He's not answering...

It happens to write to someone we know, who we have met at least a little for some reason, and who, according to what we know, should be reasonably well disposed towards us.

Today it is very easy to forward messages through any of the many means we have... certainly not letters or cards, handwritten, with more or less beautiful calligraphy, keyboards have pervaded our everyday world, giving our messages the clarity and precision of excellent typewriters and the neutrality of a script crushed in the standard elegance of typefaces.

And it happens that he, she, those to whom we write, simply, do not give a hint of answer.

Yet, as far as we know, there is no reason not to get, in a reasonable time, a nod, if not something more ... but silence is among the possibilities, and when it happens, of course, it questions.

Sometimes we discover that it is nothing serious, that silence has a reasonable explanation, a temporary malaise, a misunderstanding, some server crashed, an inadvertent  finger on the contraption that cancels the signal of our knock ...

Sometimes we have full evidence that the only possible answer is the one we like the least: our interlocutor is very clear that we have sought him, called him, invoked him, and, nevertheless, does not respond, does not move, no hint, nothing.

Dissolving the doubt can take time, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks ... and as time passes, things happen, in my opinion, interesting.

We eliminate the cases in which the lack of "response" is generated by misunderstanding, temporary malaise, mechanical failure ... even if it is not so easy to get rid of it, since, reasonably, we frequently retain the doubt that these are more or less well thought-out and presented "excuses"

In short, we call someone or write to someone, someone to whom we believe we can turn reasonably certain to quickly get a nod, an answer, today's means of connection even offer the possibility is to obtain it almost immediately: instead nothing, silence.

If on the one hand it has its practical relevance to try to know why  that “bastard” fail to respond, on the other hand it risks passing for obvious the very common fact that we are sorry, or little or much at this moment is not important: the track I would like to follow is precisely this, the regret that accompanies the non-answers we receive.

Common sense

If we ask the reason for this very common displeasure, the answers that we commonly obtain, and that we would probably give too, present themselves as variants of

1. Concern for our well-being: our interlocutor was expected to help us, in some way, and evidently the fact that he does not respond is not helpful
2. Concern for the condition of our interlocutor: health, affections, business... or a sudden, unexpected and inexplicable change in his disposition towards us

As much as we try to collect examples, we will not easily be able to find different finds; the difference, between the two kinds of answers, seems evident and irrefutable: in one case it is something unpleasant that happens to us, or that we expect to happen (we do not receive or will not receive the help hoped for), in the other it is something (tendentially) unpleasant that happened to the other, and that had as a consequence the fact that he did not respond to us,  he didn't call us back.

One directly concerns us, the other directly concerns the other, and then, only later, perhaps, indirectly us.

In the first case, even if we are willing to dig, to question ourselves, to reflect, there seems to be enough little to dig, question or reflect: the help not received is accompanied by the persistence of the condition that motivated us to call, a condition for some unpleasant aspect for those who have called, or written, we are not interested here in knowing what kind of unpleasantness it is.

We could conclude that the displeasure is accompanied more by the persistence of the unpleasant condition than by the fact that the other has not responded, which in any case does not escape us, and which is commonly "explained" with the second variant.

In short, I am in an unpleasant condition, I ask for help, I do not get it, and so the unpleasant things become two: one is the starting one, which remains, the other is that the other didn’t show up .... what could have happened to him?

Almost always, in these conditions, we make do in some way, and, almost always we find an alternative solution: that is, we eliminate the unpleasantness of the condition in which we found ourselves when we asked for help, intervening on the environment, which now presents a configuration that is no longer unpleasant.

The proof that the concern that directly concerns the other is also present in the first variant of answers that we have indicated, now shows itself clearly: we have solved a problem, the environment has been normalized, but the question of the non-response of the other is still, unpleasantly, on the table.

We must examine the second variant, the concern for the condition of our interlocutor: health, affections, business... or a sudden, unexpected and inexplicable change in his disposition towards us

Let's see what we are capable of doing with it: trying to find elements that better explain why, in general, it is unpleasant for us to have concerns of this type, that is, directly concerning the other, when the other is one of the elements of the class of subjects "that we know, that we have attended at least a little for some reason, and that, according to what we know,  should be reasonably well disposed towards us"

It is easy to imagine that, if we resorted to the technique of inquiry, at best we would get a little wary glances, at worst a quick alarmed walk away of the candidate to be interviewed: why is it unpleasant not to receive a response or nod from husbands, wives, children, parents, relatives, friends, good neighbors and acquaintances, loyal colleagues, trusted professional partners?

Quite evident and obvious is the senselessness of asking the reason for the concern that accompanies the lack of response of any of them: they are the really important people in the life of each of us, emotionally, affectively, socially, often even practically ...

It is undeniable that things are just like that for us too, those are certainly the really important people, they have strong ties with us, it is obvious that we are personally touched by what happens to them, and therefore obvious that, when they do not respond to us, at least a little we worry ... we don't want to go into the impenetrable thornbush of the nature of social bonds, emotional bonds, empathy, parenthood, will we?

Resisting the temptation to give up a research that seems less and less promising, and trying to stay away from the thornbush indicated above, it is not possible for us to explain this obviousness by avoiding calling into question the nature of the bonds that, for each of us, distinguish the people dear to our heart, so to speak,  from the others: the very definition of the importance of this or that person carries with it, it seems inevitably, the characteristic of connoting our relationship with that person as important.

And the common definitions of importance attributed to relationships carry with them the figure of the obviousness of the concerns that arise when we do not get a prompt and diligent response from them, no less than the obviousness of sorrows, sometimes even very intense, linked to a negative trend of our relationship with them: they are fine, but the relationship with us is stormy,  and we, "obviously" suffer from it, or our relationship is firm, secure, open and affectionate but they are not well, some trouble concerns them, and even in this case, "obviously" we suffer.

If on the one hand we can only bow down and accept the obviousness, the inevitability of these ways of presenting to ourselves of the nature of importance, of what is important, on the other we see at least two possibilities: we too can surrender to the importance of obviousness, and cease to question ourselves longer on this common aspect of our daily life,  or we can, in a sense, challenge the obviousness that closes our step, and try to continue.

Taking leave of those who decide to stop here, wishing them every good and every luck, we take up some points that we have basted so far.

Cui prodest

We have explained to ourselves the regret of non-response as related to the displeasure we feel when the call is aimed at obtaining help and the help does not arrive, and only residually as related to the conditions, for the moment unknown to us, in which the one or she who is a member of the class of subjects "to whom we believe we can turn reasonably certain to get a quick nod,  an answer".

