Monday, November 07, 2011

Neurotic is to Psychotic as Leftism is to ?

Correct! Totalitarianism.

This is one of the many truisms that occurred to me in reading through the essays in The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism.

I believe I've mentioned in the past that I was trained in a school of psychoanalysis (let's call it neo-Kleinian object relations) that regards neurosis and psychosis as being more on a continuum, as opposed to being completely distinct and unrelated clinical entities. (There are obvious exceptions, e.g., purely biochemical conditions, but we won't get into that discussion.)

Because of this continuity, I was taught that one could learn a great deal about the workings of the normal/neurotic mind by studying and observing the psychotic mind.

It is as if the psychotic patient has all of the same psychological defense mechanisms as the neurotic, only "writ large," so to speak. Mechanisms that are subtle and difficult to detect in a normal person become all too obvious in the psychotic (or in the normal person under stress) -- which, if you think about it, is true of most pathology. Only when something goes wrong with an organ does one become aware of what it silently and efficiently does under normal conditions.

For example, if you doubt that projection exists, just spend a little time with a psychotic person who is capable of verbalizing his experience. Likewise denial, splitting, distortion, idealization, evacuation, fantasy, somatization, support for Ron Paul, etc.

Or, think of the advances in medicine that occurred as a result of such epic bloodbaths as the Civil War and World Wars I & II. The crazed barbarity of these killing fields nevertheless resulted in important advances in medical know-how. Irony thy name is history.

Bion in particular reconceptualized the conscious/unconscious distinction into more of a psychotic/non-psychotic complementarity. As a result, we are all -- quite literally -- "a little bit crazy," except that the crazy is in a dialectic relationship with the "normal."

However, this implies that "normal" is not opposed to psychotic; rather, normality involves a healthy balance between the two. In order to be normal, one has to be a little crazy. I think this is one reason why people instinctively doubt Mitt Romney's normality. He's just too normal. Conversely, Herman Cain, whose infectious crazy leaks out all over the place, is instinctively seen as refreshingly normal. (One of the problems with politicians is that they have to pretend to be so normal. The most dangerous ones actually believe it.)

Indeed, one can be "too normal," which is the tendency of most adults. Something occurs in their development that causes them to repress or deny the crazy and renders them completely conventional.

In the past, I have noted how ironic it is that my generation -- the baby boomers -- should begin as such self-styled rebels and non-conformists, only to settle into pathetically reactionary liberalism in their geezerhood.

I remember reading an excellent paper called The Normotic Personality that touched on this "disorder of order." (I just remembered that it is actually a chapter in this book, which I hope to discuss in more detail as we go along.)

In a way, the normotic personality is analogous to an auto-immune disorder, or allergy. What is an allergy? It is an overreaction of the body's defense mechanisms to the presence of the not-body. Similarly, the normotic personality scans the psychic environment to shoot down any "not self" -- anything that might threaten one's consciously constructed identity and its narrow reality tunnel.

If we weren't a little bit crazy, the world would be drained of most of its deeper meaning and resonance. We would be like machines, or robots, or atheists. We would be completely boring, in a boring world, like talk radio before Rush Limbaugh, or one of reader William's blogs.

One of the reasons people idealize celebrities and artists is that they seem to live lives in which they are able to give free reign to the crazy. But one doesn't have to read too many biographies to discover that they didn't usually have much of a choice in the matter, and that the crazy eventually swamps the enfeebled non-crazy part of the personality. This was an occupational hazard for jazz and rock musicians, back when those genres were living realities and not just safely contained museum pieces.

In Introduction to the Work of Bion, the authors write that "The multiple experiences of the individual in his contact with himself and with others imply an unavoidable confrontation between his tendency to 'have consciousness' and not to have it, between his tendency to tolerate it and to avoid it." In this context, "the psychotic personality is not a psychiatric diagnosis but designates a way of mental functioning that coexists with other ways of functioning."

