How You Go Insane

There are two sources of organization for bodily functioning: the "metabolic" bodily vector, which we can call bottom-up; and the 'positive recognition' social vector. Coherency is defined as 'symmetry of response'. If were eating the best foods, getting good amounts of sleep, and staying physically active, were doing much to support the coherency of the bottom-up vector. We inducing our cells to process energy in less entropic ways.

The top-down vector is poorly understood, probably because of the influence of mysticism on the feeling and thinking of most humans. When you respect mathematics - and above all, the concept of symmetry - the "golden rule" ends up being the control parameter of how our states of mind operate. Recognition reinforces the positive state you were expressing, and thus functions as a 'dyadic expansion of consciousness' (Tronick). Call it love, or recognition, or dyadic attunement, or 'being known'; they all express a 'symmetry' of need; a symmetry of interdependence.

Now, the brain and the mind are a single developmental process. Mysticism often talks about the mind as if it were a 'thing' that exists independently of the body; this is the influence of wishes getting in the way of what the evidence indicates. The mind EMERGES from the brain; its processes ARE the brains processes; it's structure, the same thing as the neural structure of your brain. Is this a problem for spirituality? Absolutely not. Humans are evolving a more precise spirituality that is based on a closer and more accurate ontology, as derived from the objevtive sciences.

Now, again, the mind and body both have their own sort of symmetry processes going on. Certain foods are better than others; and likewise, certain ways of being are better than others.

If the mind-brain of the human is structured by recognition dynamics, where a "hit" means having your affective experience 'positively' attuned to, with 'positive' defined as 'complementary' to what would be best for his development, and a 'miss' as those moments where absorption in self needs leads you to fail to recognize a need in the 'other' (and lead to a conscious negotiation between your needs and theirs) and so produce a tiny 'asymmetry' in brain dynamics - with asymmetry defined as the relative distribution of energy in the brain.

With reality being this fine-tuned, and the brain, the "meat machine", actually a spiritual organ that has formed according to 'spiritual', or logical, rules related to survival, it can be difficult to recognize that every feeling and thought you have is dynamically interpretable according to how symmetry dynamics (recognition dynamics) have evolved within your consciousness since birth.

The real funny thing is how denigration of the physical led to this hyper-polarized belief in an 'ideal realm'. The physical world, in fact, is better thought of as a 'psychophysical world', or a physiosemiotic continuum, where all matter and the forces at play exist in a mutual interdependence. The human mind emerged from an obviously semiotic body. Apes have minds - but not anything that can be called an 'ego'. This evidently emerged at least 1 million or so years ago, where a 'string' of self-states could assemble into identities built around various forms of social interaction and life maintenance. This transition also entailed a naive-spirituality, particularly as the invention of fire began to metaphorically enliven the hominid brain-mind to recognize a metaphor in its behavior. It is from this recognition, and probably a day-night time dynamic where during the day the pragmatics of living, caring and playing led way to the 'mystical' explorations of the night. Such back-and-forth daily activity no doubt functioned as a spur in the generation of our more imaginative functions.

Anywho, we can see that we are far from that simple world, where no 'referent' existed for the sort of psychology we manifest today. We moderner's reflexively project our present day motivations and meanings onto the ancient past, and we think it is just like it is now. I sense this is the wrong idea - and it fails to take into account the traumatological history of the last 4000 years, where warfare and mayhem of the crudest kind was the rule, not the exception. Personalities and cultures were mostly formed in the shadow of the past. Traumas - losses - inevitably bred 'defensive' responses that were mostly imitative of the aggressors, and so history developed something like this: a Hegelian dialect built around recognition dynamics, with the referent and stand for 'truth' shifting more and more to the left the more trauma there is: the left being defined as 'supporting individualistic feeling of needs', whereas a symmetrically functioning mind is able to contemplate and consider the logical consequences of his actions (embodying logos), the person with unresolved trauma is driven by the dynamics of his development to maintain contact with that primary overarching 'attractor' - its value system - for its cognitive wellbeing.

Everyone, therefore, functions as they do to avoid going insane - for if the truth about yourself were completely shown, if the asymmetry of the way others have treated you, and the asymmetry with which you've treated others - fully known - the self's we identify with, the people we 'thought' we are, would fall apart under the weight of the gaze of the logos.

Now, I am speaking of "logos" as if it were logic embodied - and that is how I see it; it is the tip at the top of the pyramid which allows us to follow cause and effect. If we identify with it, it leads to where it obviously will lead to i.e. love.

