If you delurked just to post insults, then you chose the wrong reason to do so.
Your point could have been made without actually being insulting and you will refrain from insulting other posters if you continu8e to post.
[ /Moderating ]
Most cultures have a coming-of-age ritual which involves physical mutilation of some sort.
Most cultures have a coming of age ritual wihich involves sexual assault of some sort.
So what precisely is your point? Are you trying to attempt some sort of argumentum ad antiquitum or what?
Nonsense.
Walkabout is engaged in by both sexes, slightly more commonly by females. It has absolutely nothing to do with tracing migratrory routes and is completely unconnected to any sort of initiation ceremony.
Wherever do you get this nonsense? Becuase you have clearly never given even cursory study to Aboriginal (or any other) anthropology.
Can we have a cite for this claim please? How is high school graduation any less a coming of age cermony than, say, having your penis sliced lengthwise, your front teeth gouged out and your chest sliced by stone knives and the wounds treated with hot ashes, all of which were common actual coming of age cermonies amongst the Aboriginal cultures that you think had it all worked out?
StS: I never set out to do anything like that, like “Gee I need a ritual”. I have gone for long walks which is something that helps me sort things out (the back of my mind thinks while I walk). And I’ve had vivid experiences with metaphorical & symbolic ideas and imagery and stuff that have sort of sent me off on a quest to follow through on the ideas and impressions and see if there’s wheat among the chaff. I don’t think you have to be a lunatic for any of that, but maybe it helps.
** SmashTheState**, I actually do think you’re romanticizing us somewhat.
While it may be true to an extent that people become isolated as a consequence of valuing their transcendental visions etc, and become labeled with psychiatric diagnoses either because of the consequences of isolation or because of the contents of the transcendental visions, it is also true, I think, that isolated people are the ones deprived of easy everyday reality checks from comparing notes with other people they understand and who understand them in turn. Did you read what I said above about shaky towers of bad concepts and unviable ideas? Those, more often than substantively viable ideas that are “above other people’s heads”, are what causes people to think we’re nuts. In a nutshell, we’re quite often nutty.
Then, when there really IS something substantive there, the usual problem is communication: putting stuff into words, expressing the metaphorical in mundane terms (to self as well as others), and getting good at communicating with folks despite being a cut-off isolated person with (usually) truncated social skills. Which is NOT the same as “above other people’s heads” or “more exalted and holy than corrupt Western civilization is ready for”. In a second nutshell, if you express good ideas really badly, people think you’re nuts.
I guess it’s basic logic. Some A is B, but that certainly doesn’t mean if B therefore A.
Being a schizophrenic doesn’t exempt you from Sturgeon’s law. 90% of incomprehensible stuff said by a schizophrenic is not keeper material.
Well so long as it isn’t using your reptilian brain …
Pretty much answers itself, eh? 
Well, sure and it does, but I’d like Smashie to talk a little about that, if he feels so inclined.
Yeesh, I told you folks it was gonna be a slippery slope. First there are smilies, then you want animated smilies, and now E-Sabbath wants them to talk to us!
Now that, that was funny.
Anyways, I’ve got a few questions Hunter. Well, a few questions with a bit of a preamble.
I personally find claims, like from some deaf people, that their condition is not an impairment/disability/what-have-you to be silly verging on absurd. Not being able to hear means that everything from the sound of a dripping faucet to someone yelling “Oh my god, look out behind you!” are facts that don’t touch someone’s perception. It may not necessarily be a major disability in all circumstances, and there are many effective coping strategies for daily tasks like communicating at long distances, but it involves a serious impairment of a person’s perceptual functioning.
Now, along similar but more muted lines, would you agree that schizophrenia is something of a ‘spectrum disorder’? And, if you’d agree to that, that it can cause anything from mild and barely noticeable degradation in cognitive/perceptual/communicative to absolutely devastating, crippling impairments that make rational thought and behavior virtual impossibilities?
Would you then agree that even on the most minor end of the continuum, the condition includes some degree of impairment in perception/cognition?
I don’t think any of the above is all that controversial, so I’m curious as to your response…
In any case, if you’d agree with the above, would you then agree to a ‘compromise’ whereby you accepted that society viewed the condition as an illness as long as it was understood that simply possessing the illness did not justify forced incarceration or medical intervention?
