The Engine Room (written in 1994)

THE MEMORY OF LIFE

Bio-mechanics of consciousness and behaviour

We usually do not need to know how a washing machine works, only how to operate it. Should it break down, it needs to be repaired, unless we decide not to use it any more. If we believe the machine operated magically, we won’t be able to make it work again. On the other hand, we may know enough to call for a plumber, unless we decide to fix it ourselves, knowingly or by studying its mechanics. 
    Unlike a washing machine that we buy or rent, we are the builder of our own self. As a creative mind we thus should know how we personally operate. What makes us tick? ... Experiencing depression, we should investigate the bio-stylistic mechanics of behaviour, to eliminate its effects and its recurrences.

The debate between the concepts that behaviour is genetically generated or generated by learning highlights the controversy of the subject, especially as some of us also believe in divine intervention. Tests done on twins tend to encourage the genetic point of view with more than fifty percent probability. 
    In this book we see human behaviour as an extension of evolutionary social skills in which mind-memory, developed through stylistic learning, can become the stronger generator of behaviour ahead of the genetic imprint, which carries aggressiveness and receptivity influencing our basic reactivity. The more creative and aware we are, the less influence our genetic imprint has. Through stylistic learning, we can, and we do, create and manage our behaviour so that our reactivity and activity are more rewarding while we are more aware, within our environment. Stylistic learning makes us in control of what we do. Stylistic learning is more than acquiring knowledge of events. Applied Stylism gives us the ability to create new structures from these events. Yet we can’t deduct that all stylistic learning, and application, is right in its intensity or content. This is why there are many possibilities of conflicts. For example, what we learn can conflict with our genetic trends and our addictions can conflict with our learning. Cultural differences can create conflicts. 
    Stylistic conflicts are more at the source of depression than genetic imprint. Stylistic learning, differentiated from reactive learning, is the source of awareness within and beyond the cultural environment that implements it. Yet making choices in stylistic learning and stylistic behaviour are still biotic processes of memory which influences and modifies its self. We can therefore influence our bio-self by choices of stylistic value. 
    With the correct choices we can influence our bio-self to react more positively and less negatively to events. The more aware we are of this fact, the more we can eliminate depression. The process modifies memory into a more positive memory, rectifying down-turn energies into positive events of learning—keeping fully aware of the reality in order to avoid delusions. 

Very Old Living Creatures
Our body is the generator and the entity of the self. We pamper it, we groom it, we abuse it, we develop it, we ignore it and we feed it regularly. We are a resilient, complex organically active chemical reaction that can last on average 75 years, but, as a continuum of gene creation, is coming from more than three and a half billion years of evolution, through DNA molecules in our genes. Genes are the memory of life. 
    The DNA that induces our existence and development has an very close relationship with the DNA of all other life-forms. More than 98 per cent of our DNA is the same as that of the chimpanzees and more than 60 per cent the same as that of plants.
    Genetic studies have identified specific portions of DNA molecule linked to trends that affect our health, therefore our survival status. 
    Our body is made of billions parts and about 70 per cent water, the lot being assembled in mazes of pipes, filters, structural fixtures, control units and power-plants. It grows and self-maintains from the gene code, constantly processing fuel (food) to sustain activity—while unusable parts are discarded—until its bio-reaction doesnot sustain its original genetic integrity and decays. 
    We are hosts to a great number of other species, from fungus to microbes, bacteria and worms, some beneficial and some harmful. 

The Memory of Life
From genes, all parts of our body possess memory. This memory duplicates and variegates the cells, maintaining the survival of the DNA code. Cells develop a secondary memory, from inter-relationship with the immediate environment in which they survive—such as neighbouring cells and fuel supply—and a tertiary collective memory of activity for a structured assemblage of cells. 

Superior adaptation of memory
In complex cellular organisations, an extended greater memory gathers into a networked bio-structure that encompasses sensors (to light, sounds, touch, etc.) and a series of specialised processors—the various parts of the brain which extend back through all the body as command channels. Experiencing environmental factors through the sensors, the brain `learns’ to differentiate, and eventually choose, between safe and unsafe factors for the body to survive. 
    Discreet modifications to the genes due to environmental factors (food quality, abundance, temperature, etc) or accidental modification —either in quantum steps or in continuum—lead to variegation, a feedback mechanism leading to Evolution (successful feedback creating species differentiation) and to Extinction (feedback unable to match the speed of environmental change). 
    Adaptive survival is achieved on three main fronts: First, through adapted genetic characteristics, second, through the development of a resilient species which does not need to modify genetic material to survive, and third, through development of a social memory (memory of adaptation to environmental factors through communication between individuals rather than personal experience).  The sources of adaptation lead to various quality of survival in each of the individual of a species. 
    Apart from copulation, many animal species have social skills (nest building, courtship, parenting, playing with the young, teaching, searching for food, observing) in order to maintain the momentum of their existence and that of their offspring. These skills come from being aware of their own species’ behaviour and their genetic trends (instincts) to survive. That many animal species can be taught tricks or self-create differentiated social skills to suit environmental factors is part of the complexity of achieving survival within the full range of a genetic map in a specific environment. 
    For example, specific behaviour and appearance characteristics will be bred in dogs, yet dogs are all descendant from wolves. The behaviour characteristic of dogs—agressivity or receptivity—can be manipulated by training and breeding—training being stylistic learning grafted on a genetic imprint. Homo sapiens’ great ability to perform and adjust is reflected in the cultural diversity that includes communicative differentiation of memory through languages and traditions. At a social level, the memory of life is maintained and improved through specific learning which conditions each individual belief-system to belong to the particular group. The divergence between groups, is only a step of Homo sapiens’ evolution through its genetic and stylistic interpretation of its environments. 

A Mind Field
Our brain stores the information incoming through its sensors for survival reference. The stored information is biotic—complex chemical patterns of associations that modify through comparison with former information. A tree is not known as a tree unless we are able to refer to our stored information. We learn to recognise the shape, the smell, the feel of a tree and although we know thus a tree is a tree, it is only a spoken and written symbol other people will know as arbre, aber, etc. A tree in our mind is a network of memory bio-links. This is the most important point in understanding the processes that create a mind. The language of learning is part of the creating processes and influences our ability to adapt, by restricting or encouraging aspects of our behaviour. 
    Having analysed information, we respond through various form of reactivity/activity, striving for survival then for stylistic success. 
    Pain is the relative gauge of failure, physically and mentally.

Processing Information
Mental activity only develops from interaction with information, how simple this information is. Even as a new born baby, being fed milk is an event which develops our responses. Were we not fed, we would suffer from hunger pains, spurring our primal fear. This manifests in cries and uncoordinated movements, until the pain disappears as we are fed, or until we die from lack of support and abandonment from our species. It is probable that, even in the womb, a baby is alert to environmental factors and develops responses.

