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April 26th, 2009

cprevite said :

Welcome to Fluther. Excellent answers on the child pageant question.

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• April 28th, 2009

  Do you think those with personality disorders are born or made that way? (or both)

  The morality you speak of isn’t based on an individual’s own values. It’s based on the values that society enforces on them, via reward/punishment. This is known as “conditioning”, and has nothing to do with mental health. To the contrary, it has to do with molding a person’s behavior to conform to pack/tribal values. And, in a sexually repressive society, this molding requires the individual to stifle and suffocate their own healthy sex drives. This results in the bio-electric short-circuiting of the body’s natural sexual current, manifesting in neurosis which is clinically defined as the tension that exists between the release of a drive and its constant frustration. The theory is, we have to remember that the human being is just a sophisticated mammal. That’s all. A sophisticated, well-groomed animal. No other animal race stifles their urges like the human race does. No other animal species suffers from the horrid mental illnesses that plague humanity. And so the theory goes as such: if we trust that humanity will self-regulate its own urges, we don’t have to worry about all this inculcation of good/evil. This dichotomy wasn’t exactly devised by a group of well-meaning citizens down at the local library, by the way. The good/evil, us vs. them, you’re-evil-if-you’re-not-moral idea was enforced by the leaders of nations, to keep its people in a perpetual state of anxiety and, consequently, powerlessness. This is what gives me tremendous compassion for “society”. There is no society. We are all just individuals in pursuit of pleasure and meaning. However, when a human’s basic drives are thwarted, secondary symptoms develop. This is what morality does. It teaches original sin, that we are f’d up by nature and need to be controlled. Do you see why governments enforced this? Do you see why they no longer need to enforce it? That’s right: we make it easy on them now. Anyway, when these secondary symptoms form, the primary drives are repressed. And this is where humans can no longer be trusted, and they feel the need to enact morals. The secondary drives are truly miserable, and quite dangerous. The problem with the moralists is that they believe that the secondary drives are primary. They believe that violence is a basic human character trait, for instance, rather than a sublimation of the powerful sex energy that gets repressed at a very early age. They see anal-compulsion as being “born into us”, rather than formed by pathological parents and their horror over fecal matter. This is the illusion of the need for morality. There is no more original sin in the human than there is in the orangutan, and any insistence otherwise amounts to animal chauvinism. Which is pretty laughable when you consider how alive most other animals are in comparison to humans. I don’t know you, but I have this feeling that you actually read practically every word of a post that you’re interested in, unlike some people in this thread. Which is really admirable. And so hopefully I’ve been coherent enough to lay out exactly what my attitude is towards morality. I don’t believe that freedom is the apex of human existence. To the contrary, it is the prerequisite to said human’s ability to make the most of his/her life and the right of all. Morality must be eradicated for this to happen. Will many humans flip out and go on a rampage without it? Of course, because these are the very humans that were damaged by it in the first place. But in order that we may invite a population into a world free from such diseases as morality, that sacrifice is worth it. The people who need morality are already dead. Let the living experience life, and no less.
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• April 28th, 2009

  When you're feeling down, how much of the cause do you think is emotional, and how much physical?

  @Trustinglife Tired of getting “whacked”? Not at all. I didn’t know that I was being whacked. Just a group of people that are staggering around, confused on how to go about getting information that they don’t really want in the first place, but want to sound intelligent while they reject it. I don’t take it personally. Hell, it’s not my theory, and I didn’t go to prison for it. Reich did. Andyou are absolutely correct: Reich was very frustrated, and its a little hard not to sympathize with the man, but I do think that was a defect of his. He was very enthusiastic about his work and his findings, and unfortunately made some very powerful enemies. Einstein did warn Reich of his enthusiasm after failing in his brief experiments to notice temperature changes that Reich had suggested occurs in orgone experiments. Maybe more ominously, Freud warned Reich to be cautious with the energy he was playing with. Sorry you perceive my approach as unfriendly, my friend. It’s really a mistake however to make such judgments about words you read on your computer screen, as your probably well aware. No animosity here. You can read my apathy as non-hostile, and I don’t mind your feedback at all. In fact, you are the only respondent yet that actually bothered to read anything about Reich. If you are “turned off to Reich” based on an exchange that occurred on the Internet between a mix of people who were both educated and ignorant about Reich’s theories, then you may wish to consider a more open-minded criteria for assessing the values of a person who himself isn’t even personally involved in this discussion. I am not Wilhelm Reich’s personal spokesman. I am someone who has benefited from using his techniques and has seen remarkable change in myself and others. I am also fully aware that, due to the general state of stasis anxiety in the masses and their reluctance to accept new ideas, most people in today’s society will reject any method that professes to free them. People are comfortable living in their heads, not their bodies. They reject their bodies, and thus are in conflict with them. How is the body then expected to react? This imbalance directly addresses you original question, by the way, which i think I owe it to you to address before we get too far out on the topic of Wilhelm Reich, the scientist. I do, believe it or not, care about “us”, “you”, “them” and society as a whole, believe it or not. I am also realistic to know that most people, just like the sad examples above, will reject ideas that are new and offend the personal reality structures that they live in. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It is predictable behavior, and if I’m guilty of anything, it’s temporarily treating them as though they are open to new ideas, when that simply is not the case. Unlike Reich, I don’t have the idealist approach that the world is just too f’d up to accept my ideas. They aren’t f’d up at all. They are merely comfortable repeating their same existence, with their same dogmas, same morality. Humans are still at that level of consciousness right now. That’s ok. It won’t stop me from throwing stuff out there and seeing who pursues it. In the meantime, I just go about my own work. Someone threw some things out to me one day when I still had my drive to experiment. Occasionally – but not often – I am able to repay the favor by floating something out in the sea of society’s futility that may benefit someone equally as bold. Thanks for the response. Hope that cleared some things up for you about my whole approach to this.
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• April 28th, 2009