This fact, that love is at the 'core' of our functioning, means we can know much about ourselves simpy by recognizing how it is were affected by things. Love is simple, and hence, I can scarcely improve on the words of the ancient Chinese sage Mencius, even though he lived over 2500 years ago. Where I can improve upon him is in describing the processes and situations and dimensions which affect how cognition develops. I can speak more specifically about the 'breadth' of human experience, and yet, like him, the logic of personal self-organization is still built around love.

Where todays people are advantaged is not just in mathematics, but in physics: we now know that the physical world is a 'cascade' of symmetry dynamics, and that our minds are a complex functional consequence of the existential dynamics which physical systems like us spontaneously evolved. The logic of the first cell and the logic of how we work makes sense; it makes sense how the situation of that first 'living' form would, if time continued to add to its expressed properties, uncover what 4 billon plus years of continuity makes clear: life is relentless, and special, and sacred, and beautiful.

To be hurt; to violate the needs of the vulnerable, is to embody asymmetry not merely in the others being - but in your own as well. Shame and pain for him TODAY, and for you, the pride and pleasure of expressing strength. But such dynamics are ntological coupled; doer-done to. Shame-Sadistic Pride; you do to me, and I, in the future, may find someone weaker than me to do that to as well.

This logic is the logic of a 'single self', where how one person behaves truly does affect the dynamics of the whole, particularly by affecting how the cognitive self identifies and understands its behavior.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Meh i'm #ing crazy and i'm cool with that. I'm fully aware of the ways I'm crazy and have learned to live around that the best I can.

Everyone's crazy, some are just more than others and honestly I highly doubt there's really an average or non-crazy mind you could use as any kind of gauge for crazy. Because everyone's #ing crazy in some way...but it's cool...because the world's #ing crazy, and being alive is #ing crazy and to be able to exist in this #ing crazy world you have to be pretty bat# #ing crazy. But at least it keeps the world interesting.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Nah...much simpler and quicker than that...just let me introduce you to one of my ex's.

Scizophrenic, nymphomaniac, alcoholic..stalked me and wife for 5 years!

'course, your informative op is pretty right on too!

a reply to: Astrocyte

Crikey, yeah I knew it after reading all that. I am insane.

Kind regards,

bally

The top down is known; and has been, long before the chemical straight jacket... look up kundalini "sickness" axis & anima mundi.

The anima mundi is reversed in man and woman; like a tarot card. The "Hung Man" is inverted looking from the top down; and is not a monkey hanging by his feet falling into the reflecting pool thinking there are two moons in his conscious awareness.

Kundalini or spiritual awakening; gets called a sickness because it is "top" down... of course the axis mundi or how the world revolves; wants to call it a polar issue. Instead of man being born out of "eggs" "wombs" and the "moisture" of the anima of the shaman they are bred and engineered by modern concepts of nobility that does not stoop to animal behaviors of the shamanic realm that co-exists into one of moral and ethical(not the same) one is secular and one is not... yet the basic tenants are the same.

The reversal mentioned above; was briefly mentioned by Sigmund Freud except it was an ideal of when parents could be seen as proper role models... however, not separating the animal from the human then there is Pavlovian training. At age two a child will demand attention stand on something high to see eye to eye or climb around and try to be self sufficient and learn coping, where the adult family role model dynamic has broken down for some reason typically due to some dysfunction.

Some choose to seek psychoanalyst/psychiatrist help and some choose religion and some choose both for that well roundedness to understand others reality in how they cope. Those that choose one and not the other? Collide in all sectors of life... when taken as knowledge understanding and wisdom and not some rote task for a job? Then learning actually takes place instead of a constant cycle of perpetrator and victim with excuses and temporary fixes instead of truth and solutions.

We've come full circle of past and present; however mind like math is still theoretical... and when putting it to science? Blending math theory putting mind to the same rigors ends up with the Pavlovian. One of programming and conditioning where society has to continually be degraded... teacher has in some cases be parent to others children instead of simply teach or profess knowledge... where students/children are stuck in a survival mode of coping instead of growing and learning.

Both modes of secular and not IS the wave of the future... those holding out choosing one over another as truth or the only truth are the sticks in the mud; the mental "tar babies" that bind society and the world to repetitive problems that more want to play hot potato with or not even touch... leaving it to the "system" to fix. Yet when that becomes a toilet to flush trillions of dollars down the state federal and corporate toilet bowl? That rabbit hole seems to become nothing the maze of the minotaur... someone always riding the bull out of ignorance; and those continually whipping them into a frenzy to keep that ignorance going.

