can psychedelics help us see through propaganda?

[Schwanke668]

infinity can be understood (yet only) in not trying to quantify it(in not trying to understand it). the quantity that cannot be quantified.

has the potential to be a difficult thing to express

It would take an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of mathemeticians an infinite amount of time to express infinity.

 

[zezt]

Not wanting to derail thins thread away from its main inquiry---'can psychedelics help us see through propaganda'. Just keeping it in mind.
So in that regard I am always trying to look what is behind words. And how they are being used. because propagandists use this trick very much so. With the invention of W R I T I N G they have a field day, because now they could literally set in stone words, and these words could be drilled into the believers from generation to generation, into childrens minds, and taken around the world and preached at other people some of whom were preliterate.

John Allegro with his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross seriously opened my eyes to this, because he was also a Philologist which is the very study of words, and he reveals how the writers of mythology used all forms of literary devices to obsure the meanings only those privy to what is being done could know about. The rest would just read the surface stories literally--in a two-dimensional way. They didn't have the wherewithall to go deep into the composition.

let's remember that the very Bible straightaway proclaims the 'WORD' of 'God' which is to be taken literally----right? And many people were persecuted and murdered for not doing so!

So if you say there is a difference to 'being' 'God' to being 'like' 'God' says to me then you already have some kind of image OF 'God'.

Just say me and you were in this beautiful place in nature. There is greenest grass, meadows, waterfalls, rocks, blue sky with amazing shaped clouds floating by----everything is animated (those are my favourits kinds of days ) and we have taken some magic mushrooms, and we are in AWE be how we feel in relation to all this wonder, and are giggline in ecstasy, and I suddenly ask you: " Are you god, or are you being like god?" How would you respond?

 

[itsscience]

This is all far too cerebral for my tiny little brain to be able to understand so I'm just going to respond to the original post.

On one particular LSD trip I could hear the frequency at which the universe vibrated, at first I could hear the vibration of the atoms comprising the chair I sat in. Next I noticed that both the stereo and the table it was sitting on, as well as the curtains, walls, carpets etc, where all vibrating at the same frequency. Finally I realised that my whole being was also vibrating at the same frequency.

In that moment I truly understood how all matter, all things, are merely energy. It was at that point I understood the true propaganda of the human experience and that is we are energy, we are light, we are one (the propaganda being that we are individual sacks of meat and bone each different from the other). At that one single point in my life, I felt the Unity of all energy and I have never again felt that Unity in the same way. My conscious mind has recorded it and it is a memory that I can recall at will but that is all, I cannot truly understand it again because the only way I could ever understand it was by being it.

 

[zezt]

This is all far too cerebral for my tiny little brain to be able to understand so I'm just going to respond to the original post.

Ewwwwww, god. it's not meant to be! This is meant to be organismic visceral soulFULL, NOT just a head thing. may be your readin it wrong?

On one particular LSD trip I could hear the frequency at which the universe vibrated, at first I could hear the vibration of the atoms comprising the chair I sat in. Next I noticed that both the stereo and the table it was sitting on, as well as the curtains, walls, carpets etc, where all vibrating at the same frequency. Finally I realised that my whole being was also vibrating at the same frequency.

In that moment I truly understood how all matter, all things, are merely energy. It was at that point I understood the true propaganda of the human experience and that is we are energy, we are light, we are one (the propaganda being that we are individual sacks of meat and bone each different from the other). At that one single point in my life, I felt the Unity of all energy and I have never again felt that Unity in the same way. My conscious mind has recorded it and it is a memory that I can recall at will but that is all, I cannot truly understand it again because the only way I could ever understand it was by being it.

Alright, that was a powerful experience you had. All I would question is when you said "all things are merely energy" [emphasis mine]. I would rather say all things are energy and consciousness, and that they are not separate but distinct. Ie., consciousness is how energy feels

Now, say you felt like that all the time--that actual experience. How could you function day to day? This is why I see these ecstasies as a continuum with the flux of experience. They are enlightenment, but then we integrate these climaxic insights into our day to day lives enriching them.
All the time the day and night and day and...is changing, the light, the dark, our energy, vibrations how we feel ~~~

 

[Schwanke668]

Now, say you felt like that all the time--that actual experience. How could you function day to day? This is why I see these ecstasies as a continuum with the flux of experience. They are enlightenment, but then we integrate these climaxic insights into our day to day lives enriching them.
All the time the day and night and day and...is changing, the light, the dark, our energy, vibrations how we feel ~~~

See this is precisely where being like God is important. I am pretty much on a permanent trip now a days. I wake up and everything is 'funky'. For a week straight I thought I was psychotic. Everything was always moving. Things were always weird. i was always hearing strange noises and noticing itty bitty things and missing the obvious?

