Wise Words from the Train Journey

A couple of days ago on my way home, I happened to listen in on parts of a conversation between two elderly people behind me. I say conversation, it was mostly the older man sharing some of his observations on life. There were three main conclusions that he had come to that I heard. There was his theory on a long marriage, his theory on a reason for life (or not death) and one that is fairly hard to simplify.

His theory on a long marriage is that after about 40 years, you and your wife or husband are the same person; you love her/him the same as you love yourself. This is why he says that after a long marriage, you very rarely see a divorce.
His reason for not being dead is that he still has dreams. Without dreams, he says, you're dead. There has to be something that keeps you wanting to be alive, and that thing is positive hopes for the future, no matter how good or bad it is now.
These are both moderately interesting and to some they may be profound thoughts. The next one is even better.

Following on from his dreams, he says that if he were to experience one moment of perfect joy, one moment of profound happiness (my paraphrase, his words were closer to a moment that he wanted to have extended infinitely), that he would like to be destroyed at that moment. As an interesting aside, this is close to the deal made to Faust by Mephistopheles in the poem by Goethe, the difference is that Faust at that moment gave his soul to the devil. Now as far as I can read it there are two major reasons that you would want this.

Firstly and most simply, you want to go out on a high point. What he wants is to do is die at the highest point of his life; a bit of a downer some might say, but what could be better than having the last thing that you know being perfection (or as close as you can perceive it). This is something that many people don't think about in their interpretation of death. If death is an end, then the moments leading up to it don't really matter. But enough of that semi-morbidity.

The second reason is slightly different, but definitely related. If you have a moment of perfect happiness, then everything after that will be less than second best: the best meals will taste like tofu, the most awesome music will sound like a three year old on the violin, the best literature will read like a Hansard and the greatest joy will feel like a pale imitation of sadness. If nothing can match it, then what is the point of anything else?

Multiply/Fracture

Some recent thought has led me to an interesting point. Decartes theorised that the body and the mind or spirit are separate or different parts. By way of a proof, he offers this
1. The body is tangible, therefore, both finite and divisible.
2. The spirit is intangible, therefore, both infinite and indivisible.
Therefore, they can not be the same part of a person. As a secondary point, if the body is merely the vessel of the spirit then they share the same relationship as a house does to the people living inside it or a bag does to its contents; the inner is what is of interest and the outer, while we may grow to be attached to it, doesn't actually have any use beyond containment.

Now the first part leads to an interesting question. There is a condition known commonly as Multiple Personalities and more scientifically as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Where it could get interesting is when you look at in in terms of Decartes' theory. If the mind and body are separate, then this is definitely possible. However it leads me to one of two conclusions. Either there is more than one mind in the body, or, there is only one mind, but it is fractured. You either have to look at either Multiple or Split (fractured) personalities.

When you look at documented case histories, most diagnosable cases fall under multiple; you have two (or more) different but fully recognised people bumping around in your head. Which is where my thinking took an interesting turning. Everyone acts different around different people or in different situations. How do you talk when your girlfriend is around? Is it the same as when you're with a bunch of mates? How about when you're at work or class or which ever? Is it the same as when you're at the pub? No. You have different personalities for different circumstances. You may only change some things, like your choice of language, but there are recognisable changes that separate different parts of your character.
It follows then that everyone has somewhat fractured personalities. What that means, I don't really know, but it is an interesting point.

Deadness

Now last time, I said that I would discuss the preconception that suffering (and for the purposes of this post also death) are innately bad or evil. I should make it clear from the outset that I do no agree with this. I would put forth that in and of itself, death and suffering are not bad. Death is at most neutral and suffering depends on the outcome. Before I explain this I should say two things. Firstly that this is somewhere where agree to disagree is a very valid answer and if you don't agree, possibly the best answer. Secondly, I came to this conclusion through means that out of context (which is where they are sitting) can be easily ignored; please don't if you want to understand where this comes from.

I'm going to begin with suffering. Yes, suffering can be, and often is, bad. However, this is not because suffering is an end, or rather because it somehow has been imbued somehow with the metaphysical properties of bad. It is often bad because no good comes of it. Yes, suffering caused deliberately is disgusting. However, often medicine is disgusting and that has a good outcome. If suffering has a positive outcome, I believe that it can in hindsight be called a good thing. The problem is that suffering is called bad before people have the chance to get out of it, and that label sticks.
It will always hurt, but hurt isn't always a bad thing. The simplest example is that the body uses hurt to tell you to stop putting your hand on the hotplate. If you don't do it again in the future, then that (very minor) suffering was a good thing.
So in the context of the last post, the Suffering of Christ was a good thing because it had a good end

This second part is going to be harder to put down.