That sort of vector? Is seen in every IPO; one takes stock in or pays credence too; personal or private as finances; both physical and emotional are in a continual split... being another's debt? Is also yet; just another hot potato.

So many skills for people to learn and so little time. Being stunted in ANY of the important life skills? Takes time... and it should naturally happen with the rest of the populations age bracket or else one grows to feel isolated, however a different point of view from that struggle grows... hopefully it buds into something positive over time as good coping.

Personally an accelerated reading program; (college level in the 4th grade) left me stunted in maths. It wasn't until college number three that; that deficiency was finally closed without any uncertainty to it as a science; thanks to a great professor that also explained; the why so and not just the how to.

The more one sees both sides of all sorts of arguments; the less they care to be in or mediate either of them; and just do their own; personal studies and/or pursuit of art without any others getting in the way of it, wasting their time. This is why many college PHD's have top students gaining skills as stand in professors... also why I tend to make no time at all for the dysfunctional family I grew out of turning negative coping into positive where ever I could.

However Being the mediator and emotional dumping ground was my job to all of them for way too long... now that they are at the end of their dendrites? The more they nag me the more I hermit away, counting the days. They need to take themselves to the professionals or someone does... Absolutely no more "free rides" not even to those Sponge Bob's/Bobettes; one in college mistakes to be their "friends". :p

Take care.

a reply to: Astrocyte

What is insanity, doing the same thing over an over again expecting different results like Einstein said? Wouldn't that be stupidity, or even bravery which both are crazy. You frequently bring up trauma which is understandable, although more then I can chew however pain gives context and without we'd be dead. We suffer trauma as soon as we breath our first, all the way to our last breath.

We voluntarily try to traumatize our bodies when we perform any activity or form of exercise for muscle and/or nerve memory to avoid stagnation where tomorrow never comes.

On a more mythical note like the garden of eden story being the nervous system, change is the agent of destruction. Everyone wants to be a sage, but they have to be the fool first.

a reply to: Specimen

It should be known that Einstein was speaking of expectation as the emotional or rational... and of course being a maths fellow of physics... keeping expectation out of the plug and play of the maths allowed him to see the science and results... not the frustration of those forcing their work or expecting something from it.

So he was describing how to avoid the dramatized "beautiful mind" syndrome. Those getting emotional about their passions are full of expectations of it and not love of the "thing in itself"...

Another definition for insanity? Looking in a drawer more than once for something you lost and are looking for.

That one has to do with order and chaos... priorities... motive, attention and distraction. That's the fool and "Loki" situation you are speaking of. One finds out that they are the trickster that has hid it from themselves; unless someone else walked off with it... then it turns into investigation/confrontation/conflict.

This is why alone with my own space is good for me... I have my own tools. However that does not keep others from bothering me nor their conflicts from boiling over. Then the definition of the insanity of expectation they have of me? Is apt. so then they run around saying what are you expecting to those creating that conflict to them... it's a vicious cycle that has been going on for over four years... they know full well and good what all of each other wants; and try to get what they each want and make every one else miserable in the process.

Neither the fool nor the joker? They are wasting their own time, not mine.

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: Astrocyte

Nah...much simpler and quicker than that...just let me introduce you to one of my ex's.

Scizophrenic, nymphomaniac, alcoholic..stalked me and wife for 5 years!

'course, your informative op is pretty right on too!

I am NOT your ex.

.. wait.. you didn't mean me, oops.

originally posted by: SummerRain

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: Astrocyte

Nah...much simpler and quicker than that...just let me introduce you to one of my ex's.

Scizophrenic, nymphomaniac, alcoholic..stalked me and wife for 5 years!

'course, your informative op is pretty right on too!

I am NOT your ex.

.. wait.. you didn't mean me, oops.

Nope! You're actually a whole bunch more intelligent and make more sense in all your postings....

She was insane. Clearly. *

*PS Ok, ok folks. I work with the mentally dis-advantaged, so don't go all "policically correct" on my use of the term!!

This is just a theory. Try to stay sane when under the influence of ayahuasca.
It distorts times and dissolves a sense of "self".
It completely breaks all the physical boundaries you are use to in your body.

Ayahuasca made me appreciate what "insane" means.
I felt insane forever, because time doesn't exist "there".

By insane I mean - lonely, desperate, angry, helpless in a state of eternal terror.

Your theory about trauma sounds good, but doesn't work.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I'm not trying to be offensive, but reading through all that stuff would drive me nuts.

