Gees

That is what I thought. Your bizarre personal attacks on me having been consistent for weeks now. How did you ever get the idea that your attacks were warranted? Is it because I didn't fight back? If I don't state that I think you are full of BS, that means that I accept your nonsense? Is that what you think? You may know about science, but when you are in the Philosophy forum, you are usually quoting someone else or talking out your backside. Do you even know the difference between science and philosophy? I will give you a hint: it has nothing to do with the "blender" you alluded to. A job, not a profession, which you worked for a very short time? As I alluded to. Maybe they didn't know you gossiped about the clients. Like we didn't know that already. The takeaway is that psychotic disorders can be very frightening, because psychotic people can be very frightening. Any other conclusion that you come to is bullshit. You should not lie to a person, who has spent a lifetime studying truth. Even if you are not called on it, that does not mean that your lies are accepted, even when you do not know you are lying. What do you know of my areas of expertise, knowledge, or judgement? I'll tell you what I know about yours. You couldn't think your way out of a paper bag. You follow the accepted standard and popular truths, whether they are true or not -- because it is safer. But not you. Not in Philosophy, or in psychiatry, and definitely not in psychology. Since I have decades of engaging with delusional people, I think you are wrong. The mention of men-in-black was in response to another poster's question about a delusional person worrying about men-in-black (Exchemist). Maybe you are having a reading problem, or is it comprehension? Good advice. Maybe you should take it. Gee

I would like to suggest that at least one of the reasons is that we do not differentiate as to solutions between psychotic personalities, obsessive compulsive personalities, slow thinkers, and simple depression -- which are very different problems. In this thread, all of these and more have been mentioned implying that these problems are similar, or the same, and could possibly be resolved in the same way, which is of course nonsense. They are very different problems requiring very different resolutions. Another reason is that some problems are accepted and some are not. I believed that my Aunt was mentally retarded for most of my life, then finally learned after she died that she was actually schizophrenic. My family told me that she was retarded because that was more acceptable than schizophrenia, but her school records that we found after she died told us that she was no where near retarded. She was very bright and valedictorian of her class. Did you know that high IQ, genius, and schizophrenia all tend to run together in families? Coincidence? You respond by talking to him about the reality around him, but never scaring him. Avoid anger, fear, and argument, while pointing out the pleasant and good things in your surrounding reality. Eventually this should pull him out of the delusion long enough to get treatment/help. I don't think that sharing your terror with the general public is a very good way to help your patients/clients avoid stigmatization, no matter what you would like to think is possible. I'm guessing you didn't work there very long. I very seriously doubt that psychiatry is going to come up with many answers. A hundred years ago, in Hellen Keller's time, they were locking people up together with TB patients, syphilis patients, mentally retarded, psychotic, deaf, and just plain willful people in institutions. Seventy years ago, they were still giving people with mental disabilities shock treatments and ice baths -- I know because my Aunt got them. I suppose I should be grateful that she wasn't given a lobotomy, although that may have been because we could not afford the surgery. In short, psychiatry has not been fixing people with mental disabilities, it has been making these people more acceptable to the general population. Psychiatry is testing a whole new crop of medicines through our jail system, which encourages criminalizing abhorrent behavior and enriches pharmaceutical companies. I think a change of attitude of the general population is required. Gee

