@Arvia , too many people quoting me at the same time, i am constantly ninjaed
i answer to you first as you are a fellow paladin, even if we probably serve different, but good deities.
i agree with almost what you told but:
i did not tell "We should address other, more important things" and i never meant it as implicit. i told that we have so many more relevant things to go bersek for that is better to don't go bersek for it, less then 50 people in europe die for it every year while thousands die for other causes that also could be addressed.
and immediately after i also told, in bold and italic to give it more emphasis
and this is not in any way a reason to don't vaccine people or to don't try to avoid that 35 deaths if is possible to avoid them.
we should address those other and that thing if we would be up to my idea of what the himan race should be.
anyway given your profession i understand why you tend to go bersek for that issue more then for other ones that are more important (cause a much larger fatality rate)
i also want a future like the one dr maccoy tells about, and i appreciate your position about the new tools the medicine has now, or is going to have in the next future. sadly i don't believe that the new knowledge will be used in a wise and cautious way like you seem to advocate. and the fact that altering the human genoma is completely different in its effect and consequences from using a drug that has still not discovered negative effects as the genetic modification is transmitted to the next generations and will spread among humanity is obvious to you, but has to be told as it can not be so obvious for every reader of this thread. right now, if it is not a fake new, 2 gemini sisters are in gesture in china, with a modified gene, outside every official research project, i have reasons to be worried.
sadly star trek seems to me too optimistic not only on a ftl technology, but also on the use the humanity do of its knowledge.
@gorgonzola, You've raised a few good counterpoints. I think I understand better where you're coming from now.
Sometimes it can be a little hard to understand you clearly, because of lack of capitalization and run-on sentence structure in your posts. I don't mean to criticize you for that, but rather just to explain why I often misunderstand some of the things you type. I apologize for that.
@gorgonzola, I think I'm not prioritizing things because of my profession or counting the number of deaths caused by measles vs malnutrition or anything.
I'm saying I prioritize what can be solved easily (and is not, because of superstition) vs what doesn't (yet) have a simple, fast solution.
@FinneousPJ i was convinced that some times ago you had qualified yourself as an her in an other topic, not the gender poll, i am talking of something of maybe 1 or 2 years ago, but probably i am confusing you with an other person. i apologize again.
i will probably will answer to the other thing you told later,now i have other rl things to do.
@BelgarathMTH My lack of capitalization is due to the fact that i am very slow at typing, probably is related to a form of dyslexia i suffer. I have to continuously edit my posts cause the fingers seem to press the keys in an inverted order or skip some keys, so whatever make me press less keys helps me in the task.
As now i know that it can create problems in who read i will try to avoid it in the future. (I just typed ututre instead of future..., the last of at least 10 errors writing this short post )
@FinneousPJ i was convinced that some times ago you had qualified yourself as an her in an other topic, not the gender poll, i am talking of something of maybe 1 or 2 years ago, but probably i am confusing you with an other person. i apologize again.
i will probably will answer to the other thing you told later,now i have other rl things to do.
@BelgarathMTH My lack of capitalization is due to the fact that i am very slow at typing, probably is related to a form of dyslexia i suffer. I have to continuously edit my posts cause the fingers seem to press the keys in an inverted order or skip some keys, so whatever make me press less keys helps me in the task.
As now i know that it can create problems in who read i will try to avoid it in the future. (I just typed ututre instead of future..., the last of at least 10 errors writing this short post )
At least it helps to know it's not out of laziness or disrespect your posts are hard to read
The first major donation to Notre-Dame came from Francois-Henri Pinault, the billionaire head of luxury goods group Kering that owns fashion brands Gucci and Saint Laurent.
Pinault (...) pledged 100 million euros ($113 million) as the blaze was still raging (...).
Hours later, his great rival Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and the head of Louis Vuitton owner LVMH, announced he was donating 200 million euros, moved by the alarming pictures on TV, according to a group spokesman. (...)
The Bettencourt-Meyer family, the largest shareholder in L’Oreal, followed suit a while later, pledging a combined 200 million euros alongside the global cosmetics group.
Presidential cultural heritage envoy Stephane Bern told broadcaster France-Info on Wednesday that 880 million euros (USD $995 million) has been raised in just a day and a half since the fire. Contributions came from near and far, rich and poor – from Apple and magnates who own L’Oreal, Chanel and Dior, to Catholic parishioners and others from small towns and cities around France and the world.
Even if we were to assume that Pinault, Arnault and L'Oreal were the only big donators (and, AFAIK, they are not), it still would mean that more than half (!) of donations came from the richest. They were apparently able to quickly dispose of enormous sums of money. The decided to spend that money on a church - in the world that still has problem of food and water shortages, and where climate change make at least shake foundations of civilizations.
I am simply amazed how stupid and cruel capitalism is in its irrationality of alocating and redistributing money.
it still would mean that more than half (!) of donations came from the richest.
It has to ber told that the 5% of the people own much more then 50% of the global wealth (money and goods), and the trend to have almost all in the hands of very few is constantly increasing, in this world based on debt and payment plans.
Right now it is more on the 95% side then the 50% side, and i see a possible future when all the humanity will be enslaved by few that own all, like now is already happening in some diamond mines in Brazil, where the workers spend more to live then how they earn so they can never leave the mine work.
As long as the few very rich people have control of the media, give to the population the illusion to be rich, even if the balance of many is negative, distract us with gossip, sports and news that are blow up and then completely forgotten the next month and divide us (and to belong to different religions is a perfect reason to get divided) only very few will fight against that.
