Inside The Sane Asylum...Altered State

Another epiphany...so to speak

Ego: "You see Jess, our brains are so automatic because physical tissue carries out what we do. How could it be any other way? The brain does it before our conceptual self knows about it. But the conceptual self grows and grows and reaches proportions where the biological fact makes an impact on our consciousness but does not paralyze us. The interpretation of things past liberates is from the sense of being tied to the demands of the environment and produces the wonderful sensation that our self is in charge of our destiny. All our everyday success at reasoning through life's data convinces us of our certainty. Because of that, maybe we can drive our automatic brains to greater accomplishments and enjoyment of life."

Jess: "Ego, did you know, generally speaking, a person does not learn much when their lips are moving? NEVER PASS UP A GOOD CHANCE TO SHUT UP!"

Lemme Think About It...are you?

"Are you still you if everyone looks at you differently?"

Dr. Ego-ology

Life is short, so smile while you still have your teeth.

Reflections From The Road...Stanford

I will not torture you with a tale about the history of mathematics. I will not beat you with the origins of numerators, denominators, ratios, fractions. I will only let you know that in the main, mathematics aren't negotiable. I will not pretend to tell you that as you get older time goes faster. I will tell you that a year is always a year. It is one and only one. However, I will also tell you that when you are four years old, one year is one quarter of your life. When you are 60, one year is one sixtieth of your life, so it feels smaller, and moves faster, in your mind.

Time can be comforting, or it can be cruel. Mathematics tells us that when you are over the hill, you don't really pick up speed—but the fractions change.

When you walk the streets every morning making pictures, the fractions become even smaller. Depending on your settings and the light, it can take fractions of a second to make a picture. A fraction of a fraction of a day, of a year, of a life.

Sometimes, you see the same people every morning, for even ten years or more. You chat, or not. But you acknowledge each other. You are familiar. Then one day the groundskeeper in the park tells you that a person was found dead, in a puddle, in an alley, in the French Quarter on Christmas morning, and it is that person with whom you were familiar. However loosely, you felt like he was part of your tribe. He was a fraction of your life. He was a part of you, he lived on the street for years, and then he died in a dirty alley, alone. In a fraction of a second, a heartbeat, it was over for him. That's how it is.

Rest In Peace, Stanford. No more troubled mind.

Stanford, pacing the levee
New Orleans, LA
2016

Photo and storyline
Christopher Bryson...

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...

"Doc, I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then."

Why Didn't I Think Of That?...epigenetics

"If I only had a brain."

Epigenetics hypothesizes that a parent who experienced a trauma could have certain changes in their brain which might lead to epigenetic changes that are passed on, inhabiting the neurons of their children’s brains or even their grandchildren. That rumination bore an entirely new field, behavioral epigenetics. That means if you had a parent or grandparent who lived through a genocide, war, saw someone murdered, or who suffered a different trauma, say at the hands of an abusive or neglectful parent, you carry traits for that emotional impact in your genes.

Discovering Ourselves...trust

The human need for trust and attachment was initially studied and developed as a psychological construct in the 1950s, when John Bowlby tracked the reactions of small children when they were separated from their parents.  In a nutshell, he found that infants, toddlers, and young children have an extensive need for safe and reliable caregivers. If children have that, they tend to be happy in childhood and well-adjusted (emotionally healthy) later in life. If children don’t have that, it’s a very different story. In other words, it is clear from Bowlby’s work and the work of later researchers that the level and caliber of trust and connection experienced in early childhood carries forth into adulthood. Those who experience secure attachment as infants, toddlers, and small children nearly always carry that with them into adulthood, and they are naturally able to trust and connect in healthy ways. Meanwhile, those who don’t experience secure early-life attachment tend to struggle with trust and connection later in life. In other words, securely attached individuals tend to feel comfortable in and to enjoy the human rat park, while insecurely attached people typically struggle to fit in and connect.

Lemme Think About It...

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Dr. Ego-ology

                       
                                "I'm not arguing with you! I'm only trying to explain why I'm right."