As alluded to above, Bion assumes "that all individuals, even the most developed, potentially contain mental functions and responses derived from the psychotic personality, manifesting," among other ways, in hostility toward the mental apparatus.

That latter observation is a key, since one of the ways to most easily detect the psychotic mind in action is via its assault on unwanted meanings. As we have discussed before, meaning results from a union of particulars -- i.e., "facts" -- into a higher principle.

But what if this higher principle is disturbing to the conscious mind, say, the principle that socialism always fails, or that AGW is far from "settled science"? It can easily be dispensed with by attacking any links that lead to that conclusion. Which is why the left's principle method is and always has been attack, slander, defamation, smearing. Paul Krugman's editorials are as clear a contemporary example as one might find of this psychotic mechanism in action.

Reader William inadvertently reminded us of another excellent example of this mechanism, when he (approvingly) linked to a silly Bill Maher monologue suggesting that America's founders would have "hated" the tea party because they were all anti-religious.

To the extent that Maher actually believes such an easily disproved lie, it is only because the left has a whole publishing industry dedicated to legitimizing what leftists wish to believe. But truth infected by desire immediately becomes something less than truth. One of the first things we should learn in life is that the world could care less how we wish it to be.

But there is an intimate relationship between "wishing" and psychosis. I believe this is ultimately traceable to the boundary-less condition of infancy, the one time in our lives when dreams and wishes really do come true, as if by magic.

For example, I have an uncomfortable sensation in my abdomen. I don't know what to call it yet, since I don't have language. Therefore, I begin crying out to the cosmos, and what do you know, a bountiful breast appears, right where I need it! Some people never get over that feeling of omnipotence, which comes down to feeling entitled to the ministrations of the world. The other 90% learn that the world does not owe them a living, that life is unfair, and that it is dangerous (and deluded) to think otherwise.

Another key aspect of the psychotic personality is hatred, or what Bion symbolized as the (H) link. In other words, two subjects can be equally linked by (L) or (H), but the link is just as strong -- and just as needed -- in both cases.

For the psychotic part of the personality, the intolerance of frustration "manifests itself as violent hatred of internal and external reality" (ibid.). Furthermore, the hatred extends to those parts of the personality "that are used to establish contact with this reality and its recognition, that is, extends to everything that has the function of linking."

In The Great Lie, there is a whole section devoted to what the author calls seduction, that is, how so many intellectuals were -- and are! -- drawn to leftism despite its failures and outright horrors. The various chapters touch on what these "thinkers" have to do to their own minds in order to continue their belief in the unbelievable.

In one sense, it is simply the secular analogue of the conversion experience, whereby one has a sudden insight into the redemption of a hopelessly fallen world (indeed, this pseudo-religious aspect is one reason why its adherents have such difficulty with critical thinking and self-awareness).

Russian victims of Soviet tyranny knew all about the reality of Marxism, which is why they could have nothing but contempt for western apologists such as Sartre, Chomsky, and all the rest. Ironically, an imprisoned Solzhenitsyn was at least (spiritually and intellectually) free enough to know that "Marxism has fallen so low that it can now arouse only contempt. No one in our country who wishes to be taken seriously, not even a schoolboy, can talk about Marxism today without a smile."

But western intellectuals still haven't gotten the memo. Or, more likely, consistent with Bion's theories, they simply attacked it away via their unsane principle that anti-communists were more dangerous than communists. The hate is still there, of course, just directed at the wrong people -- much as the left hates George Bush much more than the Islamists.

Well, what was intended to be a very brief introduction has metastasized into a post. To be continued.

55 comments:

JP said...

With respect to the leftism-communism issue, the key seems to be that the inane western intellectuals never had to live under communism, so they were free to project their fantasies onto some ivory tower ideal of communism that wasn't actually tethered to any actual existing reality.

Now that communism is gone and discredited, it's no longer cool.

Is Obama still cool?

julie said...

