GEAS
The ingenopathic geas is as follows:
Thou shalt honestly signal thy inner nature for the tribe’s evaluation.
PROTOCOLS
Unitonality and ditonality are two different communication protocols:
Unitonality is large scale and low context.
Ditonality is small scale and high context.
DI VS UNI
In unitonality, the text and the subtext are generally one. At least, there is no ingenopathic geas splitting the two. Text and subtext may be split for other reasons, such as sarcasm or dishonesty. However, the message is generally designed to be sent and received in a low context, high scale context. It thus exhibits a certain unified tonal simplicity.
In ditonality, the text and subtext are split. The subtext, or deep tone, transmits implicit information about the speaker. The text carries explicit information about the topic. However, the text is inflected, altered or distorted in order to compactly convey information about deep tone.
MISCOMMUNICATION
Thus, when a ditonal message is evaluated as if it were unitonal, it often appears inaccurate in its description of the topic. And vice versa: when a unitonal message is misinterpreted as ditonal, it conveys inaccurate information about the speaker.
A ditonal often feels he is not being sufficiently honest unless he includes the deep tone info on the nature of the speaker, so that others can judge his credibility and intentions. A unitonal can find ditonals to be solipsistically self-concerned, incapable of effective rhetoric, etc.
GERVAIS
Ditonals are the Clueless in the Gervais Principle hierarchy. The canonical example is Michael Scott from the Office. Unitonals are both the Sociopaths and Losers.
(Note Scott’s deep eye sockets. The implications of this are further elaborated within the Altrugenics forum, in the members’ section.)
FARMER TOM VS VOX
Technical preface completed, we come to the conflict of the day: Farmer Tom drops out of the Dread Ilk.
Vox is a unitonal honor-hierarchical. Farmer Tom is, based on my vague impression, probably a ditonal honor-flat.
Tom writes: “This place is really going down hill in a hurry. … The vast majority of the guests seem to be so uninformed as to not know who Nate is?”
Thus one of Tom’s primary complaints is that the scale of the Vox Populi community has increased. It is no longer a small-scale, high-context communication community, but a large-scale, low-context arena. This ruins the viability of Tom’s ditonal ingenopathic communication style.
There is a further conflict between Tom’s honor-flat prestige based, passive competition versus Vox’s honor-hierarchical, dominance-based style. This conflict has always existed; however it now flares.
Trump support is a key litmus test. As Tom complains, “The host is now full on Trump supporter.” Trump is a unitonal honor-hierarchical, like Vox. Tom rejects this ethos.
Vox responds to Tom’s rejection of Trump by extensive demonstration via unitonal argument of the objective reasons for Trump support. However, I doubt that Tom’s rejection of Trump is based primarily on objective reasons. Rather, it stems from a hardwired sociobiological difference of perspective.
Likewise, Vox’s support of Trump says less about Vox than Tom thinks. Vox has not changed. Rather, the world is simply heating up, in anticipation of Great Depression 2.0 and WWIII. Tom’s error lies in misinterpreting a shift in tone as a shift in the unitonal speaker’s nature.
Note that unitonal vs. ditonal does not affect intellectual sophistication. Vox is obviously more intellectually sophisticated than Tom. Moreover, it does not absolutely dictate tonal profundity. A unitonal speaker can speak either profoundly or simply, as the situation demands. A ditonal speaker, if he speaks on a subject that admits any personal tone at all, must double-layer his message to reflect both self and topic.
FOR EXAMPLE, ME
For example, I am normally a ditonal honor-hierarchical speaker. However, in this post, I limit myself to a technical analysis of a situation, and do not attempt to express my own views. Thus text is subtext, and my ingenopathic geas is not triggered.
Were I inserting myself into this post, I would normally express my views more savagely than the actual facts warrant, to reflect my internally savage nature. Likewise, Tom expresses himself more gently than facts warrant, to express his gentler internal nature.
CASUAL GREETINGS DIFFERENCE
A unitonal casual greeting would be:
“Hi, how are ya” [casual cheerful greeting]
“Good how are you” [casual cheerful greeting]
An honor-flat ditonal greeting might be:
“Hello, how are you?” [sincere question]
“Well, I am struggling with XYZ, I think, but ABC is ambiguous” [deep, nuanced answer]
An honor-hierarchical ditonal greeting might be:
“How goes the war?”
“I hear the lamentation of their women.”
“Haha, great.”
This last exchange demonstrates that in terms of adaptation to social scale, ditonal honor-hierarchicals are midway between transparent defenseless honesty and extrovert opacity.
Other configurations exist. Unitonal dishonor-flat, unitonal honor-flat… perhaps ditonal dishonor-flat would describe Scalzi, if we dropped the honesty attribute from ditonal. (And maybe we should, since honor/dishonor already covers that dimension. Although this would damage ditonality’s correspondence to socket depth. Ditonality was originally discovered as a side-effect of the orbitofrontal cortex’s impact on affect-layer mechanics. But the relative importance of subjectivity is both a feminine and ingenopathic trait, and thus its scope extends well beyond socket depth. As always, further investigation required.)
Anyhow, those variations can be discussed another day. Let’s return to the conflict at hand.
RESOLUTION AND JUDGMENT
Tom may think that this exchange has revealed something profound about the nature of Vox. Vox certainly thinks this exchange has demonstrated immaturity on the part of Tom.
Once Tom issued the challenge, Vox was required under unitonal honor-hierarchical rules to crush him (or ignore him). This is right and appropriate to the medium.
I don’t actually know the situation or its actors well, and am just going off superficial impressions to talk about my pet theories, obviously.
Nonetheless, the solution to the problem as I’ve stated it would be for Tom to recognize that his communication protocol and sociobiological values are not universal or even inherently superior, and that in particular they are ill-suited to the medium in which he sought to “hang out” and find fulfilling self-expression, understanding and acceptance.
In this ultimate sense, we may thus say that both Tom and Vox are right. With this clarified sense of separation between large scale and small, Tom may even realize that he can consistently embrace support for a Trump presidency over that even larger-scale milieu, America.
In general, ditonals are well-advised to reverse their hardwired assumptions, and not attempt to read ditonality into an overwhelmingly unitonal world. The subtext usually doesn’t exist, nor is your inclusion of it understood, much less appreciated.
Whether or not I have accurately characterized the Tom-Vox conflict, I think it is clear that, through no fault of its own, VP is becoming a less hospitable environment to ditonal honor-flats. Like “gamma”, “Cuckservative” will probably toss some baby with the bathwater. I hope this explanation moderates that effect. It isn’t personal.