Mental Health Foc us of Latest Tragedy

Ed:

Exactly. I told you, if you're not careful, you'll end up being an old grumpy grey haired guy.

regards,
Fred

Post 21

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 2:33pm

Ed:

A Tonka Toy Truck into a dinosaur is a-fun- surprise.

Now, imagine this, instead.

A friend of yours calls you from the local psyche ward; she's been involuntarily committed, and wants you to testify on her behalf. Just come describe your relationship with her, which has been for the last 6 years just as social friend, someone who works with your wife at a small sales office. Someone who'd been a member of your wedding party 5 years earlier. Perky, fun filled, funny, a little curly haired 5'4" pixie. A little ditzy maybe. Never even slightly odd. A fun friend. She says, simply, "Come speak for me."

Sure thing.

So you and your young wife, her once daily friend(your young wife has since gone to work for another firm, but used to work daily with her), go to the local psyche ward, on the 6th floor of a local hospital. Guards at the doors, here is where they have such hearings after 120 hr emergency commitments, in order to hold someone for 90 days against their will. Due process.

You are a little creeped out; you're in a mental ward in a hospital. Never been.

You see your friend in one of those gowns. You sit with her at a small table before the hearing, ask her what is up, what is this about?

She absent mindedly takes out her front false tooth, a small dental appliance. She doesn't look at it, she is kind of playing with it in her hands, and she says, serious as a heart attack, 'They think I'm crazy.' Up until that moment, you had no idea she had a false tooth.

She barely seems recognizable.

You see her live-in boyfriend, nervous, pacing the room. The four of you had been out to dinner a few times, you'd been to each other's houses. Occasional social friends. You ask him what is up?

He tells you that he came home from work and found her naked, catatonic, in an upstairs bedroom closet, clutching a kitchen knife. He called for an ambulance, they also called the state police, they hauled her here, this was her commitment hearing.

Her bosses daughter had been brutally murdered, stabbed to death over a dozen times, about two years earlier. Was this a reaction to those events, or something else?

I still don't know. But what I learned since leads me to believe not; she was being stalked to keep her quiet about something she knew.

Now, -that- was a surprise.

And then the story gets weird.

regards.
Fred

Post 22

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 3:35pm

Fred,

Holy cow. It's rare that I'm so speechless. I don't know what to say. I am sorry that you had to go through this experience.

Ed

Post 23

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 8:03pm

We don't fix that with a law. Our culture is broken.

Honestly, Fred, I think the law isn't only capable of influencing the culture, but actually does influence the culture.

Post 24

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 8:08pm

The law and the culture influence each other, e.g. the rise in neediness and its advocates once the law started rewarding need, etc.

Post 25

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 8:30pm

Certainly, the law and the culture do influence each other, but at the root of things, the law is a product of the culture and it will change... after the culture changes. You will always see in the law a vision of what the culture used to be. The culture is so much more powerful that trying to hold back cultural changes by passing laws can only work for the shortest of times. Culture is the expression of philosophy, the holder of the most popular moralities, the vision of what is important, and the wind to which most sails will be set.

Post 26

Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 9:46pm

Well put, Steve.

Ed

Thursday, December 27, 2012 - 2:03pm

A child can emerge from the divorce of his parents (or the near death of his mother, or a bullying experience, or a serious illness, or a learning disability, or any number of adverse events) as a well-adjusted and emotionally healthy adult, but it requires that his parents be well-adjusted and emotionally healthy as well. Or, at the very least, working hard to become so. Divorce is hard on families, no doubt, but it isn't to blame for so many ills. If people act right and don't be stupid and don't use their children as pawns/crutches/whipping posts, divorce is just another of life's many challenges that a child can navigate successfully. Red herring, indeed. It's much easier for parents to say, "Our son was devastated by our divorce" because that makes it seem like they were innocent victims as well. The truth is more difficult - "Our son was devastated by our poor parenting."

Same applies to young/unwed/single mothers. A woman alone can raise an awesome kid. Until the day that she succumbs to the notion that she is a victim of something outside her control and forgets the fact that she chose to bring into this world a tiny defenseless version of herself who actually requires that she stop sucking at life and be a real parent.

Personal responsibility, people.

Post 28

Thursday, December 27, 2012 - 4:52pm

Deanna:

I agree, and even, most do.

