictions while, in actual truth, they are trying to explain emotional attitudes over which they have no control. The Anger person will say, "You gotta be tough with people." The Fear person will admonish you to "be careful . . ." and the Apathy individual will tell you (if he bothers at all) that "nothing can be done, anyway." Each person believes what he is saying. If he's lived in a tone for a long time, it's home-and he's convinced he has an inherent right to be there. We don't need to dislike people because they are low-tone. Nor should we try to "think the best of them" in the face of contrary evidence. The kindest action (for them and ourselves) is to evaluate them correctly. Only then do we have a chance of lifting them upscale. You can start teaching the tone scale to children when they are four or five years old. They are usually fascinated as soon as they see the colored tone scale chart. You could give them no better preparation for living. Having taught it to my own boys, I know they will not work for, hire, vote for or fall in love with a low-tone person (and that's quite a few worries out of the way). Don't tell another person where you think he is on the scale. You may be wrong and it could depress him. You may be right and it could worry him. In either case, it won't help him. (Surely at some time or other you've met and loathed a guy who smiled at you, smugly, as he said, "I've got you all figured out." We'll get him all figured out, incidentally, in the 1.1 chapter.) So, don't do it. If he reads this book and finds himself on the scale, he'll be taking a major step toward his own improvement. Most people raise themselves on the scale considerably by simply understanding it. Use the tone scale to choose your people, to find trouble spots in your family, your office and your groups. Learn how to spot people quickly and you won't expect more than they can give. Instead, you can help them raise tone. Try not to concern yourself too much with your own position on the scale. We do bump into ourselves in odd places; turning a corner and seeing a face in a harsh mirror we exclaim: "Who is that stranger? Oh, no! Is that really me?" It's disconcerting, but as you continue reading you'll find yourself up near the top too. I promise. Anyway, this book is about those other people, remember? Not you and me. Now, let's have a look at these characters ... ----------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 3 - APATHY (0.05) Apathy: 1. Lack of emotion or feeling. 2. Lack of interest in things generally found exciting, interesting, or moving,- indifference. -The American Heritage Dictionary "I'm on a different trip now," my young friend said. "Nothing bothers me; I just take life as it comes. I've matured a lot in the last few months. I got all those wild dreams out of my system and now I'm ready to settle down to some serious study. That's where it's really at." If I didn't know the tone scale, my friend's assertions of maturity might have convinced me. But I recalled his sparkling ebullience only four months earlier as he left for New York City. Confident of his talent, optimistic about the future, he departed with dreams of success. Somewhere in the intervening months, soundlessly and without fanfare, the bottom dropped out of his world. Someone or something took away his hope. The philosophic "realization" was a cop-out. He had given up. Apathy. When a person suffers a severe loss and cannot express his grief, he restrains it and goes into Apathy where he may claim that he isn't affected at all. "I didn't want that part in the play anyway." Apathy is turned-off. Turned-off to loving, living, hoping, crying, laughing, dreaming. A person may drop to any low tone after a loss, but in Apathy he has not only lost, he knows he will never be able to win again. This is the most serious of all tone levels. A dangerous state of mind bordering death, it's often suicidal. Life is a herd of elephants which knocked him down and trampled him beyond hope or help. THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF APATHY If every person in this emotion were curled up in a ball on the floor of a mental institution and labeled catatonic, if you could identify him easily. But you are just as likely to find him lecturing in a large university and labeled a "brilliant intellectual." Apathy breaks down into two levels. Deepest Apathy (sometimes called pretended death) is only a gnat's breath above death. He may be in bed, unable to care for himself, completely withdrawn and suffering hallucinations. People are usually in this state after an operation or severe accident. He's easy to recognize. It's the higher level, walking-around-Apathy person we find more deceiving. He may be barefoot, bearded and freaked out on LSD. He could be wearing the portly businessman's costume and getting smashed on martinis every afternoon. He may commit suicide with a gun or wander listlessly across the street against the light, hoping someone else will do it for him. I met a talkative Apathy person at a dinner party recently. His tone was reflected in nearly every remark. We were talking about cars. He disposed of the subject with: "The automotive business is dead. It's all over." When the conversation turned to problems in the construction business, he said, "The small contractor is dead. He hasn't a chance." Later we discussed a political problem: "Try to get something like that corrected and you're dead." The clue to his tone was not only his absolute pessimism, but his frequent use of the word dead. Although the Apathy person may be going to classes, doing housework, making movies, or holding a job, he is usually trying to destroy himself in some manner. DRUGS AND ALCOHOL The drug addict and the alcoholic are Apathy persons. Don't be misled by any surface belligerence, maudlin sweetness, or exuberance manifested when he's high. How is he when he's down? That's the feeling which drives him back to the chemical escape. He's committing suicide slowly. He's waiting to succumb, but he's going to stay stoned so it won't hurt so much. Meanwhile the people around him will be frustrated, concerned and desperately trying to do something for him. That's a good tip-off to Apathy; his associates are frazzled beyond endurance from trying (and failing) to help him. BEYOND RIGHT AND WRONG Now and then we find a person in Apathy who thinks he's in a state of serenity. Unable to acknowledge his own feeling of helplessness, he justifies it with scholarly discourse. I call this "Intellectual Apathy." Bill, a college student, told me about his friend who studied many philosophies and religions until he evolved one of his own. The friend lengthily described his achievement of "ultimate awareness." Deeply impressed, Bill said, "Now that you've reached this state yourself, I'm surprised you're not trying to help others to get there too." "Why should I?" the friend replied. "They're all me anyway." Everything is beyond right and wrong. He walks around in Apathy and thinks he's a god. RESPONSIBILITY There are certain philosophies (such as Eastern religions) based on the highest attitudes of the scale; but low-tone people can invert the meaning so that the end result is Apathy. When any individual or body of thought advocates less activity, less communication, less contact with people or less involvement with living, you can disregard the erudite labels. It leads toward Apathy. Other studies and doctrines seem to invite an apathetic outlook. The fatalist clings to the belief that all events are preordained and human beings are powerless to change anything ("I'm not even responsible for myself" says Apathy). Their followers look to the stars, numbers, colors and crystal balls to indicate their destinies. People in Apathy are perfect dupes for such hokum. CAUSE AND EFFECT When someone considers himself to be totally governed by influences outside himself, he sits in Apathy. He will accept grievous losses and say with a sigh, "It's God's will; nothing can be done." "if it was meant to be, it will be." (This is not truly a religious viewpoint, incidentally, for any religion worthy of the name, offers man a way out - a salvation.) The Apathy person considers himself less than the stars, the planets, the baseball scores and the flea on his leg. High on the tone scale a person feels dangerous to his environment (not full effect of it); he changes the environment to suit him; he's cause. But the more a person believes himself to be the effect, the closer he is to Apathy and death. OWNERSHIP Low-tone people have peculiar concepts of ownership. At Apathy, however, a person is close to feeling that he owns nothing. This may be literally true or he may own many possessions and still run around saying, "There's just no point in owning anything." He also thinks others should own nothing. He lets all property decay and rot. He wastes your time, runs up your utility bills, leaves lights on and motors running, and casually uses your telephone to call New Zealand. He's quite bewildered if this bothers you: "You should get rid of all this anyway." A newly rich screen star says: "I should save money for my old age, but