Stroke Nutritionism

This draft intends to extend stroke theory and to make easier to define some appearances of nowadays individual society, particularly non quality strokes that overwhelm us, act alienating and make us addictive to them - Junk strokes.

1. Recently I had proposal to extend Berne’s definition of stroke as “unit of social recognition” into “unit of life recognition” or “unit of recognition between living beings”. Reasons:

●     We can stroke ourself

●     We can stroke a dog, receive stroke from him and even develop empathy

●     We can stroke a flower in a pot and feel well when we recognize that our stroke makes good to it

2. Every stroke carry importance message, whether we stroke loved one, enemy, ourself, fish in aquarium or rose in the garden. Verbal or physical, desired or unwanted, conditional or unconditional, positive or negative, pleasure or painful, low or high intensity... every stroke in some level is carrying message: "You are important". We all need to be loved, thats meant important to someone - and that is impossible if we dont recieve srokes from him/her. Lack of strokes/being important cause us to do various weird things - and I think most end up playing games. Beside and under that, there are lot of available stroke sources in consumer society which gives us an instant stroke/pleasure, but in essence never give long term satisfaction: shopping, internet and its colorful corners, TV (realities, quizzes, series, commercials...), food abuse, luxury, body building, vanity, sex,..... and as crown legal and illegal drugs. Any stroke who’s purpose is only instant pleasure is Junk stroke. Those strokes have no essence and carry no message: “You are important”. Person who is asking for such strokes by default DON’T has “I am OK” attitude.

Example: FOOD

Mike has had hard day, and and on the end of it he used to take a bucket of ice cream and get stoned in front of some reality show. He is aware that ice cream as food isn’t healthy and reality shows won’t make him clever, but he just wanted to steal a bit of pleasure. This Junk stuff, i.e. the ice cream and the reality show, won’t make him satisfied, because both are focused on momentary pleasure, not on long term satisfaction or wellness. Given that he is aware that both of these aren’t healthy/quality, and he still gives that to himself, he also gives himself a message: “I am not important, (but I wish to feel good).” Unfortunately, things deprived of the essence, don’t have the ability to make anyone feel good, just to make a similar short term illusion.
 

Example: SEX

If two people who share some feelings have sex, this sex action makes them to feel pleasure but also has important function - building relationship, having a baby, etc. Both parties are giving message “you are important to me, and I want you to feel well” to each other. But, if two persons don’t have any feelings to other, by doing sex they only want instant pleasure and nothing more. Both parties are sharing message: “I want to feel well, and you are device for that (implicitly - you are not important)”. Such SEX can lead to addiction, not the one based on feelings.

3. Stroke has its form and essence which determine stroke sense. Sense of quality stroke is life itself - survival or enhancement of life quality. Sense of bad stroke (for example unconditional negative stroke or discounting) is degradation of life, and sense of junk stroke is pleasure without essence that could become addictive (Allport, Functional autonomy of motives), so again degradation of life, just with addiction and usually with illusion of a good life.

4. Congruency of stroke is determined by relation of its form and essence. Junk stroke is extremely incongruent: form = something (shiny, glittering, attractive), essence = nothing. Most quality strokes are highly congruent: form matches its essence, or “what you see is what you get”.

5. Stroke form causes short term feel, and stroke essence causes long term feel. Junk stroke have no essence, so it brings just momentarily pleasure.

6. Hunger for strokes forces us to ask them from environment, or to give them to ourself. If we, one way or the other, provide ouself Quality stroke - Warm Fuzzy, we will satisfy stroke hunger for some time. On contrary, if we provide ourself Junk stroke, we will have pleasure and momentarily illusion of hunger satisfaction, but right after that hunger stays which forces us to raise quantity of Junk, and so on.

7. Stroke phases are:

I.      motivation (wish or urge)

II.    intention (conscious decision to do or give up)

III.   planning (stroke way depends on it’s purpose)

IV.  giving (word, song, present, kick)

V.    media (eye contact, touch, paper, email, fb)

VI.  receiving (or ignore)

VII. accepting (or reject)

VIII.                digesting (need some time for effectively use of stroke)

IX.  feeling (satisfaction, guilt... - also need time)

8. Lets imagine we have some particular stoke, which is good by origin intention. If in some stroke phase happen decomposition or splitting of form and essence, that stroke, initially Warm fuzzy, can (not necessary) become Junk stroke.

FB example one: media allow only 7% of carrying information over text (Albert Mehrabian), so people feel that lack and use some crutches (LOL, WOW, likes, smiles...) to amplify intensity of information they are trying to place. Unfortunately,  that amplification is one-dimensional, and it relates only to intensity, and not to quality. In this phase, it can easily happen splitting of form and essence, just because of bad communication path. Further phases (receiving, accepting, digesting and feeling) can not reassemble those and that stroke can not have efficiency of a good stroke. Depend on essence obstruction level, that stroke could be Junk stroke.

FB example two: big quantity could lead to decomposition of form and essence in digesting phase, because digesting phase simply need some time, which is in deficit in FB ocean of strokes. Subject receives message (WOW, Amazing, Great), but don't have time to digest message “You are very important to me” and to feel satisfaction.

FB example three: stroke quality in a way depends on effort invested in it which is embed in first four stroke phases (wish, intention, planning, giving). FB offers much effortless ways to give strokes, so users use that, and such strokes are devastated from authenticity. What importance intensity could carries note: Your friend call you to join in Farmwille?

FB example four: chronic lack of good stroke forces us to lower our criteria and to receive and accept all strokes. Accepting all strokes reduces our ability to recognize good stroke and so on.

FB conclusion: not all FB strokes are junk. To give/receive good stroke in FB world you have to:

a) ignore various FB features, invest some effort and be authentic (phases: wish, intention, planning, giving)

b) be already intimate with your correspondent, or at least be on same frequencies, so he can have good assumption of remaining 93% of message that FB rejects. If you are not on same frequency, at least be aware of that (media phase)

c) filter message which you received and ignore junk. Processes received and decide if you want to reject or accept (receiving and accepting phases)

d) invest some time to experience stroke and to feel what stroke intend you to feel. If you do good filtering, you will have time for that, even in FB world (digesting and feeling phases)

9. Some people suggest that facebook strokes are better than no strokes. I would challenge this thought. Using same logic we can say that heroin stroke is better that no stroke. In some limited context that can be true for sure - if only two options are to give heroin to junkie or let him fall from the bridge of course you will do whatever to save him or at least extend his life for a while. But that is choice of that moment, and in next moment, hour, month you will definitely have more life(ly) ways for stroking that man than previous two. So simply, we can not answer to question “are FB strokes better than nothing”, if we cant answer why we need strokes for. If we need junk strokes just to overcome a hard day, junk strokes can help. But, if we need strokes to fill holes in our personality and to have better picture of ourselves, than junk strokes can act like pink glasses and make illusion that we are OK. Of course, we cannot really hide from real life, so from time to time we must confront with our real picture in mirror, and in face of any junkie including FB, that picture says: I am not OK. In this second case, case of FB addict, I would say that FB strokes are not better than no strokes. There are plenty of strokes everywhere and we need to relearn how to recognize them. First step for that is abstinence of junk strokes - Junk Stroke Economy.

Conclusion: Junk strokes are important concept in nowadays society because it is inevitable element in any addiction, whether social accepted or not. They don’t have capability to develop addiction without addiction radix: attachment problems, script, injunctions and drivers, but we also can say that addiction couldn’t develop without Junk strokes. I hope that introduction of a quality term in Stroke Theory could decrease and also help diagnosing and therapy of addiction problem.