Nothing new under the sun, the Romans used to say: "divide et impera" (split and rule) and that "panem et circenses" (bread and circus) is what is needed to keep the people quiet and compliant.
If it is true that the 50% of what is given for the Notre Dame reconstruction i would say that it is only a proof of how the richest people are stingy, it had to be like the 90%...
By the way i believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental, if it would have happened to let's say the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion, i think that the same would have happened.
I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more then to this one.
and i find VERY hard to capitalize my posts, but i will do it from now on, if they are long enough to create reading problems if not capitalized
@gorgonzola, You make a good point, as you often do. I appreciate very much your trying to improve your typing so we can understand you better. If you can, look out for using commas to separate sentences. I now understand why you are doing that. It's hard for you to type a period and then a new capital letter. But, this post is such an improvement, you already are coming across as a whole different person, one much more to be respected in online posts.
An example from the above:
"By the way i believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental, if it would have happened to let's say the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion, i think that the same would have happened.
I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more then to this one",
would have been much easier to understand as:
"By the way, I believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental. If it would have happened that, let's say, the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion (had burned down), I think that the same thing would have happened. I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more than to this one."
I apologize if I am coming across as a grammar Nazi, or if I am insulting you or making you feel bad in any way. A very big part of me is an English teacher. Good English teachers, just as good music teachers, are not out to make you feel bad, or to criticize you to death. We just want to help you be understood better, or in music, to play better.
@gorgonzola, You make a good point, as you often do. I appreciate very much your trying to improve your typing so we can understand you better. If you can, look out for using commas to separate sentences. I now understand why you are doing that. It's hard for you to type a period and then a new capital letter. But, this post is such an improvement, you already are coming across as a whole different person, one much more to be respected in online posts.
An example from the above:
"By the way i believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental, if it would have happened to let's say the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion, i think that the same would have happened.
I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more then to this one",
would have been much easier to understand as:
"By the way, I believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental. If it would have happened that, let's say, the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion (had burned down), I think that the same thing would have happened. I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more than to this one."
I apologize if I am coming across as a grammar Nazi, or if I am insulting you or making you feel bad in any way. A very big part of me is an English teacher. Good English teachers, just as good music teachers, are not out to make you feel bad, or to criticize you to death. We just want to help you be understood better, or in music, to play better.
I'm pretty well-versed in the English language too so I have to concur with @BelgarathMTH that proper sentence structure does help in understanding your viewpoints. I have to admit I'm pretty much used to your posts now but others may not be so it may help them to understand where you're coming from.
Having said that, I'd personally rather you feel comfortable posting your views though, so if it's a problem for you, don't worry about it overmuch...
In an international forum when in doubt always ask.. sometimes when you think in your own language and just directly translate it may sound rude because the structural differences between languages may lead to wierd constructs or not translate well at all . Translating anyhting is a work of interpretation more than anything else. Cultural differences may shock people from other countries as well... but let's not entirely derail the thread discussing linguistics
In an international forum when in doubt always ask.. sometimes when you think in your own language and just directly translate it may sound rude because the structural differences between languages may lead to wierd constructs or not translate weel at all . Translating anyhting is a work of interpretation more than anything else. Cultural differences may shock people from other countries as well... but let's not entirely derail the thread discussing linguistics
Wait, now we're being lectured on linguistics by a Martian! What is this world coming to???
In an international forum when in doubt always ask.. sometimes when you think in your own language and just directly translate it may sound rude because the structural differences between languages may lead to wierd constructs or not translate weel at all . Translating anyhting is a work of interpretation more than anything else. Cultural differences may shock people from other countries as well... but let's not entirely derail the thread discussing linguistics
Wait, now we're being lectured on linguistics by a Martian! What is this world coming to???
Well how much do you think I have to know to master so many of your barbaric languages?
The important question is, is it more difficult for us to understand you, @gorgonzola, or more difficult for you to write in a more structured way?
I agree that your last post was much easier to read, but if it makes your head hurt, takes 30 min to write a few lines, and in the end keeps you from sharing your ideas, then some sort of compromise might be a better solution.
Side note on the Notre Dame: I agree that it's most likely related to its importance as a cultural heritage and a national symbol, and not as a religious building.
Church services in France, especially in Catholic churches, are usually either empty except for three grandmothers, or held by immigrant communities.
On Notre Dame: I'm not opposing rebuilding it per se. I'm just questioning logic of capitalism that allows rich people accumulate so much wealth, while the world may burn within next 20 years.
There is no logic... If the world resources were more evenly distributed there would be nobody hungry or without a home. Nobody would have to skip available medical treatment due to cost.
Human entire economic model is insane and geared toward resource concentration and maintenance of power. There is no thought about the preservation of the human race.
On Notre Dame: I'm not opposing rebuilding it per se. I'm just questioning logic of capitalism that allows rich people accumulate so much wealth, while the world may burn within next 20 years.
What is the logic of not accumulating wealth? I guess everybody is just supposed to spend every penny they make and let the government take care of us if something goes wrong? Oh, and please don't buy into the 'world js going to burn in 20 years malarkey'. The world has been going to end in 20 years every 20 years since I've been born and the world's still here...
@Balrog99 - I'm not "buying" into anything. Climate change is a fact, and I don't consider "well, it was supposed to end in 2012 but it didn't!" as a very strong argument.
