Psycho-Babble Social Thread 897579

Shown: posts 1 to 14 of 14. This is the beginning of the thread.

 

Why my life is in freefall

Posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 11:01:37

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003965876

I was not in Iraq. I did not guard nor interrogate detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay nor any of the secret prisons one nation under somebody maintains around the world. I don't, in this context, assert that the particular nation's military activities in those theaters were right or wrong.

Mine was a different job. Glamorous...powerful...independent. So they say. My marching orders were to be servile, fawning and sycophantic to a subset of characters many of whom are now under investigation for public crimes and others of whom are beyond the reach of the law but whose rhetoric is widely attributed with compounding the personal impact on many of the recent economic collapse. My formal job description was to expose the misdeeds of these characters. My wink-and-nod job description was to keep them centered in middle of the main stream, no matter how catastrophically that required us to divert the main stream. I don't expect these obligatory investigations to result in anything except catharsis for a public mentally confused by constant pressure to accept irrational claims as rational, and to believe social proof as if it were logical proof.

I walked away -- jumped out the door and started plummeting to the ground let's say in terms appropriate for the financial model we call our economy. When my parachute opened, I was relieved. Then I found myself swooping toward another camp where I knew I could not find moral comfort. Took me a while to confirm in my own mind what was happening to me there. See, I've lived by old-school Semitic principals most of my life. Call them Talmudic or Sharia-style principals -- I avoid credit. Nor do I own property, which is to say, I don't rent my home from a lien-holding bank then claim to "own property." I'm not a homeowner, which means, unless I'm overtly wealthy, I am deficient in class standing in most office culture. Whatever technical or rhetorical skill I bring to the table, wealthy employers consider irrelevant because of my lack of property holdings, which to them is a more reliable measure of my personal worth.

Most people might not recognize the class hatred one faces when one eschews middle-class culture. That's why it might be so difficult for people to understand why I am so alienated. I doubt any three-year investigation by a radio-talk-show host with a hunch will ever shed much light on my personal collapse. I'm just a good man gone, so I couldn't have been that good - or I wouldn't have gone.

So what's with that link at the top of the page? My principals, no matter how urgently I might feel I need to sacrifice them for my own survival, remain imprinted on my conscience. Few dare to venture close to principals they've been taught are reprehensible or outdated. And these principals interfere with my survival. I'm headed to the streets, about to lose my modest home of several years for lack of income. That's if I survive that long. I feel unwelcome here -- here being my nation, which I will decline to name in this post.

I talk to those phone hotline counselors and they pretty much agree that there is nothing they can do -- they are trained to maintain the system, and to assure people the social service system has resources that could help me. It doesn't. Nor is there anything these "counselors" can say, except to suggest that I have a reason to live because I got to talk to a volunteer half my age who has no idea what they would do in my shoes, much less how it feels to live with a moral conviction that is considered pathological by a social context that is itself clearly veering off course.

I've seen my nation's leader murdered in broad daylight and witnessed my nation lying about simple facts of his death, despite clear, shocking, stunning photographic and witness evidence that documents from the back side the very trajectory through his head of the missile that blew his head to pieces. I've listened to testimony of dozens of witnesses of events of that day -- credible professionals -- who described the manner of that leaders death. Yet my nation's government, and the media that services that government, continues to assert improbable ballistic theories, to ridicule good people who speak clear truth about tragic events they witnesses, and to consider those who cannot buy into the lie mentally ill, deluded and unstable. It's more evidence of delusion to believe the plain facts of that well-documented murder than it is to believe a coworker can assess my character and my very thoughts on a particular day by looking at a computerized astronomy chart on which they overlay popular mythology.

Does anyone here understand a bit about why I don't care to be part of this game any more, and why I am prone to reward assertions that my mental health is the problem by exhibiting just the reaction one would expect from someone so described? Just curious, probably, but I wonder. Is there any sympathy for the notion that some mental illness is actually instead mental injury?

