Fish, lizards and robots all use some kind of "brain", in the sense of a material system for thinking. Mind happens without some form of brain is for my not conceivable. — Belter

Robots have a brain? I realize you're thinking in terms of functionalism. Still, robots just don't have brains. If they have circuits, wires and sensors, then honesty would denote them circuits, wires and sensors. A rose is a rose is a rose.

Wouldn't there be some sort of mind that forms between two different species when they communicate?

Would we be closer to the computer or being x? — TheMadFool

Being x. It's always rather odd to me people want to focus on computer models (computer as model) as representing intelligence or awareness instead of, say, the integrated processes (mind) of an old growth forest. My style of consciousness and components of mind communicate in a way unimpeachably closer to the minute feedback systems you find in the "cognitive network" of an ecologically complex superorganism (forests). Living compost on a forest floor is far more impressive and complex in its self-awareness than a computer could ever be (interspecies communication requires species; is a computer a specie? nope). Yet this is only a small, local slice of what's going on "information-processing" wise in a organic superorganism, like any robust sylvan environment. Mycelial mats connect plants and trees and search for feedbacks that then determine what they will do in bringing balance to players of the network locally, and non locally. Mycelial mats can connect thousands of acres of forest in this way. This is very much like a neural network of nature.

Honestly, taking computers to be intelligent, or most absurdly, at all self- aware, and not nature, tends to gore my ox...so I'm apt to wax too emotional here, but perhaps I'll be back with some cool examples as to why computers cannot be self-aware compared to the far more self-aware "being x" that can be found in nature (of which I'm a part way more than a computer). That is to say, my self-awareness is far more an extension of the order and processes going on in the superorganism of a forest than anything in silicon. We can understand (a priori), computers don't understand anything. We are aware of our limitations, computers are not. Because we are aware of our limitations thanks to nature's gift of metacognition (note I'm not saying a computer's gift of metacognition), we can ask questions about how we are limited, such as boundaries the subconscious puts on conscious awareness. You can even ask sci-fi questions about computer sentience thanks to nature's vouchsafing of self-awareness. Somehow, self-awareness is a part of having a mind that is informed nonlocally by interminably incomplete information. A machine only has to handle incompleteness according to its implied programming or manufacturing: algorithms and egos are veeery much alike, and both are chokingly narrow-minded, unreasoning. Seeing as the human brain-mind isn't invented or programmed and doesn't do calculations, and that it is likely nonlocally entangled with the universe in a way that remains forever incomplete (unless perhaps in deep sleep or dead), we think about thought and have thought about thinking, emote about emotions and have emotions about emoting: nothing is more sublime than wondering about wonder, however. I wonder if computers could ever wonder? What about the utterly unreasonable idea that a computer could have emotions reliant on programming...laughable. Reminds me of someone, having missed the punchline, laughing at a joke just because he knows it's supposed to be funny.

The human body's shape and form is stored within its dna. — Dendu

Are you sure this is true?

Again, you took that too literally. — CuddlyHedgehog

Oh...well, it's your thread so apologies.

We accept those short periods of absence when we are asleep or unconscious because we know we will be coming back round to being the centre of the universe. — CuddlyHedgehog

That said...you neglected to address my comments. What do you mean by "accept" here? You'll die without these "short periods of absence." And, honestly, an individual is unconscious for far more than a short period of his lifetime: lets see, awake for 16 hrs/day, asleep 8 hrs/day = unconscious for 33% of your life minus hypnagogic/pompic states and dreaming, which are essentially mystical states and hard to define (there's something of the non local in them).

There's a lot to learn, metaphysically, from the universe forcing deep sleep/local unconsciousness upon the life it has engendered (as a requisite for this life). In some way, local consciousness is immersed in death, for that is what it is to be embodied. Life/local consciousness/embodiment/foreground, depends on death/non conscious/disembodiment/background. It's like the inline and outline being a part of the same lineament, a gestalt.

Death, in a way, is simply the lack of omniscience in our local consciousness. So, we're partially dead/unconscious while alive/conscious. Pure consciousness, non locally, is death/nonexistence from the vantage point of local consciousness.

It isn't so much that you once didn't exist, than that the same background that was there when "you" didn't exist is still there while you are existing. Perhaps what dies is a mere bundle of sensations and memories, an agency that mistook itself for something lasting in its relatively short duration. There are meditations when I feel this life is taking a very long time to run its course...and there are reflections when I know that, in the grand scheme of things, it takes only a little longer than the "lifetime" of a freshly hatched photon in a particle accelerator.

Or is your post to be read as verse and not at all literally? (In which case I'm sorry but it is impossible to have a discussion, and the absence of metaphor in the OP is noted).

Needless? Reproduction is one of the primary criteria for being alive. — T Clark

Adolescent immaturity can be defined in the main by raging hormones. At the same time, reproduction is a part of the cyclic time I have in mind. I choose to not recognize it as an issue (Antinatalism). There are some irreducibles in the chain of being. So I'm just trying to state the contradictory paradoxes that relate to the complexity of the grievance of antinatalists. I'm thankful to have lived, even if it is possible I may have been a happy soul in the Otherworld before born.

Sexual obsession is a hangover from from a much more foolish age of adolescence. Hormones result in many bad judgments whether a child or and adult. You could say tempering hormones is a right of passage from childhood to adulthood. With humans, the body matures much faster than the mind, there are parallels between adolescent stupidity and inability to get over hormones (and the dominations of libido).

Antinatalism is the same thing as saying you wish you'd never been born . It's also true that libido may be the result of needless, adolescent restless and unruly mental forces. Hormones in adolescence are a dreadful problem.

We accept those short periods of absence when we are asleep or unconscious because we know we will be coming back round to being the centre of the universe. — CuddlyHedgehog

If you feel like the center of the universe....no wonder death bothers you so. Does anyone know where the center of the universe is? You say the universe is infinite and that it has a center. This couldn't be right, right?

The vitalism of life and the protean consciousness are an obvious, irreducible prodigy.. And that we change through states of consciousness while alive, as you mention even to the oblivion of seeming unconsciousness and back to waking consciousness (with the genii hypnagogic and pompic states interstitially) , is a subjective, ineffable event. Consciousness isn't in us, we are in consciousness.

Do you accept deep sleep? Funny how you can't live without sleep: the absence of a small, local frame for consciousness is required for you to continue an embodied existence. Rather, return of the state of universal consciousness to itself at night as pure consciousness appears as death/deep sleep/unconsciousness to us. Your accepting it, then, is about like your accepting food. You accept life.

I don't entirely agree with this sentiment although I've heard that before the world wars many drugs were legal at the time and people weren't buying hoards of speed or opiates to remedy their problems. Drugs, for the matter, have always been or have become a social issue once made illegal. I don't mean to spew libertarian sentiment against big government; but, people can be irrational, and even more so when under the influence of drugs. — Posty McPostface

Well, from my perspective, there's plenty about life itself that is irrational, is irrationality not a means of knowing what's rational? The warp and weft of circumstances themselves make people insecure and makes changes in biochemistry, the variance is always at the individual level, though, so to use the word "people" is slightly inarticulate. Our bodies are basically chemical factories; you are drugs. The brain produces a tryptamine that has actually been made illegal. The dumbest thing ever. You're illegal.