What is the logic of not accumulating wealth? I guess everybody is just supposed to spend every penny they make and let the government take care of us if something goes wrong?
Not everybody every penny, but unjustly rich and despicable people like Bezos. And others, who gained their fortune by exploitation and misfortune of others.
The problem is that we don't change a single thing about the world's problems by discussing how unfair it is.
I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, but in my opinion it's more important what every single person can do about it every day, otherwise we're like Epicurus in his garden. And no worries, I'm not planning to stage a revolution and set company buildings on fire. I'm talking about the small steps that everyone can try to make every day, like taking care under which conditions your coffee, your chocolate or your clothes were produced, asking yourself if you really need 20 pairs of shoes, repair broken things instead of throwing them away, be kind and helpful to other people, don't kick out refugees, instead maybe help them learn the language and recommend them to someone for a job, do some volunteer work, be patient and explain the importance of certain things (like vaccinations! ?) to people who don't know better... There are many more examples I'm sure, I'm just too sleepy to think of them right now.
I know that this sounds naive, but I still think that we should rather do everything we can than be frustrated with all the things we can't. Anger at the world won't change it a bit, it will only make it an even angrier place.
And if it really ended in 20 years (it might end today, tomorrow or in 300000 years, I don't care), I would still rather try to make those 20 years just a little bit better than the 20 years before now.
@Arvia , You seem like a kindred spirit to a forum friend of mine. Allow me to introduce you to @Son_of_Imoen . He hasn't been around for a while, so I don't know if he still ever checks these forums. Gosh, I hope he's okay. I think you could really help him to know he's not alone in how he feels if he could meet you and interact with you here. @Son_of_Imoen , Are you still out there?
BTW, he might be able to give you some insight about how to help your son, as well. He's had some similar problems in his own life. Not the same, but similar.
@Son_of_Imoen was last active just a couple weeks ago. If you really want to pester him, @BelgarathMTH, you can send a PM and it should give an email notification!
@BelgarathMTH Yes, I'm still around. Thanks for thinking about me. @Arvia i tend to do both: do things in daily life I believe in, like investing in wind energy for my energy needs (my house is not my own, it's rented, so I can't put solar panels on it), avoiding meat (I'm flexitarian, I eat meat about once month) and dairy products (not so succesful in that last one, quite addicted to cheese as comfort food, I buy it once a week and it's gone in half a week), no driver's license, no flying. Yet I rage a lot too against the world, well not in fora because I tend to get upset by internet discussions and get too much involved and feeling stressed about it easily.
I wish I could do just the "do good in the world" and avoid the "get frustrated about the bad in the world" but alas that's easier typed then done. I tried mindfulness to stop depression, but it made me just much more vulnerable to outside stimuli, leading to getting overburdened by sounds and by busy places, like most roads outside of my own (each passing car nerves me as well as every barking dog). Later I found out, that for people with autism a different kind of mindfulness training is needed than the ordinary one, but the damage was already done. A damage that's partly an aversion to any more mindfulness.
Been on medication ever since my mental illness surfaced when I was young (20), but it only dampens the pain, it doesn't alleviate it. Leaving ambulatory mental healthcare after more than 20 years for the care of a general physician's practice assistant, as I'm too stable the last few years for the more expensive mental healthcare teams, that in the new system of financing are intended for people who are often in crisis, yet it does confront me with the reality, which I already know, that it doesn't pass. There's 3 things that can be done and are being done: medication, accepting that I have that vulnerability/handicap/illness whatever you like to call it and most of all: learning to deal with it by figuring out what gives energy/comfort/rest and what things trigger me and should be avoided or dosed in manageable portions.
@Arvia, now that you mention your son, I remember your post about having discovered your son has autism. When I read that post, from the first paragraph when you hadn't mentioned his diagnosis yet, I immediately thought 'that's autism' so it's quit surprising that it wasn't diagnosed earlier. Yet for me the diagnosis came when I was 45 or so, some 3 years ago. It's more of an umbrella term to me, for a lot of different personalities, the new diagnosis is 'autistic spectrum disorder' and rightly so. The strange thing for me, is that it's a disorder that usually causes a lot of problems in childhood already, but for me mental problems only started when I was 20 and the first (or second, if you count the Iraq-Iran war as 1st) Gulf War was on it's way, Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and Bush sr. went into counter-attack. Very intense imagery in the news of the bombing of Baghdad and of a bombed down traffic jam of fleeing Iraqi soldiers triggered a depression, followed by an existential crisis from studying religion and philosophy and discovering that there's no intrinsic meaning to life (there was no religious or philosophic view on what is true and what gives life meaning that wasn't doubtable to my critical mind hammering all views with questions).
When I sought help after some 5 years of struggling with depression, I was in mental health care with the diagnosis SAD (Schizo-Affective Disorder) for most of that time, until some 3 years ago I got rediagnosed after complaining I never really recognized myself in the diagnosis because of the psychosis part of it. Yet when I got the diagnosis ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) and did a psycho-education course, what struck me is that most I followed the course with had problems with understanding people in average daily life communication, while I myself have no problem reading faces, understanding what people want to say. The problem for me is questions like "why do people still go on far away vacations with aeroplanes while climate change is such an obvious threat for years now", "why do people leading companies decide to make money at the expense of the worker's rights and welfare, the environment and why are things made to be thrown away" and "why do people use criminal activities to cheat people of money". In a world that I would understand, products are made to last and made with the health of the workers and the environment foremost in the mind, people would go on holiday in the near region only and you'd only need one simple password for all your accounts to identify yourself as no-one would be out to log-in as if (s)he where you.
