Theory Applied
2009-07-26 - 11:38 a.m.
Sidenote: this post will probably remain unfinished. each time i sit down and try to hammer out the wording of one of these paragraghs, it comes out all wrong. i am posting it now so i don't have to think about it anymore.
the theory of small adjustments.
understanding is only a small part of understanding. in order to understand, one must first understand.
redefined world peace.
mitch was married in june, decidely not on a friday. i was there, even though i said i was going to be. a pleasantly pleasant time in all.
been doing some work the last couple days in personality dissorders, specifically, how they are rooted in the over-use of defense mechanisms. i do not believe that anyone starts out crazy. i think they become crazy in a rash attempt to seek contentedness, or in a logical yet naieve belief that one strong defense mchanism will cure every case of restlessness. nothing more is needed to become a paranoid schizophrenic, than for someone to plot out all the things that could ever go wrong, and then not be able to decide on a course of action to avoid those things from happening...somehow, i ended up in youngs pool. i was entering a house that looked like it had been a survivior of every world war since man discovered the bone club. natural light from broken windows revealed ripped up wooden panneling with splotches of peeled polyurethane. the walls were not made of any consistent materials, but matched the wooden staircase on the right, in that they were both destroyed by what looked like a woodsman's axe. semirectangular holes covered everything, and through these holes could be seen only blackness, as if it was only the interior layer that had been destroyed. this was one dream i was fortunate not to have a sense of smell. the main floor was mostly open, though it looked unstable, and in walking around the staircase i found a door beyond. the room was bareley big enough to hang a few coats. in it was a mangled form of something which may at one time hae been male. or it may have at one time been female. if viewed from a certain angle, you might go so far to say that at one point it may even have been a person. it looked like someone had lit an etheopian on fire, torn off some chunks, and loosely sewed them back on. then curled it up into a ball and shoved it in the closet. it was not the type of thing that you check for signs of life. going back out to the main room, i began to see small bits of things, destroyed shards of one precious toys. it was as if everything that someone ever held precious to them had been maticulously seperated into its components and shredded. the core of a musicbox, with half of the nubs filed off. loose teddy bear stuffing. there were also indications that the building had been burned in discrete spots, there being no more complete way to destroy a photogragh than to burn it. at the top of the second flight of stairs was a door, and opening it, was a mistake. a shadowy form threw itself on me, attempting to restrain me but couldnt get a good grip. i could feel its intention, its pent up irrational rage for physical contact. i ran down the stairs, not caring to get a good look at it, when i found the reason for the axe holes in the stairs. fotosteps, heavier than my own, fell through the axe holes and got stuck in the holes. it was a trap. on the bottom floor again, i looked for the door out but my attention fell on a tiny carpeted staircase to the left that i hadn't noticed before. the footsteps cursed at me in a gruff man's voice, calling me names and promising to catch me next time, but he didnt see where i had gone. when my eyes ajusted to the darkness, i saw cats. there must have been 20 of them, of all different colors of beautiful fur, silently brushing against my leg and smiling ever so slightly when i scratched under their chins. just as i began to enjoy myself, a noise came from behind me. it resembled a sneeze, but quieter and choked, like a brief inhale of air after someone had been tring to hold their breath without making a noise. i slowly turned around to me my mother sitting at the opposite side of a dinner table, dusty tea set for sixteen. she had been there while i was petting the cats, and i wondered how many years she had been sitting in this silence. i pleaded with her, its a nice day outside, you arent safe here, come downstairs with me and we will leave this place. she smiled, extending her hand to me, and said nothing, but gestured for me to be silent before reaching for a cigarette. that is when i heard the footsteps again, intentional stomping from above. the cats rearranged themselves as the terror set in...we were on the second floor, the footsteps were on the third. i started to beg her again, to come with me outside, to flee this place, when i realized where i was. we were inside my mother's mind, and there is no where else she could go. she had chopped up the stairs, the floors, the walls. she had set the fires, she had destroyed every precious childhood memory, so that there was nothing that could be used to bait her into his grasp. she had used scorched earth tactics, over a considerably long period of time, and all that remained was a dark room for stray cats to shit in. an hour after waking up, i still shiver to think what would have happened, if the footsteps had gotten ahold of me. End Dream. i've had the lyrics "c'mon baby dont feel the reaper" in my head since.