Portugal is having less of a problem with abuse after legalizing all drugs. Not that I'm an advocate of all drugs, it's just an interesting social experiment with the target of improving health.

Some cases are difficult to treat, so if there is a need then I'd also be willing to consider the other options mentioned in that link, not deny them based on years of prejudice against a drug. — Posty McPostface

Actually, the prejudice is relatively new...humans have had a very long standing relationship with plants on the Earth. That any plants are illegal is mind boggling. Maybe there would be less of an opiate epidemic if people were allowed to use the poppy plant itself.

Have you ever encountered someone where, when you told them the truth about a flaw in their personality, they respond in their shock with denial before attacking you or your character, involving gossip or sometimes slander in order to have other people side with them against you so as to avoid the anxiety? — TimeLine

It's not for me to tell someone about what only they can possibly know, or discover in themselves. Being honest with oneself tends to be a non transferable skill, either you have it or you don't. Or you finally admit your aren't being honest with yourself, but this will be the result of introspection. We can't actually inform each other's self-generating, organizing, and regulating ecology of mind, we can only trigger what's already there in another.

Our dreams manifest symbolically our subjective conflicts where we can interpret and articulate consciously our unconscious realm and express what we actually think and feel. Our perceptions and interpretations conflict for a number a reasons, mostly because of learned behaviour and our ego. In the end, our reason and rational faculties regulate our perceptual and behavioural responses and we should work hard to ensure that - like we do our bodies - we keep our mind active and strong through learning, knowledge and articulating our personal experiences. — TimeLine

Working with lucid dreams is an important approach, which is again a purely intrapersonal domain. I could never show you my dreams if I wanted to. And it isn't for another to do my own inner work of dream interpretation. Really though, what you've said here can't be taken issue with. I agree in the importance of articulation and self-exploration through art, writing and most all domains which include mental imagery in some way or another. Mental imagery is a non transferable domain, which is why we have to work there alone and understand the importance of being self-organized within.

This to me is merely denial. Criminals hate police because they want to commit crimes and while there are bad policeman that would therefore justify such a hatred, the fact is that the reason why criminals hate law enforcement is because they do not need such obstacles to their desired behaviour. There may be bad psychologists, but that is not the real reason why people express their rejection of psychotherapy. — TimeLine

Who is "criminals"? Who is "police"? Legalism, eh? Laws are the business of the universe, not man; rules of human behavior in jurisprudence often don't make sense because they don't incorporate universal laws of biology, physics, or consciousness into their dictum. In other words, it is possible for a criminal to be a better person and more mentally healthy than a "law" abiding citizen. Criminals just deal with the actual, honest law, and often times don't respect what doesn't make sense in the rules of behavior, under the misnomer appelation "law." I don't follow "laws" (rules of behavior) that don't make sense (were it a law I would have no choice) for my self-information. The ones where I'm aligned with universal law, such as not making another feel inferior, or not harming another, are sacred virtues I'd follow even if it were against the law (rules of behavior, or empirical expectations of norms) to do so. We're using the word "behavior" a little too much for me, for example, as there's little doubt in my mind behaviorism has played its part in screwing up lucidity in the non transferable inner realm of the individual. Behavior means little to me, it is so far downstream. What's important in cleaning up in a person begins way before their behavior, which is the reason why only the individual himself can do it. Perhaps intention is part of it, but even intention is a very limited concept. There are components to the mind and how they communicate with each other anent differences that make a difference, which the individual must get around via transpersonal experiences. Otherwise, the person looks from a part of himself at the whole, which doesn't work. You have to be able to engulf your whole psyche to see clearly the emergent property, or synergy of it. Psychiatry may have produced some disparaging names for this act of compassing oneself...not my problem; experiencing oneness is one of the pillars of sound mindedness. I've often thought monism and understanding its implied generative order as a font of the mind is important to psychal wholeness and eudaemonia. If you don't know where your own mind begins and ends as a process, the adumbration of it the process if you will, you won't know much about how to make a unity of it, which is a problem. If you don't know what it feels like to be crazy, you certainly don't know what it feels like to be sane. You can't take somebody else's word for your own metaphysical and metacognitive framework.

I saw a woman have a hysterical episode at work, our receptionist who was laughing hysterically and crying uncontrollably at the same time and there was nothing we could do to stop her and get her to hear us or even see us, despite her being there. It was frightening to say the least, her eyes staring wildly out into space as she laughed and cried, and when she came to at the hospital, she herself said she was extremely frightened and had no idea what happened. How exactly can you be lead to your "whole human being" when such a dramatic and uncontrollable psychotic episode does nothing of the sort. — TimeLine

Sounds like it would've been quite an experience for her and those around her. As I've said, there's no one prescription for everyone. Some people do just have issues and breaks with the "whole picture" that is necessary to keep things in perspective. Perhaps they are too impressionable. It's clear though, that perfectly adhering to collective beliefs could be the incipience of hysteria, as I have little doubt in the truth of mass hysteria as a possible source of hysteria in the deindividuated person. What else explains why so many people believe in the same fundamentalisms and have so many of the exact same behaviors? For the longest time slavery was legal even though there were reflective individuals who knew it was wrong all along. The collective hadn't the slightest clue what was going on.

To your example: ...it sounds like the receptionist may have had issues with cognitive load. In which case she should have quit her job or asked for a new position as the correct sacrifice (though obviously she may have had other environmental problems). If it were entirely genetic or from weak internal self-generation, organization and regulation, there is little anyone could have done for her.

Drugs does not help you do this. — TimeLine

I prefer the term entheogen or psychedelic (manifesting the mind/soul), or sacrament. Drugs, like antidepressants harm people, likely physically and mentally, can increase suicidal behaviors and impulsiveness, aren't a cure, but a palliative. Psiloycbin, on the other hand, increases empathy in a lasting way clearly opposite to, say, the effects a smartphone in our tech obsessed society may have in decreasing consciousness and empathy in the individual. Neurologically, psychedelics prune 5ht2A serotonin receptors (and others), which are associated with depression, suicide, and other psychopathologies. A lot of how I think isn't steeped in the mania and unconsciousness of scientific or statistical fundamentalism or in radically over mechanicalized, machine determined, "life." And there are even implications in the school of "cognition" which aren't true for my way of thinking. Cognition is subsumed by consciousness, not the other way around. Cognition is a concept connected with computer science rather than consciousness/mind and indeed it is absurd to consider "computation" or "information processing" (such as a computer might do) as part of a transpersonal, non ego centered consciousness. Science, after all, still can't measure the invisible subjective world in the individual...only the individual can go there in himself, and he doesn't have to make any computations to do so. That said, I don't bar cognitive science from my way of understanding...i just call it Mind (instead of cognition; though they have many of the same connotations, it is as though cognitive science is trying to do away with Mind since it is immeasurable, more radical materialism/mind as brain/computer flimflam; Mind science).

