Hey Doc--I figured out a treatment for schizophrenia

[seekingprometheus]

Easily the best day of the rest of my life!

Dealt with emotions like a sane person all day. That seems like an unremarkable feat, but I can't remember ever feeling so proud of achieving such a seemingly insignificant accomplishment.

[seekingprometheus]

Good morning.

I am well.

[seekingprometheus]

Cogscript in and of itself is insufficient. Actualization of new cogscript intention is necessary to reify new cogscript within Paradigmatic Superscript.

You can’t simply recognize that an ingrained thought pattern is irrational. You have to act rationally to prove to yourself that your old idea was irrational.

[seekingprometheus]

By the Gleam of Light Which in Truth Was Whispered I would Never Find I UnBind Thy Devil Word.
Moreover I Bind Thee Devil: Naught Shall Be Thy Word Forevermore!

[seekingprometheus]

Another best day of my life.

Who knew that all it takes to be happy is resolving to turn your own frown upside down?

(All of you, huh? Why did this take me so long to learn? I guess I was always write about one negative thought: I’ve always said that I’m a little bit retarded (sorry—that’s a sick joke). But I’m learning to catch up now—thanks again y’all.)

[seekingprometheus]

So...surprise twist to the crazy story...

...I now believe in God...?

I can’t deny God is Real, any more...?

All very confusing...I would worry that I sound crazy...but for some reason I suddenly have faith that there is a purpose for everything...

It’s completely delusional...it’s irrational certainty...

...I was going to kill the very Devil...I thought delusional certainty was the Devil...

...wtf.

...

Wtf!

[seekingprometheus]

Flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Nurse Ratchet wasn't all that bad, in the end...

Tiny-minded, of course, and arrogant about the (non)knowledge of the whitecoats...but not quite as thirsty for power over the vulnerable as one might expect...

[D.W.]

A better review than I've given on my last few contacts with medical professionals. 

[Pete at Home]

So...surprise twist to the crazy story...

...I now believe in God...?

I can’t deny God is Real, any more...?

All very confusing...I would worry that I sound crazy...but for some reason I suddenly have faith that there is a purpose for everything...

It’s completely delusional...it’s irrational certainty...

...I was going to kill the very Devil...I thought delusional certainty was the Devil...

...wtf.

...

Wtf!

I’d rather live in my own delusion than in another person’s certainty

[Fenring]

I’d rather live in my own delusion than in another person’s certainty

Have you read (or seen) Equus?

[Pete at Home]

I haven’t.

[seekingprometheus]

So...the whitecoats say I'm merely a bit schizoaffective, and that my diagnosis is actually Bipolar 1. I don't believe I've ever actually had a full-blown manic episode until this recent round (and round) of show and tell (to my mind, I've always been dysthemically depressed until lately), but I'll take the far more "fixable" label gratefully (and--so my concerned friends know--I'm taking the meds to flatten out my mood swings--albeit slightly less gratefully--since I recognize how dangerous mania can be (I lost 25-30lbs over the last two months, bc I couldn't force myself to eat any more than I could make myself sleep)).

Thanks again, friends, for helping me see what was wrong with my thinking.

In other news, I'd like to thank Kanye for representing the problem with mania so succinctly. It's really hard to take chemicals which effectively suppress the emotional highs and lows out of existence. It feels almost like a form of suicide--killing off both the best and the worst of who I used to be, or at least fettering the emotional "most" of me. I suspect that I'll need help from my friends to keep me on this level at some point in the future, but it sure is nice of Kanye to be such an inspiration regarding the problem of powerful emotional instability...

[Fenring]

I haven’t.

Oh yeah, I forgot I asked you this. It's a play (made into a good film with Richard Burton) about a boy who worships horses, and who has created for himself a devotion of worship around the freedom and majesty of horseness. The details aren't entirely that important, compared with the fact that he has a panicked episode and does something very bad, and subsequently is sent in for psychiatric treatment. The psychiatrist is a hobbyist classicist, and admires the art and spirit of the Ancients even though he recognizes the value of what we might call advancement. In this boy he sees a throwback to times when people would be devoted almost unto madness to their gods and traditions. In applying medical science to normalize the boy's thinking and make him functional and maybe even able to hold a job, he realizes that while he's creating a productive person he's killing a god and also the spirit of the boy. But the question is: is that good? What is the trade-off for being civilized and functional within a collectively agreed-upon reality (called society)? I brought it up because I think that a lot of times positive change does come with a price, and it can often feel like losing something important, which doesn't mean the change is a bad thing. There is probably good reason to suspect that there's a necessary sadness in letting your old self die.

[seekingprometheus]

it can often feel like losing something important, which doesn't mean the change is a bad thing.

I think that things are what they are--if change means losing something important, it means that the change is bad at least in that specific sense.

But I also think that meaning is often kind of punny--change can be good and bad at the same time...

[Pete at Home]

I haven’t.

Oh yeah, I forgot I asked you this. It's a play (made into a good film with Richard Burton) about a boy who worships horses, and who has created for himself a devotion of worship around the freedom and majesty of horseness. The details aren't entirely that important, compared with the fact that he has a panicked episode and does something very bad, and subsequently is sent in for psychiatric treatment. The psychiatrist is a hobbyist classicist, and admires the art and spirit of the Ancients even though he recognizes the value of what we might call advancement. In this boy he sees a throwback to times when people would be devoted almost unto madness to their gods and traditions. In applying medical science to normalize the boy's thinking and make him functional and maybe even able to hold a job, he realizes that while he's creating a productive person he's killing a god and also the spirit of the boy. But the question is: is that good? What is the trade-off for being civilized and functional within a collectively agreed-upon reality (called society)? I brought it up because I think that a lot of times positive change does come with a price, and it can often feel like losing something important, which doesn't mean the change is a bad thing. There is probably good reason to suspect that there's a necessary sadness in letting your old self die.

Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.

Inherit the Wind [Henry Drummond speaking]

See also http://neamathisi.com/literacies/chapter-1-literacies-on-a-human-scale/socrates-on-the-forgetfulness-that-comes-with-writing

[seekingprometheus]

Some crow:

So I am Naught now?
Because somethings I seemed sometimes to mean were mean,
I am now less than the meanest thing...
Because my center never measured near the mean?

Who is the nihilist now?
Who the destroyer
Of unsanitized themes?
Whose hands here are most unclean?

Who is wrong?
And who is hubristic enough to think he can determine what that means?
Who makes naught now, where aught once was,
And deems it a good deed?