Depiction Part 26 - Depicting Humanity by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 26

Depicting Humanity

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts of the Depiction series are listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Well, now we're turning into Spring (Northern Earth Hemisphere) and the world is pretty much in a lot of trouble.  It's a mess.

So, how do writers of Alien Romance "depict" such a multi-leveled mess?

One of my favorite pastimes is to "explain" human behavior (individual behavior and mass behavior) to non-humans.

I've noticed something on TV News lately -- after the shift to interviewers asking only "leading questions" (never any real questions, only telling the interviewee what to say next), we now have almost every person "interviewed" as a talking head using a tone of voice that is either whining or condescending.

What do we mean by "whining" -- well, it's that tone of voice that projects "pleading" to understand what I'm saying.  It has an underlying texture of "complaint" to it, a whine for you to change your mind.  This is what a child does when parents say, "No."  They come back with, "But, you don't get it!"

What do we mean by condescending?  It's that tone you now hear on almost all voice-overs for commercials that are "telling" (not showing or arguing) you why you need to buy this product or service.  It's the way a parent talks to a child who just isn't old enough to understand complicated things.

So TV voices are using tones (in American English) that are either child-to-dense-minded-parent, or adult-to-incapable-child.

It has been a long time since I've heard the tune or underlying voice song behind words that indicates adult to adult communication.

I heard adult-to-adult in a short clip from some Trump Administration folks talking to the media, then it was gone.

The stark contrast between adult-to-adult tones and child-to-adult whining and adult-to-child "sweet-kind-condescension" just blows you away if you notice it.

So listen for it in the daily news clips you run across.  It is not in the words, but in the melody behind the words.  The tones are most easily spotted when the song does not match the words, the information behind conveyed.

There is an "announcer" song -- which has in it a flaw I've spotted where a word is emphasized by a pause afterward, wholly inappropriate for the grammatical flow of the sentence.

If you tune out the words and just listen to that underlying song you will notice how the song is chosen to affect the emotional response to the words.  The words require one sort of response, but the tone is urging (pleading for) another emotional response, usually an inappropriate one.

This analysis of how people talk, rather than of what they say, is one thing you'd have to explain in depth and in detail to a Vulcan, or any other non-human.  Suppose you are introducing an Alien, a First Contact Situation, to this world we are suffering through today.  What would you say to this Alien, and what TONE OF VOICE (song behind the words) would you use?

There is a rule in public speaking that I've seen disobeyed consistently, and then gradually expunged from our TV Voices (talking heads).  That rule is, "Never Uptalk."

Uptalk is a song where assertions are inflected with an upward tone, as if asking a question when finishing a declarative sentence.  It is common in Southern USA dialects, and if you move from North to South, you will pick it up without noticing.

Uptalk is passive-aggressive -- since you aren't actually saying something is so, but rather asking, you can't be countered.  You take the weaker position in the exchange, and as the weaker you can't be attacked or the other person is a bully.  Passive-aggressive.

How do you explain Uptalk to an Alien?

By tone of voice and facial expressions, humans convey vast amounts of information separately from the denotation of words.  If the three channels of communication carry conflicting messages, we often conclude the human is lying.  If the channels carry the same, harmonious, information, we believe the information is true, or at least the person is honest.

How do we tell if an Alien is lying?

More interesting -- how does an Alien tell if we are lying?  And how do you explain to an Alien that since all the humans know this person is lying, it is OK -- everyone knows what he "really means."

By matching the words, tone of voice, and body language (whether the smile reaches the eyes, and other tiny signals), we figure out what we think about what is being said.

Thinking requires concentrated effort.  Generally speaking, people are too busy exhausting themselves on daily tasks, chores, and life-or-death-decisions (like how to pay for health care).  Just staying even takes all our strength.

So living in today's world, we may pause to figure out what a news item means, or which news anchors are lying, or what interviews are 'canned' (rigged, scripted).  It's hard work trying to sort out which of the 3 streams of information you get from television (words, tone, body language) is the true one, and which are the lies.

So once a human has figured our what "the truth" is, they paste a label on that truth and try very hard not to revisit that decision because all subsequent decisions will have to be changed, too.

Most people want to be honest with themselves (at least), even politicians, but don't especially value being completely honest with all other people.  We select who to be "honest with" -- and that is a kind of intimacy called "being close."

Politicians do that.  They hold one, personal and private position, sometimes sharing it with other elected politicians of similar rank, and a totally different position publicly, a position crafted to get votes.

Thus if there is a "hack" of a private communication (such as an email) which reveals the private position, and how it differs from the public position, the public often stands aghast.  Then things settle down, and the public slaps a label on the individual whose private position was revealed.  The problem is just that one person, not all politicians.  And you tell the difference by the labels.

In fact, the whole commercial industry is based on labeling -- a type of labeling called "branding."

If you want to buy a GM car, you want it to have a GM label on it somewhere.  If you want Dole pineapple, you want to see the Dole logo.

Why do you want certain brands of an item, but not other brands?

Shortcut thinking.  Radio, TV, Magazine, media advertising methods use that "tone of voice" plastered over words that do not match to engrave on your mind that this Brand is better than that Brand.  And it might actually be better.  You never know until you try it, yet when you try it, your preconceived notions may color your tasting experience.

Labels matter when they are shared among humans.  Labels, short-cut-thinking, accepting the opinion of others who "know better" is learned in childhood.  At some point you are expected to mature, to shed the thought habits of childhood, and "think for yourself."  But thinking is hard work, so after you've thought, you do not want to re-think.  So you slap a label on your conclusion and move on with the business of survival.

Explain that mental shortcut I'm calling "Labeling" to the Alien you are falling in love with.  Can you understand his explanation of how his people use shortcut thinking, labeling, whining, condescension and Uptalk?  Do they even have an equivalent?

As an example of an emotionally charged yet completely abstract (i.e. thematic) element in Depicting Humanity, consider political science, philosophy, and history.

Modern record keeping is allowing us to revisit and rethink Labels invented about a hundred years ago, more or less.  Printing has allowed even minor works to be preserved.  Historians study these records, as do journalists, and often exhume Labels invented to cover certain cultural Idea Bundles that were "sold" to whole communities in the past.