at any given time, a person is in a state between total restlessness (agitaion) and total contentedness. as if the energy for restlessness is higher, the person seeks methods to reduce their restlessness. in the short term, a person may make choices to gain a certain amount of stress if they preceive that their restlessness will be decreased in the future (i.e. college). a description of the person's personality is then dictated by habitual reaction to stress. when a stressor is introduced, how does the patient deal with the stress, mentally? i have isolated 13 defense mechanisms, which i will detail here. by definition, a "sane" individual is one that has a variety of weak defense mechanisms, does not employ them when the stressor is not present, and does not significantly lack any one defense mechanism. "crazy" now comes in two flavors, "simple crazy" and "complex crazy". simple crazy means that the craziness is rooted in a single (often over-used) defense type. complex crazy means that there are two or more defense mechanisms working in concert with malintent. complex crazy is more often referred to as "schizophrenia".
acceptance: this personality seeks to refrain from making decisions about the stressor. the concept being, that "maybe if i don't react it will go away". this personality often leaves decisions up to other, more dominant personalities. consider abused girlfriend syndrome to be a form of simple craziness.
escape: this personality seeks to physically or mentally remove itself from the stressor as quickly as possible. consider non-dissociative fugue, denial, and selective memory to be a form of simple craziness, while dissociative fugue would be a form of complex craziness.
sharing: this personality seeks out evidence of other personalities that are experiencing the same stressor. through this knowledge, stress from the stressor is reduced. consider overly informative babblebots to be a form of simple craziness.
humour: this personality attempts to convince itself (and others) that the stressor is not as bad as it seems, often by making light of it being worse than it actually is. sacrasm, in particular, seems common. consider inapropriate affect to be a form of simple craziness.
contact: this personality relieves stress by making physical contact with others or itself. tick-tock noises, moderate heat, and low levels of pressure localized to more sense-oriented portions of the body seem to be of benefit, but are not sufficient in the long-term. consider borderline personality to be a form of simple craziness. consider nymphomanic sociopathy to be a stronger version of the same simple craziness.
repetition: this is remarkably similar to the personality for physical contact, to the point that i think they would be the same sort of defense, except that there is evidence that a simple craziness can be rooted one and not the other. this personality seeks confort in the mental closeness of things, by enumerating them or repeating a previously learned process ad nauseum. consider obsessive compulsive disorder to be a form of simple craziness.
fear: this personality is not so focused on present stressors as passively avoiding future stressors. it is a sort of tactical avoidance based on previous experiences, without which, we would not be able to learn from punishment. consider paranoia to be a form of simple craziness.
agression: this personality attempts to destroy the stressor. failing that, it may find comfort in doing damage to just about anything (though arbitrary destruction may be the most primitive form of ritual, see below). consider inapropriate affect to be a form of simple craziness.
distraction: this personality attmpts to mentally replace the stressor with some other stimulus. distraction is always an internal process, but can be internally (alternate self) or externally (alternate environment) focused. this personality may have a hard time adjusting to unchanging stressors because its ability to learn from previous experiences has been comprimised. consider halucinations and delusions to be a form of simple craziness.
ritual: this personality seeks relief from the stressor in the form of traditions, cultural rites, music, and superstition. the dedication to and/or concentration in their cause reduces observed stress. consider zealots and compulsive dancing to be forms of simple craziness.
support: this personality is similar to sharing in that it deals directly with knowledge of the existance of other persons. in this case, however, the personality does not reduce it's own stress, just concentrates on reducing the stress of the others. over time, this personality may assume a role of "protector" for a group of personalities that "depend on" this one. note reduced seratonin levels in the suportees and increase seratonin levels in the supported (allowing it to withstand more stress). consider depression and excessive nuturing behaviour to be forms of simple craziness.