To put it using an ancient topos, the answer we have given ourselves has to do mainly with an expected advantage, with a utility for us, in short, with cui prodest, to whom (and to what) benefits: something of our environment manifests itself as unpleasant (characteristic that emotionally indicates a configuration tendentially threatening for our good survival),  the help of the other is expected to remove what disturbs us, aiming to restore the previous condition of well-being.

Since these are people who are members of the class of subjects "whom we know, who we have attended at least a little for some reason, and who, as far as we know, should be reasonably well disposed  towards us", we have also recognized that, normally, even when our situation has been normalized without their intervention, we are left with a more or less vague concern,  more or less intense, about their condition.

This second source of displeasure we could make it intelligible again by resorting to cui prodest, more or less: for this time I made it, but something similar or new could happen in which its help is indispensable. We therefore still worry about ourselves, located in a more or less near or remote future, anticipating now the displeasure that we would have to face in the event, again, we do not get an answer, that is, help.

In the place where I was born, among the popular sayings, there is one that fits with what we are processing: the good comes from the useful.

This saying was used to mock and disapprove those who show consideration and affection only to those who are visibly useful to them or can be useful in relation to business, to money: disapproval is directed against this instrumental logic, wanting in general to enhance the authenticity and positivity of "true" affections, the generous and disinterested ones, on which one can always rely.

There is a lot of evidence we could bring, evidence that makes it irrefutable that our concern can also be fueled by a sincere and "disinterested" interest in the other person.

There are many proofs that, in complete good faith, we believe we can bring to maintain that our action can be moved not by our personal and selfish gain, but by impulses that we generally do not hesitate to recognize as generous, disinterested, altruistic; ways of acting and types of action that indeed present just the opposite characteristic,  to constitute obvious damage for oneself, commitment of time, disbursements of money, expenditure of energy, in pure favor of the other, with full evidence of absolute absence of any form and type of "gain"..

And without going on the dangerous path of heroism, remaining among the common facts of everyday life, we take into account a particular characteristic that we can identify of the situation in which we call someone moved, not really by need, but by the desire, by the  desire to hear another, to have news of another: there is nothing that we would like to ask him or her about something that is happening to us now, to have comfort, advice, help, it is simply to know how she is, how she is going through it, to be, more or less "virtually", a little in company.

In short, what we could call a disinterested call, not inspired by the goal of obtaining some help or some albeit distant or remote advantage ... yes, I recognize that they are rare, but I am sure that this is an experience that each of us has lived at least once.

The credible explanation that we obtained, in the previous case, from the use of cui prodest, in this case we cannot obtain it: the evidence shows that there is no advantage, and if no advantage is demonstrable, then we cannot explain this behavior by resorting to cui prodest.

So, what explanation can we offer?

In my humble opinion, possible answers can be found by following three different paths: poetry, mysticism, and science. All three paths share the condition of constituting themselves as "devices" that allow you to see what the eye cannot see, nor the hand touch... and, of course, each of these allows you to see quite different "things", sometimes not too distant from each other in some respects, sometimes almost immeasurable.

I will necessarily disappoint mystics and poets, I do not feel safe following their paths, at all: I will therefore try to follow the path of science, even if the first answers I find along this path are a bit disappointing.

To date, to my knowledge, it is not available, for an adequate understanding of human behavior, a theoretical and epistemic perspective better than that to a large extent indicated by Darwin, taken up and enormously expanded, enriched and deepened by Freud, integrated by Maturana, a perspective that I do not hesitate to call systemic. A perspective that constitutes, albeit to an extent not yet complete, a scientific paradigm.

To date, the contribution of the research conducted using this paradigm in the merits of the question we are trying to address, is certainly interesting, although to be extracted from the works of Freud and Maturana, since they have not dealt with it directly; interesting and incomplete, especially because of a conception of identity, of the person who hinges on a configuration of the ego and the so-called psychism that deserve a profound revision.

 

Revision that I certainly do not intend to conduct or present now, in part some elements I have presented in my recent work, and I will deal with them thoroughly in a subsequent work: but also avoiding now the precise indication of the elements to be reviewed, so that they are of help and not of obstacle to a fuller and deeper understanding of our common action,  it is possible to articulate some observations starting from some simplified premises.

The first premise is constituted by the indispensability, to continue to use this phrase, of cui prodest: a phrase that appropriately "translated" indicates one of the implications of the full acceptance of the drive to survival (including reproduction, which of survival is a specific form of every living species) as an engine and of survival as the first and ultimate end of every form and living species.

Trying to explain to us the meaning of the drive to survival, remaining on the path of science, today has the same probability of success as the explanation that we could look for of the sense of the energy engine of each atom; as well as trying to explain to us the meaning of the purpose of survival is apparent to the attempt to explain to us the meaning of the (temporary?)  expansion of the cosmos and the concomitant progressive increase in entropy.

Pending new developments in research and scientific knowledge, we can reasonably be content with the stability of these constructs, and attempt to base on these solid constructs the interpretations and knowledge we can develop of our behavior.

It is therefore a question of finding the advantage that each of us can obtain by acting in an affectionate, participatory, close, and, with full evidence, completely disinterested way.

I believe that among the first things that can come to mind are the actions, the behaviors of parents with respect to their children, usually the former quite lovingly dedicated to the care of the latter: and hence invoking genetic dictation. In short, we could simply be "forced" by heredity to adopt altruistic behaviors, aimed at the continuation of the species.

Assuming this position, simply by scrolling through the newspapers, we would be forced to admit a very high frequency of failure of genetic dictation, something that is precluded by the solid conclusions of at least a couple of centuries of scientific research; without however being able to  exclude that, at some level of systemic integration, a "tension" is genetically predisposed to the care of the other,favoring endo  simultaneously the rearing of offspring and the aggregation of organisms into larger communities.

We are still far from a satisfactory conjecture, but so far we are respectful of cui prodest: the reward, of course, is inscribed inobedience to the code, let's see if and how we manage to proceed.

Neural codes

I anticipate a possible objection, introducing a second simplified premise: any of our movements, actions, behaviors, is necessarily controlled, guided, supported, oriented, coordinated, by a code, no more and no less than the movements of alphanumeric control machines, robots in short, which we can see at work in many modern workshops.

As for them, for us too these codes should not be considered "cause" of behavior, but only and exactly guides of the sequences of arrangement of the organs of our organism; unlike them, it makes sense for us to speak of reward, and for any genetically inherited code the reward is the promise of survival, survival "conquered" by the generations that preceded us through the process of natural selection.

The code must be seen for what it is, instructions that guide us in governing our interaction with the environments with which we are dealing, environments that tend to be constantly changing in the configuration of the elements and systems that constitute them.

For all living beings, and therefore even more so for us, it is impossible to disobey these codes: differences in behavior must be seen for what they are, obedience to different codes.