Explaining individual behavior to Aliens is easy compared to explaining our mass movements, shifting cultural norms, and vicious arguments over what the facts were, and what those facts have now become.

Yes, as part of the labeling shortcuts human cognition uses, we change the "values" of the facts as time progresses.

Labels used in short-cut thinking are like the X, Y, W, symbols used in algebra -- they stand-for-something rather than be that something.  So we can manipulate labels the way we manipulate terms in algebra -- it is abstract thinking, and the kind of Aliens you could plausibly use in a Science Fiction Romance would very likely use this type of thinking.

Assemble a group of Ideas under a Label, (say X, for example) then juxtapose that group of ideas to a different group (say Y, for example).  Then try to find a relationship between them that holds through time -- perhaps requiring the invention of another Label or Symbol called W.

For humans, I expect this systematic explanation of human belief systems is impossible.  Humans as a group, (it seems to me) will fight any process that threatens to reveal the truth about their behavior.  We love and admire irrationality as a method of tricking our most dire foes.

Thus, definitions of Labels used historically change -- I expect in a 20 year cycle, and an 80 year cycle.

Academics, today, are struggling to redefine and clarify the Label "Fascist" -- I've seen at least 5 mutually exclusive definitions bandied about on social media, often with legitimate academic credentials attached.

Since these definitions usually come in cold text only, there is no tone of voice or body language to analyze, just words.

We have equally shapeless, whipped cream type Labels being shouted about - Liberal, Conservative, Religions, Atheist, etc.  (e.g. Zuckerberg suddenly came out with the statement that he now sees Religion as important last year, and some instantly speculated he's planning to run for public office.)

Journalists and Academics (often with identical credentials) are trying to Group the beliefs and tenets under sharply contrasting Labels, so they can call them X, Y, W and manipulate them before your eyes.

You can't make this stuff up, but maybe you can explain it to a visiting Alien just discovering humanity.  If you can get this point across, you may hit the best seller list because people will talk  (shout, argue, get red in the face, and cry inconsolably) about your novel.

You hit an emotional core response when you rip Labels apart and re-arrange what those labels stand for.  Imagine the disruption when a packaged food your family relies on is under botulism recall!  Now imagine if a Label you are absolutely sure of is "recalled" and re-formulated.  Explain to your Alien Character just how disruptive his people arriving on this planet will be to our nice, neat, reliable labeling system.

As an example, or perhaps inspiration in how to go about writing an explanation of human short-cut thinking and what happens to us when our short-cuts are disrupted, read this article all the way through.

You already know the information in this article -- Donald Trump is a Populist.  But there are dozens of definitions of Populist going around, some from serious academics, all mutually exclusive.  Historically, the Label Fascist is being redefined, reorganizing a Group of behaviors some of which were evident in Italy, and some not.

Don't worry about deciding which Label is accurate and applies to whom.  Read carefully with an eye to explaining to your Alien Character how humans use (and abuse) Labeling as a cognitive process.

This is a difficult exercise.  I warn you, the article will make you fume and stomp, maybe shout and snap at anyone who talks to you for the next day.

While you read, remember that "right-wing" means the opposite in Europe than it does in the USA, and it means something entirely different in the Middle East (explain THAT to your Alien).  I have no idea what "right-wing" might mean in China but I'm betting the meaning does not resemble anything I've ever heard of.

The point of this exercise is to gain the kind of perspective on humanity that Gene Roddenberry had when he invented "Number One" (the emotionless female) and Spock (the half-human Alien), then combined the two Characters.

Roddenberry was fascinated by "emotion" -- actually explored it from another angle in a failed pilot he made where a human being was from a culture where the worst invective was to Label something Inconvenient.

Because he was interested in how humans were affected by Emotion, he created a Character who "had no emotions" (we know he walked that back later, due to the exigencies of commercialized fiction).

That's what you can do with this exercise.  Create an Alien who has NO LABELS -- who does not understand the cognitive shortcut we use when we apply Labels (or Branding).

If you can succeed in reading this (explosive) article without blowing your top, you may be able to create such a Character who will haunt readers for generations.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/3/14154300/fascist-populist-trump-democracy

Donald Trump isn’t a fascist
A leading expert on 1930s-era politics explains that Trump is a right-wing populist, not a fascist — and the distinction matters.
Updated by Sheri Berman  Jan 3, 2017, 1:00pm EST

Of course, an expert must know what they're talking about.  Would your Alien assume she did?

Pay particular attention to the article section:
Four key characteristics of fascism (not in evidence in Trumpism)

Note the contrast with Liberalism.  Maybe you thought you were a Conservative?

All of these labels are tossed about in this article as if they are "real" -- as if everyone agrees on the definitions.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Note also that the "four characteristics" are treated independent variables.  There is no thematic connection among them (as would be required in a novel).

If you have one of the four variables, that does not mean that you have the other three.  The other three are not generated by the one -- not consequential.

What if your Alien's psychology could not encompass a notion of thinking beings functioning in such cognitive chaos?

Explain how humans can believe contradictory things.

Given that humans do believe contradictory things, why should the Galactic Community accept humans as intelligent?

You might also want to explain to your Alien Character how Fascism, as defined by this article (or maybe some other articles about it) differs from government by Aristocracy.

How is a Dictator different from a King?

A King controls life or death over individual citizens, is the chief justice of the supreme court, is the speaker of the house, and the president pro-tem of the senate, as well as the superior to every corporation's CEO.  In fact, a King is CEO of all the businesses in his Land.  The King owns all the Land and grants tenancy to Dukes etc.  The King can revoke tenancy of anyone at any time (if he can get away with it politically).

So how do Fascists differ from Kings?

We write a lot about historical times when Kings ruled, and we have projected the Aristocratic model of government into Fantasy, and even Galactic Civilizations.

We also use the constitutional monarchy model in Galactic Civilization - is that Fascist?

Suppose your Alien objects to your explanation, "But the role of government is to protect the individual from government!"

Do you answer with the ancient wisdom of humanity that without the strong hand of government, humans would eat each other alive?  Humans misbehave if nobody tells them what to do.

