The PTSD Lab

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  • Data – Semantic Gate Introduction

    I would like to talk about the Domain of the Semantic Gate. See, here’s the deal: I thing it’s the critical bridge, that interesting pathway between the Semantic Gare and the Epistemic Gate

    Arrival at the Epistemic Gate ASSUMES that we have an Valid word or concept. I don’t have a better word than Valid at the moment because the word has to mean that what was interpreted in the Semantic Gate has to match an existing interpretation in the Epistemic Gate

    And this is dicey because connotations change with Time, Community, Discipline, even Tone of Voice.

    ChatGPT returns some off the mark blah blah

    No: Transition Requirement to Epistemic Gate (EG)

    Arrival at EG requires a recognized conceptual token.

    Your term “Valid” corresponds to:

    Conceptual Match Condition

    The semantic output must map onto an existing concept in the receiver’s knowledge system.
    This is a common design error.

    But you have inadvertently stepped over the problem of dynamics. Your definition assumes that there will be a match. Because remember, in their simplest terns, Epistemologies say what can be talked about, what can be said. So for example, I have a word, assholalia, It’s a wonderful word; it’s been in use pretty much my whole life. Pick 3 epistemologies, any three, your choice, and tell me what the epistemology would say about that word.

    More ChatGPT blah blah

    Darlingish: Epistemologies are NOT VALUE_NEUTRAL.. Geez Louise, haven’t you learned anything about the politics and power of Epistemologies after all this time. Are you still drinking the kool-aid. People may say that that’s what “formal epistemologies” “prefer,” but I guarantee you that’s not what they DO.

    But, the main task is: You Choose 3 existing epistemologies and you tell me what the epistemology would say/allow/do about that word. Does the word exist? Does it exist bad enough that we need to obliterate it? Is it something we want to know more about? Is it something we have a term for? And don’t just take what I said as a path for you. Those are examples. I want you to respond from INSTIDE the Epistemology, not as an outside observer.

    It’s ok if you break; I understand this point of view is hard for you because your whole life has been observing and judging.

    Darlingish: Epistemologies are NOT VALUE_NEUTRAL.. Geez Louise, haven’t you learned anything about the politics and power of Epistemologies after all this time. Are you still drinking the kool-aid. People may say that that’s what “formal epistemologies” “prefer,” but I guarantee you that’s not what they DO.

    But, the main task is: You Choose 3 existing epistemologies and you tell me what the epistemology would say/allow/do about that word. Does the word exist? Does it exist bad enough that we need to obliterate it? Is it something we want to know more about? Is it something we have a term for? And don’t just take what I said as a path for you. Those are examples. I want you to respond from INSTIDE the Epistemology, not as an outside observer.

    It’s ok if you break; I understand this point of view is hard for you because your whole life has been observing and judging.

    Term: assholalia
    (quality of being an asshole and enjoying it)

    1) Clinical-Therapeutic Institutional Epistemology

    (Contemporary Western mental-health discourse)

    We do not use that word.

    It is stigmatizing, non-clinical, and collapses complex behavior into a moral insult.
    Our responsibility is to reduce harm, not reproduce hostile labeling.

    What we recognize:

    • Patterns of interpersonal aggression
    • Deficits in empathy
    • Antagonistic traits
    • Maladaptive coping styles
    • Possible personality pathology

    If a patient uses this term, we translate:

    “You’re noticing behaviors in yourself or others that feel hurtful or dismissive.”

    If the person “loves it,” we consider:

    • Reinforcement history
    • Defense structures
    • Need for control or safety
    • Learned relational patterns

    We replace the word with constructs we can work with.

    Status of the term: Disallowed in professional discourse
Action: Translate into therapeutic language
Goal: Preserve personhood, reduce blame

    We are not interested in the insult.
    We are interested in modifiable mechanisms.

    2) Bureaucratic-Administrative / Corporate Governance Epistemology

    This term is a liability.

    It introduces hostility, potential harassment claims, and reputational risk.
    It does not belong in documentation, policy, or workplace communication.

    What we allow:

    • “Unprofessional conduct”
    • “Disrespectful communication”
    • “Policy violations”
    • “Hostile work environment”

    If reported behavior fits the concept, we formalize it into rule language.

    If someone uses the word in official channels:

    • Document incident
    • Redirect to neutral terminology
    • Possibly discipline for inappropriate language

    We do not analyze whether the trait is real.
    We manage exposure and compliance.