The problem for me is questions like "why do people still go on far away vacations with aeroplanes while climate change is such an obvious threat for years now", "why do people leading companies decide to make money at the expense of the worker's rights and welfare, the environment and why are things made to be thrown away" and "why do people use criminal activities to cheat people of money". In a world that I would understand, products are made to last and made with the health of the workers and the environment foremost in the mind, people would go on holiday in the near region only and you'd only need one simple password for all your accounts to identify yourself as no-one would be out to log-in as if (s)he where you.
Reading this make me wander if is really you that have "mental disease" problems (i don't know if the term is appropriate for you due to my bad english knowledge) or is the whole humanity that is mental diseased and you are one of the few sane people out there...
Reading this make me wander if is really you that have "mental disease" problems (i don't know if the term is appropriate for you due to my bad english knowledge) or is the whole humanity that is mental diseased and you are one of the few sane people out there...
LOL, that's what I sometimes wonder myself as well.
Hello @Arvia, sorry for replying late, it took some time to find the energy to write in reply. Well here I am now, I don't know how I find the energy now, as I'm still trying to get awake in the morning, but I'll try to put my thoughts to the screen.
P.S.: it turned into a wall of text and I don't have a TL;DR ready. It's just about me and how I experience my diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. For anyone not interested, feel free to skip.
@Son_of_Imoen , I agree with @gorgonzola. Of course you were absolutely right to look for help because of your depression, but please tell me you didn't qualify for the diagnosis SAD because of the things you mentioned above. Did they consider that delusional?
I wondered that myself as well. I refered to Kant when I told the psychiatrist back then about my doubts as to what is real. At that time, I was very much in agreeing with Kant, because of all my questioning, that what we experience is not reality, just the way we experience it and that real reality is unknown to us, the "Ding an sich" can't be known. However, my own personal theory is, is that were I calm and ordered and had I finished my philosophy study, I just could have written a thesis about it and being seen as graduated philosopher, but because of my aggravated state: down, anxious, restless, in despair, the same doubts about reality get qualified as psychotic. And what anti-psychotic did for me all those years, because I got them described, is reign in my mind somewhat and make it easier, or that's what I think in it, to stop my mind from going berserk with questioning life. It's most noticeable when I'm very upset with some kind of news like a terror attack or being very over-stimulated, that an extra dose (I call it emergency dose) of 1/2 a mg on top of the regular dose, calms me down like a runaway train hitting a roadblock. The relief of being stopped exploding into screaming anxiety and anger.
The other, very important factor to qualify for a diagnosis of mental illness is this: How big is the impact on your life? How much does it keep you from doing things you'd usually do?sed, or just sad, with good reason?
Well, the impact is big, so that's why it's good to have a diagnosis. A diagnosis grants you two things: access to mental health care and second (but just as important) with a screening on top to check if you're indeed unfit for work, the disability benifit that allows me to pay my bills and groceries. Once in my life I started in a job, as I thought I had recovered enough and I found a subsided job, but after just a few weeks I ended up crying on the floor of the workspace because of the anxiety and stress being paid to work gave me. I then returned to volunteer work (that I have always done in my life but for those few weeks in a paid job) and found my balance to be a 7 hour working week: 3 hours on Monday, 2 hours on Tuesday and 2 hours on Thursday keeps me balanced. Working more, and I get overburdened, tired and depressed easily. So the precondition "If you live a "normal" life, it doesn't really matter" like you said, surely doesn't apply to me. I suffer on a daily basis and it surely prevents me from taking care of my own income and of my own household. I need the medication, the talks with a professional, the household help and the disability benefit to function to a certain extent in life and it's the diagnosis that gives access to those. It doesn't really matter what the exact wordings of the diagnosis are, the way I get helped in those four ways didn't change when "SAD" changed into "ASD".
You do sound like what they nowadays call "highly sensitive person", but that's still not a very scientific term and much debated where the borders are between these personality traits and a kind of mental illness, or it being the "normal" end of the autism spectrum.
"Highly sensitive person" is another way of putting to words what I suffer from, but has two problems, one of which is it's not a diagnosis so it won't give me access to the help mentioned above. The problem it has in common with the other two labels, it does not really fit. It fits partly, but just as I have no problems communicating in daily life unlike most people with autism, what strikes me in the description of "highly sensitive person" one characteristic that I have seen mentioned in almost all descriptions is HSP's are very good at sensing the atmosphere (in a metaphorical way) in a room and are sensitive to other people's mental states.
The example I read a lot is when a HSP walks into a room of people, (s)he will immediately sense the mood of the group already in the room. No way I am able to do that. It takes mental effort and time for me to be aware of what other people are thinking/experiencing: I need to realize to notice someone else's state of mind, focus on not just being obsessed with what I want to tell at the moment, take time to read from the faces of those around me how it sinks in, put effort into listening to them as well without interrupting them. One thing the psychiatrist that treated me noticed, before starting the process of renewing the diagnosis (when it was still SAD) is how I don't notice when I talk too much (because of that remark, I started to make effort to notice if other people want to say something as well).