Obama cool? I don't know; someone finally made a paper-mache effigy of him, so maybe not...

julie said...

Hm. Vanderleun links today to an interesting and oddly apropos article on Wodehouse:

Despite living through extraordinary circumstances – a self-made man, he married a sometime chorus-girl, spent time with Hollywood movie stars, endured Nazi internment and journalistic accusations of treason – he still kept up the appearance of imperturbable "normality". This was why, perhaps, he was never the most transparent of correspondents. It was Dr Johnson, one of Wodehouse's earliest literary loves, who wrote that a man's soul, "lies naked" in his letters. But Wodehouse's attitude to nudity was a wary one. "You know my views on nudes," he once wrote to a friend, "I want no piece of them." Wodehouse's correspondence is often clad in the epistolary equivalent of Bertie's heliotrope pyjamas, carefully buttoned up to disguise true feeling.

Magnus Itland said...

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness", as Aristotle would say. I am not so sure the other way around.

I got the impression back when I read Jung that the problem with his patients was generally that the strong subconscious with its mythic character burst into and overwhelmed their feeble little minds, whereas a greater mind might have become an artist or even a prophet from the same encounter.

On a related note, some of my online friends have extremely exciting (or at least agitating) sex lives, while their understanding of economics stopped around puberty, and their religious aspect never even made it through potty training.

I am not sure the other way around is perfect either.

In Moses' law, a man would be disqualified from being a priest if one of his limbs was disproportionately large, or at least so the Norwegian translation says. Our church always interpreted this as meaning someone who was far more developed in one line of mental development than in the others. Usually it is the cognitive "limb" that grows huge, in my experience. If your head gets too big, sooner or later you lose your balance and fall.

JP said...

Magnus says:

"Usually it is the cognitive "limb" that grows huge, in my experience. If your head gets too big, sooner or later you lose your balance and fall."

I think that might be a problem of modernity. Everyone got so excited about technological innovation that emotional/spiritual development is now lagging.

It could also have to do with the impulse waves of spirituality.

The 60's were an "awakening" era. As we get further from that point in time, the impulse from that wave decreases until you get a new impulse wave, which causes a new "awakening".

Less spirituality, more practical materialism/intellectualism.

Anna said...

"Or, more likely, consistent with Bion's theories, they simply attacked it away via their unsane principle that anti-communists were more dangerous than communists."

Along with that, they have the bizarre idea that it isn't the system of Marxism or collectivism that doesn't work, but that it depends on who is in charge. This to me is so poor, I haven't worked out a rebuttal, but I would like to. It would probably have to go in the direction of showing that Marxism was never a benign idea. It is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

JP said...

@Anna:

Collectivism only works at the tribal or extended family level where everyone literally knows and is very familiar with everyone else. You can run a small group on general collectivist principles and get a generally high quality of life.

It completely fails at the level of the nation state because it's literally impossible to implement at that level due to the inherent cognitive limitations of the individual human mind.

It's not just a failure to utilize and manipulate economic information. It's far worse than that. You would have to aggregate and deal with the fact that the Central Committee or whatnot would literally have to *know* the people being governed in order to get it to work. So, you have to rely on abstractions and reduce people to numbers. Which is a really bad idea.

Anna said...

JP,

I should have specified - I meant on the level of the nation/state. Any time it is "top down", I would say. I almost wrote in my previous comment that the exception is if God is the leader. I used to think this, but now think it is probably not the way He would run things. But I haven't thought it through.

Thomas Sowell's book "Intellectuals and Society" talks about what you are describing. It is excellent.

Open Trench said...

I have long maintained the raccoon tribe itself is too sane.

Where are the seers? Where are the mystics? Who among you has had a conversion experience? Who among you has a spirit guide? Who can scry?

No one steps forth, not even the blog author. Timid you are, ashamed to show spirit fire. Because it IS loco as hell. But I know, with certainty, among you all of the above exists.

