Psycho-Babble Social Thread 1110297

Shown: posts 1 to 20 of 20. This is the beginning of the thread.

 

Are you scared of death?

Posted by Lamdage22 on May 22, 2020, at 13:12:42

I used to be, but now not so much anymore. I think if you do mostly good things in life, you have nothing to worry about.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 16:03:52

In reply to Are you scared of death?, posted by Lamdage22 on May 22, 2020, at 13:12:42

Dying, or being dead?

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 23:40:00

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 16:03:52

Has to be dying, right?

Maybe some of the fear of death has to do with a fantasy that you will be able to experience being dead, that you will be alive when you are not?

Death? Just like it was before I was born, nothing to complain about.

Given you have experienced nothing without having been alive to do it, there is no impartial viewpoint. I'm looking forward to it. 'Choose life', I know, but being dead sounds like fun to me, so peaceful. I don't share the desire to self-perpetuate.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 24, 2020, at 7:34:53

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 23:40:00

I don't believe it is like anything at all to be dead.

Dying... Yes.

I feel so many regrets, already. Not because of bad decisions that I have made or because of things I have or haven't done...

But because of the world around me.

I wish I'd never been born.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by Lamdage22 on May 24, 2020, at 9:54:40

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 23:40:00

Interesting thought. So you recall how it was?

> Death? Just like it was before I was born, nothing to complain about.
>
> Given you have experienced nothing without having been alive to do it, there is no impartial viewpoint. I'm looking forward to it. 'Choose life', I know, but being dead sounds like fun to me, so peaceful. I don't share the desire to self-perpetuate.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:22:24

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by Lamdage22 on May 24, 2020, at 9:54:40

I think it is a... Meme. I don't think 'meme' is the right word...

I feel like there was some discussion or something someplace that is supposed to be common-knowledge -- but I don't remember what the discussion was, exactly, or who the people were...

The the outcome was supposed to be that nobody remembers being born. Maybe even that it is impossible to remember being born.

I think when I did psychology there was something about limits to memory and why it is that we can't remember things any earlier than toddler-hood.

I have some very distinct memories from toddler-hood. Apparently most people do not. Many of my toddler-hood memories are about emotionally significant moments in my toddler-life.

Being pushed / falling down the stairs was a shock to me. Indignant wah!

Falling through a glass window-seat. Indignant! Also stitched! Wah!

`Helping' a neighbour water flowers between our sections. Blabbity blab blab blab blab...

Then many... Maybe memories. But maybe 'rememberings' that have been articulated more recently when I looked through photograph albums.

I also remember aspects of learning to read. Mostly how painful it was to me to have my mother read to me, after that. I remember many of the childhood books. Dr Seuss, usually. Phenomes and rhyming stories. I learned when I was 3, you see. I remember spending most of 4 'interviewing' at schools because I really really really wanted to go to school (my brother was 10 years older and I wanted to be just like him). And get away from Mother. But the principles would rubbish rubbish pooh pooh my reading. Saying I memoried the words and wasn't reading really. Saying I might be pattern recognising the words but I didn't understand the meanings really. Saying I might understand the meanings but I didn't understand the stories / the themes.

Of course nobody asked me reading comprehension questions.

But I remember wondering: What more is there to reading? There is supposed to be something more to reading? Something I am not getting. Soemthing everybody else I know can do -- but I can't. What can they do that I can't? Where are the meanings?

Death is not something to fear because death is not *lived through*. I think Wittgenstein said that.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:31:53

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:22:24

And I had encyclopedias and dictionaries. And my mother would encourage me to look things up. So I would ask 'why is the sky blue'?

And the encyclopedia had a section on that... And... I never asked again after that. I swears.

But I meant... When I look at something blue it looks a certain special way. ANd when I look at something yellow it looks a certain special other way. And it is possible (in some sense of possible) that when you look at something like the sky you have the experience that i have when i look at lemons. ANd when you look at lemons you have the experience that i have when i look at the sky.

And what I meant when I asked 'why is the sky blue' was why it looks the certain special way to me that it does... Instead of looking yellow.

qualia. phenomenology.