Back to HSP: I'm sensitive to knowing if other people suffer, to sounds, to injustice etc., but not more sensitive to other people's moods and mental states, like HSP's are supposed to do, so just like SAD and ASD, it's just another label which is lacking in a fundamental way. But it's true what you said: diagnosing is just categorizing on basis of a list of symptoms. The mind is too complicated to be properly diagnosed by DSM V. That's why that manual has a habit of multiplying diagnoses at an alarming rate. The committee that makes the updates tried to cover every mental illness, but because the diversity is so great, they create ever more labels. A famous Dutch psychiatrist Jim van Os is pleading to get rid of labels all together and base diagnoses on these three questions: "what has happened?", "what ails you?", "what do you need?" and base treatment on those three questions, not on a label.
Though even autism is not necessarily considered mental illness by many, but rather kind of running on a different operating system. It's just that our society is not meant for people who think and feel differently.
It's not me, it's the world that's ill/sick, is a view I often hold myself. In a mentally sane world, there would be no injustice, no stealing, no material inequality, no pollution of the environment, everyone would think about the well-being of others and of the living environment before choosing their actions. But even in a pre-human world there was predation and suffering. In no world that can be conceived where intelligent life evolved due to Darwinist selection of traits that are helpful to the survival and procreation of genes, egoism would be absent. And a world where life evolved without that selection of selfish genes' just couldn't exist. I am just incompatible with any kind of conceivable and at the least historically existent life. So though I can justly claim 'humanity is sick and mentally ill', it doesn't relieve the suffering. I think I would suffer in any day and age, not just in our society. Life and me are incompatible alas.
i find funny when i listen other people tell that animals lack of consciousness, i am pretty sure that the dog of my sister had a lot of it.
she had kidneys problems and as her life was becoming too painful we decided to call the vet to have her killed (the dog, not my sister... ). she was perfectly aware of what was going on and very frightened about the fact that she would have been killed in a matter of minutes. she looked into my eyes all the time and i could see the same things that i can see looking into the eyes of a human in a similar situation. no words was needed, and of course words was not possible, but them was really not needed.
she was a very special dog, and not the only one i met in my life.
i could also talk to you of what i saw in the eyes of the cows in the slaughterhouse, better that i don't, it is not a pretty thing...
but i swear that most of the cows there have plenty of consciousness.
and i can also talk of dolphins, why they some times save people from the sea and escort them to the shore if they are not aware that an other intelligent mammal is at risk of life. Why, like bernard moitissier tell in the book where he tells of his solo 1 and 1/2 circumnavigation of the world on a sail boat, the time the wind changed so his boat was going toward some dangerous rocks, about 50 dolphins kept to swim in the direction he was going and then all at a time suddenly turned towards the right direction.
not just 1 time, they kept repeating the thing until he understood, then stopped to do it as soon as he corrected his route (probably dolphins think that we are quite stupid mammals even if we have a certain amount of intelligence).
are not those examples of conscious beings? i personally have no doubt that they are.
And how is it with children? Do they have consciousness right from the beginning? Is there some point in their life when it starts? Why do I know that I talked, and therefore probably thought, when I was a lot younger, but my first memories start only somewhere around my 3rd birthday? Or is memory and consciousness totally unrelated?
my first memory is the uterus of my mother beginning to have contractions, believe me i had consciousness in that moment, but as usually people don't have memories of that moment of the life and most people don't have memories of before the age of 2 or 3 i can not tell if my having so early memories is related to the fact that i had consciousness before the age people usually do or if all people have consciousness from the very beginning and simply don't have memories of the first years.
probably, if what happened to me happens to all humans, that is the very moment where consciousness really begins. Before it i was living in a world made by proprioceptive perceptions, i was not aware of a world outside of me and me and the uterus, that i did not perceive as something different from me, was all i was conscious of.
at the very moment the contractions begun something very strange and unpleasant happened, as i perceived it as some part of me/the whole world as far as i did know was suddenly trying to compress, choke, expel me, that was the very moment when duality was born in my mind, the very moment i become conscious and aware to have a physical body into, but different from, a physical world.
it is hard to explain what happens in the mind of a human way before the language, so the way to think that uses it as a tool, has begun, that mode of thinking is also active later, but most of the time is hidden behind the continuous flow of words that flood minds.
words in the mind and logic are great gifts, don't get me wrong, but if many people that meditate try to stop that flowing of words in their minds there is a reason, it is a great gift that comes at a great price...
and actually is not possible to cause the mind to stop, it can happen, but is a completely different thing.
a real guru can also cause the other minds near him to stop the flow of words inside them, as his quiet mind acts as a powerful magnet that polarizes the smaller magnets near by, such is the power of the inner silence.
but to find such gurus is not easy, it is not a thing that happens to all the people, usually the gurus famous from the media are not that kind of guru. and even if someone is so lucky to find a real guru it can happen that he don't recognize it, the last one i found was on a train, she was a very ordinary and simple noun, but her mind was a so powerful magnet...
i did not even talk to her, her only presence in the same wagon in the train was more then enough for me, even if probably i was the only person aware of an enlightened person being there.
we can not stop our minds intentionally, but be open and receptive is very possible, then the gift will come to everyone if there is a pure desire and if the ego, the "i want to be...." is kept quiet, recognizing what a really horrible thing it is.