So read
http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/3/14154300/fascist-populist-trump-democracy

if it's still available - or if not, Google fascism and see what you find as a definition, then explain it to your Alien.

In that explanation you come up with, you will find your Alien Romance Theme -- and you will find what barrier Love must Conquer to forge your human/Alien couple.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 2: Battle of Ideas - A Grifter, A Shyster, and A Priest Walk Into A Bar

Theme-Conflict Integration 

Part 2: Battle of Ideas

A Grifter, A Shyster, and A Priest Walk Into A Bar

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Part 1 - about J. J. Abrams and sexism is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

Last week we discussed Theme-Marketing Integration, and this week we'll look at a particular best selling writer's recent novel for examples about how Theme and Marketing can be Integrated using Theme-Conflict Integration.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-marketing-integration-part-1-star.html

So what if the "Bar" that the Grifter, the Shyster, and the Priest walk into doesn't serve liquor, but justice? What if the Bar is the Court of Law?  Or perhaps, the Bar is an Alien  Court of Law?

Art is an selective depiction of reality.

That selectivity is best illustrated by the cartoonist's art.

Here's an example from Dick Morris Reports back in January, 2016 when Trump and Cruz went at each other on stage at the Fox Business Republican Debate.

         

Note the YELLOW hair - strokes vaguely evocative of Trump's haircut.

Note the nose-to-nose post, squashing both (in reality different) noses flat against each other.

Note the bloodshot eyeballs shooting out of their heads.  Conflict is "eyeball to eyeball" in modern parlance, but it is not meant literally.  Here in this selective recreation of reality, you see it literally.

Note the boxing gloves, posed fist to fist -- the suggestion is of a "hit" but each hitting the other on the very well armored protection of the glove.  "The Gloves Come Off" is a metaphor for bloody fighting, fighting for real, not prize-fighting.

Note how this selective graphic representation somehow conjures "reality" in your mind's eye. That is exactly what writers do when "hooking" you into a novel.  That is a graphic representation of how to create an  opening paragraph. It is also an entire essay on how to create a book cover.

Remember the line, used politically earlier than January, "this is not a cage-match."  Meaning, it's not for real. Nobody's whole life is in danger. It's just a game played until the winner gets a prize -- it is not a grudge-match, it is a Game.

Politics is called, "The Game Of Politics."  Internationally, The Great Game - where politicians use spies to maneuver nations into a Hobson's Choice, or Prisoner's Dilemma.

It is not called the "Literature of Ideas."  Nor is politics termed, "A Meeting Of Minds."  It is a Game.

So who are the "players" of this Game?

Maybe it is "Politicians" vs. "Voters?"

And what is the name of the Game?

The Protection Racket?  The Confidence Racket (or Con Man)?  Snakeoil Salesman? Scammer? Phishing?

Note the title of this piece -- A Grifter, A Shyster, A Priest.  These are three Attributes that are  components of every living person.

We all know what a grifter is from watching the TV Series Leverage.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Nigerian-Job/dp/B001N4RAEQ/

"Shyster" is a derogatory term for lawyer, or sometimes any businessman who relies on deception or fraud.

"Priest" here means your Inner Priest, your conscience, spiritual sensitivity, sense of right and wrong, of fair and just. That Inner Priest configures your personal individual identity by patching together the crazy-quilt of beliefs, rules of thumb, maxims, old wive's tales, and cliches by which you live your life and make major spur of the moment decisions.

So grifters and shysters pretend to be something they are not.  Do writers do that?  Do writers have to do that?  Is all back cover copy fraudulent? Does being in the business of self-publishing make you a shyster?  After all, you're selling the "snake oil" of the Happily Ever After Ending.  Are writers all con artists?

What exactly is a Con Artist?

Most people probably think that all politicians are con artists, except the one oddball who seems trustworthy.  Many bar fights start from disagreements over which politician is trustworthy.

Here's an article that explains what an app detected in voice analysis of Presidential candidates:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/beyond-verbal_n_3378784.html

And here's another article that explains the same thing from a different perspective.  Compare these two articles and any others you find about this app, and reconstruct - as an archeologist does - the original press release.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/16/new-study-reveals-which-presidential-hopeful-is-the-low-stress-candidate/

Both articles seem to be made from the same press release, a publicity barrage that has to have had immense amounts of money behind it, yes, but also a marketing genius leveraging the USA political calendar (these articles appeared deep into January, right before the Iowa Causes.)

The company was trying to sell you an app.  And they went on a campaign to trick you into wanting it by tying it to the headlines of the day - the most popular and riveting spectator sport of January - the Presidential Primary Season. (just like Basketball Season or Deer Season.)

When you see articles announcing something like this app product -- not paid ads, but ARTICLES that might as well be paid ads, that sell you on wanting something better than a paid ad could sell you -- you are looking at marketing.  It is a whole profession, usually incompatible with the skills of a writer. Today, we conflate News with Publicity.

Each newspaper or magazine editor requires the writers to take these topical press releases and craft an article "slanted" toward their special readership's interest. So each article is ostensibly about something different -- but the core content is the press release.

Fiction writing skills let you take a press release and craft a newspaper or magazine article from that release.

In writing fiction,  you learn to take a huge mass of data (your story Idea) and re-arrange it into a straight-line (plot) that will interest (story) your particular target readership.

Writing such a release is an entirely different profession.

Today's self-publishing novelists need to master both skill sets because "publishing" means PUBLICITY, or press-release.  Getting widely distributed "news" sources to focus their readers' attention on your novel is very hard.

Writing an article from a press release is very similar to writing an advertisement, or 'cover blurb' from a press release.  Both craft skills require sorting through a jumble of facts to "bring to the surface" or emphasize certain "selected traits" (like the blond hair in the cartoon above) to "characterize" the novel.

You characterize a novel as belonging to a particular genre, appealing to a specific reader.

You selectively recreate the reality of what is in the novel, drawing a caricature, a cartoon, of the novel itself.

And like the two articles linked above, each depicting a larger reality, you take your own "larger reality" of the novel you have written, and whack-and-whittle it down by selecting TRAITS (like the trademarked "hair") and leaving out all the rest.