I don't. All the money I've made just slips away as if it didn't belong to me. I don't feel like doing anything to save myself. I just let everything happen." "I'M POWERLESS" There are people who brag about not being affected by anything; they're the emotionally unemployed. This is most extreme in Apathy. Jim, a college student, felt that life was losing its sparkle; nothing turned him on anymore. He told his friend, George, he planned to try an LSD trip. Both boys knew that the drug could produce long-term mental disorders and, up to that point, they had opted to bypass the whole drug venture. George, however, was also in Apathy at the time, so he said only, "Well, I don't agree with what you want to do, but I know there is nothing I can say that will stop you." In a higher tone, George would not have felt powerless; he would at least try to do something about the situation. The sophisticated Apathy person will claim he's bored: "I'm fed up with life. Nothing is amusing. What can you do to create excitement in this superficial world?" "THINGS ARE NEVER REAL" One year after the first moon landing by American astronauts, a large U.S. newspaper chain sent reporters to conduct seventeen hundred interviews in communities across the nation, asking for opinions of the event. The newsmen reported that an extraordinary number of people doubted the reality of the Apollo feat. This was true particularly among the old and the poor. An elderly Philadelphia woman thought the moon landing was "staged" on the Arizona desert. An unemployed construction worker in Miami said, "I saw that on television, but I don't believe none of it. Man's never been on the moon." In a Washington, D. C. ghetto more than half of the people interviewed expressed doubts about the authenticity of the moon walk. One man, trying to explain away his emotional attitude, said, "It's all a deliberate effort to mask problems at home. The people are unhappy, and this takes their minds off their problems." Things are never real to the Apathy person. THE GAMBLER The compulsive gambler is at Apathy. If a person consistently wins he's higher-tone because he's cause over the game rather than effect. The compulsive gambler, however, cannot quit any game a winner. When a man gambles away the rent and grocery money every payday, he's manifesting the Apathy attitude about ownership: "I'd better not own." A steamship on a cruise to South America received a report that another ship nearby was wrecked and on fire. The captain changed course and was the first to arrive at the flaming ship. Eight hundred passengers and crew members were in the water, floundering, wet and frightened. They'd lost everything but the clothes they wore. All of them were saved, however, and passengers crowded on deck where they watched and participated in the exciting rescue, some of them providing clothing and warm quarters for the victims. Throughout all this activity the gambling casino remained open. A certain number of hard-core players stayed there, eyes hypnotically fixed on the tables, apparently unaware and unaffected by the real-life drama occurring a few yards outside the door. That's Apathy. No other tone would be indifferent to such a moving experience. "MAN NEVER CHANGES" The youngster who understands the tone scale knows whether to accept advice and ideas from his elders. One day my seventeen-year-old son described a lecture given by one of his high school teachers, who declared, "Man never changes. He keeps making the same mistakes over and over. He never learns. He will never improve." "Where's that on the tone scale?" I asked. My son laughed and said, "Apathy, of course." This is another person using her years of education and experience to support an emotional attitude over which she has no control. You can find history and documentation to support every attitude on the scale. If we fully accepted her proof,' however, no teacher would bother to teach, no scientist would continue to juggle his test tubes, and I would have stayed in bed myself today. SUMMARY No matter how brilliant he is, no Apathy person can be more than an imitation of the vitality we find in the higher tones. Let's crawl up a notch . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 4 - MAKING AMENDS (0.375) Amends: Reparation or payment as satisfaction for insult or injury. -American Heritage Dictionary Lucy decides to quit dating Oliver. He's crushed. Sobbing, deep in self-pity, he vows, "I'll do anything to make you love me again. He calls, he sends presents and pleading notes. He waits around the corner for her to come out of her house so he can "accidentally" meet her. "Please, Lucy. Tell me why you stopped loving me. I'll do anything you want me to do. Just say you'll give me a chance." "Oliver, can't you get it through your head that we're through? I don't want to see you again." His head slumps down, "Then what's the use of living," he murmurs, "I wish I was dead. I might as well blow my brains out." A person Making Amends is living a constant apology-fawning, parasitic, groveling-trying to atone for some real or imagined wrong. His bootlicking servility is so tiresome that it's fortunate few people remain in this tone for long. It's more frequently used by transients, because when Making Amends gestures fail, the person feels more and more sorry for himself and hits bottom (as did Oliver here). The person at .375 is propitiating, but he can't withhold anything. Here we find blind loyalty, the self sacrificing, the suicidal martyr and "I can never repay you enough." He will wheedle, flatter, or debase himself to get sympathy or help. The puppy is scolded for committing a misdemeanor in the corner. He lowers his head and slinks away. All is lost. But, wait a minute ... maybe there's some hope. He comes back, licks your hand, wags his body and soulfully pleads for your forgiveness. He's Making Amends. This is where we find the wino who begs on the street and the female heroin addict who takes up prostitution to earn another fix. In the corridor between Apathy and Grief, this is a soupy tone; but it's a good sign if the person is moving up from the basement. WHEN THE ALCOHOLIC IS READY FOR HELP The drunkard will go into .375 if he's trying to wheedle another drink; but the reformed drunk must also go through this emotion in order to recover. In fact, he may hit Making Amends going both ways. A person in Grief feels that everything is painful. If he slides down to .375 he says, "I'll do anything to get rid of this." When there is no constructive help forthcoming, he turns the pain off with emotional anesthetic-alcohol. If he's lucky, one day, in a moment of sobriety, he realizes that his solution is now a greater problem than the one he was originally attempting to escape. His remorse moves him up to Making Amends. Incidentally, we find here the reason why many drug and alcohol "cures" are not lasting. Taking a person off drugs is only a temporary measure. To be effectively cured a person must rise up out of Apathy and want to do something about his condition. After that he must continue to move upscale. If he stays near the bottom emotions, he will slip back into the habit at the slightest provocation. Sometimes we see the drunk who makes sporadic resolutions to reform, but soon relapses. In such a case, a knowledge of the tone scale can help. He must know that the problem is not alcohol; it's emotion-the miseries he feels when no longer numbed by martinis. The cure is in raising tone. It is vital that he be in an environment where he gets high-tone support and not with someone who enjoys holding him down. Jack elected the wrong profession in order to please his parents. He didn't think he minded giving up his own goal (to be a photographer). Twenty years later he was an alcoholic in the hospital for his sixth cure. The doctor warned him: "if you go back to the booze again you'll be dead within a year. Your liver can't take any more." He moved up tone to .375 and looked for professional help. As soon as he discovered the cause of his Apathy, he quit his job and became a free lance photographer. He hasn't taken a drink in five years, and he's cheerfully successful at his new work. GAMBLER'S ANONYMOUS A gambler bet his home against the house in a poker game. Expressionlessly he waited. When the final play told him he won, he merely nodded. A spectator, bewildered by the apparent indifference-especially the absence of enthusiasm at winning-asked, "How can you just nod your head when you've won twenty-five thousand dollars?" The gambler shrugged and said, "You know when I liked it best? When we were waiting to see what the last card was going to be. That's when I felt alive. It's the only time I mean anything. Winning, losing and the money mean nothing, but in that moment I'm really somebody." The concept "I'm nobody" is an Apathy one. When a person finds something that lifts him out of it, even temporarily, he becomes addicted. Thus, to be cured, a person must come up a level. An organization called Gambler's Anonymous made this discovery. Its program, apparently, saves marriages, homes and even lives; but it works only when the individual admits