So i went OH SHIT. And I told my parents:

MOM! DAD! I THINK I'M PERMANENTLY HIGH! (Keep in mind I hadnt done any hallucinogens in 10 years except for 1 bowl of salvia about 6 years prior.) And I told them everything that was happening and how weird it was and I was like. So should I go to the hospital?

Their reply?

They both said "You seem fine to me. Your getting everything done you wanna get done. If anything you've been happier and more energetic. I dont see ANY signs to indicate you need hospitalized. Why dont you go and relax for an hour and see how you feel."

Hour later I was more mellow but still trippy as fuck.

I thought. Well i have the psychiatrist tomorrow I'll ask her.

Go to her. Ask her: Tell her all the same stuff. Things movin, hearin voices but I think I know where they are comin from.

Her response? "You seem fine to me. Personally I think this is just your personality comeing out. Lets see if we can go down on your meds instead."

So how would you live if you were trippin 24/7? You would adapt or you would end up in a mental hospital. I personally attribute my adapting to God because I personally dont think humans in their natural form have the capacity to operate their day to day lives for two weeks straight trippin their balls off.

So yeah. If his 'waveform' switched to the point in which he was perceiving everything as vibrations then either he would end up in a mental hospital or a power that be would save his ass and he would start speaking and operating as a vibrating waveform.

Personally I think this is exactly what seeing through the propaganda is all about (see it does tie in!) Its about learning to shift our 'trip' further and further away from normalcy and further and further away into the psychedelic while still maintaining the ability to operate our day to day lives 'covertly' to those around us who are not ready to see as we see or could cope with us being the way we are.

I mean keep in mind you know I was driving to and from a variety of places in my old beat up 97 mercury villager min van two and three times a day for those couple weeks. I was fixing myself meals. I was talking on the internet with my wife. She even though I was fine. Going shopping. For two weeks i thought I was psychotic and everyone that would be my 'stop gap' for 'woops I missed my medication for two days straight' days said i was normal! wtf! LOL!

The way I look at it I am now operating on a rather substantially different frequency then everyone else around me and as such I see the trips and the dreams and the visions and movements differently but because I can interpret them and understand them and use them I can operate with them just fine.

Its kind of like we're the child that plays with his toes for an hour cuz they are so interesting because he's never seen them before. After a while they are just toes and you learn to walk. Same thing in transforming to other wavelengths and being able to see propaganda. For a while we go WAAAAAYYYYYYY COOOOOLLLLL the wall is moving. Then after a while you go "Ooohh.. the wall is moving. Must mean there is someone behind it."

Or whatever.

 

[zezt]

I remember I was at art school and we went to this amazingly beautiful place in the Lake District--a famous place in England that Romantic poets like William Wordsworth loved

"And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; / A motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still / A lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains; and of all that we behold / From this green earth;"

So, I was there for a week with this group, and I decided on the Wednesday to take some Acid. I ended up taking two blotter because I thought the first one was too mild---I was wrong. I was very tripping. Anyhow, as I am sat on this beach by this amazing lake an elderly man is apporaching on this lane by the trees to the rear of us, and I shout out about how beautiful it is here 8) and he replies "Oh, I have lived here quite a bit, and you get used to it"....lol, and that meaning of what he said reverberated in my tripping head. It said to me that people can get stuck in patterns of awarness. As in 'oh I have seen that tree. THAT is what that tree looks like,. Thats it' feel me? In other words they stop looking. They become rigid in their thoughts and feeling. But what are we. Who knows this? Science doesn't know it!

by the way I am curious. If I may ask, when did you go to a psychiatrist, and be put on meds? is it anything to do with those first trips you had years ago? What meds you on?
I personally talk a lot about the myth of mental illness. Are you familiar with all that? (sorry if I have forgot it may have been you who asked me about Thomas Szasz)

 

[ararat]

I remember I was at art school and we went to this amazingly beautiful place in the Lake District--a famous place in England that Romantic poets like William Wordsworth loved

I didn't know you went to art school, would you like to post some of your stuff? I'd love to see it

 

[Schwanke668]

In the nutshell and I think I have posted this atleast one other place before so for those that are seeing it twice, I apologize.