This response sums it up nicely. +1 When we see someone with a physical disability, we see the problem and feel sympathy for the victim of this accident of nature or luck. But when we meet a person with a mental disability, we do not see the problem, we do not feel sympathy -- we feel fear. We see someone who is not responding to people, or the situation, as they should; and we have no idea of how they will act, what they will say, or what they will do. This unpredictability frightens us, so fear is the predominant reaction (as has also been mentioned by some of the other members above). Then, of course, we have movies like, Psycho, and news headlines that exaggerate the danger this person may impose on us. The truth is that mentally disabled people are more dangerous to themselves, than they are to us. We are much more likely to be attacked by a perfectly rational mean person, who is pissed off, than we are in danger from a psychotic person -- as they usually hurt themselves. Many years ago, I stopped at the bank on my way home from work, and as I entered the lobby, I saw a man, who was obviously upset, and he was shouting about a bus. The bank employees that surrounded him were telling him that he had to leave. After I finished my business with the teller, I was walking back through the lobby and realized the situation had escalated. Now the bank employees were threatening to call the police, the man was close to hysterics and still complaining about the bus, and I realized a few things. 1. There was a bus stop right in front of the bank. 2. This man had mental disabilities. 3. If the bus did not come on schedule, this man had no ability to adjust and find an alternate way home. 4. The bank employees demands were useless, because this man had no idea of where to go to get home -- and the bank employees could see this, but didn't care. When I asked, the bank employees told me that I was putting myself in danger and should wait for the police. I ignored them. I walked up to the man and asked how far he lived. He told me where home was (about a mile) but he gets lost if he tries to walk it. I told him that I had a car and could take him home. He was so relieved, and thanked me profusely. He even tried to pay me, but I told him it was on my way so there was no cost and I would enjoy the company. When I got him home, he smiled like it was Christmas morning and thanked me again. I wonder how many people have criminal arrest records for things like disturbing the peace, simply because other people are afraid of them. If you meet someone like this, try to remember that he may not be able to respond well to you, but you can listen and respond to him. Tell him to look around, there are no men in black, zombies, etc., in the room. He is safe. Always let him know that he is safe. Gee

Again, I ask, "Is there some reason you are being a sarcastic ass?" Gee

Is there some reason you are being a sarcastic ass? Gee

Those were the good old days. I think it had everything to do with the Fall of Rome. I have just spent an hour researching this Fall in Wiki, and it was much worse than I knew. I thought of Rome as a city, or maybe a country, but it was so much more -- it was more like an entire continent that slowly collapsed over hundreds of years. What I found was the Antonine Plague 165 - 180, the Crisis of the third Century which included climate change, pandemic disease, changing to Christianity as an exclusive religion, and the imminent end of the world. Then there were the military and political failures and the Little Ice Age and the Plague of Justinian to name a few things. There is more and you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire As Rome was slowly collapsing, the state religion, Christianity, was slowly picking up the pieces. It is not surprising that the eventual collapse left the Church in charge of the writings/information. Maybe the Church wanted to hide the information, or maybe the Church no longer trusted the failed government and wanted to protect the information. Regardless, the result was the Dark Ages and as I suspected, fear was the motivator. Yes, Muslims, South Africans, Asians, North and South Americans, actually everyone who was not Christian retained knowledge. What a coincidence? I don't think it was quite that simple. Trump saw a truth that no one else was looking at, or that they did not want to admit, and it was about the young American white male. After World War II, the men came home to an unrecognizable life. The women were in the factories and liked making money. No one could use babies as an excuse to keep the Moms at home because the government pushed the idea of bottle feeding to get women into the factories during the war and convinced everyone that nursing was not clean as it could not be sterilized. Then came birth control and state run programs to protect women from angry husbands and to give women and children support. Then came civil rights which gave black workers/students advantages over white workers/students. Then came no fault divorce. Lots of laws. Each one of these things can be good on their own, but when put together, a man has no reason to work, no family that he has power over, no reason to care. The suicide rates for young men went through the roof. Then Obama became President. In the unconscious, the part represents the whole. This means that if a black man (the part) is President and is above you, then all black men (the whole) are above you. Racism is not a dead issue, especially in the South. MAGA was born, and Trump capitalized on it. When Obama first ran, I did not vote for him because he was an intelligent young man (maybe a little too young) who understood law, and he had a beautiful intelligent wife, and two adorable little girls. And I did not want that family wrecked, because I know racism still exists, and I live in Michigan. I can't argue any of this. Gee

My understanding is that this constant splitting is also because of the unconscious, and falls under the idea of Generalization. From Matte Blanco's Wiki page on the unconscious: "1) The principle of Generalization: here logic does not take account of individuals as such, it deals with them only as members of classes, and of classes of classes." Nobody interprets truth the exact same way as others do because truth is subjective. Since the unconscious does not account for individual interpretations, it either disposes of the individual interpretation or assigns it to a class, which causes the split. This does not happen in all groups, but it does happen in groups guided mainly by emotion -- totalizing ideologies. Of course splitting can not go on indefinitely as there will eventually be nothing to split -- which is the only good news about totalizing ideologies. I agree. It would be a mistake to equate all religious ideologies to totalizing ideologies, as some do. I agree it is a lot like tribalism and plays a part in every group that I have ever seen or that I could imagine. It is even here in this forum. If a member is a science person, they are well accepted. But if they are not, then they have to work for acceptance. This idea shows up in the up/down votes. The forum doesn't use fear to control people, but does use down vote disapproval to control people's responses. Gee