How do we manage to account for the existence, at this obvious point, of codes that support disinterested action, demonstrably contrary to one's own personal and individual advantage, and therefore in open contradiction with cui prodest?

We have already found the partial adequacy of the use of genetic dictation, perhaps in part yes, something there is that facilitates the "altruistic" behavior, which so far is not so altruistic, given that the breeding of offspring, for the species, is an activity to be supported, and the survival index rises dramatically for social species compared to non-social ones:  so?

How do we get the other piece of explanation, remaining on the path, alas limited, of science?

We could try to resort to the classic alternative to the "natural" explanation: if not instinct (genetic dictation), then it is culture, education: we are not temporarily rejecting the Systemics, far from it. For Systemics, what we call education is the set of attempts, many of them successful, to generate specific neural codes, related to conditioned reflexes.

The codes we use, in short, our behaviors, also and above all the social ones, are rightly considered as strongly related to the education we have, or do not have, received: I do not think transversal studies have been conducted on the education of those who have dedicated and dedicate part of their lives to so-called voluntary activities, at least I lack the conclusions of these studies of which I evidently have no trace.

But the few, simple and direct results of my direct knowledge of subjects with these characteristics and their educational story, lead me to consider the culturalist option as partially unsatisfactory: if I write to Marco, Maria, Giovanna, or to my son, all subjects with whom I have a relationship, so to speak, non-profit, dedicating something of myself to them,  time, energy, money, it is not only by genetic dictate "altruistic", not even adding to this dictate obedience to the education I received.

Unfortunately we cannot be satisfied, the explanation is not complete, it is not quite satisfactory.

We begin to find ourselves a little short of alternatives, now which way do we go? Nature is not enough, culture is not enough, what else remains.... maybe randomness? Although plausibly our first reaction to hearing randomness mentioned as an explanation of our writing to Mark, Mary and others is at least one of perplexity, it is worth not discarding it immediately.

That randomness has to do with Marco, Maria, Giovanna, and also with my son, there is no doubt possible: how we each entered the environment of the other depends on such a large number of random intersections of causally determined series of events (definition of the Cournot effect), to prevent us from expelling randomness from the field of observation.

And so, what prevents us from accepting the idea that we could also function relatively randomly, like slot machines: we have a large but limited number of variables, and each combination corresponds to the triggering of a plexus-sequences of neural codes, a crank turn, or a button that presses itself, turn the wheels,  a combination comes out, and here we write to Marco.

Or less arbitrary variants, but which leave its part to chance, such as the so-called fuzzy logic...

I declare myself unable to follow this thread of investigation, I do not know enough, even if I feel a hiatus, unbridgeable by fuzzy logic, between our attempt to give us a satisfactory explanation of disinterested behavior on the one hand, and Marco, Maria, Giovanna (my son) on the other.

I therefore try to proceed along a path that I know a little better, also to try to get closer to the end of a divertissement that risks becoming too long, and therefore no longer divertissement.

Real environments and virtual environments

We need to reconsider the environment in which the things we have described happen, we have certainly done so, at least indirectly, but to proceed we need something more.  Let's start with an easily shareable fact: the write-a-sms-to-Marco event (an email, a txt, on twitter, facebook, whatsapp ...) occurs in an environment, where I can access the communication devices that can communicate the message to a recipient of my choice.

However simple (but not so simple) this action, in order to be carried out, requires to be, in some way predisposed, designed and prepared; and again it is not difficult to accept that this design, this preparation, takes place in a variant of the environment, that variant consisting of what we commonly call our mind: we think about it, it occurs to us to write to Mark, to Mary, and, more or less immediately after, we do it.

That is, we carry out all that series of acts that end with the confirmation of "message sent". For Systemics, the environments in which we live simultaneously are always at least two: one is the real environment, the environment in which we find physical bodies, physical phenomena, the other is the virtual environment, an emerging property of our neural system.

I naturally renounce a complete presentation of the two environments, limiting myself to indicating that the only truly virtual environment is the one we find, each of us, inside our cranial boxes; virtual reality, also called augmented reality, is an interesting and fun variant of the real environment, also made up of physical elements.

I use the concept of virtual environment (and also others, as we will see shortly) to distance myself from the relevant dangers associated with the use of the concept of "mind": the term is excessively syncretic, polysemic, and often unfortunately misleading, should be used with enormous caution, and, if possible, not used at all.

Let's be content with more modest and better dominable elements: in the real environment we perform a series of actions, actions designed and found in our very private, inaccessible to others, virtual environment.

So far it's easy. Much less easy is to answer the following question: who performs the simple actions described? The obvious answer: "We!" (or Me!) so obvious is not, indeed, it is enormously complex.

I what, I who..

Keeping firm and clear the stable reference to the two environments, we must give two convincing answers with respect to the two environments: for simplicity of exposition let's refer to a singular acting subject, that is, an I.

For the first it is easy: in the real environment "I" identifiesa specific human organism, and therefore, with truth I can affirm that I, a specific human organism, act.

For the second environment, compared to the virtual environment, individual and inaccessible to anyone, "I" is not, cannot be the specific human organism of before.

We could, with many reasons, argue that the first I, that of the real environment, contains the second, a kind of matryoshka: this statement, however , forces us to remain in the real environment, and to remain absolutely blind to the extraordinary wonders that happen in the virtual environment.

The Ego that is contained in the living organism in the real environment, is an extremely sophisticated evolutionary fruit: it is one of the systems of which we are constituted, and, considered with respect to the virtual environment, it constitutes itself as the organized set of all the neural codes (the codified instructions) that we have used and use to govern the interaction of our organism with the real environment.

The "systemic" ego is a system, consisting of integrated organs (systems) when we look at it with respect to the real environment, consisting of integrated neural codes when we look at it with respect to the virtual environment.

The functioning of our neural system remains, to date, for the most part unknown; the same goes for neural code: but that both exist, and that both are closely linked to our proper functioning is absolutely out of the question.

The ego as an integrated system of neural codes that we use to govern the interaction between our organism and the real environment in which we find ourselves is therefore a good hypothesis: we do not have laboratory tests to demonstrate its "real" configuration

While waiting for such evidence (confirming or disconfirming) to emerge from the research of the coming centuries, we are authorized (although at our total risk and peril) to use this hypothesis to make the contradictory phenomenon of "disinterested" behavior understandable and explainable.

Someone will have already ventured along this path, impatient to continue, probably magnetized by a couple of consequences, implications of this perspective of observation: if, in the virtual environment, the Ego is the set of codes we use, the Other, then, who is it?

Obviously in the real environment the Other, Marco, is that organism there, just and only the one there, unique and unrepeatable: and in the virtual environment? Do we have to do the same thing we did with ourselves? Impossible, since the virtual self of the Other is inaccessible, closed in his skull: of him (or her) we have only the elements that we could and we can share in the real environment.