It is what you leave out that (for you) was the whole point of writing the novel to begin with. In fact, that most important part or point is often edited out before publication by a major house.

You can learn a lot about what to  "select" for your cartoon representation of your novel, and what to leave to the imagination, by studying the Battle Of Politicians and the Race For The White House (will they ever paint it another color?).

What you learn has to do with not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Just like that cartoon does not "tell the truth," and just like the two articles about an app being publicized do not "tell the truth" about the app.

You 'select' the traits of your novel that connect  best to your target audience.  Thus, since Trump's hair was the subject of so much attention at first, his trademark became his hair-transplant comb-over style.

So look at your Theme, state your theme a number of different ways until you hit on vocabulary and imagery that "depicts" the topic the readership has been most deeply involved in lately. In other words, rip your theme from the headlines.  Make your THEME recognizable to your target audience, so book browsers see it and say, "I love that kind of book."

The Conflicting elements have to be depicted in your blurb, too.

Note in the cartoon how the eyes pop -- I mean, really!  I wouldn't believe that image of Aliens -- but one non-verbal glance and you know what that popping eyeballs image means, even if you miss the gloves.

Donald Trump's college degree is in Business, not Law.

Cruz made a neat point of that by saying he wouldn't take legal advice from Trump.  But we all know that Trump got the advice he's spouting at Cruz from his own Lawyers.  Lawyers get to know Presidential candidates in hopes of a Supreme Court appointment in the future.

So the "conflict" in that cartoon is "lawyers vs. lawyers." The lawyers are using the politicians to fight a "proxy war."

Lawyers are famous for a) picking fights (as in divorces that would have been amicable if not for the lawyers getting involved) and b) backing people into a corner so they will "settle" whatever lawsuit.

Lawyers are also famous for charging a lot of money -- but nothing like what Publicists charge.  Lawyers, though, being lawyers seem to get to keep a bigger chunk of the fees paid.

Under current law in the USA, it is virtually legal for lawyers to behave like grifters.  To become a rich grifter, get a law degree.

What do lawyers do that is patterned on what grifters do (or is it vice-versa?).

If you've won the lottery or been in a traffic accident, a building collapse, or sold a product that some odd individual got injured using, you will find yourself surrounded three deep by Lawyers looking to "protect" you - trying to scare you with visions of people attacking you or denying you justice.  Lawyers will promise you, as the erstwhile victim, not only their protection but a windfall profit, a huge sum of money for doing nothing but "suffering."

A majority of Lawyers don't behave that way.  The small segment of that population that does "ambulance chase" and victimize the victims, are often called shysters, though not all shysters are actually lawyers.

The Idea that Grifters and Shysters have something in common is like Trump's hair - a vivid item that can be extracted from a confusing mass of information and used to depict something that a lot of people remember.

But it is an abstract Idea.

So the title of this piece is A Grifter, A Shyster and A Priest.

The "Priest" is a symbol for a person who is steeped in ideas, motivated by the abstract, and very selective about objectives.

The Grifter and the Shyster operate via emotion.  They get their mark or their client to do something the mark/client would see as self-destructive if not for the emotion aroused.

The Grifter and the Shyster play on emotion, and they both choose the emotion they evoke in their target.

The Grifter arouses Greed.

It is always said, and I've found it to be true, that if you have no Greed in your soul, you can not be fleeced by a con man.  If the price is "too good to be true" - it is not the price you will pay.   Everyone knows that intellectually (the Priest Within You told you that).  Don't fall for a bargain - because it is not a bargain.

So when Politicians offer you something for nothing -- or point to someone else they will trick into paying so you can get something -- you only fall for the trick if your Greed is in charge of your opinions.

The Shyster arouses Fear.

It is always said that you have nothing to fear but fear itself -- and that is such a truth that all your readers know it.  When you're afraid, you twitch and jerk around in ill-coordinated actions that are more self-destructive than self-protective.

So when Politicians offer to allay your fears, to deal with what threatens you, to protect you from ( big bad corporations; alien invaders; your neighbor who owns a gun) you only fall for the trick if you are afraid.

When you are afraid, the Priest Withing You who is more focused on Ideas, Intellect, principles of faith, can't shout loudly enough to be heard.  Fear is a brain-noise that will always take charge of your actions.

So a theme can be expressed (cartoon depiction of your novel for a back cover blurb) as "The Masses Can Be Manipulated."

"The Masses" would refer to the old political theory that most people are illiterate, stupid, and behave like a herd of sheep,  or cattle.  The Leaders can easily trick the Masses into doing whatever the Leader wants simply by arousing certain emotions.

Romance novels turn on a variation of this. Everyone wants to be loved, so the declaration, "I love you" changes everything.

There is such a thing as a Greed For Love - someone so desperately hungry to be loved that they believe the grifter's offer, "I'll marry you and cherish and protect you forever if you'll just have sex with me now."  You can translate that dialog dynamic into Politics very easily if you see electing someone as handing them a blank check to your bank account.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/15/maria-konnikova-interview-new-book-the-confidence-game-review-scams

The Grifter can use Greed for any missing emotion to manipulate the unsuspecting into self-destructive behavior.  Some people have Greed for Power -- offer them Power without a price-tag (like discipline and responsibility) and the mark will do anything.  Remember Spiderman -- with great power comes great responsibility.  Well, what if it didn't?  What if great power could be had without responsibility?  Then you have the novel about the ne'er-do-well Scion of a Great House who gambles away his inheritance and goes into debt.

To integrate a theme such as "The Masses Can Be Manipulated" you can define the conflict as Leader vs Follower.

Take the famous maxim, "A Sucker Is Born Every Day."  That's a theme.  What if humanity meets up with Aliens who don't bear suckers every day?

Or reverse that - and what if humanity were not producing a new sucker every day, but aliens at war out in the galaxy are?

Jean Johnson's prequel to her famous series Theirs Not To Reason Why is called The First Salik War, and Book 1 is titled The Terrans.  Book 2, The V'Dan is now available.

Here's my discussion of The Terrans:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/reviews-20-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

And here's where to get The V'Dan
http://www.amazon.com/VDan-First-Salik-War/dp/0425276937/

It's a First Contact novel with leading Characters, an Alien Prince in a psychic/sexual bond with a human woman who is a Politician, a Prisoner's Dilemma maneuver, and clash of notions of what constitutes Honorable Behavior.