The Integralist and Ray have converted. Did you know that?

A single touch of the right atmosphere did them in.

Gabe Ruth said...

Not having any knowledge on the subject of psychology, I will refrain from saying anything about the substance of this post. Using different words as synonyms and moving them around and using connotation to say things without stating them in so many words sends up red flags for me, though. I'm not quite sure what was going on after the first few paragraphs, but more heat was generated than light, I am nearly certain.

Instead, I'm going to use the jab that supporting Ron Paul indicates some mental defect as an excuse to continue shameless political side tracks. Perhaps you meant only that a Paul presidency qualifies as a fantasy?

I wish to avoid the foreign policy portion, at least for now, because we've already seen where that goes:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8580258&postID=7022638061600800682

I will just state that Ron Paul's foreign policy does not mean obliging those that desire your demise ASAP. If someone thinks otherwise, there's not much else to say.

So, domestically. I'm not sure I even need to say anything, but please, tell me your concerns. For any person with a "from my cold dead fingers" attitude toward the second amendment, the drone wars alone should be enough to make you run screaming to this man's side.

You want principle? Before Ron Paul was even in congress, he refused to accept Medicaid. But instead of turning away such patients, he treated them for free. Adamantly pro-life to boot.

Obviously Romney isn't popular here, but I have a suspicion that the "most conservative candidate electable" rule will be followed by most readers. I just urge you to contemplate who decides electability, and ask yourself why you would defer to this logic DURING THE PRIMARY. I've heard lots of people say anyone in the GOP debate would be better than Obama. I'm inclined to agree. Then they bitch and moan about Romney. And I laugh at them.

After domestic concerns are discussed, and the demonstrated integrity of other candidates considered, I will have another go at the foreign argument.

Van Harvey said...

"Likewise denial, splitting, distortion, idealization, evacuation, fantasy, somatization, support for Ron Paul, etc."

Lol. Goes well with

"But truth infected by desire immediately becomes something less than truth. One of the first things we should learn in life is that the world could care less how we wish it to be."

Gabe Ruth said...

"But truth infected by desire immediately becomes something less than truth. One of the first things we should learn in life is that the world could care less how we wish it to be."

"Schuon goes on to write that 'There is no knowledge without objectivity of the intelligence.'"

http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2011/10/absolute-bullshit-of-left.html

The space between these two statements (which I agree with) is the thing that I feel is often unacknowledged around here. As I am not a critical theorist, and that vile rebranded variant of Marxism is ascendant in the modern world, we agree about many things. What I fear is that you consistently overestimate the robustness of human epistemology. As always, I hope you are right, but that fact does not recommend the hoped for conclusion.

Anna said...

Gabe Ruth -

Is there space between those two statements?

Van Harvey said...

Gabe said "So, domestically. I'm not sure I even need to say anything, but please, tell me your concerns."

I haven't looked closely at his positions in many moons, but policy wise, I don't remember having any significant 'OMG's!' concerning Ron Paul's domestic agenda, which, to the best of my memory, I mostly agreed with, and interested me.

It wasn't until I got to his foreign policy positions that I realized I was in the wrong room, and that was before 9/11, so that might need updating... except that there's not much reason to, his foreign policy seeps back into everything else, and while it's true that,

"I will just state that Ron Paul's foreign policy does not mean obliging those that desire your demise ASAP."

, it requires such a suspension of regard for the reality of the real world, as to disqualify further consideration, IMHO.

Do you know his opinion of Murray Rothbard? My guess would be strong agreement, but that's just a guess.

Van Harvey said...

Gabe said "The space between these two statements..."

... needs to be pointed out... what and where?

Gabe Ruth said...

Who among us has conquered the ego? If you think you have, you probably haven't.

The first indicates that desire corrupts objectivity, the second that knowledge demands objectivity. Who does not have a preference? Whence knowledge?

