Mental Illness, Mental Strength and Philosophical Discourse
Please read the instructions carefully before posting.
As some folks know, I have a total distrust and scorn for book-worm psychiatrists and psychologists. Now this thread is about trying to understand the definition and relationship of mental illness and mental strength with philosophical discourse. I really don't care how much psychiatry/psychology books you have read, and I'm not interested to hear you recite or vomit that stuff in this thread. If you are very well read in psychiatry/psychology, or if you've read nothing about it, you're still welcome to contribute to this thread. Think of it as street psychology/psychiatry that's going on here. The defining criteria is that your thought has to be original - strive to break out of what already exists and explore possibilities while engaging your mind in critical thinking. Vomiting theories from other sources should have no place here. That may get you a degree and a pat on the back, but not from me. Originality is more important here - if you say something original, even if it's false - that's more important than repeating something already said even if it were to be true. Obviously this isn't about saying nonsense either. You have to aim for truth, but be free to use your whole being while you aim for it. Don't let what others have told you or your fear of being wrong constrain your thinking, but rather use your own experience, your own feelings, and your entire being - including what you have read - to come up with something authentic - something that represents your own understanding.
The other criteria you should take into account is that ultimately this should be practical psychology/psychiatry, which helps you understand those around you better, as well as navigate your own environment better. Understanding each other is essential to our harmonious co-existence, and more important than ever in today's age. I think that a lot of the popular sources of psychology/psychiatry that we encounter makes us mis-understand each other, and be rather judgemental, instead of being open to the complexity that inheres in the world.
Each posting has to be focused through at least one question. You have to list this (these) question(s). It can be a question someone has already asked, or it may be a question you have decided to ask. In intellectual discovery, what question you ask is often more important than what answer you give. So think about it carefully.
By philosophical discourse I understand the capacity of the human animal to linguistically reflect upon itself (and its environment), and use that reflection as a means of (1) orienting itself in its environment, and (2) moving itself to act or not act.
Your post(s) don't have to be complete. You can ask any number of questions in a post and continue your own exploration through time by making new posts or starting from different angles if you want. Your posts can build upon other's posts, or upon your own posts, or they can come from an entirely new angle. So long as you are exploring mental illness, mental strength and philosophical discourse, then it's fair game.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Now let me begin myself:
Definition of Mental Illness: Incapacity of non-physical origin (non-genetic, non-inherited, non-aquired from accidents/diseases) which prevents one from successfully navigating and prospering in one's environment
Definition of Mental Strength: The exact opposite of mental illness.
Comment: The definitions allow the classification of all possible conditions of the mind as either being mental illness or being mental strength.
1. Can any animal suffer of mental illness or is it only language-using animals?
There exists evidence that animals in the wild don't suffer of mental illness pretty much at all. This accords with our intuition that mental illness is (mostly) a human disorder. Humans are the animals who can experience mental illness.
However, cases have been recorded of animals, whether in an arranged park, or in a zoo, or otherwise in captivity, which do suffer of mental illness. The defining factor in many of these cases is the intelligence of the animal. More intelligent animals, seem more predisposed to suffer of mental illness, and our intuitions seem to be roughly correct - the intellectual, not the peasant gets depressed.
There have been semi-successful attempts at investigating whether animals can use language. It seems to suggest that they quite possibly can't, however, they nevertheless have some form of conceptualising - especially the more intelligent amongst them. They use some form of language - although it is limited, and they cannot, on their own, extend the use of the language. Like a human having and knowing only 4 words. There's a limited set of thoughts one can have with just 4 words.
Hence I'll say that conceptualising and using language seems to correlate with the possibility of mental illness. Moreover - the higher one's skill in concept-use the higher the risk of mental illness. This is also noticed in the fact that more intelligent people (measured by IQ, which does to a large degree measure one's concept-using abilities) may be more likely to suffer of mental illness than otherwise. I add my own anecdotal experience, finding for myself that my own intelligence rendered me more susceptible to mental illness than other less intelligent folk I know.
It would seem that intelligence can predispose one to mental illness at the moment when one stops being centered or rooted in their body, but rather remain rooted in the mind - and the mind goes on, on its own, without relation to the situation of the body. The schism between body and mind generates mental illness - or inability to navigate one's environment. So long as one is rooted in the body, one always remains capable of navigating the environment.
2. Should hearing voices, seeing apparitions, and the like always classify as mental illness?
I believe psychiatrists are wrong to conceptualise these as necessarily symptoms of mental illness. They can be, but not necessarily. They are only so when they prevent successful navigation and adaption in one's environment as per my definition. I remember my mother telling us of her experience seeing the devil next to her while sleeping over the dinner table. Something she described as a dark figure staring over her, which disappeared only after she intensely prayed. There's many other such experiences such as folks claiming to have seen ghosts, demon possessions, and the like. But most of these people aren't actually suffering of mental illness. They are perfectly capable of navigating their environments - despite having the equivalent of what psychiatrists would qualify as hallucinations. There's other people who claim to be able to speak to spirits and so forth. Now I'm not concerned here with whether you believe in demons, ghosts, and the like. It's the experience of those people that's under discussion. I don't believe in those things, but I grant their experiences as real. For them, they really do see, feel and experience those things. And yet most of them are not mentally ill, despite the fact that a psychiatrist would likely qualify them as such.
To be continued.
As some folks know, I have a total distrust and scorn for book-worm psychiatrists and psychologists. Now this thread is about trying to understand the definition and relationship of mental illness and mental strength with philosophical discourse. I really don't care how much psychiatry/psychology books you have read, and I'm not interested to hear you recite or vomit that stuff in this thread. If you are very well read in psychiatry/psychology, or if you've read nothing about it, you're still welcome to contribute to this thread. Think of it as street psychology/psychiatry that's going on here. The defining criteria is that your thought has to be original - strive to break out of what already exists and explore possibilities while engaging your mind in critical thinking. Vomiting theories from other sources should have no place here. That may get you a degree and a pat on the back, but not from me. Originality is more important here - if you say something original, even if it's false - that's more important than repeating something already said even if it were to be true. Obviously this isn't about saying nonsense either. You have to aim for truth, but be free to use your whole being while you aim for it. Don't let what others have told you or your fear of being wrong constrain your thinking, but rather use your own experience, your own feelings, and your entire being - including what you have read - to come up with something authentic - something that represents your own understanding.
The other criteria you should take into account is that ultimately this should be practical psychology/psychiatry, which helps you understand those around you better, as well as navigate your own environment better. Understanding each other is essential to our harmonious co-existence, and more important than ever in today's age. I think that a lot of the popular sources of psychology/psychiatry that we encounter makes us mis-understand each other, and be rather judgemental, instead of being open to the complexity that inheres in the world.
Each posting has to be focused through at least one question. You have to list this (these) question(s). It can be a question someone has already asked, or it may be a question you have decided to ask. In intellectual discovery, what question you ask is often more important than what answer you give. So think about it carefully.
By philosophical discourse I understand the capacity of the human animal to linguistically reflect upon itself (and its environment), and use that reflection as a means of (1) orienting itself in its environment, and (2) moving itself to act or not act.
Your post(s) don't have to be complete. You can ask any number of questions in a post and continue your own exploration through time by making new posts or starting from different angles if you want. Your posts can build upon other's posts, or upon your own posts, or they can come from an entirely new angle. So long as you are exploring mental illness, mental strength and philosophical discourse, then it's fair game.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Now let me begin myself:
Definition of Mental Illness: Incapacity of non-physical origin (non-genetic, non-inherited, non-aquired from accidents/diseases) which prevents one from successfully navigating and prospering in one's environment
Definition of Mental Strength: The exact opposite of mental illness.
Comment: The definitions allow the classification of all possible conditions of the mind as either being mental illness or being mental strength.
1. Can any animal suffer of mental illness or is it only language-using animals?
There exists evidence that animals in the wild don't suffer of mental illness pretty much at all. This accords with our intuition that mental illness is (mostly) a human disorder. Humans are the animals who can experience mental illness.
However, cases have been recorded of animals, whether in an arranged park, or in a zoo, or otherwise in captivity, which do suffer of mental illness. The defining factor in many of these cases is the intelligence of the animal. More intelligent animals, seem more predisposed to suffer of mental illness, and our intuitions seem to be roughly correct - the intellectual, not the peasant gets depressed.
There have been semi-successful attempts at investigating whether animals can use language. It seems to suggest that they quite possibly can't, however, they nevertheless have some form of conceptualising - especially the more intelligent amongst them. They use some form of language - although it is limited, and they cannot, on their own, extend the use of the language. Like a human having and knowing only 4 words. There's a limited set of thoughts one can have with just 4 words.
Hence I'll say that conceptualising and using language seems to correlate with the possibility of mental illness. Moreover - the higher one's skill in concept-use the higher the risk of mental illness. This is also noticed in the fact that more intelligent people (measured by IQ, which does to a large degree measure one's concept-using abilities) may be more likely to suffer of mental illness than otherwise. I add my own anecdotal experience, finding for myself that my own intelligence rendered me more susceptible to mental illness than other less intelligent folk I know.
It would seem that intelligence can predispose one to mental illness at the moment when one stops being centered or rooted in their body, but rather remain rooted in the mind - and the mind goes on, on its own, without relation to the situation of the body. The schism between body and mind generates mental illness - or inability to navigate one's environment. So long as one is rooted in the body, one always remains capable of navigating the environment.
2. Should hearing voices, seeing apparitions, and the like always classify as mental illness?
I believe psychiatrists are wrong to conceptualise these as necessarily symptoms of mental illness. They can be, but not necessarily. They are only so when they prevent successful navigation and adaption in one's environment as per my definition. I remember my mother telling us of her experience seeing the devil next to her while sleeping over the dinner table. Something she described as a dark figure staring over her, which disappeared only after she intensely prayed. There's many other such experiences such as folks claiming to have seen ghosts, demon possessions, and the like. But most of these people aren't actually suffering of mental illness. They are perfectly capable of navigating their environments - despite having the equivalent of what psychiatrists would qualify as hallucinations. There's other people who claim to be able to speak to spirits and so forth. Now I'm not concerned here with whether you believe in demons, ghosts, and the like. It's the experience of those people that's under discussion. I don't believe in those things, but I grant their experiences as real. For them, they really do see, feel and experience those things. And yet most of them are not mentally ill, despite the fact that a psychiatrist would likely qualify them as such.
To be continued.
Comments (197)
Quoting Agustino
I apologise for not following your instructions, but you yourself have said nothing original; there is a long tradition of alternative and anti - psyche out there, and in the context of hearing voices in particular, there is a movement against medicalising such experiences of some standing. I link to their position statement by way of largely agreeing with you without claiming to have invented anything.
Having said that, or got someone else to say it, I'll pick at the nit of 'incapacity'. It's a weasel word. A pacifist is incapable of the normal function of fighting, a miser is incapable of generosity, an unhappy person is incapable of smiling. More seriously, almost any deviation from current political received wisdom might be called an incapacity.
And on the other side, very many folks in prison have demonstrated an incapacity of one sort or another, almost every homeless person too. And in these cases, it is a failure to recognise and diagnose that leaves them without help or understanding.
So how does one spell out the difference between mental strength as conformism, and mental strength as resistance to a mad society?
This would entail the "prospering" Agustino in definition of mental illness,which I wholeheartedly disagree with. I've experienced "seeing apparitions", trouble with these experiences is that I wasn't alone and there's "stuff" which happened which can still be confirmed by multiple others, the main relevance of these experiences for me is that there might be some weird stuff going on which is hard to define, the main practical relevance of my experiences is that I would not necessarily see people undergoing such experiences as "cranks"; where it can become troubling fast if such people take apparitions as a bigger cue then "objective" reality.
Concerning "mental" illness, I would consider those actual physiological defects in the brain and am of the opinion that a lot of what is considered mental illness at this point in time is rather behaviour which is far from the norm.
My grandmother from my father's side was a complete nutter, I wouldn't know what she'd be diagnosed with but I wouldn't rule out Asperger syndrome. At one point she was the town idiot and she had the compulsive habit of stealing toilet rolls... My father's upbringing was hampered to a great degree because of this and I feel his autistic tendencies could potentially be explained by his upbringing. As such I would describe him as a slightly autistic introvert who uses "handles" to appear as an extravert, which makes him awkward in most common social interactions and it has hampered his social development.
My mother was an outlier from a fairly big family and I have strong hunches it was a lack of understanding from her environment which drove her crazy. She has tried to kill herself multiple times and some of her attempts were clear cries for attention but a few probably failed due to her lack of knowledge (even with potent pills (though no barbiturates) it takes quite meticulous planning to actually succeed). She got institutionalized and from the point where I was about 9, maybe 10, she never functioned "properly" again, she was on heavy medication and died recently due to a seizure. My parents divorced when I was about 3.
My sister and only sibling is three years older then me and, maybe due to her being a female and being a bit older when the "sh#t hit the fan", did not come out unscathed. She underwent hospitalized treatment, suffered bouts of auto mutilation (I have a few similar scars, yet I was "merely" curious and wondered what kind of will power / craziness it would take to do such a thing ...I concluded I could never do such a drastic thing but these slight experiments in combination with a sensitive skin created permanent scars... I'm not particularly happy about that but it was a very worthwhile experiment). She's still on medication but functions somewhat adequately, the idea of "prospering" is as such that she uses it to judge her own experience.
Myself, well... I guess I'm lucky that the whole ADD / autism hype came just after it could be applied to me (I'm 36). I suffered outbursts of rage yet these outburst were, to my mind, always fully justified. As far as I can remember I always had a strong morality, so strong in fact that I had a lot of issues / frustrations with my own behaviour because it was quite amoral at times (the fits of rage were never amoral in that regard). I'm quite introverted (a term which took me a long time to even hear!) and this was quite troubling for me in my youth. When things went haywire because my mom tried to kill herself it only justified my suspicions in that most people didn't have a clue about what was going on; it justified the doubts and hunches I already had. Psychiatry was tried on me yet my disagreement with such attempts was such that these avenues were not followed up on (fortunately). When I was 18 I volunteered due to pressure form a girlfriend, they prescribed a Prozac like pill without even actually asking me something face to face (the Netherlands) ...the stuff felt like hampering with my brain and I threw the stuff in the bin after 2 days and that was that.
I finished high school quite easy on a medium level but had no clue what to do for a career while I did have a strong need to become self-sufficient due to erratic environmental influences (juvenile detention, foster homes, child care, a "stupid" father, a mother who had turned into a drunk on top f her medication, etc). I ended up in construction and am still working there, as a self employed skills-men it provides a degree of freedom which I appreciate and you meat a lot of different folk in a lot of different places, which was great for my anthropological interests.
I've really tried a few times but social "prospering" just isn't for me. "Navigating" has always been my thing though and acquiring the internet was a big deal. If I had known about cognitive science or semiotics 20 years ago, I'd probably had something I could study which would actually interest me. I took a few wrong turns but, all in all, I've been able to develop a heuristic of life which provides me with a great explanatory power towards my own life, and the life I see evolving around me. It helped to confirm a lot of hunches I had and strengthened the conviction that I'm not mentally ill per se.
