Taboos, Hoo-hoos

Smile … Hah!

“Smile though your heart is breaking…La La La.

 Smile though your heart is aching ….”

“Medicate though your mind is crazy …

 Medicate though your will is lazy …”

“Cutting” is considered self-harm and a symptom of severe mental illness.  Paying someone else to jab ink into your skin, as in “tattooing”, is considered an “Art Form”?  I don’t really know.  I don’t have any tattoos, but I am told by any number of friends who are really into tattoos, that it can really hurt. 

So I can go somewhere and hand over several hundred dollars and get a picture or some stupid symbol, of whose meaning I might have only vague knowledge, jabbed permanently into my skin.  Or, I can stay home and carve a couple of lines on my self somewhere.  And, two weeks later it has healed up and gone away. 

Now I am not advocating this.  I am not advocating cutting!!!  God forbid, anyone should advocate self-harm.

But … think about it.  To display grief over the death of a family member, many, many, many, cultures have all kinds of severe, some super severe, things they do to display their grief and respect and, I guess, love for the departed.  A lot of them fast – as in starve themselves – for, sometimes, lengthy periods of time (like a month).  The indigenous Hawaiians used to knock their front teeth out.  And, remembrance tattoos are common, but so is self-scaring and even branding.

I’m just pulling up the question … I guess.  Some things, cultural taboos ‘n stuff, kind of fascinate and sometimes frustrate me.  For instance, women’s high-heeled shoes.  I don’t get it.  They’re terrible for their feet, uncomfortable (I hear), sometimes downright dangerous, bad for their backs – all kinds of negatives.  For what?  To appear a few inches taller?  Balding men who wear ponytails or hair buns?  What are you trying to say?  Can’t get your motorcycle helmet over a ponytail or a bun, and if you do somehow cram your stupid bun in the helmet – looks really stupid when you take it off.  And, we can still see you’re bald!

Fascinating, to me, is also the American thing with bumper stickers.  Some are really funny, some are cool, some are really foul; but why you take something you spent a huge amount of money on and stick stickers (?) on it.  It’s like getting a tattoo on yer face?  Tattoos are fine, but – well, on your face is kind of  … ;;; what the fuck are you saying with that?

To wrap up – so much is so dependent on how you look at something like behavior.  For my own part, if tattooing wasn't so expensive – assuming you hire an artist with real talent – I'd be as tatted up as a Hell’s Angel. 

The Two Faces of Two Faces

The Two Faces of Two Faces

I just finished watching a documentary about a young Canadian man who videoed his trials and tribulations in dealing with what was at first, diagnosed as bipolar disorder. 

It was slightly enlightening, and I mean that just as I said it, in that it was slightly enlightening.  Having had this diagnosis conferred upon me, some ten, or more years ago – I forget just how long ago it was, I was, naturally, intrigued.  It turned out to be very much like a number of films I have seen, and books, on the subject, I have studied.  Every time – every freakin’ time – these tales of woe and sorrow and courage(?) seem to be about, and made, by people who are, as a rule, single and have access to a considerable amount of money.

Often they include either a love(?) of the wonders of medical and therapeutic science or a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and herbs and eating special dirt (or something).  Mostly they include little vignettes from supportive family members, or friends.  How brave, how courageous, what examples of marvelous courage!  Jeezuz!  At the most most of this stuff is mostly formulaic  - like Reality Shows (whose reality and why do they always follow the same thematic crap).

A current undercurrent approach to MI is that it is being over diagnosed and frequently incorrectly diagnosed, which has resulting in a lot of people being treated for the wrong issues and, worse yet, with the wrong medication.  It’s almost like a political election battle.  “All the licensed MD’s are just pill-pushers!  It’s a big conspiracy by Big Pharma to get masses of people addicted and grab massive amounts of casharoo.”

“Don’t listen to the AMA!”

 ETC……. Etc. Etc.

What game are we playing at here?

First of all, I am told I’m nuts.  I have a deep narcissistic psychosis.  Then I’m severely depressed.  Then I have PTSD.  Then I have bipolar II.  Now I am told I have a personality disorder – and NOT any of those other things.  My children have forgiven my behavior (partly), my wife (who basically thought I was just an assehole sometimes) has forgiven me (mostly).  But still the overall assumption has been, and remains (mostly) that I am broken in the brain-pan. 

Now.

That was my story, how I got this way is a completely different story, but let’s deal with this part.  Who, just who the fuck, is a person who wakes up in the morning wishing he just didn’t have to wake up, supposed to listen to?  And then spends most of every day, kind of, wishing it was the last day he had to go through.  But with a lot of effort manages to get through that.  Some medications (with really thought provoking side-effects), a bunch of exercises and other little tricky self-developed tools and maybe, just maybe, can get to the evening time with a bit of work under his belt.  Just who is that person supposed to believe?

AND, just suppose that person is not single without children, or does not have much money and has virtually no support network – why don’t we ever see stories about that person.  I’ll answer that; because those people do not have the time, resources and/or any kind of support system to push their story out there.