This made me chuckle and grin. You can't agree that people may have been stupid back then and follow that up with a reference to the 'classical' era. The people, who lived in the classical era were not stupid, but the fall of Rome around the fifth century coincided with a lot of misery -- which can make people stupid, according to Blanco. Should dictate? I don't think that "should" had much to do with it. Using the word, should, implies that this was a decision. It was not -- unless you are talking about the people trying to lead, rather than the ones who are led. The conscious aspect of mind is rational -- we call it the rational mind. The unconscious is strongly influenced by emotion and is not rational. We are talking about an emotional reaction, not a conscious decision. I remember either a book or a movie about bank robbers. The leader shot a bunch of bullets into the ceiling making the people scream, then he said, "If you can get them pissing down their legs, they are easier to control." He was right. So what made the early Christians suddenly afraid of dying and going to Hell? What caused them to think they were going to die? The fall of Rome? Or was there more? What caused the fall of Rome? First there was the classical era, then there was Augustine, then there were the Crusades, then there was Aquinas, then there was the renaissance. The knowledge was never "lost". It was hidden. These are the main points that surrounded the 'Dark Ages'. The classical era gave us Plato, Aristotle, Thales, Socrates, and many others. People were not stupid at that time. In the fifth century AD, Rome fell and no doubt other tragedies contributed to that fall. Augustine's work came to light and his distrust of science became apparent. I think he hated Aristotle. Augustine thought that "God's" word alone (the church's word) should determine right and wrong, guilt and innocence, so this thinking validated just war, or "God's" war, and it prohibited a large amount of knowledge from leaving the church archives, hence the Dark Ages. The really ironic part of this is that Augustine's ideas about just war allowed the Crusaders to go into the middle east to spread "God's" word, or to collect gold, (whichever you believe) and while there they found Aristotle's work, Plato's work, and this little thing called a zero, which changed math. Then Aquinas, et al, studied this information, rewrote church doctrine, and threw open the doors of the church to knowledge ushering in the renaissance and closing the doors to the Dark Ages. I don't think they had TV stations or the internet back then, so you are talking about Trump now. You are Canadian and I can not blame you for feeling frustrated with the United States right now, but I want to tell you that I am American and never voted for Trump. I know a lot of people are going to start denying that they voted for him, but I truly did not. I found him to be an embarrassment. I also remember 911 and remember that my President, Bush, in his fear forgot that airplanes can not stay in flight indefinitely. He ordered that passenger airplanes with hundreds of Americans on board not be allowed to land -- which was insane. Canadians, not insane, allowed the planes to land on Canadian soil and saved hundreds of American lives. I will never forget this and neither will my children. I can't argue with any of this and agree with most of it -- if not all of it. But what I was trying to state was not how these totalitarian regimes work, but why they are accepted in the first place. From Blanco's Wiki page: " "unconsciousness" is marked by symmetry, where there is a tendency towards 'sameness' and likewise, an implicit aversion to 'difference' " This 'same' verses 'difference' describes most of the processing of information in the deep unconscious and is the source of our bias. We also have a 'self' verses 'other' in the unconscious which together with the 'same' v 'difference' triggers our prejudices. You might think that we can or should dispose of these triggers, but we can't because many of our survival instincts are also tied to the same triggers. What we can do is recognize that when someone tries to make you afraid, they are trying to control you. We don't have to let them. Gee Sethoflagos: I missed that typo, but am glad you caught it. What fun. +1

