THE "COME ALIVE" ASSESSMENT:

One of the most valuable tools in spotting tone is this: What turns the person on? I call it the "come alive" assessment. Notice what grabs a person’s interest and animates him and you’ll know his tone.
Between 1.1 and 2.0 a person gets kicks out of scaring people, making them nervous, bewildered, embarrassed, making them wrong and seeing them disturbed. He will relish recounting such incidents. Upscale people never take pleasure in someone else’s discomfort.
I read recently about a carnival side show in which (with the aid of glass and special lighting) the audience was tricked into believing that a wild animal was coming right out into the audience. The perpetrator of this hoax says he’s happy when the crowd is frightened into a frenzied stampede for the door. "When I do a show and nobody runs, it makes me feel bad," he said.
Pleasure is something that neither man nor civilization can do without. It’s man’s whole reason for existing. The concept of pleasure takes on many meanings as we move up and down the scale, however. In the rich playboy, pleasure becomes an idle satisfaction of the senses without plan or progress toward any goal. High-tone pleasure may be easy and relaxed or dynamic and constructive; but the upscale person never enjoys purely destructive or perverted sensual gratification. He gets enjoyment from survival actions. He will desire skills, a good job, a large income, many holdings and good possessions. These are all survival goals.
Downscale, pleasure moments are turned toward destruction. The Antagonism person takes pleasure in whomping up a good argument or beating down the enemy. The 1.5 will tell you, with satisfaction, how he really "put a stop to that." He’ll advocate killing and blowing things up. The idea of destruction turns him on. A 1.1 comes alive if he runs across a tremendously inviting situation which permits him to be devious, covertly hostile, or perverted in some way. He’ll delight in deceiving someone into believing an outrageous lie. He’ll chuckle lasciviously as he describes how he cheated on his wife. If he dwells on death, illness, tragedy, and poverty he’s probably in the lower band. And if he turns on with a chance to do for the unfortunate, he’s in Sympathy or Propitiation.
A Grief/Apathy person will actually daydream contemplating the most gruesome suicides and deaths of his loved ones and how he and everyone else would feel if this happened. That’s his kinky kind of pleasure.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Where is his attention in time? A person between 0 and 1.0 is caught in the past. You say, "Look at the purple sunset," and he must describe all the other sunsets he’s ever seen (or those he missed).
Between 1.1 and 2.0 he’s barely in present time. He talks a great deal about "getting things started." He lives impulsively without regard for the future consequences.
Between 2.0 and 3.0 the person is pretty much in present time, although he doesn’t look back much and prefers not to plan too far ahead.
The individual at the top can remember the past with enjoyment; but his attention is on the present and long-range planning of the future.