Dysfunctions in the control system
Many forms of mental problems are due to defects in the complexity of the system. Not only the physical brain can be defective but our sensors can be of mediocre aptitude in providing information (need glasses to see for example). The brain for some reason or another can limit the amount of information processing (‘retardation’), can lose its memory (Alzheimer’s) or be unable to properly communicate learned reflexes (Parkinson’s). On the other hand some functions may be enhanced such as greater memory retention (‘Rain Man’) and greater logic (Einstein). Links between sensors and brain and motors can be damaged (Multiple Sclerosis) where the nerves leak messages from the brain to the wrong motors—the muscles—creating spasms. 
    And last, most importantly, information that has created our belief stack controlling our responses (habits) may be erroneous, in which case our dysfunction stems from the ‘programming’ of bio-memory rather than the hardware. Yet the construct between the programming and the hardware is indivisible. Through targeted stylistic learning, we can thus modify bio-habits, including addictions.

Survival
The diagram below [no diagram inserted on this blog — will post separately] shows the basic elements of the memory of life, including survival (fitness) and its basic indicators (pain, fear and contentment) from which active/reactive mode stems from—creating personality trends, emotions and behaviour when applied in memory. 

Procreative Platform
Procreation is the primary memory motivator of life, encoded in the DNA. It gives individuals the ability to duplicate themselves, in various ways. over billions of years of duplication, the procreative ability has become very sophisticated in variegation and duration of species, yet the life of individuals as a procreative platforms is rather limited. Mortality, so far, is a necessary condition for life to diversify and modify. 

Fitness
Fitness to survive is the defining quality of the procreative platform  and includes hereditary factors. In much of the animal world an unfit individual perishes and is often rejected by its own parents. In our species, due to much advancement in fitness control (medicine) and management of other environmental factors (stylistic viewpoints including morality and ethical grounds), there are many levels of fitness—including genetic disorders and poor health other than the natural optimum—at which we can survive.
    
Pain
Pain is the primary indicator of fitness. Pain measures our level of fitness. Pain is the mechanical part of our genetic map that indicates that our survival is threatened. Pain related to information creates many inhibitors and emotional responses, including fear.

Fear    
Fear should be viewed as the memory of pain. Whether fear is genetically encoded (instinctive) or not, it appears to be the first reactive component of learning from painful events and uncertainty in environmental factor status. 

Contentment
Contentment is the acknowledgement of successful survival in the same manner as fear is the memory of pain. Should our fitness falls below a certain level, our mind experiences pain, generating a reaction to redress the problem, such as a search for food when experiencing hunger. From analysing perceived environmental factors, the mind eventually bypasses pain and reacts directly to the environmental factors to achieve contentment (survival success) while avoiding pain and fear (the memory of pain).
    In many animals species, fear shows up soon after the beginning of life or at the first encounter of unsafe environmental factors inflicting pain (shock to sensors) without destruction. These early encounters have a great influence in the development of behaviour for future survival. 

Environmental factors
These factors are the reality of who we are in where we are. They act upon us as what we see, feel, smell, hear. Environmental factors include formal eduction and accidental events, all of which demand responses, as well as our bio-fitness (internal environment). These factors are generally of two kinds: safe factors which do not present threats to survival—factors that sometimes appear as beneficial—and unsafe factors which do present threats. 
    Not only environmental factors provide essential ingredients for physical survival, such as oxygen and food, our interaction with them shapes learning, as relative interpretations of these factors into stylistic and reactive knowledge. 

Consciousness
Consciousness is the status of personal active/reactive memory of life, at the present moment. Totally dependant on memory, consciousness cannot exist without past, how immediate or small the past is—the flux creating the notion of time. Consciousness can be of high or low degree of awareness, depending on our understanding of the environmental factors, and whether we are awake or asleep.
    We share consciousness with other creatures, although genetic and stylistic evolution has led humans to a more extensive use of tools, such as communicative and dextrous skills, and to a mental processing potential never reached, setting our species in a class of its own. 

The energy of life
Energy=mc2. this most famous equation gives an elegant stylistic interpretation of the relationship between matter and energy. Life is part of this relationship and uses very precise chemical modifications of molecules (matter) to provide energy (heat, motion, thoughts). 
    We need to consume matter to stay alive. We need to process events to be conscious. Even during meditation, sleep or coma, our mind is not arrested, as the mind processes information from within itself, subconsciously. 
    In deep depression, the mind is still operative, although it seems disengaged from aggressiveness and receptivity to some degree. It feels sluggish and awareness is very low. Nothing matters because we could not care less. In high degree of serenity and intense meditation, the mind can also disengage but awareness is very high. Nothing matters because we know we cannot be affected by events. 
    These opposite polarities of the mind between depression and sublimation reside in the control of aggressiveness and receptivity—the two core activities of life. 

Control of the activities of life
In depression we have foregone activity. In order to get out of depression we need to reactivate our aggressiveness or our receptivity, or both simultaneously, while minimising stylistic conflicts. We can do so by choosing a very simple activity that we can perform successfully—success that we acknowledge. We reward our self. By doing so we empower our self to be motivated and the primary challenge of survival becomes how far can we go while avoiding self-destruction. The secondary challenge is to re-arrange our stylistic interpretations in a less conflicting manner. We may have to give up some ideas and adopt new ones. The short cut manual to stylistic happiness near the beginning of the book can help us formulate better concepts. In the longer term we empower our self with the natural energies of life that we can manipulate to our, and others’, advantage through relationships. We reinvent for our self the notion of love, caring and compassion with the full awareness of their stylistic meaning and integration with natural energies.

A matter of life and death
Death occurs when subconsciousness ends. This delicate notion is difficult to establish without reasonable doubt as a body can survive without consciousness, and the assumed death of a structure does not necessarily mean the instant destruction of cells or groups of cells.  The notion of death is an issue for organ transplant. A heart could still be beating and subconsciousness totally gone. 
    Our social codes and cultures have interpreted the concept of death in many ways, giving hope through the belief of after-life. Consciousness—the knowledge of one own existence—has made many of us develop a need to believe it cannot end, We do not often accept death as a terminal event. 
    Death is a natural process for life to continue. Like other life-forms, we grow from very little (a minuscule genetic map), spend energy on survival and stylistic activities, allocate time to reproduce our species with a generation overlap so the continuum is unbroken. Eventually our chemical reaction reaches its end by simple decay, unable to sustain its own momentum, although we often attempt to slow the decay by many means. 
        Death, procreation and adaptation create the variegation of life.

A Mind Of its Own
Slow in developing survival skills, our processing of the environment factors is very complex, and our survival depends on an enormous collectivist memory (albeit several versions of) which influences our perceptions and understanding of the environmental factors. 
    Similarly to individuals of some other species removed from the collective, we show signs of distress at not knowing what to do, unless we are taught and cared for, until we have learned from our peers the basics of individual survival. 
    Should we lose part of our physical self, we will lose some of our consciousness in proportion to the amount of information stored in the part (including muscle tissues). Under the influence of drugs we are modifying the physical self, thus altering our consciousness. 

Control of the biotic processes
The simplified diagram* below illustrates the basic interaction between the elements of the mind’s biotic process and the environment.
    The osmosis between fear and contentment creates the caring mode of the self—itself a composite of aggressiveness and receptivity, the two core activities of life—which is a necessary tool for survival (at species and individual level). The status of the caring mode for the self versus the state of the environmental factors creates our state of mind. The shift of the caring mode from one state of mind to another creates our emotions. Caring for the self measures how much we desire to achieve survival. Caring for life start with caring for the self.