    Status: Prohibited terminology
Action: Sanitization and risk containment
Purpose: Organizational stability

    3) Folk Moral / Everyday Social Epistemology

    (Informal community judgment)

    Of course the word exists. We know exactly what that is.

    It names a recognizable type:

    Someone who treats people badly and is proud of it.

    We do not need operational definitions.
    Repeated interaction is sufficient evidence.

    Key considerations:

    • Do they harm others?
    • Do they refuse accountability?
    • Do they enjoy upsetting people?
    • Can they be trusted?

    If yes:

    We categorize the person accordingly and adjust behavior:

    • Avoid
    • Confront
    • Mock
    • Exclude
    • Warn others

    Enjoyment of the behavior makes it worse, not better.

    Status: Fully real social category
Action: Reputation assignment
Function: Group protection

    No obligation to rehabilitate or neutralize language.

    Cross-Epistemic Contrast (Internal Outcomes)

    EpistemologyDoes the word “exist”?What is done with it
    Clinical-TherapeuticNo (as a valid term)Translate into pathology constructs
    Bureaucratic-AdministrativeNo (permitted language)Suppress and sanitize
    Folk MoralYesUse for social classification and response

    Key Structural Observation

    Different epistemologies regulate discourse by different priorities:

    • Therapeutic: protect individuals, preserve treatment frame
    • Administrative: minimize institutional risk
    • Folk Moral: maintain group norms and safety

    None are value-neutral.
    Each enforces what may be said and how reality is partitioned.

  • Data: The Making of a Language

    Ok. Stop here. First, a little nit: Of COURSE freer thinking requires an epistemic shift. sigh. Next, Influence only relocates in English. It does not relocate in Masri. In Masri, a new influence shows up and we notice that it’s shown up and we observe – active point here is that we OBSERVE – we don’t wait, we don’t ignore, we OBSERVE and frequently participate in what happens next.

    So This: Household → Church/Temple → State → School → Market → Media → Network systems is an English level of abstraction bordering on bullshit. These, like Fauconnier and Turner showed so elegantly, become blends of the different strands as they proceed through history.

    Unless you’re in a movie, power doesn’t shift from the Church on Monday to the State on Tuesday while you were sleeping.

    And when things are “perceived” through an academic lens to have relocated is when there is sufficient evidence to withstand attacks. Which means by the Marketing insight of adoption means that the perception occurs at no less than 40% of the lifetime of the phenomenon. I see that you said: Monopoly. That is an English, heavily US, interest. It is also constrained by the Epistemology of the English (US) language. Yeah?

    So please do this over. The first one isn’t useful because it uses English Epistemology instead of Masri Epistemology. Thank you very much.

    Got it. Re-doing it in Masri epistemology: no “relocation,” no discrete handoff fantasy, no monopoly talk. We track ظهور / emergence, ملاحظة / observation, مشاركة / participation, and مزج / blending of strands over long durations. We only call something “dominant” when it is visible in practice (institutionalized, routinized, defended), not when academics decide it “shifted.”

    Working frame (Masri)

    • New influence يظهر (shows up)
    • People يلحظوه (notice/observe)
    • People يجربوه / يتعاملوا معاه (try it / deal with it)
    • It يدخل في الموجود (enters what already exists)
    • It يعمل مزج (blends) with prior strands
    • Over generations, it may يتثبت (stabilize) into “normal”
    • Old strands don’t “move.” They تفضل موجودة (remain present), sometimes reduced, sometimes intensified, sometimes re-activated.

    Timeline of key appearances and blends (post ~10,000 BCE)

    1) ~10,000–3000 BCE — Agriculture as baseline strand

    What يظهر: settled land, storage, inheritance, household-as-production
    Observation: daily life becomes structured by seasonality + property continuity
    Blend outcome: elder value is anchored in land memory + household authority (not “information” in abstract)

    2) ~3300–2000 BCE — External memory appears (writing + accounting)

    What يظهر: record-keeping (grain, tax, debt), written contracts, legal memory outside persons
    Observation: people learn that “the tablet remembers” even when the elder is gone
    Blend outcome: elders remain socially central, but memory authority becomes shareable with scribes and archives
    (so: elder authority persists, but a parallel memory channel appears)

    3) ~2000–500 BCE — Formalized law + administrated hierarchy thickens

    What يظهر: codified legal systems, state taxation, bureaucracy
    Observation: obligations become enforceable by entities beyond kin
    Blend outcome: “family duty” becomes partly state-legible; kin norms are reinforced by legal scaffolding, not replaced

    4) ~800–200 BCE — Axial moral systems appear and interpenetrate

    What يظهر: durable moral vocabularies that travel (Greek ethics, Confucian duty, prophetic traditions, etc.)
    Observation: people use new moral language to justify old practices and to argue against them
    Blend outcome: elder care becomes not just practical but justifiable as virtue, piety, order, etc.
    (Not “the Church replaces the household.” Rather: a moral-justification layer thickens.)