One more tragic female in this tragic comment, as a post script. Sophie Scholl.

"At the age of 21, Sophie Scholl was executed by the People's Court in Germany on Feb. 22, 1943, during the Holocaust, for her involvement in The White Rose, an organization that was secretly writing pamphlets calling for the end of the war and strongly denouncing the inhuman acts of the Nazis."

http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/holocaust/articles/sophie-scholl-white-rose.2786.htm

By whose hand we die, does it matter? If I die of starvation for love, warmth, understanding and trust, is it any different than if I had made a reckless move during a dangerous propaganda mission that led to my arrest and execution? It was her hand against her own society and culture that led to her death. She enjoyed the hope of youth and the comfort of supportive friends. She could have played along with the culture of the time and place, or could have better maintained tactical discipline to avoid arrest during a dangerous mission. Only difference, I believe, is that Sophie was remembered. As she did, I suffer dangerous frustration that can cost my life, no matter whose hand releases the blade to fall through my neck.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 12:36:28

In reply to Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 11:01:37

Okay I admit I'm confused. Could you maybe say what is going on are you suicidal or feeling like an outcast? Phillipa

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Phillipa

Posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 12:52:23

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne, posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 12:36:28

> Okay I admit I'm confused. Could you maybe say what is going on are you suicidal or feeling like an outcast? Phillipa


I'm realizing there is no place for me here, and describing the context. I'm intelligent enough not to post online an invitation for political authorities to raid my home and detain me as a mental patient, as often occurs in the context of public discourse involving feelings of alienation and normal human reactions to alienation. I'm citing as my peers two women whose lives ended tragically.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 13:10:15

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Phillipa, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 12:52:23

Okay timespan puts you in late 60's as an estimation. My Son was in Desert Storm lost his eyesight. But no interrogations just harmful innoculations and the diseases sure to hit him and others later on. So How do the two wars correlate? Philipa

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by gobbledygook on May 25, 2009, at 13:17:30

In reply to Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 11:01:37

We are all prisoners of where we've been. My mental illness...PTSD, BPD, DID, abc and xyz...are really my MENTAL INJURIES.
There are no rewards for seeing the world as it is, realistically, and without rose-colored glasses - only outrage, absolute
disgust, and mental scars.

It's a dog eat dog world out there, Timne, and my hard earned meaningless suburban lifestyle with all the props and soy lattes
can't free me from the painful prison I'm in. I can't even allow myself to imagine the kind of freefall your world has taken you.

The only thing that can shelter you from what's really going on is to wear the rosest-colored glasses you can stomach and go
along with all the vomit-worthy events and revelations. Which I've tried, but am unable to do.

I have no real answers as I'm struggling through my own freefall, but I do know that I can't and won't give up.
I hope you don't either, Timne. The skies are still blue.

Gobbledygook

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall

Posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 13:35:40

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne, posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 13:10:15

> Okay timespan puts you in late 60's as an estimation. My Son was in Desert Storm lost his eyesight. But no interrogations just harmful innoculations and the diseases sure to hit him and others later on. So How do the two wars correlate? Philipa


To answer your question with a quick, unstudied correlation, I'll say each was a military venture sold as a strategic mission that masked otherwise cultural intentions. More meaningful impacts of both wars, to me, is their public definition as distinct wars when in my experience, war is not so well bounded by troop deployments, but rather affects cultures continually over periods of time. WWII was but a particularly acute phase in a disease of irrational thought and speech that had permeated at least one side of that conflict. The irrational thought and behavior doesn't stop at the edge of the battlefield. It doesn't just become irrational when the obviously harmful effects become catastrophically acute.

And how do we, or particularly I, abide in a rhetorical context where almost every word I here spoken reveals the speaker part of an irrational context? When the measure of "rational" is social expectation rather than logical construction, who is irrational -- the person who seeks rational basis for values, or the person who considers social approval to be a rational basis for values?

