Everything that rises will converge. Diversity is just various manifestations of an unity. From one singularity, chaos is born and then order slowly assembles. I am speaking like a damned oracle, a stupid mystic, a deranged moron, but I don't give a shit. As a new friend noted, what really counts in your life is not opinions of others about you, but your opinions of yourself. Of course, I am aware that every human statement, unless it is of mathematical construction, has limited value and validity. Self-opinions only count when they reflect facts and logic (rigorous thinking), otherwise they may derive from delusions. Very few humans are capable of objective self-assessment. Most tend to fall prey to self-aggrandizement to make up for unresolved inferiority complex. I have tried to be as objective as possible, but I am only human. I can't see my back. I welcome all dissenting views as long as they are grounded in facts and logic, and not in malice and stupidity, like the individuals to whom I referenced in the following introductory paragraph in a piece posted in my blog.
"Unlike certain ignorant and asinine assholes who made facile generalizations and categorizations and speculations about my alleged mental illness without a proper reading knowledge in religion, philosophy, psychotherapy, cognitive science, language development, and mental illness itself, I have been doing such reading since 1972. I am quite sure that names such as R.D. Laing, Durkheim, Foucault, and Castaneda are utterly foreign to them. At best, they just heard about two names, Freud and Nietzsche, without knowing a fucking thing what these two thinkers contributed to human knowledge. The assholes are intellectual frauds and pygmies. I have nothing but utter contempt for their intellectual dishonesty and lack of mental acuity based on the way they have expressed themselves in writing. Needless to say, their gratuitous comments about my state of mind have infuriated and enraged me...."
Our behavior is mostly biologically determined, with much influence from the environment. To a certain extent, we can willfully control our thoughts and exert some influence over the functions of our brain and our body by physical exercises, sleep deprivation, chemical ingestion, sound, and meditation. Suicide is a malfunction and breakdown not only of the will to live because of overwhelming stress, but also of the over-presence of certain chemical in the brain. Certain medications give rise to suicidal thoughts. The warnings are required by the FDA in the United States. You can go the Net and Google various articles about the link between chemicals and the suicidal thoughts. Here's one of them:
"Published: Dec. 13, 2012
COUNTERING BRAIN CHEMICAL COULD PREVENT SUICIDES
Contact(s): Andy McGlashen , Lena Brundin
125 42
Researchers have found the first proof that a chemical in the brain called glutamate is linked to suicidal behavior, offering new hope for efforts to prevent people from taking their own lives.
Writing in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Michigan State University’s Lena Brundin and an international team of co-investigators present the first evidence that glutamate is more active in the brains of people who attempt suicide. Glutamate is an amino acid that sends signals between nerve cells and has long been a suspect in the search for chemical causes of depression.
“The findings are important because they show a mechanism of disease in patients,” said Brundin, associate professor of translational science and molecular medicine in MSU’s College of Human Medicine. “There’s been a lot of focus on another neurotransmitter called serotonin for about 40 years now. The conclusion from our paper is that we need to turn some of that focus to glutamate.”
Brundin and colleagues examined glutamate activity by measuring quinolinic acid – which flips a chemical switch that makes glutamate send more signals to nearby cells – in the spinal fluid of 100 patients in Sweden. About two-thirds of the participants were admitted to a hospital after attempting suicide and the rest were healthy.
They found that suicide attempters had more than twice as much quinolinic acid in their spinal fluid as the healthy people, which indicated increased glutamate signaling between nerve cells. Those who reported the strongest desire to kill themselves also had the highest levels of the acid.
The results also showed decreased quinolinic acid levels among a subset of patients who came back six months later, when their suicidal behavior had ended.
The findings explain why earlier research has pointed to inflammation in the brain as a risk factor for suicide. The body produces quinolinic acid as part of the immune response that creates inflammation.
Brundin said anti-glutamate drugs are still in development, but could soon offer a promising tool for preventing suicide. In fact, recent clinical studies have shown the anesthetic ketamine – which inhibits glutamate signaling – to be extremely effective in fighting depression, though its side effects prevent it from being used widely today.
In the meantime, Brundin said physicians should be aware of inflammation as a likely trigger for suicidal behavior. She is partnering with doctors in Grand Rapids, Mich., to design clinical trials using anti-inflammatory drugs.