From Inside The Sane Asylum...when I'm gone

A Pinch Of Me When I'm Gone

Put a pinch of me in things I like.
Maybe my desk drawer
or on the spokes of my ole bike.

I like my tote bag
that travels on my back.
It never brags or talks back.

And how can I forget the Sea.
To North, South, East and West.
Fling a pinch to what life might be.

Maybe send a pinch to China
and mix me with bone.
Fine China I will be known.

Kaolin, Feldspar, pegmatite
Mix me according to alchemy
And you will know my might.

Maybe a set... I will be.
Strong and durable
to hold fine tea.

Sit me at a table between friends to be.
Let me listen to their soft words
Hold me close so I might see
the mist above the fine tea.

Appears for a little while...then it's gone...Doc 1/12/17

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...values

"The essence of who we are does not lie in our strengths. It does not lie in our talents, our accomplishments, or the things we do well. The core of our being lies in our values".

The most basic human value must always have been life itself. It must have been the first and oldest basic human value, for today we still see throughout the whole of nature, any living being is in a continuous struggle for survival.

However, respect, is the most basic social standard, from which all other social standards can be derived...

Footnote:
Essentially, we’ll never truly be able to distinguish between “right” and “wrong” actions. At any given time in history, however, philosophers, theologians, and politicians will claim to have discovered the best way to evaluate human actions and establish the most righteous code of conduct. But it’s never that easy. Life is far too messy and complicated for there to be anything like a universal morality or an absolutist ethics. The Golden Rule is great (the idea that you should treat others as you would like them to treat you), but it disregards moral autonomy and leaves no room for the imposition of justice (such as jailing criminals), and can even be used to justify oppression. Moreover, it’s a highly simplified rule of thumb that doesn’t provision for more complex scenarios. For example, should the few be spared to save the many? Who has more moral worth; a human baby or a full-grown great ape? And as neuroscientists have shown, morality is not only a culturally-ingrained thing, it’s also a part of our psychologies.  At best, we can only say that morality is normative, while acknowledging that our sense of right and wrong will change over time.


           

Stopped To Ponder...

Where You Will Or Won't...

Sometimes that thing
you are afraid to do,
is the change to set you free.

Makes little difference
where you will or won't,
can't change if you don't.

You see...in life
it's just a choice to make,
where you will or won't ...Doc

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...compassion

"Compassion is understanding the basic goodness in all people and then seeking to discover that basic goodness in specific people. Because of this, it helps you from going through the often mental torture we experience because we don’t understand the actions of others."

Scribblings From The Study...before language

"I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries." Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man

Before language, man would still have felt the need for food. He wouldn't have had a word for it. He would have just felt it. He would also have known that particular feeling meant he must find food. Again, he wouldn't have thought the words "find food", he would just have known instinctively what to do.

Now, what happened in a group of prehistoric people if one of them was injured and felt hungry? He may not have been able to go find food for himself. Somehow he had to let the others in the group know. Sign language was the answer. He possibly pointed to his mouth, rubbed his tummy, made eating movements with his jaw, or whatever. There would still be no words, no verbal language - but sign language is a language nonetheless.

But surely, by the time man reached that stage, he would be thinking - although without words - that he had to inform the others he needed food. That thought surely must have preceded the concept of making signs to convey his need.

Thought is not much use without language, and language is not much use without thought. So, it seems to me that thinking and language probably developed in tandem as a response to the need to communicate with other members of the group.

Commonly, modern man thinks in language (according to such as Chomsky) not pictures; although this is not always the case. Autistic Savants can sometimes be an exception - Kevin Peet being an example. He is a genius at math, but he doesn't think numbers. Instead he sees colours, and those colours coalesce and intermingle to give him the answers to incredibly complex math in an extraordinarily short time.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language is a straight-jacket for thought. That could indeed be true. Many times, our thoughts or communications with others are stifled because we can't put our thoughts into words. Misunderstandings are commonplace. How much better would communication be if we could send pictures & emotions to others instead of having to use words? Oh...guess we do...👍👎✌️🙏.

Footnote: I personally think language evolved out of the need to gossip...:) Doc