It often seems like you are trying to use your intellect alone to understand experiences without the messiness of actually having them. Hopefully you can see how you’re just getting in your own way.
Stop sitting in a black and white room reading about colors and feelings. Go outside and paint something. There’s really no comparison.
If you want deep answers, don’t ask people what they know. Copy what they do.
Most importantly, worry less about articulating meaning, and more about finding a group or community that you simply enjoy being around, and it will naturally start to rub off on you if you don’t fight it.
Honestly, this isn’t the best format for understanding deep philosophy, and neither is your primary tool for learning, which seems to be request or research a query, and then reductively analyze the responses and prioritize finding any potential flaws over finding ways to make use of it or experiment.
You’d be much better off with a real life person to person interaction with experience, in either a Socratic format which helps you work things out for yourself with focused questions you have to consider, or something like zen that keeps you from stalling out in any of the common stagnant mental habits.
You think that people who are trying to be somewhat sympathetic to him and help him, to the extent you can help anyone on a message board, should insult and taunt him?
Why? Because you feel you’ve managed to integrate your own mental illness into your own life so well that others could not possibly benefit from some good advice professional help?
I’ll keep that in mind next time you post an impenetrable tl;dr screed.
To be blunt, your viewpoint may be valid for you, but it’s not a generally accepted one. He’s asking for advice on a message board and is going to get responses that represent what people think. We’re not psychiatric experts, but we all have real life experiences that we bring to the table. You’ve made your views clear on this and other threads, and that you find it offensive is not particularly relevant to the discussion.
Yeah but those are song lyrics, they aren’t the same. This is the stuff I am referring to: Ndileka Khumalo | Facebook (ok I realized that you can’t really see the parts I am referring to without actually having a Facebook account).
For me song lyrics with such words are nice but they don’t carry the same impact that “sages” do.
Machinaforce, I asked before about your religious upbringing for a reason. These subjects can be be perceived quite differently between people born with a religious upbringing or some strong philosophical code, and people who don’t. IMHO, having unconditional belief at a young age seems to simply satisfy many people, no matter how strongly they believe or what they end up believing as adults. I think children without that kind of upbringing will see the various belief systems of the world in a different light, perhaps not recognizing how much all religions state they have exclusively found the only true path. Perhaps this does not apply to you, but it might be helpful for you to discuss how it is you got here.
And going back to the quote in post #2, a lot of people on this board can tell you what a bitch self-awareness is. You may have a little more trouble with this than others, but you certainly aren’t alone in wondering and looking for an answer.
If no one here is qualified to diagnose psychiatric issues, then why do so many feel so comfortable doing it, and do you really have no concern for people who may actually have those conditions and are, quite possibly, insulted by the idiocy getting spewed here for the sake of… honestly I’m not quite sure what. I’m really not sure what the machinaforce expects to get out of this thread. Although I do have my suspicions, we need not linger on them.
“[T]hat you find it offensive is not particularly relevant to the discussion.”
Yep, that’s how we marginalize people with disabilities. Other groups, too.
I was raised Christian (or Catholic I don’t really remember) but I have always fallen sucker for spiritual “wise men” like the one in the facebook link I posted (well it’s more like the guy he is quoting). Their words just seem so profound and wise and it must be true, but that’s more like me giving them some kind of status as having seen the “hidden truth” and found peace and happiness. Their words goes back to my previous hangup about if I can’t prove it wrong then it is right, rather than just letting it go.
Clearly your upbringing didn’t provide an answer you were looking for. When did you start looking elsewhere? Was there some triggering event, or were you just never satisfied with your Christian upbringing?
Except I don’t think anyone is marginalizing the OP. People are engaging with him, offering suggestions, challenging his assumptions and correcting him when he’s factually in error. But there’s no point insisting that we do so under a framework that the OP has never espoused.
I have no problem with AHunter3 having his worldview, and I agree that it’s valid for him.
It’s true that no one here can accurately diagnose mental illness, but if someone is suffering from obsessive thoughts, as Machinaforce says he is, we can urge them to seek the help they need. There’s nothing offensive or marginalizing about that.
If someone complained about a fever and a cough, even the doctors here couldn’t say if he had a bad cold, the flu, or COVID-19. But anyone could give him the correct advice to see an actual doctor.
I don’t mind you urging someone to get the help you think that they need.
There is, however, a difference between “Machinaforce, I think you may have a psychiatric issue and you should seriously consider seeking psychiatric help” and “Machinaforce, you are mentally ill. Go get psychiatric help”. The latter is pretend-caring. When someone does that, it actually functions as is:
• making a derogatory jab at Machinaforce; under the hood, it conveys “Machinaforce, you’re fucking nuts” — but without being honest about it
•attempting to reduce anything and everything that Machinaforce is saying to mental-disorder brain-static, meaningless neuron chatter produced by a brain ailment. That’s an argument ad hominem: “We should ignore everything this poster says because it’s the babbling of an impaired person”
• It also sideswipes everyone else who has been psychiatrically labeled, either professionally or n the same informal fashion, reminding us all that we can be discredited in any conversation using this technique
Do you really need an answer badly to resolve something in your life? Is the problem your hangup, or that they just don’t have the answer and you desperately want an answer?
There is no difference between the two sentences other than the former has unnecessary hedging and verbiage. It’s not derogatory at all, any more than telling a physically ill person to see a doctor. He himself has said that the thoughts cause him distress. And there is thread after thread of evidence that he is not actually capable of engaging with posters productively.
I know you have your views on mental illness, but they are catastrophically wrong. I say this as someone with his own mental health problems and an aunt with severe paranoid schizophrenia. If your views were publicly adopted millions would suffer and die. They are the equivalent of opening up crowded events during the current pandemic. However I know you are pretty set in them and you seem like an OK guy otherwise so I’m not going to argue about it any further.
I have a problem leaving things unresolved or unanswered. I feel the need to have a response to everything, which is what makes spiritual stuff kind of sticky for me since I can’t just google something saying they are wrong and I can’t really argue against their personal experience of what they felt.
Letting things go feels like losing for me so I feel compelled to “win” by proving them wrong, which further makes spiritual stuff sticky because it usually just ends with the other person saying “to each their own” or something like it. Plus being unable to “win” against them makes me feel like I am wrong because they won’t admit they are wrong.
This is what I’m in a twist about. We have no idea if Machinaforce is or is not mentality ill. Encouraging him to seek answers and assistance from pressionals is one thing, but (g)you aren’t helping anyone by applying the label to him; you are possibly hurting those who really do suffer from some form of mental illness—and know it—and find themselves being categorized with… who or whatever Machinaforce is.