Comments
i answer to you first as you are a fellow paladin, even if we probably serve different, but good deities.
i agree with almost what you told but:
i did not tell "We should address other, more important things" and i never meant it as implicit. i told that we have so many more relevant things to go bersek for that is better to don't go bersek for it, less then 50 people in europe die for it every year while thousands die for other causes that also could be addressed.
and immediately after i also told, in bold and italic to give it more emphasis we should address those other and that thing if we would be up to my idea of what the himan race should be.
anyway given your profession i understand why you tend to go bersek for that issue more then for other ones that are more important (cause a much larger fatality rate)
i also want a future like the one dr maccoy tells about, and i appreciate your position about the new tools the medicine has now, or is going to have in the next future. sadly i don't believe that the new knowledge will be used in a wise and cautious way like you seem to advocate. and the fact that altering the human genoma is completely different in its effect and consequences from using a drug that has still not discovered negative effects as the genetic modification is transmitted to the next generations and will spread among humanity is obvious to you, but has to be told as it can not be so obvious for every reader of this thread. right now, if it is not a fake new, 2 gemini sisters are in gesture in china, with a modified gene, outside every official research project, i have reasons to be worried.
sadly star trek seems to me too optimistic not only on a ftl technology, but also on the use the humanity do of its knowledge.
now i run to read your mp!
Sometimes it can be a little hard to understand you clearly, because of lack of capitalization and run-on sentence structure in your posts. I don't mean to criticize you for that, but rather just to explain why I often misunderstand some of the things you type. I apologize for that.
I'm saying I prioritize what can be solved easily (and is not, because of superstition) vs what doesn't (yet) have a simple, fast solution.
i will probably will answer to the other thing you told later,now i have other rl things to do.
As now i know that it can create problems in who read i will try to avoid it in the future. (I just typed ututre instead of future..., the last of at least 10 errors writing this short post
It's quite alright.
At least it helps to know it's not out of laziness or disrespect your posts are hard to read
In other news: Source - https://globalnews.ca/news/5175990/notre-dame-cathedral-money-raised-rebuild/
Even if we were to assume that Pinault, Arnault and L'Oreal were the only big donators (and, AFAIK, they are not), it still would mean that more than half (!) of donations came from the richest. They were apparently able to quickly dispose of enormous sums of money. The decided to spend that money on a church - in the world that still has problem of food and water shortages, and where climate change make at least shake foundations of civilizations.
I am simply amazed how stupid and cruel capitalism is in its irrationality of alocating and redistributing money.
EDIT: Hey, my 1000th post!
Right now it is more on the 95% side then the 50% side, and i see a possible future when all the humanity will be enslaved by few that own all, like now is already happening in some diamond mines in Brazil, where the workers spend more to live then how they earn so they can never leave the mine work.
As long as the few very rich people have control of the media, give to the population the illusion to be rich, even if the balance of many is negative, distract us with gossip, sports and news that are blow up and then completely forgotten the next month and divide us (and to belong to different religions is a perfect reason to get divided) only very few will fight against that.
Nothing new under the sun, the Romans used to say: "divide et impera" (split and rule) and that "panem et circenses" (bread and circus) is what is needed to keep the people quiet and compliant.
If it is true that the 50% of what is given for the Notre Dame reconstruction i would say that it is only a proof of how the richest people are stingy, it had to be like the 90%...
By the way i believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental, if it would have happened to let's say the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion, i think that the same would have happened.
I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more then to this one.
An example from the above:
"By the way i believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental, if it would have happened to let's say the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion, i think that the same would have happened.
I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more then to this one",
would have been much easier to understand as:
"By the way, I believe that the fact that Notre Dame is a church is only accidental. If it would have happened that, let's say, the Colosseum, that is not related to a religion (had burned down), I think that the same thing would have happened. I think that the whole Notre Dame thing belongs to the politics thread more than to this one."
I apologize if I am coming across as a grammar Nazi, or if I am insulting you or making you feel bad in any way. A very big part of me is an English teacher. Good English teachers, just as good music teachers, are not out to make you feel bad, or to criticize you to death. We just want to help you be understood better, or in music, to play better.
@gorgonzola
I'm pretty well-versed in the English language too so I have to concur with @BelgarathMTH that proper sentence structure does help in understanding your viewpoints. I have to admit I'm pretty much used to your posts now but others may not be so it may help them to understand where you're coming from.
Having said that, I'd personally rather you feel comfortable posting your views though, so if it's a problem for you, don't worry about it overmuch...
Wait, now we're being lectured on linguistics by a Martian! What is this world coming to???
Well how much do you think I have to know to master so many of your barbaric languages?
I agree that your last post was much easier to read, but if it makes your head hurt, takes 30 min to write a few lines, and in the end keeps you from sharing your ideas, then some sort of compromise might be a better solution.
Side note on the Notre Dame: I agree that it's most likely related to its importance as a cultural heritage and a national symbol, and not as a religious building.
Church services in France, especially in Catholic churches, are usually either empty except for three grandmothers, or held by immigrant communities.
Human entire economic model is insane and geared toward resource concentration and maintenance of power. There is no thought about the preservation of the human race.
What is the logic of not accumulating wealth? I guess everybody is just supposed to spend every penny they make and let the government take care of us if something goes wrong? Oh, and please don't buy into the 'world js going to burn in 20 years malarkey'. The world has been going to end in 20 years every 20 years since I've been born and the world's still here...
Not everybody every penny, but unjustly rich and despicable people like Bezos. And others, who gained their fortune by exploitation and misfortune of others.