Aggressiveness and receptivity
These core activities of life control our reactivity as we experience fear, pain or contentment. Aggressiveness and receptivity relate to hormonal levels and other chemical patterns including those of learned behaviour. Studies have shown chemicals such as cholesterol can influence aggressiveness. Cholesterol is an important component of brain cells and low level of cholesterol decrease serotonin in the brain that leads to more aggressiveness. Research also show that people on drugs to lower cholesterol levels are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety than those not on the drugs. 
    Aggressiveness and receptivity are essential activities for living creatures to feed and to defend themselves if under threat from environmental factors. Even in its simplest form, feeding is aggressiveness through taking over the content of another being—animal or plant—and at the same time is receptive for the sheer necessity of processing the captured food into survival energies. 
    For humans, our very complex stylistic learning is used to balance aggressiveness versus receptivity in order to limit the damage we can do to others and to ourselves, at individual and species levels. The challenge is not to lose control at individual and social level.

Basic stages of the mind
The mechanisms of biotic activity, from which develop our conscious thoughts, are of course tremendously complex, are always in a flux and evolve as we grow. Five basic stages of the mind can be defined although they overlap in the complex multiplicity of activities. These five important stages are the Contented State, the Traumatic Stage, The Passive/Delusive State, The Traumatic/Delusive State, and the Depressed State.

CONTENTED STATE: contentment is achieved by controlling our aggressiveness and receptivity to a survival position within a known safe environment. We are successful and we are aware of this status through our caring active mode. 

TRAUMATIC STAGE: the response to unsafe environments factors is fear as we gauge elements of threat to our survival. We usually do not like lingering through this stage, which often has a surprise element from the environmental factors. With our caring mode, we modify our relative position to, and/or alter, the threatening environmental factors, to return to a contented state. 
    Our average daily activities usually span between mild traumatic stages to mildly contented states as we find solutions to low level unsafe environmental factors (small conflicts, small danger, problems, etc.). Most of our reflexes operate in the traumatic stage of mind. 
    In a traumatic stage, the bigger the conflicts and dangers, the more fear and distress we feel, until a solution (shift of position) or comfort (dangers have passed) is found, and the emotional drag has gone.

PASSIVE/DELUSIVE STATE: our contentment is maintained while faced with unsafe environmental factors. This lack of discernment leads to dangerous situations (accidents). This state of mind can comes from misjudgement of environmental factors (lack of knowledge) and can be due to mental disorders stemming from defective fitness (angel disease, hormone imbalance, slow learning ability). Social safety nets should protect us from early destruction.

DELUSIVE/TRAUMATIC STATE: our state of mind is locked in primal fear while operating within safe environments. This undesirable reactivity in safe environment can come from a lack of knowledge, from mental disorders (created by a trauma inducing persecution feelings, hypochondria, phobias etc.) stemming from our inability to control fear at this point in time.

DEPRESSED STATE: 
The active/reactive caring mode weakens, and can disappear totally during deep depression. We are now in an inactive mode, unresponsive to safe or unsafe environmental factors. We do not care.
    Long-time memorised influences of environmental factors, which have been in conflict and could have induced distress, have now minimised our caring mode (aggressiveness and receptivity) because we were unable to find a way to achieve contentment. Without the caring mode, we can lose cognition (memory reactivity, such as linking perception of a tree to the stylistic word ‘tree’). 
    The trigger that induces changes from a traumatic stage to a depressed state can be the old conflict itself, but usually it is an insignificant event which reduces our ability to control our caring mode below a critical level. This state can also be induced by our interpretation (rather than reality) of failure at providing satisfactory solutions for our own survival. This is a typical chaotic situation in which an increasingly strong stress factor is not sufficient to induce a terminal event. Yet a very small secondary event can spark it. An increasing amount of explosive being stored in one place is under control until a small event, a trigger,  such as the use of a detonator or a cigarette butt blows the whole lot.
    In the depressed state, we often lose the acquired relationship between contentment and safe environments (reward), we lose the relationship between fear and unsafe environments (danger). We are in a conscious state of limbo with no thrust. On all account this is a very stable state. The biotic results of that state will be fatigue, dour headaches, difficulty in controlling bodily functions such as tears and lack of cognition. The stylistic results will be indecision, lack of motivation and loss of comprehension.
    It is important to proceed slowly with care when emerging from depression. We need to create small events of actively caring for our self and re-link contentment to safe environment factors. Emerging from a depressed state through a traumatic stage can lead to stronger distress, deeper depression or suicide.
        One cannot overstates the importance of the control of our caring mode (learning to manage aggressiveness and receptivity) in relation to depression. It is in this field that most of our success to fight depression comes from. 
    The role of  peers, family or counsellors is paramount to provide a safe environment to re-operate in. They protect us from physical dangers that we cannot see, provide a roof over our heads and contribute temporarily to our physical survival such as supply of food, money, compassion emotional support—all provided without asking for payback, nor enforcement of prejudicial beliefs. 
    The rest is mostly left to us.

Flexibility/roundness
The mind is a bio-system with many leaks, overflows and bypasses which make it very complex and impossible to map with exactitude. The varied genetic trends, as well as the combinations and intensity between pain, fear and contentment, the shifts between the states of mind, the elasticity of the stylistic learning. all give it roundness, flexibility and flux, which provide adaptability and resilience, but can also be at the source of mental disorders. 

Reversal of a depressed state
As we emerge from depression we can be subconsciously unsettled by the instability of such a system, and/or frightened by its imprecision, complexity and lack of obvious direction. Having lost our motivation, we suffer from an inability to concentrate or decide. We could then drift into a semi-surrealistic mode of internalisation, the source of which is not controlled, is meaningless and delusive. By-passes such as this are part of our ability to deny reality. 
    We should see depression as a negative energy. In order to change it we need to rectify it like alternative current is rectified into direct current. In reality, rectified direct current is not constant, unlike a true direct current from a battery, yet rectified current will flow only in a positive direction. We slowly raise the minimum point at which we can accept being generally negative, until we are in a generally positive mood no matter what, because we make the effort to invert the negative energies.

What does this mean for the depressed
The goal is to change a negative energy into a positive energy. Several techniques can be used. Principally we need to establish a relationship between the aggressiveness and receptivity of our caring mode. We do it by acting relationships between success and reward, from little events we create, increasing the complexity as we progress. The rewards need to be physically satisfying, such as a sweet. Eventually the reward can become stylistic, such as creating hope or being mentally pleased. We enact a feeling of happiness by reinforcing the connection between activity and success, sometimes through a deliberately controlled small amount of fear and pain, and then actively acknowledging success when we eliminate them. 