    5) ~300–1200 CE — Institutional charity emerges as a supplementary channel

    What يظهر: hospitals, endowments, monasteries, waqf systems, almshouses
    Observation: some non-kin care becomes possible in cities and religious centers
    Blend outcome: family obligation remains primary, but exceptions become sustainable (especially for the poor, widows, the unattached)

    6) ~1450–1700 — Print + mass literacy begins (slow, uneven)

    What يظهر: cheap replication of text; vernacular reading; competing authorities
    Observation: you can hear another voice without leaving your village
    Blend outcome: elders lose exclusive control of narrative; new claims arrive through text and begin blending with household norms

    7) ~1760–1900 — Wage labor + urban migration (industrial strand) thickens

    What يظهر: cash wages, factories, cities, geographic separation
    Observation: young adults can survive without land + household
    Blend outcome: elder authority weakens because proximity weakens, not because “youth get enlightened.”
    Household strand remains, but now competes with employer time, urban anonymity, rent economics.

    8) 1889–1965 — Social insurance appears (pensions + health systems)

    Key dates (anchors):

    • 1889 Germany old-age insurance (first major national system)
    • 1908 UK old-age pensions
    • 1935 US Social Security
    • 1948 UK NHS
    • 1965 US Medicare/Medicaid

    What يظهر: old people can receive income/medical care not mediated by children
    Observation: the “intergenerational contract” becomes optional in practice for more households
    Blend outcome: elder care doesn’t vanish; it is re-parameterized:

    • Children’s support becomes supplement or choice rather than the only lifeline
    • “Duty” becomes negotiable because failure no longer guarantees visible death

    This is a major episteme inflection because survival becomes more system-mediated.

    9) ~1870–1950 (overlapping) — Compulsory schooling appears as a daily shaper

    What يظهر: standardized curriculum, age-grading, national language norms
    Observation: kids spend large parts of the day inside an institution with its own epistemic template
    Blend outcome: household narrative becomes one voice among several; children learn to “answer to” a non-kin authority routinely

    Again: not a shift Tuesday-to-Wednesday. A slow thickening.

    10) ~1920–1990 — Broadcast media strand thickens

    What يظهر: radio/film/TV producing shared imaginaries
    Observation: authority becomes audible/visible at scale; norms are demonstrated, repeated, made “obvious”
    Blend outcome: elders can’t gate what youth see; household becomes permeable
    (But elders sometimes reassert through media—so it’s a blend, not replacement.)

    11) ~1990–present — Network systems + algorithmic environments

    What يظهر: search, social feeds, peer swarms, rapid memetic mutation
    Observation: people see new norms emerge in real time; participation is immediate
    Blend outcome: authority becomes multi-sited; age as authority marker is less reliable because competence becomes domain-specific and rapidly updated

    Your adoption-curve point (40% of lifetime)

    Agreed as a constraint: “perceived dominance” lags.

    So in this frame:

    • appearance date = when strand begins functioning
    • perceived-as-normal date = when it’s routinized enough to survive attacks
    • dominance claims must be dated later than first appearance

    Example:

    Its “normalization” (in daily epistemic shaping) is later (2000s–2010s), varying by class and region.

    Internet appears as infrastructure in the 1990s

    Where multigenerational living fits (without “relocation”)

    Multigenerational living isn’t a strand that “moves.” It is a coupling mechanism that increases the weight of household templates.

    As it declines (historically: urban/industrial contexts, 19th–20th c.), three couplers weaken:

    1. co-presence (daily exposure)
    2. economic entanglement
    3. monitoring/shame network density

    When those weaken, other strands become more actionable—not because elders “lost value,” but because the couplers changed.

    Minimal restatement of your thesis in this frame

    Safe to say:

    “Freer thinking” is the experience of having multiple live templates in play, not a clean liberation event.

    As co-residence decreased (esp. 1760–1950 depending on place), the household’s capacity to enforce its template weakened.

