Posted on 08/13/2018 4:15:31 PM PDT by ETL
To understand the human brain, take note of the rare, the strange and the downright spooky. That’s the premise of two new books, Unthinkable by science writer Helen Thomson and The Disordered Mind by neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel.
Both books describe people with minds that don’t work the same way as everyone else’s. These are people who are convinced that they are dead, for instance; people whose mental illnesses lead to incredible art; people whose memories have been stolen by dementia; people who don’t forget anything. By scrutinizing these cases, the stories offer extreme examples of how the brain creates our realities.
In the tradition of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks (SN: 10/14/17, p. 28), Thomson explores the experiences of nine people with unusual minds. She travels around the world to interview her subjects with compassion and curiosity.
In England, she meets a man who, following a bathtub electrocution, became convinced that he was dead. (Every so often, he still feels “a little bit dead,” he tells Thomson.)
In Los Angeles, she spends time with a 64-year-old man who can remember almost every day of his life in extreme detail.
And in a frightening encounter in a hospital in the United Arab Emirates, she interviews a man with schizophrenia who transmogrifies into a growling tiger.
By visiting them in their element, Thomson presents these people not as parlor tricks, but as fully rendered human beings. ..."
By connecting these strange brains to everyday mental processes, both books make clear how much we all have in common, and more than that, how all our brains are a little bit unusual.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
see... I knew I’d come in handy...
There are several factors driving the false narrative that 1/4 of the population is mentally ill.
Liberals confuse tragedy with evil. They want to blame bad upbringing, lack of “education”, a lack of “love”, and at worst, mental illness for all crime. This worldview lets them think that if we just talk to most bad people long enough, they’ll convert to good happy liberals. If that fails, institutionalization of dissidents creates a faux conformity (look up Russia’s sluggish schizophrenia diagnosis for dissidents) while drugging people into compliance can certainly work.
Another tactic is inflating the numbers of the minority in order to justify altering society to fit the minority’s demands. Make people think 10% of the population is homosexual versus 1%, the demand to redefine marriage seems more reasonable. Inflate the “transgender” category from 1 in 50,000 biological accidents and similar numbers of people with gender dysphoria to include drag queens and butch lesbians, and suddenly it is 1/1000 or 1/100 ... a number that you can leverage to demand all public accommodations change while saying it is not practical to truly deal with it on an individual basis.
Ironically, they deny that gender dysphoria is a mental illness at all because they think it furthers the liberal narrative that sex is a social construct so, viola, there’s no difference between men and women and feminists are totally right ... except when women are better, but we will ignore the issues cased by when men say they’re women because we just want to love everyone as they are.
You see the same “inflation” issue with autism. The number of retarded has significantly declined while the autism rate has increased. Most kids who would have been “retarded” 30 years ago are now classified as autistic.
I recognize that autistic people are mind blind, lacking mirror neurons. In severe cases, this interferes with language learning and bonding with people, and that is the definition of retarded. In moderate cases, you can get nerdy adults who can function but are socially awkward. By expanding the definition of “autism spectrum”, now they argue 5% or more are on this spectrum ... they think having more numbers on their side and in the category box makes their case for them. It is more like calling people with glasses “on the blindness spectrum”.
Another mistake liberals are making is that everyone has a right to be happy with life and content. If you grieve too long, that’s a mental disorder, here are your anti-depressants. If you aren’t an extrovert, something’s wrong with you, here are more pills. A kid is too active? Too much work to increase PE time, just drug into compliance. See, everyone’s fixed! Everyone’s happy! Isn’t life great? Sometimes I think liberals read or watched “Brave New World” and think it is an instruction manual.
Dr. Jordan Peterson did research into the personality subtype of social justice warriors and found that they ARE statistically different. Lower verbal IQs than classic liberals, stricter black/white morality we tend to associate with religious conservatives, and uniquely, more likely to have an anxiety disorder or family member diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.
That’s why they demand safe spaces and emotional support - they truly are disproportionately neurotic.
And they are demanding everyone else stop, ban and censor everything they don’t like. The fact that this removal of the things from society make them less able to cope when it does appear is ignored.
I’m not going to say that all liberals are crazy. The issue there is that they ONLY use perceived fairness and perceived suffering/pain as moral measures. In-group loyalty is a sin when your high personality trait openness makes you hate the familiar and adore the foreign, including people. So loyalty to one’s group is out for liberals, especially nationalism.
A lack of disgust means most purity rules are out, though SJWs are bringing it back big time for food (vegan, clean eating, gluten free). Respect for authority is denied as a virtue by liberals because they only use fairness, and someone having power over you is by their definition UN-fair.
What we are seeing is liberals catering to the far left, the control left, because those are the ones screaming “I’m suffering”, “he’s invalidating my existence (killing me)”, “that’s hate speech” (you’re hurting my feelings).
Because they reflexively default to siding with whoever cries first, screams the loudest or throws the biggest tantrum, they CANNOT refuse to give in to the emotional blackmail of the liberal bullies.
And because the moderate liberals cannot check the violent crazy ones, the whole movement looks insane while making excuses for why insanity isn’t so bad.
They’re trying to protect the feelings of the liberal authoritarians pretending to be hysterically offended, while a few liberal bullies launch the violent nuts at society to force change and scare rivals into silence the same way Muslim moderates will deny Muslim terrorists are Muslim or justify their acts as provoked by the victims. If you just did what we said, they wouldn’t have organized a violent mob against you! If everyone just agreed with us, the violence will stop! Oh, it makes us look bad? Don’t blame us, they’re random crazies / not really Muslim / Antifa not liberal. But if someone comes up with an insane conspiracy theory that lets liberals or Muslims avoid responsibility for something, awesome! If their violent acts or organized oppression achieves the political goal, excellent. If they sound like raving loons, they just think differently and you’re not allowed to criticize them or the ideology, its always perfect.
Mark for later
Excellent!!
Which, thanks to powerful electron microscopes, is no longer just the subject of speculation.
“Wise man say: too much concern with second brain unwise”...
We typically do not perceive beyond the context of our immediate realities.
God bless you, FRiend! :)
And keep on doing whatever you’re doing to keep you so mentally fit!
Lol! Old bug eyes himself!
I’ve never read the book. Was it ever a film?
I've never read it...but I was referring to actual brain science.Although it's not particularly well known in the US the Karolinska Institute is,in fact,one of the finest (and most highly respected) medical research institutions in the world.
In referrence to post 9...
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells.
The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection.
The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature.[2]
Wells described it as “an exercise in youthful blasphemy”.[3]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau
Great timing! See my post 34.
BTTT.
Best post of the day.
The depths of those malfunctioning brains make the ocean look like a pie plate.
People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
One of the most chilling movies ever - “Are we not men?”
The first few chapters freak me out because that's what they're doing - sexualizing youths to take away their souls.
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