I come in a lot of different place and mix with a great deal of (though somewhat skewed when it comes to social rank) different people and always try to practice what I preach, I could very well be chatting up a stranger a local grocery store and would not necessarily refrain from trying to articulate my inner most feelings. My upbringing has hardened me a bit emotionally yet where some try to blame my lack of social "prospering" to being reserved emotionally, I would rather take pride in that the fact that I'm quite easily willing to put everything on the line where the consequences of falling flat on my face are taking as a valuable learning opportunity.
I have a fond interest into philosophy, mainly because it helps me navigate existence, yet I find that the same lack which disturbs me in most area's of life is as much present as anywhere; there's a lack of real engagement due to a (nowadays) futile notion of abstract self-preservation. I say this as fact because, even though I don't have a fancy degree, above average intelligence or the "prosperous family" people make out to be some sort degree which makes one able to say something about life, I've put all my knowledge into practice on a daily basis. It's one thing to do so with like minded people but it takes effort to relay thoughts to those who aren't accustomed to thinking and who might cast you out if you don't fit in (luckily I seem to perform as some sort of clown and people seem to appreciate my company due to that).
I've been able to help my sister to articulate what's actually bothering her (which she then uses to make her therapy more effective ..."sigh"... and, when push comes to shove, those who know me come for advice in crisis situations. Overall though, the strong lack of "prospering" is starting to weigh heavily, if not because the "navigating" has come to a point where navigating further would become a useless intellectual exercise (which I see a lot of here, as well as a lack of actual engagement). Unfortunately my job is quite noisy and busy and this doesn't help when your on the verge / having a nervous breakdown. I need alcohol, to an ever larger extent, to negate the despair I feel in functioning "prosperously". Where I live a lot of people seem able to make use of some sort of welfare to aid them in being able to be "dysfunctional" but like psychiatric evaluation, medication and waving away responsibility are things which seem to me as an admittance to a physiological "defect" which I have spend my whole life to deny ...rightfully!
Though I don't think I have the willpower, I am working towards ending this whole ordeal abruptly and the main thing which is keeping me going is the idea that I would like to make very clear that doing so would be a rational conscious decision. If nobody is willing / capable of denying my arguments rationally, I feel it's irrational to expect me to keep playing along with a game which is forced upon me due to others' their unwillingness to admit they're being played.
I'm at the point where I'm actually noticing I'm breaking down physiologically, given enough stress a person will break physically, mentally, nervously, yet the cause of it can be fully rationally explained. Everything I'm writing here (aside from being "odd" in talking so open about it on an internet forum) is not to evoke sympathy (though I could use that from my "real" environment ...if only I could make them understand...) it's the most real (no theory, degree, philosopher cited) way I'm able to relay that a lot of what is called "mental illness" is no physiological defect and, if it's considered a mere "mental" defect, it's something which could benefit from philosophy being put into practice.
What still gives me a small reason to persist is that there's a role to play where insights from the soft sciences come down to regular folk, along with the new Samsung S8 / Iphone7. I actually think this is crucial in this point of human history with a global macro economy taking prescience over the micro economy which should've been the basis of said macro economy, the way scientism is taking the form of a religion, etc. Just observing my own experience, the effort it took me is a bit too much to expect, if I'd manage to to facilitate taking "up" a study... what good would that do to the average Joe I now meet everyday? Just this topic ...I've met a lot of people who think they have actual "defects"... it might be arrogant and futile at the same time but I've been able convince a few there's nothing actually wrong with them, just a lack of common knowledge able to facilitate their views.
Quoting Gooseone
We may disagree about the "prospering" but we certainly agree about a lot of other things. Although I'm not sure how you have defined prospering - I would just define it as successfully advancing towards one's goals, whatever those goals happen to be.
Quoting Gooseone
I agree.
Quoting Gooseone
Yes, agreed.
Quoting Gooseone
Yes, I also agree here!
(2) I think most mental illness stems from shame and most shame stems from bad early relationships which ppl grow up to project onto other ppl. Shame has to do with failing to live up to another's standards which, on a deeper level, makes you unsure where you stand in relation to another's love and wrath (i.e their desire) I also think - this isn't my idea but I agree with it, sry - that psychotic episodes result from double-binds where a person is torn between two mutually exclusive obligations (obligations felt on a deep, often unconscious level) and the self/ego is torn apart by the tension (sufferers of acute schizophrenia often literally jettison any stable sense of self in order to become a cosmic battleground or theater)
The disagreement here would lie in that "prospering", to me, requires a certain amount of mutual interaction with the social environment, it's the "navigating" put into practice. Though gaining a specific form of feedback from the environment would still be an egoistic ideal, even for the most egoistic ideals to be fulfilled there's still an environment which needs to provide a framework which enables the distinction between other and self, The way in which "I" would see myself prosper depends greatly on the role I would play in my environment.
It's probably semantics on my part where the one having a goal is one thing, and the actual goal is another. Good thread btw, I feel psychology is where exact science and philosophy meet and where the functionality comes into play.
So, what characterizes happy people? Are there commonalities in the ways we go astray?
My theory is that happy, mentally healthy, successful people are presented with no confounding factors early in their lives that are greater than they can understand and overcome. Unhappy and mentally unhealthy people have, conversely, been presented with confounding factors which they could neither understand nor overcome. Intelligence explains little here, because no matter how intelligent child is, he is too undeveloped to have the insight and information required to grasp his difficult situation. That won't come along for another 20 years, perhaps. By adulthood the unfortunate child has had plenty of time to develop some crazy features.
this doesn't account for all craziness. People with major mental illnesses (like bi-polar disease) are screwed from the get go, however happy a family they had, and no matter how well they navigated the ingravescent inimicalities of childhood.
Some of us didn't socialize well as children. We didn't fit into "the group". We were outliers. We were deviants in various ways. Because of our outsider status, (not always outside, but outside often enough to be very familiar with the experience) we failed to develop both social knowledge (how society works) and social skills (being able to move smoothly through society.
People who are touched by outsider--outlier--deviant status, tend (a tendency, not a rule) to be propelled further outward. They aren't propelled so far that they are actually outside, though. They live altogether within society, but without the full set of skills that belongers, conformers, and central tendency folk have. The outsider--outlier--deviant experience much more social friction than most people do, and this further alienates them, and it might not occur to them what is happening to and around them. Again, this isn't about intelligence, it is about an insufficient skill set, insufficient insight based on poor experience, and the like.
The resulting stress, sturm and drang, anger, disappointment, unhappiness, job loss, broken relationships, frustration, sorrow, loneliness, et al produce a good share of what is classified and treated as "mental illness". These people aren't crazy, exactly; they're just not very successful at life. Do drugs help this sort of problem? Sure, they help in as much as many of the drugs used for depression have a tranquilizing effect, and the tranquilization of an antidepressant is possibly (but not invariably) safer than any one of several well mixed cocktails--old fashioned, manhattan, martini, gin and tonic, etc.
We can add chemical abuse, debt, long and taxing commutes, and a lot of other crap that tends to make people feel, if not act like they are, to use a shorthand term, crazy.
That ties in nicely with how I see things, shame is mainly differing from what most people hold as the norm. (though I would go along in asserting that there can be certain objective norms). If these "norms" are never investigated people might feel shamed unnecessarily, feel that way long enough... unable to articulate ..frustration ...forced to comply anyway ...psychotic episode.
Though I would not want to negate "real" problems, a lot of problems appear to stem from miscommunications due too a lack of awareness
Certainly I think you are right. We are always being in the world - in an environment. Prospering does have to do with an environment, but it doesn't have to do with what the environment asks from you - or expects you to do. I incline to think that prospering has more to do with being capable to organise the constraints of one's environment in such a way that one is capable of achieving their goals in the given environment. Someone's goals can be contrary to the goals of their environment. But still - the achievement of their goal depends on their skill both at perceiving their environment and perceiving, to use a chess analogy, what moves they need to make in order to reach their goals.
And I think we see this all the time. Two people with similar or identical goals placed in the same environment. One of them succeeds in reaching their goal, the other doesn't. I think the difference is made by a certain practical skill, which has nothing to do with their intelligence, degrees, or otherwise, a skill at navigating their environment. It could be that the more educated one, the one with more degrees, better resources and so forth fails, and the other succeeds. I think it's less about the cards one has, and more about how they're played to put it differently.
That is why I would speculate that "mental strength" has to do with this practical skill more than it does with the condition of the body or the mind or the environment. Someone can have a mind which is prone to anxiety, and still not be impaired by it. Someone can be in an unfriendly environment, and still not be stopped by it. Someone can have a broken body and not be stopped by it. And so forth. Take for example this man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxSrPD__BA
This is an excellent example of mental strength - in fact an example of exceptional mental strength. He overcame such great odds, he played such a hard hand so well.
Quoting Gooseone
Thanks for your kind words, I appreciate!
I was like that. I was also very anxious, and have had anxiety since I was a child. But I feel that because of being like that I developed more pragmatic social knowledge and social skills - because I simply don't care what others think. While others are afraid to act, I'm not. That's why I think mental strength and mental illness are very close to each other, and very far from normality. I'm not normal. I've never been, and I know I haven't, nor will I ever be. But take one issue on which I've had, let's say a positive experience, and others would have had negative experiences.
When I was in high school there was no question about having a girlfriend, because my parents (well my mother really) never allowed it. Nor would they allow me to go out at night or anything of that sort. But I knew this. I knew this since I was much younger. And I was patient. I learned my environment. I analysed what my parents allowed and what they didn't. I learned my school environment. I never gave my parents the impression I was interested in girls. They would never see me around any girl - not even talking. Quite the contrary actually! I never went out at night - never even asked them to let me. And so they grew complacent. I soon started dating a girl. When I would go see her, I'd say I'm going to meet a friend. I never even tried to tell my parents. I used technology to keep up with her. Technology that they could never check because they didn't understand it. All in all, I never took a risk to do this - they never found out because they never could. I did it within the constraints of my environment and I was successful. But there were a lot of ways I could've gone wrong. If I had asked to go out at night, they would have become suspicious. If I would have tried to directly fight against them, I would have lost. And my mother was always at home - there was no day when she wasn't in town. And many did, in similar circumstances, choose a wrong path, and thus had a negative experience instead of a positive one. What made the difference between me and them? We both had environments which were out to get us. Why did I succeed? It was this practical skill - patience, waiting, planning, never hurrying, never taking a risk, always acting when things were certain. But most other people, I noticed from my friends back then, weren't like this. They couldn't wait. They didn't trust their thinking. They were put off by the long-term uncertainty and preferred the greater short-term uncertainty instead. They took bigger short-term risks. And so forth. But to give you the end of the story, alas, not even my wits could beat the evil of globalisation, so when my family moved countries - I couldn't outsmart that, and gone was my girlfriend - gone with the winds >:O
The problem with this thread is your attempt to impose standards inconsistent with this forum, namely that you're to ignore all prior academic efforts to answer your questions but are instead to just share your experiences and offer your conclusions based upon those experiences. It's by definition anecdotal, and it's not a terribly rigorous way to go about answering any meaningful question.
I'm not normal either, and abnormal children are all weird in different ways.
My central problem as a homosexual child is that my sexual interest existed in a vacuum of information. In 1958, 7th grade, living in a very small town, when I began looking for information, there was nothing available. I didn't ask, and looking back, this was a prudent choice, given the time and place. I had nothing to go on but some childhood play experiences with the neighbor boys, and imagination. But I had almost no fodder for even a solid erotic daydream.
Plus, I was nearly blind. I could read, watch movies, etc., but my vision was very poor, and that ruled out a lot of activities that boys in rural midwest small town did--like work on farms in the summer, drive around in their parents car, play sports, do well in phy ed classes (which was whatever sport was in season), and the like.
There are biographies of gay men my age (70) who grew up in New York City, for instance, and could become worldly wise, even if they all didn't. There are also a lot of guys like me whose bios tell of growing up in rural North Dakota, Kentucky, Texas, California... If one lacked natural gregarious with which to overcome isolation, one stayed isolated, or one got the hell out of Podunk and hightailed it to the nearest more urban city.
Homosexuality used to be defined as a mental illness. In one way, that made sense: A lot of homosexual men who reached adulthood before gay liberation hit the fan in 1970 were, in fact, kind of crazy because of their not-surprising maladaptation to being the only gay fish they knew in the heterosexual pond.
The overwhelming conventionality of small town life was another crazy-making element for young guys who were going to build their adult sex lives in a deviant very urban sub-culture. Yes, the wicked, strange, big city was L-I-B-E-R-A-T-I-N-G, but it was also disconcerting.
I agree with a theme in your OP. Mental illness is mostly not a physical disease (except that experience is mediated by the physical structure of the brain, and if the physical structure goes haywire...) Much of what is called "depression" for instance, is just a consequence of the ghastliness of many people's everyday life. They need a better life, not better anti-depressants.
For most people (let's say 90%) the terms of their life are reasonably compatible with their basic personality. Part of us is given before birth, part of us is shaped in childhood, and a part is shaped later in life. For some people (the remaining 10%) who they are is incompatible with the kind of person which society attempts to shape and which they are expected to be.
Back in the 60s and 70s the rate of mental illness was calculated at about 10%. Seems reasonable. At sometime in their life, 1 out of 10 will require medical assistance in coping with mental illness. That's a lot, 30 million people in the US, but 290 million won't require medical assistance for mental illness.
Sometime in the 1980s the estimates started rising and reached 2 in 10; 20% of the population would need medical assistance for mental illness. My guess is that the estimation rose because there was now an at least somewhat effective drug treatment that could be prescribed. The responsibility of people is to buy the products which will fix them. Besides, somebody had to take the place of all those crazy homosexuals who weren't defined as "sick" anymore.
The homo's replacements were ordinary, miserable heterosexuals who were unhappy enough that they were becoming significantly less productive (always a problem) or they were acting out at work (even more of a problem), or they tried to kill themselves in a way which went beyond a snivelish "cry for help". Some of them shot presidents (Ronald Reagan) in an effort to impress movie actresses. Was John Hinkley insane? Or had he simply happened upon an ill-advised plan to impress the woman he loved (Jodie Foster)? I sort of regretted that part of the plan didn't succeed - I'm sure he and Ms. Foster would have made a fine couple.
I will admit to being offended (indeed, even triggered) by those who attempt to project their own experiences as necessarily being the same for everyone else. I try my very best not to do that. It's a dangerous sentiment to have to assume that because you got over what you describe as "X" problem, that everyone else can and should as easily overcome what plagues them. On a personal and familial level, I know how truly catastrophic and debilitating mental illness can be for someone who once was strong, independent, and of a healthy disposition. And I've never felt or thought about anything more painful in my life than the experience of not being able to help someone who needed me.
But no amount of patience, love, time, or sacrifice can be enough sometimes, either for another, or for yourself. The isolation that the truly mentally ill often feel stems from not being able to empathize with others. Most people think waving some pom-poms will do the trick, or hearing a benediction in a Church, or receiving a hug and a kiss, but until you've stared insanity in the eyes, and seen someone you love fall into shambles and disrepair, and you can't do anything about it, then you'll understand that mental illness can be gravely serious.
Anyway, I'm not going to argue with anyone what I've said here, because you asked for experience and anecdote over the gobs of research and findings and studies I could have listed here, so you'll just have to think about what I've said and give me your thoughts. I didn't write this response to get winking/laughing faces, only to give another perspective, which seems your only aim.