Sometimes we just need to step away from the fire, so as we don't get burned. Chinese sages, asymmetry, Shame-Sadistic Pride, Hegel, and all that stuff seems a bit obsessing ... just chill out a bit, if you can

Once in sane? Stay there... Then out of sane is everyone else. That is what simple observation without judgment is, it is when the eye is used more like a camera... or free from "stupid programming" the eye knows how to see without help even in what some call "the blind" if one never called the blind... they would never show up, as in their reality? They see... do to ignorance? Those discriminating and not knowing such wisdom? Are the blind. Such is the nature of duality... that is the meaning behind "an eye for an eye". Introverted see inside themselves; extroverted see outside themselves and yet neither really exist.

Now, the brain and the mind are a single developmental process. Mysticism often talks about the mind as if it were a 'thing' that exists independently of the body; this is the influence of wishes getting in the way of what the evidence indicates. The mind EMERGES from the brain; its processes ARE the brains processes; it's structure, the same thing as the neural structure of your brain. Is this a problem for spirituality? Absolutely not. Humans are evolving a more precise spirituality that is based on a closer and more accurate ontology, as derived from the objevtive sciences.

Objective, means objecting to an object... as a goal or imperative. So what do you think the nature or being that exists in such a vocation does as a "science"?

The brain is the brain... mind is a reflex function of reflections, seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched/felt and sensed all at once(mind) as a unity consciousness of all of those... each one of those has a separate; area or "house" consciousness in each and every individual based in attachment. The "time" of those attachments in the individual varies, as they occur in individual frames of reference to each house and sorted at an incalculable amount of time in the various states of rest in those houses.

This means typically; there is always a state of cognitive dissonance going on between oneself and "other". When that occurs on many spatial levels? It typically gets labelled as dementia... which itself stems from an old esoteric belief itself as in "demented" or measured against the peer group or status quo; such as the Salem Witch trails... where that mass peer group in belief; became the chaos or demented ones. Due to the very nature of their cultural grasping at normative behaviour and what they saw and gossiped or slandered... creating the very delusional state en-mass and feeling wholly justified in the entire process.

A single self sufficient woman; always read as "The Scarlet Letter". Where tongues got to wagging about more than the crops and weather or other business in passing as a cordiality. So of course over time... stigmatized and it is not any error that an eye disorder called astigmatism is linked; as that seeing over time ceases to function clearly based on what the local yokels etc start dishing out against the honest days work.

Those that were "awake" in premedical history were typically labelled by others as blind, deaf or dumb... as in can you not see, hear me? If not then dumb was the label... hence the folklore of "knocking on wood" what gets left out? Is the seeing or more accurately hearing... if it talked back.

Spatial awareness also varies based on those various attachments... meaning distance... of course in a being how does one even begin to measure such a distance and rate over such times? Through that silly thing called science in trying to find some base for what one wants to call "normative" for the species.

Once you know how to tie your shoes... do you think about it? Or just do it... in some awareness's; their frames of reference move much slower... meaning dimensional not really demented or having dementia.

Like the song lyrics: "...did you have to let it linger?" could mean any of the sense consciousnesses or bases; and the mind attached to the consciousness aware of whatever that contact made or occurred was chose to ask.

Conversations with "ghosts" used to be all the rage... this mysticism was exactly that; mystical... many many cultures house and appease the dead for a reason. Awareness does not end on death in those overly or overtly attached in some way shape or form. It typically takes the average corpse; to lose sense consciousness in all senses a bit less than a month. Otherwise, still occupied... those that die quickly as in accident to them it's as if the accident never even occurred. To those murdered or otherwise killed by wrong means... if not satiated or appeased a conglomerate can mass together...

Those often get referred to as hot or cold spots or a chill is in the air... such a thing also takes place in water.

In this day and age we all know just how self reliant and sufficient a woman can be; many men of course still hold a complex against those things in chauvinism, instead of the "sane" thing and building a set of skills to complement such a woman. Of course; at such a point one becomes self sufficient and reliant also and such a term is two ships passing in the night.

That sort of thing is like accidentally splitting the atom... two old maids that can't get anything done for each other or even oneself that could even occupy the same space and not even be aware of it. So imagine a poltergeist between two entire worlds of such people, that met wholly as equals and refuse to budge... now imagine the same existing in several or even thousands of locations; and it moves from constellations or clusters into entire galaxies.

Is it any wonder the microcosm and macrocosm; mirror as well as the internal and external... as the concepts of far and near?

Anyways grasping at concepts any and all of them? Is buying the delusion and when not buying the delusion... one is biting the delusion.