  Do you think those with personality disorders are born or made that way? (or both)

  How does a human being even function without morality?? How? You’re currently looking at words that are being typed by a human who functions quite well without morality. Sorry if that offends your…morality. lol That’s cool, it’s been fun. Sorry that you are having such a negative reaction to my lack of need for morality, and for the disturbing revelation that people in today’s society are obsessed with the topic of children and sex. I have never seen a society as obsessed as this one. Do they get as titillated when they hear a child has been maimed by a pit bull? No. They just yell, “Shoot the dog!” and it’s over. Children have and are still being beat senseless, and what is the reaction? Oh well, that’s terrible! Some people even condone it. But throw sex into the picture, and watch the crowd build up. I guarantee you that if the news was allowed to show footage of a child getting raped on the Internet, you and every other moralizing “child lover” would have their nose pressed to their monitors, drooling like a rabid dog. Oh, of course in horror. You would essentially be watching child pornography. And you know what? You’d justify it. Every. Single. Oneofyou. Hope you read this, and really don’t care if you didn’t. I knew at the very outset of this conversation that it would wind up with you being horrified. This is very formulaic and predictable. To you, I am an immoral pervert. To me, you are just another statistic with moderate hysterical symptoms. I will continue to live without the need for morals. You will continue to preach morality. And while all this is happening, society will continue to cannibalize itself.
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• April 28th, 2009

  When you're feeling down, how much of the cause do you think is emotional, and how much physical?

  @daloon That’s very amusing: someone is “obstructive” if they don’t provide web links? If I did give you some links, would you like me to read you the webpages to you, too? Translate some words that are hard for you to understand? Turn off your computer for you when you’re done? You’re right: I don’t care. I’m not here to “persuade” anyone; is that the way you conceptualize it when someone raises a point that you don’t like and challenges you to find the information you want to refute on your own? The main reason why I don’t go around and source out links is precisely because I suspect that someone who is too lazy/disinterested to look up information themselves is probably also too lazy to read through it. You will form your opinions based on the bits and pieces that you understand/are tolerant of, and ignore everything else. And whereas that’s totally your prerogative to read it any way you see fit, it is similarly my prerogative not to waste time in a discussion with someone who is entirely uneducated. If you would like to discuss it in depth with me: read his books. Learn his techniques. Otherwise, you are the “obstructive” one, and yes, I don’t care. I can, will and have discussed and debated Reich with others who at the very least took the time to educate themselves, and there was much mutual learning in the process. No one threw links or books at me. I went out and tried it myself. Try it sometime. Or don’t. Who really cares? I don’t. I have information that you don’t have. If you want it, find it. If you have questions after reading what you’ve found thoroughly, let’s discuss it. Otherwise…I think you know what I’d suggest.
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• April 28th, 2009

  When you're feeling down, how much of the cause do you think is emotional, and how much physical?

  @nikipedia I don’t “take exception” to your method of experiment at all. I merely pointed out that you start out with a bias and your motivation is to discredit a theory right from the outset, rather than approach it with an open mind. And you know what? i could care less, really. I’m not trying to sell you a theory. You questioned something that I wrote to someone else, and if you want to find out more about it, I’ll say it to you slowly one-more-time: Find Out For Yourself. You’re a scientist, right? What scientist goes around begging for links to websites? I found out about Reich because I went out and purchased his existing books. And then do you know what I did? I experimented on myself. If you actually have any guts at all as a real scientist, why don’t you try it out for yourself and record the results? Here’s a bone for you: start with Reich’s “The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety” if you are not brave enough to actually try the experiments on yourself and just prefer to mentally ruminate over your desk. If you are serious, find the information yourself, refute it, and do let me know what you came up with. That way, if it was all wrong, I can let everyone who has received treatment from his amazing technique know that they are free to become neurotic, compulsive and self-loathing again. Sorry if it seemed like I was insulting your writing style by the way. Just pointing out an obvious pattern that seemed contrary to your claim to have a scientific outlook. No offense there.
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