To be exact, in the best conditions we have only neurograms (it is the synthetic name of the neural codes that we have specialized to govern each specific configuration of real environment with which we deal) related to those elements, neurograms that together constitute Marco as one of the elements of our real environment.

Even stopping here, long before trying to understand how then it is possible to constitute the Other as a subject, and not as an object among others in our real environment, the conclusion to which this path leads us is before our nose: if we have only the neurograms that concern Marco, which concern the Elements-Mark shared in the real environment,  having accepted that the Ego is the set of neurograms that help us to govern our interaction with the environment, then Marco, in our virtual environment, is simply a "part" of our Ego.

I would prefer that we call it, from now on, Egoic System, leaving the ego, the I, to our daily conversations, grammar and syntax of the language that we preferentially use: the advantage we obtain by adopting this suggestion is to dramatically decrease the possibilities of misunderstanding and confusion.

We are dealing with systems and environments, let's see how this can help us understand what we dare to serve, better than other scientific options do: our Egoic System integrates, in its functioning, certainly also the neurograms that help us to govern the interaction with that particular and specific configuration of environment in which Marco comes into play. .  and that is Marco.

Having to deal with Marco in our virtual environment certainly does not mean putting ourselves in front of a virtual mirror, trying to identify in our Egoic System the neurograms-Marco, as if they were parts of a Harlequin costume: representing ourselves in our virtual environment as "copies" of ourselves that we see in the real environment is the simplest and most spontaneous thing that can "come to mind" to do.

If we followed the impulse we should not forget, prudently, that what is virtually painting the scene in our virtual environment, certainly does not paint it using canvas, colors and brushes, arms and hands, or none of the tools that we can find in our real environments ... we will not follow it, trying to take a few steps in the direction of a conclusion towards which it is good to start.

The constitution of the Other as a subject necessarily takes place in our virtual environment, and it is a complex process, which involves numerous systems, which we will not deal with now: more or less we are all capable, to a greater or lesser extent, of recognizing and welcoming another as a subject, and not only as a living object in our environment.

Those that we consider important are, in our virtual environment, plexuses and sets of neurograms relevant and significant in our history, for reasons and reasons that are written in our history, unique and unrepeatable: their existence and accessibility is important, or at least it has been (and therefore could be again) in relation to the quality of our life, in short for our survival.

Align and confirm

It is now necessary to introduce a further element, which concerns our simultaneous existence, our simultaneous life in the two different environments, a sort of guiding principle, a rule of security: being able to have a virtual environment is a wealth, evolutionarily speaking, formidable, constitutes an extraordinary competitive advantage.

In the virtual environment we can manipulate space and time, we can do experiments and tests even extremely dangerous without doing ourselves any harm, we can prepare the actions that we will then successfully deploy in the real environment, and much more: of course, there is a danger, relevant, with respect to which, in all probability, natural selection has ended up constituting a kind of seat belt.

The danger is to exceed in the "virtual life", that is, to remain mainly in the virtual environment, neglecting the government of the interaction with the real environment: to avoid this extremely dangerous eventuality for our survival, we are equipped with a kind of alarm that triggers when, beyond a certain time limit, very variable from individual to individual, what we find in the real environment does not correspond,  it is not similar to what we simultaneously find in the virtual environment.

As we would say using everyday language, we can remain immersed in our thoughts, in our reflections, in the study of mathematical abstractions, even for a long time, but at some point, it is better to take a look at what is happening out there, maybe a thunderstorm is being prepared, and deal with what exists in the two environments.

This is not a "reminder of reality", both environments are really existing, but a device for regulating activity, genetically transmitted memory of what the generations that preceded us have learned, living admonition: the extraordinary elaboration that we can develop in the virtual environment serves, must serve, to make our life safer in the real environment.

Alarm systems

Human alarms of this kind have a specific characteristic, they are silent and painful, consisting of unpleasant suffering, more or less intense: even if slight, displeasure accompanies the finding of misalignment between what we find in the virtual environment and what we find, simultaneously, in the real environment.

On the other hand, the relative success in achieving this balance, aimed at making our survival safe, is marked by the general satisfaction (it too can be of very modest intensity) that is felt when what we find in the virtual environment is "found" in the real environment.

It is time to sum up: the selfless care towards the people important to us, as long as it persists, the losses that we apparently bear (time, energy, money) as long as such disinterested care persists, are in truth rewarded by the satisfaction that the "disinterested caregiver" feels in finding in his real environment what exists in his virtual environment,  important elements and parts of oneself, neutralizing the painful javelins of the anti-imbalance alarm system.

Alarm that evidently gave signs of coming into operation, motivating the caregiver (disinterested) to call, write, in short, do something to get confirmation of the similarity between the configurations of virtual environments, the good neurograms at work in the virtual environment, and the configurations of the real environment, again the good neurograms this time at work in the real environment.

The response of the other, of this other specific to which we address in a "disinterested" way, then has the value of confirming its own good functioning, confirming that it undeniably has a great value for us, well sufficient to reward the efforts deployed to obtain it: something that simply cancels the "disinterested" appearance of our action, an action that so clearly pursues and obtains something that is needed.

The lack of response opens the perspective on reparative or mournful scenarios, but we can stop here, to the confirmation of the legitimacy of the displeasure we feel, concomitant with the lack of response, the result of that ancient alarm system that imperiously warns that something must be done, since our worlds have misaligned, since our lives, the one we lead in the real environment and the one we lead in our virtual environment,  they no longer flow in harmony.

Or again, in other words, our good neurograms, the ones we rely on to ensure a good survival, may no longer be usable with confidence: better  get to work.

Starting to write this summer divertissement, a few years ago, it seemed funny to me to title it "look who’s back" having in part already in mind the path that I could follow, and the part that the Egoic System could play.

System in which past, present and future intertwine, depositing their imprint in neurograms, a system in which and with which we incessantly build and reconstruct the way of governing our relationship, our interaction with the environments in which we live, simultaneously, always, real and virtual.

In this sense, in the framework of relationships with people important to us, precisely because of the characteristic of importance that we attribute to them, naturally also the result of our considerably complex adoption of equally complex neural codes, it can only be a re-see, a seeing again what we have already seen: that is, seeing in the real environment what we needed to see,  already "seen", existing in the virtual environment, moved by the need to keep harmonized, aligned the environments in which we lead our lives.

That's it? Perhaps we do not know how to say it, but it is likely that we feel it, we feel a sort of imbalance between what we experience to the "non- response" and this explanation, although convincing, of the type "unconnected peripheral, verify the connection", alarming yes, but not enough to allow us to fully read what happens to us: even adding this last "discovery" to the two previous ones,  there remains a precise and clear feeling of incompleteness.