I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, but in my opinion it's more important what every single person can do about it every day, otherwise we're like Epicurus in his garden. And no worries, I'm not planning to stage a revolution and set company buildings on fire. I'm talking about the small steps that everyone can try to make every day, like taking care under which conditions your coffee, your chocolate or your clothes were produced, asking yourself if you really need 20 pairs of shoes, repair broken things instead of throwing them away, be kind and helpful to other people, don't kick out refugees, instead maybe help them learn the language and recommend them to someone for a job, do some volunteer work, be patient and explain the importance of certain things (like vaccinations! ?) to people who don't know better... There are many more examples I'm sure, I'm just too sleepy to think of them right now.
I know that this sounds naive, but I still think that we should rather do everything we can than be frustrated with all the things we can't. Anger at the world won't change it a bit, it will only make it an even angrier place.
And if it really ended in 20 years (it might end today, tomorrow or in 300000 years, I don't care), I would still rather try to make those 20 years just a little bit better than the 20 years before now.
BTW, he might be able to give you some insight about how to help your son, as well. He's had some similar problems in his own life. Not the same, but similar.
I wish I could do just the "do good in the world" and avoid the "get frustrated about the bad in the world" but alas that's easier typed then done. I tried mindfulness to stop depression, but it made me just much more vulnerable to outside stimuli, leading to getting overburdened by sounds and by busy places, like most roads outside of my own (each passing car nerves me as well as every barking dog). Later I found out, that for people with autism a different kind of mindfulness training is needed than the ordinary one, but the damage was already done. A damage that's partly an aversion to any more mindfulness.
Been on medication ever since my mental illness surfaced when I was young (20), but it only dampens the pain, it doesn't alleviate it. Leaving ambulatory mental healthcare after more than 20 years for the care of a general physician's practice assistant, as I'm too stable the last few years for the more expensive mental healthcare teams, that in the new system of financing are intended for people who are often in crisis, yet it does confront me with the reality, which I already know, that it doesn't pass. There's 3 things that can be done and are being done: medication, accepting that I have that vulnerability/handicap/illness whatever you like to call it and most of all: learning to deal with it by figuring out what gives energy/comfort/rest and what things trigger me and should be avoided or dosed in manageable portions.
When I sought help after some 5 years of struggling with depression, I was in mental health care with the diagnosis SAD (Schizo-Affective Disorder) for most of that time, until some 3 years ago I got rediagnosed after complaining I never really recognized myself in the diagnosis because of the psychosis part of it. Yet when I got the diagnosis ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) and did a psycho-education course, what struck me is that most I followed the course with had problems with understanding people in average daily life communication, while I myself have no problem reading faces, understanding what people want to say. The problem for me is questions like "why do people still go on far away vacations with aeroplanes while climate change is such an obvious threat for years now", "why do people leading companies decide to make money at the expense of the worker's rights and welfare, the environment and why are things made to be thrown away" and "why do people use criminal activities to cheat people of money". In a world that I would understand, products are made to last and made with the health of the workers and the environment foremost in the mind, people would go on holiday in the near region only and you'd only need one simple password for all your accounts to identify yourself as no-one would be out to log-in as if (s)he where you.
Reading this make me wander if is really you that have "mental disease" problems (i don't know if the term is appropriate for you due to my bad english knowledge) or is the whole humanity that is mental diseased and you are one of the few sane people out there...
P.S.: it turned into a wall of text and I don't have a TL;DR ready. It's just about me and how I experience my diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. For anyone not interested, feel free to skip.
I wondered that myself as well. I refered to Kant when I told the psychiatrist back then about my doubts as to what is real. At that time, I was very much in agreeing with Kant, because of all my questioning, that what we experience is not reality, just the way we experience it and that real reality is unknown to us, the "Ding an sich" can't be known. However, my own personal theory is, is that were I calm and ordered and had I finished my philosophy study, I just could have written a thesis about it and being seen as graduated philosopher, but because of my aggravated state: down, anxious, restless, in despair, the same doubts about reality get qualified as psychotic. And what anti-psychotic did for me all those years, because I got them described, is reign in my mind somewhat and make it easier, or that's what I think in it, to stop my mind from going berserk with questioning life. It's most noticeable when I'm very upset with some kind of news like a terror attack or being very over-stimulated, that an extra dose (I call it emergency dose) of 1/2 a mg on top of the regular dose, calms me down like a runaway train hitting a roadblock. The relief of being stopped exploding into screaming anxiety and anger.
Well, the impact is big, so that's why it's good to have a diagnosis. A diagnosis grants you two things: access to mental health care and second (but just as important) with a screening on top to check if you're indeed unfit for work, the disability benifit that allows me to pay my bills and groceries. Once in my life I started in a job, as I thought I had recovered enough and I found a subsided job, but after just a few weeks I ended up crying on the floor of the workspace because of the anxiety and stress being paid to work gave me. I then returned to volunteer work (that I have always done in my life but for those few weeks in a paid job) and found my balance to be a 7 hour working week: 3 hours on Monday, 2 hours on Tuesday and 2 hours on Thursday keeps me balanced. Working more, and I get overburdened, tired and depressed easily. So the precondition "If you live a "normal" life, it doesn't really matter" like you said, surely doesn't apply to me. I suffer on a daily basis and it surely prevents me from taking care of my own income and of my own household. I need the medication, the talks with a professional, the household help and the disability benefit to function to a certain extent in life and it's the diagnosis that gives access to those. It doesn't really matter what the exact wordings of the diagnosis are, the way I get helped in those four ways didn't change when "SAD" changed into "ASD".