No doubt, many of us have noted this problem and wondered about it. But a few years ago, I ran into a pretty good explanation as to why/when this happens. I wish I had saved the article; I didn't and can't remember all of the details, but it told about floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, and famines, etc, or all manner of miseries that made people afraid. Many of these happened at the same times as these religious and political upheavals and also happened during the organizing of the early Catholic Church -- around 400/500 AD. Prior to that article, I had always blamed Augustine (who was a prolific writer) for the work which created most of the Church doctrine at that time and validated the idea of "just war", or war in "God's" name. I did wonder why people accepted his ideas of just war, heaven and hell, the City of God, the idea that Mary of Magdalene was a prostitute, that witnesses, logic, and evidence were irrelevant, which ushered in the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that I saw as nonsense. I just thought that people must have been stupid back then. Then I read the article and realized that I was wrong. The people weren't stupid, they were afraid. We are not talking about normal fear, we are talking about life changing fears caused by floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, famines, etc. This kind of fear shuts down the conscious rational aspect of mind, so we work instead through the sub/unconscious aspect of mind, which does not process information in the same way. Swansont was probably right and should have moved this thread to psychology. But I am not sure if there are enough members who study psychology to make it worth the move. I am not a psychologist, but have looked into it because of my studies of consciousness, so I have learned a few things. The first thing to note is that emotion always works through the sub/unconscious, and the unconscious has it's own logic. Bianco calls it bi-logic. You can look up more about Bianco's very well accepted and clinically tested ideas here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Matte_Blanco Suffice it to say that if you can make people afraid, you can access their emotional logic. Trump knew this. I am tired now and will finish this later. Gee

Again. What is it you are looking for? The simplest explanation is that truth reflects reality and fact defines that truth. This is the whole reason why truth is subjective and fact is objective. Think of each and every life form as a mirror reflecting whatever it experiences, so it reflects its own subjective experience, its own truth. When communication happens through shared experience, emotion, or maybe language, then we can get an objective truth, which we will then define and negotiate between us to create fact. Have you looked at my post on Page 2 of this thread? The one that dimreepr put the big red down-vote on because he was admittedly feeling pissy? I wrote that while working in a philosophy forum and it was very well received. The members there thought it was a very good, comprehensive, study of truth, especially for an amateur philosopher. I copied it to this forum years ago and recently found it in archived threads. The study of truth can also tell us about fact since fact is based on truth. I can't trust anything that iNow says. Misinformation likes to play with truth and fact. Well, I don't really agree with you, but I can agree to set these other questions aside. OK This says that fact can be wrong, it can even be iffy, but still be called fact. Much like the idea that I can be called a convicted murderer and treated like a convicted murderer, even though I never killed anyone. When we define a truth and classify it, we create fact, but that is no guarantee that we are right. This means that it is a true reflection of reality. All reflections are not true. Sometimes we have a bad mirror and are wrong, which is why we compare with others to try to obtain an objective truth -- fact. Tautologies are covered under the title of Conceptual truths in my post. They are always true because we set up the rules of the game. Yes there are different kinds of facts and different kinds of truths. Maybe you could go back to page 2 and review my post. Maybe someone could take that big red down vote off of it, so that people might take it more seriously. When I wrote it, I called it 'A Measure of Truth' because that is what we do. We are constantly trying to improve our knowledge and measure our truths. By the way, I have a question for you. As I noted earlier in this thread, I suspect that all of reality is based on motion and balance. Recently I have noted that emotion is also based on balance and have been wondering if it is real, like you mentioned that a shadow is real. I have also been considering that math may be real. It occurred to me that simple math can not be done without a balance point, an equal or less than or more than sign. Is math also real? Seth posted something about math at the top of this page and I found it interesting, but thought I would ask you since you seem to know a great deal about math. Gee

Well, that's a good question. Do we think in dreams, or are they just memories? I don't know. The study of consciousness is a massive study that encompasses all of religion, most of philosophy, and probably half of science, so five lifetimes of study would not be enough to fully understand it. Here is what I do know: Neurology says that we store information in the unconscious -- so there is that. Psychology gives us Freud, Jung, Bianco, and many others. Freud's work was not well accepted, but his interpretation of dreams is still well regarded. Jung understood the unconscious better than most, and learned a lot about the "God" concept with regard to the unconscious. Bianco used math to discover, I think six, levels or maybe he called them stratums in the unconscious. ( I have no idea of how he did this. ) The deepest of these did not accept time constraints, so logic does not work there. Most people will not accept the idea of thought, without thinking also being present, and thinking does not work without time and logic. In these deeper levels, if Mary is Rose's mother, then Rose is Mary's mother. These levels do not recognize time, only relationships. Is this thinking? I don't know but the work is fascinating. One has to wonder if truth fits in here because fact certainly does not seem to. Probably. Gee

