artisticsolution wrote:I have not abused the concept of mental illness. Mental illness is a huge subject with many categories and subcategories. You took my words to mean that I think racism is a mental illness and perhaps that is true upon closer inspection...but what I meant is that IRRATIONAL thought is a mental illness. You are the one who voiced the "liking and disliking" of whatever you thought I liked or disliked I am not sure. But I can assure you I was not saying what I said as a derogatory remark...I think if you look back and read my initial post...you will not see anywhere that I had a personal vendetta or attack anywhere and I was merely mentioning the obvious.
In what world is it positive or neutral to be mentally ill? Besides, if irrational thought is "mental illness", which it of course is not since that's absurd, then, as a consequence as you've said yourself that we all have irrational thought, we are all also mentally ill ^^
artisticsolution wrote:Here is my line of thinking...please read it as is instead of inferring emotional responses to what I say....
Rational thoughts are better to perform healthy and accurate thinking than irrational thought.
That is the tendency, yes. Of course, sometimes our rational thoughts are wrong, because we're missing important information, and then we're simply screwed. Problem here of course, is that "optimal", which is what rationality tries to achieve, is also a matter of debate, since you'll have your opinions on what is optimal, and I'll have mine, and the racist will have his or hers.
artisticsolution wrote:Rational thought promotes healthy thinking.
Not always. For instance, Japanese samurai who commit suicide may reason that they are failures and not worthy of society's demand for success, and should therefore be disposed of. I think this is perfectly rational thinking, it's just ethically and morally wrong, as people doesn't necessarily become happier from living in such a society (as the one they are leaving by death), although happiness may not be what they are trying to achieve (and instead it may be glory or pleasure or grandness or honouring of some principles), or they have a mind which is well adapted for the suicide of others and therefore may actually sense a medium-term happiness from getting rid of the failure (though in the short-term they'll have one less hand to help and some people might suffer emotionally from the person's passing, and long-term I bet they'll probably succumb sooner or later to depression and emotional uncertainty all of them).
artisticsolution wrote:Irrational thought promotes unhealthy thinking.
Depends upon who is doing the thinking and from what position. Children are constantly irrational, and yet they are capable of being very happy and make other people very happy if they are in a safe environment. It may be that their sole lack of interest in rational thinking makes them able to relax enough to produce happiness whereas other people's rational worries might make them prone to forever trying to accumulate without taking time to spend also.
artisticsolution wrote:Therefore rational thought is better than irrational thought to promote mentally healthy thinking.
No. Wrong. The health of the mind is measured by how well the mind works on its own, not whether it is optimal in accordance with some given perspective. You can be happy but completely out of your minds in your given culture (imagine well-meaning goodfolk Arian Germans hosting a big feast for poor Jews right after Kristallnacht and the whole of the wrath of the German 3rd Reich turned towards Jews. They are bloody irrational and bloody "out of their minds", but they are absolutely not mentally ill for that sake. Idealism and good-heartedness is not a disease but still it is very often irrational).
artisticsolution wrote:If I said,
Physically fit bodies are better to perform physical tasks than nonphysically fit bodies.
Yes, but they probably should be the ones doing it so they get back into fitness!
artisticsolution wrote:Being physically fit promotes good health.
Being nonphysically fit promotes bad health.
This is debatable. By large I would think so, but it should be taken into account also the means by which one becomes physically fit and what one spends his physical fitness on once it has been achieved.
artisticsolution wrote:Therefore being Physically fit is better than being nonphysically fit to promote healthy bodies.
That's the tendency, yes.
artisticsolution wrote:Would you argue that I dislike nonphysically fit bodies?
If you called them mentally ill, yes, but I understand that you come from some strange place where it's not a negative thing to be mentally ill and therefore one should not feel that one is robbed of anything by being so, and in extension, one has therefore not really anything to gain by not being mentally ill (getting well) since one hasn't lost anything in the first place that makes one in a bad condition. Or is one in a bad condition, and because you have a superior mind that can tell what is optimal and therefore say which thoughts are rational and which are irrational and in turn therefore which are mentally ill thoughts and which are healthy ones (and if you don't have a superior mind: why should anybody recognize what you decide as irrational for being actually irrational? Or in turn is it so that irrationality is just a matter of perspective and you are just delivering your perspective and you just want everybody to accept it? Many things to choose from there.).
artisticsolution wrote:I think I gave a rational reason why liking/disliking humans vs vegetables is totally different as all humans are under the category "humanity" while vegetables are not.
Do you dislike war criminals? Would you find it totally okay if all the worst war criminals happened to live in your neighbourhood completely surrounding you and their kids if any attending the same schools as yours and the same kindergarten and for those of them who had no regrets they would transfer their opinions onto their own children and from those children onto your own and in their gardens they might even make banners honouring what they themselves have done... would you really not care? I give a fuck if those were part of the category "humanity", I would not live surrounded by them. Maybe one or maximum two in somewhat close vicinity, but anything more is an "immigration problem" that I would like to get rid of.
Are not those people also part of humanity to you? Should you not have a right to dislike them and want them away from your life? Your values are in contradiction with theirs, and therefore you don't like them, I would say, and therefore, you don't want them around you, I would further say. Am I wrong about that?
artisticsolution wrote:If I said Racism is a form of irrational thought and irrational thought is not mentally healthy. Would that sound better to your ears?
Racism is only irrational if, from your perspective as an anti-racist, it is irrational. My opinion on the matter is that it's counter to what we want to achieve in ethical and moral terms, but I really don't care if it's rational or irrational, as those words doesn't mean anything more than "my perspective is better than yours", which is not the kind of thinking I spend much time with, I find it wasteful. Perspectives should be incrementally integrative with other perspectives to get better, not selected for their individual merits and then talked about as if their existence is sufficient reason to discard other perspectives.
