Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

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> Tom Cruise is too old to appear in action films? Well, his image won't be.. even after he is dead and gone his image will be owned by a corporation.

We all know who that corporation/religious group will be, too.

On a tangent, have you considered that Tom Cruise may have the most wonderful life in existence? He's known, and probably liked, by billions for his movies, he's adored by his fellow religious adherents, the religion provides him a pampered lifestyle where his every whim is taken care of be what are essentially servants (religious adherents instructed to never question him and see to his every need, no matter how hard or ridiculous[1]), has enough money to do whatever he wants due to his fame and career, and has the idea that he deserves this as a chosen individual strongly reinforced every day by both the people surrounding him and the reality of his situation.

I mean, a billionaire Saudi Prince might have it pretty good, but they have nothing on Tom Cruise. Even a dictator with total control over his people usually has some repercussions when visiting other locales.

It's not something I would wish for myself, but I can't honestly say if I was in that situation I would decide I should get out of it, given how it would condition me. He's likely the most "blessed" individual to walk the Earth to this point, given what he has access to in the modern age.

1: As recounted by Leah Remini in an interview by Joe Rogan regarding Scientology.

Yes, but he's profoundly mentally ill.

He (seemingly) has, at least, borderline personality disorder and possibly NPD.

That suggests highly unstable relationships, emotions, etc. Not a life you would wish for yourself.

Material luxury both comes with its own trappings (eg. fear of being kidnapped; a fear that your friends only want you for your money/fame; which creates paranoia in most rich people) -- and then, in lots of cases, mental illnesses.

> Yes, but he's profoundly mentally ill.

But how much of that is because of his situation? Is it possible to remain what we would consider a sane, well-adjusted individual given prolonged exposure to that situation?

Are dictators or the kings of ages past with absolute or close to absolute power any saner?

> Not a life you would wish for yourself.

Yes, as I said, not something I would want for myself, at least in my current mindset. But if I was in that situation for more than a few months, I'm not sure what or who I would be after that time.

A lot of actors have personality disorders. The mimicry of the behavior of others is a technique in navigating social situations when you are unable/unaware of how you feel.

In the "crazy interview" Tom did for scientology you can literally see him flick through a deck of emotions. His entire demeanor is a bit like a random walk through mimicking the emotional states of others.

I can't recall if I had any idea of the trigger in that case. But, hypothetically, it could be a technique to disguise an unpalatable emotion he was havin. Often, I believe, this would be rage/anger/contempt.

I wonder whether the "intense eyes" of cruize/kanye/etc. are that of an intense rage/contempt. Their demeanor is certianly mimicry, what it is they would be emoting is harder to ascertain.

People describe being around that type as like "walking on egg-shells". That's because they really are in an anger-prone state... you just can't see it. But you can "feel" that if you slip up, the rage will become public and take the form of abuse.

>People describe being around that type as like "walking on egg-shells". That's because they really are in an anger-prone state.

I know several people who have worked with Cruise on films who describe their experience as the opposite of this.

> Yes, but he's profoundly mentally ill.

He seems to be a very happy, upbeat person who has avoided taking any psychotropic drugs. If that's what "profound mental illness" looks like, sign me up.

The people most emotionally hostile to taking drugs for mental ill-health are typically those people who need them and deny their need for them. The hostility Cruise displays feels a lot -- to me -- like this kind of denial.

It has a quite a specific feeling to it. The manic who denies the need for drugs is somewhat correct in how good they feel, but they lack the self-insight to be aware of their impact on others and self-destructive tendencies.

Their "intensity" arises from the europhia of (hypo)mania, the feeling that it is too good to be "medicated away" etc. and a strong desire to persist in their (hypo)manic state. But it is mostly quite debilitating, and can quickly exacerbate into psychosis.

But it's not at all evident that narcissists suffer from their condition, as long as they can afford to live the way they prefer. In fact all Dark Triad traits make more sense when viewed as alternative social and reproductive strategies enforced on the level of phenotype.

There are no signs of that at all. I see the opposite. Someone who is brave and stands up for his opinion about the psychology profession.

In an insane world, sane people are said to be insane. There is a huge amount of truth in that statement.

> Yes, but he's profoundly mentally ill.

He (seemingly) has, at least, borderline personality disorder and possibly NPD.

Please don't make armchair diagnoses of people like this. I think you need to seriously reconsider how appropriate it is to make cavalier declarations of another person's mental health in a public forum. Even if you were a clinically trained professional, making this assertion on a message board would be baseless speculation.

EDIT: I find the flippancy with which you're commenting in this entire subthread to be demeaning and inconsiderate. Please step back for a moment and understand that you're extrapolating speculative diagnoses from observations you have not made in a clinical setting. You're pontificating about someone's mental health despite the fact that you cannot possibly be informed about it.

Yes, but we are only in a comment thread on HN and talking about a celebrity who can be in no possible danger from anything I am saying.

> making this assertion on a message board would be baseless speculation.

Yes, its speculation. But arent we exactly on a message board where we are speculating? Isnt this whole conversation, from the OP article itself, a game of speculation?

Why refrain from speculating about the mental health of a person?

You seem to be repeating good-natured pablum which applies, of course, when dealing with specific vulnerable people who could be affected by such speculation. In this case, certainly, it would be bad.

But we're not in that case. Its entirely reasonable to make a judgement about the mental health of other people, in the course of assessing their life.

> You're pontificating about someone's mental health despite the fact that you cannot possibly be informed about it.

Yes, like every person in this thread on every topic in this thread. Speculation isn't bad in itself. It's pretty necessary in the course of discussing a topic.

I am not diagnosing anyone. I am speculating about a diagnosis for the purpose of illustrating problems I believe Tom Cruize may have: so what?

Internet psychiatric diagnosis is something we can do without here. It doesn't gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and gets pretty ugly pretty quickly. Please don't post like that to HN.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

>He's likely the most "blessed" individual to walk the Earth to this point, given what he has access to in the modern age.

He has been through three divorces. If I was going to pick the most wonderful life in existence it won't have a divorce in it.

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