Allow me to associate myself with your observations. Anyone who has lived with and loved someone who is manic depressive with deep depression and mania which immediately heads off into psychosis, knows, feels, and has suffered the inability to help the afflicted person. Even with heavy duty major tranquilizers (anti-psychotics), it can take days to suppress the screaming and thrashing of a bad mania attack. Thorazine and a padded cell is entirely appropriate for such situations, crude as they seem. Until something better comes along...
You know that, understand it, and haven't thrown the baby out with the bath water in a fit of total scorn. On the other hand, my depression went away when my life got better.
And? ;) Have you looked what part of the forum I placed this thread in? Probably you haven't. So you should.
I remind you of the rules:
If you read my definition:
Quoting Agustino
Then you'll see that such a condition doesn't qualify as mental illness. Alzheimer's, for example, would classify as a disease of the brain, as the brain physically changes. It's a physical disease first and foremost.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Me and my family have gone through that. I understand that mental illness can be serious.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Not all mental illness occurs in old age though. Consider this for example:
https://openi.nlm.nih.gov/detailedresult.php?img=PMC3014899_1471-2458-10-745-1&req=4
Schizophrenia is a disease that regularly and most frequently starts amongst the young, and improves as they age in the intensity of the symptoms. The patients, in other words, learn to manage it better.
Personally I consider conditions to be worst when they could be helped but aren't. Many of those cases you refer to simply cannot be helped much. But then many of the young who are suffering of all sorts of different mental conditions, many could be helped, but currently aren't helped. I think that's a problem, we should do better for those people, simply because we can do better.
Overall thanks for sharing your experience, I appreciate it! All perspectives are valuable and offer insights, and the more we have the better a view we can all form of the matters at hand.
I for one would not like to imply that regular medicine / research should be ignored in any way, stuff like anti-scientism and how some views on alternative medicine influence decisions / sentiment badly bugs me.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Exactly this appears to be an issue, maybe not in modern psychology but in society overall. The sentiment still seems highly behaviouristic; "What makes me happy should make others happy so we'll just advice those who are unhappy to do the things that make me happy". Some autistic children go haywire if they're forced to comply with normal social interaction for too long and they demand a lot of care / attention where it cannot be expected that they can control themselves in a similar manner as regular children i.e: it's morally wrong to hold them fully responsible for their actions. There's a difference in Tommy not liking his dinner and autistic Henry not liking his dinner, we might "force" Tommy to finish his meal properly but that probably wouldn't work out well with Henry.
Similarly, it's unrealistic to expect society to adapt to a particular individual yet if say, behaviourism (and it's failings), was a concept most were familiar with, there could be some more common knowledge with which more understanding can be generated.
Also, like how people learn to actually drive their car properly 'after' they get their licence, I would not want to criticise psychiatrist on the whole, far from it. Yet if a psychiatrist leads a good life and is happy and hasn't had much setbacks in life, learns a "trade" and uses a DSM manual in the same way Searle using his operating manual in the Chinese room, there could be a lack of understanding which could be crucial in assessing the actual problem. It could, in cases be beneficial to be able to function as an average benchmark for mental health but if it becomes an absolute benchmark they could be just another social cue which adds to the patient's problems because he / she fails already failed to adhere to such behaviouristic social cue's.
I wouldn't know how to get psychiatrist more able to really understand, it seems amoral to traumatize them so that have a good understanding of how certain things might feel but actual wisdom seems to be underappreciated. What I'm advocating is that not every mental illness is necessarily a physiological defect. A lot of academic science tends to apply very well in cases where there might be actual physiological defects (where the field is moving forward still ...at speed, and the consensus might not always be, well, justified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis ) yet it can be hard to distinguish underlying causes which might have similar effects.
It was almost twenty years ago when I filled in a form with multiple choice questions and that sufficed to get a Prozac like pill, these days family physicians can prescribe them to people without having them see a psychiatrist or psychologist; I find this a bad thing, which is not meant to imply that all these prescriptions are wrong by definition.
I have a friend with ADD, it was more prominent when he was young yet he took Ritalin far into his twenties. Never was there any medical inquiry if he could potentially phase out his medication. He did so on his own inclinations, while his girlfriend kept nagging because: "he's so busy". They're fine now though.
My sister is currently undergoing cognitive schema therapy and this seems very beneficial, she's getting more insights into her own workings and is becoming able to see her own sticking points herself instead of an external observer pointing them out for her. It demands a lot of resources though and is not yet common practice for everyone, which is somewhat understandable.
Though subjective, I feel that even those in the field of psychology would share the opinion that there's much to improve yet that this should not mean that we should negate current functionality. Also, seeing we're talking about psychology, Quoting Hanover the first question you get is probably something along the lines of: "Tell me how 'you' feel".
A word on behalf of psychiatry...
Psychiatrists are, first of all, doctors who get paid through the bossy bureaucracies of insurance companies (at least in the US). How much they get paid per patient, and how much time they can reasonably spend on each patient visit is governed not by their employer, a clinic or a hospital, but by Amalgamated Medicine Corporation, or some such insurance company. The time per patient might be as short as 10 or 12 minutes.
Some psychiatrists see patients for longer periods of time, (30 minutes per visit), and they can do so because they are in private practice. They may not take Medicare or Medicaid patients though, because Medicare payments are a bit too low.
Visits to psychiatrists tend to be medication checks. How are you feeling? Do you need a new Rx? See you next month. They literally, and really, don't have time to discuss your life--as much as they might think it appropriate--thanks to Amalgamated Medical.
General family practices are caught in exactly the same squeeze. Patient time is metered by the minute, and doctors generally don't have a long time to discuss your vague medical problems. They want you to get to the point, show them your throbbing foot, quick diagnosis, Rx, and NEXT!
Good therapy takes time. An exceptional clinic I received therapy from did long-term counseling lasting for years, if need be, with 50 minute sessions. Patients who were unable to pay received the same treatment as paying customers. How did they pull that off? An endowment and enough paying customers to balance the books. Plus, they were a training program for PhD-level therapists who worked as interns. Were they any good? They were very good.
So, how do psychiatrists live with themselves? For one, they tend to have a lot of debt and it has to get paid off. They work according to the terms of the workplace. Two, some of them see patients on psychiatric wards, where they can treat first class insanity. Three, psychiatrists are as likely as the next guy to live a life of quiet desperation.
Mental disorders:
Relatively unusual mental processes that regularly prohibit their bearer from functioning as they desire, in ways that are physically and pragmatically possible, as well as prohibiting pragmatic ways of functioning that most people can achieve with respect to going about day-to-day affairs such as preparing meals or otherwise acquiring food, performing a job if necessary, taking care of whatever errands are necessary for the person in question, interacting with others socially, etc.
Insanity:
Relatively unusual mental processes that not only regularly prohibit their bearer from functioning as they desire, in ways that are physically and pragmatically possible, as well as prohibiting pragmatic ways of functioning with respect to going about day-to-day affairs as above, but that also affect the individual's behavior to an extent where they can't manage to take care of themselves to remain healthy and/or out of legal trouble and/or they can't manage to not put other persons' health/well-being at risk.
Just my two cents worth. Your (s)mileage :) may vary. (L)
What do you think about people who fail to live up to their own standards? Don't you think they are also more prone to mental illness? And if the answer is "yes", does this suggest, to you, that one should have and maintain no standards for oneself? Would this offer a better approach to life? Or perhaps someone should do something entirely different, and if so, what would that be?
Everybody screws up, Agustino. It's how you react to failure that signals your mental health.
Perhaps I wrongly defined my terms, because they don't account for "normal" behaviour - or standard, average, call it what you will behaviour - neither "mental strength" nor "mental illness", but rather a kind of complacent conformism as you'd say. I would intuit that both mental strength and mental illness have to do with non-conformism of one kind or another. Successful non-conformism we label mental strength - non-successful one, mental illness. What makes for successful non-conformism? What is successful non-conformism?
That's the kind of generality that I don't think can quite help someone in practice. The problem is precisely that some people have a certain reaction, and others have a different reaction to the same issue. Why? Given person X today, he cannot alter his reaction that he will have 10 minutes later when he finds out Y. So he's fucked. If he's ready - if his worldview, self-conception and position are such that he will have a positive reaction to Y, he will achieve mental strength. If he's not ready - and his worldview, self-conception etc. aren't such that he will tackle the situation positively, then he will be likely to suffer of mental illness. So what then are the essential elements of worldview and self-conception, according to you, that enable a positive reaction to failure? Given more time than 10 minutes, person X could use that information to alter his sense of self - or perceive why such an alteration would be beneficial to him.
Quoting csalisbury
Isn't "learning how to conceal my actions better than" a social skill? Concealing can only be undertaken in a society, and when it is undertaken successfully, that sounds to me like a social skill. And how else can it be learned, except by having to be an outsider and being forced to learn it? The kid who grew up in a rosy environment won't have it. It's never been demanded of him. He's at a disadvantage. If a dictator comes to power, and for whatever reason hates his race, family, religion, etc. and orders all like him killed - then he's likely to die, while someone like me, even though I'm also the target, I'm more likely to survive, because I have a skill he doesn't. My lack of fortune, was actually my greatest fortune. You can say he's living a better life than me, and he's happier than me CURRENTLY. But wait until the shit hits the fan, and then we'll see. And it's inevitable - in this world, ultimately, the shit always hits the fan. That's why you should rigurously train yourself, physically and mentally, to be capable to go through whatever life can throw at you. I have a feeling that by their acceptance of the "rosy childhood is good" theory, psychologists are actually leading to mental weakness, which any day could turn in mental illness. We need a theory which prepares people to face the harshness of life as it is. And life is harsh - Schopenhauer was right, it's like a slaughterhouse, and we're all waiting our time. So to help people, we have to help them become strong, first and foremost, before anything else - psychologically strong.
I'm with Nicholas Taleb from Anti-Fragile. A stressed organism who responds well to stress is more capable than an unstressed organism to respond to difficult situations.
As I wrote in my first post, diseases like Alzheimer's are still categorized as mental illnesses, even though mental infers mind, when really it should be brain. And I forget if it was in here or some other thread, but the discussion of materialism in the sciences is actually one reason why psychology is held back at times. Even though mental illness derives from physical changes in the brain, it's still important to make the distinction between brain and mind. A lot of people worry over whether their illness will change who they are as a person, and for the worse, so it's important that medications, and counseling, and so on all work together in order to help the person realize that they're still them.
Quoting Agustino
I didn't mean to suggest that mental illness is seen only in the old.
Overall, I still think you're failing to acknowledge how well psychiatry can and does help people. But I also realize from the historical standpoint that mental healthcare in Europe has a track record of being abysmally worse than really anywhere else in the world, which is perhaps still true now. Here in the US, I think there's a healthy appreciation for what mental healthcare we do provide. If anything, we need more mental healthcare, which doesn't just means drugs. To treat any illness or disease, you need a lot of different things to come together for progress to be made and for the person to get better. If somebody's simply going to a psychiatrist, or just a psychologist, or just their doctor, or whatever else, then that probably won't be enough.
Two more points...
Shame does not always have to be about other people's expectations. I've often felt shameful for there being something wrong with me, which is inherently irrational, and has to do with my own expectations, so I agree with your analysis, I think. If I had cancer, it'd be retarded for me to feel sorry for myself, as if I did something wrong. Mental illness is just the same.
Also, when I'm talking about mental illness, I mean real mental illness, not circumstantial depression or anything else that's "normal." Mental illness is unintended and unwanted, as Terrapin says, undesired. There's no choice involved with it until you can get help. That's the biggest thing, really.
Okay, but please understand that for the most part that's not the type of mental illness I'm referring to. I'm not referring to Alzheimer's for example, or other conditions which I consider to be physical rather than mental - as I have defined the terms.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I know, but I said I'm not operating under that definition.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Maybe, I don't know how things are in the US.
Ever heard of Stephen Covey? When I worked for AT&T, everybody in management had to take a Covey course. I was taken in by it at first. It's actually very similar to the founding principle of Zen. There's a fly in the ointment. I'll share it with you in PM if you're interested. Bottom line: failure is supposed to hurt. It's supposed to bring you to your knees. That's what makes you stop and learn something. People who don't go through that pain are ego-maniacs. They'll fail over and over because they can't learn.
OK. Practice without a license if you want. If you aren't an ego-maniac you'll discover the downside to that. :)
Have you ever read Nassim Taleb's Anti-Fragile?
Quoting Mongrel
What's that have to do with anything? What am I practicing without a license? I haven't practiced anything.
No. Should I?
Whether you should or you shouldn't that's up to you to decide. Now answer my other question.
Right. Well, goodluck with that. Any particular reason why the Great Mongrel falls so low so as to respond to someone's poor misunderstanding by insults? I thought better of you, but it seems I was wrong.
No you weren't "trying" but that's what you actually did as anyone with two eyes can tell you.
As for saying "now answer my question" - it seems only natural, you ask me questions and expect me to answer, I ask you and expect you to answer, and in case you don't I remind you that I'm interested in an answer. There's nothing uncivil in that.
"Now answer my question" is not a request in American English. It's a command. It's a sentence a parent would utter to a child.
Street psychology... what power strategy did I just employ?
:-! The more intelligent Mongrel, is the one who knows how to hide their intelligence.
Yes, I can see that right here:
Quoting Mongrel
I would but I'm afraid that we'll find out that Mongrel isn't a woman, but a man >:O She doesn't seem annoyed when called an actOR instead of an actTRESS.
Nobody as far as I know.
I'm not sure anything has a non-physical origin. But assuming arguendo that's possible, does the fact I'm incapable (due to an aversion to unilaterally imposed rules) of successfully navigating and prospering in the environment of this thread mean I suffer from a mental illness?
Yes, this is the two-fold problem; once we reject 'normal' as the measure, on the one hand it is hard to find the appropriate diagnostic authority, because the shrinks are normally insane, or insanely normal, and on the other hand, there is the problem - even if one is sane, of knowing that one is and distinguishing between sane and insane non-conformity.
Sometimes it is easy; I spent some weeks looking after a schizophrenic, and there was no question in anyone's mind which was the madman and which the revolutionary. But 'success' is also a problematic criterion. There was this guy I heard of who said strange things and got himself crucified ... with the benefit of hindsight, he seems rather sane and successful, but at the time, success seemed a long way away.
'Distress' is also sometimes proffered as a criterion, and it has the merit of fitting the medical bill of leading to a 'complaint' - the old term for illness. But again the manic, the schizophrenic, the paranoid, are not usually inclined to complain... and it is the madman who does not know he is mad that is most needful, and hardest to identify.
When the church was dominant, the question was whether one's visions were from God or the devil. I don't think things have really changed much.
I disagree that failure is supposed to hurt. Only losers cry about spilt milk (and we've all been losers at some point). And no, not crying isn't being an ego-maniac, although the ego does probably play a role in it. A large ego, by the way, is only a handicap when it runs out of control, but otherwise a large ego can be a huge advantage - like a powerful engine. I don't know if you've ever tried jet skis, but there's generally two versions. One is heavier and thus easier to control. The other is much lighter, can go much faster, but much more difficult to control (and you could injure yourself if you don't know what you're doing). A big ego is like the lighter jet ski - in the hands of a master it's very useful, in the hands of the idiot it's disastrous.
