Missing Canadian man found 10k km from home in the Amazon jungle
nzherald.co.nz
nzherald.co.nz
I'm getting this positive feeling that nature must have cured him off schizophrenia.
"If a person lives in a forest and no one is around to label them as a 'schizophrenic', can that person be claimed to have a disorder?"
When you're alone, you can't be compared against society's bullshit definition of "normal". You are just you. Imagine how freeing that is, to extract oneself from the judging glare and arbitrary definitions of your peers who think themselves better than you.
A situation like this perhaps tests the bounds of that idea. Even if he says, "I feel fine about all of this", it may be necessary for loved ones to step in and say, "OK, but you're endangering your health."
I travel full-time, often in some pretty odd places, and I have several friends and passing acquaintances who aren't all that far off from this guy. I know folks who ride trains with nothing but a backpack, people who hitchhike cross-country on a regular basis, people who've ridden bikes through multiple countries, people who live/travel in a van or car, etc. I worry about their mental state in some cases, and many have addiction issues, but many choose to live lightly, and I don't know that it would be ethical to insist they do otherwise.
Schizophrenia is more common than most folks realize, and people can suffer in a wide variety of ways because of it. It may be worse to be trapped in an apartment or a mental hospital, or to be suicidal, or to become violent, because of the condition than to be roaming around South America, at least for some folks. It isn't always treatable (anti-psychotics sometimes help, anti-depressants sometimes help, Lithium sometimes helps if schizophrenia is paired with bipolar disorder; my father was schizophrenic and was, at times, prescribed all of those), so maybe being happy (or content) and not hurting anyone is as good an outcome as one can achieve.
So, yeah, he may have schizophrenia, and I hope he's able to get treatment that works effectively. It sounds like he's happy to be back with his family, and they're happy to have him back. That's an awesome outcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
My first thought that his obession was somehow conencted to Borges. Borges being the former director of the National Public Library of Argentina.
This mans story has Borgesque qualities to it in itself.
When it comes to real-world experiences, most details fail to get documented.
I know I've gone out for a drive or a walk to clear my head and found myself 90 minutes from home. Maybe this guy took it to a whole new level
CBC date is: Feb 07, 2017 15:31 ET
Daily Mail: Feb 08, 2017 16:38 ET
Sigh! four-tops-itis reaches New Zealand
Who is this "we" at the beginning of your sentence, and who is the "them" at the end? Are "we" and "them" the same collective, subjecting themselves to their own analysis? Or is the "we" the collective of those who are apparently not mentally ill, with "them" being the group being targeted for labelling? If the latter, what is your justification for assessing a group of people you do not belong to? Your own manmade "science", with no basis in factual laws of nature required?
What is mental illness, as defined by our society? It's being affected by an "abnormal" state of mind, as proclaimed by those who self-label themselves as not being affected. For the most part, "being mentally ill" is simply "being different". At its very core, every mental illness requires a second individual to "diagnose" the first.
Aside: I believe that "mental illness" is born in an individual by having been forced to cohabitate in tight quarters with millions of individuals they have no personal relationship with and who don't give a damn about them, while having no choice but to slave away at a job they despise, performing menial tasks that feed corporate greed while not providing a single meaningful contribution to their community... and for what purpose? To perpetuate the meaningless existence we have created for ourselves? Society did not have to work out this way, but somehow this is where we have ended up. It's depressing beyond belief, and it's no wonder so many people are fucked up.
The great thing about facts is that they're true whether you believe them or not. Schizophrenia has been documented (not by that name but by description) more than 2,000 years ago. You can't blame modern capitalism or the industrial revolution or modern cities or whatever for schizophrenia.
Any piece of documentation that was not witnessed first-hand by many individuals, with none of them disagreeing on the totality of the facts, is unreliable and forever suspect. The moment someone writes down a fact that was witnessed by someone other than themselves... that "fact" is no longer actual fact.
Please tell me about the facts of Jesus's time on Earth. Too far in the past? Fine, tell me exactly why the US occupied Iraq. No, not what you were told or what you read - the information you obtained in person during the decision-making process. Can you?
Read more carefully. "We" is all of mankind, and "them" is mental illnesses.
> It's being affected by an "abnormal" state of mind, as proclaimed by those who self-label themselves as not being affected. For the most part, "being mentally ill" is simply "being different". At its very core, every mental illness requires a second individual to "diagnose" the first.
No. Not all things are subject to relativism. If you believe you're indestructible and do something that gets you hurt or killed, then your cognitive functions have objectively malfunctioned. It doesn't matter if you realize it or not.
> I believe that "mental illness" is born in an individual by having been forced to cohabitate in tight quarters with millions of individuals they have no personal relationship with and who don't give a damn about them
What about, say, some European monarchs who went crazy due to generations of inbreeding?