This has always nagged at the back of my mind when Lewis, for example, takes our desire for Heaven as an indication of its existence, like a duckling's instinct to swim indicates the existence of water.

Anna said...

Just going to try this out here, but the issues people seem to have with the possibility of objectivity or not seem to come from the post-modern doubts on things' knowability. The object can be known.

julie said...

"The Integralist and Ray have converted. Did you know that?"

If true, good for them. And if true, it probably has nothing to do with this place, but everything to do with grace.

Anna said...

Poetry! "place... grace..."

wv says: versins

Okay. :)

Anna said...

Btw, verse-in's is the plural of the verb form of verse... as in, poetic.

Oh now wv says elitisti... That's a new one!

Gabe Ruth said...

Anna, I respectfully disagree. We can have a tremendous amount of contingent evidence, more than enough to make existence endurable, somewhat predictable, even enjoyable. I am no lover of Hume. I try to place a great deal more importance in the whole world's continued existence than my own, even at the expense of my finger's being scratched. But all knowledge starts from faith, and I think he understood that, though he rebelled against what it meant.

I BELIEVE in the Absolute, and in the unity of the cosmos. The consistency of human experience strengthens that faith, as does the success of engineering in harnessing nature, and the degraded state of modern man. Some feedback loops are clearer, shorter term, than others.

I think our epistemological predicament says something tremendously interesting about our Creator, for I do believe in Him. The implications fill me with Hope, sometimes with Joy.

Van Harvey said...

Gabe said "The first indicates that desire corrupts objectivity, the second that knowledge demands objectivity. Who does not have a preference? Whence knowledge?"

It sounds like you're coming at that from the post Descartes/Hume/Kantian point of view... best to go back to basics, and work your way forwards.

If you take what is now typically taken to be Objective knowledge, and Subjective knowledge as the only two options... you're going to wind up lost in one dualism or another. What they both presume, ultimately, is that reality is unknowable, which is demonstrably false, and so their ideas of it are unavoidable false - even in those instances where they might chance to be factually accurate, as were Ptolemy's observations on Mars. His observations were mostly accurate, but with his geocentric view, his views had no chance of being true.

There is an object. There is a subject. and knowledge results from relating the two (through concepts ultimately developed through our perceptions), not in picking one over the other. It is because we are able to perceive reality, that we are able to develop an accurate understanding of it, and because we can, we are able to discover when our previous assumptions about reality are flawed, as was eventually the case regarding Ptolemy and geocentrism.

Anyone who trusts their preferences for what objective knowledge is, especially where it concerns conception, rather than perception, has a fool for a professor. Anyone who thinks they cannot be fooled by their own preferences, into making an error, is in the same boat. It's not that your preferences can't corrupt your objectivity (a different issue), but that the truth is knowable if you rigorously hold yourself to examining your ideas in relation to the real world which you are able to perceive.

Hope that's not too rushed, gotta go.

Anna said...

"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

The KJV says, "For now we see through a glass, darkly..."

The NAS, "For now we see in a mirror dimly..."

JP said...

"The Integralist and Ray have converted. Did you know that?"

Pics or it didn't happen.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Using different words as synonyms and moving them around and using connotation to say things without stating them in so many words sends up red flags for me, though. I'm not quite sure what was going on after the first few paragraphs, but more heat was generated than light, I am nearly certain."

You really need to read a lot of Bob's earlier posts and, in particular, his book to get more of the backstory, so to speak.

And I urge you to take another look at Ron Paul. Don't ignore the utterly insane crap he says just becauise he says a few good things.

Of course, I would say study all the candidates thoroughly before making a decision.

Would Paul be better than Obama? Not for the GOP, I can say that much for certain. But overall, I really couldn't say which is worse.
Yes, Ron Paul is that bad.

Van Harvey said...

Gabe, I just saw Anna's comment and your response to it - glad Hume isn't a factor, but then what, other than peoples sloppiness and failure to check their work for consistency, accounts for your comment,

"Anna, I respectfully disagree. We can have a tremendous amount of contingent evidence, more than enough to make existence endurable, somewhat predictable, even enjoyable."