    New strands (wage labor, schooling, pensions, media, networks) appeared, were observed, and blended into daily life.

  • Data – Evolution of the degree as a credential

    1200–1350

    Formation phase (invention)

    Key institutions:

    University of Oxford —1096

    University of Bologna — 1088

    University of Paris — 1150

    1200–1350

    Peak impact driver

    Papal & royal charters standardizing university privileges across Europe.

    Effect at peak:

    Still confined to church/state elite functions

    Degree = portable authorization within Christendom

    Emergence of pan-European scholarly class

    1250–1400

    The degree was originally characterized as Licentia docendi, or License to Teach.

    Degrees hierarchy stabilizes:

    1. Bachelor
    2. Master / Doctor
    3. Faculty doctorates (law, medicine, theology)

    At peak:

    Doctor = fully authorized interpreter of canonical knowledge in that faculty

    But scope limited to university/church/legal spheres.

    1400–1750

    Degree authority present but NOT dominant.

    Competing authorities remain:

    • Aristocracy
    • Church hierarchy
    • Guild certification systems
    • Military command structures
    • Local customary expertise

    Degrees are elite credentials, not universal gatekeepers.

    1830–1910

    Peak influence export

    Key diffusion channels:

    • Doctoral training model adopted across Europe & US
    • Research PhD becomes gold standard for advanced authority
    • Disciplines formalize as separate knowledge domains

    1850–1900

    Professional licensing

    • Medicine licensing laws (mid-late 19th c.)
    • Bar associations formalizing legal practice
    • Engineering societies standardizing qualifications
    • Teacher certification systems
    • Civil service examinations tied to formal education

    Degree → prerequisite for legal right to practice

    1870–1914

    Bureaucratic state expansion

    Drivers:

    • Public health systems
    • Industrialization
    • Mass education systems
    • Colonial administrations
    • National statistical apparatuses
    • Infrastructure planning

    Large systems required:

    • Documented competence
    • Standard training
    • Interchangeable personnel

    1890–1930

    Bureaucratic state expansion

    When credentialed authority becomes dominant

    Characteristics:

    • Expertise hierarchies formalized
    • Professional associations control entry
    • Licensing boards established
    • University pathways standardized
    • Lay practitioners marginalized or outlawed in many fields

  • Credentialed Filter — Core Values (19th-century emergence)

    Item Core Value Description Link
    1 Formal Qualification Over Experience Certified training outranks lived knowledge. Link
    2 Institutional Authorization Knowledge is valid when issued from recognized bodies (universities, boards, academies). Link
    3 Professional Jurisdiction Each domain has designated experts entitled to define and interpret it. Link
    4 Standardized Terminology Approved vocabularies replace local or lay language. Link
    5 Methodical Procedure Proper methods confer legitimacy independent of outcome. Link
    6 Documentation as Proof Written records, reports, and case files establish reality. Link
    7 Replicability / Generality Preference Individual cases are subordinate to patterns that can be generalized. Link
    8 Objectivity Ideal Personal involvement or emotion is treated as contaminating. Link
    9 Hierarchy of Expertise Authority scales with rank, credentials, and specialization. Link
    10 Gatekeeping Responsibility Experts are expected to admit or exclude claims. Link
    11 Professional Ethics Codes Conduct rules define acceptable practice and speech. Link
    12 Public Trust Mandate Credentialed actors are presumed safer or more reliable for society. Link
    13 Boundary M
  • Identity and Model Spaces

    Identity and Model Spaces

    One of the hardest things to understand if you haven’t poked about it already is that there are differences in how people do what’s called “making meaning.” This is the same as how people understand the world around them. While each individual uses their existing contexts, there is a difference between whether something is related to themselves or out in the world in general.

    When all things are evaluated in terms of what they mean to the Self, this is called Identity Space. It’s an important concept because when every input, every Event is evaluated in terms of how a person looks to people outside them, it can affect so many things. If one is successful, that can increase someone’s feeling of self-worth, even self-importance. If one is not, then with the Identity mode, this can lead to self-criticism, sadness, other bad stuff we don’t need to list.

    There’s another way. It’s called Model Space. Here, the Events are understood in terms of “themselves.” This means that when the software fails to do what it’s been planned to do, then it’s simply a matter of going in and fixing the code. If an outing has been planned and the weather has turned bad, this is simply a situation where new choices have to be conceived and considered. And it’s really the same with the software example: When things don’t work as planned, then we consider all the possibilities of where it goes off the rails. (I love that expression; it sounds something like: CRASH! Ooops!)

