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Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 2:56 am
by Gary Childress
Sometimes I feel like I've pissed God off too far with my complaining about his world and start to feel like something horrible is going to happen to me for it, like I'm going to get diagnosed with some horrible disease or something in divine retribution. I tend to feel superstitious quite a bit. It's difficult to be a critic of religions that threaten condemnation for non-believers or heretics. We mortals tend to live in enough fear as it is with so many existential uncertainties threatening our fragile lives.
I recall studying Nietzsche in college, and that there was a lot of speculation by some theological critics of his that Nietzsche was punished by God with mental illness for declaring "God is dead". Then again, do any of us escape fate in the end, whether we're theists or not? Is it just a matter of everyone gets punished by misfortune, and atheists are more scrutinized when they meet their demise?
Life is full of things that make me anxious. However, perhaps that's true for everyone.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 3:07 am
by Gary Childress
One of the disadvantages of being a reclusive hermit is the lack of contact with others can make us naive and unaware of what others think or feel. Perhaps all of us human beings are much the same in many ways. Perhaps I am little, if any, different from most. Has everyone been interned in a mental hospital before? I've heard that as many as 1 in 5 Americans will experience some form of mental health issue over the course of their lives. Not sure how that pans out for other countries but I suppose mental illness has become more common since the days when people were locked away in asylums all their lives because there were few, if any drugs to combat mental health disorders. Now, many of us who would be locked up are walking around on the streets, bumping into each other, possibly never knowing that the person we just bumped into has schizophrenia also.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 12:53 pm
by Ben JS
The universe is indifferent to us, Gary.
We're insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
Universe ain't out to get ya.
We don't need to change the external environment,
in order to make progress on how we respond to the environment.
Some are more fulfilled in their lives & happier,
even when locked in a jail cell,
than those with great material opportunity.
You have the capacity to heal -
but you must nurture that within yourself.
No one can do that for,
but we can point to the path.
Your own demons are what suffocate you.
You have access to those.
EDIT: In my stupid, naive & wrong opinion.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 2:58 pm
by Lacewing
Ben JS wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 12:53 pm
The universe is indifferent to us, Gary.
We're insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
Universe ain't out to get ya.
We don't need to change the external environment,
in order to make progress on how we respond to the environment.
Some are more fulfilled in their lives & happier,
even when locked in a jail cell,
than those with great material opportunity.
You have the capacity to heal -
but you must nurture that within yourself.
No one can do that for,
but we can point to the path.
Your own demons are what suffocate you.
You have access to those.
That's beautiful.
We might get stuck by thorns while wandering through a garden, but the garden is not out to get us. Things happen and we all try to find our way through the best we can.
I think it would NOT be helpful to think that life or the Universe (or a god) is out to get/torture you...
That disempowers you.
Although it might feel that way...
although it might seem to explain pain and suffering...
although it might seem to justify continuing to travel in the same tracks...
one's goal INSTEAD could be to practice seeing/understanding from different perspectives in the garden.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 4:17 pm
by Walker
Ben JS wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 12:53 pm
The universe is indifferent to us, Gary.
We're insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
Universe ain't out to get ya.
We don't need to change the external environment,
in order to make progress on how we respond to the environment.
Some are more fulfilled in their lives & happier,
even when locked in a jail cell,
than those with great material opportunity.
You have the capacity to heal -
but you must nurture that within yourself.
No one can do that for,
but we can point to the path.
Your own demons are what suffocate you.
You have access to those.
EDIT: In my stupid, naive & wrong opinion.
Another view: Animism prevalent in traditions such as Bon predates the ego dominance of modern views and requires no belief or knowledge to be effective, but the effectiveness goes unnoticed. Behave inappropriately in a location where guardians dwell and inconveniences will subsequently affect you in seemingly disassociated ways that don’t necessarily follow known causal patterns of today. This gets explained away as a string of bad luck, just one of those days, coincidences, didn’t have the morning coffee, got up on the wrong side of bed, etc. More serious effects can be explained away as bad choices if ego insists on remaining in charge of events, and if one is inclined to betray and denounce the judgments made by one's past self ... which is a cause of samsara.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 4:46 pm
by Walker
What's your opinion about Thomas Szasz's views, from what you know of them?
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 4:59 pm
by Gary Childress
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:46 pm
What's your opinion about Thomas Szasz's views, from what you know of them?
I hadn't heard of him until you just now mentioned him. What views did he have that you find most compelling?