We cannot convincingly explain at least a precise variegation of the complex set of emotions that mark the event "non-response": I certainly do not claim to know what everyone feels, feel emotionally in these cases, my observations remain within the limits of my field experience.

Within these limits, it is not given to me to find a single feedback of a single subject who is not at least annoyed by the lack of response (annoyance is the name of an emotion), or disappointed (another emotion), or saddened (another emotion) and who, describing the judgment, the evaluation that can formulate the event, does not arrive, sooner or later, to involve the lack of consideration , to put it in courteous terms, of not being part of the final and liberating phase of the digestion process of the one who has not given a hint of response, translating, for reasons of literary acceptability, a well-known Italian popular saying.

A very popular way of saying, which I find more fruitful than the aulic "lack of consideration", of moralizing tone, for me very unpleasant: popular brutality, in this case, puts us better on the right track, better than the blame does, which would force us to take a longer and probably less easy ride.

The value

Even when not systemic, and using common language, the conclusion we necessarily come to is like: I am not important to him/her, not as much as he/she is to me, or at least not as much as I wish to be.

This conclusion, on the one hand, brings us back to the need for alignment of our worlds, already seen and appreciated, and declared, rightly, incomplete, on the other hand it opens up to another kind of vital needs that peremptorily, daily, require satisfaction, and that, returning to the common language, we can indicate as confirmation of value.

This kind of need has some faces, simultaneously: it requires us to obtain with sufficient frequency the proofs of our good functioning, the systems of which we are constituted are in order and work well, the codes we use to deal with what we have to do with are reliable, the work of continuous virtual-real alignment provides feedback of acceptable success.

If we do not get positive evidence we are in danger, our control systems activate alarms, the danger, associated with the non-response, has interesting aspects, the one indicated by the popular saying is among the most interesting: descriptively, literally, it is the no longer being part of our interlocutor, it can not "expel" us because it has already expelled us, while we were elsewhere and dealing with something else,  without our knowledge.

Not being a part of the other, obtaining proof of one's own expulsion, feedback of the current configuration of the real environment, is what does not align with that part of our virtual environment that provides that our interlocutor, an important subject for us, keeps us in his egoic system as we keep it in ours, misalignment that requires immediate intervention,  to put our codes to work to put things right, or put things right back.

What codes can be effective in putting things right and realigning worlds? In seeking the answer to this vital question we necessarily take into account the variables that may have determined, or contributed to determine, the feedback we have obtained, in short, the possible causes, the possible conditions in which our interlocutor finds himself: we are relatively certain that we have not done anything that may have made our interlocutor unhappy with us , and, today quite easy, we have made sure that he is alive and healthy.

The non-response,  which is a response, says what it must say: you are no longer in me, with me.

Abandonment

And this answer is in a network of connections, for each different, overall, often similar for some traits, very frequent is the activation of the connection with abandonment, with having been abandoned.

The knot of abandonment is terrifying, both for the frequency with which this type of experience is produced, and for the multiplicity of forms it takes; of great scientific interest is how we deal with it, what codes we have developed to deal with it.

Some time ago, I do not remember on which of the modern media, perhaps even Science, I came across an article that reported the result of a research conducted among those who had been disconnected, rejected by their contact on social media, finding that, to put it with a similarity, those who were disconnected, rejected felt a pain higher than that typical of receiving a punch on their nose.

Like almost all the so-called studies on human behavior, it was, in truth, a meticulous collection of data and observations, absent any serious etiological hypothesis, in short, absent the explanations, the reasons that can be presented and accepted, able to explain why, why, being "disconnected" from a "virtual friend" is accompanied by an intense pain like the one that is generally  felt after receiving a punch on one’s nose... I don't remember any punching on my nose, I remember beating it very few times in my life, and I remember it being very painful.

Sounds a little bizarre, doesn't it? it is a "friend" on facebook that, at a certain point, cuts you off,  how hard can it be, a virtual "friendship", as almost everyone says, where virtual really can mean not so firm, perhaps superficial, perhaps definitely fictitious: the research, if I remember correctly, highlighted the relative indifference of the traits of recency, superficiality, etc.,  it was just the happening, cold hard fact. Cut off, closed off.

If we read the "disconnection" as a variant of the multiple forms of abandonment, and the non-response as another variant, we always have  the task of explaining the painfulness of the reaction, and of better verifying the possible connection with the value.

That abandonment is really a threat, just as our nociceptive system impeccably signals through the painful signal, well, it depends, doesn't it? it depends, for example, on how safe we are in the real environment, on the alternatives we have...it is that we have put ourselves in the most unfavorable condition, we are dealing with an abandonment made by a person important to us, relatively impossible or very difficult to replace.

Let's take a step back, in the time, in our time, a few years or many decades ago, but these are decades, not millions of years, we should at least be able to imagine what it is to be in the condition of being abandoned when babies, or kids, as all of us have been, struggling with these giant demigods,  substantially omnipotent, who take care of us, and perhaps even diligently when we need nourishment, an indispensable help in separating us from our dejections, possible sources of infections, of mortal threat, protection and defense from the attack of predators: without them it is death.

Well before any thought, well before any consciousness, each cell f ours knows and teaches, through the two and a half meters of DNA strand, what it is and what is good to try, well before our random birth, it has known it for millions of years, it has been teaching it for millions of years: do we really believe we are stronger,  more powerful than this gigantic wave that has pushed our species on the shores of a provisional survival, but still survival?

Certainly yes, and certainly we are... but not immediately, not at the beginning of our small, insignificant, derisory, unique, unrepeatable and extraordinary life, we can become it later, much later ... and, of course, also not succeed.

Equally evident that one thing is the abandonment for a small child, a small girl, something completely different is what we "grown-ups", we adults, are able to face, golly, now we are those omnipotent demigods, well, in short, greatly reduced, but able to satisfy our desires, our needs ... or not?

The universe in a walnut shell

Maybe someone recognized the title, a valuable work by Hawking, a few years ago, I liked the suggestion of the walnut, they told me, decades ago, that a walnut opened in half would show me the design of the tree that could have become over time, and I looked at the nutmeat, still in the half-shell, that I was trying to extract to savor it,  well, why not, it seemed plausible.

Digress? I think not, one of the aspects of the "functioning of the codes", over the years, has become increasingly important for me to decipher: no one knows anything about it, really, neuroscientists (some I have consulted) are engaged along different strands, they cannot help me, pity.