And still nobody knows what waves and particles have to do with it.

but maybe i don't understand *meanings*.. but seemed to me that they changed the question. didn't understand the question i asked. reading comprehension fail.... from somebody. for sure.

what i didn't learn was the pronounciation guide in the dictionary. saying works correctly was harder. my mother 'guesses' a lot of pronounciations wrong. too. and i guess sometime that is reflected in spelling.

i guess i am not afraid of dying becuase i don' tthink death is something that i will live through. i don't think there is anything that it is like to be on the other side of it. there is no through it... it is the cessation of experience. no more what it is like to be me. no more suffering. no more sadness. no more regret.

i regret that i couldn't accomplish more with my life. i feel sad. wasted potential. never allowed to accomplish anything. not allowed to achieve anything. constantly crying for basic needs. constantly turned back and denied and not allowed. never allowed. thats the story of my life.

but i guess all the pain and suffering associated witht aht will cease on my death.

somehow that makes it worse.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:41:13

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:31:53

because it just gets me thinking

why was i born at all?

why did it have to be like anything, anything, anything at all to be me?

________


and of course that's why i did philosophy.

why i turned to philosophy. why i was interested in learnign abuot various aspects of philosophy.

but the field came to be populated with people who are in it for...

the money.

for the company. becuase they were attracted to staying with the people who were already there. and / or the people who wanted to be there. and / or the people who were working to be there.

and 'what do you mean by x' tagged in front of something was mistaken for a good question. and failure of reading comprehension was mistaken for an insight into possibility. or a failure of reading comprehension was mistaken for intellectual curiosity or whatever. it isn't about deepening our understanding in meaningful ways when it's a basic failure of reading comprehension...

...

...

and i came to find the basic questions i had... the philosophical questions i had were resolved to my satisfaction. the fly had been shown the way out of the fly bottle.

and now it was time to do something else. to answer other questions. to then go on to employ those answers and those understandings to the enlightened task of helping others.

not helping myself to others.

helping others.

not others helping themselves to me.

helping others.

not being exploited by others.

helping others.

but people would rather help themselves to me...
prevent me...
obstruct me...
try and force me to do what *they think* would be good for me (and good for them)

but mostly: they have the power to ignore and confuse and obstruct and prevent and that's what they seem to get on with doing.

i mean...

you do the degree... you do the work for the degree... you get the degree. it's simple. couldn't be any simpler.

but they think they are above the calendar statutes. they think they are above the legislation. they think they are a law unto themselves. they think they can do whatever they want whenever they want because they want.

and since nobody would voluntarily help them they think they will keep slaves tehn.

they don't train the next generation.

they don't even learn from the next generation.

they don't seem to realise how they cripple development.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:51:29

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:41:13

and i think of the little aids babies.

there are standard pictures. you know the ones.

the naked little starving kids with the bloated bellies and the flys feasting on the yellow goo extruding from the corner of their eye.

you know... the christian charity people want us to give them $1 a day so they can help them or help themselves to them or make more of them or something...

and i think:

(about the kid -- not about the 'charity')

what is the difference between you and me?

when many of those kids die when they are infants. toddlers. die before they are 3...

what is the difference between them and me?

when i leave this world i won't have left anything at all that i wanted to go on and accomplish, either.

nothing.

not a single thing.

nada.

thanks world.

why did i have to be born?

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 20:10:33

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:51:29

experiences come in from outside. from our senses. touch. taste. smell. visual. auditory. you get the idea.

we can remember our experiences. vivid memories of intense experiences.

and then there is thinking.

most people think there is an empirical aspect to thinking. where you have an experience (visual or auditory) and then you can remember it -- sort of have it at the forefront of the stage of consciousness or on your workign memory workbench or however you want to understand that for yourself.

and some people think visuo-spatially. they can remember things like maps and they can do things like rotate them or invert them or whatever in their 'minds eye'. there are tasks you can ask those kinds of minds to get at whether they have that capacity... whether they are doing that or not. i imagine that it is a skill that you can develop -- with practice. my mind is not naturally like this. but i have enjoyed developing that capacity. some people's minds are like this. it amazes me. i'm astounded at how well some people can orient and navigate in computer games with map mazes. or driving on roads. or doing supid little object rotation tasks in those kinds of exams.

temple grandin used to say that she thought like that, primarily. visuo-spatial.

i'm fairly verbal. but that doesn't mean i'm good at memorising word lists. i am good at memorising a word list when the word list makes meaningful sense. i don't mean an aribitrary story made up for the purpose of making the word list easier to memorise. i mean a true progressive understanding. i encode for meaning rather than surface form. that means i'm great at 'repeat back what i just said using your own words'. in more recent stuff (that is political) i certain give my own 'slant' (shall we say) -- that is intended to be provokative or a bit tongue in check... that is intended to extend the meaning in a direction that encourages the message giver to backtrack or to pivot...

but it is important not to mistake the above for a failure of reading comprehension.

