reverie

Thanks for pointing that aspect of Insanity out TK, wasn't initially thinking along that route.

I don't know though.. I don't think the words "Self-Induced" have to always mean intentionally. Perhaps one day someone can be aware of their more basic actions / experiences, and then gradually have this specified version of awareness disintegrate.

The reason I say specified version of awareness is because I think that one can become aware of more complex components of their experience. One's that cannot always be relayed through common expression (like words, because there are none for them). This would be sort of similar to what one experiences while in an altered state of consciousness (sleep, drugs, coma etc etc). The reason one may dismiss these aspects of human experience is because although they are pretty common, it is not the "norm"... It is not the daily experience most people live their lives through. But, the degrees of this "normal" experience always vary, even from your average "normal" person to person. I believe that we simply label these specified cases of uniquely directed awareness "abnormal" because they are so extreme. Because they are so far from usual approaches to life.

But I suppose labels have their purpose for the convenience of identification. It just sucks huge when stigmas develop from these labels and effectively reduce how we handle these people.

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dissolve popular detachment

Lord X

What I mean is that insanity is always self induced in one way or another. I don't believe that there is a mental problem (bedsides things like retardation and others of the sort). I used to think i was going insane and rather than fight it and drive it further I embraced it. Its what makes me me.

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Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

al-Mu'akhkhir

cool you clearly have no idea what you're talking about..
I know that this is cool "food for thought" once you start using drugs, but this conversation will go nowhere until everyone has agreed that there is a universal reality, and that insanity is a deviation from what the rest of us experience.

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R1bal

im insane

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reverie

An agreed upon universal reality and deviation from it is what created the label of insanity...not the questioning or discussion of it. I believe it is quite the opposite. The questioning and discussion of it is exactly the most important part of this issue because we then see all the subjectivity involved in labeling.

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dissolve popular detachment

al-Mu'akhkhir

So essentially this thread is doomed to go nowhere.

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reverie

No, Imo growth is relative.

If you consider "going somewhere" as everyone agreeing on the same things, I don't know if you would ever find progress amoung humans. Lots of progressive understanding can develop from these kind of conversations.

When one acknowledges the large amount of uncertainty in the universe, they become more flexible in dealing with those uncertainties. Agility is a keystone in the art of survival and evolution.

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dissolve popular detachment

al-Mu'akhkhir

how is it possible to have a conversation about something that nobody is willing to agree upon, and furthermore, even if we did all agree upon the definition of insanity, everyone seems to be too wrapped up in their psychotropics to agree upon what reality is..

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reverie

It is something people can agree upon, infact I've agreed with many people in this thread.. some who could be viewed to have totally opposite opinions. Its not that people can't agree, It's more a matter that every individual will not all agree entirely on the exact same things. But this goes for every subject in life. This is because we all have different experiences in life with different values.

And i think reality is far too big of a concept for us to define or label. There's far too much uncertainty, and far too little experiences to claim we know everything in absolute truth. This doesn't make anything including discussion pointless, it only emphasizes that we still have so much to learn.

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dissolve popular detachment

al-Mu'akhkhir

Not really, it's pretty easy to see that 99.9% of the population shares their experience with reality... read some non-fiction............. ......... It becomes pretty obvious pretty fast who's nutjob and who's experiencing what we all experience.

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reverie

Hyper, I mean this in the kindest sense possible... You would really benefit in trying read other people's posts better instead of focusing on replying to them.

I said that it's a matter that we can never fully agree on everything in the exact same way. Of course there are general and common understandings on things...We all agree on certain basic ideas. But complete agreement of all the details does not exist, especially given how many humans their are.

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dissolve popular detachment

ziplock

Haha hyper, even if hypothetically there is a universal reality we all share our experience with, how do we go about defining what would be the correct or normal way to react to such a reality?

It's all completely arbitrary.

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Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.

Lord X

And what are your areas of expertise? Do you have an advanced degree in physiology? Many of us are just speculating. I don't think there is anything wrong with any ones mind other than what they create for them selves. If you think you crazy... then your crazy.

__________________
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

al-Mu'akhkhir

there's not really any way to reply to that.
Working on my BA in psychology actually.

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SageTree

Maybe I'm insane but that peace sign looks like it smoking a J......

This is a good read everyone. I think it's okay to just learn from each other and not agree on a damn thing...



Sage

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Lord X

i commend you then. However I think that it is the most in exact science possible. Because you can't blanket every ones thought. No one is the same thats what makes this possible. Insanity is relative to the individual.

On a lighter note, I just remembered a short Dilbert comic. It defined insanity as doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. and no offense by this but hyper you shooting our ideas down is insanity. You keep doing it but we will never give up on our conversation.

Plus this conversation is a Socratic discussion. It is how everything is learned. You have many ideas and you test or research them until everyone agrees upon one central idea. Welcome to scientific method.