I am a lover of Asian martial arts and related knowledge. I've practiced several forms through out my life and I've always read books like The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure etc . The ego is not your enemy. You have to befriend the ego, whatever and however it is, it's a tool, just like any other that you have available. The only thing is that you must not let it control you and govern you. It must be servant, not master of the house. Sometimes the ego is useful, sometimes it's not - it's up to you to decide when.
Quoting Agustino
I'm asking you because Taleb's metaphor of anti-fragility is what I mean by mental strength. The idea is that there are three types of organisms: fragile, robust, and anti-fragile. Fragile organisms are always hurt by pressure/stress. Robust organisms aren't affected by pressure/stress, they can withstand it without being hurt. Anti-fragile organisms not only aren't affected by pressure/stress, but they thrive under it, they are made better and stronger by it. Taleb's anti-fragile hero, for example, is Seneca. I would think most of us, and Taleb concurs, are in the fragile or robust category. I think the reason why many of us, myself included, have suffered or continue to suffer from mental illness is precisely that - our fragility or our robustness being overcome. But that's simply because we have never worked on ourselves, we have never trained ourselves to be any different. The idea is to move from that category into the anti-fragile category. That, in itself in my mind, offers quite possibly the best protection from mental illness as well as all the other things life can throw at ya. But of course - the corporatists at AT&T and so forth - they never want people to be in the anti-fragile category. They're too difficult to control and manage. Free people, in fact, cannot be managed. Better to tell them it's supposed to hurt - that way they'll be docile. If you teach them to thrive from stress - my God, they'll take the liberty of striving from the stress of opposing you!
Yea.. taken in the right way, I think you may be right. There's a wrong way to take it, though. That's all I was saying.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by a wrong way to take it. Are you referring to ego-maniacs? And if so, what does that mean exactly? Very often our world chastises people with big egos - "Ah you have such a big ego, it's all about yourself!" - as if having a big ego were a moral failure in itself. The truth is we don't really control the way our ego is. By the time we start having a sufficient degree of self-determination our ego has already crystallised, and it is what it is. But instead of teaching these folks how to use their big egos properly, we punish them because they are big. Many of these people do suffer because of it - some of them quite often developing all sorts of neuroses. So if by "wrong way" you mean a way to punish them simply because their egos are big, then I would be against this. The whole idea of chastising those with big egos emerged because they make us - the ones doing the chastising - feel threatened. I can prove it in fact by example if you want. There's a certain way of writing I can use which will annoy and provoke my interlocutor. If you stop and ask yourself why you are annoyed - then I'm not sure what you'll discover. Why would you, for example, react negatively, or feel negatively if I were to say something like "I'm superior to you"? Clearly if you have a solid vision of yourself, and feel comfortable about yourself - then you'll be like "This fella Agustino has really gone a bit cuckoo hasn't he? He has lost even the little bit of intelligence he had left! >:O" - but many people would react like "Ahh, Agustino, this shameless bastard!" Why? Because they'd feel threatened - they, not me, in that case, would be insecure, and my bluff/boast would merely illustrate it.
So I'm not sure what ego-maniac is. Is ego-maniac the kind of person who enjoys prospering at the expense of others, or just is happy when others suffer? That to me is just being a mean and nasty person, nothing to do with ego. You could be like that regardless of whether your ego is big or small, and what you need is to learn the joy of compassion.
Is ego-maniac someone who is controlled by his ego? That person to me is just a good show. Maim and bait them - they always bite. It's fun to play with them. They always hurt themselves, they can't control their behaviour. They have no strategy. The smallest insult and they go in a rage. Their problem is that they are self-destructive - their ego simply is destroying itself. What they need to do is simply learn to control their ego, not to make it smaller or bigger.
Talking about ego - I once played poker with a psychologist (amongst others). Me and him dominated, but I ultimately won the game. And so I mocked him a little (he was a friend of a friend - and I had just met him)- "So tell me, you know so much about the human mind, and can't even beat me? I outsmart you?" - and he responded - "That's what I want you to think ;) " - so I asked "What do you mean that's what you want me to think? I won the money!" and he said - "Well, you're not thinking long-term" - me, "What long term? The game is over!" - him, "You outsmarted me and used all your tricks. I learned them, you are now like an open book who thinks he knows everything I can do. I haven't used any of my tricks, but when I'll get you to play me somewhere in Monaco on much more serious money, then you'll understand who the real winner today has been!" >:O I respect that man. I bowed to him right there and then, in front of everyone, and thanked him for educating me.
On a milder note, any individual can put off accepting the pain of failure. In fact, most shrink from the weight of condemnation. That's why people are so quick to rationalize. A well-known side-effect of this is sleeplessness.
Crazy:
That sounds to me like being stupid though :P and stupidity and arrogance together are quite a deadly combination. But I'm not sure it's just that - some people just can't do certain things (well they can do them theoretically, but in practice they never do).
But I don't understand why anyone would be like that. I'm very competitive by nature, I have to win. So in my mind, not learning from mistakes - that's being stupid because it stops me from winning. It's all very pragmatic for me in this regard.
Would that coincide with a stereotypical extravert conservative who classifies success as a personal achievement yet ascribes failure to environmental circumstance?
What does classifying success as personal achievement and ascribing failure to environmental circumstance have to do with being an extravert conservative?
I mentioned "stereotypical", it's not always the case but I've observed this behaviour in real life many times over. I am informed here by George Lakoff's strict father model when assessing conservatism and the concept of being an individual responsible moral agent weighs heavy, generally speaking.
If combined with being extravert to a high degree, it would seem likely that there's little awareness of any self serving bias at work. Ascribing failure to environmental circumstances internally could appear to external observers as "not learning from mistakes". It could also just be plain stupidity though...
Well I experienced the strict mother model and I am a conservative and an extrovert.
Quoting Gooseone
Still, I fail to see this. Whether I fail in action X because of my environment or because of myself, to me, it's the same thing. I failed. Doesn't matter how and why. If it's because of the environment, it's my fault - I should have controlled the environment, or at least predicted it. Ascribing failure to circumstances seems to be merely a way to deceive yourself that you failed because of the environment - which isn't true - you always fail because you don't manage your environment well enough.
The glaring problem of the definitions is that mental strength is not defined by referring to this assumed non-physical capacity, such that mental illness would be defined as a deficiency of this non-physical capacity. Instead, mental illness is defined as an incapacity, and mental strength is defined as the negation of this incapacity, such that we have no defined classification for the capacity itself, only an implicit reference that the capacity is a non-physical capacity
We are left with a logical puzzle, produced by implicit references. It is only by piecing together this puzzle, that we can determine that mental strength is really being portrayed as a non-physical capacity, and ask what does this mean. The definitions imply that it is "non-genetic, non-inherited, non-acquired from accidents/diseases". So what is this capacity supposed to be?
This is what I'm implying, whereas 'you' are able to see your environment as something which you can manage (I would say learn to adapt 'to' more productively) it's not self evident that others see it that way. If there's no self reflection on one's own role in failure (which is easier to do if the blame is laid fully in the environment) there's never an inclination to adapt. The example you give in that clip works very well and I'm inclined to think a conservative extravert is more likely to think (using the example from the clip) "they've been wronged by this bad guy".
You could reflect on your assessment that you define mental illness as an inability to adapt to one's environment where mental strength is seen as being able to adapt favourably. It appears to me that you see non -conformism to a "mad world" as a favourable adaptation, this concerns a value judgement and not necessarily an objective reality. (Mind you I'm in favour of non -conformism to a large extent.)
There's a common environment in which we all function and we have an internal environment we use as a cue to be able to function in the common environment, I would see it as a mental strength to be able to persist from obliging immediately to cue's from the common environment but at a certain point I would see it as a detrimental if the internal environment becomes the only cue with which "prospering" is judged.
Again, I'm not really arguing your case, rather elaborating on it. I make a distinction between mental illness caused by physiological defect and mental illness caused by conceptual misunderstanding (which could very well lead to physiological defect). With the latter the distinction between non - conformism and irrational non -compliance is hard to make and one's own value judgements (bias) plays a big role here. Gaining objectivity towards bias is crucial here, if this is glanced over it's just a battle between an overall value judgement of society vs.one's own value judgements.
You indeed address the crux of the matter. Metaphysically I assert an embodied view of mind, though non-physical in immediate appearance I do not believe in mind / body dualism. Similarly, our environment is both physical and abstract, we can feel physically hurt if we're abstractly harmed and conversely, the emotional engagement we might have towards certain abstract conceptions can inform our physical engagement.
This view makes me assert that our emotional inclinations play a big role (I don't think people are capable of full rationality). Basically I'm saying that what's important to us plays a very very big role. If one values their role in society to a high degree they can be distraught if they fail to settle down and have a nice house, kids, etc. while someone who favours their own integrity might not care about such "futile irrational values" and can easily endure a solitary existence by valuing non-conformism.
Even the word "strength" depends on what we value abstractly, in any case it might be seen as an ability to endure certain immediate circumstances to achieve a goal on a longer term. I also happen to think "mind" and the way humans are able to use it has / is this function (making abstract projections about the future which can aid us in directing (controlling) our current behaviour).
I don't think people shouldn't have standards, no.
Well they have been wronged by that bad guy. But the fault isn't with that guy - that guy is a bad guy. It's their judgement that's the fault - they didn't judge him correctly. If they had judged him correctly from the beginning, they would never have been harmed. So their failure is merely the opportunity to begin again, as Henry Ford said, this time more intelligently.
I don't like this formulation, because it presumes there is a "reality" set in stone, and your preconceptions have to match that reality. But I think that you and your preconceptions play a role in affecting your environment and reality. Your preconceptions may very well become reality if you play your cards well. My point is precisely that one must not abandon their preconceptions - but rather so seek to organise and control their environment, that their preconceptions can find expression.
I've had many preconceptions about reality. I've held onto them - some of them for 15 years or more. And I've also had the great great pleasure of seeing some of them turn into reality - So Terrapin, I cannot agree with your distinction, because it seems to suggest one must abandon their preconceptions in favour of some given reality. And that's precisely what I'm negating. Reality is not just given - but also made. And yes, that means you'll have to fight some people, you'll have to battle some forces from your environment, and seek to win. But that's what life is about. If you give up your preconceptions - as you call them, then you give up yourself, and that's just a shame.
If you influence the world, so that in the future it meets your preconceptions, then you don't have to adjust your preconceptions, right?
You are committing the error that Nietzsche spoke against: "Perhaps - thus he [Socrates] should have asked himself - what is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent? Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is exiled?"
This is a very common error amongst academics. There are some peasants though in this world, who have less than 1% the "knowledge" and "sophistication" of an intellectual, and yet can get a lot more done. How come? Because a lot of this quibbling is empty of substance and useless.
You don't have to renounce them, no.
But if at present, reality doesn't meet your preconceptions, should you figure that it is what is in error and that the way you expected or wanted it to be right now is correct instead? It can't be other than it is right now can it?
What does error mean? Error means it's not according to how it should be. How should it be? That's what your preconceptions tell you. So that means you recognise your present reality as not being what you want, and instead seek to move towards the reality you do want.
The point, though, is that present reality can't be other than it is. At that moment, you have to recognize and adapt to what is and work with it--that's all you've got at any present moment.
Yes, you have to recognise that it is as it is.
That's all the quote is saying, really. That's what you have at that moment, and it's what you have to work with.
Yeah, it probably has that connotation often. The quote I relayed wasn't meant that way, though. It's actually from Brian Eno--musician, composer, producer, etc. And it's partially a statement of his working philosophy, especially related to the way he treats "mistakes." Preconceptions in this context isn't negative. It's just what he (and his collaborators) had in mind to do/achieve. But it has broader application, too.
MU is trying to allude to the contradiction in you definitions. If mental strength is defined in opposition to mental illness-- an absence of incapacity-- it cannot be the response to present mental illness. In this case, it's impossible for someone to have mental strength and also a mental illness.
This is why "mental strength" has no apparent practical definition. In the terms of you definitions, it is not a response to mental illness, some action taken to deal with a present mental illness, but a description of being in a state without mental illness.
You definitions preclude this because it would require that a condition of mind could be both a mental illness (incapacity) and mental strength (absence of incapacity).
Note: your direction is more or less correct, "mental illness" is a classification of ethics, a way of saying a particular way of thinking ought to exist. Rather than a description of a state of mind, it's a judgment about what sort of mind ought to belong.
This, however, amounts to an absence of standard in judging the presence of mental illness. In any case, we are relying on a ethic defined in-itself, rather than the presence of a mind.
In this respect, "mental illness" is revealed to be more rhetorical than anything else. It's a form a naturalistic fallacy. Instead of being honest about what at stake, a thought, behaviour or action which ought not exist, we equate what's wrong with the mere presence of body and thought. In terms of the individual, it's sort of a denial of responsibility. Rather than describe actions or states which ought not be (e.g. lack of motivation, despair, etc., etc.-- depression), someone is just said to be "mentally ill." It's nothing more than an image used to position where someone goes in an order-- e.g. the sorts of people who ought or ought not be, the sorts of people who need treatment or medication, etc.,etc.
First of all, I have never thought about it that way. I dislike this kind of quibbling though because it doesn't get us anything of practical value. We can talk about this day and night - none of us will become any better because of it. What I meant as opposite is this: mental illness is incapacity - mental strength is capacity - NOT lack of incapacity .... I wrote the opposite merely because I didn't want to write the same sentence again using capacity instead of incapacity.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Okay, so what's the practical significance of this? How does that help any of us? Do you become a better person because you know that? Does your neighbour? Do I?
I get that. Just because you are able to do so doesn't mean it's obvious for everyone. I was trying to point at the underlying innate tendencies of humans which might be aiding in a "failure" to do so. Even though non-conformism might be a thing due to it being very obvious to some that a large part of the constituents of our environment do not see this, it does not necessarily follow that they're stupid or even "fail". If nobody is "enlightened" with such heuristic, who's at fault?
If a larger part of the population does not see things this way, they still constitute the environment we apply ourselves in socially. should we blame ourselves in failing to make others see how learning actually works, should we make the utmost of the opportunity to deceive others while using their lack of awareness or should we concede failure ourselves because we don't comply with a majority?
These are very different ways of interpreting an observation which I basically agree with.
I can't see your point here, ideas are formulations. Have you ever met an idea which is not a formulation? It appears like you are trying to separate form from content, saying that the form of your approach, which is what I objected to, is unimportant, it is the content which matters. But what I think I demonstrated in my post, is that your approach is pure form, there is no content. We are left with a non-physical capacity, as the content of mental strength, what does that mean?
Quoting Agustino
Pure capacity means nothing. The same capacity which is the capacity for good is also the capacity for evil. Have you read Plato? The same capacity which is the capacity for mental strength is also the capacity for mental weakness. Capacity without the qualification, capacity for "X", is meaningless. And so your definition of mental strength is also meaningless.
I think that very failure of the image of "mental illness" vs "mental strength" is the point.
What practical relevance does saying have "mental strength" have to anyone? It's nothing more than an imagined image. As a claimed solution, it really offers nothing more than any other response. One might go to a Monastery, believe everything their psychiatrist says or collect their new age crystals.