Entheogens impart a feeling of unity or oneness with the cosmos that is truly hard to come by in a world where anthropocentrism (humans' God complex as laid down in Genesis) and behaviorism dominate human relationships and tend to distort intrapersonal intelligence as well. The individual must not be over dependent on other people for his well-being. Yes, this is a part of well-being, having honest and warm human contacts (not pseudo ones through cognitive dissonance or social media)...yet there are many requirements in conforming to a market society that are in themselves not conducive to mental health (such as the need to market yourself...whoa!...an astonishingly pretentious notion not congruent with what is the whole person). The defective patterns in social environments and institutions are as deserving to be labeled mentally ill as anything in an individual's head. War? I'm anti war. Many people have a war going on within them, and they usually support military psychology's role in civilian society. What's that all about? Is it rooted in Abrahamic religion like so many other dysfunctional elements of human inter/intra personal skills? The battle between good and evil, right (Zoroastrianism)? Though there are reasons why people compete with themselves and are internally conflicted, some genetic, some from no autonomy, some from dysfunction in society. This is what interests me...what are some of these reasons?

I've described a few internal psychodynamics in the previous post, which are the source of either a peaceful or violent schema, but apparently it wasn't convincing and makes little sense. I may have to say it again in a different way or just keep repeating it until not ignored. However, I don't really desire to convince anyone of my way of thinking as different people have different needs for their eudaemonia, at least I'd hope. There's no one-size-fits all or standard for all individuals' mental health (if there were one answer for everyone...we'd be automatons...stuck in mind killing mimesis). In a very real sense, it is up to the individual to regulate himself as only he has access to the source of consciousness. And only he can spot perversions and blindness that may be a part of the society he is in, which threaten to reflect in and diminish his own consciousness. There are sacrifices, for holistic mental health, one has to make in his lifestyle you may never suspect or have thought an alternative when the social character is sick. Blaming the individual has become so mentally lazy. There are virulent forces in society that ruin people's mental health...many of which it appears the majority of people are blind to...or if people are aware of the dysfunctions in society, why do they go on and conform anyway, thereby contributing to what is a runaway shortcoming of mental clarity? Said psychogenic illnesses can become a runaway contagion at large when so many think they are coping when they are actually spreading unconsciousness and causing more psychiatric illness. The herd instinct, for example, is a big problem for mental health in my view: one that leads to unconsciousness on a massive scale. I have a few ideas for a horror story along these lines...zombie apocalypses have become kitch...but the plot would have something to do with what happens when everyone loses metacognition.

Finally, here is a link to a good site on the subject of plant medicine: http://reset.me/ These plants have been used successfully in shamanism for millennia. Only very recently in history has collective man's picture of himself become so distorted as to have banned their use. How to make the law (plants produced by natural law) illegal by dreaming up a rule of behavior against the medicinal use of plants is lost on me and not included in my autonomous observance of living networks of health before human games.

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

I don't know what the purpose of boredom is; there is no purpose, it isn't associated with lucid cognition. Life has much meaning though sometimes it can be hard to find in human games (social constructs you have to believe in for them to exist). Without nature, biology and physics, perhaps there would be no meaning.

A lot of children complain of being bored, it seems it could be a symptom of immaturity or maybe of living an over structured lifestyle. It isn't a universal emotion, precisely not a universal emotion, actually: the universe isn't bored; be like the universe. Only some people get bored that need to figure out how to be alone in a dark room for as long as it takes to feel comfortable within themselves. It can help to talk to yourself in said dark room until you pinpoint your restlessness, examine it, stop rejecting it, cajole it into joining the part of you that isn't bored, etc. Or go out into nature and use your senses, learn from it...you'll understand what I mean when saying the universe isn't bored and to be like it. Make some field observations, maybe a painted turtle basking unmoving all day in the sun, or a leopard frog calmly poised eating bugs for hours, or a massive oak deeply rooted. It's mainly humans have a problem with boredom, it isn't natural. Hopefully when seeing that lower life forms can be more tempered and calm than humans, the phantom that is "boredom" is understood. Though admittedly, human animals remind me more of a termite mound or maybe bacterial culture (lowest life forms) in the helter-skelter cities. Maybe a termite gets bored when it has to hold still for any amount of time? I would rather be like a serene frog than a antsy termite, or a termitesy ant.

Anyway, I feel as though we're at an impasse so I'll return to the OP. — Posty McPostface

Oh, okay. No problem. My posts have had maybe too much meandering and logorrhea. It's not really about drugs to me, meditation, holotropic breathing, drumming, lucid dreaming, astral projection, getting lost in the woods, automatic writing, flow, and other methods achieve the same thing. We have to realize the illusion of mistaking the map for the territory to begin with and there are only so many ways to do this. This is what I mean when talking about preconscious processing, and the possibility some are afraid of it and don't trust themselves. This is an arch ego problem...sometimes people are so mechanical and controlling they equate ego death with physical death. They probably can't be helped and may never correct their blindness to their condition.

We unquestionably live in a time where the zeitgeist imparts an irreal feeling of being in control through calendars, mechanical clocks, big data, algorithms, machine learning, instant communications, smartphones, social media, internet of things, and most other technics. None of this addresses the "technology" of introspection, though, which is what's important. Some entheogens make one feel more sober than sober so as to become brutally honest with oneself, it's nothing to do with feeling intoxicated or escape that's for sure. It cleanses an imagined, overly literal reality and opens up the imagination showing you some of those hidden subconscious processes and metaphoric images and emblems of your life; seeing the raw processes of the mind at work is beneficial to mental health, to see what is more clearly without anything added to it.

Those who think deep inner work is unnecessary may be right for them, who am I to say. Unfortunately, I am usually left thinking these people are too impressionable and mean to stay away from something maybe a little too much of an open, non self-generated, system within themselves. I can only say wholeness is necessary, of this I'm sure. Another irony: even though it seems perhaps stupid in a world of instant information...it's absolutely necessary to be more of a closed system to information and organization and process what's already in you. Many folks are so open to an over informed and over organized human system....I can't imagine how they interpret all the moving parts as a unity. What is there to interpret, right? You have to have the ability to turn off the waterfall and watch some of the fish swimming in the pool at the bottom; generate yourself, organize yourself, and regulate yourself.

It is noted you go to the example of war, and I agree that the war model is usually there at many subsystems of society. I've heard and somewhat believe that in every tete a tete relationship (the only kind that exists in my view), one is dominant and the other submissive. Are these kinds of control dramas necessary? If not, what must the individual do to decondition himself from such adolescent and otherwise harmful effects of social domestication? Another example: most believe in reciprocal relationship, which is fine on the surface, but should human relationships really be run like a business with tab keeping and all? Clearly not. Whatever we do, we should shine like the sun and expect nothing in return. Ever realize the destructive side of exchange value of relationship? Lex talionis: eye for an eye is the same thing: death penalty is another form of what reciprocation and exchange value of relationship produces. Relationships don't work if they're run like a business with exchange value, though perhaps just being friends who know each other's weaknesses is something else. Then the destructive process of projection and introjection and the neurosis it involves are less involved. Where did we learn to hide our weaknesses?