But we are wondering about the causes of rare, fringe events, and what has changed over the course of the past 50 yrs.

A small percentage don't adjust well, but a small percentage times a larger set means more fringe mayhem. Children of divorce are way more prevalent today then 50 yrs ago.

Not the only factor, but a factor(and a factor in Adam's case, the latest rare, fringe failure at the edge resulting in a national debate over realizing 10 sigma perfection...

Another factor is tribal over-normalization, also a factor in Adam's case, and not related at all to divorce.

We are piling up folks on the fringe and all but pushing them over the edge.

regards,
Fred

Post 29

Friday, December 28, 2012 - 6:30pm

Its hard to be personally responsible for and over ideas you aren't even consciously aware of having influence over you. When 99% of a culture accepts a bad idea, and when those bad ideas are promoted and enforced by government, how in the world can anyone be "personally responsible?" People just want to survive. They don't want to cause trouble, but they cause trouble anyway just by accepting ideas without a second of reflection.

AGW, altruism, Marxism, guns and drugs cause crime, using government force to destroy the life of your child's parent because you're a victim of that child now, the bloody death of Christ magically wiping away the sins of Man, blankets killed the indigenous people, public education is a great deal, meat is poison....on and on and on. You name it, people will believe it.

I'm not sure that I fully agree with Fred's idea of tribal over-normalization, but he's a very smart guy, and I'm all ears.

Fred, what do you think of this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/plans-to-study-adam-lanzas-dna-splits-scientific-community-2012-12

I think philosophy has more to say about this than science does, but scientists don't incorporate much philosophy now days. They need it most, but, unfortunately, use it least. This is a quest for pure biological determinism and will only serve to produce more lies to foist on an ignorant, frightened public.

Post 30

Friday, December 28, 2012 - 11:10pm

Teresa:

My first reaction is, gee; after an event like this, we political ghouls used to restrict ourselves to pouring through the perp's wallet, pulling out the membership cards that were politically abusable, ignoring those that were uncomfortable and/or inconvenient, and called it a day of cashing in on fringe mayhem. An example was the murder of Matt Shepherd. The fact that he was gay was more politically usable than the fact that he was an affluent kid killed by working class thugs, so the tribe went with the anti-gay hatred, and ignored the working class hatred for the rich kid on the wrong side of the tracks, because gay bashing fit the political narrative better than 'maybe we've gone a little overboard with this rich vs. poor tripe.' See, hatred, when it is manifest in the local unfettered state, can be readily compartmentalized when politically necessary. You have to imagine a kind of yellow police tape, only in the minds of the raving maniacs; the tape surrounds their class warfare based hatred as an effective barrier, permitting only their anti-gay hatred to guide their actions.

But now we can blow right by all that, past the 'he was white and young and affluent' and actually pick through his DNA to decide which of his several many thousands of characteristics we want to politically abuse for ghoulish gain. Imagine the carte blanche that provides, when guaranteed, on demand, we can point to as many thousands of matches as necessary to imply a comparison with a mass murder with anyone we choose.

I'd say, the tribe is losing it's collective fucking mind at an ever accelerating rate.

What do you think of it?

The DSM has exploded by several factors. Is this a sign of an epidemic of actual mental disorders in humanity, or is it the smoking gun evidence of our over-normalization, the official tip of the ice berg?

Is it really an abnormality to be able to concentrate intently on complex subjects these days? It is not 'average' and so, not 'normal' ... but is it a defect, an abnormality? It is in a tribal culture that is consumed with over-normalization in appearance, fashion, demeanor, and even personality. The tell tale signs are cemented into our language: geeks...dweebs....

Most survive geekdom...dweebdom...even divorce. But the topic of a rare, fringe Adam isn't about 'most.' It is about rare failures at the fringes and what has changed in our culture over the last 50 years to create a statistical uptick in what happens at the fringes. The culture of the Tribe is making more Adams than before.

What modernity calls 'diversity' is the most exclusively restrictive and narrow club ever imagined policed as effectively as anything mankind has ever dreamed up.

regards,
Fred

Post 31

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 5:38am

Good rant, Tres.

You hit on several key points, all of them good.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/29, 5:41am)

Post 32

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 10:10am