Deconstructing subliminal messaging and implicit frames

[trenton]

I recently had an insight that changed my relationship with the mind. This is a huge topic that needs to be explored because the implications are significant for making sense of reality. I recognized that my mind seems to heavily bias consistency, but this consistency is predicated upon subliminal messages absorbed through cultural osmosis despite conscious disbelief. The outcome is inevitable inconsistency regardless of intellectual stance. In this thread I would like to explore how subliminal messages form a significant core of our worldviews while avoiding direct analysis. I have autism, so it may be the case that the autistic mind excels at detailed explicit content while struggling to name the implicit social messages that may be absorbed into the psyche regardless of apparent consistency. Changing my relationship with the mind in turn seems to open up a large range of possibilities for worldview and identity reorganization.

I first realized this through extensive self-reflection and deep trauma work. One thing I discovered is that although I consciously disbelieved in religion, the familiarity with the Christian religion causes it to feel as if it were more true due to my family and the religious symbols they used. The act of sanctifying religious figures such as Mary and Jesus caused me to feel as if it were more valid or true than other religions when in reality I logically understand that this is a consequence of cultural familiarity. Philosophers call this phenomenon an alief. This is distinct from a belief in that the belief is your logical position whereas the alief is a feeling in your body or mind that causes something to seem true independent of your intellectual beliefs. This commonly creates cognitive dissonance and a lack of inner harmony which in turn has created significant confusion throughout my life.

The same thing happens with a scary movie as it does with religion. When I watch a scary movie, I get absorbed into the narrative such that my body treats the monster as if it were real. I intellectually know the monster isn't actually real, but when the movie is over I still feel afraid because the monster might be lurking somewhere. The power of suggestion bypasses the intellectual layer and causes the body and mind to treat even fictional suggestions as if they were true despite the objections of the rational mind. This happened to me with religion when the repeated exposure to symbols caused part of me to treat religion as if it were true after which my mind started getting pulled in multiple confusing directions. It wasn't until I did a deep dive into systematically analyzing religion that this part of my identity finally collapsed upon me seeing the mechanism more clearly.

Implicit frames are also important for understanding traumatic experiences as they are often used to impose beliefs or aliefs which are not explicitly stated, but the body and mind treat them as if they were true anyway. One example would be if you were punished or shamed for anything as a child. The implied frame is that if you do something socially undesirable, then you are unlovable. I don't think children consciously think to themselves that they are unlovable, at least I never did that. However, my body learned to internalize a lot of shame which in turn made self-love feel impossible. It became more like a living reality that I am unacceptable to myself such that I must be changed before love is possible. In fact, I recall that I explicitly organized truth and honesty around self-love as I believed that self-love required me to accept the truth of who I was as the alternative would be an incomprehensible system of lies based on nothing real. I have since figured out a counter example to this as the ego can love itself in the sense that it splits part of itself off from the truth of its nature and denies it within itself out of fear such that it loves a divided fragment of its true nature. In that sense self-love is possible in a different form through self-deception, although it requires disowning shadow material. This seems to be how the narcissistic ego works due to fragile self-esteem, causing extreme and disproportionate reactions to shame which the ego tries to protect itself from.

Implicit frames applied more broadly seems to map well onto institutional dynamics involving power and authority. If I go to a Bible study, I notice that people often seem hesitant or give simplistic answers, possibly because they must hide their true thoughts or risk ostracization. If I go to a mental health professional, then if I point out the flaws in the scientific method as they are applying it and their context stripping as they apply studies inappropriately, then they will want to discredit me. If I engage in a political discussion and try to understand the bigger picture, then sometimes I end up seeming to threaten both the left and right because I prioritize understanding and appreciation of complexity over tribal allegiance. Those who challenge the assumed frame rather than taking it for granted seem to be threatening to power and authority in many different contexts.

I think I would like to get better at detecting implicit frames and subliminal messages. I practiced this at the aquarium by expressing excitement about seeing the birds. Although others were confused because the expectation is to see fish, this aquarium also had a penguin exhibit, therefore it is technically correct to go to some aquariums to look at birds.

This is probably a huge domain with major implications for worldview organization because the apparent rationality on the surface is often organized around underlying content that preceded rational analysis. This inevitably leads to contradictions and probably an ego dissolution under sufficient self-reflection. In my case, I try to get to this implicit layer by finding the surrounding content that stuck in my mind and then trying to deconstruct it with adult epistemology. This has its limitations, but if I can inwardly sense the general direction of the alief, then I may be able to study relevant archetypes and profiles to systematically organize reality into something comprehensible. This is what I did with religion in the case of the virgin archetype. It had an underlying meaning or significance which I analyzed because it stuck in my mind and was adjacent to trauma.

Consciousness seems to be a significant part of this work to try to sense what these implicit messages are which bias the direction of our reasoning due to bypassing the intellect. It requires using some degree of a felt sense and intuition combined with accumulated self-knowledge open to reorganization.

I believe one particular area which has impacted me significantly has been masculinity as it has been depicted in my life in America. The general underlying message is that the most visible forms of masculinity are the most dangerous and toxic forms. This included several cases of sexual assault and exploitation mixed with shame adjacent to sexual themes in religion. This was exacerbated by an absent father, creating an unhealthy environment for growing up due to an absence of healthy masculinity. Deconstructing masculinity both toxic and healthy seems necessary for me, but also hard to do. My psyche appears to have been largely feminized as a consequence of repeated messaging since childhood.