The extent of self awareness that must be repressed in a soldier returned from war is basically unimaginable. No doubt all that is left of him is derived from repression and he returns with nothing but death instinct. But I don't think instinct in general is a monster like that...it's a matter of how you treat it. Note: I do think military/war psychology can be examined to understand a main source of violence; though this is basically self evident I'd hope. Truly I feel sorry for a lot of those tortured souls that are anything but antiwar. If you aren't antiwar, maybe you have a war inside you. Check out ahimsa (Hinduism): it's another concept from the east which makes most western concepts on reality and mental health seem like kindergarten. Ahimsa goes as far to say what is the most subtle form of violence, which is for one person to make another feel inferior. The thing is, when this has been understood, you'll find yourself having to be submissive in your relationships with others, which is one way of breaking the cycle of violence and hate. You have to see the truth that this power struggle is fully dysfunctional in order to be able to absorb other people's violence from the world and dissolve it, though. Which requires shamelessness, but sometimes speaking truth to power, though of course in a manner outside the dysfunctional and socially sanctioned dominant-submissive violence so often at the center of "relationships."

And I think it is the result of violence within the shooter, which is likely caused as much by socially sanctioned psychoneurosis as psychosis. What causes violence within the individual? But I'm not really connecting neurosis or psychosis with violence...violence is it's own condition in my view. Which is why I don't think a psychotic break out of nowhere is responsible....there is a long buildup that may be from neurosis more than psychosis. For me, psychosis and neurosis are on the same spectrum, which is why it is so strange people think one is so different than the other. It seems one (neurosis) stops with anthropocentric fallacy where people tend to be infantile before each other, while the other (psychosis) includes the truth, that humans exist in a universe of incomplete information, the universe doesn't end where social norms say it does, really. Social norms may be and often are quite wrong and unhealthy. But how do you know if a psychiatric illness is socially patterned or not?

I understand. It's just that, especially with all the public shootings and such, it's clear to me that ego dissolution is usually associated with a laving the mind of violence, which is at the core of the most serious personal and social problems. How is it that Violence itself isn't an end diagnosis rather than something like depression or anxiety? E.g., so and so was diagnosed with Violence. What causes violence inside of an individual? Also, haven't you ever wondered if disorder could be the result of too much order rather than not enough? The arm of Apollo is dominating our times in extreme ways and he is in cahoots with Procrustes. Give me some Dionysus, please. I'd only care so much about being functional if I thought I were out of touch with myself enough not to recognize violence as somewhat or to a large extent induced by ever increasing Procrustean social norms. Seriously, why do we think society is a source of perfect order? Think of the just world fallacy.

I never claimed to have a common view on mental health. Perhaps I couldn't prescribe what works for me. Everyone is different. And while I have no grand consummate theories about it, there are some observations that have taught me all is not what it appears. Indeed psychoanalysis teaches us of the "god of irony" which tends to rule the common understanding of things. Psychosis was far more accepted up until the modern age of radical social neurosis, dark triad, and instant feedback through the wonderfully dominant hold telecom has in defining what is mentally healthy while ignoring implicate orders of psychic wholeness. CBT is perfect for the age of smartphones...only I don't think the way it's playing out is very holistic at all for what it means to be an adult and responsible for integrating your undesirable and disliked side of yourself. I will pick apart your post later. CBT is NOT what it seems...it is more likely to lead to increased social mania, neurosis, and a break in consciousness due to the promotion of pseudo contact in oneself and in relationship. In short, it is childish as it doesn't lead you to own yourself as an whole human being with subconscious processing, and it ignores certain undeniable elements of mental process. Most of the people I know who go around talking about being more positive all the time are immature powder kegs, manic, easily offended. It reminds me of the modern advice to avoid toxic people....which sounds fine if you say it fast enough...save how can you be sure you your self aren't toxic? Is it because you practice CBT? Suffice it to say there are some problems with this way of thinking.

If you think the age old advice of Know Thyself is misguided...at least be open to the concept that you have mental process going on whether you are aware of it or not. Indeed I have an issue with CBT...glad you brought it up. Regardless of how many people believe in it...CBT is the most ridiculous concept I've ever heard and I think it will lead to increased occurrence of a host of psychiatric illnesses and projection of inner demons out on to other people rather than ever owning them and integrating them into a system of self-generating, organizing, and regulating consciousness. The danger of projecting your own undesirable qualities and emotions onto other people when you deny them in yourself is too likely with CBT. But then this is another insight gleaned from psychoanalysis...which is more applicable in the age of narcissism than ever before. Are you familiar with the process of projection and introjection as they occur in the human psyche? It doesn't seem you understand their role in creating a psyche that hides from itself that doesn't trust itself.

]Suffice it to say I don't trust people who aren't honest with themselves....such as a psychoneurotic, manic narcissist. Not that all people who take selfies have deep seated issues...yet it is clear that a dynamic psychiatric illness - narcissism - has made it's way into the social character. Not good. CBT is for narcissists...and it is they who are the toxic ones. Actually, as I see it, it's likely CBT may even lead to a bipolar condition. And yes, I realize we have to look at the social systems and norms (whether or not empirical expectations of behavior are sound, right?) when addressing these questions. And yes I am going to say there are an ever increasing amount of socially patterned defects one can't ignore in defining an "ecology of mind." The mind begins its illusory fission of itself by splitting the world into concepts like positive and negative valences, heaven and hell, good and evil if you will. You split the two, repress the undesirable side and make a war against the undesirable side because you haven't found a way to deal with it, while making it the repository of all your unwanted qualities and emotions somewhere out in the world , but never in your own psyche. But this is only the beginning. Ever wonder how the enemy is demonized in military psychology? Something like this goes on in a confused INTRApersonal mental process, only such people are split against themselves in internal conflict, and they are indeed competing with themselves...which is why it is so important to know how this compartmentalization of mind begins. People have depression and anxiety for a reason if you'd believe that. When meds are prescribed and CBT, it leaves the problem open, never resolved, unintegrated. There is an irony here and if I seem to champion a world beyond ego that includes the entirety of the psyche opposite psychoneurosis, including instinct...then indeed you are correct. Honestly, since when was not life defined by ups and downs? When was it that the most bizarre belief we should always be up came into the popular, and rather unconscious, mind? Too much order and forcing will lead to disorder.

Lastly, and if I comment any more it will probably be along these lines, what I'm saying is that psychoneurosis is not such a mild problem as perhaps you and many people believe, it has amplified into a condition as serious as it is common. There are several reasons this is so, which I may get to later. And just what does it mean at its core to be out of touch with reality?
Does it not mean to be out of touch with yourself? Of course it does. And this is where I'll argue neurosis has as yet unrecognized seriously injurious role in making people compete against themselves almost like the two sides of the brain tend to do. And as there are steps one can take in his spiritual practice which diminish the domination of the left brain over the right there are steps that will lead to a more integrated, non neurotic mental process. And I'm saying the answer will look a lot like psychosis in a world that has crossed the rubicon into a delusory acceptance of neurosis as benign. It isn't. Ta.