it is important not to mistake the display of a higher level skill for the failure of a lower level skill.

i thought accomplishment. attainment. of lower levels skills was given. assumed. upon successful completion of undergraduate degree.

but things are very de-evolved...

i think becuase the people in charge / with power have not been progressing tehmselves. joke about how you get tenure then eat your brain. get tenure then never publish anything again. get tenure and all productivity ceases.

people remember stories. another form of remembering. narrative. oral.

it isn't sensory because there's a symbol. a higher level representation. a meaning. that can be expressed with different words. like the formation of a mental map, i guess. where people haven't memorised their 'way around' the map on the basis of landmark 'turn left at the light post' but rather they have a mental map they are using to navigate from.

top down driven by the representations that were formed wehre teh representations are manipulations or abstractions or whatever from the sensory data component of their formation.

ah... philosophy of mind... psychology...

i do understand (and think there is sense to) the idea of a disembodied consicousness.

what would it be like to be me without a body?

i wouldnt be able to see anything -- no eyes. i wouldn't be able to hear anything -- no ears.

i would have my memories of experiences. i would have my mental representations. meanings. maps. i would be able to continue to manipulate those (think about them). that would be my life. it wouldn't be too hot or cold. it wouldn' tbe pleasant or unpleasant. there wouldn't be intensity of emotion (where physiological arousal is an intrinsic component of the stronger emotions). peaceful. i guess. anxiety would be limited by the lack of arousal. pain. unpleasant would be limited. peace.

i guess it could be like that.

in other words: what form of experience *could possibly* live through the death of the body?

it would have to be like that.

unless it could become attached or associated with / to another body.

i don't know that i've seen anybody say anything sensible at all about why i got to be associated with this one. rather than your one. why we don't swap tomorrow. why i don't find myself born as a bug or a bee.

or a rock.

what's it like to be a rock? no sensory experiences (no nervous system).

no sensory data input. i can't imagine that it is like anything at all.

can it do higher math?

i don't see how...

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 20:22:33

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 20:10:33

well it would have to be geometry.

on the basis of a mental map.

but then wouldn't that be an abstraction from someone taking a stick and drawing lines in the dirt that formed a representation of a space that you also were able to physically orient yourself around?

and acquring meanings means hearing people speak. or seeing written word. or seeing sign language.

people thought that you needed sensory experience to be able to think about such things. (empiricists).

other people thought (idealists) that the contents or components of meanings or whatever were supplied by the mind rather than sensory expeirence in the world.

i think the truth is both compoennts are necessary for full development of them. but getting at the *precise contribution from each component* has been interesting.

that's why psychologists got all excited wehn they found this kid who was older than 7 years old who had been kept by her parents in a room and never spoke to her. they thought they could try and teach her language and it would be support for (or against) this idea that you needed exposure to language before age 7 otherwise your brain would hardwire and you could never attain fluency.

they called her 'i dream of genie'. becuase she was a wet dream for a psychologist interested in such things.

but it came out in the criminal trial of her parents that they locked her away and treated her like that because they thought by looking at her / interacting with her that something was wrong with her, already.

so the psychologists lost interest and dumped her in an institution.

but there was this idea that before 7 or you never attain fluency as a native speaker (for deveo of true bilinualism or multilingualism). and they wondered if that might be true for linguistic ability across or over ALL languages. and they were interested in how if she was not able to develop language only becuase of her lack of exposure (otherwise normal cognitive develompent and capacity assumed) then we would know about what language was responsible for by way of seeing what if any other defects or lacks of ability she had.

that was the idea.

they say that about throwing arms, too. before 7 or never at all.

'critical age'.

that way there isn't any point teaching other people's kids -- see?

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 25, 2020, at 23:26:39

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 24, 2020, at 7:34:53

>I wish I'd never been born.

'No greater tragedy than having been born'. Who said that?

There is a passage I like from Ecclesiastes......

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 26, 2020, at 13:55:27

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 25, 2020, at 23:26:39

A search for this sort of thing leads one to Becket.......

Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place, that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 26, 2020, at 15:00:59

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 26, 2020, at 13:55:27

I am surprised to see a review of Anna Kavan's work in the latest NYRB. I first read her 40 or 50 years ago. "Machines in the Head', 'Julia and the Bazooka', 'Ice'. Not as good, I thought, as Jean Rhys, of whose work 'Good Morning, Midnight' deserves special mention. Quite nice to have belonged to a book reading culture.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/05/28/anna-kavan-awful-force-inanimate-things/

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by beckett2 on May 29, 2020, at 19:14:41

In reply to Are you scared of death?, posted by Lamdage22 on May 22, 2020, at 13:12:42

Keanu on death. At 9:49.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNu6NyMkp8k

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by beckett2 on May 29, 2020, at 19:28:59

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 23, 2020, at 23:40:00

>Maybe some of the fear of death has to do with a fantasy that you will be able to experience being dead, that you will be alive when you are not?