“In the future, it’s likely that blood samples from suicidal and depressive patients will be screened for inflammation,” Brundin said. “It is important that primary health care physicians and psychiatrists work closely together on this.”
David Foster Wallace, a writer widely considered talented and received a genius grant from the MacArthurFoundation, suffered from long-term depressing and had to take medication to function. He then mysteriously stopped taking the medication. Shortly thereafter, he killed himself.
So you see, suicide is a complex phenomenon which has biochemical link and not merely a result of a loss of a will to live. Using psychology to explain and prevent suicide as Thomas Joiner did in recent cover story in Newsweek magazine may be simplistic and bark at the wrong tree. Joiner asserted that feelings of loneliness and being a burden to others, combined with a lack of fear, created a deadly cocktail for a serious attempt of suicide. The bottom line is whether we humans can actually and consciously control our thoughts or our thoughts are at the mercy of the chemicals in our brain.
Suicide is viewed as a an act of ultimate madness, albeit a conscious act. But madness is a nebulous, hazy, value-laden term. Laing and Foucault wrote at length about madness. My view is that we are all mad, crazy, unbalanced, unhinged, off-kilter, maladjusted in some way and in some degree. We all engage in some self-destructive behavior in varying degrees. We overeat, over-drink, overwork, overplay, make enemies because of greed and/or ego, and take unnecessary risks for stimulation or unconscious desire to punish ourselves.
Gambling is a an act of madness since it flirts with insolvency which then leads to all kinds of problems. Poker, properly played, is not an act of gambling, but a tool to make money by understanding self and opponents and mastering certain principles. It is akin to waging a war of attrition. It is no differing from having a business in a cutthroat environment. Consequently, poker is appealing to strategic thinkers who also have a tolerance for controlled risk. It is an outlet for those humans who enjoy challenge, brain power, and a need to demonstrate that they are better thinkers and warriors and businessmen than others. Results of poker playing will have a sobering effect on self-conception of those who choose to engage in this "game" because fewer than 10% can consistently make money.
Poker is a deadly financial game, one step below the game of actual war, and far better than other humdrum games like chess, gin, and backgammon. It requires much more than intelligence. It demands also courage and patience, mastery of probability and psychology, money management, and emotional fortitude in the face of adversity.
Because humans live in groups which come up with behavioral rules for harmony and group survival, life for humans functioning in a group>society, presents a series and a variety of games. To survive in a group>society, one must follow the rules of the games. Work is a game. Friendship is a game. Love is a game. Hunting is a game. Poker is a hunting game of fierce, deadly, wild animals in which the human predator can turn out to be a prey. Poker is for warriors and hunters, not for pussies who use their mouths as weapons, who bad mouth those they don't like, who make up stories and lie to discredit those whom they hate. Poker is not a game for cowards. Those assholes who think they possess more intelligence and courage than I do, I challenge them to sit down in a game of no-limit hold 'em poker with me.
Wissai
June 22, 2013
Thanks for understanding me. You are probably the only one that does so. I bcc my piece to Omar. The only comment he made was: "You sounded very angry. You used a lot of curse words. I very rarely get angry." My reply to him was as follows:
"Omar. You are a very kind, gentle guy. You are like a Buddha. I am not. I am like storm and thunder (Sturm und Donner). Maybe in time I will learn to be like you a little bit."
Gene, we humans are both alike and different from one another. The differences, no matter how seeming and superficial, are crucial for self-identity, growth, and stimulation.
Not to sound rationalizing and sophistical, Death is an end-point for the historical, time-bound entity. The entity's influences and genes and constituting elements live on.
Yes, to fully appreciate our existence, we must develop a sense of mystery about it and everything around it.
At long last, I found somebody with whom I can talk. Not only variety, but serendipities are also the spices of life. A man's life is the sum of his experiences. I will post this and your comment below on Facebook. Omar just taught me how to use Facebook.
Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
Sent from my iPad
On Jun 22, 2013, at 12:23 PM, gene wrote:
"Omar. You are a very kind, gentle guy. You are like a Buddha. I am not. I am like storm and thunder (Sturm und Donner). Maybe in time I will learn to be like you a little bit."