There is also something like a split-brain condition that results from smoking a lot of skunk. The THC receptors are densely concentrated on the corpus callosum and heavy use can lead to lesions in this nerve bundle that connects the hemispheres therein messing up the connection of the "brains."

People who are out of touch with themselves are probably less likely to want to face themselves through depersonalization to begin with, less likely to take a substance that would interfere with their inner hide and seek games they play with themselves (internal conflict). People who are unaware of themselves and stuck in first person, looking out into the world as a place they're never a part of, and projecting their own "demons" out into the world as a consequence of their dysfunctional intrapersonal domain, such people are already against drugs, usually. Actually, I've learned there are supremely stupid people who make a value out of fight or flight, and most of the time these types are at least aware they shouldn't take mind expanding substances inasmuch as they know it will make them even more volatile. Fools that live this way tend to mistake metacognition and metaphysics for demon possession or something evil, when it is actually the other way around...ignoring inner contemplation to understand the relationship between components of mind opens the door to breaks in consciousness.

As a fan of more psychosis in a world devoured by damaging neuroses, I advocate smoking pot if it leads to psychosis. Psychosis is really the only cure for neurosis. In our day, neurosis is a subtle problem and at once a real threat to the soundness of the social character. The problem is that once neurosis, and the repressive engine which it creates, reaches a tipping point the person can no longer maintain balance in themselves; ego and neuroses go hand in hand, but ego is made of instinct and can never escape its influence on cognition. Instinct always barges in after its been repressed by excessive neurosis, and always outside the person's control...effectively, the breaking point threshold is lowered due to neurosis and repression. As I see it, peaceful people with psychosis are actually far more balanced because they respect their instinct and don't block it in favor of ego or the pestilence of norm determined neuroses. Usually such people know themselves far better since they aren't having to constantly deal with neurotic, norm-driven blocking of instinct. In other words, psychosis doesn't block and so gets along with the entire psycho-dynamic schema within. There is no intrusion of unwanted thoughts derived from repression. In the ironic and radically socially determined ethos of our time you may have been led to believe psychoses are a condition associated with mental illness....this isn't true. When there is no blocking of instinct and primary process, there are fewer repressions and the components of mind communicate more fluidly without neurotic and manic impulsiveness which is enforced by the ignored instinct. It depends on to what extent the person has spent their lives trying to escape from the entire continuum of consciousness, which includes the antidote to neurosis and the impulse control illnesses which stem from such blocking. Impulse control problems are such because they're derived from repressions, which have gathered a kind of agency of their own...though the agency is the blocked off part of yourself coming back to haunt you in an altered form different slightly alien and different from the original neurotically repressed material. Indeed there are some people who shouldn't touch hallucinogens...but it is more likely to be people acutely out of touch with themselves from severe psychoneurosis than people who are peacefully psychotic. The majority of people with "mental illness" aren't violent. And violence, again, is derived, impulsively from a body of material the ego has kicked out (though this is impossible as the instinct always boomerangs back into itself - remember neurotic ego is made of instinct - and reclaims what is itself...but it does it in a way unrecognized by the lubber ego).

Fear is a vague term. However you could say that, in the aforementioned context, fear is of one's own instinct and of psychosis; or you could say that someone is such a control freak, he is afraid of his own unconscious thought processes, or maybe he thinks his own subconscious is a demon or alien. Study cynicism to learn the value of shamelessness in getting over what keeps you divided in your self, the external locus of control that arises in fear of social disapproval, allowing yourself to be punishable and rewardable by other organization and not self organization. The social domain is of import to psychal wholeness but to let it divide you within is to give it too much importance. Indeed there is a trending belief that most psychiatric problems stem from loneliness and boredom. To me it is the opposite, imbalance of mental processes results from inability to see the value of being alone and the danger in needing to constantly distract yourself into a kind of primary narcissism (first seen in helpless infants) tech-driven virtual reality of overconnectedness. The more connected people are on their phones and virtual realities, etc., the more disconnected they are within themselves. Most would rather be "possessed" by other people than by their own anima these days...not good. This could go into a further tangent though, and maybe I've already done enough of that here for now.

That was one reason that I gave for why it's wrong, and a mistake and dis-service, to reward and praise some students, and to hold them up to the others as better. ...to divide the students into approved and disapproved kids, winners and losers, high and low. Better and not-as-good.

What I suggested has nothing to do with class. It was only about individual preferences of students. — Michael Ossipoff

Then we agree. Sorry if I took a part of your post for the whole. I do think it is a class and maybe a caste issue though. What is it that rewards people most in the market society where people are insinuated with foolish and radical ideas of marketing themselves along side objects (products)? Money. In the market society, if you don't have near perfect attendance, you'll be fired and not have your monetary reward. I've subbed for a teacher who had a poster up on the home room wall that depicted a mansion with a 5 car garage out on a promontory overlooking the ocean with some idiotic subscript about success. It gave me a despondent feeling.

One of the peculiar mores of our times: compulsory education. I grew up in the country a half mile away from the ruins of a one room school house. It was finally demolished about 15 years ago. Economic radicalization of the human being seems to be getting worse instead of better. There's really no need to go to school if you want to be uneducated. There's been many very bright people who were "uneducated." Uneducated doesn't mean the person is stupid or lacking knowledge or anything in particular. The way things are going, everyone is becoming exactly the same (due to factors like compulsory education, technic determinism, and consumerism, where people are buying the same mass produced products). If more people were autodidacts and artisans, each person would know a little something different than others. But then no one would be marketable and interchangeable and the sacred economy would collapse.

Why should kids get used to accomplishment being rewarded though it is the incipience of class warfare? What is accomplishment? Money? Fame? More accomplishment warrants more money, right. More attention warrants more reputation?? Rewards, rewards... What if reward seeking were a problem? Inasmuch as it is.

The wedge between winners and losers. Yay!! How meaningful!

Perhaps you're right. Care to elaborate, though. In the example given by the op, it is ostensibly a case of competition: for perfect attendance. E.g. not everyone got perfect attendance, some were made to feel more special than others when given/offered the accolade; perfect attendance merits a reward because it's a competition involving what's merited and what's not. Meritocracy sometimes seems to have sadomasochism elements to it, or it's a source of sadomasochism.

Rewards are usually in the context of competition (e.g., if you get the reward, there were others who might have gotten it but didn't) which is continually diminishing human relationships all around the world.

What extent does luck involve a communication between autonomous and heternomous systems? Here the child isn't lucky (in the context of a reward given by the heteronomy of the educational facility) because he hasn't gotten sick because in a way, this is a question that belongs to intrinsic, autonomous health, and nothing to do with extrinsic school. It's a mixture of domains that aren't comparable along a number of criteria.