When I was a kid reality was wierd to me. I mean I knew I was different ever since about 6 years old. Reality always felt foreign to me. Nothing ever made sense. I always felt like I was missing something. Like there was something ELSE I was supposed to be looking at then anything that I could "see". Something beyond. Something out there. Something 'more'.

So I was horribly depressed as a kid. Became the target of abuse from pretty much everyone. Other students in school all the way up through highschool. Teachers in several grades from about the 5th grade up through highschool. My parents. Even my two best friends at the time were actually my two 'least enemies'. (They still abused me and pulled mean tricks on me, called me names. But they were all I had.)

I went to the wrong college for the wrong reasons and hated most of it and never really got into/understood the college thing. The real 'fun' had nothing to do with college. Either the last year before college or the first summer home from college I did my first trip on LSD of a couple of hits of whatever. (Cant ever know what anything is anymore unless you know the chemist.) And when that kicked in and everything went apeshit. I KNEW I WAS HOME! It was like all of a sudden life and reality made sense. LSD straightened me out for those brief 12 hours. Coming down was like omg back to living hell. But when I was high on LSD it was like I was me. Like I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it but I could never tell anyone because they would never understand. (And when I did they never did.)

So for 5 years in college. I spent more time doing LSD and other stuff then classes. Spent 99.9% of it soul searching. Some trips I just spent by myself analyzing myself deeply, learning how I operated, gaining more mental control. Teaching myself to hack my own brain, mind over matter, that type of thing. Others I just did it cuz it sounded like a fun thing to do and didnt pay any attention to any kinds of plans what-so-ever. Got to the point where I actually made it a ritual that I had to pick a real busy class day and trip through all my classes or I felt like I hadnt officially 'done my homework' for those classes.

Near the end I got deeper and deeper into the rave-party scene to the point where the head of the entire area's sound crew took me on as his friend/employee though I never accepted any money and we did parties every weekend for about a full year. I got all the free drugs I wanted. Got a perminent back stage pass to a club or two. Got lammies. (Back stage pass to a party if you dont know the jargon) to every single party that was anything. Always got in free. I was friends with the lights guys, the sounds guys and the video project/internet broadcast guys for pretty much everything west of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and on into eastern Ohio.

So you can see how you can get sucked into the glamour and glory when you have an altruistic mind and people throwing drugs at you and a free ticket to any event in the area. I would have 36, 48, and 72 hour days starting friday afernoon and ending monday afternoon doing nothing but whatever would keep me going or just plain crashing out on the dance floor behind some speaker somewhere whenever I felt like it.

What this lead up to was a delusion that I was going to 'make it big' in the party scene (as what I never figured out but somehow you miss that kind of thing when your doing LSD every other week or more.) and that college wasnt really that important in the grand scheme of things.

I also got sucked into a drug house where the guy that 'ran it' kinda of who happened to have a million dollar trust fund that was his when he graduated college with good grades actually asked me to live in his attick with them and be their pet. The pet thing never really happened but they did build me an attic room which was really wierdly shaped and made entirely of plywood but hey, free room and board at the time lol, free drugs, best drugs money can buy. (Think cocaine on tap, free drugs from the parties, free drugs from the house, free backstage pass to every party in a 100mile radius every day there was one. All the rave parties at the clubs. It just sucked me all in.)

Soooo... to make an insasnely long story even longer. The epiphany moment wasnt even one moment but a culmination of experiences that were tied up in the previous five years of my life.
For one thing, somewhere in there I had done enough LSD that I never actually came down. I had overdosed once already. They had to hospitalize me for 3 days and even when I was able to talk myself out of the hospital I still hadnt come down and I knew it. Still a month or so later I climbed up back on that stalion and rode again.