And if that would be acceptable to you, would you then agree that in certain cases at the absolute ‘barking mad’ end of the spectrum, that such measures may be called for? Personally I’m not sure how I feel about locking people up, sane or not, for suicidal thoughts/feelings/plans/attempts. I tend to believe that the ability to potentially choose the time and nature of one’s own death is a fundamental human right, and I do not like that, at all, that thoughts/threats/attempts at self-harm can have punitive consequences beyond that. Still, I’m conflicted on how to deal with cases that arise from mental instability. If, with the proper medicine, or with the passage of time, someone would exit a mental state where they wanted to kill themselves, might that not justify a temporary intervention in some cases? If someone is in the grip of a temporary ‘episode’ and wanted to commit suicide because they believed that aliens were putting chest-bursting larvae in their cereal, would it be acceptable to ‘save them from themselves’ until they could ‘sober up’ and realize that such a delusion wasn’t worth suicide? Would it, perhaps, be acceptable to you if such treatment was bound by a requirement that a person contract to such involuntary treatment should they fall into a severe delusional/self-harmful state in the future? E.G "I, Bob Smith, do certify that if at any point I attempt or advocate suicide due to a mistaken belief that aliens are attempting to implant me with their larva, that I consent to be zonked out on thorazine, even if I do not consent at the time, until such a state passes and I no longer wish to inflict self-harm upon myself. "
(I ask this honestly, as I’m curious what your thoughts are and I’d like to get your read on that)
Along the same lines, what are your views about people whose condition might make them a danger to others? What, would you feel, would be the threshold for action? If a husband and wife have a child and the mother has some form of mental illness that might cause her to injure or even kill her own child , should treatment be mandated, confinement? Should CPS take the child away from both parents even if the father is fit, but otherwise take no actions wrt the mother?
Thanks.
Just in case no one else answered the question (thread is TL - DR some of it, I admit), Icke had several heavy Ayahuasca trips and saw/realized these things in visions.
Gesundheit.
I’m pretty much with you there. I’m trying to keep an open mind. I wrote above (unfortunately):smack: that I was willing to listen. Shit…you know what I meant… but I’d say the deaf-culture activists have an uphill battle to wage for the gaining of my allegiance on that one.
No, actually. It’s different. We know what deafness is, it’s well-defined and does not readily lend itself to alternative or auxiliary interpretations. With schizophrenia, although the oft-repeated claim is that it IS (consists of, is defined as) a physiological condition of the brain, most likely pertaining to neurotransmitter chemistry or the receptivity of cells to them, etc, all of the following are true and require a rethinking.
a) As actually used, by psychiatrists in interviews, etc (cite forthcoming if requested), it is sometimes held that survivors of some recent publicized tragedy are at risk of mental illness. From my first post in this thread: An example of this would be the hypothetical case where one was raped repeatedly during the Rwandan genocides and that it is held that as a consequence of this one has developed a clinical mental condition that does indeed have brain-chemistry correlates. Similar assertions are made about people who worked close to Ground Zero here in Manhattan in Sept of 2001. At an absolute minimum such an assertion ameliorates the causality of brain chemistry: either Rwandan genocides and 9/11 terrorists can cause the brain to develop unfortunate brain chemistry or an unfortunate brain chemistry merely leaves one predisposed to a mental condition that only manifests itself under certain stressful circumstances. One could also draw the conclusion that there is quite a bit of definitional bait-and-switch used by the profession: SOMETIMES they speak of mental illness in the same fashion that we would speak of SOME INCIDENT OR PHENOMENON driving a person crazy. That the cause of the mental condition is the event or phenomenon or incident. And that therefore whatever is going on with that person’s neurotransmitters et. al. is a result, not a cause, certainly not a “prime mover” sort of cause.
b) In clinical practice, no tests are done for neurotransmitter levels or sensitivity of neural tissues to same or breakdown byproducts of neuro enzymes or anything of the sort. All diagnoses are made on the basis of observed and/or reported behavior. At this point, not only is there a distinct possibility in any given case that observed behavioral patterns are the result of some incident or phenomenon (with or without accompanying neurochemical manifestations), there is ALSO a lot of room for subjective and culturally determined perceptions and value judgments to enter in to the process of making the diagnosis.
c) I really do like the way my mind works. I’ve not had the opportunity of experiencing your mind from the inside, or that of anyone else, but I do of course get the same kind of subjective sense of other people’s thought processes, as derived from their statements and behaviors and opinions and whatnot, as people could form of me from mine. And I like mine better. I see things more clearly as they actually are. I understand things better. I don’t think you folks have a full range of cognitive perception and mine is attenuated, I think I have a formidable range of cognitive perception in comparison to which the typical person’s are attenuated. Having said that, I think there are some areas of deficits that I do suffer, some of which are a problem. But on balance I think I come out ahead. This is all subjective, of course, but at some point it’s the only place one can go to answer the question. That, plus a concurring opinion from many others who have been so diagnosed. Is some of it a sort of rebellious pride, a flaunting of “attitude”, as we suspect it of the deaf activists discussed above? I strongly suspect some of it is, yes.