he's powerless over gambling and that with the help of others he may lick the problem. Furthermore, he must realize that he could be "somebody" even when he's out of the action. This, of course, requires a rise in tone; but first he must reach Making Amends before he's willing to do something for himself. ON THE JOB A person working for a heavy-handed boss may eventually lose all confidence in himself and become apathetic about his own judgment and creativeness. If there's a glimmer of hope that he can retain his job, however, he may turn into the weak "yes" man. In constant apology for his humble existence, he'll attempt the most debasing job to escape the "pain" of being fired or chastised. He'll probably bungle it, however. He's an apple polisher who keeps dropping the apple in the mud in his frenetic attempts to please. SUMMARY Any time a person experiences a deep disappointment, is wronged or betrayed, he may give up his goals and sink to Apathy. While in this emotion of heavy sadness, he's unwilling to repair the misunderstanding or wrongs that exist (whether his own or another's). He must move up to Making Amends. Then he has a chance. One day a twenty-year-old friend came to me: "I don't know what's the matter with me lately. I feel as if life is going by me but I'm not even in it. I don't know what's real anymore. It's terrible. Anything would be better than this. What do I have to do to get out of it?" Although his condition seemed grim, it was an improvement. For several weeks this young man had been dwelling in an "everything's fine" Apathy -the tone most difficult to reach. Now he was aware of it. Although only a tiny rise, he was willing to do something about it. We talked awhile and he told me about the big disappointment that brought on his Apathy. He cried then, and after the bottled-up tears were all released, he skipped easily up the scale. He left with eyes sparkling and face radiant. Making Amends is a weak, fawning tone; but it contains some hope. You just go from here on up through the blues, which is what we're going to do in the next chapter. -------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 5 - GRIEF (0.5) Grief.- Intense mental anguish; deep remorse, acute sorrow or the like. -American Heritage Dictionary Mildred always complained about her married life. "He doesn't love me. He treats me so badly, and I gave up my whole career for him. Everything was so much better when I was single." Just to have something to say (this was back in my more naive days), I asked her why she stayed with him if it was so bad. When I saw her a year later she said "Well, I'm taking your advice; I'm getting a divorce." This was a shock to me, since I didn't advise her to get a divorce. But Grief is a somewhat hypnotic level; he soaks up everything you say to him and uses selective parts of it to succumb. 1 didn't see Mildred for another year and she sobbed still. Now divorced, her son refused to live with her and she quit a coveted job as an actress in a long-running play because she wasn't "getting anywhere." Now, after arranging all of this misery, she was saying, "I used to have a husband and a son and money and a job. Now I don't have anything." Grief cries for help, pleads for sympathy. He's a potential suicide, a whiner, a habitual complainer wrapped in self-pity. He failed; he's been betrayed; he's lost everything. He's a mess. Grief and Apathy are overlapping tones with many common characteristics. In fact, the position of .5 is actually Apathy driven by Grief. It's a little more alive than .05. He's wringing his hands. He feels he's about to fail, but he still sustains one last cry of protest. When any individual suffers a loss (death, departure of a loved one, failure of a goal), he may drop temporarily to Grief. The person stuck in this tone, however, is the personification of loss, even though it may not be justified: "What did I do wrong?" "Why is God punishing me this way?" A woman in Grief may be on the verge of tears all the time. You can see it on her face. If you try to question her closely about anything, she'll cry. A rough word may turn on the faucet. She hears of the poor little dying orphans in Timbuktu and she sheds enough tears to float the Queen Mary. Not every Grief person cries, however. Some remain in suppressed Grief just below tears (which moves them closer to Apathy). This is more common in men since they are usually convinced, as children, that "big boys never cry." so they must suppress the outward manifestations of misery. You will see it on their faces though-a petulant mouth and the downcast, melancholy, bloodhound eyes. You will hear it in the deep, heaving sighs. Even without the physical manifestations, you should recognize Grief by his words. Although he's not always crying, he's always whining. THE PAST IS ALL THERE IS The chronic 0.5 is aground on a narrow ridge; he can't go up or down and he won't let go. He can't give help and he won't receive it. He hangs on. Among other things, he tries to hang on to the past. He collects tokens of better times-the theater program, the glove she was wearing the first time he kissed her, the pressed flowers, the old chair that belonged to great-aunt Belinda (Note: antique collectors are not necessarily in Grief; they're usually just smart investors). In addition to articles, he also collects old memories. Much of his conversation lingers in the past. His stories usually express beautiful sadness and a longing for the good old days." Old Lucifer misses his dog, which died of old age. He saves the dog's leash, and feeding bowls. He' keeps pictures of the dog around the house and constantly talks about their good times together: "He was the best friend I ever had. He always stood by me." He concludes that he has lost everything. If you suggest he get another dog, he tells you, "I can't ever replace old Jake. Besides, I don't want to get attached to another dog. He'll just die someday too." Loneliness and nostalgia are both mild manifestations of Grief. When a person returns to the old school, home town or office, he finds things changed; they aren't like they used to be. It's a little sad. (it's often expensive for a man to feel nostalgic about his old school; the alumni association catches him moving up to Propitiation, and extracts a generous donation.) Anytime a person feels downhearted about leaving, he's manifesting Grief, mild or strong, in his reluctance to let go of the past. HONESTY Don't rely on information given you by a Grief person. In pleading for pity, he may tell you the wildest tales to justify his wretchedness. I heard two teen-age boys talking with a girl in chronic Grief. Complaining about her mother, she said, "She beats me." Shocked and sympathetic, the boys started questioning her further. One of them asked, "No kidding? How many times has she beaten you?" "Well, once." "Oh. How many times did she actually hit you then?" "Ah ... once." "Did she hit you with her fist or her open hand?" "Well, it was her open hand; but it really hurt!" "In other words, she only slapped you once. Is that right?" "Well, I guess so. But it really did hurt. This is the honesty level of .5. One slap in the face becomes "beatings." The chronic Grief person must constantly look for reasons to explain the emotion. Widow Jones nagged the life out of her husband, moaning and complaining all the time., Now that he's gone, however, she describes him as if he were faultless. This makes the loss seem greater and helps to justify her emotion. "LIFE HAS AFFECTED ME TERRIBLY" The high-tone person who marries a Grief type will regret it because he'll never be able to "solve" the wretchedness. A .5 wife demands enormous quantities of affection and constant assurance that you love her; but she never really believes you. When she experiences the slightest snub or rejection (real or imagined) she plunges in the direction of death. She'll develop a parasitic dependency. If you eventually give up and leave her, you'll be a black-hearted villain; she'll invent all sorts of peculiar incidents of cruelty which you committed against her in order to win the sympathy of others around her. GROUPS Sometimes people group together on this tone, crying for sympathy and help while offering nothing in return. No solution, no contribution, no concession is ever enough. They still continue their collective whining. Thoroughly introverted, irresponsible, absorbing pity, sympathy and affection, Grief people are insatiable sponges for the inflow of your charity; but they never improve (real charity would be directed toward raising their tone: not just patting them on the heads and giving them more lollipops). POSSESSIONS I've known many a griefy bird who was an impeccable nest-keeper because he (or she) was trained to maintain a pleasant, clean environment. If he hasn't been so trained, however, his tendency toward death shows up in his surroundings. He gravitates toward grim living quarters; he drives ancient, rickety cars; he dresses in drab, ragged clothes. These are all pleas for pity; he won't permit himself to have something better. We sometimes see a rebuilt slum district that (when populated with