We are used to considering codes as sequences of instructions, 1 and 0, the need to know how to write codes suitable for quantum computers has changed things a lot, sequences of 1 and 0 are not enough, the exploration of the possibilities of construction and use of neuromorphic computers  at the service of A.I.  they have opened new paths, we will see what they find: for now we must be content with what is there, and resign ourselves to not having what is not there.

Over the years, the elements I have collected "in the course of work" seem to converge, indicating in some way that our neural codes preserve and "respect" history.

For now mine is only a conjecture, even less than a hypothesis, and, alas, there are no tools so fine and precise that can be used to obtain certain scientific evidence, or little or nothing doubtful, in the absence of anything else, I keep it, better than the nothing we find: it is possible that ontogenesis, also in this case, repeats phylogeny.

It is a principle known and accepted among scholars of life, even for us it seems to apply, from conception to birth, to the beginning of ectopic life, each of us has reproduced this unspeakable wonder, in about 36 weeks, 270 days, 24 million seconds, we retrace a history of 4 billion years, on the one hand 24 million, on the other 4 billion,  ratio 1 to 170, almost two hundred times faster.

I find it often very difficult to realize the magnificence of which we are witnesses every moment, if this is not, in some way, translated, into something understandable for our senses ... our neural system, according to very serious researchers, inside a single small and miserable brain of about a kilogram of weight, employs more or less 120,000 kilometers of neural filament, yes what is found between dendrites and axons, more or less what is enough to make three times the circle of the equator ... I am already very impressed by the distance covered by an air flight between Milan and London, I struggle to imagine the tour of the world, which is much more, not even a thousand kilometers between the two cities, forty times-and-something our equator.

The two and a half meters of DNA are nothing, unless we keep in mind that this strand is contained in each of our cells, from 10 to 100 microns each, so, a micron is a millionth of a millimeter? right?  Yes, I checked... if we transformed each nucleotide into a letter body 11, and prudently accepted the simplest linear readability, like that of a common book, in short, we would find ourselves with a library of over forty thousand volumes, each of about 500 pages, A4 format ... accepting readability not only linear, but also and simultaneously in groups of two, or three, or pairs and backhoes of the third level, which we seem to do without any difficulty, as happens in the reading of musical scores, the number of volumes in our library becomes astronomical.

In a single cell, a single, very small one.

We walk, it's a beautiful day, a walk is good, especially if done in healthy places, less and less available today, alas, we are not in a hurry, as far as we go, 3, 4, maybe 5 kilometers per hour ... and a fool touches us running at the speed of, therefore, 5 times 200, well, it seems a thousand, yes, it is 1,000 kilometers per hour, one million meters per hour, it takes little more to get the roar of the breakthrough of the wall of sound ... how long does it take to overcome us, let's say to travel a meter?

I have to do the math, I do not trust, I imagine very little, yes, but the number gives me security, one thousand kilometers in an hour three thousand six hundred seconds ways, therefore, almost four thousandths of a second ... no, I don't get there, I don't see it, I'm not capable, too fast, the eye is deceived with sequences of images that follow one another and just over 10 frames per second, we don't see the frame, we see the movement, 4 thousandths of a second, I can't do it.

What about the neural network? Standard bio-electric pulse transmission rate, estimated at 1 millisecond, 4 times faster than our recapitulating 4 billion years of evolutionary history during a "normal" pregnancy... What can happen in our neural network in just one millisecond?

Nobody knows, we don't have enough tools and knowledge even to start describing it.

For purely practical purposes, it has been of considerable use to me to consider that our neural codes preserve the history of their construction, embodied in their configuration: for decades it has been recognized and accepted that no living person accesses life like as a blank page, we are full of instructions for use, the only relevant difference between humans and other species is the considerably greater ability to build and write new codes,  compared to other species.

But our systemic nature "prevents" creation in the void, to what we are given to know, from immemorial time  we accept that natura non facit saltus, nature, whatever it is, certainly as an abstraction for us able to contain almost everything, does not admit jumps, does not present discontinuity, each element comes from another, is modification of something that was there before ...

The new "codes" have root in the old, and, when they are used, when that portion of the neural network related to their preparation and motorial execution (real and virtual) is activated, they retrace the whole story, from the beginning, from when they were the reflection of the membrane of the amoeba that "withdraws" from contact with acidic substances, the command given to the flagellum of the eukaryote,  up to the configuration necessary for the impeccable performance of the Chaconne, from the Violin Sonatas, Opera 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004, by Johan Sebastian Bach.

What do we see? Ah well, we see a part of the end of the show, now I'm "enjoying" a ciaccona performed by a Japanese violinist, very good, chapeau, and it's already a lot.

And what do we ever see of abandonment?

What can we know, without knowing that we know, but it is there, under our very noses, also "inside us", and simultaneously outside, out there, of the reason, of the reasons that led the other, our other, the one who ,damn, does not respond, not to respond?

Egoistic me!? So what about you?

No one can disobey the genetically imposed egoism, the command to try to survive at any cost, there are no possible exceptions: to bring the infrequent practice of suicide back to further proof, and not an exception to the rule, is relatively easy, not here and not now.

The Egoic System "contains" and organizes everything we need to survive, from sucking breast milk to wearing jmmy choo, even the codes that decline how it is better to be selfish: our every action, and therefore each of our codes impeccably pursues our best advantage, is consistent with this purpose, and is the irrefutable content of doing our best,  in every moment of our lives.

To resume a partition presented in a booklet of several years ago, stupid-naïve-pirate-intelligent, the forms of the inescapable selfishness of each are to be considered as side effects of other codes, inevitably adopted because those, better than all the others, have received sufficient confirmation of being able to obtain the greatest benefit.

It sounds a lot Smith, liberalism and neoliberalism, doesn't it? And we have all seen where the adoption of that paradigm has led us and is leading us, the denunciations and admonitions about the perniciousness of the current impact of the survival of our species on the global ecosystem, of the continuous growth of inequality, appreciated by a small audience that I would like to call cultured, in practice totally ignored ... and this too has its own precise reason, it exhibits a solid rationality, even if it is not that rationality identified with intelligent conduct, one of the four forms of rational egoism and, not the only possible ... the speech would take us further, not here and not now.

It may sound paradoxical to say that those who act stupidly, obtaining disadvantages and harm for themselves and for others, demonstrate complete rationality, but it is relatively easy to conduct this demonstration: what interests us, here, in the very limited scope of the investigation related to the non-response related stress, is to assume, after having carefully examined clues and evidence, after having realized the unspeakable complexity from which our codes originate,  that the non-response is constituted, for the other, as the best possible action, an action that achieves its best advantage.

On this side, free us, in relation to the search for our best advantage, to judge what we observe of the conduct of the other as stupid, naïve or pirate: with this we can in no way deny that what we observe is the fruit of observance of the criterion of doing one's best in every moment of one's life, and that,  although not necessarily visible or easily understandable to us,  there are very solid reasons, knowing which we would find demonstrated the rationality, the sense of what we observe.