On Jean Johnson's future Earth, humans have finally come to their senses and eliminated discrimination by skin color, elevated honesty in Politics to a level where failure to be honorable and truthful means corporal punishment by public caning, and utter physical humiliation.

In other words, fear keeps power-lust in check for law makers and especially law-enforcers and military commanders (this book introduces a Caning law previously applied only to police to be used to hold military commanders and new recruits in check). Every morning, each government official has to recite an Oath to be Honorable.  It's long, complicated, abstract, and the repeated recitation has a similar effect that prayer does. It is designed to engrave on the psyche that when you act in the name of others, you are responsible for the consequences.

Greed is controlled by Fear.

The expected signature behavior that proves Greed (for power, money, sex, anything) is in complete check by fear of Caning is Honorable Behavior.

"Honorable Behavior" is presented, in this series, as a set of rules that is objectively true, as clear and precisely determined as any scientific fact.

For most readers, the word "Honorable" means something hard, absolute, easily understood and recognized in the behavior of others.

Blake Snyder illustrates the core-value shared across the USA as "honorable behavior" as "save the cat" (take a personal risk to save the helpless).  Compare the thinking behind Snyder's image of "saving a cat" to the thinking behind that Trump/Cruz cartoon.

The thing is, in the USA today, we do not share a common creed of Honorable Behavior.

What is honorable to one (murdering a daughter who refuses to dress correctly, thus insults her parents and dishonors them) is considered death-penalty-material to others.

The difference between an illegal alien and a drug smuggler is that while they might both promise to sell you heroin, the drug smuggler will deliver.  Which one is the Honorable one?

Generation to generation the definition of what behavior is Honorable changes.

For example, in the early twentieth century, an apology was considered false and worthless if given in response to a demand for an apology.  In the 19th century, if someone uttered an insult about another person, ("You're a Horse Thief!" or "You Cheated At Cards!") the insulted had the right to deck the insulter (or shoot him dead).

In the 21st century everyone takes offense at any statement (true or not) and demands an apology, which, when choked out bitterly is still regarded as valid, and the matter as settled.  There was a time when the statement of a truth could never be considered an insult, however rude it might be.

In fact, this "I'm offended, so you must apologize even if you didn't think you did anything wrong" attitude now governs international affairs.

Heads of State demand apologies from other Heads of State -- not individual to individual, but whole countries to whole countries, involving people who never knew anything about it and have no idea what is true in  the matter.

Jean Johnson, in The V'Dan, has noticed this rise of a new custom regarding insults and apologies.

Johnson has shown (not told) how the "I demand an Apology because I feel offended and therefore you must act to assuage my feelings, never mind how you feel, only my feelings count..." attitude can be used by an Interstellar Ambassador from Earth to illustrate Earth's superior Morality.

Because Earth's Inner Priest's sense of Honorable Behavior is so superior, the lead character is Honor Bound to force Earth's behavior norms down the throats of aliens during First Contact negotiations.

All of this is rationalized by the fact that the Aliens are treating the Earth humans as if they were children, not adults -- not allowed to spend large sums of money to buy supplies for the Earth Embassy building, not allowed to buy liquor, not allowed to drive.

It is a genuine First Contact issue (and absolutely hilarious to read).  But the reason the issue is an emergency to be taken up immediately with the Alien head of state is that these Aliens keep insulting the humans by treating them as children.  Other human groups might consider the Aliens' penchant for protecting children to be a sign the Aliens are kind, considerate and honorable.

Johnson's Earth humans take offense, and because they feel offended, are honor bound to force the Aliens to apologize and adopt Earth's then-current human standards.  This novel series is full of such absolutely gorgeous work.

The way Johnson depicts interstellar politics plays into the current USA fear of being irretrievably emotionally damaged by the words of others.  It is, from this, very clear why Johnson is a national best selling author.

To the target audience for this novel, mere words are an existential threat that must be countered by wielding force majeure.  An insult flung can cause a mortal wound.

The V'Dan depicts with searing accuracy how the reader's Earth currently manages international affairs.  And this novel portends, just as our current election-cycle portends, that change is seething below the surface, about to erupt perhaps violently.

The enemy in the interstellar war of Johnson's series is a species that eats Alien sentients. The tastiest type of food they know is the flesh of sentients of species other than themselves (though I believe they do eat each other).  It doesn't matter how alien the body chemistry is, these Salik will eat anything sentient.  The Salik are Greed Personified.

The V'Dan are humans whose ancestors left earth almost 10,000 years ago, and colonized a planet (now a lot of planets) so far away from Earth the region has not been explored by Earth's budding interstellar united planets.  Somehow, many earth plants and animals were carried with the humans who eventually colonized a planet and became The V'Dan.

The V'Dan have many non-human allies in the fight against Greed Personified, the Salik. But that coalition is losing the fight against the Salik, and they know it.  They are Afraid.

So, Jean Johnson, a very well known National Best Selling author, has crafted theme and conflict around Greed, Fear, and The Priest Within.  It's a beautiful mix of carefully selected attributes, brought to the fore just like Trump's hair and the popping eyeballs.

That's what Best Selling Writers do!  Dissect any Best Seller, and you will find a pattern just like this -- something that reflects what is the most prominent Theme in the headlines divided up into recognizable adversaries who naturally conflict.  Personification and Dramatization are subsidiary techniques. Ripping theme from the headlines is the primary requirement.

The conflict is the exact conflict inside all of us -- the Grifter's Mark who believes in something for nothing; the Shyster's client who sees something to be afraid of, and The Inner Priest who knows "the right thing to do" but is not in charge.

The basic human animal will be emotion-driven, though the human spirit reaches for the ineffable.

Our current civilization has surrendered to the animal nature of humanity.  We see that in the rise and sustained popularity of Romance novel plots turning on the absolute irresistibility of sexual urges.  The V'dan and its prequel The Terrans, turns on the formation of the psychic bonded pair that will literally die (both of them) if denied sexual intimacy. Star Trek did something similar with Pon Farr, but Star Trek got that from much older science fiction works.