Yes, for me. That and not seeing how everything ends.

During my worst depressions, two, I believed myself to be dead. That's not uncommon, except the degree to which I was a leaf discarded from the living tree. Maybe that's not uncommon in depression either.

 

Re: Are you scared of death? » beckett2

Posted by sigismund on May 29, 2020, at 22:29:26

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by beckett2 on May 29, 2020, at 19:28:59

Not uncommon. After all it was/is simply true in the sense you felt it.

I assume you know this, I'm always looking at it....

1 So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. 2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. 3 Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by sigismund on May 29, 2020, at 22:31:55

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death? » beckett2, posted by sigismund on May 29, 2020, at 22:29:26

I'm kind of with Job's wife on this. 'Curse God and die'.

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on June 2, 2020, at 21:20:46

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by sigismund on May 29, 2020, at 22:31:55

i don't suppose there is much difference between regretting nothing and regretting everything. i suppose i regret everything, really.

my masters thesis had a chapter on the Cotard Delusion. named after Jules Cotard a French neurologist (i think) who discovered it. his patients would say they were dead.

i wrote about whether they were delusional in a believing a contradiction sense of denying the cognito 'i think therefore i am'... or if they were expressing a feeling of emotional non-responsivity or numbness in the context of depression. my point was the rather Wittgenstinean one that there are many things that people can do with language (many language-games) and expressing how we feel is surely one of them. clinicians jump all over things sometimes and magnify the problem / issue and make it worse... often to justify their own existence, i think. well, i didn't say that. i didn't know why they seemed to be almost willfully misunderstanding...

but now i know.

i don't regret raging against the machine.

the protest has made me aware that what is going on in medical selection in new zealand is a case of the 'chosen white' choosing people who (they feel) are sympathetic enough to the 'chosen white' cause. of course the majority of them don't see it that way... they think they are being inclusive and so on... in picking a few white-looking members of ethnic minority who maybe pay a sufficient bribe and / or express sympathy / empathy for the 'chosen white' cause...

of course the people who decide who gets to live or die...

acccording to the new york times...

who gets medical tests and medical treatments in the time of scarcity...

_______________

say what you will about Trump...
saying what he did resulted in India increasing output of anti-malerial medications (because they thought it would be financially lucrative to do so because they could sell the medication to rich and stupid americans / to clinicians wanting to take prophylaxix for themselves...)
the medications are being shipped to Brazil so that clinicians in Brazil can look after themselves...
or give themselves heart conditions or whatever...
or give their dose to someone with malaria who cannot afford the medication...
or something.

I am curious about what use he is going to put the money that he is no longer giving to the WHO.

He believes he can make better use of it.

I am excited to see.

Precedent... Looks good for him.

I think.

Actually: Doesn't look good for him. Which is perhaps important. Perhaps an important part in him being able to effect the things that need to be affected. Sometimes adoration can get in the way of efficacy... Because the things you need to do to be adored... To retain adoration...

 

Re: Are you scared of death?

Posted by alexandra_k on June 2, 2020, at 21:29:40

In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on June 2, 2020, at 21:20:46

And that was the trouble with the interview at Otago. It was very 'chosen white'. Every single person on that panel was white. Was 'important' for whatever it was that they were allowed to do. Wanted to be acknowledged and revered for the work they had not done. People who were sufficiently in-bred such that more modern (and inclusive) ideas posed a threat to them.

A threat to last rites of the church.
A threat to giving at risk youth an actual chance.
...

And I don't want to join them.

There is an actual poster up in advertising:

'Success Breeds Success'.

It's a poster advertising the University of Auckland.

There was this really large poster on the back of a bus, too, that was... I don't remember what it said. Something about being the best success you could be. Then a picture of a young Indian (from India) woman with what looked like a really large wedding ring.

Advertising the Univesrity.

They seem pretty determined to take a 'low road' to growth. A sort of a: Just how sh*tty can we advertise things as being and... And still they come. And still people throw thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars at us and hand over their kids to our 'protection' (haha).

ANd their attitude has been 'and who will stop us?'

It is a form of white supremacy on campus.

The grades are given to the 'chosen white' and the training places in professional degree programs and the like.


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