Why would you think that I am standing out on a limb? This sounds personal. Of course, you can look up the definition of thought in a variety of ways, i.e., Google, dictionaries, etc., but that is not what you want to know. You want my definition of thought, so here goes: I study consciousness and all manner of things that are incorporated into that idea, mind, psychology, life, etc., but mostly I study how the things work. Thought is a product of the rational aspect of mind and can be manipulated in order to produce thinking and ideas. We control most of our thoughts and use them to guide our lives, make our decisions, etc. We are aware of our thoughts. No. It requires knowledge, but not necessarily thought or a conscious mind. Knowledge can come from DNA, but that does not cause thinking. Most people in this forum will tell you that thinking requires a brain, so plants and some others could not possibly think or have thoughts. When one person told me that consciousness required a brain, I responded by saying that spiders, fleas, and flies must be conscious because they all have brains. That person quit talking to me. If you want to make the argument that all living specie have thoughts, go ahead. I don't want to participate, but can I watch? 😀 Gee Yes. You missed it. Please note that I have not forgotten your snarky response about me, re: "truthiness", in the last thread where we communicated. I also noted that there was no apology. If you are not going to post in good faith, this will be my last response to you. Fact is an objective, created and/or defined digital truth, and is artificial. Truth is a subjective, analog reflection of reality through emotion and/or experience, and is natural. imo Gee

OK. Here I disagree. I think there have been some very good answers and wonder why you think there has been no comprehensive answer. What would satisfy you? Well, some of the people are dead wrong and some others understand just a portion of what is truth and how it works. I am going to be frank here and say that most of the members are science people. They study fact, not truth, so they are not as informed about truth and just a tad biased toward fact. If you really want to understand this issue, maybe you could tell me where you see conflict, explain the contradictions that you see, and maybe together we can work this out. It might also be beneficial if you could tell me where there is agreement. Surely some of the responses are in agreement. We can use the agreements as a base to build understanding. Oh, it was clear. What was not clear was the equivalent with regard to fact. You see the problems with truth, but do not see the problems with fact. Models, plots, maps, graphics, and schemas all have nothing to do with emotion. All of those things can exist quite well without emotion and have nothing to do with it. You are confusing the issue. This is closer to true than any other thing in your post. So if a fact is a partial model of truth, then couldn't we say that the fact is artificial? second hand? not actually true? Reflexes work through the sub/unconscious aspect of mind and so are automatic responses which do not require thought -- very much like emotion. Gee Harry is an orphaned infant put in the care of people, who do not care for him. I think everyone can identify with the fear that kind of helplessness engenders. Emotion is not illusion and transfers among people very easily. Haven't you heard of the riot or mob mentality? Emotions can transfer from person to person while getting stronger with each person. There is no problem with 'loss of signal'. The problems arise when the feeling finally dissipates and the people are horrified to recall their behavior while under the influence of such strong emotion. This sharing of emotion is common in many specie and I suspect that emotion was the first language in many specie. So startling a bird can cause thousands to take to the air. Startling a cow can cause a stampede. Gee

I suspect just the opposite. I see a thought as a piece of an idea. So if I think of a thought, '50 years' -- what does that mean? What is the idea? The mortgage will be paid off? I will start looking forward to retirement? It will be half a century? Or maybe I will be a grandparent. These are all ideas that the original thought could be part of. I don't think that emotion can be thought. Emotion is a feeling. For many years, decades, I wondered if emotion carried thought, or if thought activated emotion, as both seemed to be true at different times. Then when I was corresponding with a Physics/Philosophy Professor at Duke University, he said that thought has no power. He explained that if we take our greatest thoughts and write them down or record them on a CD, then store them away, we will find that in five, or fifty, of thousands of years, they will have done nothing. The paper may deteriorate, but the thoughts will have done nothing. Thought has no power on its own. I am leaning toward the idea that emotion is the motivator, not thought. But I am still not sure. All the best stories are based on truth, and that truth is a reflection of something and was caused by emotion. Gee

I like a lot of your posts and think you understand truth better than most. But this post shows me that you also have very good instincts. Gee