Creating a strong inhibitor against negative energy
From the time we are born, we mostly learn our social behaviour through moralistic filters, applied as rewards and punishments. Not too strangely for a creative mind, the many dos and don’ts do not provide protection against negativity because of our exploring curiosity. If we want to avoid depression and maintain our curiosity we have to deliberate self-create an inhibitor of negative energies. This inhibitor modifies our reactivity to events into a positive trend towards believing that we are in control of our stylistic interpretations, without becoming deluded. This becomes self-confidence from a decidedly personal choice, rather than from a moralistic cause and effect. The results may appear similar, yet the personal choice is more enlightened, more aware and eventually more powerful than any other stylistic concept we can apply for our self. We become fully active rather than reactive. Eventually we create a memory of positive action rather than reuse our old memory of positive/negative reaction. This process does not happen overnight because of memory persistence and can be unsettling until we raise the intensity of decision. As soon as we feel negative energies, we deliberately stop our activities and modify our point of view in order to carry on from a positive perspective. We inhibit our self from negativity. In the long run, we positively stylistically develop our self rather than being the product of someone else’s manipulation. We do not need doctrine dependence. We can increase our receptivity without becoming submissive and we can control our natural aggressiveness without being violent. The flow-on for our health are the removal of negative stresses and all the health problems negative stress can induce. We become assertive, positive, motivated and dedicated without being overpowering. As a creative mind, we are rolling at decisive speed in which we accept the responsibility of the choices we make but do not become burdened by it. We lighten up. We can improve relationships, including that with our self, without fear, using the core natural activities of life—aggressiveness and receptivity—to care for our self and others.

see http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8011

especially: the pursuit of happiness

 

We have a long, long way to go. I met the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, last year. We talked about depression and he said he found it really hard to understand “why someone like you, with the life you have, would have depression”. I was, I admit, quite shocked. He was reflecting an opinion that many hold, and this is the fight – to understand that depression has nothing to do with how popular or famous, unpopular or unknown, you are. It just is. Like cancer is. Like asthma is. Like diabetes is. Some people get it, some people don’t. It is a truly horrible illness, and must be viewed and treated as such.
Alastair Campbell at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/12/robin-williams-tragedy-understand-depression

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Below is part of what Gus wrote about depression 20 years ago.

The Engine Room (written in 1994 for a book that was never published)
The publishers wanted a more esoteric approach like simple dictums such as "believe you're a pretty flower" or "god will look after you" or "whatever nice"...
LIFE IS NOT LIKE THAT. My book was about the mechanics of and the solutions to solve deep depression — especially for creative people (which we all are) while minimising drugs (especially medicinal drugs)... I still drink red ned for pleasure. The (as part one - reduced) chapter below was about PERFORMANCE. 

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Performance

Stylistic MANAGEMENT

Creativity, communication and talents

‘He knows everything, but lacks inexperience...’ (Berlioz, about St Saens...)

Animal performance is health (mental and physical), while stylistic performance results in appreciation, wealth, status and cultural activities—on personal and social level. Performance of both kind is interrelated and dependant of each other, yet while animal performance is necessary for natural survival, stylistic performance may not be so, although it maintains, or improves, quality of living within a stylistically developed society. 
By manipulation of our stylistic performance through ethics or other means we can influence our animal performance in degrees such as brushing our teeth to minimise tooth decay, or dying, driven by stylistic ideals, on a battlefield. With better health, we can improve our stylistic performance, yet health care is a stylistic activity that many species enact, such as birds preening their feathers. Success usually derives from the quality of our stylistic performance, personal and social. 

In ultimate form, stylistic interpretations are the necessary of the unnecessary, yet stylistic choices influence our animal performance, including self-healing. We all know of the effects of negative stress leading to heart diseases, but do we know how to manage stress to reverse the problem? Doctors will prescribe pills to reduce the effect of stress, but we are still operating in a negative stress framework. We need to modify negative stress into positive energy of activity in order to improve our animal performance. We need to tune our activities with our biorhythm. 
The mind over matter concept is not about bending spoons at birthday parties, but to stylistically maximise our animal performance by action and thought patterns, while enjoying life, including the induction of serenity.

Analysis and synthesis in performance
Conscious analysis and synthesis of stylistic processes are often tedious and slow but are part of education for better performance. The more we learn, the more we should be able to perform although it may not be so because of many factors, including imagination which can unsettle our natural uncertainty and the vagaries of memory which resist difficult changes in favour of easier pathways, unless trained to be adaptable in complexity. Although the path of least resistance can be stylistically enjoyable, by training memory, even the path for complexities can become a pathway of least resistance. 

Sleep versus performance
Sleep deprivation can induce stress that can lead to worry, reduced ability of solving conflicts, then depression. Sleep deprivation can reduce our performance through headaches and fatigue. Unmanaged torpor while conscious is physical inactivity equated to a depressed state and can be due to a low level of fitness. A measured sleep therapy can reduce stress as long as it does not induce a habit of inactivity (depressed state) or does not use drugs. Treating depression with drugs lowering reactivity or inducing sleepiness does not treat the problem. Although some drugs can remove symptoms of distress while we come out of depression, such treatments can encourage a habit of  depression, by keeping us in an inactive state. 
Should we sleep "little" ( I sleep about four hours a night) the way to deal with this is NOT TO WORRY  about it and have a 20 minutes siesta in the afternoon. (See also NRD).

Status
Status is a very complex mixture of our general ability and our acceptance from other human beings. Although status does not measure our personal worth as a being, it measures our performance in relation to others in a stylistically constructed society. The influence of status on our state of mind can be important. Much of our relationships (through aggressiveness/receptivity) are influenced by status, measured in the level of influence we exert on them, the structure of society and the amount of reward, money and gratification we collect from this influence.  Managing our status is not a priority when emerging from depression but some time after that, we may have to come to terms with it. Creating, developing, changing and accepting our variation in status, are important steps which define who we are and have been. 
Status, as an indicator of wealth, provides a link to happiness in a stylistically demanding society. Ultimately though, it is our appreciation of the notion of happiness which makes us enjoy life rather than the belief that status is provider of happiness. 

Mistakes in performance
Embarrassment results from making a small mistake. It is of a lesser strength than guilt, as it does not carry fear of penalty. Depression can follow a repeat of embarrassments, because we are making too many silly mistakes in a given period of time and this could be a symptom of a bigger problem. Embarrassment can also be a trigger rather than the source for depression.
Shame is a stronger feeling than embarrassment and follows a transgression of a moral code in which we believe. Shame does not carry other penalty than being exposed. Shame can induce a depressed state if we let it be. 
We have to minimise our silly little mistakes by either avoiding the situation or paying more attention to whatever we are doing, after having taken time to analyse the origin of our mistakes.