When I rode again I basically did one hit and was effectively high/psychotic (whatever you wanna call it, same thing at this point) for pretty much a full month. No clue what I did most of that month at a practical level but at spiritual level this was when I dug in hard and dug in HARD CORE and decided. ALL RIGHT YOU SON OF A BITCH (talking to myself) WE"RE GUNNA FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT ONCE AND FOR ALL (meaning life was always wierd OFF lsd and right as rain ON). And so i THINK I holed myself in my room for a week. I guess I ate or came out to eat or something because I didnt waste away to nothing but I dont ever remember doing anything except searching my mind for answers.

At this point my LSD experiences inside my own mind had pretty much been perminently visual. I could point at a thought in my mind and move it around like 3d jigsaw pieces and combine and transform and mutate my thoughts visually to get the information out of them that I wanted. If youve ever seen johnny mnemonic where johnny uses the 3D gloves to manipulate the computer network it was like that. Point. Drag. Open. Shift. Rotate. Mix. Match. All visual but I knew what I was doing with them.

Over time I had developed a process where by i could take a collection of thoughts and run them through a series of filters that would weed out any extranous thoughts and over time I was able to fine tune those filters to a point of "Is this the answer that I seek?" I did this with more and more thoughts faster and faster until I started to run out of thoughts and then one day I reached the end.

I looked at that remaining thought and i said. This must be it. This is all thats left. If this isnt the answer then I have no purpose. I have no life. I have no meaning. And I looked at the thought. Bewildered. Thinking. Holy Shit. Do I really want to open it? Do I really wanna know? Why? (That was always my question for everything. Why? And I knew that this thought had the answer to my question: Why?)

So finally I said. Alright. Lets do it and dove in head first.

The best way that I can describe the experience without being able to physically transfer thoughts with anyone yet is that I looked at the thought and I said:

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

and the thought replied:

"My name is Jesus Christ. I am your Lord and Savior. STOP DOING THAT!"

At which point after having been psychotic for a full month I decide maybe its time i checked myself into a mental hospital now that I just heard God talk to me. Checked myself into a mental hospital for 10 days and came home to NJ and faked life for 12 years until now.

As for the medication I am on Lamictal, Geodon, Lithium and Buspar and its for a technical diagnosis of BiPolar but she has never really felt like she knew what she was doing with the meds and why they work only that we have tweaked them a few times and finally found a balance she likes and like i said she wants to go down on them.

I do know that I DID need them before as I have gone off them twice once on purpose and once by accident and both times I have been hospitalized because I was overwhelmed with psychotic and illogical/irrational behavior. (As in both times I thought I WAS Jesus Christs. As in ressurrected from the dead to bring salvation to the world. Which isnt even biblical since he descends from heaven but somehow I had convinced myself that I was Jesus and the bible didnt apply to me lol.)

I do believe there is such a thing as mental illness whole hearted as I certainly do NOT like who I turn into when I go off my meds. But then at the same time I quit my blood sugar medication, my thyroid medication and my cholesterol medication because I was pissed off at my doctor and all three areas of my life came back perfectly normal. So I guess there is no such thing as diabetes, overactive thyroid or high cholestoral either lol.

Everything in the human body is about chemicals. Eb and flow, tide and flair of chemical compositions. Anything can be out of whack in any of a number of a 100 directions and you spiral out of control unless you know how to balance yourself back. Brain chemistry is no different. Psyche meds operate on the same though polar oposite chemical situations as psychedelics. One system tries to control them the other tries to induce them but its the same neurochemistry.

 

[zezt]

hmmm fascianting story. Did you hear what happened to Sid Barret from Pink Floyd. They claim he had too much psychedelics and he just lost it. I am always speaking out about the mental illness myth and the war on entheogens. I am just actually doing a blog about it titled exatly that and should publish it this coming weekend. Check it out

I think you can abuse psychedelics like anything else, and from what you say with those and other drugs you have done also. Hope I dont seem harsh saying that. I am just trying to be honest with you. I also had a fukin TERRIBLE time throughout my enforced schooling years (cause all of us kids are forced to go to those godamned awful places!) and this traumatizes your young years which SHOULD not BE freakin tramatized. But this culture based on war and sadism obviously wants kids to fit into that shit.
I also have had a terrible demonic sexual addiction which involved drugs too. So I know about hellish experience etc

The trouble with the 'chemical imbalance' propaganda coming from the psychatrist-pharma cartel is that it scapegaots people in this society, and imposes a 'normalcy' on everyone. So IF you feel distressed in any way, have visions etc it is classed as mental illness and chemical imbalance and they then push THEIR toxic drugs onto adults and children, and this diverts attention away from the very brutal culture this is happening in. So, nothin radically changes because they pretend (because no actual medical tests exist to prove their words) that it is fault of the individual who they see as a machine.