William Drischler proposes this viewpoint that I agree with. "Death is neither good nor evil and that is why people have so much trouble accepting it." I think that this is the way that lots of things work. I will use the example here of money because I can take a very will known quote and make my point. Timothy 6:10 'For the love of money is the root of all evil.' Too often people interpret this as 'For money is Evil' when it never says that. It says that a devotion to money or greed is what causes most if not all evils. Money in and of itself is not bad, neither is it good. What it is, is neutral. But if the end of a neutral thing is bad, then humanity tends to put neutral things in the bad pile.
The song 'Thoughts of a Dying Atheist' by Muse features this line. "[Death] Scares the hell out of me and the end is all I can see". The end that is seen is nothing, so it isn't a positive, so by extension it is bad, and therefore, or so the argument goes, death itself must be bad. This relies on the argument that the end justifies the means - the method of something takes the qualities of the end of it. Not many people actually like this argument any more though, so why is it still the viewpoint in this case. I don't know and so I won't answer.

Death in and of itself is merely a change from one state to another - a change from a state of life to a state of not life. And so I can't see how it in and of itself is a bad thing. Especially when it is one of the three ultimate guarantees (birth and taxes being the other two). State changes are bu definition not bad, they just are.

Easter

Someone commented today that saying Happy Easter is a contradiction in terms - since Easter literally means suffering, how can that be happy? This leads me onto my next post, but before I discuss that particular one, I will answer the primary assumption.

The context of this was saying that since Easter was the death of Christ, we shouldn't be celebrating it - It isn't a happy occasion. Now, from my understanding, the death of Christ should be the happiest day of the Christian calendar. If Easter is indeed the day that Christ rose from the dead (I don't intend to make this an argument so just run with it if you don't agree) for the purpose of taking the sins of his chosen on himself, then it is the most unbelievably amazing thing that has ever happened, not a cause for mourning. At the time, I can understand that response. In retrospect however (which is what we've got the advantage of) it should be a cause for dancing in the streets (if you feel liberated enough to take advantage of this possibility).

And if that isn't enough reason for celebration, there's small, almost elliptical balls of chocolate to eat. What more could you ask for?

Recent Developments in the world of the brain

The World Psychiatry Association has recently decided that the list of drug-treatable mental illnesses isn't quite long enough. Not really, they've just decided that there needs to be an increase in the diagnosable illnesses and so they have put forward a list that they think should be added. Below I've got a list of some of my favorites. Some of these haven't made it into medical journals and so are still basically under wraps (I know a few people in the Psychology Business, in fact most of my counsellors are in this industry)

Pre-Adolescent Psychosis - Actually defined as "A teenager who is a bit odd". Brilliant, because we need a few more of them.
Associative Identity Disorder - Similar to Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities) except it covers people who act different ways in the presence of different people or in different circumstances.
Atypical Paranoia - This is an interesting one; it covers people that are worried that they aren't worried about things.
Monopolar Disorder - Covers people who don't have major changes in their emotional response.
Pre-Echolalia - Covers people who manage to know what is going to be said before it is said (thought to be related to an overdeveloped Temporal Cerebellum)
Daymare Disorder - Similar to Nightmare Disorder but covers the time spent day dreaming (This one is a bit controversial as it is still unclear whether it is a self-imposed illness or one born out of some trauma)
Anti-Defiance Disorder (Jones' Syndrome) - This one is probably a teachers best friend. It covers kids who show a higher than average propensity for following orders.
Attention Surplus Syndrome - Roughly the opposite of Attention Deficit Disorder where people have an attention span greater than the average. It is unclear whether this is an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Cognitive Tourette's - Similar to both Standard and Somatic Tourette's Syndromes (where someone is incapable of controlling some of their speech or actions). In this variation, a person is unable to control their thought patterns. Characteristically they consistently change the topic of a conversation or are incapable of following a continual argument.
Boanthropy - A disorder where the sufferer thinks he is a cow (Don't believe me, look it up)