Accidents waiting to happen
In the workshop of a school, I saw a big heavy piece of metal fly at high speed through the air, burst through a large window and land in the yard next to a group of students. No one was injured. A chain of events had started when a student was playing practical jokes, secretly filling the pockets of students’ overalls with lubricating oil. 
The student operating the powerful high-speed surfacing machine, became annoyed when, reaching for a calibration tool, he found his pocket full of oil. He did not laugh much, but as he switched the machine back on, the distraction had made him forgot to turn on the locking field of the magnetic vice. When the grinder got hold of the steel he was milling, the whole lot, including the vice, took off like a bullet. 
Most accidents happen from mistakes we make or that someone else makes. A mistake usually involves a misjudgement of environmental factors, an extension of our capabilities beyond a safety point or an irresponsible decision such as a deliberate prank. When we are young, safety is often unlearned, unfelt, resisted or only a vague notion because we may have been in similar dangerous circumstances and have not created an accident—as a mistake or a prank does not necessarily lead to an accident. Younger drivers are the most at risk. For example, despite hefty insurance premiums for young drivers, most insurance companies loose money on those because of the high rate of accidents from under 25 years old.

Safety has also been the subject of controversy in regard to swimming pool fences, as toddlers, unaware of the danger, can venture into an unfenced pool and drown. 

The more serious the accident the more guilt it is likely to generate and circumstances are usually evaluated to allocate blame. Unresolved guilt often leads to depression. This is why at the time of recovery from depression it is important that, due to our poor ability to judge environmental factors, we should be protected from making mistakes, dangerous or not—protected by people who compassionately care—in a safe environment in which to reassess our field of operation and priorities.
Witnessing or being involved in grave accidents can induce trauma, but this should reinforce our desire to operate within safer environments. Someone else’s trauma can be so severe, we might be unable to operate for a while, pushing us into a depressed state. It is time to breathe deep, seek counselling if we can’t manage on our own, reprocess our priorities and make sure, whenever we operate again, that all safety measures are back in place, as we often develop a loss of confidence in safety from the environmental factors. 

Excuses
Our ability to find excuses for the inexcusable is excellent. But although this often allows us to pursue activities in our field of operation, it creates a subconscious false premise which can undo our belief-system, the surface of which is often called our conscience. We manufacture excuses while in a delusive state of mind, and even if we are not caught out, the need for more excuses to cover our tracks will increase this state of delusion, possibly dragging us into a state of depression, unless we are more and more aggressive in the defense of our deluded position.
The proper attitude is to find a solution to the problem, including apologies, regrets and care, rather than formulate an excuse—and develop an ability to avoid making the same mistake again. This is easier said than done, unless we specifically understand all the processes that led to the mistake and work through it with care.
Depending on the social parameters (which may involve death penalty in some countries) we need to assess our survival for accepting the level of carelessness and responsibility. Overall, we should have compassion for victims and help repair the damage as much as possible. We may also help other people avoid making similar mistakes. 

Stylistic performance components
Stylistically, our aim is to create a habit (memory trend) of happiness by caring for ourselves and caring for others while being aware of the status of the environmental factors and reacting/acting to them without endangering our life and that of others. Mechanically, we can achieve this on three fronts.

• MOTIVATION  focusing our aggressiveness and receptivity: 
* Care for our self and care for others
* Create our own strings of goals (draw of the future)
managing dream and reality
* reinforce and sustain the memory of contentment
* Develop better relationships (trusting and bonding)
Giving and receiving, without prejudice or ulterior motives 
Improving our status and that of other people

• CONTROL (Controlling our emotional reactivity)
* Manage our state of mind
* Create fallback position (safety net).
* Modify event/fear relationships (associative memory)
Being able to face up to the worse.
Being able to appreciate the best
* Understand our inhibitors (awareness)
Guilt minimisation versus acceptance of responsibility

• THRUST (energy supply and expenditure)
* Exercising and fuelling mind and body (fitness)
Developing and maintaining mental agility
Developing responsive skills by practice 
Understanding food quality and measuring quantity.
Activity and health management
Stress reduction, redressing negative stress
* Improving our image (exteriorising our energy through style)
* Understanding of environmental factors (energy of life)
* Feeling the natural and stylistic rhythms of life 
(progression and regression)

Wherever we start from, we should follow the points which we feel will maximise chances of success, minimising habits of gloom and doom, in order to eliminate the inertia of depression. Using the NRD (non-reactive defocusing) practice we can recreate, improve or stabilise our personal core belief-system via a specific ethical decision to care for our self and others, creating a better stylistic momentum of life.
Using specific dedicated times to improve our motivations, our control and thrust including skills, we should thus increase our degree of performance at other times.

Understanding Performance
Being aware of the time factor in our activities is paramount. The level of our impatience will influence our success. Yet experience has shown us that time to perform a task has a specific minimum, since only so much can be achieved in a given period, this time can greatly extend if we are slow, inefficient or unmotivated. That activities will always take the time allowed, is true of many circumstances. 
In general, maximum efficiency of performance is not sustainable unless we are fully trained, fully dedicated and fully immersed in what we are doing, this performance set in a timeframe in which there is no need for new choices, only the ones we have trained for—a performance like a violinist or a pianist in full concert conditions in which there is no room for replay. Following an intense performance, we need time to relax and debrief our self. 
Coming out of depression, we should find the best level of performance/time relationship for ourselves in which we are not tripping over for going too fast, nor going too slow and feeling guilty for loafing. This performance/time relationship does not need to be set in concrete. As we improve our abilities, we can improve the speed of performance or learn to pace ourselves as well as re-learn to relax after activity.

Low efficiency
Depressed, our ability to perform efficiently is low. Time drags on and we get more depressed about it.
This low efficiency is not to be confused with sleep or rest times such as doing nothing during a holiday. Although times of relaxation can appear unproductive, our mental alertness is still in control, though relaxed and un-threatened by non-taxing activities. Dilettante discovery of  new places or new activities can stimulate the mind and modify our reactivity into pro-activity which can benefit our general performance. A change is as good as a holiday.
Problems rise when we are trying to perform well and are inefficient at it through our motivation, direction of effort or results. When we are depressed our motivation is close to nil. To stop the rot, we need to remedy this inefficiency and eliminate the factors which are reacting to it, including our level of fitness. Tiredness, distractions, boredom, guilt, worries and depression are factors that reduce our efficiency. We can process each of these elements as best as possible and by discovering the presence and influence of each of these factors, we are on the way to improve our efficiency. 
We may need to take a rest, take a break, exercise or solve a smaller conflict unrelated to the work at hand. This can involve making a decision which is not as obvious as it may seem, as the problem could stem from guilt especially when we desperately seek performance. This is the case of most workaholics whose efficiency diminishes as more work is attempted, often in order to prove efficiency, while others workaholics could neglect other aspects of their life, eventually making them vulnerable and depressed.