You're likely right about the parent's intention. It's somewhat ambiguous with their sentence structure as that second sentence reads fine without the first, with the "them" referring to the "most people" after the comma. Upon second reading, I can see it makes more sense for "them" to refer to the previous sentence's "mental illnesses". There should have been a semicolon between and some restructuring. :)
However, I am still not satisfied with that distinction. The "we", even without an intentionally spliced "them", is still being used to try and say "we as a whole", when the reality of the statement is "we as a subset of the whole". Specifically because almost no "mentally ill" person will self-identify as such without having been subjected to years of subjugation to do so. Please find me the group of people, with a statistically significant size, who are both mentally ill and working to define the term "mental illness". They will be few and far between.
This reminds me so much of Jane Elliott's lifetime spent trying to teach people who claim not to be racist that they are in fact flat out racist. It's not a perfect analogy, but the root of the problem is very similar.
Also, this:
> the mentally ill only wind up labelling themselves as that after years of pressure into conforming to that label by those around them
is not true. For example, a chronic depressive is perfectly capable of seeing that something is wrong with them, because their illness doesn't impair their cognition.
As for your analogy regarding cats... give me a break. Cats see you solely as a giver of food and oft unwanted affection. That doesn't mean that's all you are. Or... maybe that's exactly all you are, a dumb moving object whose only purpose is to dispense food. Perspective is everything.
Just so we're clear, you're asking why I said something I didn't say. What I said was that a chronic depressive is capable of being aware of their illness, not necessarily that they are aware.
With that out of the way, let's consider a hypothetical conversation between a depressive A and two healthy people B and C.
A: Man, it's really difficult to get out of bed every morning, isn't it?
B: Yeah, getting up early is tough.
A: I don't mean just that, I mean just getting motivated to even get up.
C: Uh, not really. There's stuff that needs to get done.
A: So you don't have any problems getting motivated to get up?
C: Not generally, no.
B: Yeah, me neither.
A: Next you're gonna tell me that you've never considered killing yourselves.
B and C: No, never.
A: Huh. Must be just me, then.
Likewise, a colorblind person can realize that other people are experiencing light differently without being directly told.
> As for your analogy regarding cats... give me a break. Cats see you solely as a giver of food and oft unwanted affection. That doesn't mean that's all you are. Or... maybe that's exactly all you are, a dumb moving object whose only purpose is to dispense food. Perspective is everything.
That analogy was in response to your point that "no mentally ill person calls themselves that". Now you're changing the subject to how other people view mentally ill people.
But anyway, basically your only argument is that reality is subjective, and there's no way to judge whose delusion is the illness, and that's BS. If you believe that the world is ruled an all-powerful Jesuit organization when there's no reason to believe this, and this belief causes you to endanger yourself or others, then that's an illness. The criterion is based on the effects of the belief, not on the belief itself.
Now you're splitting hairs to try and prove that your perspective is superior to that of those you're labelling. This is exactly the characterization of someone who is being (perhaps ignorantly) oppressive. In such a situation, one has no business trying to argue that they have a bloody clue talking about a subject matter that does not directly affect them; and no, having a friend or family member who is "affected" is not "direct". You cannot claim to understand racism simply because you are a white person who happens to have a black friend.
>> let's consider a hypothetical conversation between a depressive A and two healthy people B and C
That whole discussion is one-sided. You're assuming that a majority consensus from B and C completely nullifies the possibility that A's perspective is valid and normal. The very fact that the word "normal" is used to indicate a majority consensus against the behaviour of a minority stinks of exclusivity and is outrageously abhorrent. 1,000 people saying that "situation A is normal" does not mean that 3 people saying "situation B is normal for me" is somehow abnormal. They are both normal scenarios, each having a different section of the pie chart. Who the fuck is so high and mighty as to decide that Slice B of the pie is not normal because Slice A is larger? When the sophistication of the statistical analysis you are using to generate your world view requires a grade 5 level of mathematical comprehension, you're using the most selfish of non-analytical thinking to justify your personal bias.
>> Now you're changing the subject to how other people view mentally ill people
Exactly. Those who label themselves as "non mentally ill" have no valid perspective of what it means to be "mentally ill". Seeing oneself as "normal" while comparing oneself against others who "must clearly not be normal because I say so" is the entire problem. You have no frame of reference, because you can't put yourself in their shoes - end of discussion.
> Those who label themselves as "non mentally ill" have no valid perspective of what it means to be "mentally ill".
This is what I call an argument from experience. "You've never experienced it yourself, so you have no business discussing it." This is equivalent to saying that someone who's never ridden a plane can't be an aeronautical engineer. How about something a bit more compelling?
Look, you're the only one since tempestn's comment (inclusive) that's used the words "normal" and "abnormal". If you want to argue that the pattern of emotions experienced by a depressive is normal, or that a delusion is normal, then that's fine. I don't agree but I don't particularly care either way. But are you at least capable of seeing that a depressive who neglects their responsibilities, or even kills themselves, has an illness? That if someone has a delusion that causes them to murder someone, then that delusion is an illness? Or are you going to argue that murder and suicide are good things?