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 pm
by Walker
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:59 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:46 pm
What's your opinion about Thomas Szasz's views, from what you know of them?
I hadn't heard of him until you just now mentioned him. What views did he have that you find most compelling?
He's pretty old, may have passed on. His claim to fame is that he was a psychiatrist with some radical views about mental illness. Basically, he said it doesn't exist. Some quick research will provide his reasoning.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 5:46 pm
by Gary Childress
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 pm
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:59 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:46 pm
What's your opinion about Thomas Szasz's views, from what you know of them?
I hadn't heard of him until you just now mentioned him. What views did he have that you find most compelling?
He's pretty old, may have passed on. His claim to fame is that he was a psychiatrist with some radical views about mental illness. Basically, he said it doesn't exist. Some quick research will provide his reasoning.
I looked up his name and a couple of things he is known for. I don't know if he was correct or not. The world is so messed up beyond recognition to me that I have no opinion on his views.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 8:57 pm
by accelafine
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 pm
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:59 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:46 pm
What's your opinion about Thomas Szasz's views, from what you know of them?
I hadn't heard of him until you just now mentioned him. What views did he have that you find most compelling?
He's pretty old, may have passed on. His claim to fame is that he was a psychiatrist with some radical views about mental illness. Basically, he said it doesn't exist. Some quick research will provide his reasoning.
So he's a big part of the reason that dangerous lunatics now wander the streets completely ill-equipped for life (apparently they 'don't exist') because most of the mental hospitals shut down where these people would otherwise have been contained. I once ended up in a queue behind a man whose clothes were covered in shit. Normalising insanity and brainwashing people into ignoring their natural instincts has created a lot of the mess we see today.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 11:13 pm
by Walker
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 8:57 pm
So he's a big part of the reason ...
Wiki says no to that.
The Wiki tells us:
“Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.”- Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
*
In Szasz's view, people who are said to have a mental illness only have "problems in living". Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" are passed off as scientific but are judgments (of disdain) to support certain uses of power by authorities.[9] In that line of thinking, schizophrenia becomes not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social disapprobation. Szasz called schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms.
He argued that psychiatry is a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by using medical-sounding words, and that supported by the state through various Mental Health Acts, it has become a modern secular state religion. As a vastly elaborate social control system which disguises itself under the claims of being rational, systematic and therefore scientific, it constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom and dignity.
In The Myth of Mental Illness he argued that people can only play "the mental illness game" if their partner and those around them play a complimentary role - a situation that would later be described as codependency. - Ibid
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 11:15 pm
by accelafine
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:13 pm
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 8:57 pm
So he's a big part of the reason ...
Wiki says no to that.
The Wiki tells us:
“Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.”- Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
You should have read more than one sentence
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 11:17 pm
by Walker
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:15 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:13 pm
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 8:57 pm
So he's a big part of the reason ...
Wiki says no to that.
The Wiki tells us:
“Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.”- Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
You should have read more than one sentence
I could cut and paste the whole piece if you like.
I'd say a shit suit counts as a problem in living.
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 11:19 pm
by accelafine
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:17 pm
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:15 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:13 pm
Wiki says no to that.
The Wiki tells us:
“Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.”- Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
You should have read more than one sentence
I could cut and paste the whole piece if you like.
I'd say a shit suit counts as a problem in living.
''Citing Szasz's writings, legal reforms were enacted, and all 50 US states narrowed their criteria for involuntary commitment from the prior standard of "need for treatment"—causing the number of patients in public psychiatric hospitals to plummet, and the homeless population to balloon. It also exponentially increased the prison population with an estimate of 40%–80% inmates with mental illness by 2006.[10]''
Re: Gary's Corner
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 11:25 pm
by Walker
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:19 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:17 pm
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 11:15 pm
You should have read more than one sentence
I could cut and paste the whole piece if you like.
I'd say a shit suit counts as a problem in living.
''Citing Szasz's writings, legal reforms were enacted, and all 50 US states narrowed their criteria for involuntary commitment from the prior standard of "need for treatment"—causing the number of patients in public psychiatric hospitals to plummet, and the homeless population to balloon. It also exponentially increased the prison population with an estimate of 40%–80% inmates with mental illness by 2006.[10]''
So, how do you reconcile that, with the previous statement that discounted his influence on mainstream psychiatry?
In your extensive research that read more that one sentence, did it mention that his treatment reforms, whatever they may be, were enacted, and as a result folks are wearing shit suits?