Note: not getting sick is not an accomplishment, but an absence. You can't talk about it in terms of luck anymore than you can talk about being lucky because you have an autonomic nervous system that allows you to live (without having to remember to make your heart beat, etc.). If we want to say we're lucky to have been born...that's different. You make your own luck; though as long as too dependent on others and not self-organized, you may be apt to think you're lucky just because others accept you or give you a trophy.

Some people become monsters while trying to help others, tending to make all the wrong sacrifices. This isn't the right way. Maybe if such a person as I describe would stop and have a look at himself and see he spreads poison while believing he should be thanked, then maybe he could become a genuine helper instead of a poseur.

Would you want helped by someone that was messed up? Where messed up could mean he had severe cognitive dissonance, was Machiavellian, a psychopath, or narcissist? Personally, I hesitate to allow some people to help me, people who failed to understand loving kindness before they thought they had learned what it meant to help someone. The subtlest form of violence is to make another feel inferior. Being truly kind to someone is the first major step toward helping them, and actually anterior to any other form of succor. If I believed someone were truly kind, I'd have no problem accepting their assistance in some way.

No one's perfect no thing is perfect. Albeit, you can tell who is genuine and who is putting on airs. Falseness spreads itself and makes the world a worse place in all it affects, especially because the human system (or I could call it a market society, or a commercial pathology) rewards falseness. Genuinely good people don't fail to be kind in the subtlest of ways. Genuine goodness recognizes itself in others ; counterfeit people think they're good people but have no relationship with themselves by which to gather honest feedback to know if this is true or not, and if they are ugly inside, it's usually this deformation that "helps" others, their eternally repressed shadow projects itself into the world. Basically, the more someone convinces himself it's necessary to sacrifice his feelings, love, and reason to conform to the demands of the human system (with all its perversions), the larger the shadow grows and the more impossible it becomes not to see through its lens...even when "behaving" as though you wanted to be giving and to help others. Behaviorists are no good to anyone.

Relationships aren't something to run like a business. One of the main seals of genuinely good people is that they've gotten outside of the tit for tat disease born of the business model.

The person who thinks he's being selfless by giving more of his mind to the external world rather than to the internal world (introspectively) is often more selfish than one who includes himself in his worldview. A lot of people seem to forget they are in the world and a part of it: this is surely an illusion which could possibly lead to being more selfish than otherwise. To have the right intentions, it's necessary to have self-recollection. Selfishness is more often seen in people who think they're doing the right thing to the point of bigotry. If you never doubt yourself while you look out at the world filtered through some rigid code, there is a danger of a log being in your eye. This aphorism describes a possible defect that may develop in one who thinks selfishness is about excluding himself from his worldview (who thinks he ought not think of himself):

"And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?"

Selfishness doesn't mean thinking of oneself. Right intention requires self-recollection and mindfulness of the environment: they're a part of the same context or continuum.

The OP asks if it's possible to help another without helping oneself. In other words, do you help another in order to to help yourself thereby? Is it selfish to want to help another along these lines? The object would be to do so without creating a zero sums game wherein it might be possible one is embittered when he has to help another, which would be the converse of good feelings resulting from the good deed. It would be necessary to obviate any chance of staining oneself in helping others (for it to be pathogenic to the benefactor); if oneself were worse off for helping, then he shouldn't help (this would be a zero sum game). Perhaps only people who have mastered themselves should help others. Otherwise, stained people tend to corrupt everything they interact with even if offering succor. The right means work wrong in the wrong hands. Getting the log out of your eye (helping yourself) is the first order of business.

Anything that has mass has energy, is matter. A thought has not mass, possibly no energy, can't be measured, therefore isn't matter...therefore all is not physical.

There is not an isomorphic correlation between chemicals, brains scans, TMS, shocking the brain and a thought. We can experience far more thoughts and qualia subjectively than can be measured physically. To limit mind to what can be measured physically is to do away with subjective reports of inner cognition. Subjective experience is still entirely impervious to physicalism, thank goodness, or my mind would be an fMRI. Whatever data you have and are trying to say IS the thought of the subject is a very strange view.

Forgetting about mental imagery and visualization being a prime mover (though perhaps less energetically than in an as yet unexplained way) of matter is an oversight. Are dreams physical? Protein synthesis can be caused by mental imagery. The nature of photons and light appear to be closer to mind-stuff than matter stuff. The best I can do in meeting the physicalists (who oddly seem to have forgotten the new physics entire) is with neutral monism. Also, psychophysical parallelism and preestablished harmony are appealing ideas.

Whether or not you think there's such a thing as eternal or timelessness influences how you think of the mind-body problem (inasmuch as truly, nothing ever happens that isn't in this moment; yesterdays and tomorrows either were now or will be now when they happened or will happen). And if every event (past and future) is somehow superimposed on top of itself in a way we can never comprehend, it further makes sense that psychophysical parallelism and preestablished harmony may be at work in some hard to understand or impossible to understand way.

To our limited selective mechanisms, it may only appear that one event causes another; the fact we have to make observations to try to understand the universe is possibly an indicator of our limited understanding of causality. If there is a universal mind, absolute and omniscient, it doesn't have to make any observations, and so we are closer to it when we aren't making observations or trying to understand it. And indeed it is true when I'm zoning out or meditating, or in a state of deep sleep, time flies, the subjective nature of time is more obvious when making fewer observations. Causality itself comes into question.

One local event is causing another all around the universe far beyond any isolated local causality. Even though we have a small perspective of our own lives and activities, within a local sphere of causality, it has to be remembered that in a way, everything causes everything when nonlocality is introduced. Which is in fact what is happening. Everything informs everything as though it were one unfathomably monumental event. We tend to get stuck in trying to apply local causality to the big picture or to infinitude. Splitting the universe into pieces is done by human observers, not by the universe itself.

Nevermind. Or how do you delete a post?

Yeah, when you say "interconnected" this is what I'm talking about when mentioning the mind as having non local causes, in some way touching on complete information of the universe. When the mind is in superposition, and not making any observations it's boundaries are likely as limitless as the universe.

As for open and closed systems, the mind benefits from being more closed actually. Ours is an information society, and as such, people are apt to try to "eat" way, way, more information than they can actually digest/process. It has to make sense to be more closed to information and process what's already there in your autopoietic system (Maturana). The brain has to have energy and as such is an open system. The mind can be more or less closed to information and organization and is very different from the brain in this way. Most people need to close their minds more, especially to organization. Folks that frequent this board are like me, no doubt, in that we read all the time but could probably think more if we weren't reading. Sometimes it's better to stop reading and start thinking and writing within your closed system of organization and information (to see what's there asking to be processed).

A strict belief in materialism and that we are exclusively material beings is conducive to severe neuroses. The domain of mind is invisible. This is about as obvious as it is overlooked. Also, more correct me if I'm wrong, but a tightly connected brain is usually associated with less efficient processes of mind. An unhealthy brain has to do more work than a healthy one, and I'd assume uses more energy therein, or wastes more energy. As the mind self organizes and informs, and is more efficient, there may actually be a negative correlation with energy in the brain. However you look at it, it is hard to convince me brain is not quite a different system than mind, though it is obviously part of a more global apparatus of psychophysical parallelism.