?

How do you mean 'contingent evidence', are you talking about "Necessary vs. Contingent"? If so, then you're right back in... well, if not Hume, then Kant's response to him, which amounts to much the same, assumes the 'Critical Question' (which practically IS modernity) and is bogus from the get go.

I'm going to blunder on with the assumption that that's what you mean, but it is an essentially an anti-conceptual view of knowledge and either discards or denies the possibility and necessity of an integrated view of knowledge, and also denies the possibility of objective knowledge from the get-go.

For instance, from the first page I pulled up,
"Necessary vs. contingent: this is a metaphysical distinction between what must be true or could have been otherwise."

,and offers an example of 'contingent' knowledge as being,

"‘Obama is the president of the US’ and ‘McCain is the president of the US’"

As if that is somehow something that is less metaphysically true than triangles having three sides. It is not, and presenting it as if it is makes a huge statement about the metaphysics of the speaker (and that usually amounts to denying the possibility of there being any metaphysical knowledge - directly, or by implication). It not only presumes elevating a statement about reality to the level of knowledge of reality, but in doing so it presumes a source of knowledge that is not, and cannot be, objective, which is begging the question to say the least.

Sorry if I'm too far off the mark here, but anytime I hear such concern over epistemology, it nearly always comes from having discarded the possibility of metaphysics to begin with, and that pretty much always traces back to one form or another of a kantian view, which is and always will be, technically speaking, poop.

julie said...

Gabe,
with all due respect (you're probably feeling a bit piled-on now; sorry, but I think this needs to be said), sometimes you need to unclench. I don't even mean the Ron Paul issue; Ben covered a few of my reasons against him, not to mention the damage an unelectable third party candidate can cause in a close race. A vote for Paul is a vote for Obama.

No, what I mean is this: "Using different words as synonyms and moving them around and using connotation to say things without stating them in so many words sends up red flags for me, though. I'm not quite sure what was going on after the first few paragraphs, but more heat was generated than light, I am nearly certain."

In other words, you don't like symbols.

The irony here is that you apparently don't even realize you've just demonstrated the point of the post: there is a concept you don't fully grasp, but instead of simply acknowledging that it isn't clear to you, you must mark the unfamiliar (offending) idea as "more heat than light". That's a rather dismissive and judgmental approach, just because it's a little hard to understand, don't you think?

I hate to break it to you, but using symbols as a short-hand to express meaning is pretty much how man became man. Or for that matter, how the world is, what with the Word being God and all. Without "made-up" symbols, this conversation could not happen. If the symbols used here seem a bit slippery, that is the point. Dismissing them won't make the underlying concepts go away, it would just make them impossible to express, instead of merely difficult.

Van Harvey said...

JP said about ot's "The Integralist and Ray have converted. Did you know that?",

"Pics or it didn't happen."

Which I've got to agree with too (JP, we're getting on a roll here).

How do you know that ot? Do you at least have a reference?

Van Harvey said...

I'll add a Yep to what Julie said (insert Walt's trademark trademark symbol here... I can never find it), and add that that too comes down to metaphysics and a non-objective view of knowledge.

Van Harvey said...

wv wishes to add a new term: "obobvist", which I kant help smiling at.

Anna said...

In a way, it goes back to the basic axiom that: there is truth, because to state there is not truth is a statement of truth. It kind of seems to gnaw on the question - are we alienated from knowing truth? But if anyone in the cosmos is positioned to know truth (even in part; see above... 1 Cor.), it is human beings, as it is what we are. So I think the question of objectivity is the question of the existence of truth and the ability to know incognito (no pun intended), no?

Christina M said...

"The Integralist and Ray have converted."

What others have said here, plus "converted to what?"

Christina M said...

BTW, I have made it to Card # 11: Force. Stunning.

