Informational Positioning

Informational Positioning (IP) is the process of placing (or replacing) information the PU has acquired via experiences into "places" that are not easily accessible to the awareness of the PU. IP is a technique that uses informational access restriction as its main feature. IP can be regarded as a subclass of DM as it is a major technique contributing to the defense and survival of the PU.

When the PU experiences something, that information is being stored as memory, which can be accessed later on when the PU remembers it. Since the CQ of the PU is limited, consciousness cannot encompass the entirety of its memory at the same time. It is limited to a specific "area" of the "memory bank" depending on the amount of CQ the PU possesses at that moment. All experiences that are made by the PU are being stored, but not all of them can be accessed easily. Information Positioning entails the distribution of these information to different "areas". Some information are put into positions that can be easily accessed by the awareness of the PU, others are put into positions that are strongly avoided by the awareness of the PU.

An easy way to understand this process is with tags. Imagine all experiences the PU makes are stored on shelves that are placed in rooms. At the door of each room (read COEX) is a tag that depicts what kind of experiences are stored on the shelves of that room. Prior to entering the room, the PU reads the sign and depending on what it sees, it is either attracted to entering that room or disgusted with it, and avoids it. The PU uses IP as a technique to minimize Disjuncture, thereby minimizing stress, which in turn contributes to the long term survival of the PU.

Informational Positioning uses the limited awareness (CQ) of the PU to the advantage of the PU by placing unpleasant information into rooms (COEXES) that are out of reach for the awareness of the PU.

Typical Defense Mechanisms using IP

Repression

A typical implementation is the use of Repression. When we repress, we don't divert interpretation of the experience, as is the case with Awareness Redirection Mechanisms (Denial, Projection, Rationalization, Distortion). We accept it "as it is". More precisely, we accept it as we interpreted it, despite it being unpleasant. If the psychological system of the PU would not handle the experience via IP, then the PU would be constantly aware of those experiences, which would be highly debilitating from several perspectives simultaneously. Thus, when the PU experiences unpleasant things, and Awareness Redirection Mechanisms are unable to beautify those experiences sufficiently, it is left with little other choice but to tuck those experiences away into places that are not easily reachable by the awareness of the PU. Due to IP, the PU is able to function well despite those experiences, rendering it functional despite toxic conditions.

Notes

IP is a technique that enables the PU to function despite toxic conditions. The use of IP is by no means salutatory. It is only necessary in toxic conditions. A healthy socialization context would render the use of IP, Awareness Redirection Mechanisms and Awareness Reduction Mechanisms essentially obsolete.

Other Visualizations of this Process

Water Glass Metaphor

Another useful visualization of IP is the water glass metaphor. Imagine a glass with water in it. The glass represents your PU. It is the container of the "consciousness juice". The water/juice, represents your consciousness. The amount of water in your glass represents your CQ. It can vary depending on a host of factors; for instance holes in your glass. Now when the PU experiences something, it stores the experiences onto the walls of the glass. Wherever the water reaches, it is in touch with the walls of the glass which contain the memories of past experiences.Those experiences are easily remembered by the PU. More precisely, there is no barrier to accessing those information. IP entails the positioning of information to places that are above the "normal" level of the water. Thus, awareness never comes into contact with those information and is relieved of having to deal with them.

Given that the CQ raises out of whatever reason, the water level raises, and the awareness of the PU gets into contact with information that were previously tucked away from its reach. Since those information were deliberately tucked away onto those places by the psychological system of the PU, you can bet they are not very pleasant. The PU will have to deal with it now that the CQ raised in the glass, and it suddenly has access to those information. This explains why Awakening is often a difficult undertaking. Awakening (Activation and especially Ascension) is the process of stably gaining more CQ.

Hot Teacup Metaphor

The hot teacup metaphor is a more precise, but slightly more difficult to grasp visualization of the process. Keep in mind the concept of fractals while reading this.

Imagine a teacup. The teabag is put into it and hot water poured over it. Let's say we wait for a couple of hours. After this time, the tea has imprinted itself onto the walls of the cup. The walls are becoming brownish (infused by the tea) Say we don't wash the teacup, and pour hot water over the same type of tea again and again. After a bunch of iterations, you will have difficulties washing the cup clean, because so much of the tea has been imprinted onto the cup. In this metaphor, the cup is once again your PU. The tea you put into your container (the cup) are the experiences your PU makes. The hot water that is being put onto the tea is your Consciousness. The temperature of the water depicts the CQ. Given you make 100 times the same experience, then the flavor of that experience is deeply ingrained onto the inner side of the cup.

This metaphor allows for several tweaks of its three variables.

a) the cup (whether it has holes or not)

b) the tea (what kind of experience imprints itself onto the inner side of the cup)

c) the hot water (how much of it is poured onto the tea, and also how hot it is)

The water glass metaphor already (vaguely) deals with a, b and the first part of c.

The interesting bit is the idea of how hot the water is that is poured into the glass. When the water is very very hot, then the tea that is on the inner side of the cup will dissolve into the liquid due to the high temperature. The temperature being your CQ, it is clear that even though the hot water reaches certain spots, it will only dissolve the tea relative to the temperature of the water. So, even though the information is reachable for the PU from a "positional point of view", it cannot be accessed, because the water is not hot enough to dissolve the memories on the specific spot. The information is essentially hidden away by layers of other information. (Similar to the concept of Encapsulation in Object Oriented Programming). Since the CQ of the PU is not high enough, it is not confronted with the information that is encapsulated this way. Perhaps it helps to think of fractals here. Let's say the first and second layers of a fractal are visible, but the layers deeper are not. When the CQ raises, it is suddenly able to see a larger part of the fractal. This is equivalent to raising the temperature of the water, thereby dissolving the tea. The flavor of the tea gets stronger for the awareness, because it dissolved a larger, and more intricate part of the tea from the inner sides of the cup, which were put there by previous experiences.