I daydreamed of a shocking device that needed a special room for it to work in the way it's designed. I designed it to be built in a prison to adjoin the whole where prisoners are placed for solitary confinement. It's a sensory deprived room where no sensory stimuli can pass either way except through observable microphones, but only one camera used only for safety purposes. The room is about sound. Both ordinary sound and sound that is silenced in the throat and presumably unspoken. In this specially rigged room, however, even the urge to speak can be monitored. The deal about this is that an electric shock strong enough to really hurt, but nothing that couldn't be recovered from in a coupla minutes. It's punishment for activating a specific behavior. Not for exhibiting the behavior that got you sent to be made whole.
It's the same with the rest of the room. It could have any other comfort of home because it's not about punishment for but a certain behavior. The punishment would be only for speaking, and eventually, even thinking of it.
The whole deal would have to be explained and demonstrated to the naughty person in a way that would allow them to make a considered decision. The monitor running the experiment would have to be somebody like me. Totally dispassionate.
In this day dream I would wait until the prisoner realized he wasn't in the regular solitary confinement cell, but different, then I'd open by attacking his ego and fishing to get them to yell at me. When they did, they'd receive that no bullshit electric shock, and when they said "Ouch" or something more mundane, they'd get shocked again for that. Ad infinitum until they figured out to keep they trap shut. Oh, the angst!
Then, I'd piss them off again. Aiiiyyyeeeee!
Again: Aiiiyyeeeee
Again: aiiyeeee
Again: ai... ai
Again: ...uuugggh
Again; .....
Then, in my sweetest, loving, fatherly voice I might say: Here's the deal. In every case, it's been yo' mouf that got you in trouble at every level of what you call trouble you've ever been to. How would you like to learn the hard way to stop talking without thinking about what you're gonna say first? It's either that or do your regular time in the regular hole.
If you choose to accept this mission, it's gonna hurt. Even if you get to where you can tolerate the pain, I'm gonna turn the rheostat up to the point where you can't tolerate it. Until you have to know there is a consequence to trying to get over through fakery or misdirection. The room equipment will be able to detect your intentions, and light you up like a candle, but without actually harming you. However, if you understand what's going on and keep returning until the mission is accomplished, this is what will happen (Not really, this is a dream and a hypothetical theory)
When you get to where you can control uttering even a single noise without getting shocked in response to me insulting the hell out of you, I increase the sensitivity of the room such that it can detect even your unconscious impulse to speak traveling through the eighth cranial nerve nanoseconds before it reaches your larynx and eventually even shock you for sinning in your heart. In this way you can learn to live a life of no blame, and that might not stop you from thrill seeking, but it might keep you from getting caught because you inadvertently jacked your jaws and incriminated yo'self.
I just remembered the source/origin of this dream. Aiiyyee... and done forgot it.
There are various and sundry ways to do this. My description seems very primitive. I never got around to waterboarding. Any way of detecting a human's speech apparatus in such a way that they could gain control of their impulse to speak irrationally in dire straits might work. On the other hand, you might run the risk of psychologically shutting down their entire impulse to speak altogether. What a drag man, but at least they couldn't yell at you for doing it.
There is a software solution. Hypnosis. The watch dog could be an alias designed specifically to observe the onset of the speech impulse and sound an alarm for the subject to self-observe as a post hypnotic suggestion after the fact. Other alias could be designed as witnesses to testify to the veracity of the watch dog to be certain it's yapping ain't no false alarm.
It's not a big deal though, because the only behavior to instigate in response to the watchdog would be to attempt to be consciously aware of the impulse to speak as it organizes itself to express itself in speech. It's not that one is attempting to keep their mouth shut to stay outta trouble (although that could happen as an aside), but to exercise volition/control over that impulse to discover if responding to a given stimuli impulsively is gonna help or hurt in the situation you find yourself reaching for a quick solution.
That's why looking before you leap is so popular as a teaching metaphor. Learning to let many things pass without being duped is part of what it takes to live a life of no blame. I could be wrong, but it seems like to me that most every system of expertise that involves protecting yourself teaches some form of being patient as one of the systems most useful strategies.
I spent much of the afternoon and most of the evening up until this point copying the written notes involved with an exercise on a youtube video for learning 48 different but related two-note chords in one fell swoop. Here is a link to the video that I'm trying to memorize, just click on the arrow and you'll easily understand the whole deal. I've tried to follow along on my piano as the video plays, but my fingers don't know where to go that quickly. So, that's what I've been trying to do by writing it all down.
As you can see, about halfway through the video it starts showing how the notes are written down as it plays them once again. I bought a spiral notebook of empty staff lines just to do stuff like this. The trick with the video is that after I click on the arrow I can stop and stop the video with the space bar. I found that out accidently. So I play the video until it gets to the part where the notes are written down, and I stop the video until I can write all the notes and symbols down in my staff book. I write down the letter names underneath them just like in the video.
I have to be sure I'm striking the right notes before I attempt to memorize these two note chords, because I do things like this with the intent of it being forever, and if I get careless and learn these chords and scales incorrectly, it could take years to correct the mistake if I ever do.
With all this information right dab in front of me, I try to figure out how these chords work out. It's easy to see the note on the right side of the two notes played together stays the same for two bars. The left note of the two descends one/half note at a time. The first chord is sounded, then the left note of the pair moves down a half-step, and that makes a Major Seventh chord, the left finger/note is moved down another half-step, and the sound is makes is the dominant seventh chord, move it again (keeping the right side note on the same key), and the chord you sound is the Major Seventh of ... hmmm... don't know how that counts out yet. Manana.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