Grief and Apathy people) soon slumps back to a state of squalor. When you see an environment that reflects obvious long-term neglect, you can be certain it is "cared for" by low-tone persons-most likely Grief or Apathy. APPEARANCE It is down in this general tone range (could be a tone or two higher) that we find the girl who could be pretty "if she would only fix herself up a bit." She refuses to use makeup to her best advantage, never knows what to do with her hair and buys the most unattractive clothes possible. When you see a woman wearing clothes that went out of style twenty years ago, it's a safe bet that she's a Grief type. These are probably the clothes that were fashionable before dear Wilbur died. It's another way to hang on to the past. I once knew two sisters who looked alike in size, coloring and bone structure. They were similar enough to be twins, except that one was high-tone and attractively groomed while the other looked incredibly plain, mousy and old for her years. When I remarked on the strong resemblance between them, the low-scale girl replied, "Well, maybe, but Marcia really inherited all the good looks in the family." This was an emotional response. She could have been just as stunning as her sister; but she elected to stay unattractive in an attempt to get sympathy for the cruel way in which life was treating her. Grief prefers attention in the form of pity, rather than admiration. FRIENDSHIP As a friend, he's a drag. He latches on, expecting advice, guidance and care. Childishly dependent, he'll lean on you totally (if you let him). Although affecting "humility," he's actually convinced he's a privileged person who should be taken care of by others. The world owes him a living. He loses his job because he never did his work, and he expects you to feed him. He gets kicked out of his house for not paying his rent; he tells you the landlady was cruel and expects you to take him in. His friends desert him and he wants you to spend your time consoling him in his loneliness. He steals your time, your money, your space, your kindness and your power. "THEY WON'T LET ME" Grief appears to blame himself for everything ("I was wrong") but he is actually blaming everyone else. If he were able to take responsibility for his own destructive actions, he would move upscale. If he could say, "I stole money from the company, no wonder they fired me," he would recover. Instead, he says, "I tried to do my best, but I don't know where I went wrong. They just fired me. I never seem to do anything right." He hangs on to his grievances. THE ADVICE TRAP The .5 is easily moved to shame and anxiety. He fusses about conditions, his conversation dwelling on illness, death and tragedy; but he won't do anything about them. He merely uses his anxieties to set advice traps for the unsuspecting. "Oh, what should I do?" he wails. If you try to suggest a solution or give him a job, he dissolves in a puddle and tells you it's impossible. I once received a letter from a New York school teacher who read my book on raising children (Miracles for Breakfast). She told me of working for a private school specializing in difficult youngsters. She complained about the children's open rebellion, sullen hatred, endless arguments and blank minds at test time. She described the degraded facilities-broken windows, broken desks, clogged plumbing and damaged equipment that was never repaired. Classes were set on a chaotic half-hour schedule which never gave time to get into a subject and teach anything before it was time for the class to move on. She was missing half of the required textbooks. "I'm uptight and discouraged. What should I do?" Someone was working overtime to make this school fail. It would take a very strong, uptone person to put order into such manufactured confusion. My correspondent could get up to Sympathy tone (which is why she took the job) but probably not much higher. I wrote: "Change jobs. You should get more training before you try to conquer a situation like this. Meanwhile, get a job where you can win." If she were mobile on the scale, I knew she'd accept my advice. But she wasn't and she didn't. Her reply was typical of someone caught in the circular route between Grief and Sympathy (more about this in the Sympathy chapter). She replied that she couldn't leave her job because it was hard to get work, she needed money and, anyway, "I really want to help these children." As with any Grief person, she didn't expect to rid herself of the problem; she merely wanted to wallow in the horribleness of it all ... and she wanted company. This tone always considers that a tremendous effort is required to accomplish something. My answer, of course, was too simple. No low-tone person accepts a simple solution. And a Grief person doesn't accept any solution. SUMMARY The only real cure for Grief is raising tone. Don't worry too much about the reason he gives you; it's probably a lie or a contrived situation he's brought on himself. If you manage to remove the "cause" of his malady, he'll quickly find another. Each low tone tries to solve the problems of life through his emotion. The .5 does it by dribbling through life hanging on to his grievances. He's an injustice collector. Rainy Jane. Sniff, sniff. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 6 - PROPITIATION (0.8) Propitiation: To appease and make favorable,- conciliate. -Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Some years ago an elderly family friend often invited me to her home for dinner after I finished work. She was thoughtful, generous and a superb cook. Why, I wondered, did I feel depressed after these visits? One evening on arriving for dinner I offered to help her in the kitchen. "Oh, I wouldn't think of it," she said, "You look tired. Why don't you just lie down on the couch and rest awhile?" Usually I resisted her solicitous attentions, but this evening I decided to surrender. I lay down on the couch as she suggested. Soon she appeared with a blanket. A short time later she brought me a pillow. She returned several times to flutter over me and inquire about my comfort. When dinner was ready, she offered to serve me a tray so I wouldn't need to get up. By this time I realized that if I remained there much longer I'd probably turn into an invalid, even though a few hours earlier I walked in the door as a reasonably happy, healthy twenty-three-year-old. Maybe you can't kill somebody with kindness, but the Propitiation person is going to try. He makes friendly overtures to gain someone's favor. He gives-himself, his services, his talent, his time, his possessions or his creations. He seems to ask nothing in return. Well, what's so bad about that? Isn't this the kind of person we've been looking for-someone to serve us, and to give us desirable baubles? Aren't generous, unselfish people the good guys after all? THE HIDDEN INTENTION This tone position is a paradox because it looks so admirable at first glance. Of course, there is a place for the generous person-high on the tone scale. Upscale we find that a person often gives more than he receives; he needs less. High-tone help and generosity are motivated by a genuine intention to improve conditions. Intention makes the difference. The compulsive Propitiation we find at .8 is motivated by an intention to stop. This is the friendly neighbor who's always bringing over a pie or cake and who refuses to accept anything in return. Here is the over-indulgent parent who does too much for the child, thus firmly tying knots in the apron strings. Here is the hostess who presses you to eat more. Here is the self-sacrificing do-gooder. He's low-tone. Propitiation is actually part of the Fear band (which extends from .8 through 1.2 on the scale). The person at this tone, however, is unaware of his fear. He retains memories of Grief so he tries to buy his way into good favor to prevent coming to Grief again. His propitiative gestures are performed to protect himself from bad effects. He can tolerate little effect on himself. Just try to give him something in return. I once knew a Propitiation neighbor who frequently baby-sat for me, but refused to accept return favors or payment. One day she was complaining about the high cost of barbers, so I offered to give haircuts to her three boys. This seemed a fine opportunity to repay her many kindnesses, so I was delighted when she accepted my offer. A few days afterward, however, she presented me with a gift worth twice the value of the haircuts. I decided to quit playing barber before she went broke. TO STOP SOMEONE To stop someone, give him lots of (unearned) objects that he considers desirable, wait on him, do things for him. The more we give someone, the more unhappy he becomes. Why? Because it stunts his ability to earn these things for himself. Given enough, he either runs away (if he's bent toward survival) or curls up in Apathy, no longer confident of the ability to provide for himself. The .8 wife will try to stop her husband (from leaving, criticizing or disliking her) by polishing his shoes, cooking his favorite food and faithfully serving him. Thus, even in his most disgruntled moments, he's forced