Multi-tasking 
As a creative mind, we are able to perform several tasks at the same time—performing on automatic with a high degree of precision on a few fronts. We can’t be too faint-hearted, as decisions have to be made in much shorter time than we could be used to. 
Multi-tasking drains great amount of physical and mental energy —energy which we do not possess as we come out of a depressed state—yet can enhance general performance. Apart from possible failure should we not achieve much, high-speed multi-tasking promotes production of adrenaline which can induce muscular febrility and stronger emotional shifts if unmanaged. The complexity of goals, our management of aggressiveness and receptivity, our tendencies to slack off or goof when approaching a goal can induce mind blocks. In muti-tasking, we switch to another problem of various degree of difficulty. During this new activity, having already faced the earlier problem in a conscious mode, the subconscious processes it. Many important ideas are created thus, when suddenly in the middle of achieving something else, or even waking up in the middle of the night, the solution to insurmountable problems appears crystal clear.
A complex task may demand several days, or several attempts to be completed satisfactorily, but having turned our attention to another simple task on the planning board between these attempts, we did not panic about what to do next, nor felt frustrated by the non-achievement and the feeling that we were wasting time. This provides  a timeframe usually filled with success, reinforcing our confidence in problem solving.
Most activities are compatible to multi-tasking but not every one wishes to indulge in the process or enjoy the stresses this can creates. Some of us prefer concentrating on one problem at a time and this method can be very effective too.
Multi-tasking lets problems find their own way through our mind rather than impose progressive logical processes toward a solution.
We can use Multi-tasking to steer us away from a depressed mode, by imposing upon ourselves the task to consciously involve ourselves in unrelated activities. This is achieved through the creation of small focuses and their successes. Our depressed state slowly eliminates itself as we continue processing activities towards contentment, by first allocating the task, then succeeding and repeating the process until we are able to juggle tasks with dazzling dexterity and confidence.  Multi-tasking is not always efficient or appropriate, such as when, as part of a team, we cannot delay a task necessary for teamwork to proceed. In this case we have to pull our socks up, no matter what, and seek help if necessary. There is no shame is being helped when we are unable to perform. There is a problem though, when our ability to perform becomes chronic. In this case we need once again to reassess the factors which have reduced our ability to perform including our fixations. 

Defocusing
Defocusing is akin to mine-sweepers being degaussed. These boats eventually develop an undesirable polarity during operations. This polarity being dangerous in finding and removing magnetic mines. 
We can loose track of reality when our memory and imagination become polarised on one single intense activity. Eventually we become inefficient in other activities, losing track of their importance. During such polarisation we forget to feed ourselves, we fail to see oncoming danger or we lose general cognitive ability, eventually leading to nervous breakdown and depression.

Pressing the reset button
Somewhere in our brain there is a reset function, like the one we press on a computer after a crash—a function that happens when we sleep and dream, allowing us to discard conflict-residual effects. We often say: ‘Sleep on it and you’ll feel better in the morning...’. Sleeping should help us re-value and reposition what we do and think, in alignment with biorhythmic activities. But sleeping may not be as efficient as it should be, because our biorhythm are too much out of kilter or we have accumulated too much junk in our mind, or we can’t properly sleep because of problems.

 

 

From Michael Pascoe

I hold a grudge against Peter Weir for what he didn’t have Robin Williams say in Dead Poets Society – the missing speech that flawed an otherwise inspirational film, Academy Award nominations and all.

Williams’ character should have had one final declamation - empathetic, moving, brilliant, sad, quietly but forcefully impassioned as Williams could be. It should have been a speech decrying Neil’s suicide as a betrayal of “carpe diem”, of all the Dead Poets Society stood for, of surrendering rather than seizing the day.

Instead Neil’s death was allowed to lie there as an unanswered dramatic statement, the convenient theatrical denouement

It annoyed me at the time and annoys me still as it left a film with enormous youth appeal and much joy apparently accepting suicide as a big statement, as a comprehensible way out of difficulty. In Neil’s case, it could be construed as something like revenge on controlling parents, parents who still didn’t subsequently understand their son.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-robin-williams-speech-on-suicide-that-was-missing-from-dead-poets-society-20140813-103o5l.html#ixzz3AFuUAaXz


Gus: Michael, The point is not that the drama has lost its way but that suicide happened. Trying to explain what has gone awry often becomes imbued with 'spirituality" or reasons gone amiss. A final speech would have appeared "worthy"... The fact that Weir did not indulge in giving a final speech here is for anyone to make their own uncomfortable peace within.
Dead Poet Society was a great story of course, but to me the more intricate movie which explains the subconscious of a (tormented and clever) person like Robin Williams is "The Final Cut"... Its plot can be a bit thin at times, but the philosophical contents is far more enlightened, though dark, than that of a "dead poet society". 
"The Final Cut" is on par with the works of a genius like Dali or Luis Buñuel... It is full of existentialism and surrealism and full of manipulations of illusions for a futile purpose. And at what point can we chose to die? That choice can be made within our mind, as we struggle with our health — mental or physical. Some people chose early. Some people let the decay go on till the end. Some people die too soon because of accidents or wars.
Mental health is one of the most undervalued item in our life... We might value our things, like cars and bank accounts, far more than our mental health, because at most time we do not want to go "in there"... It's too hard to understand, thus we go and "believe" in the paint covering the wall rather than "understand" the wall itself... It's hard. I know.
But once you know how to fiddle with the mechanics, there is a greater chance of "winning the race".

 

LOS ANGELES — Robin Williams was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, his widow, Susan Schneider, said in a statement on Thursday. His suicide had provoked widespread speculation about his career, finances and mental condition.

“Robin’s sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson’s disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly,” Ms. Schneider said.

The statement, which was released by Mr. Williams’s publicists, expressed gratitude for what Ms. Schneider described as “the tremendous outpouring of affection and admiration” that came with news of his death.

“Whether he was entertaining millions on stage, film or television, our troops on the front lines, or comforting a sick child,” said Ms. Schneider, “Robin wanted us to laugh and to feel less afraid.”

read more: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/robin-williams-had-parkinsons-disease-his-widow-says/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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I have known people with Parkinson's... It robs people of their "spontaneity"... It took a hour and a half for my dad to put his socks on every morning. But he did it... Parkinson's disease takes away reflexes... For a person like Robin Williams where the speed of delivery of words is paramount, this essential skill would have been disappearing and he would have started to slur his words and trip over simple sentences... while hands would be shaking.

 

 

Human cells contain two forms of monoamine oxidase, MAO-A and MAO-B. Both are found in the brain, but MAO-B is far more prevalent and is responsible for the breakdown of dopamine after its re-uptake from the synapse. Parkinson's disease is characterized by the death of cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter, resulting in a decrease in synaptic signal strength and concommitant symptomology. By inhibiting the breakdown of dopamine at the mitochondria, rasagiline permits the signaling neurons to reabsorb more of it for reuse later, somewhat compensating for the diminished quantities manufactured.

Selegiline was the first MAO inhibitor approved for use in Parkinson's disease in the United States. It is chemically similar to methamphetamine and its metabolic breakdown path eventually yields l-methamphetamine derivatives that have been associated with cardiac and psychiatric effects in some patients.[citation needed] The chief metabolite of rasagiline is 1(R)-aminoindan[12] which has no amphetamine characteristics. Some clinicians believe rasagiline will be better tolerated in sensitive patients for these reasons. Aminoindan inhibits both MAO-A and MAO-B in a reversible manner, although considerably weaker than rasagiline.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasagiline

------------------------

Apparently, one of the side effects from Rasagiline has been a sudden increase of libido in some patients. This has led people to have instant orgasms or ejaculation without warning. 

See http://passeurdesciences.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/08/14/ce-traitement-anti-parkinson-qui-provoque-des-orgasmes-spontanes/

 

San Francisco:  Members of the controversial Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church are planning an ill-advised protest at actor Robin Williams' funeral over his portrayal of a gay man in The Birdcage.