The image of "mental strength" has more to do with opposing particular types of responses (e.g. the cost, drugs of psychiatry, how psychiatry doesn't allow a person to be better on their own, etc., etc.), then it does for defining a practical outcome of mental illness.
[quote=]What I meant as opposite is this: mental illness is incapacity - mental strength is capacity - NOT lack of incapacity[/quote]
Which is not what you said in the OP.
And yes, this knowledge does make us better people. Not necessarily because we can magically solve mental illness, but rather because we don't fall into the trap of confusing an image (e.g. "mental strength") for a solution and then punishing people for whom it doesn't work. It means we don't scapegoat people for failing to get better by our preferred method (and it will mean we don't deny them the opportunity to get better by some other means we happen to despise).
In the context of the individual, it makes our understanding sharper too. A person who goes it on their own actually describes behaviours which ought to be changed, rather than considering a nebulous notion of "mental illness" which requires some yet to be understood solution. I think there may be something of a practical effect here.
If one knows behaviours they ought to change, they can direct themselves towards achieving that. Well, some people can at least. It certainly gives more to go on than saying: "I'm mentally ill and need to be fixed."
Strength could apply in two ways here, with respect to value. First, there is the need for a certain mental strength which gives us the capacity to establish a hierarchy of values. This is how we apprehend which things actually have value to us. Then there is a strength required to resist giving up on these determined values, and allowing these priorities to dissolve.
We should try to make them understand.
Yes I have read Plato, but I'm not interested in quibbling over notions - especially when you take words such as capacity, which I use in common parlance, and give them the technical meanings they have in some philosophies. So tell me how your understanding of capacity (which you take from Plato et al) helps you achieve or not achieve mental strength, or else I'm not interested in criticism which puts nothing better in its place. Then if you tell me that, I can see if there are problems with it - problems which will appear on a practical, not theoretical level, and I can let you know what I think.
Okay, replace the image then. Do something useful, don't just point fingers. We have to discuss by comparing notions. You just criticise. That's not very effective, because ultimately people choose between alternatives - nobody chooses criticism. So what's the alternative?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes I said that in the OP as short form - as I said, instead of repeating the sentence and changing capacity with incapacity, I just wrote that.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Who talked of scapegoating? The point was what works and what doesn't work, there's no scapegoating here. People are not punished for acting a certain way by anyone - rather their actions themselves will be punishments or rewards, depending on whether they work or not.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nowhere do you outline such behaviours, nor the means of changing them.
I sincerely agree and it is a value judgement which I use to judge myself and my environment.
In terms of behaviour, there is no image to replace in this context. You were only ever talking about theory. With respect to mental illness (or rather, how people ought to think and behave), you never defined a problem. You began with this nebulous image of "mental illness" that needs to be fixed and imagined the image of "mental strength as it's solution." But what was wrong? Who was acting in a way they shouldn't? What behaviour needs to be fixed?
You have neither spoken about any such issue or offered any practical advice. From the beginning, this thread has been all theory, not an identification of a behavioural problem and a suggestion of a partial solution, but (supposedly) an instance of knowledge or explanation to any problem-- you say: "lack of mental strength" just as the lazy psychiatrist might say "brain chemistry and drugs."
With respect to practical advice, we can't even approach the subject until we start talking in terms of specific behaviours. This thread has never been about doing anything useful in this respect. It's all about the theory which gets used to define how people respond to the mentally ill.
You didn't talk about it, but your argument entails it. Take, for example, the several people I know who've had successful experiences with therapy. If we worked by your system, they ought have never started seeing a physiologist. If they weren't managing on their own, you would have chastised them for lacking "mental strength" and just demanded the understand it (how?). You would (in your ideal world) deny what worked for them (since it's supposedly ineffective-- just a racket of scam artist taking their money) and prescribe them "mental strength." Their health would be a scapegoat to the application of your preferred method of treatment.
Ah well, the problem is that implies that capacity/incapacity are working on the same axis, are in opposition.
Mental illness (some incapacity--failure) and mental strength (some capacity--success) does work as a discintion. But the trouble is it still lacks definition. What is the behaviour that needs to be changed? What behaviour is successful? The contradiction may be resolved; the mentally ill (failing) may respond with mental strength (success) in the future, but that says nothing of practical value about anyone's behaviour.
Second idea I outlined, is that not all people who have experiences which are different from the norm are mentally ill - and thus such people shouldn't be medicated, but they should be helped to navigate their experience better - to linguistically frame it such that they are not handicapped. Again, you miss this - instead you keep stuck to some quibbling over definitions like a child. Fuck the definitions. Get down to business - real business, not nonsense!
That's the problem though: the definition of "mental illness" is not practical. It a nebulous allusion to failure. What is the failure? Is what's called "mental illness" even a failure at all? No doubt you want to help people, and I more or less agree with what you say there (with the addition that "mental illness" is a concept of how people ought to act that emerged out of our language concepts), but you still respect the (oppressive) idea of "mental illness" as a concept of someone nature.
Fuck the definitions indeed, particularly "mental illness." Who needs that second order notion of being handicapped to distract them? If something is wrong, why not just describe that and tackle it head on? What does saying that one is "mentally ill," as opposed just describing behaviours actually add to the picture?
Okay, go ahead, do it. Let's see it. I will judge it, once I see it. So far it's all criticism what you're doing - nothing original. Stop sitting on the sidelines and get down in the ring. This thread is for everyone to contribute however they want, and however they see fit in the process of generating ideas and brainstorming. If you dislike the definitions, good! Do something about it, propose something different.
It's your thread, your definitions, you tell me your understanding of this non-physical capacity which you call mental strength. That's what I'm interested in, what constitutes mental health, but you just seem to want to focus on mental illness. You claim that you want to talk about something practical not theoretical, but you're lost in some theory about what constitutes mental illness. Fuck mental illness, let's concentrate on something practical, how we can obtain mental strength. But no, logic, puzzles, theories, etc., things which exercise the mind, are too academic for you.
Though I might not fully agree with the term mental illness as used by Agustino, I'm assuming he's talking about something which should not be defined (easily) based on obvious behaviours but involves a self-report of mental and emotional states, including a need to make such a report.
Seeing it's usually not a very good idea to let someone judge their own mental states completely and "understanding" one's own mental states involves a degree of articulation ("Because it felt good" might appear to be a self-report involving sufficient reason but I guess we can agree it generally does not suffice as a good enough explanation and we're expected to have a degree of self control), would we get farther if we let individuals articulate a self-report? And, if so, how can we know that we ourselves are capable of judging such a self-report?
We give adults a degree of freedom whereby certain behaviours are not tolerated, most of these behaviours are judged according to the respect with which others' freedom is respected. People have a large degree of freedom to harm themselves (it's not forbidden to become an alcoholic to my knowledge) and we cannot force people to really care about someone who is suffering from loneliness.
Social engagement, common sense / knowledge and a good handle on our own biases could aid in making the large grey area between, let's say, having an occasional drink and full blown alcoholism smaller. Common knowledge would be important here because nowadays actual care could easily be seen as "intrusive meddling".
In a similar vein, what about the many nihilistic / solipsist threads on this forum? We're unable to judge behaviour but there's a difference between someone having a decent fulfilling life where spare time is used occasionally to let natural curiosity rein free and inquire into matters of meaning and knowledge vs. someone who suffers an existential crisis, has become unable to keep a job and sees life as something unfulfilling / futile.
It is my own personal judgement that a large degree of nihilism / solipsism is usually not very beneficial for someone but it might be beneficial for those who are actually trying to negate life's experiences somewhat (depersonalisation light?). There can also be those who really don't care for anything else but forcing a good answer to certain difficult questions and this could be regarded as "mental strength", in some cases brilliance and persistence have not always been equal to a healthy physical existence. There's also a degree of egotistical arrogance: "Refute this motherf#ckers, Ha!", But (and I would really like to get some feedback on this one) it could also be a justification for having a point of view which is wreaking havoc on one's experience. Using the mind to rationalize bodily feelings can be a coping mechanism in some cases. If we see someone living in an obvious detrimental way and we ask for a self-report, a rationally articulated (irrefutable) report can be given and, if there's no familiarity with the concept I'm trying to elaborate on here, any help could be judged to be intrusive meddling".
Would a nihilist be trying to gain an identity, would he / she rather find actual meaning, is he / she just butthurt in not being able to know the future, is a solipsist an ego on high octane fuel, distraught in not being able to generate their own thoughts, comforted in having found an impossible to refute metaphysical position, etc?
A lot of what I'm talking about I would not consider a mental illness, far from it, yet some of it could very well lead to a mental illness. It is my opinion that mental strength 'could' be regarded as being in control of emotions yet I feel that, at least in "civilized" societies, there's little need to be over protective concerning our own identities / emotions; I wouldn't see being emotionally "touchy feely" as a mental strength yet an honest self-report would qualify. Justifications and strong convictions can, to my mind, be regarded as a hint that there's something to report on (mental stress?), it's usually far from obvious though.
'Mental strength' could be seen as functioning analogously to 'fitness' in evolutionary theory. One cannot say much about it in advance, and what is fit in one ecology may be unfit for another.
For Norman Normal, anything that deviates from current accepted practice is incomprehensible, and therefore probably insane - mad sad or bad. But Norman turns out to be mistaken if the deviance becomes accepted and society changes. At which point the madman retrospectively becomes the leader and hero. Just as the successful mutation becomes the new species, whereas the unsuccessful becomes the new disease.
Gregory Bateson has related ideas. (But do watch out for the cultish offshoots.)
Evolutionary fitness is an extremely difficult concept. If it is related to survival, we can immediately abstract it from survival of the individual, because evolutionary theory doesn't associate survival with survival of the individual. Now, the person with mental strength does not put one's own survival as the highest priority, and one who puts one's life at risk is not necessarily mentally ill. Furthermore, evolution goes beyond the survival of the species, such that new variations may create newly evolved species. How can we reconcile this with the proposed concepts of mental strength and mental illness?
With great caution!
For example, a heightened sensitivity, or even a new sensitivity to some environmental/social factor, may look like a weakness. For instance, in my lifetime in the UK there has developed a sensitivity to child abuse (as we now call it), that wasn't taken seriously before. There is still a deal of resistance to this namby-pamby attitude.
At the same time, speaking from experience, there are conditions that are fairly clear cut, just as there are mutations that are obviously maladaptive. The disintegration of speech, of contact with reality, and of the personality, that constitutes the classic schizophrenic are pretty obviously not going anywhere good, for society, for the species, for the individual, or for anything else. Although even here one should be cautious; it includes a creativity, and a sensitivity that with the right nurturing can become productive and transformative.
Yes BUT - take the cockroach. It is a species of insect that has evolved very little, if at all, in the past 300 million years. It is very adaptable, and not fragile to modifications in its environment - it can thrive pretty much regardless of environment. If you expose it to the same radiation level as Hiroshima for 30 days, 10% of its population survives. If there are no males around, the females can reproduce by themselves. They become immune to poisons and chemicals very rapidly. And so forth. Now, here's a creature whose survival is pretty much environment independent (I say pretty much because obviously there would be some extremely severe environments they wouldn't be able to survive in).
By analogy, I recognise for example that the mind/person that maximises flourishing (and survival) during a war environment is different from the mind/person that maximises flourishing during peace. The social skills that are required in peace are things such as mixing in well with others, lack of aggression, being part of the group, engaging in social activities like parties, drinking, sensitivity to others and so forth. The skills and mindsets that maximise the chance of survival in war on the other hand are controlled aggression, courage, daring, pragmatic intelligence, critical thinking, patience, resisting pain, decisiveness etc. But notice there is an asymmetry in terms of fitness between the two mindsets. The "war" mindset, let's call it, is superior to the "peace" mindset. It's true that during peace the person with the "war" mindset will have a harder time - he won't be as successful as the other guy. But he'll manage. But - during war on the other hand, the "peace" mindset is first to be exterminated, while the "war" mindset has a greater chance of survival. So in one situation the "war" mindset is significantly better than the "peace" mindset, and in the other situation it doesn't perform as well as the "peace" mindset, but well enough to ensure survival. So if one is to pick rationally, it seems to me that one will pick the more austere "war" mindset - because that covers more than one base as it were. Obviously I gave some extreme examples to show the point I'm trying to make, but this points to the possibility that there may be a series of characteristics which equate to mental strength across many radically different environments.
Quoting unenlightened
But you see that's the thing. Norman Normal is as Taleb would say fragile. The environment changes, and he's gone. The deviant on the other hand, so long as he assures some degree of survival in the current environment, but stands to gain SIGNIFICANTLY from random changes in the environment is positioned at the right place, while Norman Normal is making a fatal mistake and is in fact sitting on a booby trap.
Quoting Agustino
I would say that Norman is a cockroach. He is like the vicar of Bray in adapting to society, or like the decent citizen who becomes an extermination camp guard. In a consumer society he consumes, and in war he fights.
But my evolutionary analogy was intended to steer you away from survival/ success as a measure of sanity. I had thought you would see immediately that a sane man can get crucified. And with Jesus in mind, I suggest that sanity is fragile in that worldly sense; that it is vulnerable to social insanity, precisely because it cannot adapt itself to the world gone mad.
I don't think so. Jesus died, like Socrates, on purpose. Some things are worth dying for, because when you die for them you make a point. And regardless, we're all going to die someday, might as well die for a great cause. But notice that their death didn't come from weakness or lack of worldly success - they were successful, that's precisely why they [the authorities] wanted to kill them. And they stood upright, and refused to yield and obey the authorities, and preferred death, rather than bowing down and giving up on their values. If they had bowed down, they would have already lost everything they were fighting for anyway. Death was a pragmatic solution, I would have chosen death in their situation too.
The Taoists and other Asian cultures seem to understand the relationship between worldly success and spiritual success. The two of them come together - it's impossible to succeed in the spirit and fail in the world. That's a schizophrenic Western conception that the good guy always loses. Why would anyone believe that? To me, there is no spiritual strength that fails to break through in the world. The spiritually strong remarks himself, he makes himself seen and heard. He is always a problem for the authorities and those in power - because he has the strength to disturb the created order.
Did you hear of Nick Vujicic for example? He has no arms and no legs, but because of his spiritual strength, he beats all those odds.
This sounds like chest-beating bullshit. What exactly does it mean to "fail in the world"?
Indeed - but this only tells us that the sane man was also mentally strong, and sufficiently dangerous to the established order that there really was no other way to get rid of him - he can't be bought, can't be threatened, can't be guided, can't be manipulated, can't be stopped in any other way. His crucifixion is precisely the crowning of his Earthly as well as spiritual success. The fact he holds onto dignity and refuses to give up on the good just to live one more day - that's spiritual strength. And the fact that others resort even to killing him - that's a sign of his worldly success.
Quoting John
I will answer, but before I do, I'm curious just what you would understand by "fail in the world"? What images would this bring to your mind?
You first, dude.
Well you need to educate me about this, because it's a use of the terms 'earthly', 'spiritual' and 'success' that is wildly different from my current understanding. On the face of it, it looks like you are moving the goalposts in a great hurry, because earthly, as in cockroachly success, certainly didn't include not surviving a few posts ago.
He who wants something from another has to accept the conditions on which they'll be given no? :P But the reason why I want you to go first is because I don't understand what you don't understand. "Fail in the world" is a common phrase I think. So what does that make you think about?