to admit that she's a "good wife." The Propitiative husband operates in a similar manner: just when his wife nearly works up the courage to walk out on him, he brings home a cozy mink coat for her. PARENTS The propitiative parent unconsciously creates a weak child. Junior is planning to break away from home; he's going on a junket around the world. Dad says, "I've been thinking of getting you a car, son. What kind do you think you'd like?" If son is weak enough for the glitter of chrome to blind his ambitions, he steps into the trap. Soon Dad will be saying, "Maybe after you think it over, you'll want to come into the business with me. You could do worse. You'll never want for anything." If the boy yields on the basis of what he will get, rather than a genuine interest in the business, he's stopped. It's a short trip downscale to Apathy. I saw this happen to a sparkling, fun-loving young girl. As a high school graduation gift, her parents gave her a small shop with a going business. They never let go of the gift, however. They still hover around "helping" her and reminding her of frequently n neglected chores. Sometimes, when the kindly admonishments become too heavy, she sullenly responds: "I didn't ask for this business anyway." Most of the time she slumps around in Apathy, all of her sparkle gone. She's nearly forgotten whatever it was that she planned to do with her life. If Dad works nineteen hours a day because he enjoys it, that's fine. If he works so his children "will never want for anything," it's misplaced kindness. The child of an over-indulgent parent becomes lazy; he lies around unwilling to work and feeling that the world owes him a living. His early attempts to contribute were squelched; the acquisitions came too easy; why work? He develops a comfortable philosophy: "if he wants to give me money, let him. It makes him feel better." If the child is higher-tone, he leaves, refusing further help. When this happens, the parent drops the short distance to Grief and wails: "How can he be so ungrateful after all we did for him?" The upscale parent permits his child the dignity of working and learning to provide for his own needs. This makes the youngster feel wonderful; he's worth something. COMING UP FROM GRIEF The .8 tone is fine if one is just passing through. When a person, grieving over a recent loss, stops feeling sorry for himself and becomes interested in you (perhaps inquiring about your health or offering you a cup of coffee), it's a good sign. I once read an article which promised to divulge the secret of "being happy." The writer described several cases of grieving widows who found happiness by getting interested in other people worse off than themselves. Some of them went to work in hospitals; others taught retarded children or joined charity groups. In essence she told the reader to be interested in others, rather than himself. Good advice for Grief; but if a person parks in Propitiation chronically he'll never find that promised happiness. GIVE AND TAKE The main reason Propitiation drives a high-tone person downscale is because the flow is moving in one direction only. We humans are healthiest and happiest when we balance up our giving and receiving. I used to drop in on a friend of mine who always wanted to feed me. Sometimes, having eaten earlier, I declined. This never deterred her; she always prepared food anyway and if I didn't eat it she became quite distressed. That's another way to stop a person: stuff him with so much food he can't move. BUSINESS At first glance, Propitiation would seem just the right tone to hire. He'll work for practically nothing and give his all for the cause. Not so. Although he flaunts a strong sense of duty, he's ineffective on the job. He makes mistakes, crumbles in a crisis and he'll try to give away your whole business. Most low tones are wasteful, but Propitiation must be; that's his whole theme song. He'll design and mail tons of ineffective advertising. He'll place expensive ads that neglect to give the company address. (I know a Detroit woman who failed in three business ventures this past year. Recently she opened still another shop. She ran a large, expensive ad in the paper which glowingly described her product and the exact business hours, but neglected to mention the name or the address of the store!) Propitiation will give away premiums and neglect to follow up. He'll donate your services for "good will" when you can't afford it. He'll send out sales notices that arrive two days after the event. He'll propose elaborate "money making" schemes which can cost you a fortune. He has to flow things out. He'll give away your profits just as he gives himself. PROPITIATIVE GROUPS Whole segments of society are grouped together on this tone, particularly charities and government agencies that exist to care for the downtrodden. These are fine if they actually help the unfortunate individual regain his self-reliance. Charities which donate without rehabilitating, however, help the losers stay down. Thus we wind up with two large factions: 1) those who need to give and 2) the Grief/Apathy ones who sob that they can't find work, never get the breaks and want someone to take care of them. It would seem that these two groups could nicely satisfy each other. To some extent they do, but they also spend far too much time trying to shame higher-tone people into their game-and they're dedicated to channeling tax money and charitable contributions into low-tone "help" endeavors. The more we support give-away programs, the more individual self-reliance crumbles and we slide downhill as a society. This doesn't mean we should give the fallen man another kick. We mustn't cover him with a blanket either. Get him on his feet. A charity which provides for physical needs while failing to restore the individual's independence and self-respect is the cruelest of all; it keeps him stuck at the bottom of the scale crying for more handouts. For this reason most massive welfare programs don't solve poverty and unemployment. They actually breed these conditions. We gradually cease to survive as a society when we try to satisfy the requirements of the body alone. Food, warmth and shelter may satisfy the needs of an animal; but man requires the dignity of self-worth. APPEASEMENT Since .8 is basically a tone of appeasement-a tone used to stop-it is the most frequently adopted (even by higher-tone people) to mollify Anger and Grief. "If I'm real nice to him, maybe he won't hurt me." Or, "There, there, don't cry; I'll give you a cookie." This is the store clerk who waits on the loud, angry customer first. Here is the university which yields to a few dissenting students to avoid trouble. Here is the company leader who gives in under threats of violence from unions. Here is the government which surrenders to those who wail the loudest and takes from the person who is quietly doing his job and contributing the most. Continually appeasing the noisy, non-producer, Propitiation fixes both the giver and the receiver low on the scale. SUMMARY In deep Fear, the .8 offers soft words or expensive presents. He seems to be asking for a license to survive; but he's always motivated by an effort to stop. Don't be fooled by the apparent kindness. He's doing favors to protect himself from bad effects. He bustles through life maintaining a mild faith that if he does "good unto others" he'll come out all right. He'll try to keep you from high-tone activities. He wants you down in Apathy where you can't hurt him. And that's mostly all that's wrong with Propitiation-he needs to keep someone below him to "do for." Let's crawl out of this pretty trap. Chapter 7 - SYMPATHY (0.9) Sympathy: A relationship or affinity between persons or things in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other. The act of or capacity for sharing or understanding the feelings of another person. A feeling or expression of pity or of sorrow for the distress of another. -The American Heritage Dictionary Maxwell was a cheerful, optimistic man who plodded off to a regular job each day and spent every night writing short stories. These he sent off to the popular magazines. Although he did sell two stories, he acquired a huge collection of rejection slips. He persisted, however. One day, he promised himself, I'll quit that dull job and write all the time. Meanwhile, he married a lovely girl who was kind and understanding. He knew she would "stand by him" through everything. And she certainly did. Every time he received a rejection slip, she said, "Poor darling. They don't appreciate your talent." One day he came home to find four of his favorite stories returned. Slumping dejectedly in the chair he moaned, "I guess I just don't have what it takes." His tender wife sat on the arm of his chair to comfort him. "Now, dear, you've just been working too hard. You need a rest. Why don't you take a vacation?" So he did take a vacation - from writing. Maxwell now spends his evenings glumly watching television and drinking beer. His sweet wife understands why he gave up his ambitions and consoles him: "You tried so hard, and you are a good writer. I'm sure the only people who get