attention: this personality convinces itself that it is "da bomb" and that all others are "nonfactors" by comparisson. this behaviour is similar to the support defense, except that the results of this attention-seeking behaviour (the seratonin boost) are much more short-lived. consider road rage to be a form of simple craziness, and egomania to be a stronger version of the same simple craziness.
observably, "craziness" has ocurred whenever the use of a defense mechanism results in higher restlessness. this may be because the defense was not well-suited to the stressor, becasue the stressor was not present, or because the defense mechanism was not present.
dream: miguel and bianka (a dream of exceptional intelligence). miguel very much reminded me of "the brain", a character from a book i was forced to read in middle school. the group of four friends met at a local grocery store, i was an outsider, meeting them for the first time. some snappy comments were made. later, we were riding in a van, and then stopped to construct a sort of helicopter from spare parts, and there was debate about who should get to ride in it, becasue the one friend was overweight and would cause it to tip. miguel ended up staying behind, and making another, smaller flying device, just for one person...End Dream. the dream is fuzy because i didnt write it down as soon as i woke up, and here it is, several months later. i tried to return to these characters several times, without success.
my father has a theory, that men create gods. that the existence of a god is a sliding scale, directly related to the amount that laypersons believe in it. i thought it was rubbish, since at the time, i hadnt developed my definition of honour yet. honour, in light of this theory, could also be a connection to a godly existence, the �something more�. if enough people believe in a country, does that make it so?
you know what they say...if it doesnt kill you, you dont get hero status.
dream: gnoll snakes.
politics, the art of moving others, is inherently evil, since we value free will. or do we value free will because we consider politics to be evil? all is fair in love and war...this is true but not the whole truth...all is fair in politics. love and war are only two parts of politics. there are only politics and ecconomies. an ecconomy is a system of things which can be traded, bought, and sold. like values. so we can see, there only exist 2 things, that which you can buy, and that which you can attain through manipulation.
hummingbirds have bones.
Sir#1: *ping* when i was cleaning out this room, i found these two theories he left behind.
Sir#2: *pong* do tell Sir, you know how i love a good theory.
Sir#1: *ping* "the theory of perfect drugs" suggests that for every person there is some other person, that fits their prescription. sort of a Rx generation take off on the whole soul mate idea, but it allows for soul mates of varying degrees, and also introduces the possibility of people as contraindications.
Sir#2: *pong* ahh, i am already familiar with these theories. the other was from her father, "the theory of the fucking universe".
Sir#1: *ping* correct, Sir. the seven levels of tantric interaction between every element in the universe, atoms to heavenly bodies.
Sir#2: *pong* we should repackage them with that list of converstaional words that shows amusement and intrest, and label it "50 ways to pick up librarians".
dream: cursed.
dream: parasite shadow bears and robotic finger cancer.
mitch has a theory which has rather interested me lately, "the theory of Self". im going to give a paraphrased bastardized version of it here, because it provides the background my theory of negative images, but for future reference notice that the theory of Self is not quite complete. assume that a person exists. let M be that person's mental capacity. it can be shown that by using physical tools, as simple as paper and pencil, the person can increase their mental capacity by storing information for later use, such that at some later point they may have capacity M+P. another person with capacity N may read the paper and gain mental capacity N+Q (note that Q is not neccessarily equal to P). this can be shown in a simple example by writing a single symbol on a peice of paper. P (or Q) is directly related to the knowledge that M (or N) has assigned to it, thus the same symbol may have differnt meanings to different people. the objective of the Self, then, it to maximize its potential (a sum of M and numerous P potentials)...
the motivation of the Self.
the threashold of meaning.
attention from familiarity.
the negative image.
Mitch said the other day that by definition, one cannot control bad information in one's subconscious. but the information that is in the subconscious had to get in there somehow. all that is needed then, is to find the path, and send the good information down the hatch.