Now having said that, I am not trying to put people down who freely choose so-called medication. That should be human choice, but at the same time this does not mean you cahn turn a blind eye to all the animal victims who have this shit 'tested' on them, and the fact that there exists no medical science behind this, and that many people really do suffer from this medication, and being locked up without their consent and treated like a non-person. So you have to look at the bigger context this is happening in.

Your early experience was terrible, and that is real. And as a result you sought 'something else', and thought you had found it in psychedelics and finding them wanted to always be in that treality because the 'normal' one freaked you out. This is exactly how alcoholics and other habitual drugs users feel, and comfort eaters, shoppers. 'ordinary reality' is what they trying to escape from. When you have those vision later of being Jesus ...? have you ever read this amazing book Trials of the Visionary Mind, by John Weir Perry This guy started this project for people classed 'schizophrenic'--an alternative place they could go and not be pumped full of drugs. He mentions how the 'delusions' of being Jesus, Napolian etc and other 'big people' is a compensation thing going on to make up for how insignificant they had been made to feel by others. So in other words this and other manifestations of feeling are self-healing expression of the organism and soul. But what maistream mechanistic-based psychiatry does--or bio-psychiatry is it doesn't recognize or understand the soul or inner person, and tries to suppress this feeling with drugs, and these drugs have side effects and can harm the persons both physically and spiritually.
Bothe Diabasis--the najme of the project and house--and another one that was called Soteria House were closed by pressure from the big drug companies who dont want ANY alternative understandings of mental health, and see it as competition that will threaten their MULTI BILLIONS corrupt profiteering drugs industry

 

[Schwanke668]

I hear ya. I just see a very straight use for psyche meds when combined with faith and freedom of choice to allow yourself to balance out and ultimately get off them.

Personally I think people who try to 'normalize' without psyche meds run the risk of seriosly hurting themselvs or others. Sad as it is we live in a society designed for normalized people and unless you have a commune you can go off and join that will take care of you when you want to start killing people because the radio is talking to you. (Happend to afriend of mine. Guy took a fire ax to the snowman on the front property of the gas station he was working at cuz the radio told him to.) then you need some way to 'survive in society' and that is to 'reach their definition of norm'.

With this then I recommend to people to join the 'system of normalcy' for a time and stabalize 'to society normalcy' THEN when you get close enough to start seeing the light, start getting into freeing yourself from the 'society normalcy.'

You need a place to start when you are soooooooooo out of whack that you cant cope.

Then once you find that starting place you can branch out into non 'society normalcy' solutions.

 

[ophiuchus]

infinity can be understood (yet only) in not trying to quantify it(in not trying to understand it). the quantity that cannot be quantified.

has the potential to be a difficult thing to express

It would take an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of mathemeticians an infinite amount of time to express infinity.

and so here we all are

 

[Schwanke668]

infinity can be understood (yet only) in not trying to quantify it(in not trying to understand it). the quantity that cannot be quantified.

has the potential to be a difficult thing to express

It would take an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of mathemeticians an infinite amount of time to express infinity.

and so here we all are

OOOOH OOOOH OOOH AHHH AHHH AHHHH..

Grabs somethin nasty and flings it at the audience.

 

[zezt]

I hear ya. I just see a very straight use for psyche meds when combined with faith and freedom of choice to allow yourself to balance out and ultimately get off them.

Personally I think people who try to 'normalize' without psyche meds run the risk of seriosly hurting themselvs or others. Sad as it is we live in a society designed for normalized people and unless you have a commune you can go off and join that will take care of you when you want to start killing people because the radio is talking to you. (Happend to afriend of mine. Guy took a fire ax to the snowman on the front property of the gas station he was working at cuz the radio told him to.) then you need some way to 'survive in society' and that is to 'reach their definition of norm'.