Anna said...

Interestingly, this was part of the topic of the talk by Larry Arnn at the Hillsdale College meeting last Thursday in Portland. He gave an example of schools that only want the students feelings or appraisal about a text, rather than examining the text itself. [Van - It was an in person event, and the talk was "Finding Opportunity Amidst Danger:
Steps to the Restoration of Constitutional Rule". I wonder if it was similar to the one you mentioned, "Reviving the Constitution"?]

Also, it seems to be a main circuit of OC -- exiting the closed circle via transcendence. But here I might be going too far into the *infinity* (symbol) of the binocular vision. Stating such large points that the point veers off into the obvious.

Open Trench said...

I have no proof of the conversion of the Integralist and Ray; I only sense they converted from a place of feeling alone to feeling the Presence. That is the only conversion possible; to my knowledge it never proceeds in the other direction.

William is on the cusp; he is shopping Buddhism and that is always a sign the Presence is about to grab one around the nape; another conversion this way comes.

The wave of the future politics is "mitigated capitalism" or "modified socialism." These will be known as 'mitcap' and 'modsoc' and they are a hyrbrid between communism and capitalism. All nations will use it in one form or another before it gives way to a new thing not yet seen clearly.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"In one sense, it is simply the secular analogue of the conversion experience, whereby one has a sudden insight into the redemption of a hopelessly fallen world (indeed, this pseudo-religious aspect is one reason why its adherents have such difficulty with critical thinking and self-awareness)."

Right on. This even spills over into the rest of their lives, particularly the hardcore leftists.
For instance, their jobs if they have one.

I'm not just talkin' about the one's who have jobs directly related to their psychosis such as politicians, teachers, writers, etc., that are so heavily invested in this destructive illusion/fantasy of leftism, but one can see it in any job.

The mental health field is festering with leftist, delusional idiots, and they can do far more harm than good.

It's been my experience that many (not all) are more enablers of victimhood than healers.
Some are so far gone I'd rather go to Skully for therapy (like Sargeant Ermey...on steroids).

One thing that most on the left dismiss out of hand (for they must) is that even most leftists hate leftists.

The various OWSer protests are a good example of this.
Hurray for anarchy fascism! It works so well going back to barbarism. Except for those who actually try it.

It's all fun n' games until people get assaulted, robbed, raped, OD, destroy personal property, embezzle, stink up the joint, bring crabs that no amount of butter will make more tasty, not contribute to the cause, etc..

julie said...

OT - In other words, you just pulled it out of your ass. No surprise there...

Anna said...

Speaking of binocular vision, it seems like an issue also of convergence of left brain and right brain. Too far in one direction and there is no decision-making capacity. Too far in another direction and there is no analysis. In concert... another story! There is good sense (truth) and meaning (spirit). I'm a fan of the corpus callosum.

Anna said...

Speaking also of smiling at wv...
squarmak. :)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I'll also add that the OWSers and leftists in general will still blame all the crime at their protests on Wall Street and conservatives.

And they'll never admit that their ideology/cult/pseudo-religion attracts predators, mostly from their own rank ranks.

Yet, they can't explain why this doesn't happen at Tea Party protests, which are much larger than the OWSer tantrums.

I suppose because they believe it does happen because they don't need proof to "know" it.

In any event, the OWSer protests are an excellent example (in microcosm) of precisely what leftism in all it's fascist forms does to people.

Anna said...

Ben said...

"I'll also add that the OWSers and leftists in general will still blame all the crime at their protests on Wall Street and conservatives."

Concur.

Gagdad Bob said...

The hypocrisy about that is stunning, even by the standards of the left.

Christina M said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christina M said...

"Shades of Rachel Corrie..." Oh there's a blast from the past.

julie said...

Anna, re. binocular vision, that's a good way to put it.

And re. the protestors protesting their innocence, methinks they doth protest too much...

Anna said...

Julie said...