Where I keep finding myself going back to is the notion of letting us decide whether it’s an illness or a non-unfortunate difference or even a difference we’re happy about and proud of.
I know that’s not entirely non-problematic. Would that be “us” as a movement and as a community, or would that be “us” each individually? How does the gay community and/or individual gay and lesbian people conceptualize and address the possibility — hypothetical and, I assume, at least some of the time, real — of one gay person who does say “I think that the way I am is sick and wrong and I wish to be and want to be fixed or helped to not be this way” — ?? Does one say “We can say authoritatively that you are just full of self-hate, you’ve internalized the homophobia of our culture and THAT’S the problem you have that needs fixing”? Does one say “This may be true for you, and only you can speak for you, but if you’ll pardon me for saying so we THINK it likely that you’ve internalized the homophobia of our culture and we HOPE you’ll some day get beyond that and realize there’s nothing sick and wrong about how you are” — ?? Does one say “Ya know, I personally have gay pride but I can only speak for myself, and your truth is as valid as mine, and none of us can speak for all of us” — ?? If the latter, can there be a movement?
Does any liberation movement of this general ilk always step a bit on individuals who fall into the category for which they seek to speak who, as individuals, dont’ find their personal experience to mesh with the movement’s voice? Maybe so. Is it unfair to say that a movement of self-affirmation is more likely to do more good for more people, and less harm to fewer people, than an atmosphere defining those same selves as something sick, wrong, and twisted?
But certainly it would be an unalloyed good thing to be rid of forced incarceration and forced treatment even if vast numbers of people continue to think we really OUGHT to be thought of as damaged goods and sick and demented.
Joseph Campbell discussed this extensively, and argues that the problems we see in the West with crime, lack of personal responsibility, and other forms of immature behaviour are the result of a lack of ritual which draws a concrete line between childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood.
What I know about the Aboriginal walkabout comes from a university course I took on mysticism. I don’t have any books handy in my personal library specifically on walkabout, so I’ll need to go to the library. Am I being poked with a long stick, or are you actually curious about my sources, because I’m growing increasingly wary of wasting my time around here finding citations for people with dishonest intentions.
Wouldn’t its mother have to be Jewish?
… Well, I’m a bit dubious about your teacher, myself, then.
No words on the Bar Mitzvah bit?
And no, Ivan, it could convert, if it truly wished to.
It’s axiomatic. People don’t co-opt the Bar Mitzvah because they don’t feel that it properly scratches their itch. People want a mystical experience, and the Bar Mitzvah, while it’s certainly a ritual, shares the same problem as Confirmation and First Communion in that the experience is not sufficiently visceral. Contary to belief around these parts, “mystic” is not a dirty word. Mysticism is based in the experience of revelation, that inner exploration which Einstein calls the basis of all art and all science. It is this very dismissal of revelation which has left people in the West hungry for spiritual experience. They know instinctively that something very important is missing from their lives.
Point taken sir, but please note that I did apologize in reply #143.
You sound lucid enough today, Hunter3, but does that mean you will be equally lucid tomorrow? Next week? Next month? It is clear that your brain works differently – hell, even my brain works differently. But yours is far more different than most, and you’ve admitted – nay, celebrated – that it’s due to an incurable, yet treatable, mental illness.
If you had a heart murmur, would you claim that your cardiovascular system merely “beats to a different drum?” If you had cancer, would you eschew treatment and assume it’s God’s Will, as the Christian Scientists do? Think about it, Hunter3 – you cannot rely on your own mind to make the correct decisions, because the problem lies within your mind. And this board is doing you no small favors by enabling your deep-seated delusion that you are merely “different.”
I’ve said all I need to say about this. But I’ll give one final token of advice – next time the illness overtakes you, one thing you can never say is that you haven’t been cautioned in advance. You will always know, Hunter3, that someone with grave concern has previously advised you against walking this dangerous path. It’s your own personal decision, of course – I know the Patient Bill of Rights by heart. But you can never, ever say that you haven’t been cautioned.
The actual quote which I suspect you are distorting is: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
If so, you are trying to substitute “source of” in the place of “basis for the philosophy and practice of” in order to put forward an untenable claim. The basis of science (that is, the philosophy and methodology of organized inquiry) is, actually, proof and refutation.
Einstein was saying that our lack of understanding about things that mystify us the basis for scientific inquiry. Just as he said that imagination and intuition are essential to creating new hypotheses (that must then be tested via proof and refutation in order to become theoretical knowledge).
Distorting what Einstein actually said in order to pretend that “revelation” is at all equal to epistemology is exactly the kind of rationalization that will cause people who are paying attention to realize how you are using the cites you do offer, and why it is that you won’t offer more. We’re also used to the misuse of Einstein to support absurdities. Einstein himself lamented the woo-meisters who saw the fourth dimension as a doorway to magic.
