Szasz

What a quirky, brilliant old psychologist Szasz was.
Now I don't agree with Tom Cruise that the whole movement of psychiatry is somehow 'evil', but basically every industry is infused with the profit-making incentive and an evolution of more ancient activities.

You might've thought before that there's something a little odd about the numbers when it is said that 5% of people are allegedly suffering from disorder A, while another 3% are from disorder B and another 6-10% from disorder C. By these numbers, everybody, it would seem, has at least about 10 disorders, and some people have >50.
Now I'm not saying that there aren't an incredible variety of ailments, of things that can go wrong with the human body - things which go "wrong" causing pain or biological dysfunction. But the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) used by psychologists has a history of calling every normal human condition (and things which don't affect functioning) a disorder. Until 1973, homosexuality was classed in the DSM as a mental disorder. Masturbation was also said to be a symptom of insanity! The DSM continues to say that behaviours deemed socially unacceptable are in fact disorders...

It's also important to disentangle "moral"/un-scientific statements from real science. It's true that being fat reduces your life expectancy somewhat, but not by a lot. Historically, a lot of the digust obesity is not based on health concerns (as it might've been for lepers) but based on religious-moral paradigms - for example, thinking that eating too much was sinfully greedy and therefore should be avoided, even if it didn't really harm the subject anyway.
In fact, prior to Kraepelin's classification system, everyone a tiny bit different was "mad", and it was caused by the devil. Electro-convulsive-therapy, it was thought, could be used "to harm the evil spirits inside". Not surprising, when you consider that the Medical Model that most humans were supposed to be using when they thought up their 'scientific' theories was an extremely superstitious/religious one...I mean in most of the world, exorcisms to drive away "evil spirits" are still being performed! In the 21st century!



If you're on the same page as me, you might like this quote from Szasz:

"Mental illness...is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations”...
I disagree with this, because he is saying that ALL mental illness is a myth, and I don't think ALL mental illness is a myth. I don't want to be seen to be playing-down the reality, that a lot of people have crippling disorders...but a lot of "mental conditions" are just concepts created to make profits off people in the form of drugs and/or consultations, or to control them.
What is more primary, pervasive, perpetual and problematic is struggle between humans cloaked up as morality, not mental disease. The vast majority of us are organisms which function incredibly well, and there are reasons why we feel supposedly 'dysfunctional' or 'negative' emotions such as anger, jealousy, spite etc. Here, medicine is acting in the service of social control, not our understanding of nature. It is is unconstrained by the requirement pertaining to all good science, which is to be concerned with fact and entirely ethically disinterested, not concerned with values. "Science" concerning value systems is religion, not science.

And Szasz again:
"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western [movie/novel] two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.

Also, Rosenhan's study in 1973: Eight well-adjusted people acted as patients, presenting themselves for admission at psychiatric hospitals, reporting that they were hearing noises/voices...they otherwise told the truth about themselves. All but 1 diagnosed were diagnosed as schizophrenic, and then hospitalised and prescribed medication. Perhaps to be expected. But what was interesting was that the psychiatric staff interpreted all of their otherwise normal behaviour as being somehow "insane"...

But Life

Often we think "Hey, I'd like to do this now, BUT..." or "I'd like to see you now, BUT..."

Obviously, we're not entirely free to do what we want to do when we want to do it...we can allow some spontaneity in to our lives, but many things require a great degree of planning, and this has various, often unanticipated consequences for one's own happiness.

Life and other mundane things are the "but"

I often think when people talk about their "soul"and things like that (or spiritual needs), they're talking about those high-order needs like self-actualisation - reading, the development of a distinct and strong personality, the achievement of one's potential.
Eating and drinking and sleeping and shitting are usually thought of as not connected to the "soul" or "spirit", because the soul or spirit (for me, the brain that wants to think when it wants to think) longs to not be dependent on anything, not to be living bound up in flesh, to be waiting for a paycheck to clear or to work just to allow one to work more rather than to live.

This is also why when people are too busy with life that they tend to complain that there is a spiritual void in their lives. It is just not being able to focus on things that one WANTS to focus on, and when they want to. Those on a spiritual quest might find that void filled with a little more more free time in which to think. To use their brains. If they haven't forgotten how.

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Capitalismis a good slave and a bad master

The Poor

Grow or decline not in strength, certitude or spirit, but in numbers only.

Revolutions don't happen quickly, only change does. When people talk about "The Russian Revolution" or some other event confined to a time period of a few years, they're talking about changing circumstances in Russia, not a change in Russians.