With this then I recommend to people to join the 'system of normalcy' for a time and stabalize 'to society normalcy' THEN when you get close enough to start seeing the light, start getting into freeing yourself from the 'society normalcy.'

You need a place to start when you are soooooooooo out of whack that you cant cope.

Then once you find that starting place you can branch out into non 'society normalcy' solutions.

Well 'normalcy' as accepted in THIS world is far worse than some deranged dude takin an axe to someone, it is unleashing tons and tons of bombs onto innocent babes and adults, yeah....? And all our so-called pressure to be 'normal' is stuck in that reality, cause most of us are doing shit jobs which are getting fewer to pay TAXES to fuel the 'normal' war machine also. So in other words I am trying to look at the big picture and how this myth of mental illness fits in.

It is simply not true that all people who are so-called mentally ill are violent--like the example you said. That is a myth coming from the media. Every film near enough or TV programme aboput people who are 'schizo' or 'Bi polat' etc are supposed to be violent and a dabger to society and it isn't true. And IF they are it STILL isn't 'mental illness' because there are no actual medical tests to confirm, that. Ie., it is NOT biological disease, it is a behaviou7r that is interelated with the brutality of our culture and which isn't being LOOKED AT, is IGNORED, and so is suppressed and drugged away. At the same time people are being told that if they feel like that it is a biological disease and is violent---get me. So this is like in the religious era if people went through certain psycholgical distressed states they really believed they were possessed by demons because that was the belief at the time, and this myth has an effect on the psyche. It is a myth which affects how we think about who we are.

I already said in the last post that there HAVE been successful attempts to provide space for people who do not want bio psychiatry and its toxic drugs, and being treated as a non person and machine, but the corrupt drug companies who give governments vast amounts of money see to it that they have their fuinding/MONEY stopped. This is wrong and why I speak out

If you are happy with the way things are that is cool for YOU, but there are many others who are not and want something radically different.

 

[zezt]

I remember I was at art school and we went to this amazingly beautiful place in the Lake District--a famous place in England that Romantic poets like William Wordsworth loved

I didn't know you went to art school, would you like to post some of your stuff? I'd love to see it

I have lots of art work stored. I became VERY dissilusioned with the 'art world'. I had a rough time at art school, and I think the so-called art world is very superifical. My thing is seeing urgency of this world we are living in anc ommunicating about it, and I do not disclude what I am doing here as art either. Communication is art. After all that is what images are. When we dream and have visions--often by this culture called 'mental illness'--and mythology, dreams, imagination, it is imagery and is something we all share and also has deep deep meaning. The propagandists exploit this and de-grade the emotional meaning of imagery. They did it in the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden, and they is doing it now in the corporate-mechanistic world

The artists have also been coopted by the propagandists and many of them are only concerned with their fukin egos and how much money they can get for their shit--and most of it IS shit which investors pay lots of dish for etc etc

I still will want to eventually get my shit online but as of yet it isn't. You will have to in the meanshil;e make do with this art of mine.....? LOL

 

[Schwanke668]

When we dream and have visions--often by this culture called 'mental illness'--and mythology, dreams, imagination, it is imagery and is something we all share and also has deep deep meaning. The propagandists exploit this and de-grade the emotional meaning of imagery

Its actually rather well known that the predominant number of popular artists in the last few centuries or more were mentally ill.

Its also fairly well known that 99% of the prophets of the old testament and several of the apostles of the new testament were mentally ill.

Mentall illness is not always frowned upon. Its actually highly exalted in many places. I just think some people get bashed with anti-mental illness and then think everyone else thinks that mental illness is evil. Kind of sad and somewhat ironic. People with mental illness thinking that people are out to get them for their mental illness. :|

Mental illness isnt evil nor is calling mental illnes mental illness evil unless the things done by the mentally ill are evil or the calling of the mentally ill mentally ill causes them to 'be evil.'

Personally? I like calling myself mentally ill. I find it has a particular 'charm' if you will that helps me seperate the wheat from chaff. Its REAL EASY to gauge someone's general perspective if you mention your mentally ill first. Their response shows how open or well rounded they are as an individual.