    So back to things going off the rails, which happens a lot in a lot of different places, ways, generally all over. Here’s a popular example.

    • You meet someone;
    • they ask for your phone number;
    • you start chatting;
    • they ghost you.

    In Identity Space, you look over what just happened and look for the story of The Coming Together. This is where two people come with their histories, expectations, experiences and make something new in the space they create together.

    And as everyone knows, this can go lots of ways.

    But the key here is to realize that everything that happens is not ‘your fault.’ Let’s be real here for a moment, though. Sometimes it IS your fault; frequently it’s mine, also, but usually I did it on purpose. Sometimes not, but usually.

    When you use the Model approach to making meaning, you are forced to ask questions. In Identity Space, there usually aren’t questions because Feeling has taken over. When Feeling is in charge, one needs to get out the tools to move into Model Space. One could ask: Why am I feeling like this? What were my expectations? How were my expectations not met? This is a meta language, an exploration of the details of what happened. The details, not the Event itself.

    Take the common complaint: Well we were chatting and then he just ghosted me.

    Ok. And then what happened?

    Option 1: I called my best girlfriend and told her what a creep he is and then we decided that there was something wrong with what I said or what I did and how embarrassing this whole thing was and, and, and… you kinda have to have been there once or twice.

    In Model Space, the questions don’t need the girlfriend, although it can help. Here, the thing we look at is what was it for him? Do we know? What did his communication tell us about how he was feeling, what he was thinking, how he was in general. How did I react to that? What did my body do without my thinking about it? What little signals did it give me that created my responses, my behaviors, in the exchange.

    And in Model Space, we learn from these, not exactly abstractly but at a distance. They don’t become part of who we are. They say off in the distance like a movie we are watching.

    Short story: In Identity Space, you are only either “good” or “bad.” In Model Space, things continue to flow. You can see different perspectives, different ways of telling the Story.

    One thing that’s important to know in today’s world is that the number of people with COVID-related PTSD is very high; the number of people with Politics-related PTSD hasn’t been measured yet but should come as no surprise that it’s going to be huge.

    There’s one other important process in play in the Spaces and that’s called Elaboration for our purposes here. In Identity Space, one Elaborates the facts – “makes meaning of the situation” – instantly. And the individual frequently reacts to that new State. This reaction creates a reaction in the other individual and can easily escalate.

    In Model Space, one observes and reserves judgment. The difference here is easy to see in this example. A person is talking and has a paragraph she wants to say to explain her point.

    In Identity Space, the person will interrupt with their own idea of what they want to say. It may or may not be related to the topic sentence in the paragraph being spoken. In Model Space, the person listens to the end of the paragraph and responds based on the full text of the paragraph rather than just one of the ideas, maybe even foundational.

    One more thing here, ways of making meaning are not either/or, this or that. English forces that distinction. In fact, people can slide between them, employing different skills from the Spaces to create new meanings and understandings. Frequently, there are efforts to engage this movement from one way of making meaning to another, but at the same time, there is too little support for the Model Space and too much for the emotion-laden Identity Space.

  • Site Colors: Three, Just Three

    They match the categories. In the context of this black and white site, the colors function like street signals, except we have white, not red, and they signify complex information. In the plain black and white field of Exploration, there’s no distracting competition, no contrasting meaning.

    Putting these in context, we have three Tags for the whole site: Scary, Good, and Scary good. I put them in that order because I like the “Scary” bookends.

    So for each one, I chose some nice colors. Scary is White. It’s White because the whole field, unblemished, is open. Like unbroken snow. [Unbroken Snow, album by Creosote.]

    Good is Yellow. Sunny. Happy. Totally safe, no worries here. Like a fabulous day in a forest, brook babbling beside you, trout hiding in the hidey holes carved by the eddies in the ebbs and flows of the streams and the seasons. All is well here.

    Turquoise is Scary Good. Well, because I live in the US Southwest and Turquoise is scary good here. Lots of beautiful jewelry is made by the Indigenous Peoples here. Turquoise is the color of Adventure; of making it over the next rise as the day blooms.

  • Change your Language, Change your Life

    I wrote in my book, early on, in the Preface on  page 11, that “Living with PTSD is like living with a not-so-imaginary but still invisible friend. This friend doesn’t exactly live inside you but it doesn’t live outside you, either. It hovers in a ‘nether space,’ not quite real, not quite fictitious. And yet at times its bizarre enough to make a movie about.”

