Discussing Mental Illness

>>Okay, how did you arrive at that conclusion? What is your basis?<<

Well, I think the description was very well put. I've come to a similar one myself, based on exploring a wide range of philosophers, religions, political systems, and historical examples.

There are various sources of input: thoughts and facts are of the mind, desires and feelings are of the heart, and faith and virtues are of the soul. For best function, use all of them. Ignoring any can cause problems. Ignore rationality and the facts can kill you or others. Ignore emotional reality and you can quite logically arrange a life that leaves you miserable. Ignore spirituality and you will be without higher support in dark challenges.

I worry about people who eschew the use of logic and facts when making decisions, and make theirs exclusively or primarily based on emotion and/or faith, because I have observed that those decision-making methods tend to generate choices with very unpleasant consequences. Compare the Dark Ages (a faith-dominant cultural wave) to the Classical and Renaissance periods (both favoring rational lines, with some extra emotional upwelling in the Renaissance). This does not necessarily mean that all faith-based or emotion-based decisions are wrong -- merely that it is very easy to be blindsided by facts if you ignore them in your decision-making.

>> Rand, for example, would say that society should be based on an ethic of "rational self-interest" (whose derivation I won't bore you with - I'm only picking on her because I'm familiar with her work, not because I prefer her position). How do you refute her position?<<

There's a very useful test to see how effective a philosophical premise is: What would happen if everyone followed it? Rational self-interest is another way of saying "every man for himself" -- Rand's philosophy maximizes personal freedom by minimizing responsibility to take care of, or refrain from harming, others. It's a splendid system if you have the power to take and hold what you want. It's a horror if you lack such power ... and nobody keeps that kind of power forever, for time and your body will betray you in the end. If practiced by everyone, rational self-interest would produce not a society but anarchy. That is ineffective and therefore undesirable on a large scale, although it is extremely attractive to people who believe they have the power to take advantage of such a system.

One of the drawbacks of rationality is that logic can justify all manner of things that are wicked. Hence the need for counterbalances in emotion and spirituality to remind us that too much selfishness is wrong and destructive.

>>Have you ever actually studied philosophy? It's really not as convoluted as you imply (Kant beside the point...)<<

For my part, yes, including a couple of actual classes. I was only somewhat impressed by it. Some of it is straightforward, some is intricate, some is sublime, and some is just dumb.

>>I sense that we're rather hijacking Ysabet's thread, which was a discussion of mental illness, not philosophy. <<

If folks are interested in philosophy, I have no objection to it. Do you want to keep discussing it here, or would you like me to start a separate thread for it?

>>I think it's rational to acknowledge the fact that we are emotional animals, that we can be fooled and misled, that we can all benefit from scientific skepticism. <<

I agree. Also, emotional and spiritual aspects can be beneficial. We are not minds alone.

>>It's irrational to accept excuses for the suffering of others; we'd all benefit if everyone gets the help that he or she needs.<<

Too true. It frustrates and baffles me that people don't see the connections there -- how widespread suffering and illness harm everyone.

>>For ex., how many victims of PTSD are referred to their chaplains because it's "cheaper" to treat suffering with make-believe than solutions that work? "cheaper" to blame the victims and delegate responsibility to our imaginary friends?<<

I'm not in favor of picking treatment based on how cheap it is, but rather on how effective it is. Sometimes a chaplain can help with PTSD, other times not (and it depends on the chaplain's skill, too). PTSD often entails spiritual trauma; frex, a person whose faith commands "thou shalt not kill" may suffer spiritual injury from killing another human being. If they thinks that their soul is now marred by that killing, no amount of medication is going to fix that, although it may dull awareness of the problem. For spiritual injuries, clerical care is usually required. On the other hoof, someone whose PTSD involves neurochemical damage that makes them shaky and insomniac is unlikely to be helped by spiritual means; a quiet environment and soothing physical activity are required, and possibly chemical assistance.

PTSD is a messy, complicated nightmare of a condition -- for bystanders as well as sufferers. There are no easy assessments and no quick fixes. It's so ugly and scary that it makes people want to sweep it under the rug. That is often fatal for the sufferer. It keeps happening because, for the bystanders, that does make the problem not theirs anymore, unless someone sues them for negligent death.

So far, I'm cool with it. If the medical stuff gets too steep for me, I'll let you know. But I think there are folks in the audience here who would be interested in this stuff. If you want to keep going in this thread, that's fine; if you want me to launch a new one, let me know.

This is very well said.

>>Also, you suggest that this endemic "mental illness" prevents us from creating "a more rational and ethical society". There are two problems with this statement. First, addressing the "rational" portion of your statement, keep in mind that, unlike the fictional Vulcans, humans are not perfectly rational beings. They have an emotive element that is not based on reason as such.<<

A rational society tends to survive better than an irrational society, because when irrational people ignore rational facts, the consequences can be crushing. As we are currently experiencing in the effects of global warming: you can say that it doesn't exist, you can keep choosing profit over sustainability, but that will not put out the wildfires or water the crops.

>> Second, addressing the "ethical" portion of your statement, whose ethics shall we put in place? Plato's? Hume's? Kant's? Nietzsche's? Rand's? There is little agreement among philosophers (and, for that matter, religious leaders) of what constitutes ethical behavior - trust me, I was a philosophy major in college. So which set of ethics do you wish to choose? And enforce (noting that some will inevitably disagree with you)?<<

Preferably something more effective than the wretched mess we have now, in which profits are generally valued above human well-being, planetary safety, and the survival of the human race. I'm a more serious student of comparative religions than of comparative philosophy, but my personal inclination would be to pile everything together and look for two things: the stuff that all or almost all systems agree on (i.e. it's unethical to kill innocent people) and the stuff that one system has figured out a better way to handle than what anyone else has. As a social mechanic, I tend to see systems as sets of connected parts, which can be detached, changed, replaced, improved, discarded, etc. at need.

>>I wonder if we're not all mentally ill, if that doesn't explain the status quo. <<

I think not everyone, but the rate does seem to be alarmingly high, and rising -- even just counting by the skyrocketing prescriptions. Our society is not very healthy, sane, or secure right now in a lot of important ways. That causes some problems.

>>Our failure to adapt, to thrive, to establish a more rational and ethical society.<<

I believe this contributes to the problem. Frex, we've all but demolished the family, from an extended family to a nuclear family to singles and single parents. Statistics show that people are fragmenting into smaller and smaller social units. So, our support network is fraying; we have fewer people to celebrate our joys and help us over the rough spots, and studies show that lonely isolated people have higher risk factors for many physical and mental problems. That's just one of many stressors facing people today.

>> Also, the tendency to associate addiction or mental illness with vice, and the treatment as such.<<

That is certianly part of the problem. The army is currently discovering that when you stigmatize treatment, people don't get treated, and Bad Things Happen.