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].