HUZZAH! Banned from Rentech.com!
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: Renatus on 2005 August 28, 06:38:26
JM, your misanthropy is taking over your intelligence. :P First an amazing lack of understanding of Darwinism, and now an amazing lack of understanding about how human brains actually work. Unless of course you can actually willfully control each and every chemical your brain produces, in which case I suggest you start teaching others this amazing skill so you have one less thing to be misanthropic about.
So your chemical imbalance makes you feel depressed. Fine. You know why this happens, so you know this is simply a wiring problem. Ignore it. Simple enough. It's not fatal, it's merely a nuisance. You can overcome it. Unless the problem will actually kill you, as opposed to make you feel unpleasant, then IT CAN BE IGNORED. I, for one, am tired of people using their "feelings" as an excuse to justify their poor impulse control. If I simply indulged every single random pointless urge that I had, I'd probably be in prison.
Renatus:
Why on earth didn't I think of that astoundingly wonderful idea before? I'll just ignore all of my problems and they'll go away!
Unfortunately, JM, it doesn't work that way. Like most problems with a physical cause - even if you are talking mechanical objects and not living things - ignoring a mental problem does not make it easier to deal with, as the problem will continue to worsen, and the person often ends up self-medicating with substances or behaviours that compound the problem still further. Furthermore, some mental issues (schizophrenia comes immediately to mind) when left untreated can lead to irreversable brain damage.
If you have some data by some actual scientists, JM, then I'd be happy to read it and see if it refutes what I've been saying, and if it has, I'll adjust my opinions accordingly. Otherwise, I'm going to to stick with my opinion based on scientific data by scientists and continue to find opinions based on how you want the world to be completely unfounded.
ZephyrZodiac:
No doubt Pescado finds it amusing what happens when schizophrenics who haven't been diagnosed or who refuse their medication go out and kill innocent children in a primary school before blowing themselves away!
SimsHost:
I suspect that what's missing from JM's analysis is that wetware can be misconfigured and damaged just like any other system. It's the most complex system in the human body, with more failure modes and effects than any other system.
By its nature, wetware is open to software damage through its sensory channels. There doesn't seem to be any virus scanners on the input channels, either. (Though it might help to disable the buttons for CNN and HBO on your television remote.)
Quite often, the core software is not adequate to deal with damaging influences at the rate they happen. That leads to the phenomena that pshrinkologists attempt to categorize as mental diseases. The damage can reprogram the core software so mental problems usually take longer to heal than physical ones, often as not enduring longer than the physical system itself. (That is, quite often the person can't be completely healed before the body dies.)
Even worse, the core software seems to have been produced by a team of the worst of the Microsoft and Electronic Arts programmers working overtime on a Sunday morning after an all-night party that involved enough ethanol to float a battleship!
Sandilou:
JM:Quote
If I simply indulged every single random pointless urge that I had, I'd probably be in prison.
I'm sorry, but this really did make me laugh! When I was growing up, mental illnesses were a middle class indulgence - poor/working class people couldn't afford to be ill; people just had to get on with it. Of course, many were ill, but were not given the opportunity to break down fully. Family support propped up those that were not coping well. Some might argue that doing this only helps the symptoms without trying to find a cure. But I would argue that medication does exactly the same thing.
In today's climate where families are much more spread out and the vulnerable are less likely to get family support, more and more people are being diagnosed and medicated. Sometimes it feels like what were once considered idiosyncrasies are now getting formal labels so that drug companies can make money.
The classic middle class 'made up' disorder for me was given to toddlers that wouldn't sleep through the night. I remember my jaw hitting the floor when a work colleague told me that she was taking her three year old for treatment because she and her husband had not had a full night's sleep since he was born. I have always been a full time working mother - I have no idea as to whether my children ever had this disorder because I was too tired to find out - I slept through the night! Sometimes people do seem to have too much time....
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