published nowadays are the ones who know the editors personally." That's Sympathy. She's a darling. And she's deadly. The only trouble looming in this chapter is with the definition of the word Sympathy. So let's clear that up first. We say "we're in complete sympathy with each other" when we're talking about the closest possible harmony with someone. We say "he's sympathetic to our cause" when referring to a person who's smart enough to agree with our own ideas. And is there any one of us with a character so stoic that we don't welcome a sympathetic person around to soothe us when someone has stolen our little red wagon, our lover or our knee warmers (depending on which stage of this game we're playing)? Sympathy, as we generally use the word, can mean a high-tone empathy and accord, the charitableness and understanding of the big-hearted, a shaft of warm sunlight slicing through the murk. However, we're talking about something else here. The .9 is a counterfeit. He doesn't choose to be kind; he's chronically sympathetic. He can't do anything but commiserate. FEELING TOGETHER The prominent manifestation of this emotion is obsessive agreement. We're in the Fear band here and it is Fear that dominates the .9. So at this position of the scale, Sympathy is not valor, but cowardice, stemming from a basic fear of people. He's excessively afraid of hurting others. He's compulsively "understanding" and #I reasonable" about all the lowest-tone unfortunates of the world. He's the person who's "reasonable" about the axe murderer. He'll be understanding about the toadying leech. Sympathy means "feeling together," so if one were sympathetic with a high-tone person, everything would be glorious; he'd feel high-tone. But the person at .9 seldom achieves more than a superficial tolerance of upscale people and conditions. He is most comfortable when he can sympathize with Apathy and Grief. Of course, his "feeling together" causes this chameleon to wobble drunkenly through the low tones always somewhere between complacent tenderness and tears. He looks harmless. And that's just how he wants to look. He's desperately trying to ward off blame. "See how understanding I am?" "See how I wouldn't hurt anybody?" His addiction to praise and fear of blame make him compulsively understanding. It was a quiet, pleasant party. We were exchanging ideas about the future of religion when Casper-a new arrival-interrupted contemptuously: "Surely you've read Schemerhorn's theory on penalties and predicaments?" No one had, but he rambled on interspersing his complicated monologue with obscure references. When he ran out of breath, we picked up our conversation again. Someone said, "I think most people need to believe in something, whether or not they call it religion. So if ..." Sneeringly, Casper cut in: "That's just infantile thinking! In my opinion, there's only one intelligent viewpoint. Vosgarten's treatise on the majestic obsession covers the whole concept . . . " After enduring two hours of Casper's rude arrogance and unintelligible speeches, an aggressive member of the party challenged him: "Why can't you just say what you want to say, man? We don't understand you. Do you believe that?" "Well, it doesn't fit into my model of reference. It's like Wumvoogen says ... "Don't get started again. I'm trying to tell you that we can't understand you. You don't make sense. You've monopolized the conversation and you haven't said anything. Furthermore, you don't listen to anything the rest of us say. What's the matter with you that you can't communicate?" To our amazement, Casper's defenses collapsed and his eyes filled with tears. Although everyone felt some compassion for him (and eased the conversation back to neutral grounds), only one compulsive Sympathy person emerged. A pretty young woman named' Judy, silent until now leaned toward him, "Casper," she said, "I see beautiful qualities in you." "I can't believe you mean that." "Of course, I mean it." "Oh, people say those things, but they don't follow through. It takes more than words to convince me." "I want you to believe me. I mean it sincerely." I could see the beginnings of a complicated and regrettable relationship here. Judy saw nothing "beautiful" about Casper in his moments of boorish arrogance. It required his defenseless state of Grief to bring her to life. The ultimate cohesion between this pair would be about as inspired as a glutinous mass of day-old spaghetti. BEHIND EVERY FAILURE Someone once said that "behind every successful man there's a woman." What no one said (until Ron Hubbard uncovered this emotion) is that behind every upscale man who goes downhill and fails, there's probably a sympathetic woman. No high-tone man ever broke down from mere hard work or even a few setbacks. He can be crushed, however, by the slow, eroding benevolence of a Sympathy person who "helps" by supplying infinite justifications for his failures. Sympathy is so devastating because he is telling the low-tone person: "The helplessness you feel about yourself is so justified that I feel it too." No one needs that kind of assistance; it strengthens the person's problems instead of his ability to solve problems. It takes responsibility away from the individual. "Poor you. The world isn't treating you right." The high-tone person (especially if he understands the tone scale) would say, "Well, this is most unfortunate; but let's take a look and see what went wrong. You can go out and try it again." But Sympathy loves company, so he doesn't help someone recover from a loss and go back to win. He can't; there wouldn't be anyone to spend his Sympathy on. The high-tone person sees a drowning man and throws him a life line. The Sympathy person jumps in and drowns with the victim. INFLUENCE ON LOW-TONE PEOPLE We may find ourselves liking Sympathy better than the more aggressive people between 1.1 and 2.0 on the scale. He's not throwing barbs at us. He's not demanding that we change. He's not excessively critical. If we need to lay the head down for a good cry, he's right in there with a velvet-cushioned shoulder. It feels so comfortable to have someone who accepts us uncritically in our most unlovely moments (it's probably quite similar to the sensation of drowning). But, he's ineffectual. He does nothing to improve conditions. The upscale person says "You're hurt; we'll patch it up." But .9 moves in on the same wavelength saying, "Oh, you're so tired. We'll have to take care of you." There's a deadly timelessness about that. He doesn't say "cure." He says "take care of." Sympathy (as well as Propitiation) is most comfortable around sick people. And if they're not sick already, he'll help them along. If the person on the receiving end of all this kindness becomes convinced that he needs to be cared for, he remains at the bottom of the scale. The .9 is too afraid of hurting others to do anything effective. He just agrees about how terrible it all is. A high-tone person is not afraid of hurting others for a just cause; he's able to take any necessary actions to benefit the greatest number. But Sympathy, instead of curing the alcoholic, sits down and gets drunk with him. Don't work yourself into a lather trying to figure out whether a person is at Sympathy or Propitiation. Although each tone is slightly different in character, they intertwine like two tangled coat hangers. Sympathy often leads, automatically, to Propitiation. Mother says, "It's too cold out for you to walk (Sympathy). I'll drive you to school (Propitiation)." The student says, "It's too bad you fell asleep during the lectures. Here, you can copy my notes." THE CRIME OF SYMPATHY The crime of Sympathy is the crime of omission - the crime of not handling, not controlling, not disciplining, not providing strength. His pity and leniency merely reinforce low tones. He's quite destructive when coupled with a higher-tone individual because the emotion results from a hidden goal to knock the higher person down to the point where Sympathy will be needed. He waits until the upscale person suffers a setback, at which time he comes alive. He slows down or stops the other individual by pitying him. Sympathy finds many ways of castrating the higher-tone person. The boss gets mad when he hears that the tippling salesman is offending customers, so he plans a showdown. Along comes Sympathy who soothingly purrs: "Now, now, boss. Of course it's upsetting, but let me handle it. I have a little more patience than YOU have." Patience may be a virtue at the top of the scale, but at .9 it's only another euphemism for weakness. THE DEADLY CYCLE Everyone - even the topscale person-sinks down into the drearies sometimes. Sympathy, however, is more prone than any other emotion to revolve in a perpetual circle between happiness and melancholia. His brand of happiness, of course, is nothing you're going to want to bottle up and sell on the street corners. It's mostly a consoling self-righteousness: "Oh, how merciful and compassionate I am. I never turn my back on anyone who needs me." He's a magnet for the dregs of society. He puts his attention on the criminals, the invalids, the skid row bums, addicts, alcoholics, and all