4.0 ENTHUSIASM
At 4.0 the individual is enthusiastic, happy and vital. At this level, the individual experiences love, strong and outgoing; he experiences friendliness. This high level of the scale contains the faculty [an ability or aptitude] of communicating completely and withholding nothing; also the ability to communicate with complete rational selectivity; also the ability to be conversationally creative and constructive. At this high level, the individual is able to listen to everything which is said and evaluate it rationally. He can receive ideas without making critical or derogatory [faultfinding; giving a low opinion] comments. And, while receiving another person’s idea, he can greatly aid that person’s thinking and talking.

3.5 CHEERFULNESS
At 3.5, cheerfulness, the individual is capable of communicating deeply-felt beliefs… and can hold back or give forth conversation according to the rational or pleasant circumstances of the moment. The individual at this level can listen without becoming critical and can aid and assist others in conversation.

3.0 CONSERVATISM
At 3.0, conservatism, the speech of the individual becomes casual and reserved. Here is the level of small talk, for example, about the weather. At this level the individual has a resistance toward ideas which are too massive (big or huge). Here we have the level where conservatism begins to enter the reasoning and where persuasion and social graces begin to be employed to invite the participation of others. Safety, security and somewhat better survival conditions are the arguments used along this level of the Tone Scale.

2.5 BOREDOM
At boredom, you get the eyes wandering around …, but not frantically as in fear. Also, he won’t be avoiding looking at you. He’ll include you among the things he looks at. Here we have a “let’s not argue about it” attitude, a carelessness as to whether one’s conversation is being received or is even understandable. Boredom is not a state of inaction. It is a state of idle [not really going anywhere] action.

2.0 ANTAGONISM
At 2.0, antagonism, the person will look directly at you all right, but not very pleasantly. He wants to locate you—as a target. This is the level of antagonistic conversation. The individual is apt to nag or to make derogatory [faultfinding; giving a low opinion] comments to invalidate [make less of] other people. On this level the individual can only be roused [brought to life] by nagging, nasty cracks, invalidations* and other antagonistic communication. [He has] a feeling of annoyance and irritation caused by the advances of other people toward the individual. Here is the occasional grouch, the complaining individual who yet makes no mistake about what he finds wrong.

*invalidation: putting someone down or saying what someone else considers to be a fact is wrong, different, no good or false.

1.5 ANGER
Anger is simply the process of trying to hold everything still. In the lower band of anger, the person will look away from you, deliberately. At this tone level, we have a shutting off of other persons’ conversation, a complete refusal to listen and efforts to destroy incoming conversation. The conversation which is given forth by an individual at this level is forthrightly destructive and is given without any thought of the possible retaliation which may result from this destructiveness. Conversation on this level could hardly be called conversation (the prefix con- meaning “with” or “together”), as it is a forward motion toward destruction and a refusal to accept anything which might prevent that destruction.

1.1 COVERT HOSTILITY    [Covert = Hidden]
At 1.1., we have lying, to avoid real communication. It takes the form of pretended agreement, flattery or verbal appeasement [telling people what they want to hear], or simply a false picture of the person’s feelings and ideas, an artificial personality. Here is the level of covert hostility, the most dangerous and wicked level on the Tone Scale. Here is the person who smiles while he inserts a knife blade in your back. Here is the person who told you he stood up for you, when actually he has practically destroyed your reputation. Here is the insincere flatterer who yet awaits only a moment of unguardedness to destroy. The conversation of this level is filled with small barbs [sarcastic or cutting remarks] which are immediately afterwards justified as intended compliments. Talking with such a person is the maddening procedure of boxing with a shadow: one realizes that something is wrong, but the guardedness of a 1.1 will not admit anything wrong, even as, all the while, he does his best to upset.

From such a person one should never expect an outright frontal attack; the attack will come when one is absent, when one’s back is turned, or when one sleeps. A 1.1 can be accurately spotted by his conversation, since he seeks to upset [those around him] by his conversation, to destroy them without their ever being aware of his purpose. Here we have painstaking efforts to “better people” by showing them their faults. Here we have attempts to “educate” people into adjusting themselves to their environment—in other words, to stop being vital and active and go somewhere and lie down, where they will be no menace. Here we have confusions introduced into any situation which are given the most adequate “reasons” and which are yet only nullifications [methods of handling others wherein the individual seeks to minimize individuals].

1.0 FEAR
As a person starts moving up into the fear band, you get the focus shifting around, but still directed downward. At fear itself, the very obvious characteristic is that the person can’t look at you. People are too dangerous to look at. He’s supposedly talking to you, but he’s looking over in left field. Then he glances at your feet briefly, then over your head (you get the impression a plane’s passing over), but now he’s looking back over his shoulder. In short, he’ll look anywhere but at you. In this tone, being fearful, the communication is twisted and consists of lies, and the reality is poor and is agreed upon for covert purposes. Fear is expressed on its highest level as acute shyness, stage fright, extreme modesty, being tongue-tied among other people. At this level we have withdrawal from people.

0.5 GRIEF
A person in chronic grief tends to focus his eyes down in the direction of the floor a good bit. In the lower ranges of grief, his attention will be fairly fixed, as in apathy. Here we have … pleas for pity, his desperate efforts to win support by tears. This takes place where one recognizes his loss and failure, as in the death of somebody he loved and tried to help. The person in grief talks dolefully [sadly] and hopelessly in terms of bad things which are happening and will happen and for which there is no remedy. He listens only to such conversation. He cannot be heartened or cheered up.

0.05 APATHY
At apathy, a person will give the appearance of looking fixedly, for minutes on end, at a particular object. Only thing is, he doesn’t see it. He isn’t aware of the object at all. If you dropped a bag over his head, the focus of his eyes would probably remain the same. This level is expressed by complete withdrawal from people. There is, in apathy, no real attempt to contact one’s self and no attempt to contact others. Apathy, near death, imitates death. If a person is almost all wrong he comes close to death. He says, “What’s the use? All is lost.” The apathy case will try to discourage anyone from doing anything. Hopes and dreams are destroyed merely by claiming that they are hopeless and impossible.