Mind has no extension in space and may exist in a more or less dilated time. A thought is nowhere, in the quantum vacuum as far as we know. Thoughts aren't subject to measurement in their primordial fettle. So far as we know, it is only the brain which needs energy; perhaps thoughts do not need energy and perhaps neither does the information and organization of mind require energy. Because a thought itself isn't measurable, it is impossible to know.

In other words, on a clear day, blue sky, you look up and lo!...there's the inside of your cranium in the upper atmosphere. Exactly. The physicalism of neuroscience and brain scans have gone way off the deep end in trying to make mind follow the brain, culminating in the most inane ideas I've ever heard: eliminative materialism, type physicalism, etc. If you're having a thought or feeling or intuition or mental imagery that can't be correlated with brain scans...guess what...it's like demon possession and you must be crazy. A very naive way of thinking; actually, I don't think there is any thought going into these interpretations of the mind body problem. What a shame to throw away what makes us human: metacognition: that is, not only thought, but thought about thought about thought, and so on.

An example of mind over matter is provided by the fact the brain changes function (and even form as in protein synthesis) by mental imagery such as imagining shooting free throws can improve performance. Mental imagery is a domain unaccounted for by physicalism neuroscience.

Much of what is known about mind-brain is gleaned from electrodes (being placed in brain regions and shocking them; or TMS). The most easily cited example of shocking a part of the brain and producing drastic effects in consciousness is at the claustrum (when it's stimulated, consciousness is lost). The source of energy which changes brain function in these experiments is rather arbitrary. Organismically, the voltage differentials of neurons are held in place by energy from the organism and its organization and interaction with the environment and likely stimulated non locally as well as locally. If we want to attribute causation to the electricity coming from an electrode placed in the brain, you have to realize this is nothing like the electrical causation that operates the brain in everyday experience. For the brain to change function naturally there has to be an interaction between the organism and the plenum, not just shocking or magnetism.

Shooting free throws in the mind is ontologically nothing like shocking the brain with electrodes, and how they cause changes in function and form of the brain are in entirely different spheres of causality. We don't go about our daily life shocking the brain with electrodes to cause perceptions and conscious experience. Natural causation of brain-mind is nothing like artificial stimulation of the brain. In the final analysis, I'm not sure I can accept too much of what is learned about the mind by artificial stimulation of brain.

There are a huge number of laws most of which most people are unaware of so it is only in certain specific situations where you have to obey a law. — Andrew4Handel

Quite right. This is one of the observations what compels me to focus on the definition of "rule" (anthropocentric ruling class) vs "law" (non anthropocentric ruling "class"). It must be fatuous to a significant extent to respect human rules very much when there is no autonomic nervous system or instinct backing up rule with law; perhaps goodness is a kind of law of instinct and antisocial people have no instinct. Perhaps it isn't necessary to know what one respects in order to respect it, however, I am inclined to respect pre eminent powers more than subservient ones. I respect the plenitude, gradation, and continuity of the empyrean more than the delimitation of any one species, even though the heavens and the earth contain endless unknown and unpredictable phenomenon: there has to be "species" of time and space for there to be worlds, saying nothing that comes after in this hierarchic chain of being. In mistaking rule for law, humans have done nothing less than made themselves time and space, worlds, and all that transpires on worlds. As though instead of walking on a beautifully abstract planet, we were walking on a monumental human head that was feigning to bark out natural laws and processes.

It does seem like a lot of people identify with the aggressor anymore. Does society reward aggression? The military psychology is getting too close to mainstream.

Some people self-regulate very well (introverted monk types for example), others are power hungry and more aggressive (exploit or be exploited; kill or be killed: capitalist and soldier aggression respectively). One can't really say "we" in describing who and who doesn't have self-recollection as they navigate their lives in an even keel. I'm more passive, but in a hyperactive market society, don't make the mistake of calling me passive-aggressive: I've heard people are afraid of being alone these days: clearly this is an index of something gone severely wrong in the social character. Being alone requires slowing down to a stop and facing oneself and one's demons while taking no actions whatever, sitting still. To a hyperactive and aggressive market society social milieu, no doubt this seems too passive, but I think it's the norm of society that has become too extremely active and aggressive. It takes all kinds, there's no "we" in terms of an entity that is the same. And it is bizarre that the law (rules) are expected to apply to everyone equally as though everyone were the same person, which is impossible (against the Law, with capital "L"). From the perspective of the true Law, indeed it does apply to everyone equally, but also differently in the interior domain of mental imagery, imagination, reckoning, idealisms, and eidolons.

Anti social lawyers and judges are commonplace (this is part of the grand irony of the legal system); they set aside warm, forgiving human relationships and connections, and individual lives at large (personal histories, whole beings; treating perception as though it were demon possession), while believing they're being objective (basically, it's impossible for anyone to be without emotion or observational interpretation or truly objective; judges aren't insensate objects as much as they may want to be). In this regard, those in law are behaviorists and attempting to minimize human intuition, trying to leave nothing undefined and nothing to chance or fate. Any living human has selective mechanisms of attention based on his personal experience, personal history, and style of introspection: he has several (separate) cognitions, unlike any other's cognitions; no two people alike learn a fact or make an observation as though they had no perception. Law (and I don't mean rules of anthropocentric teleology) is never cookie-cutter, we see its infinite variety in countenances, and in varied styles of consciousness and modes of being trying to make a unity of the multiplicity of life. To do this, some need rules that apply to everyone (as though they didn't trust themselves or their own agency/autonomy/self-law), but to more autonomous people, the same rules act as a hindrance to the internal consistency of their unique sui generis of self-law. One could be a much better person than what is allowed by the rules of anthropocentric teleology if he created a closed system of information and organization. There can be no argument human society has become over informed and over organized to the uppermost: and it isn't hard to argue this will play a role in social decay.

Behaviorism? Behavioral regulation? That the system of rules of the game (for the ruling elite) still relies on animal conditioning/operant conditioning for it to "work" (does it work?) says enough to why it is lame I'd hope. Or you could say puerile behaviorism and psychoneurotic hysteria of jurisprudence resembles a second set of parents, with little to no internal consistency in its "laws."

Because statutes and precedent can't possibly keep up with the domain of life and its novelty, life is dragged down to a necrophilic land when it is based on rules instead of living law; and the system of legislation is so internally inconsistent it breaches itself anterior to any need for human interpretation. An individual can facultatively create a system of law for himself far more internally consistent and inherently virtuous than any rule system meant for everyone; there should be a law for him to do so, but maybe this is a law that only informs and organizes the thinking natures of autonomous people (as for them, it is impossible not to be autonomous).