For example I have begun randomly mentioning to people that I have bipolar at gas stations and check out lines and so forth. Started that about 6 months to a year ago. Years ago. They would go 'whats that?' and then kinda skittish when they figured out what it was. Now, every other person or more will say "Oh yeah. My brother/sister/daughter/cousin/friend" has that. And we get into a conversation about which medications work, which ones dont, what kind of life skills can be learned which kind will probably never make sense. Lots of beneficial conversations from calling myself mentally ill.

Maybe its just I get lucky and get all the people that see mental illness in a good light and I DONT run into the people that get abused for being mentally ill. I've just never seen the situation where someone has been 'forced' to live a certain lifestyle because of their mental illness. Doesnt mean it doesnt happen I just havent seen it. Maybe I'm living some kind of wierd mentall illness sheltered life where I dont bump into all the crap that surrounds mental illness in other areas of the country/world.

I mean come on my own government isnt even forcing me. I just got my disability renewed and they said in the paperwork they would supply job training if i wanted it. No government employee is coming to my front door step saying "Get your ass to work slacko." I get more of that from people who are fedup with the fact that they are stuck in jobs they hate then anyone else or people who think taking money from the government is a crime but have jobs that do ten times worse damage then that and dont even know it.

I'm not taking it because I am starting an ebay business and think ebay is a far better way for me to spend my time because it fits into the fact that mental illness or no I do have depression cycles and hypomanic cycles where I either sleep for 20 hours or stay awake for 36 and its just easier to have a job where you make your own hours then to have to fit into someone else's schedule.

Essentially I am saying I am not someone who is 'milking the government tit' as some would call it. Id rather be off disability and making twice what they give me doing a job I enjoy but I have no problems using the system to help support myself while I get that ball rolling. Thanks to my government and the big (medium? lol) business of my dad and his father before him I dont have to spend 20 hours a day working at a burger joint hating my job and hating my life. If society didnt think I was mentally ill and thought I was normal I would be fucked lol. No thanks. I'll take my government sanctioned mentally ill classification any day. Temporary partial free ride thats gunna let me pay my own way later, sooner, and do it right instead of having to hack and slash shit jobs to make ends meet now.

Dont really care what society or the government calls me. I like the way things have worked out and am very glad for the system and how it works. Sure I feel bad for the ones that it doesn work for but it wouldnt be any better without it. Just different. Grass is greener on the other side isnt jut a cliche. Everyone who hates their life the way it is now thinks change is good and everyone who doesnt thinks it isnt. Natural state of humanity.

 

[ophiuchus]

@schwanke: well, i think the word "illness" has a bit of a stigma associated with it. majority of people think: like characteristic of a defect or disease. illness tends to compliment wellness which i believe most people consider a positive thing.

anyways, i follow you on everything else.

@Zezt:

I had a rough time at art school, and I think the so-called art world is very superifical.

probably a good sign. most famed artists weren't recognized nearly at all until they were much older or dead (=change in the times.)

might mean your ahead, might also mean you just suck. put bluntly haha. you appear intelligent though, so i'd put money on the former.

 

[Schwanke668]

@schwanke: well, i think the word "illness" has a bit of a stigma associated with it. majority of people think: like characteristic of a defect or disease. illness tends to compliment wellness which i believe most people consider a positive thing.

anyways, i follow you on everything else.

.

Ahh. So then. We take the conversation in this direction:

"Its The-Man that is saying that illness is a bad word to use. Every time we allow 'The-Man' to use the word illness negatively we are giving the The-Man more power over our language."

I use words wrong all the time, half the time on purpose. I take control of my language. I invent words, combine them in strange ways. But because I keep the general flow of the english language in hand I can change the way language itself is percieved around me instead of refering to all those The-Man made english dictionaries.

People have to actually think when I talk to them, even my own father with some psychotic IQ, because they have to process ALL the words that I am saying and not just pick out the two hot button words they want to respond to and figure the rest of them are 'pretty obvious' what I was trying to convey.

