Agreed. It's a conversation stopper for me. Sorry. When I hear that term I have to remind myself that people of color automatically get a lot of racist crap, as a matter of course. But still I block or mute. Just the other day I saw a tweet beginning with "Hey white girl" followed by some diatribe. I immediately and reflexively muted this person. Call it my white privilege.

It’s just like the real world. Where I grew up, “hey white boy” was often a prelude to someone threatening or trying to beat me up for no reason. As an adult, those words still trigger my reflex to prepare for an actual fight.

The Commanding Self by Idries Shah It is a curious choice, I admit, but it takes you out of the mundane reality into fresh view of life. Expanding your view is a great cure for depression. I was also very inspired by Shah's "Thinker from the East".

Stephen LaBerge made this same discovery in 1987 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_LaBerge They did not do their research.

Everything old is new again...

It goes back to the late 70s with Stephen LaBerge's and Keith Hearne's research, but as far as I know, those experiments were always involving one-way communication.

A few years ago, the author of the awesome blog lucidcode, trained himself to communicate in Morse code with the outside world: https://lsdbase.org/2012/05/11/hello-dream-world/

I also recall someone doing a full-on two-way communication experiment involving eye signals and light flashes a couple years ago, but I don't remember the source.

I read it again, recently, it was oddly comforting during a time like this.

And I saw that this, too, was meaningless.

It is best just to read the first book. It is complete in itself.

And then there is Whipping Star, which is best skimmed through so that you can get to The Dosadi Experiment.

In fairness, Whipping Star is a fabulous take on what it would be like to attempt to communicate with an alien species that does not share our basic assumptions.

Dosadi Experiment is filled with fascinating ideas. Little gems like: “Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?”

Nah, it's best to read all 6 books by Frank Herbert. They're incredibly good.

I concur with Ancillary Justice. I love the way that you have to work out what is happening through successive detail. Plenty of surprises. A genderless society is very hard to get one's mind around.

The Mulla Nasrudin books by Idries Shah. These tales, some of them very old, represent patterns that repeat again and again, in different guises in life. As you absorb them you start to recognize your own behavior patterns in response to analogous situations, which gives you the option of changing your response over time.