If you don’t play fast and loose with cites you’ll find that Dopers will not be forced to point out your misuse of them.
All this shows is that there’s a genetic predisposition that can be ‘triggered’ by events, or that certain events can induce pathological neural functioning. Much like a genetic alcoholic can be fine all their life but turn into a raging drunk when they have their first drink or someone who isn’t genetically an alcoholic can become one if they drink enough and often enough and their body becomes habituated to alcohol. I didn’t even realize this was at all controversial. My maternal grandmother was a paranoid schizophrenic and was, for all intents and purposes, fine until she saw the Nazis drag her brother, kicking and screaming, out of their house one day and her mother hang herself the next, and added to that she served as a nurse near the front lines during the actual fighting once she’d escaped Germany. None of that means that there isn’t a physical bass to the disease.
After all, if there isn’t a physical basis then what’s the contention? What can cognitive functioning be based on if not neural/hormonal structure/activity? Serious question.
Yes, but so? How does that ameliorate anything? One way or another, brain chemistry is being changed, either through predisposition or neurological/psychological trauma.
I’m still not seeing the relevance of the first point. Even if mental illness was caused by really bad pasta, it’d still exist. I also think you’re drastically over stating the relevance of the second point. While there are certain cultural constructs, hearing voices that aren’t there (for example) is an objective disconnect with reality.
Well, we could get objective measurements with a decent study, that certainly doesn’t have to be subjective. What we do know is that schizophrenia, objectively, contains impairments in perceptual and cognitive functioning. I’m unaware of any actual evidence to support the counter claim (revelatory shamans notwithstanding :smack: ) Can you elaborate? Even better, can you come up with any external evidence to support those conclusions? Because if not, it looks like we have objective evidence that the spectrum can include mild to severe perceptual and cognitive impairments and absolutely no evidence that it leads to perceptual or cognitive enhancement. Even if you happen, individually, to be brilliant on some topics, is there any evidence that it’s not that you happen to be brilliant and also have a mental illness rather than that the mental illness somehow imparts brilliance?
I am, for instance, dyslexic. It’d be pretty silly of me to say that it’s not an impairment and that it, rather than coping strategies I developed, led to my interest in/facility with linguistics and cognitive linguistics.
While you don’t have to feel bad about it, people being proud of paranoid delusions or hallucinations seems… odd. It’s like an overcompensation. Sure, you’re not a bad person if you think your (generic your, I don’t know your specific symptoms) neighbors are working for the CIA to broadcast subliminal messages into the fillings in your teeth, but being proud of that level of disconnection from reality is inappropriate.
My maternal grandmother, for instance, would’ve been way out of line if she treated the fact that she was a danger to her own daughter as a reason to be proud of her condition.
I do wish you’d stop using this comparison. Being gay effects just about nothing about a person, other than who they prefer to have sex with. That’s it. It’s like someone preferring swiss to cheddar, or cheddar to swiss. The same degree of personal opinion does not hold true if we’re talking about whether or not someone is hearing voices that aren’t there or has paranoid delusions.
See, I’d be happy to get behind a movement that said that schizophrenics deserve to live their lives without being forcibly medicated or incarcerated (except for some extreme situations, and I’d still appreciate your comment on those if you could), but the idea that one would have to be self-hating, or what have you, to think that delusional perception is an impairment just doesn’t jive. If schizophrenia was comparable to homosexuality and it made you prefer Uwe Boll to Kubrick, then okay, I’d happy agree that it didn’t matter. But it’s not at all comparable.
Being a homosexual does not cause or imply any impairment in cognition of perception.
Well, we can agree on that much, then.
I must admit I’m curious though… does your ‘pride’ idea extend to all forms of mental illness? Should, say, someone with borderline or anti social personality disorder be proud of it? Should people with perceptual impairments like those evince by people like the man who mistook his wife for a hat be the subject of pride?
Again, serious question.
Yes you have. Much more than you needed to say really.
But no…
Hey Hunter? I hope you’re taking notes. Some random internet person is giving you medical advice. You better do everything he says or it’s *ALL ON YOUR HEAD. *
Fuzzy just cares too much about the “whackjobs.”
Why do you know the patient’s bill of rights by heart?
Yes, and and that goes for the reptilian menace too.
Read my post #146, kind sir.
Yeah, whatever happened to that topic? Perhaps Hunter (and STS, for that matter) is a reptilian himself, distracting us from the awful grim truth??? Hey, it COULD be true!!
drools all over self*
Sure, until some hot shirtless twink walks by…