That inner dichotomy between the animal body and human spirit can easily be roused into Conflict.

All audiences recognize the Greed & Fear vs. Voice of Reason or Righteousness.

Look again at that cartoon.  Why do you understand what it says?

Yes, people will disagree about what it means, but everyone can see what it says.

That's what Jean Johnson accomplishes to earn the appellation, "Best Selling" writer.

Now, go watch the Politicians hurl insults at each other and demand apologies as if they are in the grip of Greed for Power and Fear of Humiliation.

Remember your early childhood. Did you ever lust after enough power to make your parents stop preventing you from doing what you wanted to do?  "When I grow up, I'm going to stay up all night!"

Greed for Power (especially over your own life and destiny) is absolutely basic to the human animal.

Now think back to your childhood, and remember how you eventually learned to refrain from some action, "...Mommy won't let!" you would tell  your friends luring you into misbehaving (then you'd probably do it anyway, then lie about it).

Eventually, you learned to do it anyway, lie about it, and not get  caught in the lie.

And beyond that,  you learned it's really better not to do that anyway because it's counter productive.

The different self-perceptions of Child vs. Adult is the pivot upon which the novel The V'Dan turns.  Just how insulting is it to  you to be treated as a child? Then why do you treat your children that way?  Does truth have anything to do with it?

Only with many decades under your belt do you arrive at "mature" considerations.  You no longer lunge greedily after the proverbial Free Lunch -- because you've learned the price.  Therefore, you have nothing to lie about.

To arrive at a life-stage where you're not greedy because you have all you need, not fearful because the worst has happened ( bankruptcy, divorce, being fired, whatever) and you handled it, you have the luxury of listening to what that Inner Priest has to say about right and wrong, truth and lies.

With enough years and enough experiences, we all turn into Gandalf or Yoda -- serene, confident, wise, having resolved that conflict between Greed, Fear and the Inner Priest.

When someone slings insults at such a Gandalf/Yoda Figure, that Figure is not insulted.  Such a Figure is not insulted by being treated as a child. Knowing that what comes out of a person's mouth says more about the speaker than about the topic being spoken of, the Figure does a kind of Emotional Judo.

Judo is based on the physics of using the opponent's strength and momentum to defeat the opponent. Many techniques of Judo and Karate are based on just not-being where the blow lands.

That's not a technique of "dodging" a blow.  It's a matter of letting the force the opponent emits expend itself on the opponent, not on you.

That's what the mature learn about insults. Let the insulter hoist himself on his own petard and hang there in humiliation.

Demanding an apology is an admission that the blow landed on its target -- it is an admission of guilt.

Demanding an apology often seems childish, petulant, an admission of weakness before the superiority of the insulter.

In emotional judo, the target flows aside and lets the force of the insult boomerang onto the insulter.

Look again at this article about stress level measurements in Presidential Candidates voices:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/16/new-study-reveals-which-presidential-hopeful-is-the-low-stress-candidate/

The article notes that the only candidate they measured whose voice rarely shows the kind of emotional stress (expected of Greed or Fear or lying) is Donald Trump.  He's gotten more insults and death-threats than most of the rest combined by now.  He sometimes offhandedly mentions that someone should apologize, but he rarely "demands" apologies except where appropriate.  His attitude toward apologies seems to be that they are good for the soul, so do it for your own sake.  If not, no skin off my nose. (note the nose-to-nose posture in that cartoon.)

He's old enough to know those who attempt to destroy will destroy themselves if you just stay out of the way.  For that matter, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (and Biden and Bloomberg) are old enough to have arrived at that maturity.

Perhaps this article's observation of relative voice stress indicates what the pundits have missed in analyzing Donald Trump's initial, wild popularity. They have assumed the voters are "angry" (anger is most often the emotional response of the coward to feeling fear, so calling voters "angry" is an insult).  Maybe they were wrong?

The pundits have assumed the voters are  "the masses" (sheep, followers, herd animals), instead of individuals. When panicked, the masses, the voters, stampede after a "bell-weather" or leader.

The pundits identify Trump as the leader.  The voters are just blindly following this leader out of simple minded anger.

The article shows, somewhat scientifically, that Trump's trumpeting is not stoked by anger.

He's the calm one.

Voters chose him as the best in the field (OK,  not necessarily any good, just the best of the lot, until he disqualifies himself) because he's not afraid and he's not lying.  What he says may not be true or factual, but he believes it sincerely.

He's not stressed when he says he can handle all the President's problems. (Little Does He Know!)

He is confident and relaxed, not running in fear or greed for power. He's not a "Leader" -- he's not greedy for power or fearing he'll lose. He's a goal-oriented achiever, not caring if anyone follows him.  He just goes and does his projects. He doesn't need followers.  He hires specialists.  He's undaunted, calm, confident because of his life experience, and he (unlike the other candidates who have this trait) lets it show. And that's why he's popular --  you can hear it in his voice in person. He's not stressed.

Study Trump's antics on stage, especially his epic "equal opportunity insulter" tactics, and try modeling your Leader/Hero Character after him and see what you get.  Understand the insult as a social instrument by reading a lot of Regency Romances written thirty years ago (mostly free on Kindle). Drawing Room insults are an artform well worth reviving in the interstellar era.

Such a novel won't work in today's market, as Jean Johnson well knows.  She's a best seller because she does  not use Trump as a model.  Such a Character would not be plausible to her target readership. Trump is a salesman, a marketer, a branding master.  His target audience responds to him, just exactly the way you want your target audience to respond to your Romance Novels.  So study him.

The lesson about non-stressed, confident Voices prevailing over anger, greed, fear and panic is the core theme used by Gordon R. Dickson in his long, exemplary, much celebrated best selling series, The Dorsai.

http://www.amazon.com/Dorsai-Childe-Cycle-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00GS9FLJM/

Confidence backed by real strength is a military tactic -- great strength, used properly, never comes to blows. Wars are won by maneuvers, by what the adversary knows you can do, not explosions. Destruction is counter-productive.  The Romans learned that and coined the term Pyrrhic Victory.