Several years ago I decided that I was going to do away with my apostrophy. If it wasnt for the fact that I sometimes need it for other things I would have taken it out of my keyboard. I regularly do not as in (dont) use it in words such as cant wont havnt didnt. I decided that except for the case of we're and were in some situations there is actually no need for that character and that by removing that character from my spelling of those words I am saving a half a second or so every so often that I could better spend doing something else.

Now think of how often you type a word like that in your life time? Even if it was only one hour my entire lifetime, I would much rather have mind blowing sex for an hour then type apostrophies.

Beating The Man is about taking control of your environment in small ways that show people in general, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciosly that you are NOT in chains and NOT held back just because someone else says you are.

 

[zezt]

mental illness means illness of the brain. They have no scientific medical tests to back up their propaganda. They dont and will not try and understand the mind. We are machines to them. I am trying to exaplin where this myth is coming from--its timeline in my soon-coming blog I hope to publish this weekend. To summarize it begins for the 'modern' era with rene Descartes who believed that he thought and so was 'I think therefore I am', and then thunk that because be believed animals didn't think they must be machines. Then he and his other sadists tortured animals to death and their screams of suffering he said were to be just thought of as squeaks of an engine. So there....right there, we can see the DANGER of some kinds of thinking, especially when it is purported to be philosophical and scientific. Real living beings became victims and still are and so are we.

next influential 'thinker' was Wilhelm Wundt a philosopher, and professor of psychology in Germany 19th century. He claimed that humans were animals and....can you guess? yes, were like machines. In other words he took the psyche/soul out of psychology. He was only interested in what could be measured, as science is, and as soul, and mind, couldn't be measured they didn't exist for him, and this mechansitic paradigm is the world we live in. So if you 'break down' they got these 'chemical-fixers'---but it is really just changing around chemicals in the brain. They aren't looking at us as soulful beings that have depth, and that there is meaning behind our suffering, nor are they questioning the brutal circumstances and world many people are subjected to

You sound like you have a dad that has a bit of dosh so you may not feel what can happen to people including children who ARE vulnerable and at the mercy of this myth. But they do, and thats who I speak out for

By the way, I think I am on to what your trying to say about how you see 'mentally ill'. It sounds like what they do here at The Icarus Project which is Mad Pride. It is saying eg:

Welcome To Icarus
The Icarus Project envisions a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of 'mental illness' rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.

We are a network of people living with and/or affected by experiences that are often diagnosed and labeled as psychiatric conditions. We believe these experiences are mad gifts needing cultivation and care, rather than diseases or disorders. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness, creativity, and collaboration can inspire hope and transformation in an oppressive and damaged world. Participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness.

 

[ophiuchus]

agreed. i often find myself using language in a similar manner, especially around closed minded people. it forces them to consider my paradigm inherently.

how often do you see me use capitals? either like THIS because i can emphasize well on a keyboard, or things i denote special respect to. like names of people i admire (only when i remember and am feeling fancy). i am quite strict with my own grammar and spelling though, but that is to ensure that the message flows without turbulence or a need to read twice, if one's full attention is on it. and the spelling is mostly to not discredit myself in the judgemental eyes of others. probably wouldn't care if i wasn't good at it, but it's always come naturally for me.

everyone's got their shortcuts i suppose. while it is fun indeed, hours of sex can be pretty tiring to the pelvic region

 

[Schwanke668]

agreed. i often find myself using language in a similar manner, especially around closed minded people. it forces them to consider my paradigm inherently.

how often do you see me use capitals? either like THIS because i can emphasize well on a keyboard, or things i denote special respect to. like names of people i admire (only when i remember and am feeling fancy). i am quite strict with my own grammar and spelling though, but that is to ensure that the message flows without turbulence or a need to read twice, if one's full attention is on it. and the spelling is mostly to not discredit myself in the judgemental eyes of others. probably wouldn't care if i wasn't good at it, but it's always come naturally for me.

everyone's got their shortcuts i suppose. while it is fun indeed, hours of sex can be pretty tiring to the pelvic region

Ironicly enough I didnt even notice. I had to look at what you typed to see what you meant. Might be from the fact that I taught myself to speed read at a very young age and speed reading is all about using general graphical cues as opposed to individual letters. So the difference of an i or I at the begninig of sentance doesnt matter cuz the ". " (dot space) stands out more.