The Good Will Hunting star passed away on Monday and while details of his funeral have not been made public, members of the church have already announced plans to picket the memorial.

A message posted on the group's official Twitter page reads: "Westboro Baptist Church Hopes To Preach In Lawful Proximity To Robin Williams' Funeral - To Warn The Living: Repent Or Likewise Perish."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/westboro-baptist-church-plans-protest-at-robin-williams-funeral-20140816-104ybx.html#ixzz3AcSHwZig

I'd rather perish ! I will do anyway... and so will they, despite their ardent beliefs in the whatever...

 

When a much-loved celebrity dies in a sudden and shocking way, the immediate human desire is to find an explanation. We want to rationalise brutality. We need the reassurance. We kid ourselves that knowledge is a bulwark against falling into the same situation. If we know what caused it, the flawed reasoning goes, we can prevent it from happening again.

So it was that, in the days after Robin Williams took his life, media outlets were filled with speculation. Was it the threat of bankruptcy or career worries or a lifelong battle with addiction or a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's that made him confront the meaning of his existence?

The questions were futile. Depression is not a logical disease, a matter of straightforward cause and effect. Suicide is a devastating and complex beast. In truth, the only person capable of telling you why they did what they did has fatally absented themselves from the discussion. And sometimes, even they would be unable to pinpoint a reason.

But alongside the hopeless search for motivation, something else emerged in the aftermath of Williams's death. There was a lot of chatter surrounding the "stigma" of mental illness. Social networks were clogged with people urging others to seek help for their depression and not to feel "stigmatised" by their illness. There were magazine articles about mental health issues being "taboo" and how we must counteract this state of affairs by talking about our own struggles.

All of which is entirely admirable, but is there a stigma? The very fact that the internet was abuzz with people sharing their own stories of depression and encouraging others to do the same suggests that, thankfully, we live in a more accepting age. Most of us will know of close friends or family members who have dealt with depression. Some of us, myself included, will have experienced a form of it ourselves. Celebrities, too, have spoken out, fostering this culture of greater acceptance. The actresses Carrie Fisher and Catherine Zeta-Jones have talked about their bipolar disorders. Stephen Fry has written movingly about his depression

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/24/robin-williams-stigma-mental-illness

 

Depression is like loosing our ability to care for ourselves — whether this is real or imagined. And this is important for people around depressed people to maintain caring without it becoming a life-lesson on how to behave... I know many people who say to depressed people: "... do this do that... or get real.. or get out of it..." and this could be the wrong to do. Caring without being overbearing is often the go, though each case is different. Even for those who suffer from "bipolar", the process of "switching" out is difficult. Often depression is linked to our inability to "reward" ourselves, in the sense that what we do does not make sense... We loose sight of our naturalness... We sink into a world where nothing matters at the bottom, while we should be in a world at the top where nothing matters... except that we care... 

 

 

The Marin County sheriff's office ruled that the cause of his death, on 11 August, was asphyxia due to hanging.

Autopsy results revealed today showed that Williams, 63, had taken prescription drugs but only in “therapeutic concentrations”.

The Oscar-winning actor was last seen alive by his wife, Susan Schneider, at home in Tiburon, northern California, on the previous evening.

He seemed "excited" and appeared to be well, she said, using an iPad for the first time after months of not watching television or reading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/robin-williams-death-actor-had-no-illegal-drugs-or-alcohol-system-when-he-died-9848054.html

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I believe it would be well known to psychologist and psychiatrists dealing with suicidal patients that there is a time of euphoria between the time a subject has chosen to kill himself/herself and the time the deed is done. When depressed people become "excited" one needs to keep a very close look on them should we wish to prevent them to harm themselves. I could dwell more on this but in most suicide treatment manuals, this aspect of "excitement" is often hushed up or misunderstood as an "improvement" of the depressed condition. In fact the subject having chosen to kill oneself becomes at peace with himself/herself as the trauma and the problem is lifted by the decision. 

As I have mentioned before, in order to get out of depression, one needs to delude oneself, but this needs to be done carefully as to avoid the final solution or avoid an increase of the original inductive trauma.

Please read caring about ourselves and others...

 

 

"The rich are poor people with money"

Mindy was having a party for one of her cousin who was electioneering and who was also hypocritically eating in both political trough... Mork, annoyed at being pushed aside, "became" a woman and acted with such incisive rudeness that all the guests left the party. This was possibly the first time that Robin Williams was seen in drags on TV, dressing up into what looked like a precursor of Mrs Doubtfire... including her curly hair-do and voice. Vale Williams...

Yesterday morning, Radio National ran a small stint of 2 minute raves for stand-up comics on the "coal is good" subject. The one that got my vote was that "coal was good because it prevented plagues of canaries from taking over the world"...

Comedy on planet botherfiddle, otherwise known as the Earth, is important as to expose our inadequacies in tackling our tentacular idiocy and our self-importance of sewer rats... Sometimes too often, comedy masks the pain of the problems, though comedy can help cure problems.

Comedy and satire is not new. Unfortunately, most stand up comics these days tend to self-deprecate for being bonkers and inadequate in life (bed, kids, mother-in-law) rather than attack the system that pushed them to be loopy. Self-confidence tends to become expressed as an exposure of self-centrered warts rather than attack the social system and its failings... Success becomes the ability to survive on a sagging sofa found in the street, while living in the dumps as the wallpaper slowly peels off.

It was not so long ago that wit about culture and governments dominated the expression of witty writers. The one thing one can say in favour of self-deprecation is that it is a bit like therapy. Cathartic therapy. Shy people become empowered by exposing their failures and mental problem in a funny way. 

This is where WISE stand up for mental health came in. This part of the disability programme is designed for people with mental illness or depression in its various forms to express themselves with wit and show "the world what we can do' in relation to being employed, despite suffering from a mental illness. It takes far more courage that I could ever muster though sometimes I consider myself completely mad. These stand up are heroes fighting other people's huge prejudices and their own demons at the same time...

"I am not sick, I just need a bit more mindfulness"

"The music teacher came twice each week to bridge that awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin..."

"She was a town-and-country soprano of the kind often used to augmenting grief at a funeral"

"A critic is a leggless man who teaches running..."

"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes"...

"Television is the new car of the foot-in-the-door salesman"

"The Romans had better things to do than to learn Latin..."

I have tried to be witty to expose the fact that" Tony Abbott is an idiot and he lies". So far I cannot find the perfect expression. Everything I come up with tends to increase my mental pain rather than soothe it. May be I should borrow from wittier people than I : "A bad escape of moral sewer gas..."

Have a good day. Keep fighting the great imbeciles by voting for the lesser of them.

Some of the one liners from a book by Frank Muir...

 

 

Some might label her reaction a “rage spiral,” but Stagliano, whose three teenage girls have autism, is not about to apologize. Like many parents of autistic children, Stagliano — the managing editor of the Age of Autism, which covers autism news — said she’s grown tired of people, particularly those in the public spotlight, making autistic symptoms sound fashionable.