"Highly sensitive person" is another way of putting to words what I suffer from, but has two problems, one of which is it's not a diagnosis so it won't give me access to the help mentioned above. The problem it has in common with the other two labels, it does not really fit. It fits partly, but just as I have no problems communicating in daily life unlike most people with autism, what strikes me in the description of "highly sensitive person" one characteristic that I have seen mentioned in almost all descriptions is HSP's are very good at sensing the atmosphere (in a metaphorical way) in a room and are sensitive to other people's mental states.
The example I read a lot is when a HSP walks into a room of people, (s)he will immediately sense the mood of the group already in the room. No way I am able to do that. It takes mental effort and time for me to be aware of what other people are thinking/experiencing: I need to realize to notice someone else's state of mind, focus on not just being obsessed with what I want to tell at the moment, take time to read from the faces of those around me how it sinks in, put effort into listening to them as well without interrupting them. One thing the psychiatrist that treated me noticed, before starting the process of renewing the diagnosis (when it was still SAD) is how I don't notice when I talk too much (because of that remark, I started to make effort to notice if other people want to say something as well).
Back to HSP: I'm sensitive to knowing if other people suffer, to sounds, to injustice etc., but not more sensitive to other people's moods and mental states, like HSP's are supposed to do, so just like SAD and ASD, it's just another label which is lacking in a fundamental way. But it's true what you said: diagnosing is just categorizing on basis of a list of symptoms. The mind is too complicated to be properly diagnosed by DSM V. That's why that manual has a habit of multiplying diagnoses at an alarming rate. The committee that makes the updates tried to cover every mental illness, but because the diversity is so great, they create ever more labels. A famous Dutch psychiatrist Jim van Os is pleading to get rid of labels all together and base diagnoses on these three questions: "what has happened?", "what ails you?", "what do you need?" and base treatment on those three questions, not on a label.
It's not me, it's the world that's ill/sick, is a view I often hold myself. In a mentally sane world, there would be no injustice, no stealing, no material inequality, no pollution of the environment, everyone would think about the well-being of others and of the living environment before choosing their actions. But even in a pre-human world there was predation and suffering. In no world that can be conceived where intelligent life evolved due to Darwinist selection of traits that are helpful to the survival and procreation of genes, egoism would be absent. And a world where life evolved without that selection of selfish genes' just couldn't exist. I am just incompatible with any kind of conceivable and at the least historically existent life. So though I can justly claim 'humanity is sick and mentally ill', it doesn't relieve the suffering. I think I would suffer in any day and age, not just in our society. Life and me are incompatible alas.
she had kidneys problems and as her life was becoming too painful we decided to call the vet to have her killed (the dog, not my sister...
she was a very special dog, and not the only one i met in my life.
i could also talk to you of what i saw in the eyes of the cows in the slaughterhouse, better that i don't, it is not a pretty thing...
but i swear that most of the cows there have plenty of consciousness.
and i can also talk of dolphins, why they some times save people from the sea and escort them to the shore if they are not aware that an other intelligent mammal is at risk of life. Why, like bernard moitissier tell in the book where he tells of his solo 1 and 1/2 circumnavigation of the world on a sail boat, the time the wind changed so his boat was going toward some dangerous rocks, about 50 dolphins kept to swim in the direction he was going and then all at a time suddenly turned towards the right direction.
not just 1 time, they kept repeating the thing until he understood, then stopped to do it as soon as he corrected his route (probably dolphins think that we are quite stupid mammals even if we have a certain amount of intelligence).
are not those examples of conscious beings? i personally have no doubt that they are.
probably, if what happened to me happens to all humans, that is the very moment where consciousness really begins. Before it i was living in a world made by proprioceptive perceptions, i was not aware of a world outside of me and me and the uterus, that i did not perceive as something different from me, was all i was conscious of.
at the very moment the contractions begun something very strange and unpleasant happened, as i perceived it as some part of me/the whole world as far as i did know was suddenly trying to compress, choke, expel me, that was the very moment when duality was born in my mind, the very moment i become conscious and aware to have a physical body into, but different from, a physical world.
it is hard to explain what happens in the mind of a human way before the language, so the way to think that uses it as a tool, has begun, that mode of thinking is also active later, but most of the time is hidden behind the continuous flow of words that flood minds.
words in the mind and logic are great gifts, don't get me wrong, but if many people that meditate try to stop that flowing of words in their minds there is a reason, it is a great gift that comes at a great price...
and actually is not possible to cause the mind to stop, it can happen, but is a completely different thing.
a real guru can also cause the other minds near him to stop the flow of words inside them, as his quiet mind acts as a powerful magnet that polarizes the smaller magnets near by, such is the power of the inner silence.
but to find such gurus is not easy, it is not a thing that happens to all the people, usually the gurus famous from the media are not that kind of guru. and even if someone is so lucky to find a real guru it can happen that he don't recognize it, the last one i found was on a train, she was a very ordinary and simple noun, but her mind was a so powerful magnet...
i did not even talk to her, her only presence in the same wagon in the train was more then enough for me, even if probably i was the only person aware of an enlightened person being there.
we can not stop our minds intentionally, but be open and receptive is very possible, then the gift will come to everyone if there is a pure desire and if the ego, the "i want to be...." is kept quiet, recognizing what a really horrible thing it is.