Social signaling

Rare is the person with sufficient self-confidence to look at another and be prepared for what could follow. The other side is also rare: the person who suddenly, unexpectedly, finds themselves the focus of another's attention - and is prepared to deal with the intention and direct or redirect it in a positive way.

So your life becomes a repository for unfinished possibilities. Energy that you, alone, have to redirect into dreams, movies, alcohol, drugs, uncertainty, transference. Not healthy, but very today.

Signaling

Animals are, to a great extent, dressed for the job. Color, sounds, scent, biology, life cycle, plus the simpler set of aspirations - and, to our observations at least, lack of pride - help animals relate quickly and effectively. We humans also have a number of conventions for signaling intentions:

• Our physical appearance (look, smell, touch). Do we take care of our appearance? Our age indicates our potential ability and energy to interact (sorry folks).
• The symbols we may intentionally use to indicate our preferences (gay pride flag button, flowers, cars, hats, outfits, handerchief colors, etc.).
• We may dress to attract attention rather than dress to fit in.
• Our behavior. How we put ourselves out there; how we act.
• Electronic social media (Facebook, Scruff, Grindr, texting, bumping, Skype).

Protecting your pride

It would be far healthier if we had a signaling system where a person whose hormones have suddenly been elevated by seeing another person randomly can communicate with that person and interact towards a positive outcome for both. Not a hookup, but a communication.

I remember the beach in Rio (picture hundreds of people) where a good looking young guy walking by a really hot bikini said: "Wow, you're hot" to the girl. Her reaction? Smile. Thanks. But her body language said: "No way", but in a nice way: "Yeah you're cute too, but I'm totally not into it just right now". She actually said: "Thank you but I just got here and just want to sit and chill for a while." She made sure her attention was directed - and it was - in setting up her towel and environment to make sure he got the message.

A couple of comments exchanged. The guy felt good about it all, but didn't stop to force it. No indecision on her part. She just simply let him know and expected him to understand. And he did. You bet that if he didn't, she would have a number of other tactics ready to deploy. Latin Americans are so much more mature than North Americans.

I find that our current conventions either give out too much information, or too little. I believe the time has come to establish a system that allows us to more quickly and discreetly communicate likes, dislikes, preferences, immediate wishes, and other emotions. We need the ability to back-and-forth with others so that we can test out and redirect our energies in a positive way, rather than spend the day accumulating a set of frustrations that are just looking for an object to dump them on. Picture the husband who has been turned on by cute young things all day in the street coming home to his now dumpy wife and consciously or unconsciously taking out the day on his nearest and dearest.

We need to balance what conventions we have so that we can communicate more than "too little" and yet not "too much".

Developing a signaling convention

If we decorate our bodies and clothing with symbols, we do two things: we commit ourselves to advertising certain preferences over a period of time, and we expose those preferences to everyone. However, our feelings can change from minute to minute, and our objects of interest may be just as fleeting.

So what I'm looking for is a series of signals we can use to communicate only with the person of interest and that allows that person to communicate their reactions back to us. We also need that signaling language socially understood and in a way that overrides prejudice. If we can be taught the larger spectrum of human diversity at a young age, then this signaling system will allow us to interact in a more balanced way, and all of us will be so much happier and better people. For example, if the interaction starts between two guys, then that's ok too. No need to get upset - just a need to communicate feelings quickly and discreetly.

The following table lists potential interactions, and suggests a signal to communicate these interactions. Please accept this list as a first stab at a signaling system. I hope that, over time, I can distill a system that does the job and that we can all be comfortable with.

Each interaction needs to be generic enough to apply to any two people (male-female, male-male, female-female, ...) Each signal needs to look natural to anyone else, but have meaning to the intended recipient. Also note that the signals can form a kind of language in that you can use more than one in sequence in order to communicate more information.