For the avoidance of doubt, the door of petty relativism, through which all the nonsense of the world passes, is firmly closed: recognizing the rationality of stupidity, of carelessness, of piracy does not imply at all that they are automatically cleared and, in any way, authorized.

For our very limited purposes, accepting the "immanent" rationality of all forms of human egoism is a condition that facilitates the understanding of the phenomenon we are studying, helps the identification of antidotes to stress.

Our Egoic System, selfishly, organizes and preserves what we need, what is of help to us in governing the very complex interactions with our real and virtual environments, in view of the satisfaction of our needs, our desires, in short, our survival: the other has expelled us, we can be sure of at least one thing,  in his "judgment" we do not serve him to deal with what he is dealing with.

We are not helpful, maybe we can go back to being later, or much later... maybe never again. Now, of course, no.

Guilt

It is possible that among the thoughts that have come to us (yes, the thoughts come to us, like everything else, I think) while dealing with the non-response, we have found, at the time, something similar, and the thing may have also left us more or less indifferent, some version of his business, her business, , find your way, so it is life,  or even making warm invitations to go to places that should be more than overcrowded, depending on how many people accepted the invitation.

Even if this were the case, launched the exorcising invitation, it is not said that nothing else will come to us, according to my direct and indirect feedback it happens with much greater frequency than one might suspect: what?

The word guilt is so common that we risk letting go unnoticed the numerous meanings that justify, if not explain, the frequency of use, including the meaning of inadequacy, of not being, or not having been, up to expectations, nourished by the twin defectiveness, both compatible and often correlated with what happens in the courtrooms of modern courts,  in scientific research laboratories, in examination sessions, in conflicts between humans, of any order, extent and degree.

Observation and research have made it possible to collect an impressive amount of data, converging on a general finding of considerable interest: children struggling with the abandonment of one or both parents present, with very rare exceptions, a common solution.

Each puppy of our species, very soon, from the very first years of his life, like all living humans, has an absolute need, for its proper functioning, to align real environments and virtual environments, to obtain continuous evidence of its good functioning, to identify what is connected to what, what causes what,  what is a consequence of what, in the common language of "sense making", also of making sense of what happens every day, of making sense of abandonment.

Abandonments that, it should never be forgotten, are close, for the puppies s of our species, to pure catastrophe, life is at stake.

What we usually call imaginary guilt is one of the forms of the predisposition, plausibly genetically inherited, to resort to a very particular solution when we face insoluble problems, of the type of those constituted by the abandonment by our fellows, especially in that phase of our life in which the presence of who-takes-care-of-us is of particular relevance for our survival.

In other cases, this special solution takes the name of magic, of magical thinking, capable of constituting itself as a connection between elements otherwise impossible to connect, as an "answer" otherwise impossible to obtain, the speech would take us further, and I fear in inaccessible territories, maybe another time.

Guilt brings with it the finding of inadequacy, of defectiveness, which with enormous frequency are constituted as the reason for and cause of abandonment: impossible, for the little child, to consider the possibility that it is the grown-up, the care taker, that kind of omnipotent demigod, to be guilty, defective, inadequate, not up to the task ; the genetic predisposition, plausibly, also takes into account the need to favor the so-called "sociality", protect belonging and permanence in the group, the rebellion against the incapable care-taker is less "winning" than quiescence ... and then, statistically, better an incapable care-taker than no care-taker.

And even the rebellion that occurs quite frequently during adolescence is not at all incompatible with the initial and prolonged attendance of the solution: it is my fault.

The contents of such guilt, of imaginary guilt, rarely present difficulties in finding, any detail, appearance, action, can easily be integrated: with the words that are conquered in the course of development are described configurations that who knows how long they have been presenting themselves in the virtual environments of the child, I am ugly, messy, I am not able to do this or that,  I did not answer properly, I am stupid, ungainly, I did forbidden things, very rich repertoire.

The guilt is, in these cases, a magnificent solution: in this way the worlds align, and we have at least one way to deal with this hostile configuration of the real environment, we govern at least the taking shape, knowing its source, in a certain sense we "control" it, it is no longer something that can appear out of nowhere,  impossible to predict how threatening, it is no longer meaningless.

Of course the price is high, we are lacking, defective, inadequate, structurally at constant risk of being sent away, difficult to be appreciated, even if we can try to hide the guilt, sometimes we succeed, maybe even often, maybe even for very long times, until they discover us we are safe, hiding the guilt is a hard job, very tiring ...

We put all this in connection with the considerations made about the ontogenesis that repeats the phylogeny, of the "nature non facit saltus", of course, conjectures, attempts to explain to us the reason for the displeasure related to the lack of response ... again, well within the perimeter of facts and events to which I have been a direct witness, solid clues, and, often, evidence, little or nothing refutable, converge on confirming that the "displeasure" (quoted, since I wish to emphasize the incredible complexity, hidden under a name, a term so common and flattened) related to the non-response is "nourished" also by this,  this pre-set, ready, quick and safe solution.

Several years ago I was very struck, to the point that I remember it without any difficulty, the reply of a senior business executive, in my opinion one of the two or three "real" (I know, the quotation marks end up boring, I invoke the clemency of the Court) General Manager that I have been able to meet in decades of professional activity, one of the many unknown myths,  champions of an insufficiently recognized silent leadership... well, in the face of a comment received, with full evidence a good attempt at a humorous joke, containing a mild nod to the possibility that he, General Manager, could disappoint the great expectations of those around him, he responded lightning fast, and with a tone very far from expressing, simultaneously, devaluation of the comment, indifference, rejection of meaning, difficult for me to describe it positively,  there was pride, taking charge, understanding, acceptance, recognition of value, energy and pacification: "You have every right to be disappointed in me".

Magnificent vocal register, no mark, of repertoire beat tried and tested, developed with considerable use of attention and energy, exactly the sound that we are all able to grasp, that sonority that marks and makes unmistakable the fruit of the best attempt that has just been made to find, in the infinite sea (or almost) of all possible answers,  of all the possible replies, the truest one, the best truth that one has been able to find, and to offer.

As proof that exactly this was what it was, for me, already at the time not entirely incapable of observing and evaluating events of this kind, was what followed: nothing.

Exactly nothing.