Combine Gordon R. Dickson with Keith Laumer's Retief novels, ..
http://www.amazon.com/Envoy-New-Worlds-Retief-Book-ebook/dp/B00NWJ7446

...about professional diplomat Retief engaged in official interstellar diplomacy, much like Jean Johnson's characters but far more effectively, and find a Theme and a Conflict you can Integrate into a Best Selling Series.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 5 - How To Create Using SHOW DON'T TELL

Theme-Symbolism Integration
 Part 5
How To Create Using SHOW DON'T TELL
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg  

Here is the article, published August 2015, that we'll discuss today.  It contains the clue to solving a fiction writer's income problem.

http://www.redstate.com/2015/08/26/donald-trump-takes-page-history/

Here are the previous posts on use of theme.  Keep all these points on THEME in mind while reading about the comparison of Trump and Reagan in that redstate.com article.  (yes, it's a far right website, but this particular article reveals a truth writers need to absorb and use to crack the income problem.)

Foundation Posts on Use of Theme:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
-- on structuring nested Themes into a novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
-- defining the terminology I use in these posts to distinguish plot from story and why they are indistinguishable.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html
-- compares use of Theme in a movie with the use in a Novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html
-- explains something arcane about how to create a symbol to explain a truly Alien Civilization to modern Human readers.

Remember, I pointed out that fiction writers in general do not even make minimum wage if you consider the hours spent vs the income over the years.  You need to get up to where they are making blockbuster movies from your books to have a decent wage, and when that happens at the end of your  career, they tax your income as if you always made that amount and always will.

They cancelled the provision in the tax code that writers always depended on to allow them to recoup the losses on time invested.

It was called Income Averaging, and allowed you to pay taxes on your average income over the previous 5 years, not on the "windfall" that comes through when your publisher suddenly decides (probably because of a writer's organization audit) to pay what they've owed you for 10 years.

As a result, fiction writers are trapped in pauper status virtually forever.

To smooth out income and make up the difference, most fiction writers do something else to earn a living.

One way out of the trap is to write non-fiction as a "work-for-hire" which earns you current income as wages, not royalties.

Here is where I discuss that:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Here is the point that redstate.com article makes that applies to fiction writing, and how to create using SHOW DON'T TELL.  It also ILLUSTRATES (shows without telling) exactly why fiction writers must master this technique.

-----------quote-----------
Someone else had a talent for doing this. Ronald Reagan. (heads up, if you accuse me of saying Trump is another Reagan I swear by the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress that I will ban you)

From Hedrick Smith’s epic and under-appreciated 1987 book The Power Game: How Washington Works.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Game-How-Washington-Works-ebook/dp/B009QJMU1S/
This is the set up. CBS News’ Lesley Stahl was convinced that Ronald Reagan is an empty suit. A nincompoop. Someone who was skating along on imagery and who was pretty shallow and inconsequential. So during the 1984 campaign they took advantage of Reagan’s visit to a flag factory to use that as a metaphor for just how bad Reagan was. This is some of the text from the television report (what follows are jpgs via Google Books because I don’t have access to my library right now).

---------------end quote----------

Here are the png images included in that article excerpted from Google Books.  I recommend you look up this book on Google Books or Kindle or whatever.  It was a best seller for a reason.  You can make your fortune using your fiction skills to write books like this one.  Here are the 3 excerpts the article writer chose to include, without the comments interpolated between.  I recommend you read the actual article on redstate.com (nevermind, just read it.  It won't kill you to read it.)

----------excerpts from Google Books----------------

-----------end excerpts----------------

-------QUOTE from redstate.com article-------------

The reason Stahl had to rely on those visuals for her hit piece was because Reagan and his staff carefully stage managed the visual aspect of all of his appearances. They knew, as Scott Adams says up top, that the visual is about 10 : 1 in impact when compared to the verbal. No matter what Reagan said, the imagery was going to be what the television viewer remembered.

This is what people are failing to understand about Trump. The political class thinks he is a buffoon (a buffoon who could buy and sell his critics by the truckload, mind you) because he refuses to play by the traditional rules. As Leon pointed out, he is operating so far outside the political experience of the rest of the field that no one is even sure how to attack or criticize him. The media can criticize Trump for tossing this Ramos character but to do it they have to show the video. Once they show the video, no one hears what they say because Trump dominates the imagery and the conversation.

The way Trump handled Ramos should be the way all of our candidates handle the mindless gotcha questions like those that characterized the first GOP debate.

-----------END QUOTE-------------

I remember reading The Power Game: How Washington Works, full of "Aha!" moments.

This one, however, did not surface in my mind until I saw this article flick by me on Flipboard.com where I collect items on various topics of interest to fiction writers:
https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

So here's the point.  Mastering SHOW DON'T TELL, mastering what screenwriters call "story in pictures" -- mastering the non-verbal arts -- is the real key to communication.

SAVE THE CAT!
http://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-%C2%AE-Strikes-Back-ebook/dp/B004QT6Z0A/
will save your butt as a writer.

I can't emphasize that enough. It's a series on screenwriting but it is the key to novel writing, for exactly the reasons sited in this redstate.com article.

Words,  vocabulary, spelling and grammar, lexicon, all of that matters.  It matters vitally.  It makes all the difference.  But "difference" from what?

The difference from confusion, mixed messages, which vitiate the effect of your Conflict and Resolution.

The visuals you select, all of them without exception, must precisely and exactly illustrate and depict your theme -- the theme and the images must say the same thing, or you get the effect described in The Power Game: How Washington Works, and the effect Donald Trump produced evicting a reporter from his press conference.

People, readers, accept and believe the images and ignore the denotation of the words.

First comes the visuals.  They penetrate the mind, connect to the autonomic nervous system, elevate and activate and communicate with the animal brain.  After that point, the only words that are "heard" are the ones that agree with, expound upon, and adorn the image.

Yes, words are mere decoration wrapped around visuals.

There are animals with far superior vision to humans, but most of them are predators with fairly small brains and one focus, hunting.

Humans are multi-purpose creatures, flexible -- which is why we survived the last Ice Age and can survive the coming Global Warming whatever the reasons for the shift in conditions.  (we can, but will we? -- that's the question fiction writers play with: "Will we?"  "Will we?" is all about politics.)