__________________
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Lord X

Beautiful! I love it. Its what I had hoped someone would post sooner or later. For that I tip my hat to you.

__________________
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

reverie

Koshiva, I love that post..shamanmystic, yours too
I couldn't agree with this more.

When you really inspect the concept of "self-induced insanity", the more apparent it becomes that it is a common occurrence. The vitality of this realization presents itself in how I would personally interpret the words: *Personally initiated senselessness*. Considering that we are all individuals responsible for most of our inner experiences, excluding the subconscious effects of conditioning....we, by default (because of individuality) are (for the most part) the conductor of our personal states and how we operate. Therefore our states of mind can always be viewed as being "self induced", the degree of this self-infliction would be determined of how aware the individual is of the dynamics of what they experience. How?- is a much bigger and complex aspect of this process, because the direction of awareness can be vast-given how many areas of life we have the ability to focus on. I, personally am not that great of a multitasker to consider all the areas of focus the universe has to offer. But, really..how could we expect that great of a feat to be accomplished of any one individual? I suppose thats why there has always been such a great reverence for unity, together perhaps it can be realized....

Which brings me to the senselessness aspect of it all. This is a much more harder aspect to gauge, because of the subjectivity and relativity involved in it all. Sensibility is a state of operation that is reasonable given circumstances and knowledge of circumstances. Society has become a sort of authority figure in establishing what is "sensible" for the populace, because it largely dictates the populace's quality of life. Our history and culture have played a big role in this too, I mean look at how much religion can influence people's behavior based on "moral" sensibility. So the relativity is found in the reason behind this sense of authority. Reason can be found in things like: morality, in survival..and more common in Western culture these days, in material progress. Society usually has a cocktail of reasons for their authority, much of it in what I just listed. They're decent multitaskers. However, if there is deviation of this reasonable ambition within society... it is "senseless". It is senseless because it provides no use in contributing to the bottom line entailed by the reasons society wishes to operate on. "You want to live in a mud-hut? Girrrrl! youz crazy!!" without asking why..

To be aware of unique and personalized operations is completely reasonable in relation to the individual. Infact it is probably the most sensible form of operation, given that it is a genuine representation of the individual. As koshiva mentioned in a similar way, to accept being told what is sensible is probably the most senseless thing one could do, especially when you consider individuality. We put so much pride upon individuality, identity and expression.. yet we wish to find this within the confines of someone else's agenda. Anorexia, superfluous spending, propaganda, cosmetic surgery....all for ourselves? If a society as a body had a regulatory system to alert unhealthiness, it would be pulsating of inflammation.

Undirected ambition is fine with an authority figure to say so. External factors these days are viewed as "aspirations", to obtain for self. Personal authority is viewed as transient because the majority still have yet to realize validity within self.

In regards to Psychosis...many psychiatrists (Carl Jung being one) believe psychosis can onset at anytime for certain individuals, some people being more inclined to psychosis than others. Psychosis is a very unique form of operation, with many different psychiatric opinions on it. Being said, it is one of those "different" personal experiences. Considering I don't like the compartmentalization of realities anyway, I personally feel that psychosis could be a hyper-sensitive experience of reality. Tuned various ways of course, differing from person to person. But I believe that it occurs in individuals geared to the more intangible, subconscious aspects of "reality". Higher frequencies - if you will. Perhaps these are things that cannot be filtered by the conscious brain. The brain is told to think a certain way by conditioning, the fortifying of neurological pathways and such. And since much of our conscious experience is centered around language, communication and external happenings...things outside of that is extremely difficult for us to relay. We have experienced far too little of ourselves and areas that are normally subconscious to put too much faith upon the conventional conscious. Precedence of conscious is (imo) a bad habit that hasn't been attempted to be broken often.

Things like insanity are terms we use to classify things far detached from our own personal experiences. We cannot understand that of what we cannot relate with. We can not relate with what we haven't experienced to some degree. Lack of experience can mean a lack of "awareness". So it really really comes down to what experiences are we as individuals subject to? The most common of experiences are naturally going to be considered sensible, while the less common will rarely be appreciated for what they are.

The way I look at it all is - Hey, most all pioneers of thought were associated with some sort of dysfunction...So it would appear dysfunctionality is really a sure way to get anywhere we're not already headed. And that is something I can dig.

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dissolve popular detachment

Yaxie04

This never worked for me either. I tried to let got of everything and float off.
I think that its a skill that needs to be cultivated during times of health. Actually depression probably occurs, at least for me, from a lack of being able to let go of things.... Buddhists monks in high positions are never depressed

reverie

^ I agree. Letting go is a powerful experience. I've personally experienced more healing just by that simple mental activity than any other methodical approach (therapeutically).

And lol, Kundalini is thought to be dangerous for it's "potential to induce psychosis" which is really interesting.. Lets all do the rapid breath of fire, and become "crazy" together.

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dissolve popular detachment