You use the phrase "fail in the world". I want to know exactly what you mean by that. If you don't want to tell me, then fine; that's the end of the conversation.
But do you think personal survival always makes sense? What if I die, and then my entire tribe gets to become a great kingdom that will last for 400 years, and if I had not sacrificed, then they would have been wiped out? If Jesus didn't accept crucifixion, nobody would have been a Christian today. Isn't that, in a way, survival too? If Socrates didn't take on death so defiantly, would the Platonic Academy have existed? Would Plato have been inspired to dedicate his life to philosophy? Probably not. If Socrates had not taken on death so defiantly, I too, probably would have never been interested in philosophy.
Certainly evolution and everything we know about natural science must be capable of explaining such sacrifices in terms of survival too. In fact, that's precisely what I claim - they - Jesus and Socrates - made a rational choice, anyone who was rational in their shoes should have chosen the same. It was a pragmatic question. In some instances it is foolish to choose your own survival because the costs of survival are too great.
Ok, no problem! If it sounds like chest beating bullshit, then I surely deserve to know what you mean by that, before I shall tackle your other concerns. If you don't wish to accept even this request, then I don't feel compelled to answer you either.
No I don't think that. I think that personal survival is part of earthly success, along with having rendered unto one some of that which is Caesar's, and so on. I don't think either, that Socrates' taking on death succeeded in founding an academy. I think he would be insulted that you thought that he died for anything other than in defence of his principles - a spiritual reason.
Earthly success is about survival and earthly prospering, as you say, if not for oneself then for the tribe, or for humanity, and I suppose, if you count the treasures of the Vatican, then Jesus' death was an earthly success. But I don't think Jesus counts them at all.
But this is getting a bit off topic. One can perhaps judge the sanity of a man by subsequent events, but it is no help in judging his sanity now. His survival or not, his prospering or not, his adulation or not, these are not good guides to his sanity.
And tell me unenlightened, if Socrates had chosen to run away instead of accept death, would his principles have survived?
Quoting unenlightened
But it is an earthly success when your values and principles are passed on. Some like Genghis Khan are the fathers of 1000s of biological children. But others like Buddha, Muhammad etc. are the fathers of millions and billions of people, many of whom are ready to die for the same values they believed in and fought for.
No worries. My referring to it as "chest-beating bullshit" was probably just an example of my unfortunate tendency to be provocative; which is amply justified in this case, though, as a propadeutic technique designed to exercise your self-avowedly thick skin and render it even thicker in order to benefit you in relation to your professed desire to become a superlative politician.
Translated into more civil parlance, "chest beating bullshit" would be something like 'hyperbole supported by empty rhetoric'. It is on account of the fact that I believe "fail in the world" is a phrase that is vague enough to be classed as 'empty rhetoric' that I asked for a concrete account of its meaning.
Only when we have a solid account of what it means to "fail in the world" will we have the means to assess the justifiability of your claim that spiritual success is not possible when people "fail in the world". Although, a need for a cogent account of what 'spiritual success' consists in might also become apparent.
Quoting Agustino
You are so busy arguing, you are missing the point, and arguing against your own position. Jesus, Socrates, and the principled man of peace, not to mention the principled man of war, and the suicide bomber are not to be judged by their survival or their death.
It is exactly the man of principle, who holds to the rational consequences of his principles who is least adaptable and far from the cockroach like resilience you seemed to extol, is most fragile and vulnerable in purely physical (worldly) terms. Their anti fragility is mental and spiritual in being true to themselves, and 'single-minded' in the sense of not suffering from a conflicting need to 'succeed' at the cost of their own integrity.
Yes, but this single-mindedness certainly transforms and shows itself in the world, in worldly terms. I am arguing for what I have told you I'm arguing - namely spiritual success inevitably brings about worldly success - the two are linked. Absolute and unwavering dedication to one's principles does, and will always attract, worldly success. It is because of that absolute and unwavering dedication to his principles that Socrates' death had such an effect on his contemporaries, and inspired some, like Plato, to create a movement around it. I'm not saying Socrates does it for the worldly success - no, absolutely not. But the worldly success follows like a shadow.
Yes, Hitler still has his followers. But that does not prove him sane. Unwavering dedication can also be stubbornness to the point of monomania. Principles can be wrong.
Indeed - but that's still mental strength. Hitler is mentally strong and sane. So is Ghandi. But one is morally evil, and the other one is morally good. That's the whole point I'm trying to make. Evil or good - morality or immorality have little to do with mental strength or mental illness for that matter. In our society, very frequently we seem to associate evil with mental illness, and goodness with mental strength. One of my main points in this thread is that such an association is wrong.
One form of mental illness in particular. The mad axeman is mainly, but not entirely a myth with respect to schizophrenics, but I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Are you saying that psychopathy is a mental strength, or are you going back to the 'success proves sanity' trope?
I wouldn't see psychopathy as a mental strength, it would seem easier to single mindedly go after one's own goals if there's a complete disregard for the environment then there would be if there is a genuine care for the environment. And (again) at a certain point (don't ask me where), if there's no reciprocity at all between the goals of the overall environment and the individuals' goal, I would see that as objectively dysfunctional. (Ideology usually plays a big role in the many atrocities mankind is capable of).
I think you need to look at that again, and see if this bears any relation to what you think Jesus was like.
You appear to have gotten lost and confused now Agustino. Look at the op, you clearly define mental strength as the opposite of mental illness. Now you're saying that some forms of mental illness are actually mental strength, they are just misunderstood by society, misdiagnosed you might say.
But that is exactly the problem I pointed out with the op, you position mental illness as the describable condition, then proceed to position mental strength as opposed to this. That is the very problem, you have nothing to determine mental illness except the diagnosis of the doctors. You haven't produced any principle of mental strength, to refer to, by which you can say that a doctor's diagnosis of mental illness is wrong, and that the person really displays mental strength. So you have absolutely nothing to stand on if you are to say, as above, that a certain psychopathy is actually a misunderstanding.
You got too tied up in the health and welfare of the individual:
Quoting Agustino
See, your idea of mental illness refers specifically to the individual, "one". Now when it has been explained to you that the person with mental strength will actually demonstrate actions of putting the well-being of others as priority over the well-being of oneself, your definitions may be completely reversed. Or at best, they are just plain wrong. You're completely lost, you have no grounds for diagnosing mental illness, and no bearing for determining mental strength.
No, an inability to reconcile individual goals with societal goals says something about what 'we' are capable of at this point, just because it might not be a simple either / or does not mean the starting point is completely baseless.
There is something, but not everything, to be said for the view that sanity/madness is relational. To call someone, or some behaviour insane is to admit that one cannot 'make sense of it'. And then of course to try and make sense of it in terms of some deficit or excess. The implication then is that one cannot be mad on one's own, or mad to oneself - not that one cannot find oneself to have been mad from the POV of having 'recovered one's wits'.
But then consider PTSD. The sufferer may know he is 'not himself', with or without knowing the cause or label.
But talking of madmen, one might take something from Wittgenstein's discussion of family resemblances here. It may be that there is only one way to be sane, but there are certainly many ways to be mad. What seems to be coming from this discussion, at least it's coming to me, is that a mental condition can be at the same time a weakness and a strength, a deficit and a (compensating?) talent.
Things are not made simpler by the fact that most disorders are 'spectrum' disorders, such that more or less everyone is to some extent traumatised, paranoid, psychopathic, schizophrenic, autistic, and so on. I speculate that whatever leanings one has in one direction incline one to find that disorder less real. Thus to the extent that I am paranoid, I find paranoia to be a perfectly sensible way of thinking and acting, not a disorder at all.
Another person worth considering is Van Gogh. Both his huge talent and his mental fragility are pretty much unquestionable. Likewise his failure in his lifetime and his huge legacy and influence after his death. And I think he was a good man.
That's such a bait and switch tactic. So first you link me to the forbes article which suggests:
And then you link me to the article which talks about the following as psychopathic traits:
-uncaring
-inability to plan for the future
-violence
-selfishness
-narrowing of attention
-insincere speech
-shallow emotions
Now can you see that the two of them are very different? Yes I agree that shallow emotions, insincere speech, selfishness, violence etc. are quite possibly psychopathic traits in the mental illness sense. But take the first set of skills you've suggested to me as psychopathic traits - reading people, identifying their likes/dislikes/motives/needs/fears/vulnerabilities, not having the social inhibitions of most when jumping in a conversation, and being skillful with language and words - that sounds to me like mental strength you know. A leader, take Ghandi, for example, needs to be able to do that. He needs to identify - is this person trustable? If not then he may betray me - if he betrays me, is there a way to turn his betrayal into a useful situation for my cause? How does he respond? How does one get him to do something the quickest? Does he respond to some sort of fear, or does he respond to rewards? And so forth. These are very very important matters, and good leaders, as well as evil leaders need to have such skills. If these are the skills you call psychotic (as that article certainly does), then certainly they don't represent a mental illness to me, but signs of mental strength and intelligence.
Quoting Gooseone
Yeah I agree with you. I referred to psychopathy only as shown and illustrated in the forbes article, not generally. Obviously I don't think psychopaths - in what we traditionally understand by psychopaths, such as serial killers, rapists, and so forth are mentally strong. I think, actually, they are quite mentally weak, precisely because they cannot feel emotion, and thus can never understand others. I would see someone who is purely selfish as mentally ill - or otherwise just plain stupid/irrational - because such selfishness ultimately undermines itself. If you destroy your environment, that's no different than committing suicide.
Well I apologise if I misled you. I assumed you had some familiarity with the psychological terminology. But the difference is not all that huge. The Forbes article rather assumes that we know that a psychopath is more or less as described by Psychology Today, and proceeds to explain how someone who has these traits can nevertheless appear plausibly competent and talented.
I wish I could wean you off your black and white thinking about this. You have just seen the same condition being described positively and negatively in your own view. But they are talking about the same condition, psychopathy.
A medical surgeon needs the ability to de-empathise with his patient to the extreme of being able to treat them pretty much as a piece of meat. But hopefully, this talent is used only when needed, and he does not regard his wife and children that way, or even his colleagues. Now the psychopath typically lacks in empathy, but can feign it when he finds it convenient, because he does not lack insight and understanding of others. This is a simple example of a talent and a disability coinciding.
Alright, because to me some of these traits sound contradictory. For example - inability to plan for the future + narrowing of attention don't go well with reading and understanding people.
Quoting unenlightened
In my opinion, I have seen two different conditions described, and the same name stuck to both of them, which is what my problem was. Or do you mean to say that being able to read people, having excellent use of language, and lacking social inhibitions of most when starting conversations are signs of mental illness? You'd probably be hard-pressed to find many leaders who lack these skills indeed.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't see how this is possible. He may try to feign it, but since he lacks the first-person understanding of empathy, his feigning will only ever be very imperfect. It's like me trying to feign that I'm in love with someone without ever having experienced love myself. I can look at what other people who are in love do, and mimic it, but since I don't actually have the feelings, then it's going to be imperfect, at certain points and in certain particular situations it will become clear that I'm only pretending to those who do have those feelings or know about them.
The surgeon on the other hand CAN access feelings of empathy, he nevertheless closes them off while performing surgery. That's different. He doesn't lack in a capacity for empathy - but from my understanding, psychopaths lack precisely in this capacity. Since they've never had it, they simply have no first-person knowledge of empathy.
Ok, sure. "Fail in the world" means failure amongst worldly matters, such as not being able to procure food for oneself, being disregarded by one's fellow men, failing to achieve one's worldly goals, and so forth. Spiritual success implies self-knowledge and understanding, devotion to the right principles, and virtue.
I think that's still mighty vague on a very broad spectrum, and on that account there would not be many people counted as failures. Not that many people who are in a situation where procuring adequate food is possible, fail to procure it, for example.
What kind of regard counts as greater, the regard of your family and friends or of the public? The regard that proceeds from love or from fear, from admiration or envy? And in the context of worldly goals; one person may have very modest goals and succeed in all of them, while another may have fantastic aspirations and achieve them only to a moderate, or even small degree, and yet achieve far more, in worldly measures such as money, fame, power and so on than the first. Who, then would be the greater failure? Or think of art; what is better; to achieve greatness but fail to be recognized or to achieve universal acclaim and yet be a mediocrity?
I don't disagree in principle with your criteria for spiritual success, but how would you go about measuring spiritual success according to them? Who decides whether you truly possess self-knowledge and understanding or whether you are merely deceiving yourself? Who decides what are the right principles or whether you are in reality devoted to right principles, rather than to your own ego?
Sure, but then there's a lot of ways that would qualify as "worldly failure" so to name all of them entails being broad.
Quoting John
Family and friends probably.
Quoting John
Love, because fear only works when you also have power.
Quoting John
Admiration and envy don't depend on you though - they depend on the character of the other person. Me for example, I have very high admiration for great people - when I see a great person, whether they're an artist, a writer, a businessman, a songwriter, a politician - anything, I always respect them. But I notice that most folks feel jealous of greatness rather than admiring of it. Perhaps this merely represents their own regard for themselves. I regard myself in a good light, and so I merely treat great people the way I would want to be treated if I was like them.
Quoting John
Hard to say. Did the first have small goals because that was truly all that he wanted to do with his life, or because he was afraid to seek to do more?
Quoting John
To achieve greatness and fail to be recognised - because sooner or later, you will be recognised. Whereas if you are a mediocrity, sooner or later you will be forgotten, even if at present you enjoy fame.
Quoting John
By faith.
You say that sooner or later recognition will come, but I wonder to what degree luck may play a part. Let's say you are a great artist and you produce a body of brilliant work but have achieved no recognition. All your voluminous body of work is in your studio with you when it burns to the ground, killing you and destroying all your work. Would it still be better to be that artist than a brilliantly successful mediocrity?
Sure this is an extreme and unlikely scenario. But how can we ever know how many great artists, poets and composers have been consigned to the recycle bin of history due purely to unfavorable circumstances of one kind or another?
Absolutely, because a priori, the probability of remembrance is always greater if you are authentically great. You simply played the best cards you could have played, and lost. You could've done nothing better.
Yes, but the salient thing is there is never any guarantee of greatness; whether one is recognized or not.
Sure, so? Virtue is still the safest bet, the most likely one to win. If not even virtue succeeds, then certainly nothing, not even crookedness, will succeed. For example - if I am the crook artist, who is in reality a mediocrity - that will fail - I will be forgotten, regardless of the current popularity I am enjoying. So why choose a road where the final conclusion is certain, instead of choosing the road where there is at least some possibility? That's the ultimate irony - those who succeed spiritually also happen to be the most likely to be successful in the world - and those who sacrifice spiritual success for worldly success, will actually lose the worldly success as well.
OK, but my point is that one should ideally not be at all concerned, in such spiritual or creative endeavours, with the the regard of others, or success as measured by acclaim, whether now or later.
In politics, of course, it is an entirely different matter; you cannot possibly be a successful politician without achieving recognition.That is why I responded critically to your apparent equation of spiritual with worldly success.
So, I actually don't think you have any real justification for saying "That's the ultimate irony - those who succeed spiritually also happen to be the most likely to be successful in the world - and those who sacrifice spiritual success for worldly success, will actually lose the worldly success as well."
Yes of course. But I'm saying that the way to gain it, is precisely and paradoxically not to be concerned with it.