the woeful, poor, stricken, limp, sobbing Grief and Apathy cats he can find. He's easily taken in by their lies. Grief says he has no money, no job and nobody loves him. So Sympathy says, "Oh, you poor thing. Life has treated you terribly. Of course I'll help you." So he goes down to Propitiation, providing shelter, food, money, sex perhaps his whole life. Soon he's down there in Grief himself (he's always duplicating tones, remember) and we hear him sobbing "I've done everything I could, but nothing seems to help." When Sympathy isn't slobbering over the needy types at the bottom, he's recklessly defending the destructive ones in the 1.0 to 2.0 band. He insists that "Nobody is all bad. Give them the benefit of the doubt." He's the most gullible victim of the 1.1 con. Also, because of the ease with which he is influenced, the Sympathy person can be readily corrupted; the glib 1.1 can lure him into all sorts of criminality, perversion or promiscuity (all of which are more common to the 1.1 tone). Eventually these activities get Sympathy into trouble, so we hear him grieving again. Too weak to actually handle the low tones he attracts and too compulsively "understanding" to permit himself to retreat, he stays locked in a permanent elevator ride with Sympathy as the top floor and Apathy in the basement. You can spot him by his fluctuation. Even when you point out that he's associating with low-tone people who are dragging him down, he's unable to handle and unwilling to disconnect. He might hurt somebody. That's how such a nice person gets betrayed so often. He's noble though. He soon crawls back up to Sympathy and tries again. IN BUSINESS If you run a business and you want to stay solvent, don't put a Sympathy person in charge of a department. His overwhelming fear of hurting others is a dangerous attitude. He'll be ineffective on the job, he'll throw away your profits and he'll attract the losers because he feels sorry for them. He's the one who insists on hiring the griefy girl because she's had all the bad breaks. He'll defend the employee who goofs off because "he has a sick wife and fourteen children, you know." IN THE FAMILY It's the Sympathy person who most often marries the bad fellow. Here you find the beautiful young girl who weds the down-and-outer, because she just can't bear to hurt his feelings. The .9 is one of the worst possible parents. His over-permissiveness breeds an uncontrolled, destructive child. It's easy for loving parents to get lured into feeling Sympathy. How many of us could remain untouched if we saw a small child sobbing because his ice cream cone just fell in the sand? Attitudes of Sympathy and Propitiation are automatic: "There, there, don't cry. I'll buy you another one." This is not truly kindness because it neglects the future of the child; the gesture teaches him that no matter how careless and negligent he is, if he cries loud enough someone will pity and take care of him. It would be equally cruel to shrug unsympathetically and say, "That's tough; you should learn to be more careful." What is the high-tone response? Give the child a chance to recover from the loss with dignity, not as a beggar: "How would you like to do a job for me? You can earn the money for another ice cream if you want it." When we see a youngster who is chronically hideous-crying, whining, screaming or throwing tantrums-it's a safe bet his parents are stuck in the Sympathy/Propitiation tones. They obviously surrendered, repeatedly, to this behavior; that's why the child continues using it. He's rewarded for his weaknesses, so he never develops strength. Sympathy parents wonder "Where did we go wrong?" while the child grows into a perpetually immature adult who continues whining through life looking for a permanent baby sitter to hold his hand and agree that it's a cruel world. When I was a child, I knew a young boy who was constantly getting beaten up by a neighborhood bully. One day he ran home crying and his mother decided not to be sympathetic: "You go back over there and lick that kid or I'm going to give you a beating myself. More frightened of his mother's mood than the neighbor, the boy went back and beat up on the bully for the first time. With new confidence he soon established neighborhood supremacy as a fighter. As I recall, it was necessary to take on nearly every belligerent kid in the school first, but he eventually emerged as a peace-loving individual who knew he could defend himself. A mother stuck in Sympathy will be so "understanding" that she creates a permanent loser. I'm not suggesting that we cultivate bullies; but we should recognize that fighting is higher-tone than surrender. And the person who cannot fight cannot move upscale. Probably the best answer is to teach the child the tone scale so he can select higher-tone friends. SUMMARY He's the nice guy who marries the helpless clinging vine because "she needs me." Not everyone who goes to read to the blind children is in permanent Sympathy. High-tone people care too. In fact, they'll probably be the first ones to teach the children to read Braille. The highscale person will be compassionate; but he'll boost you back up. When you find someone who seems hard to place on the chart, who's never vicious, who's prone to noble deeds and good intentions, but who collects physical and emotional cripples faster than a dog picks up parasites in a flea farm, suspect a Sympathy person. I started my study of this tone with the assumption that I would find very few people here-probably only those types who get their kicks out of going to funerals or placing wreaths on gravestones. I couldn't have been more wrong. I finished with the shocking realization that it was one of the more populated levels of the tone scale. Those who aren't there already are frequently forced into Sympathy socially by the many popular pity-the-underdog movements. In the harsh light of research I recognized a disconcerting number of my favorite people at .9-people I tried (sympathetically) to place at a higher tone. The act of Sympathy convinces a person he has lost, and once he thoroughly believes that he can lose, he is unable to win. After a person finds the comfortable warmth of Sympathy, he begins to desire it. He may become so addicted that he runs around hoping for an accident or illness so he can get more. This is a thick, gooey, insidiously destructive emotion. Everything's so serious. In fact, it's a downright shame. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 8 - FEAR (1.0) Fear: A feeling of alarm or disquiet caused by the expectation of danger, pain, disaster, or the like; terror, dread; apprehension. -American Heritage Dictionary "Now, Fred, slow down. Watch this car up here, Fred. Better get into the left lane, Fred. We have to turn eight blocks from here. That dog might run out. Be careful, Fred!" (Scream) Driver panics (at scream, not at any outside threat) and hits brakes; he nearly gets rammed by the car behind. Everyone is a nervous wreck. Fear. This tone wears many disguises. It slips down to influence the Sympathy person (who is afraid of hurting others) and Propitiation (where we see the strange manifestation of a person attempting to buy off imagined danger by propitiating), and it sneaks upward on the tone scale to lurk behind Covert Hostility and No Sympathy tones. Most people harbor a few select, temporary fears. We see the tough, swaggering student who turns to a quivering butterfly in the seat of an airplane. We see a housewife who has the courage to be a Cub Scout den mother, but who quails at the sight of a harmless snake. We see the bull strength of the business tycoon melt into a pool of limp terror when forced to give a speech. Although irrational, these fears are not necessarily chronic, so they don't indicate that the person is a 1.0. There is a time to be afraid, just as there is a time for joy or grief. It's sensible to have a respect for danger when caught in a burning house or a New York taxicab. That's survival. Acute Fear (whether rational or irrational) causes a pounding heart, a cold sweat or trembling. This may be fear of actual death, injury or merely some harmless menace. Stark terror is the highest volume of Fear. In low volume, we see Fear expressed as excessive shyness, extreme modesty, or unwarranted suspicions. We find the person who gets tongue-tied easily, who withdraws from people, who jumps at a door slam. CHRONIC FEAR The person in chronic Fear tone lives with one or another of these manifestations all the time. He's continually frightened; everything is dangerous. He's afraid to exist. He's afraid to own things (he might lose them). His solution to life is to be careful-about everything. So, whether he's in terror, mild anxiety, dread or insecurity, he's at Fear on the tone scale. He talks about fearful things, real or imaginary. In Grief we find anxiety taking a limp form ("Oh, dear, how am I going to handle this? I just don't know what I can do.") but at the higher tone of Fear the person tries to handle all of the anxieties. Of course, he's pretty ineffectual, but he does work hard at it. DISPERSAL This person is scattered-like a Kleenex that's been