Insanity, mental instability, religion, torture, and family

[howtoneverletgo]

Insanity. What is insanity? Thinking in a way untrue to reality? no. Having a warped thought process? Nope. Thinking in a way so far removed from common schools of thought, that it is incomprehensible to the average person? I believe so. Mental instabilities including medical craziness, retardedness, autism, and other mental disorders are not

Comments

[ashai]

Hmm, thinking in a way untrue to reality and having a warped thought process can be either symptoms or the result of mental illness so it's hard to separate where the line is drawn between cause and effect. You make a good point though. There is something a bit voluntary about being insane in the way you frame it as an ultimate freedom within society. I think it would be classified as eccentricity in psychology today instead of insanity though. The difference lies in whether harm is being done or suffering is caused by a person's thought pattern and behavior. That distinction is very important to the modern understanding of psychology.

It may interest you to know that mental illness can influence not only the interpretation of sensory information, but also it's perception. How can someone ever interpret the world in a "normal" way when the person's perception is out of the ordinary.

That torture/terrorism conversation is frightening, isn't it? It's going on in many households though. What a sad world we live in. It is idealistic to say that torture is never acceptable, but to me, that is the only right answer. Others will disagree, no doubt, but I can't compromise what I believe anymore. There are other, more humane ways of gathering intel from criminals and terrorists. These methods are not fully developed nor flawless, but I firmly believe that we should be searching for a perfect solution precisely because it's an imperfect world. (Also since the body of evidence that torture doesn't work is beginning to pile up...)

Sometimes it's hard for me to understand when people don't see eye-to-eye on moral or ethical issues, but there are hardly absolutes on most things. It's sometimes funny, and other times a bit unnerving, to see how fluid ethics can be when just a few words or details about a situation are tweaked.

Is okay to hurt people?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Apparently it's okay if someone tells you to!

Is it okay to destroy a parasitic life form that leeches off of and causes hardship for a healthy human life for approximately a year?
Okay I can't really link this one via Wikipedia cheating since I heard it at a conference, but the Scientific American blurb gives good examples:
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Minds-Nature-Designed-Universal/dp/0060780703/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248241311&sr=8-2
Morally, we might find termination of the leeching life form permissible. Why should the other have to suffer? Now what if that parasite is revealed to be a human fetus? Suddenly it feels really wrong, but I can barely articulate why.

Is humanity doomed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
...Yeah. :(

Don't feel too bad about your uncle's belief's though. As appalling as they may be, those ideas are shared by many religious individuals (generally the crazy ones) and not limited to just any one faith. Sadly, you're going to see it a often. =/

Your poem is very melancholy because it is so truthful, but I like it nonetheless. And I ramble a lot, don't I? I'll try to stop. lol

[howtoneverletgo]

With a bipolar aunt, and a religious fanatic depressed uncle who's as good as diagnosed with narcissism and bipolar disorder I have learned that their thoughts are the result of wearing badly tinted and cracked metaphorical glasses which may as well be metaphorically super glued to their metahporical faces, however when i wrote this i was to bother to explain anything. I agree with you, but sometimes when I hear about the mass killings I wonder. Would it be so wrong to torment the man responsible if we can save them? Can his rights really outweigh the rights of hundreds, thousands even of people? and what happened to sacrificing the rights of the few for the many? is that even applicable? I used to think it was a load of bs the government used so they didn't have to work as hard at providing individual rights. now, i wonder. Then i listen to someone like you and i remember how truly wrong toture is.

As for my uncle, i was more anoyed than anything. I no longer expect rational or humane thoughts from him.I love him, don't get me wrong. I just hate to listen to him on a religious rant. And i get tired of being the bigger person. I never give in though. I remember that he's a 42 yr. old man living with his mother believing that he is entitled to money and the works, believing that the world and his entire family owe him. That's what keeps me the bigger person. About the poem, is it really? Thats good to hear. It was rather below my usual par, but i fed it a lot of anger and sadness- that probably made up for it. If you haven't yet please read the song of a thousand lyres on my journal. That's slightly better. More will be up soon. Thank you for your advice on this and my blurb.
Gwennan, out!