Human behaviour in all its potentialities is invariant over the short-term, but changing circumstances and political realities create a strong illusion that human behaviour is highly variable...unless one wants to narrowly define human behaviour as just whatever they happen to be doing in some corner of the century.

What I'm interested are revolutions in the way that people think. Take the Darwinian Revolution...that has been taking place for more than a hundred years.... or the possibility of real changes in our genotype. and the consequent effects..

Maternalistic and Paternalistic Societies

What exactly is a maternalistic society and how would I know if I were in one? Refer to the past if you must, but try to imagine it as an adaptation to or restructuring of the world today.

Conflicts of Interest

An increasingly complex society = inevitably, more conflicts of interest. To what degree can we expect society to manage this? Say one person M owns shares in X where company X owns a stake in a fund that owns shares in Y and company Y’s CEO’s cousin is married to or in some economic partnership with M. Could that be called a conflict of interest? Ok, that's a little extreme, and nobody wants a new monolithic bureaucracy out there to monitor such things.
But the law seems so dodgy and uninterested in this respect.

I'd be interested to know from anyone out there what standards exist in what environments..I can't find anything on law sites. It seems there are so many other ways in which one's actions could be affected without being directly linked materially or socially to somebody else. What about the trail of nepotism in the suburbs, in company hiring policy...it would seem unfair to demand a business owner justifies a decision to hire his daughter over a million other more qualified people, but...but...argh. Idealism again.

I hope India wins

Westerners - divert your money away from China and in to India. You may make 18% instead of 20% p/a, but you won't be implicitly supporting a monstrous totalitarian regime. The Chinese Communist Party has consistently showed its utter contempt for human rights, and demonstrated that it will pursue glory at any cost. I understand the importance of stability to the Chinese, given the chaos in China in the last century. I know that Chinese need to manage the possibility of their progress being de-railed by severely disruptive social problems. But Chinese leadership has conducted itself despicably.

Chinese often wonder why the events in and around Tiannenmen's square remain such powerful images in the minds of many Westerners...
-- Hundreds of millions of peasants that toil fruitlessly toward the glory that the CCP promises them have their homes demolished without notice or compensation, and, should they protest, they are beaten and jailed. There are too many people for fair trials. The media and political opposition are strangled in China, foreign investors have ridiculous restrictions placed on them, and may at any moment have their assets confiscated without recourse to legal action.
-- Chinese officials packed people infected with SARS into ambulances and drove around for hours just so that the WHO wouldnt know the truth of the extent of the infections and the inability of the health system to contain them.
-- Falun Gong members and their families are kidknapped, and often used in live organ forms. Outspoken members may be sent for "re-education", which is the Chinese government's way of saying they will labor all day to build the infrastructure to support this enormously overpopulated country. These measures against Falun Gong and other minorities are widely supported.
-- Govt officials decided not to tell 8 million residents in Hunan province that they were drinking poisoned water, while they scrambled to fix the problem.
-- The Chinese government maintains a "Great Firewall of China", censoring vast portions of the Internet which it feels undermine their iron grip over the contents of citizen's minds. The concept of freedom of speech, or expression in appearance, sexuality, profession etc just isn't taken seriously in China.
-- The Chinese, bent on a glorious image, snatch 5 year-olds from their families to be machine-trained for 7 hours a day in order to win gold at the Olympics. Yao Ming, the 232cm basketballer, was the product of government "matching" efforts between two tall people.
Etc. Think about it, the West sucks in many ways that China does not, but do you really see the above happening in countries such as France, Australia, Canada?

The Chinese are a proud, intelligent, hard-working people with an incredible history. They will form a very useful counterbalancing force to the USA et al. However, I'm worried about what China may look like when it has eclipsed them. Will Chinese citizens have rights by then? Or will tyranny be exported elsewhere?
The Chinese I meet who haven't been outside of China for long have huge walls in their head. This can appear sweet/cute, in native, naive Chinese girls in their 20s, but can also seem very ignorant. China (NOT people of Chinese origin) is socially and institutionally inferior in many respects to Western countries with long histories of wealth and stability. Also, it's great that China's politicians are often scientists and engineers rather than hacks like here, but they need to realise that Chinese cannot innovate to the degree required in today's information economy if they are brainwashed and taught not to think for themselves.
Unless China reforms, internal instability may cause its downfall, even without the demands for change that powerful Westerners are likely to start to call for. Float your currency, China.
India has many of the same problems as China, and it approaches many issues less scientifically and analytically. But it does a better job of balancing its development with justice, democracy and human rights.

******
This guy was so in love with this girl, that when he was away from her, he sent her a love letter every day for 500 days. On the 500th day, she married the postman.