Gene, we humans are both alike and different from one another. The differences, no matter how seeming and superficial, are crucial for self-identity, growth, and stimulation.
Not to sound rationalizing and sophistical, Death is an end-point for the historical, time-bound entity. The entity's influences and genes and constituting elements live on.
Yes, to fully appreciate our existence, we must develop a sense of mystery about it and everything around it.
At long last, I found somebody with whom I can talk. Not only variety, but serendipities are also the spices of life. A man's life is the sum of his experiences. I will post this and your comment below on Facebook. Omar just taught me how to use Facebook.
Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
Sent from my iPad
On Jun 22, 2013, at 12:23 PM, gene wrote:
Very well thought out and deep. Your writing inspires me to think and write more deeply. Thank you. Your quote is also pretty awesome:
"Everything that rises will converge. Diversity is just various manifestations of a unity. From one singularity, chaos is born and then order slowly assembles."
This is counter intuitive for most people, but I am in your camp on this one. From a purely scientific perspective it also promotes that everything is connected and that separation is an illusion. This is what helps me see myself in another, even when they are so buried in ego and materialism; a perception of being separate. They are not separate. They are us in a slightly different phase of organized assembly. I have even learned to see part of my existence in rocks and tin cans. Nothing is separate.
For me, your quote is essentially describing the nature of the universe, of all things. While we try to pinpoint a start and finish as linear beings, it is impossible to actually find it. I do feel that we use the word singularity too generally and most people don't understand it. It sounds like a starting point, but what it really means is, "We don't know." I tend to think of singularity as a point where all the information reaches a point of compression and "some mystical laws of physics" rebound inversely or in some type of derivative sense. In this sense it is not a single point, but a moment when the whole of what has been, simply transforms. It is a transitional point into another existence, but still fully connected with no point of separation from what has been. I think of death as the same type of moment. A ball that reaches the floor does not reach an end point, it bounces and the information is inversely propelled into its new direction. The universe and our existence is the same, for me, but we cannot really be sure. It just feels right.
I would like to offer a counter to an earlier point you made in a previous email, using your quote from above. You said death is an end point. IMO I think this a linear mindset and certainly part of how our human brains are wired. Ask yourself how your thoughts of death being an end point match up with the idea expressed in your quote.
The nature if the universe is entropy which is in many ways the opposite of chaos assembling into order. They are really the same, just inverse to each other. Entropy could be viewed just as much as moving towards chaos, as it is moving towards organized assembly. If we add yellow paint to green paint we can say that we are creating chaos and the information of green and yellow are now blended into this chaos. We could also say that the information in green and yellow have organized into a higher existence, orange. The important thing is to remember that none of the information has been lost. It has just been assembled differently. In this sense chaos and organization are an illusion. They are derivatives of each other, forever connected in the process we call creation.
Ultimately, I try and understand what drives this whole process. I think that the essence of the universe is perhaps curiosity and self love (non-ego). The consciousness that exists in all parts of the universe wants to know. It is just as curious as we are. It is us. If we can say that all of existence is connected, just stretched out so far we feel separation, than what we are experiencing is ourselves. This is why it is so important to learn to love ourselves, before we can truly love who or what we perceive as another.
Your thoughts are very deep and appreciated. Not too many people are able to consider our existence at this level. Most people need something solid to hang onto. What you and I are discussing is everything but solid. It is solid in the sense that everything is connected, but most people do not have the lack of ego to exist in a state of "not knowing." Not knowing is the fundamental nature of the cosmos, even at the highest orders of existence. For this reason we and all of existence will forever be blessed with a sense of mystery. It is up to each of us, whether we embrace the mystery or resist. In the end no one can avoid meeting mystery, it is inevitable in death. We can fall in live with the mystery or fear it.
This conversation you have triggered is where I spend much of my time in meditation. Through meditation I have realized that all I will ever need to know is connected to me, through me, and can present itself. Understanding and knowledge does not present itself because I ask for it. It presents itself because it sees a welcome mat at front door of my conscious being.
It has been fun to co-create together. Your thoughts have stimulated many of my thoughts and helped me refine how I express and understand them. You are a unique individual.
Gene
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