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 20:16:11

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 13:35:40

You lost me. Sorry Phillipa

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall

Posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 23:20:33

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne, posted by Phillipa on May 25, 2009, at 20:16:11

> You lost me. Sorry Phillipa

Rants tend to do that.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by Sigismund on May 25, 2009, at 23:24:48

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 13:35:40

I made it to the middle again.

>I'll say each was a military venture sold as a strategic mission that masked otherwise cultural intentions.

They ran out of targets in Afghanistan.

But tell me about the 'cultural intentions'.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall

Posted by Sigismund on May 25, 2009, at 23:41:05

In reply to Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 11:01:37

>I feel unwelcome here -- here being my nation, which I will decline to name in this post.

What has interested me has been how the most trenchant criticism of the last 10 years has come from old fashioned conservatives.
They are old enough to remember values from more difficult times (WWII).

The Scholls knew how to call a spade a spade....
>Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by gobbledygook on May 26, 2009, at 3:42:08

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall, posted by Timne on May 25, 2009, at 23:20:33

> > You lost me. Sorry Phillipa
>
> Rants tend to do that.
>
>


Wow, I completely misread/misunderstood your post.
Sorry about my own rant...way off!

That was some post though - was it just a rant?
You could write a book about your life.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » gobbledygook

Posted by Phillipa on May 26, 2009, at 19:54:10

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne, posted by gobbledygook on May 26, 2009, at 3:42:08

Yes I agree most definitely. Phillipa

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » gobbledygook

Posted by Timne on May 27, 2009, at 17:19:32

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne, posted by gobbledygook on May 26, 2009, at 3:42:08

> Wow, I completely misread/misunderstood your post.
> Sorry about my own rant...way off!
>
> That was some post though - was it just a rant?
> You could write a book about your life.
>
>
>
>
Sort of a rant. Two thorough edits and it might've been an essay.

You seemed to respond to the emotion -- frustration -- and the general context moreso than the to details, but if it was details I was worried about, I'd be posting on some other forum.

Mine does seem a righteous and maybe marketable rage. But whose doesn't, to the person feeling it first-hand?

Sanity seems to be a gradient of acceptable speech and behavior, boundaries of which seem defined as much by social context as by formulaic reason. Social context is yet another fluid filter -- the measure depends on which context is chosen for the measure, with even similar-seeming contexts widely varied along axis of time, place and circumstance.

I can recognize when it gets dangerous for me. When I wake up thinking of dying, that's probably condition orange, toward the red end of the scale. When I see people dying around me, or dying of similar frustration, I know I might be on dangerous ground, but that doesn't tell me how well prepared I am to handle it, on that day.

I can say that the feeling of stability seems to follow both economic and social contexts in my life, and it seems to be a tendency that if I get one right, the other is wrong, for me. That dichotomy - intolerance for forced social performance for economic reasons -- is the more narrow tolerance I seem bound by but which the vast majority of my peers seem to suffer through with little complaint.

 

Re: Why my life is in freefall » Timne

Posted by gobbledygook on May 29, 2009, at 4:10:32

In reply to Re: Why my life is in freefall » gobbledygook, posted by Timne on May 27, 2009, at 17:19:32

"You seemed to respond to the emotion -- frustration -- and the general context moreso than the to details..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, you're correct. I did respond to the emotional tone of your thread - the frustration and pain from what
you have seen and lived through. The details were hard to relate to as my life is bourgeois and mundane...
suspense and intrigue only exist in my head.

I have to confess though - you have me curious about the truth of your work and your "nation"...although
I understand you can't reveal this for safety reasons.

Well, you have a fascinating story to tell, so I hope you keep posting. Only I might need to sign-up for reading
comprehension to fully appreciate it...you had my little brain working overtime.

Sorry I wasn't able to give you a more satisfying reply to your thread - but, I hope your ranting, venting, and
writing has helped you.

Hang in there.

Ava-


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