through the washing machine. He's trying to be somewhere else-anywhere else. He flits around, physically or mentally. His attention jumps from one thing to another. His conversation takes grasshopper leaps from subject to subject. Sometimes (not always) you can see this dispersal in his eyes when he talks to you-they flit over here, over there, up, down-everywhere but straight ahead. He can't look at you. LIFE IS THREATENING Fear is careful because he knows that nearly everything is threatening. I once knew a man who insisted that all of the doors and windows of his house be locked, day and night. He called his wife half a dozen times daily just to see if everything was all right. If she went on an unscheduled visit to a neighbor, he phoned every house in the block until he located her. His speech was peppered with phrases such as "You can't be too careful," "You never know what might happen," and "It doesn't pay to take chances." Where a higher-tone person will plan his attack on the enemy force, Fear is always planning his defense (if he's on the high side) or his retreat (if he's on the low side of Fear). When there's a robbery on the other side of town, Fear puts extra locks on his doors. If he lives in Minnesota, but learns of a deadly new mosquito breeding in the tropics, he get anxious about it. His attention flits all over the universe trying to cover every possible danger. In case you think there aren't many people at Fear, let me remind you of the now famous Orson Wells radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" in 1938-a realistic but fictional report of a Martian "invasion." An estimated one million listeners missed the three announcements about the fictional nature of the program and panicked. Telephone lines were hopelessly jammed and people were running in the streets. A Fear person is gullible and credulous about fearful things. He selectively hears only communications on his own level. A smooth-talking insurance salesman chalks up a bonus day when he meets up with a Fear person-the poor devil will buy one of everything. SUBURBAN SECURITY He's afraid of losing things, so he walks around constantly fearing that he'll get bad news-news of a loss. He's afraid he'll hear that his house burned down; he's apprehensive about getting fired; he wonders if somebody is going to die; he worries about his wife leaving him. I once lived across the street from a Fear couple. His face compressed with deep worry lines, completely bald at the age of twenty-nine (I don't know if that's relevant; but I'll mention it anyway), he and his wife worried constantly about germs, diseases, bad health, burglaries, accidents and disasters. Name anything dreadful-they dreaded it. Before letting their children out to play, they bundled them up like Eskimos for fear of catching colds. Interestingly, their two youngsters suffered more colds and illnesses than any children on the block. One quiet Sunday morning I saw this neighbor cautiously emerge from his house. After carefully testing the door to make certain it was locked, he walked to the garage and unlocked it. After unlocking his car, he drove out to the gate, which he also unlocked. He backed the car out, returned to the garage and locked it, walked down the drive, put the chain padlock back on the gate and drove off. Impressed, I thought: he must be leaving for a month. (We weren't living in the heart of the crime belt, you understand. The most serious wrongdoing in this bland suburban community during the previous six months was when a three-year-old youngster down the street toddled off with another three-year-old's tricycle). Ten minutes later, however, the neighbor returned with the Sunday papers. He unlocked the gate, the garage, and went through the whole lockup routine in reverse. This chap could put the security system at Fort Knox to shame. While we were living in the same neighborhood, a salesman called one evening trying to sell a fire alarm system. We turned him down, but as he left I thought: If he would only stop across the street, they'll surely buy one. Well, he did, and they did. LOVE AND CHILDREN At 1.0 love shows up as suspicion of proffered affection. Filbert offers Belinda his class ring. Instead of happily accepting it, she queries, "What does this mean?" He tells her he loves her and she wonders what that really means: "I don't want to say I love you; it might turn out that I don't." There won't be much free-wheeling love from a Fear partner. He's too careful to be spontaneous. Fear parents strongly influence their children. I once knew a woman who actually hid in the bedroom closet whenever there was a thunder storm. Her fearful mother taught her to do this. I knew another woman who was afraid of cats, "My mother always said they were dangerous. You know, they're supposed to carry all sorts of diseases-at least that's what Mother told me." A contagious emotion, Fear. Unless he takes the trouble to examine all the boogies himself, the child grows up convinced that nearly everything is dangerous. IN BUSINESS The Fear person performs poorly on a job. He constantly worries about protecting himself. He's afraid to make decisions, worries about taking on new projects and invents amazingly insurmountable obstacles to any new plan. "This is a dangerous time to get into that market. We could lose our shirts." "I'm afraid we'll get sued for patent infringement if we try this." "It's a nice idea if it weren't so risky." Convinced that huge effort and energy are necessary to overcome his imaginary barriers, he'd rather put off than confront them. So he invents reasons why he can't do a job. He tries to avoid responsibility at all cost (he thinks he'd be hurt): "Oh no, you're not going to get me to take on that job. Everybody would be passing the buck to me. I'd have to take the blame for everything that goes wrong." While he's better than all the tones below this, you have a poor job risk here. THE THREE LEVELS OF FEAR Fear represents a crossover point on decision making. At the lower part of Fear, the person is afraid to do things. Retreating, on the run, he's a master at avoiding. At the high point of Fear the person is afraid not to. He defends against every possible eventuality. In the middle of Fear tone, we find the absolute maybe. Here is the person frozen into indecision; he can't make up his mind. This is not the apathetic indecision of Grief ("I just don't know what to do"). At Fear the person actively vacillates between "Should I?" and "Shouldn't I?" When a higher-tone person hits this level of the scale, he finds it uncomfortable. Here we see the young girl faced with the choice between two eligible men. She likes them both; she can't decide; she wavers back and forth. Finally, the indecision becomes so painful that she impulsively makes a choice (she may even run away with a third man who is totally unsuitable). Anything to move off that maybe. Some Fear people, however, live in indecision for years-waiting for some occurrence to tip the scale. Such an individual is afraid to be right and he doesn't dare be wrong. He's afraid to and he's afraid not to. He can't commit himself. He can't plan the future, and he can't face the present. If you ask him to set up an appointment a few days in advance, he can't: "Call me later. We'll see what happens." (The more high-tone a person is, the more willingly he will commit himself to something in the future.) Here we find the couple who date each other for seventeen years because they're afraid to get married. He's the man who wants to change jobs, but can't muster the nerve; he grows old waiting for the right impetus. Here's the miserable marriage that continues on because neither person works up the courage to resolve it or end it. HOPE Hope is a marvelous quality when it is quickly transferred into specific plans, actions and accomplishments. Every great doer starts with a dream. At Fear, however, we find the vacuum of blind hope - the deadly initiative killer. He doesn't progress; he doesn't give up. He simply postpones living today. It's too frightful, so he waits for something to happen. What is that something? I don't know. I've seen people who waited for years, but "it" never arrived. They spend their lives living out of mental suitcases; they never unpack and settle down to something and they never take off and go anywhere. They wait. They day-dream. They think wistfully. The next moment, the next hour, the next day, surely, will bring that magic something that dissolves all doubts. That's blind hope. Waiting. Indecision. That's the dead center of Fear. Fear is the last of the soft emotions. Now we're going to leave the mushy marshes and pick our way through a stretch of barbed wire ... ================ http://www.clearing.org ==================== Sun Aug 13 06:13:25 EDT 2000 ftp://ftp.lightlink.com/pub/archive/minshull/min0.memo Send mail to archive@lightlink.com saying help -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Homer Wilson Smith The paths of lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink (607) 277-0959 cross in Internet Access, Ithaca NY homer@lightlink.com the line of duty. http://www.lightlink.com