Quoting John
I don't think so - most politicians are fleeting, their names are forgotten. Few are those remembered by history, because most of them make too many sacrifices to achieve power, and hence the power itself becomes useless. To me, as I said, spiritual and worldly success always go together. Even in politics - it is better to be principled and lose because of it, than to gain the whole world and lose your soul. being principled is in truth still your best bet to win. If even that doesn't get you victory, nothing else can, not even being a crook.
Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't be sly as a serpent. You should be - you should know who will be a crook to you, who will not, and take all factors into account, including actions of betrayal and so forth that will happen. You would need to know this. You can't be a fool who thinks everyone will be as virtuous as you, because then you will most certainly lose. But it's not worth winning while sacrificing virtue. The whole art of politics is winning without sacrificing virtue.
How so?
Losing due to sticking to one's principles I agree is better than winning by being crooked, but I would call that 'spiritual success' not 'worldly success'; such "losing" is not counted as worldly success under the ordinary definition. Perhaps you have some other conception of worldly success in mind?
Quoting Agustino
People do feign falling in love, and people who are lonely and hungry for love will fall for the deceit enthusiastically, almost conspiring to maintain the fantasy. And they won't thank you for disabusing them, and they will get hurt. I'm very glad you lack that ability. I'm a poor actor too. But assuredly one can be a passably good actor by mere imitation and without empathy.
Quoting John
I have mentioned Van Gogh, a great artist who had serious enough psychological problems to harm himself, and be hospitalised more than once.
Consider Winston Churchill. A great man, a great leader, a great success, who suffered all his life from depression.
Or there is the phenomenon of the autistic savant. It is thought that Mozart was one.
The game of trying to sanity equal to success or strength simply doesn't work, because we are not one dimensional beings. One can have abilities and disabilities at the same time, and they can be the same thing. And one can have disabilities in one area and great talent in another.
No but I'm saying that you will fail worldly, guaranteed, if you are crooked. If you stick to your principles and play your cards as well as it's possible to play them in that situation (by being sly as a serpent), you stand the best chance of winning in the world as well. If even in those circumstances you lose worldly, then you could have done nothing better - winning simply didn't happen to be in the cards God gave you.
Now you may count becoming Prime Minister, or President or whatever as worldly success, but that depends. It's not always a success. It also matters what you can do from that position, how loyal your people are to your cause, and so forth. What use is getting there if it turns out you can't even apply your principles? What use is getting there if you can't even do the good you intend to do? And remember that immorality will always haunt you - you can never escape it.
Sure, but most who do feign have been in love before and know what it's like. Hence they can feign it - they have first-person knowledge of it.
Quoting unenlightened
Sure, but as I said, that only works up to a point. I can't believe that one who lacks the capacity for empathy can feign empathy with there being absolutely no phenomenological difference. That's just impossible in my mind, because the person simply lacks the knowledge that he or she could have had from the first person perspective. Sure, he can be a good actor up to a point - but the best actors are always those who actually make themselves feel it. But those who can't feel, can't make themselves feel it, and therefore they can never be great actors either.
Yes, but I don't see how it can be claimed that sticking to your principles would be either more or less likely to bring worldly success. It all depends on what profession one is thinking of, what kind of milieu one would be working in, what kinds of people one happens to be surrounded by, and so on.
Quoting Agustino
I think what you are alluding to here would more rightly be called spiritual or ethical failure, in the sense of failing to realize one's ideals (and not necessarily through any particularly significant fault of one's own; think of Obama) than worldly failure.
Yes, I agree completely with what you say.
Okay, suppose I gain political power by murdering my political enemies and decimating (physically) the opposition. I currently control directly, or through henchmen all the state's political institutions. Now some people who are currently allied with me will know about this. In their minds, regardless of how I act to them, regardless of what I shall do, I will always be a ruthless and ultimately dangerous man, who could any day do the same to them. Now what will they do? They're not stupid. They will feign alliance to me, and at any opportune moment, will seek to get rid of me, in the same violent and ruthless fashion that I have exterminated my own opposition to gain power - and moreover, they will feel right to do it, because I'm not lawfully there in the first place. What's more important, I won't be able to distinguish ally from foe anymore, because the people I will be surrounded by will be just like me - lacking principle, because those with principle are long gone - they would never agree to work with me. So sure, I have gained victory, but at what price? I'm guaranteed to lose that victory - it's just a matter of time. A crooked success is inherently unstable and thus never worth it.
But on the contrary, if I am principled, but sly as a snake, than if someone tries to outmanuver me, if someone else tries to kill me, trick me, or otherwise get me out of their way - then I can know it, and I can exploit it - because whoever is immoral exposes themselves to the greatest of dangers. But showing kindness - even to an enemy - especially to an enemy - wins them over. Forgiveness - your people knowing that you are forgiving - that is much better than them knowing you are ruthless. Really, goodness always beats evil. Morality always trumps immorality. It's simply a matter of time.
It's an extreme example, but that's what I ultimately mean. Regardless of profession - I believe that ultimately being a crook will inevitably lead to destruction (not necessarily physical destruction, but destruction nevertheless, whether financial, etc). It's just impossible to win being a crook. But it is possible, though not certain, to win (whatever that means in the chosen profession) while following principles. The two are not contradictory - ethics and pragmatism.
Van Gogh probably didn't cut his own ear off. Firstly it was just a piece, and secondly, a lot of historians think that it's more likely that his violent roommate cut the piece off of his ear during one of their fights.
I don't see it this way. All great people see themselves as great - it simply cannot be otherwise, they would never be great if they don't first of all see themselves as great. To dare for example to study anatomy all by yourself - like Da Vinci - and achieve his knowledge - that requires very big balls. You must see yourself as a genius - if you don't, you won't even begin. And to be able to achieve anything, you must first of all make the first step. This obviously has nothing to do with how you see other people. It's quite petty to think that others are idiots for not realising you're a genius. If you think that, the truth is, you're the fucking idiot for failing to make them realise it.
Now there's the other kind of people. Those people, who see themselves as average and normal as you call them. They are apparently nicer folks than the genius, with the only difference that they are the ones who always get jealous, who always want what someone else has, who always complain - the genius is never jealous, never complains, never wants what others have. They are the ones who resort to small and petty lies to get something, they are the ones who willingly accept to be guards at concentration camps - THEY are the ones. Not the genius. Not the great man. The great man will never bow his head to evil, will never accept to serve immorality or bat for the devil. And the man who doesn't see himself as great, but likes to THINK of himself as great - he is a special kind of these "normal and average" people, whose sole concern is the fact that others don't see him as great. There's many of those. So many! More than you'd realise - and many aren't even aware they are like this. For them it's not about BEING great, but about being SEEN as great by others.
Ironically, you spend a lot of the comment talking about what shit-ass idiots the average normal person must be, while sensually massaging the geniuses.
To be honest, I've only done that because your post suggested that great people are fucked up and the normal and average are better. That said, I think that great people can also have a very serious difficulty to face, just like normal and average people do. The difficulty for the normal and average is not to be jealous, not to be petty, etc. The difficulty for the great men is not to disconsider or treat as inferior or be overly harsh, demanding, uncaring and insensitive towards the normal and average. Not to treat them as expendable or less worthy. To be compassionate and caring towards them. That's difficult for the great men simply because of the hatred, fear and jealousy the average and normal exert towards the great.
Quoting Wosret
SEEING yourself as great is constitutive of greatness and one cannot be great NOT without thinking they're great, but without SEEING they're great. There's a difference. You can think whatever you want, but when I say seeing, then I mean that you feel yourself as great on a level that is there prior to thinking. Greatness is simply integrated into your self-model.
Alarm bells ring, but don't ask for whom the bell tolls; (it tolls for thee).
They're both ways of dealing with the same fundamental reality that the two kinds are similarly encountering.
I am not arguing that the starting point is baseless, I am arguing that it is useless, or meaningless. It is a staring point, so it is a base. Let me explain again. Agustino starts with a definition of mental illness, and then says that mental strength is having no mental illness. So if the doctors, who are the specialists in the field, say that psychopathy is mental illness, then by Agustino's own definitions, it is impossible that any psychopathy could be a mental strength.
Yet Agustino still wants to say that some psychopathic behaviour could actually be a mental strength. Unless an alternative definition of mental strength is provided, there is no premise to argue this. That is why, in order to properly discuss this issue, we must start with a clear definition of what mental strength is. Then we can move to identify, and classify, different types of variations in relation to what mental strength is said to be. This allows that mental illness might be determined as a specific type of privation of mental strength. Not all waverings from the defined "mental strength" should constitute mental illness, that would be ridiculous. Agustino's position does not allow any variations to mental strength because mental strength is just a catch-all category of not mentally ill.
Quoting Agustino
I think you underestimate the capacity of the human being to deceive another. The lying con artist comes in all different forms, some are good, some are not so good. They can all look you right in the eye and lie to your face, with great ease. If it's a good liar, this doesn't mean that the liar was once honest, and knows how to present oneself as honest, it most likely means the opposite, that the liar is well practised, from childhood. Being an honest person, and knowing how to be honest, does not make one a good liar, by knowing how to appear honest. Like any acting, practise makes perfect.
But what makes the con artist a good con artist, most of all, is the nature of the con itself, and this is derived from the creativity of the artist. I don't see how you can consider this creativity as anything other than a mental strength. If the creative capacity of the psychopath is considered in this way, then how can it be anything other than a misdirected mental strength, despite the fact that the "misdirected" aspect makes it clearly a mental illness. If this is the case, then mental illness may not even be in the same category as mental strength. Mental illness would be within some motivating factors, not within the strength of the mind itself, which is built up by habits and exercises. That is where strength comes from, practise. The motivating factors of the psychopath would be producing the wrong habits and exercises (antisocial thinking), such that there is still strength of mind, but not in a reasonable way.
And steroids.
Then why are we discussing it rather than something else?
Well you have demonstrated that it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to construct a scenario wherein the crookedness of a person in power will likely lead to their demise. But this is a specially tailored case, purpose-designed to support your generalization; which it is not really fit to do.. Life consists of all kinds of cases, of which probably only a vanishing minority are alike to the one you have outlined.
I completely disagree with you about geniuses. There are far more mediocrities who think they possess genius that there are geniuses who think they possess genius. I think it is far more likely that your average genius is totally absorbed in their passion for their work, and probably gives little thought to their being a genius. Great artists, poets and musicians don't really know that they are great; that they are geniuses; this is established only by posterity. Greatness in the arts or in philosophy is far more problematic today, since when it comes to formal innovation it has all pretty much been done. The exception to this might be when it comes to scientific theories.
Oh isn't that funny? Where have I actually said that? In fact, I've said quite the contrary, but people still think they've read what they want to have read instead of what I actually wrote ;) :
Quoting Agustino
Excellent piece of writing! It reminded me of it! Alas BC, the point I made seems to have been lost on Wosret - both normal and average and great have their own specific problems and challanges to face in relationship to life. This doesn't make one "better" morally speaking or "worse", they're just different. I respect normal and average people who are humble and don't resort to resentment and jealousy. I also respect great people who are compassionate and don't resort to arrogance and hardness of heart. I'm not being one-sided on this issue, as I am on the conservative-progressive debate for example. I freely admit I'm one-sided and biased there, always have.
Good, so have you explained to yourself why I responded the way I did to you? Have you taken the ques as they are, or have you rationalised them to save your world-model?
That's not my experience with such people. Generally I've found that such people are usually quite arrogant and cold - some of them, a few from those I've had the chance to meet, are actually nice people, who have compassion for those lesser than them. But not that many. Not that I put it to them - I understand why they are the way they are. It's not easy being great.
So it's not that they think they're great, so much so that they simply act that way, without even thinking about it. As I said, they've integrated it into their self-model. The challenge is always to integrate it in the self-model without sacrificing compassion for those who aren't as great. I've always admired greatness of any kind, but as I said, that's me. Most people I know are quite jealous of it, and resent greatness, unless they directly stand to gain something from it, in which case they praise it to no end.
I agree that doing so would appear useless but might have "some" merit, mainly by virtue of there being a consensus about the role of individual value judgements. 'I' would not, for instance, regard psychopathy as a mental strength yet seeing they appear to make great captains of industry, what do I know? I also wouldn't agree on mental illness being a lack of mental strength, but the hole Agustino seems to have dug himself into here might stem from a continuous shifting between societal value judgements, mere physical well-being and individual value judgements.
I've tried to make this point earlier: http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/37905
It take it to be impossible to come to a clear definition of what constitutes mental strength but laying out a mechanism with which individual cases could be viewed might be a step along the way.
I think that the point we are getting to here is the question concerning the nature of "value judgements". I would ask, is a so-called "value" judgement really a judgement at all? Consider, as I suggested in my last post, that motivating factors are separable from mental strength. Mental strength is related to judgement, as judgement comes from an exercising of mental capacity, the capacity to think. But value is what directs such thinking. Value is prior to thinking, judgement posterior. So value is the motivating factor, which produces thinking, practise, and mental strength, but what directs value itself? It cannot be that thinking and mental strength determine what is valuable, or else we have a circle, what is valuable directs thinking, and thinking determines what is valuable. Such a closed loop would deny the possibility that mental illness could enter in. Perhaps we must distinguish two types of mental illness, that which affects the values, or motivating factors, while the thinking process might remain strong. And, that which affects the thinking process itself, disallowing the strength which comes from practise, repetition and habituation.
Though psychology and emotion appear to be a bit too vague at times to discuss properly in philosophical discourse, I cannot help but observe their relevance towards most everything we undertake. Also, consciousness is not always deemed to actually exist or, if it does, gets more credence then is justified. I'd guess the somatic marker hypothesis from Antonio Damasio provides the most relevant "proof" for the following but thinking (conceptualizing) gets it's value due to an emotional response. I could go further and enter the realm of pure speculation (though it seems to apply to my own life) where I'd assert that, what we value has to do with development / purpose. Not insinuating there's necessarily a clearly defined pre-set goal to achieve, but rather that most people value (positively) developing in some way (Gaining material wealth, procreating, belonging to a group, being intellectually challenged, levelling up in Call of Duty, stubbornly persisting in finding "truth", etc.)
One of the exemplar cases used by Damasio is that of a male suffering brain trauma which does not seem to hamper his behaviour at first glance, yet a lack of emotional response towards his own conceptions (thoughts, projections of the future) made him make decisions which were detrimental to his well-being, a bit similar to Phineas Gage. Seeing there was little emotional inclination to respond to rational thought, the person from the modern example could follow the logic of where he made "wrong" choices, he was just unable to care much for doing so.
Even though this was a clear case of severe physiological trauma, the resulting mental illness was very hard to diagnose.
So this was a case where physiological trauma affected the ability to value but (for example!) a very intelligent mind in a very dumb environment could be affected by a lack of valuing, mainly because the common goals of the environment do not suffice and there is a lack of information in which value could be found. Such a circumstance could very well lead to mental illness without any physiological predisposition while, vica versa, certain autistic people or people with Asperger syndrome can gain valuable functionality if giving the right environmental outlet (like in the often mentioned examples of maths geniuses, etc). Here, a physiological "defect" isn't really a mental illness any more. Also, psychopathy could be summarized by a strong thinking process and strong value judgements (mainly extreme egotistical ones) yet a clear lack of value judgements 'shared' by the environment is what makes most of us see psychopathy as a mental illness.