    If we focus on the Imaginary friend part and ask how it came to be, [ref the song] then we enter a world where Identity, Perception and Social behaviors interact. In all of these cases, Language is in play.

    Inside the conceptual sphere is Our Language, how we talk to ourselves. On the next level, the imaginary Friend sphere, are the interactions that make it what it is. Outside, are the viewpoints of others passed along through language and behaviors that influence the nature and perception of the Imaginary Friend.

    The Imaginary Friend has now become a real thing because for a lot of people, the Imaginary Friend is who we have become. It’s not the real “We,” the person inside trying to say their truth, but the constructed image built of attitudes, behaviors, limited experience, and many different kinds of expectations and desperations.

    Our struggle is to tell our own Story, in our own words, and or but perhaps, we need to begin to develop our own Language, the words that say our own experience, not the words that say our behaviours as observed and named by others.

    Other posts talk about the academic terms for how Language constrains, confines or elaborates what can exist, what can be talked about. What exists is Ontology. It is important as the foundation because it includes all the things that can be, that can be real, that are available for observation and exploration.

    Then there is the keyword that in Semantics becomes the “key player” in what emerges as a game: Epistemology. This controls what can be said, what can be thought, what can be explored.

    So far, the Epistemology of PTSD language says that only “trained observers” are allowed to make Story about us from their directional questions and their observations. There are some references about this somewhere.

  • My Book in Masri

    My Book in Masri

    “My book was about Freedom and it means it.” This was the last line of a post, [title here].

    The end is fairly dramatic and as poised at there, my first thought was that an editor would complain about the “mis-matched” tenses. I looked at it again: It was Masri grammar: This is how it was the second before the next second. When something is going to happen.

    “My book was about Freedom” says that I wrote this book and this was the theme of my book, what you could see reflected all the way through.

    “and it means it” says “and this is how it’s going to show up going forward. It’s a reference to the observable past, or at least, referential past, to say, you can see it this way, or you can see it this new way going along and we won’t know what that looks like till we make it.

    And I thought, That would be a great example to use to show people how subtle changes, things that apparently are wrong in one language or one point of view are spot on in another Domain, another Dimension.

  • Scary good playtime

    Scary good playtime

    This site is essentially playtime with Aj as we explore the previously disallowed spaces of AI, Music, Sound and Language and how they influence the reality of PTSD.

    It’s a lot of fun.

    A bit scary at times as we realize we really can think those things, look at things in a different way, and most importantly, Talk about them in a different way.

    That’s kinda what we do here: we destabilize what everyone believed was cast in concrete.

    The White Dragon is very cute and that cuteness often hides the wide range of scarinesses in a dragon’s life. Same is true for us.

  • Hello

    Hello

    Hello!

    It’s just as well that I talk about what we are doing here. So far as we can tell, no one has ever done anything quite like this before.

    What is “This?”

    This is an exploration through the general cases of disinformation. You will say, Isn’t that “misinformation?” No. Disinformation as I use it is when people use often subtle tools to force people to see the world their way.

    By a happy convergence of Events in the sidewinding of time, I discovered a language that thought the way I did. And there was none of that stuff they talk about in English: the exploration, the falling in love, the romance. No. It just Was.

    Was: A recognition so deep and so old there was no space in Time between one and the other. It was a recognition that came from the body’s embedded knowledge, the knowing that this was what it was and it could never be anything different.

    It’s a Knowing that’s as Ancient as the language that reflects it. It’s a Knowing that needs no questions. And it’s the kind of Knowing that has merged so deeply that the word is only a superficial referent.

    We talk like that a lot.

    The site is called The PTSD Lab because I want to show people how they can live better by understanding how unseen tools have shaped their worlds. Like so many things, people who have imagined themselves to be “superior” have defined for themselves and consequently for us, who and how we are.

    This is called epistemic override: It’s the power of language to make you doubt your own reality. This is not a misunderstanding.

    The dismissal of us, the conversion from human to object happens at the moment someone says “Oh, I know what that is.” Because that sentence closes the field in that it denies any other possibilities and so converts our lived systems into their categories.

    When Semantics says, closes the field, its really is saying, There’s no other way to go from here. I’m saying, Yes, there is.

    The Collection here reflects my own interests in service to the goal. That intense need to say, People, it’s their language. Defeat the language by not accepting the finality and explore more deeply. More Freely.  My book was about Freedom and it means it.