Adding to the insult, she said, is that the man who aligned himself with the autistic community made his livelihood by humorously dissecting the social nuances of the human condition, a painfully ironic twist for a disorder marked by sufferers' inability to read social cues and communicate effectively.

“My kids’ lives are irrevocably altered by autism and not in a good way,” she told The Post. “Autism is a neurological condition that requires a clinical diagnosis based on serious behaviors and issues and challenges. It’s a medical diagnosis, not a personality or a gift.”

For many parents, she said, that diagnosis, and the medical services it demands, is not easy to come by.

“Jerry, if you think you have autism,” she added, “come over to my house for a night, and we’ll show you what it’s all about.”

To be fair, Seinfeld never actually said: I am autistic.

"I think on a very drawn-out scale, I'm on the spectrum," he told NBC's Brian Williams. "Basic social engagement is really a struggle. I'm very literal. When people talk to me and they use expressions, sometimes I don't know what they're saying."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/11/12/for-some-parents-of-autistic-children-jerry-seinfelds-self-diagnosis-was-a-slap-in-the-face/

Most of us are inadequate in many social situation. Social adequacy needs training and for people like me, I need to remove "butterflies in the tummy" when encountering a "new" social situation. Some people can manage very well without fluffing their understanding nor insulting people accidentally. Some people can make you feel comfortable enough to be at ease very quickly.

Turdy Tony by contrast seems to sail through life with a foot in his mouth, without any qualms about telling porkies over and over  He sells idiocy as if it was butter while being dead-pan and staying on his feet. It's an art form that would make Jerry Seinfeld jealous...

But at no stage does this porkie-telling constitute autism either. It could be seen as psychopathy by some people but then some people could be right. 

 

“It was not depression that killed Robin,” Susan told People magazine in one of her first interviews since losing her husband. “Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one.” 

Instead, she argued that it was a debilitating brain disease called diffuse Lewy body dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) that took hold of Williams, and probably led him to suicide.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/03/robin-williams-disintegrating-before-suicide-widow-says

 

From Edward Curtin:

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.  Society highly values its normal man.  It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.  Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.  Our behavior is a function of our experience.  We act the way we see things.  If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive.  If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.”

– R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, 1967

“The artist is the man who refuses initiation through education into the existing order, remains faithful to his own childhood being, and thus becomes ‘a human being in the spirit of all times, an artist.’”

– Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death

Most suicides die of natural causes, slowly and in silence.

But we hear a lot about the small number of suicides, by comparison, who kill themselves quickly by their own hands.  Of course their sudden deaths elicit shock and sadness since their deaths, usually so unexpected even when not a surprise, allow for no return.  Such sudden once-and-for-all endings are even more jarring in a high-tech world where people are subconsciously habituated to thinking that everything can be played back, repeated, and rewound, even lives.

If the suicides are celebrities, the mass media can obsess over why they did it.  How shocking!  Wasn’t she at the peak of her career?  Didn’t he finally seem happy?  And then the speculative stories will appear about the reasons for the rise or fall of suicide rates, only to disappear as quickly as the celebrities are dropped by the media and forgotten by the public.

The suicides of ordinary people will be mourned privately by their loved ones in their individual ways and in the silent recesses of their hearts.  A hush will fall over their departures that will often be viewed as accidental.

And the world will roll on as the earth absorbs the bodies and the blood.  “Where’s it all going all this spilled blood,” writes the poet Jacques Prévert.  “Murder’s blood…war’s blood… blood of suicides…the earth that turns and turns with its great streams of blood.”

Of such suicides Albert Camus said, “Dying voluntarily implies you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit [of living], the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”  He called this feeling the absurd, and said it was widespread and involved the feeling of being an alien or stranger in a world that couldn’t be explained and didn’t make sense.  Assuming this experience of the absurd, Camus wished to explore whether suicide was a solution to it.  He concluded that it wasn’t.

Like Camus, I am interested in asking what is the meaning of life.  “How to answer it?” he asked in The Myth of Sisyphus.  He added that “the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”  But I don’t want to explore his line of reasoning to his conclusions, whether to agree or disagree.  I wish, rather, to explore the reasons why so many people choose to commit slow suicide by immersing themselves in the herd mentality and following a way of life that leads to inauthenticity and despair; why so many people so easily and early give up their dreams of a life of freedom for a proverbial mess of pottage, which these days can be translated to mean a consumer’s life, one focused on staying safe by embracing conventional bromides and making sure to never openly question a system based on systemic violence in all its forms; why, despite all evidence to the contrary, so many people embrace getting and spending and the accumulation of wealth in the pursuit of a chimerical “happiness” that leaves them depressed and conscience dead.  Why so many people do not rebel but wish to take their places on this ship of fools.

So what can we say about the vast numbers of people who commit slow suicide by a series of acts and inactions that last a long lifetime and render them the living dead, those whom Thoreau so famously said were the mass of people who “lead lives of quiet desperation”?  Is the meaning of life for them simply the habit of living they fell into at the start of life before they thought or wondered what’s it all about?  Or is it the habit they embraced after shrinking back in fear from the disturbing revelations thinking once brought them?  Or did they ever seriously question their place in the lethal fraud that is organized society, what Tolstoy called the Social Lie?  Why do so many people kill their authentic selves and their consciences that could awaken them to break through the social habits of thought, speech, and action that lead them to live “jiffy lube” lives, periodically oiled and greased to smoothly roll down the conventional highway of getting and spending and refusing to resist the murderous actions of their government?

An unconscious despair rumbles beneath the frenetic surface of American society today.  An unspoken nothingness.  I think the Italian writer Robert Calasso says it well: “The new society is an agnostic theocracy based on nihilism.”  It’s as though we are floating on nothing, sustained by nothing, in love with nothing – all the while embracing any thing that a materialistic, capitalist consumer culture can throw at us.  We are living in an empire of illusions, propagandized and self-deluded.  Most people will tell you they are stressed and depressed, but will often add – “who wouldn’t be with the state of the world” – ignoring their complicity through the way they have chosen compromised, conventional lives devoid of the spirit of rebellion.

 

Read more:

http://edwardcurtin.com/slow-suicide-and-the-abandonment-of-the-world/

 

 

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"Christians often assume that suicide is an unforgivable sin and that those who die by suicide automatically go to hell. That's a misconception that believes in a transactional view of sin and forgiveness, where if we don't confess the sin of suicide after it takes place, it can't be forgiven. But that idea comes more from Augustine and medieval theology than the Bible," he said.

"Scripture doesn't actually say that suicide separates us from God for eternity. The unforgivable sin is never equated with suicide in Scripture. Somebody like Samson died at his own hand, but he's still included in Hebrews 11 among the Hall of the Faithful. And there's the promise in Romans 8 that 'neither life nor death,' not even death by suicide, could 'separate us from the love of God in Christ,'" Hsu explained.

 

Read more:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/pastor-andrew-stoeckleins-widow-expla...

 

The Christian jihadists don't kill anyone else... apart from Samson, the strong man because he had hair on his whatever?

Idiots...

 

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