Then we can look at, for example, down syndrome where people might be lacking somewhat in strong thinking processes yet are able to value things adequately and, with a little attention from the environment, can function prosperously.
Also (what I've tried to show by my own example), if a value judgement shifts (in my case from valuing my own personal mental development very high where a lack of development in this regard has made / is making me value my societal role more) there can suddenly be despair where there was "mental strength" before. (I'm hoping it won't lead to mental illness, but I can envision how it could). I have a hunch our value judgements are more important then our thinking processes seeing a sudden trauma which would hamper my thinking process could only be detrimental if I would be keenly aware of a sudden lack and how this lack hampers my ability to achieve my previously cherished values. Similarly, if someone is suffering from a psychotic episode due to "delusions", could these "delusions" possibly be articulated and "handled" if the thought process was strong enough and the information was provided with which it could be seen which value judgement is running haywire?
It's all quite complex... to me anyway. I do feel that "value" can be linked to progressive development (yet this can be realised in so many ways it's almost a futile handle), where a lack of progressive development combined with a keen awareness of such a lack can lead to great despair and, especially if this mechanism is not understood whatsoever, to mental illness.
Congratulations @csalisbury! (Y)
Yes the shame idea was indeed quite intriguing and good. However, you never took me up on it afterwards, but my inkling is that in some cases shame does and can lead to mental illness, but in others it may also be a stabilising force which prevents mental illness.
Just a cautionary note... Out and out psychopaths do not make great captains of industry. It's a suite of talents, one of which might be some psychopathic characteristics that makes them effective. A touch of megalomania helps some people too. More than a touch, and you have a an unbalanced personality (like some presidents-elect).
Do you really think he has an unbalanced personality? >:O See, I would never identify someone like Trump as suffering of mental illness. I simply wouldn't think of that as psychopathic in any sense. So I find it entirely amazing that others folks find that to be mentally ill. Maybe you disagree with him - sure - but to say he's mentally ill seems very strange to me. Certainly doesn't look as what I imagine by mental illness.
I began by saying "a lot of people" are of those kinds. The dynamic doesn't apply to me. :D
I didn't read BC as saying Trump is mentally ill. My diagnosis is that you defend him because you want to be him. His father taught him that there are two kinds of people in the world: losers and killers. After his brother committed suicide, Trump swore to himself that he would never be such a loser.
Devoting oneself to being a "killer" is a sign of imbalance. That's not a judgment anymore than noting that a hermit doesn't have a particularly balanced personality.
I don't think Donald Trump is mentally ill. The word "Unbalanced" had that connotation. One can have too much ambition without being mentally ill. Nobody has the 'perfect balance' of all traits. Slightly psychopathic administraitors can be very effective, thoroughly and widely hated, but still be "mentally healthy". Indeed, they function all too well.
Trump has a crude streak, he's narcissistic, he's extremely ambitious, he's a successful business operator, he's probably slightly psychopathic, he's no more of a liar, thief, knave, and scoundrel than most other politicians or corporate heads are at the start or become, and most likely would fit into the 'normal' range on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (a psychiatric diagnostic test). He's not mentally ill, as far as I can tell.
He's a loose cannon in a dangerous field of other loose cannons. His reach has exceeded his grasp of statesmanship. As pundits have said, he's restocking the swamp much more than draining it. He's nothing but trouble, and he can be all of these negative things without being mentally ill.
Quoting Gooseone
So here you mention "the ability to value". But I don't think that valuing is really an ability, I think that it is something inherent behind any intentional activity. So valuing occurs whether we like it or not, and it's not really an ability. The problem though, is that we judge the way other people value things, in relation to the way that we value things, and that difference may incline us to say that the other is lacking in the ability to value. The person is still valuing things, so doesn't really lack in an ability to value, but when we judge that person's values with respect to some other values we claim that the person lacks in that ability.
Quoting Gooseone
So now you have a "shared" value. I assume that what you mean here is a consistency between numerous individuals as to values. This would enable individuals to make similar judgements. If one is not making similar judgements we might conclude that this individual has different values and is mentally ill. But how would you know whether the different judgements are the result of different values, or the result of a different thinking process?
Quoting Gooseone
Now where do the values really come from? As I explained before, they must be prior to the thinking process, so they can't be produced by thought. We can't really call them value judgements, because they are something which just comes to us, as if by necessity. And as much as you might think, "I don't like this value which I hold, I'll get rid of it", we can't really do that unless something comes along of even more value, allowing us to relegate. But what would cause this new value to be more highly valued than the old value? It must be somehow relate to the thinking process. Does it facilitate the thinking process?
I thought he just told them there's winners and losers (which by the way is true). Regardless - what else did you expect? Do you expect the advice to be "Yes go ahead and be a weakling"? Strength does not mean lack of virtue as you seem to think. You can be strong - and still be virtuous. The Art of War for example advocates a path which is in accordance with the Dao - Daoism being a widespread religion in the times of the Warring States in China. Of course it advocates that you're sly, intelligent and don't allow yourself to be fooled. What else would you expect? Let me give you a clear example -
If Trump bought property which needed repairs before it could be sold, it's absolutely just and fair that he demands a fair price from his contractors, and uses psychological techniques - if he has to - to obtain that fair price. This can go as far as threatening to not pay, threatening to walk back on a deal, and so forth. That's normal - that's part of the game. If you don't bargain you'll get ripped off - you'll be gone. There's no immorality in bargaining and pushing hard. People all want to make an easy buck off you. Your job is always to make it hard for them to make an easy buck. Afterall, you yourself aren't making easy bucks.
But if you have no strength on the other hand, then you certainly WILL lack virtue too. I've met people for example, who are so weak, they always put their own family down, and allow their own family to be cheated because "they don't wanna have a hard time" - if you ask me, that's fucked up, that's immoral. They should be ashamed of themselves, that they fail to protect and care adequately for their loved ones because they're too scared of a little bit of conflict.
Quoting Mongrel
What's wrong with the hermit?
Quoting Mongrel
Okay, but if you attacked Da Vinci, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and so on, I'd defend them too. Does that mean I want to be like them? Maybe - but only in the sense that there are things about them that I admire. As I said, I always admire greatness. But I found many other people - including you here it seems - who don't admire greatness. All my life I've admired greatness, wherever I could find it. I've never felt jealous of a successful person - I always admire them.
Huh? I was told, you win some, you lose some, and this I think is true. What's with this notion that everything is either black or white? Where is the colour in your life?
Regardless, my point is really that some people are losers - here's what I mean by that. Some people - for whatever reason - will give up on opportunities that come their way, or will throw away important opportunities. Why? Because they're too scared, because they're too lazy, because they're not interested and so forth. They are losers, because they throw away opportunities without playing them to their maximum capacity.
Quoting Mongrel
Thanks for engaging, I would see "valuing" as the bit where our thought / mental abstractions / future projections get an emotional response. I would not know to what degree it facilitates our thought process (where it might be observed that our consciousness enables us to negate our value judgements / emotions to a degree which separates us from other animals) but our thoughts are crucial in coming to terms with the way we 'might' automatically respond to our own value judgements / emotions.
The difficulty lies in being able to articulate (think "rationally") about what's actually governing our behaviour, which appears to rely on a degree of self awareness / consciousness. There are values which are commonly shared (procreation, survival ...usually) and which have a very obvious physical base, yet when abstract thought comes into play, these values can be "hijacked" to some degree, a degree which (in my mind) does not necessarily correlate to easily defined physical or common values (like valuing knowledge to such an extent it might be detrimental to our physicality).
Just as we are having conversation now, if I were to have a goal in mind which I'd value (obtaining knowledge) which is wreaking havoc on my physical well-being and you were to ask me why I was not looking after myself, I could respond with articulating why my individual value judgement made me do so. You could then respond in numerous ways, using both common values and individual values. If you yourself would value common values a lot and would not be able to envision my "ordeal" you'd probably be inclined to say something like: "No exam is worth losing so much sleep over". If you could envision my value judgement yet wouldn't care much about my well-being you could be like: "Whatever floats your boat" (where you would not necessarily see me as mentally ill) and, if you'd care and you'd trust in my own judgement you could be like: "Just make sure that, when this exam is done, you take care of yourself".
The main thing I'm saying is that "valuing" is indeed innate yet it starts to take on more / other functionality as our self / awareness increases. If we negate this (like in asserting there's such a thing as pure rational thought) or don't make an effort to report how our own value judgements influence our rationality to others ("Oh, I was just playing") we actually succumb to being mere pawns of our own value judgements / emotions.
(I feel what I'm addressing is mainly difficult because it's not common knowledge and that the fact it isn't common knowledge is due to people valuing to manipulate others highly and try to prevent becoming too predictable... where a lack of common knowledge in this regard creates an environment where people might be inclined to follow their value judgements blindly while thinking they're behaving rationally... because everyone else seems to be doing it.)
No when one of your companies declares bankruptcy then both you and your creditors have lost. It means that the company borrowed money, invested it in some assets, and those assets failed to bring in profits. To take credit you also need revenue so presumably a lot has gone bad in the company not just the deal you required money for.
And yes, this is actually the way it should be. Those goddamn bankers like enslaving people and playing a game where they simply can't lose - they very rarely have skin in the game. So this way, the bankers should know that if they FAIL to adequately advise you and try to help you, they will also lose, not just you. They will never get back the borrowed capital and interest
Do you recognize two approaches to one's own value judgements? First, we could automatically start acting on the values, we'd be constantly working on how to achieve things. In this way, everything appears as a means to the end, because we never even think about the values (ends) themselves, we are constantly engaged in procuring the means. If it gets to the point where one loses contact with one's own values, just constantly acting to procure the means, without even having a clue as to for the sake of what, this could be mental illness. Second, we could question our values. Is this value reasonable? Should I hold this value? Why do I hold this value? But again, if one takes this to the extreme, being afraid to act for fear of doing the wrong thing, this could also be mental illness.
Quoting Gooseone
So the second approach I described, questioning one's values, could lead to this hijacking you refer to. The hijacking itself is not mental illness because it is supported by reason. The question then becomes, is the reason truly logical, or is it more like rationalizing. If the latter, then again we may be facing mental illness.
Quoting Gooseone
This "functionality" you refer to, is I believe, what I call questioning one values. The idea of "pure rational thought", might cause one to suppress all values, under the idea that pure rational thought is the only true value, an other values might need to be suppressed to allow rational thought to be pure. But this might be a mental illness as well. And the opposite extreme is like the first approach mentioned above, when we just continue to act on our values, we concentrate on carrying out the acts themselves, loosing track of what our values actually are.
Quoting Gooseone
This as well might be a mental illness, valuing the manipulation of others. If it comes to the point where an individual would have to obscure one's own behaviour, to prevent oneself from becoming too predictable, because what is valued is the capacity to manipulate others, doesn't this seem like mental illness to you?
Well it's only in humans we expect people to be able to refrain from automatically acting on their values (where some are still ingrained, like going a long time without food might make one do crazy things). And take for instance a mid-life crisis, isn't that usually where people take stock in what they have achieved thus far with blindly following values and never thinking about those values? And if I envision a person who's been shamed a lot when young for not "acting right" (by parents, peers, etc.) I could easily see them having such low self esteem it could be considered a mental illness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As humans, we are able to use a "logical" reasons to refrain from instantly giving in to our own values / desires, etc, usually with the help of another (or maybe even the same) value, which we then try to reach on a longer term. (Simply not doing what one might want to do right now to save up money to do what they want later). The way rationalisation comes into play here also functions as a means to increase our self esteem or at least refrain from distracting from it. There are al sorts of coping mechanisms / biases which aid in our self image and a healthy self image isn't necessarily a bad thing. Is it a mental illness for a criminal to make up some sort of favourable alibi when accused of committing a crime while he knows he's guilty?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If a solipsist gets himself into a depression because of solipsist idea's and is thinking about suicide, I would say the embodiment of thought is negated to an extreme extent and it could be deemed a mental illness. The opposite extreme, in my opinion, hangs on people being capable (aware) enough to reflect upon their own values. We can take IQ tests, EQ, tests, etc, yet there seems to be little test for actual wisdom and we also don't always seem to expect a degree of wisdom from each other. Wisdom here would be applying our meta cognition or might be similar to Kahneman's "thinking slow" (haven't read the book but I'm guessing this is what he means).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, it's beneficial for humans to be able to manipulate their environment to some extent, in our case this includes other humans ...which we depend upon also. I can wonder if, when we learn as children that we can't always get what we want, do we then just become morally upright or do we become more cleverer in getting what we want? Also, in the recent past, it would be highly beneficial to manipulate others into thinking you're a strict religious person because heathens were burned at the stakes. Like certain psychopaths, extreme egotistical behaviour is seen as a mental illness but a lot of what I would call "petty" behaviour isn't. And even though I find it petty, if I'm working with someone who is continuously mentioning what a great job he has and what a wonderful day it is, how good his job going on this specific day, etc. there's a point where it's not just a positive attitude any more but starts to resemble a rationalisation for doing something they might not be very fond of. I wouldn't call this a mental illness ...yet.
fair enough -
[quote=Agustino]What do you think about people who fail to live up to their own standards? Don't you think they are also more prone to mental illness? And if the answer is "yes", does this suggest, to you, that one should have and maintain no standards for oneself? Would this offer a better approach to life? Or perhaps someone should do something entirely different, and if so, what would that be?[/quote]
It's not standards versus no standards but clear, achievable (even if challenging) standards vs unclear, impossible, perhaps contradictory ones. And it's also how the love or wrath of the standard-setter is entwined with those standards. When things get tooo blurry or impossible (double-bind-y), stuff starts to go haywire. One way of reacting is to recoil from the intense blurriness and/or contradictions and to make one's worldview and self-image super crisp, black and white. Sufferers of NPD, for instance, are especially prone to madonna/whore complexes, identification with saintly or powerful figures (while seeing others as sin-drenched or cowardly) and efforts to control their social interactions in a way that allows them to keep their rigid sense of self intact.
Let's consider this example for a moment then. Suppose a baby manipulates its mother to get what it wants, food. Next the child starts to see that it can't always get what it wants, simply by crying, the mother actually has some say in that matter. Let's say that proper moral development would have the child recognizing that the mother has wants as well, and even that the mother has authority. Whether or not the child gets fed is actually dependent on the mother. But if the child doesn't develop in this way, and instead of learning to recognize the mother's authority, it just becomes more and more clever at manipulating the mother, developing the idea that it had some sort of authority over the mother, by always finding a way to get what it wants, wouldn't this be a road to mental illness?
Well, following the example you mention I'd guess we'd get some super psychopath or something so yeah, I would call it a road to mental illness.
Yet there can be the contemplation that, let's say, an altruistic person could be doing good for others or could be doing so for feeling good himself when he / she does good for others. I think a strong either / or isn't healthy. Also there's the question if doing certain things is wrong if someone isn't aware why they're doing so (we don't blame babies for crying when they want food yet at some later point we tell kids to stop whining if they don't get what they want).
And, isn't our economy based on the idea that most people act out of self interest where the common ground comes from having a mutual self interest?
I think it becomes a clear mental illness when someone is always consciously manipulating others for their own gain.