"And re. the protestors protesting their innocence, methinks they doth protest too much..."

Oy.

I'll just say it. To me the situation is embarrassing at the least. And at the most, it makes me a little... uh upset. How dare they? It seems like huge gaffs of taking things for granted. It would be different if it was a movement conducted by written articles or speeches, especially coherent speeches. But this is terrible. It is destructive in essence, not at all constructive. When will it be over? Ugh.

Anna said...

WV is spirited today.

wv: ovolver.

mushroom said...

Ray posts on First Things every so often, usually offering his typical evolutionary tropes. Carter seems to handle him pretty well.

He seems happy. We're glad.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

That is stunning, Bob.
Everytime I think the left can't set the bar lower they do just that.

I'm beginning to think this is the new standards of the left, which is to say no standards at all.

And Obama and company sure haven't walked away from their endorsement of the OWSer extracrimeickular activities.

Sad what envy (and the other deadly sins) can reduce people to when they are of like mind.

Collective destruction and unplausable deniability.

Cond0011 said...

"I have long maintained the raccoon tribe itself is too sane. (Open Trench)"

Muahahahahahhaaaaaa!!!!!

"Who among you has had a conversion experience? "

Well... I was 'born again' in Bible camp as a kid. Twice even. :)

I still remember looking around afterwards and realizing "hey! I still feel the same... huh..."

"Russian victims of Soviet tyranny knew all about the reality of Marxism, which is why they could have nothing but contempt for western apologists such as Sartre, Chomsky, and all the rest. "

Yea. They suffered the application of the Theory of Marxism (Which quickly morphed back into the oligarchy of totaliarianism due to its lack of understanding of the darker side of human nature). ...and yes, the Western Intellectuals continue to choose to ignore historical evidence and feed their misplaced desires with, yet another try at a failed idea.

Here is a fun video you all may enjoy about the:

Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8

Cond0011 said...

"One of the reasons people idealize celebrities and artists is that they seem to live lives in which they are able to give free reign to the crazy. But one doesn't have to read too many biographies to discover that they didn't usually have much of a choice in the matter, and that the crazy eventually swamps the enfeebled non-crazy part of the personality."

We all live in a pressurized world called society. As we grow up, we have a tendency to take on the 'norm' of the given society based on its ideal - with the push-pull of the pressures of society that help the individual find coping mechanisms so that they may maintain the societal norm in opposition to these pressures.

Societal pressurization is lost when personal power in the forms of money, power, influence, & celebrity reaches a magnitude where the individual can actually ignore societal pressures. What happens afterwards is what Victor Frankel would call 'Moral Deformation' (Book: Mans Search for Meaning) which is akin to somebody stepping out into outer-space with no space suit.

Simply put, most people need societal pressure for them to maintain who they are. Those who can remain 'sane' when they are granted such opulent freedoms, have a character trait aptly called:

Integrity.

Something that seems to have been lost in this most post-modern world

ge said...

open trench coat: read yr MOTT, public levitation is a bit.... gauche or gross

Gagdad Bob said...

Cond0100 -- I like that outer space-with-no-space suit analogy. It's kind of like dreaming, but even in dreams we meet certain intrinsic limits within our own psyche -- the ego is dissolved, but a certain interior structure remains, whereas in the case of the super wealthy celebrity, the ego expands beyond all proper limits.

julie said...

Cond - great video. Thanks!

Cond0011 said...

Thank you Bob.

I am aware of the fragility of the human Psyche. Who we think we are may actually change, or transform, under different circumstances and different social pressures (or lack thereof). For me, that is unsettling - maybe this goes hand in hand with 'the Normotic Personality'. hmmmmm... "Power Corrupts". Or maybe the corruption was already there and that Social Pressurization spares us from seeing those darker components within the farthest recesses of our souls.

Thankfully, God loves us anyway. Warts and all.

@Julie: there's more where that came from! hahahhahahaaaaa!!!!

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