Rely on the witch doctors and be susceptible to breakdowns and tragically accidental incidents that can land you in a clinic, or worse, maybe jail.  Rely on the traditional medical community and be susceptible to a foggy, unemotional brain, slow witted, without a notion of creativity or imagination AND have the adventure of massive weight gain and/or liver damage.  !!!  (Oh and just a side issue – if you are of the male variety, one really cool {?} side-effect of a lot of these meds is that your sex life can become a distant memory.)

Personally, just like religion, if you can convince yourself that eating tree bark will help straighten out yer brain, then for gawd’s sake, eat tree bark.  Somewhere there has to be a middle-ground.  Having the symptoms of a Mental Illness obvious as can be to yourself and everyone around you, is kind of proof that there is an issue you must deal with.  Getting a label for that issue can be kind of helpful, at least in the beginning when your daily life-style gets completely whonked.  After a number, like maybe ten or twenty years, that label gets very tiresome to lug around.  And often feels like it’s just an excuse for other people to treat you like some kind of an emotional invalid. 

So, speaking from a backlog of about 60 years of dealing with this on a personal level, here is my first recommendation.

“Search for a methodical life pattern which will sustain you and stick with it as long as possible.”  This is just #1.  I will get into others with other blogs.

Caveat: “Don’t let it break you though, if that methodical life pattern collapses from time to time.  Just “hang in there”, stay in the game and look for a new one.” 

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

Note: for the brave among my dear readers, I offer a new, separate but different blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

A study in a matter of theory and conjecture about human brain-mind development towards retaining ever increasing meta-cognitive development.  Based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

Monsters, Madness, Mania and Meaning

Monsters, Madness, Mania and Meaning

I have long contended that creative genius, or even creative actions (All forms of Art and progress in the hard Sciences, Math, etc.) come from the minds of persons who are clinically, or could be determined to be, mad. 

How can any human mind create, or make, anything beyond what is termed reality – what is the now, what is part and parcel of “what is known”?  These people must have the ability to fantasize and have the full confidence that they are capable of creating, from whole cloth, those very fantasies.  These individuals must be capable of transposing themselves into the world(s) of their fantasies, just in order to make those non-realities have coherency for others to perceive. 

When A.A. Milne wrote “Winnie the Pooh”, he had to be capable of transposing himself into the mind, and world, of a very young boy who believed with absolute certainty, that his stuffed toys were alive.  By any outside, professional psychiatric device, this would be absolutely defined as madness. 

It can be said that Milne did not actually believe his fiction was, in truth, reality.  I contest this.  His stories might be drawn from his own childhood, or from one he wished he had had.  But, for these stories to be as universally loved and to simply hold together as a literary Art Form, or device, he had to be accurate in his prose.  Mostly he absolutely had to be convincing.  There is simply no way he could have done this without the ability to actually enter, time and again, the mind of Christopher Robin.  Or, even the minds (non-minds) of the other characters, such as a honey addicted stuffed bear.  This ability can only be defined as abnormal.  Or, not normal. 

I contend that this same principle is an overriding principle in the act of creating.  Possibly, simply put, “why not”?  This is the “Why Not” principle.  Anyone, any normal intelligent person, can observe “what is” and form conclusions totally rooted in what is accepted as reality.  It is only those persons who can observe what is, form multiple conclusions as to that data and then expand it to why and then with an abnormal mindset, why not this other?  Other what?  Other anything.  Anything other than what is. 

The only conclusion left, observing Occam’s Razor, is that to create anything that is not here now, must absolutely become the intention of a person who can mentally go beyond that which all of those around them cannot (or will not).  If this person can go beyond they are seen as either deluded, if their notions remain as mere spoken notions, or possible actually insane, if those notions include actions.  Even, if those actions are harmless to anyone else.  An inventor is just a crazy inventor, until their inventions work – and they are considered a genius if those inventions return a lot of money and notoriety.  The same fucking person!  Unknown = nutcase; known ₊ money = genius.

From madness to mania is not much of a step at all.  Or, often enough the first follows the second, when it is left uncontrolled.  When the madness raises its head, the personification is then named a monster.  Everybody knows Vincent Van Gogh.  When he was alive and working, he was a societal monster.  To be avoided.  To be ridiculed.  Now that entire museums are named for him and his work is almost priceless, his mania and madness are forgiven, since so much money is involved, it is forgotten.  He has not so much been rewritten by history, as he was reborn from the moment his work became recognized as of value.  Of Artistic moment.  Meaning  has been attached to his madness and mania, therefore his monster qualities have been subjugated to invisibility.

The list of persons who have ever accomplished anything of note and to whom this exact philosophy has been attached, is nearly endless.  The case could be made, it has happened to every one of them.

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

Note: for the brave among my dear readers, I offer a new, separate but different blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

A study in a matter of theory and conjecture about human brain-mind development towards retaining ever increasing meta-cognitive development.  Based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”