I’m told that besides bipolars and schizophrenic visionaries, political dissidents andsubversive herbalists were also tortured and burned at the stake. Let’s add gays and Lesbians to the list. It makes sense that a single woman might make her living from herbalism. Which she may have learned from a lesbian mentor. Which was part of that Old Time Religion, not Christianity. Herbalism, that is, not lesbianism!
Hallucinogenic plants are very effective in treating certain kinds of ailments. Sort of like early transpersonal psychology. Until one of the Good Townsfolk took the belladonna and had a bad trip. She’s a witch! Burn the witch!
According to the infamous &Hammer of Witches, gay men were to be thrown in with the bundles of sticks as kindling, hence faggot. It was so prevalent that the word for kindling became applied to gay men as a pejorative.
The mentally ill are *still* seen as being demon-possessed in some places, even in the US. I have talked to folks who have been forced to undergo exorcisms. Of course, there was that unfortunate incident in Romania where the Romanian Orthodox church crucified a schizophrenic nun.
On the other hand, you could see an exorcism as an extreme form of psychosocial therapy. I mean, the whole family had to commit themselves to the new, well person. If you think about it, you spend years in therapy and your family still bears a grudge for the things you did in episodes 15 years ago. You can never live it down, not ever. It would be nice to make believe that some demon left and took my sins with it.
Into the Void
Back off, man, I'm co-creating my reality.
The Kindling Effect
Shamanism and talking to Dog
The anthropological literature has whole books on how different cultures view mental illness. A bipolar makes a perfect shaman, because unmedicated we tend to have periods of remission between any episodes of talking to Dog.
How we perceive our own level of functioning is an important part of the diagnostic criteria. I quote from pendulum.org:
The symptoms are a cause of great distress or difficulty in functioning at home, work, or other important areas.
It seems fairly obvious that if your job function is to have psychotic episodes, then the symptoms aren’t going to create difficulties at work.
I completely agree that many of the prophets and Christian Mystics were mentally ill. I believe that they were putting forth Truths that were only available to a shattered mind, a mind that has no stake in the status quo. This is the meaning of “thinking outside of the box&”.
We are stigmatizing mental illness in ways that go far beyond any distress or difficulty in functioning that we experience.
Your Library – A Meme Game
A little game from bipolar disorder: the story of me and it.
- Grab the nearest book you have on the subject of Bipolar Disorder.
- Open the book to page 18.
- Find the ninth sentence
- Post the text of the sentence.
- Have a laugh.
(a derivation of the page 23 meme)
There is a higher prevalence of bipolar disorder among people diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder known to involve differences in the basal ganglia that result in tics.
– Mitzi Walsh, Adult Bipolar Disorders.
Today’s meanderings
Well, the news is full of fun stuff today. The press could do so much good if they directed their energy into improving the world.
Man faints, dies after seeing epidural. Ok, I can almost see this. The needle is three inches long and marked in stripes to indicate depth of penetration. It looks kind of like a skeeter’s tweeter.
US reporter jailed in CIA trial. This one is tricky. Background: Joseph Wilson was confronting Dubya over the questionable evidence he had presented to justify the rape of Iraq. To retaliate, someone told a NY Times reporter that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. Nobody knows how many people have died because she was outed – she was in a sensitive overseas post. Furthermore, the reporter who is being jailed, Judith Miller, doesn’t even know who the leak was! The issue here is whether the press has the right to keep sources confidential.
G8 calls for new climate dialogue. There are only 5 people left in the world who don’t accept the awful fact of global warming. All of them are in the White House.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Christian Doc Speculates Why Americans Rank #1 in Mental Illness. Have you talked to God today, Ma’am? He can save your sanity.
Drug Kingpin investigated for “doctor shopping”.
Ah, here we go… Mars picture of the day.
Soccer moms on dope. “We don’t see families torn apart. We don’t see the violence. We don’t see the robberies and the burglaries,” he said. “Meth is definitely worse on society than [marijuana ].” Huh?
Ever wonder why we went after Iraq when so many of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis? Here’s a profile of the gentleman that Dubya knows as Uncle Bandar.
Armor Plate your iPod. Clever devils, those Japanese.
This one’s from MemeMachineGo! It’s about the recent eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. The one that allows your town to bulldoze your home if they can increase their tax revenue by giving the land to someone else.
On the question of animal intelligence
I believe that the answer is to treat all animals as humans and to provide vocational rehab for those who have trouble functioning in human society.
– me, 25 Apr 88 20:03:56 GMT in sci.bio
Are Animals Patentable?
Hacking the vacuum cleaner
New use for those robotic vacuum cleaners.
What sort of add-ons could you have for the Roomba?
Angle: For the Roomba, there is a group that’s working very seriously and looking at the idea of using the Roomba as a physical avatar. I might log into a Web page and see what the robot sees, hear what the robot hears and be able to drive the robot from my Web page.
If I read this right, I can now become one with my vacuum cleaner.
Mathematics vs. Religion
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell … –Saint Augustine (heh heh heh)
SSDD, huh?
Feb 11 1988, 12:43 pm in sci.philosophy.tech
Fedora?
I’m considering getting a Linux laptop. Now that Red Hat has been seduced to the Dark side, Fedora it will be.
I get the scratch-and-dent email from BobJohnson.com and I’m hopeful that there will be a suitable laptop soon. And that they will actually be able to ship it to me this time.
Author! Author!
BlipVerts
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Potential Threat To The Nation
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