Even to my watchful and ruthless observation of the so-called "non-verbal signals", by this gentleman, between 55 and 60 years old, no signal was generated and sent, no signal of winking, of "we understood each other, do we ... I am the DJ, in here they are all inferior to me in degree", but only, and consistently, those of a quiet and pacified awareness, caring, not at all careless, saying without the need for words, what you say is important, it really is, and, simultaneously, it is also what I have found in many years of work,  it is in your full and completely recognized right to find yourself disappointed in me, to find me, to see me, to evaluate me as disappointing, not up to your expectations ... and it is in my full and unquestionable right to make decisions that can disappoint you, and translate them into concrete action, if this is the best judgment I am capable of expressing.

In other words, I think harder, more primitive, and cruder (and this is largely the extraordinary aspect): I am at peace, I am not hostage of your expectations, neither now, nor ever, nor yours, nor anyone’s.

That is, for us here: the way of guilt is not my way, not anymore.

How he succeeded I could not really say, at the time I felt happy, without being able to explain why, it took me almost fifteen years to find out, and even if now I know (or I think I know, the difference is laughable) because, however I am grateful to that gentleman: thank you René!

Why am I grateful and happy, even today? Yes, you guessed it: if he succeeded, we can do it too.

Help

Freedom, complete, not depending on anything or anyone, and at the same time knowing and being able to provide for oneself, for one's family, for those we love, I believe is a "dream" that all of us, at some time in our lives, sometimes even for long periods, have nurtured.

For some time it has happened to me, with greater frequency than decades ago, to hear young men and women, from twenty to forty years old, express with great energy and conviction that desire, to see it presented as the main purpose and the future reward of their daily efforts, often very intense, tiring, demanding...  yes, I remember it, I had it too, a long time ago. And not anymore?

Yes... and no.

The interweaving of our addictions is so dense and widespread, so many are the perennial sources and springs, to be stunning and technically impossible even to think of being able to try to dissolve them: to stay alive we depend on the quality of the air we breathe, the water with which we quench our thirst, the food with which we feed ourselves, the environments in which we live,  to such a cogent extent that we can recognize that from this form of "slavery" it is structurally impossible for us to redeem ourselves.

And it does not take long to make it clear to us that even just to satisfy these elementary needs we depend on an impressive number of other human subjects, on the skill and diligence with which they carry out their work: climbing the scale of complexity of what can make our quality of life acceptable, and of the processes through which we can obtain it, the "dependence" on others increases again, enormously.

Not depending on anything and no one is literally, technically, impossible, having impossible expectations to fill is not for me, and therefore no, if we put things like this, no thanks.

But it would be foolish and vain to stop here, to what seems to be the brutal confirmation of the conditions of "reality" with which we come to terms every day of our lives: they are young, but they are not stupid, their passionate declaration of love for freedom, of today, like ours of yesterday, must be understood, honored ... and supported, helped.

I try, every time, as best I know and I can, I try to understand what is inside that container on which a label is applied that shows the word "freedom", for each the content is partly unique, unrepeatable, partly quite similar to what I patiently found in others, even in mine of a long time ago.

To fully describe what I have found in these researches is a task beyond my strength, remaining truthful I can indicate, as a synthesis, some passages of a famous monologue, yes, the Hamlet’s to be or not to be, free from:

" the whips and scorns of time,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy takes ".

Which systemically I translate into prosaic to have to deal with dummies, naïves, and pirates, with these three possible forms of the granite, genetically cogent, selfishness, with the nefarious, ominous and pernicious effects of the forced interaction with them.

Who among us can guarantee that we have never behaved, at any time, with respect to the one who continues not to respond, as a dumb, as a naive, or as a pirate?

Even without going into the specific merits of any "real" interaction, are we really sure that we can recognize the cypher of our being, or having been for them ... and of their being, or having been for us, following in perfect good faith the path indicated by the VIP sign, they are important for us ...

If we have been, temporarily or permanently, abandoned, at this point it is impossible for us not to recognize the root of what happened: we are not helpful, and it is quite possible that, after looking better, more carefully, perhaps even with "systemic glasses", we can discover that it is not a bad result at all ... of course, maybe even a side effect, unwanted and undesirable, of the lack of knowledge of how we function.

Even help, helping, are common words and present complex interweaving of meaning, far from simple to know and understand, at every step, what helps and what does not: not necessarily the confirmation of the immediate  obtained relief  is the certain proof of having succeeded, even if we recognize that it is impossible for us to tolerate for a long time the sorrow, the pain,  unmistakable marking of configurations of environments, real and virtual, hostile to our survival.

The complexity of how, how to be of help, is flanked and united by the complexity, to be faced, of why and because,  for what reasons, on the basis of what reasons, ours and of the other, and, no less important and crucial, in view of what, of what end, of what result, and of the possible or probable consequences that may derive from it,  or that will probably result... for us and for the other.

Complexity that I indicate here, refraining even from trying to deepen, I do not think a book would be enough.

Remedies

The first and most important remedy, without any presumption and well guarding me from any boasting, is what we found here: knowing more, having a better knowledge of the phenomenon, which means, concretely, having a better knowledge of how we function, is the first and most important remedy for stress from non-response.

As we have briefly mentioned in the introductory page of this section, dedicated to stress management, stress is the name of an unpleasant strain, associated with our detection of configurations of real and virtual environments hostile to our survival: the possibility of dominating its meaning and reason helps to change the way we deal with it,  to reduce, if not eliminate, the condition in which we are forced to suffer its effects, to access the one in which, better guided by better knowledge, we can at least begin to look for a more effective remedy than those we have available.

The better knowledge we have developed here helps to scale with greater accuracy our assessment of danger to our survival, understood in an extremely broad sense, including everything that, for each of us, allows us to distinguish the different levels of quality of our life, personal and professional, and to act in a congruent way to achieve and protect a satisfactory quality of life.

It is now possible for us to have clear in "mind" that we have two lines of work, different and complementary: one goes in the direction of identifying, with the greatest possible precision and congruence, if and how to try (at least) to help the one who does not answer us, accepting that, for reasons now unknown to us, it is quite possible that we do not succeed , recognizing that "understanding the reasons" is the main way to arrive at a good solution, but that it is not at all said that we will succeed, either because of our inability, or because of the incoercible determination of the other not to allow us to get on board.

The other goes in the direction of helping us to help, of seeking and developing a better knowledge of how we function, wider, more extensive and deeper than the one that, necessarily fragmentary, we have found here.

Not that there are no other remedies, we already know this, they are the ones we have used so far: but, if we have come to read so far, we also know that they are not entirely satisfactory.

 

Non-response 2 and non-call 1 and 2...

How do we deal with the complementary configuration, with the situation in which we are the ones who do not give an answer?

And how do we deal with the configuration of the non-call 1, the one that we trace easily through comments like "it's been a long time since I wanted to call you", and, while we're at it, with the non-call 2, the configuration in which we are the ones to postpone and postpone a call, the composition and sending of a message?

We already have the answer.

De te fabula narratur.