So what do our multi-purpose eyes and brains glean from images?

What element of a novel does the basic-animal-brain extract from a wall of type, an impenetrable page of fiction in words?

There's a linkage, a series of synapses, that young people either develop -- or not -- at a certain age when they can learn languages and reading.

Pretty much by age 7 or so, the ability to create these synapses begins to wane -- and it's fairly gone by age 10.

With vast effort, such things can be learned later, but the effort is vast so the reward has to be obvious.

Watching someone staring at pages in a book, (or an e-reader) for hours and snarling at interruptions does not convey the magnitude of the reward.

What happens when you read print?

You interpret.

The brain cells involved in grasping the words hand off the "meaning" extracted from the black squiggles on the page to other parts of the brain.  The synapse we're talking about here is the hand-off of language to images.

When people who love to read fiction immerse in a book, they SEE the images, smell the smells, feel the velvet tingles -- senses engage.

Words translate into the activation of other senses.  It isn't strong as if you were actually seeing the image.  It's a bit "removed" so it is easier to read about something ugly or repellent, and still feel as you would if you had actually seen it -- just not so strong you have to run vomit.

VISUALS ARE VITAL

Using the words that tickle the visual cortex for the reader is what a writer does for a living.

Symbolism is all about visuals.

If a word becomes a symbol, then it is stylized -- you use a special font to register a trademarked word.  You can't trademark a lexicon word, but you can trademark the image of a word.

The IMAGE triggers the associations to the company or product, but the lexicon word does not.

That is the nature of humans.  Writers are artists who know how to use that nature.

The images you choose to evoke with your words are the "symbolism" component of your romance story and your romance plot.

What the symbols mean and why you need them in your novel is called the "Theme" component of your work of art.

You don't TELL the theme; you SHOW the theme in symbolic images.  If you tell the theme and say THIS IS WHAT I MEAN! but the images say something different, the images will be believed and the words ignored.

The symbolism is more compelling than any word, just as with the Reagan/Trump comparison in this article from redstate.com.

Donald Trump is a businessman, a graduate of a premier business school.  I'm fairly sure they don't teach the art of fiction writing to such Business Majors.

But they do teach THE ART OF THE DEAL.  That's the famous book Donald Trump wrote that you should read to learn how to write dialogue scenes.

Here it is in Kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J-ebook/dp/B000SEGE6M/

Donald Trump's book is as popular and informative as The Power Game: How Washington Works.

Put the two together, you have a Romance Novel of gigantic proportions - sex and politics, power and fame.

Dealing, negotiating, is an art.

You don't get what you deserve.  You get what you negotiate.

Everyone knows this truth, but few think about it consciously or articulate it.  It is stored in memory as the dejected posture of the loser walking away from a meeting, being fired from a cushy job, or being rejected by a lover.  

Therefore, you as a fiction writer can use negotiating in scene structure.  And you the non-fiction writer can use negotiating in speech writing.

Speech writing is akin to writing a sex scene.  Think about that.  Listen to some famous speeches and graph the emotional peaks and valleys, overlay that graph on a graph of a famous sex scene and see how they match exactly.  It's called wooing an audience for a reason.

If you are writing a dialogue scene, the Characters are negotiating -- i.e. they are at war, they are in Conflict, they are at cross-purposes, they are communicating in words, but they will each be understanding what is really happening via imagery-symbols.

They call that, in theatrical stage writing, "business."

"Business" is actions that have nothing to do with what is being said, but everything to do with what is meant.

An old fashioned example of "Business" is how famous, sexy actors and actresses added sexual innuendo and power-talk to dull dialogue scenes by lighting a cigarette then mashing it out on the floor, punctuating the end of the scene.  Today, they play with their smartphones.

Negotiations turn on actions, and the visual impact of actions within the cultural context of the Characters.

When Trump just quietly nodded to his Security guy to remove the fractious reporter, that was a visual symbol of power.  It was an actor using "Business" to convey meaning without words.  It was the entire theme of his campaign in one tiny movement of his head - power, greatness, decisiveness.  When he immediately announced he'd be bringing that reporter back to get his turn at asking questions, and then did that with great aplomb, he used show-don't-tell to illustrate the theme of reasonableness and compassion.  At the end of the exchange, when the reporter admitted that Donald Trump was correct in one assertion, Trump praised that reporter for his honesty and invited him to lunch.

Most observers agree, it was not scripted but spontaneous on Trump's part.  But screenwriters recognized the underlying "scene structure" template, and all viewers saw (visually) Trump in the role of the Main Character, even maybe the Hero or possibly the Villain depending on what other visuals they had absorbed.  Trump knew what to do and how to "play" that scene just as Reagan did -- because he'd played that scene many times before.  That's why he did it so smoothly.

There was another such scene that deserves consideration as you learn how to create using show don't tell.  It is the famous one when a shoe was thrown at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq in 2008.

To the USA audience, it was a stupid act of aggression of no meaning except to illustrate the boorishness of the uncivilized people.  To the Iraqi audience to whom turning the sole of a shoe toward someone is an unforgivable insult, Bush's reaction showed them that the USA culture is stupid and weak, without moral fiber.

Both audiences saw the same IMAGE -- each extracted a different THEME.

You can do that between a human from Earth and an Alien from Elsewhere if you create the Alien civilization using theme-symbolism integration to the point where you can show-don't-tell the meaning on a non-verbal level.

Your Alien may "play the scene" out of practiced habit, and your human can totally miss the point, causing the human to take actions that cause the Alien a lot of trouble at home.

Here is another neuroscience article from August 2015 to consider.  We know how images affect people, but we don't know all the mechanism behind that.  So when creating your alien species, mull over some of the research like this:

http://www.deepstuff.org/brainbow-reveals-surprising-data-about-visual-connections-in-brain/

Theme-symbolism integration is the secret to getting a reader of a page of text to burst out laughing or melt down sobbing.  It's just words -- but the meaning blossoms into parts of the brain that have no words.  That's the most powerful part of the brain, the real decision making part.  Most of the time, words just "rationalize" the decision the "gut" has already made.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com