Usually it's the parasitic authority in one's own schema (interiorized autocracy; behavior without knowing any of the reasons why you are behaving or simply to fit in or acquire arbitrary gain) that, like a brood parasite (you think you are raising your own young, but it's more like a changeling in you), sits in lieu of a spirited self processing and self organizing system of agency (function, organization, and structure are all organic and part of a changing vital equilibrium in self sufficient, good people) that becomes anti social; internalized authority with it's lack of virtue is largely to blame in failing to liberate the species, as it is afraid of punishment or desirous of reward (virtue does or doesn't do or not do things based on punishment or reward, but on understanding of what is more or less inviolable and in keeping with organismic terminuses and setpoints); authoritarians are often antisocial; judges and attorneys are more often psychopaths than the laity. But, if the drift of discussion ignores this and all that is antithesis to monkey behaviorism, I won't understand any of it so... Sorry if I misinterpreted it though, didn't mean to misdirect the thread or to be an imp of the perverse.

Sorry for oversimplifying this, but it is something I've thought about quite a bit and have distilled it to this law anent laws: Rules can be broken, laws can't. Humans play "God," and they delude themselves every step of the way. There are plenty of things happen you don't like or you do like...but likes and dislikes, or agreements and disagreements are usually based on point of view more than law (similar to cultural relativity). Unless you tried to say you have psychal laws within, and that your feelings on a matter are derivative of psychal laws. Then you discover that there are laws of feelings and emotions and laws anterior to what is fathomable and fathomless. What is possible or impossible to enter into your head is perhaps a subject of metaphysical law. So this illustrates that if it is against the law, then it is impossible. If it is is possible, then it isn't against the law even though you may not like it. Perhaps your feelings for what is possible and impossible is also part of the law.

One thing is for sure: human jurisprudence isn't law, but rules. If it were law, it would be impossible to break the same as it is impossible to jump on top of your house. Traffic laws can't prevent car wrecks because they aren't actually laws: the deranged metal of the cars involved and the broken bones of the drivers are derived from law. When enough people agree to a rule and then all believe it is a law is the contagion of mass hysteria or crowd psychology, that is, unconsciousness. There may be some law of consciousness which transfers agency away from the individual's responsibility to think freely and consciously, autonomously and independently. Laws aren't created by any one species, though there may be species specific laws. Man can use laws, or mix laws into an emergent reaction or pour one into another, but can never create them.

This is a good topic as I feel the confusion of rule and law has long been a central reason man is born free but grows up into hard shelled pseudo structures that are basically imaginary agreements which lead to the en mass delusions and socially patterned defects which are maelstrom to the health of our species. There are a lot of bifurcations on this topic of import to its phenomenological domain. Humans are great at giving away their agency which makes the individual incapable of ascertaining the starting point or ending point of many ontological questions. There are classes of unities anent what is possible and impossible. Epistemological arrogance comes into play with our species, especially when we site our involvement with technology, such as when it fails or works as it was planned, as an excuse for our failures or success respectively. Somewhere in between the exteriorization of agency and whatever it is that catches our projections there is something like a phantom we mistake for a law, but is actually a false belief, not justifiable, not true. Superegos are suggestive of mass bundles of make believe or rules and not laws, a projection of omniscience into abstract human organizations, which of course are never the truly unknowable domain of cosmic abstraction, but only anthropolatry. How to subjectively handle the limits of what is know/knowable and unknown/unknowable plays a big role in what we adhere to and the selective mechanisms of what we give our attention. What is unknown and unknowable is truly abstract, but what is knowable/unknowable from the perspective of anthropolatry is pseudo abstract.

There's surely no one answer to a question like this. If there were, it would mean there were no such thing as perception. Perception varies by individual knowledge and expectations, selective mechanisms (of attention), and so on. In other words, when two different people observe the same object, they observe it with discrete perceptions and aren't actually observing the same object at all. In the same way perceptions differ per person, so would happiness. Some people likely can stay happy for extensive periods of time. Others happiness is aperiodic and has more a life of its own. I do often wonder if people like my grandma can maintain happiness due to their rather obdurate and inflexible schemas and mental structures (schedules), which is pendant to a sort of restlessness of needing to know what will happen next. Others can cultivate happiness in a more genuine and eudaimonic way: whatever happens, whether desirable or not, is accepted and embraced as part of a greater order that is always, to some extent, outside of control. Most of us fluctuate, and if that means a zero sums game, then, yes, it would be. The Tao is always in a state of returning. Perhaps changing moods are actually associated with the pendulum-like equilibrium of a healthy entelechy. And each of us have our own self organized teleological cartography to life.

Rigid expectations are never conducive to happiness. When lives are so micromanaged by telecom and clocks (that is, technology over the domain of life and relations; complete information of the universe reduced to a set time on a mechanical device: mechanicalized time), it blocks genuinely free human relationships: used to be before telephones, the only way someone could talk with you was by stopping by your residence, of course unannounced. And it's likely whatever activity you were engaged in was put aside to visit with your kith. Now when someone stops by unannounced and you're busy, they're being rude to incommode you. These contexts alter happiness because, though I'm not as sociocentric as most I know, human relations are central to happiness, and in our era, more agency has been given to machines than to human relationships (a pity).

To answer the questions: No, we couldn't exist in a world where everyone were happy. This type of sameness would be bad whatever happened to be: if everyone were happy, it wouldn't be called happiness anymore. So, would we want to all be happy if we could? Would that then be happiness? No. Happiness arises in contexts that aren't happiness even if it is a kind of neutral feeling of metaphysical pathos.

Suffering can be routinized and handed over to mechanicalized "life"; eliminating all other order in one's life including the Bacchic celestial order (freedom) can be accomplished by the convenience of supplication before machine (but machine order is not elimination of suffering at all since it makes people more and more effete and lame, servants to itself; prone to more suffering actually, more chances for uncontrolled and unexpected outcomes). Some people seem to try to transform suffering into living an over organized, overstructured life. But they usually harbor inner tension and are ready to lash out and lambaste every chance they get. Again, if someone harbors anger or everything they do is derived from psychoneurotic repressions, there is hidden suffering despite what they say or claim to believe about themselves and their lifestyle.

If a life without either happiness or suffering would be worth living makes me think on other states of consciousness I've experienced, which would act as coordinates other than up and down moods. Transpersonal experiences and peak experiences are indeed rather "other" comparatively. So I'd say, yes, life would be worth living in some other state if even that wouldn't be desirable. Going beyond comforts and discomforts, happiness and suffering, is possible and maybe even parallel to liberation (lasting joy). When there is a trauma which involves a whole community, everyone forgets their differences. Why were they living in such a partially conscious way that they should feel their whole life prior to the trauma was only routine and not worth living to the peak? What role does trauma play in the transmodulation of their psychal components? Why do people feel every day of their life is a rehearsal for the future in complete disrespect of cosmic order and immanent death or trauma? If they didn't feel a false comfort in this way, maybe they'd understand life isn't so much about happiness and suffering, but intrinsic value of life day by day.

No. I equate straightforwardness with honesty, and outspokenness with unreserved speech. As such, they are two different things, and neither one is a symptom of an impulse disorder, narcissism or psychopathy.

Narcissistic and psychopathic behaviour is generally calculated and deliberate (i.e., not impulsive). Is this a result of greater than normal self-monitoring which compensates for a lack of empathy? — Galuchat

"Straightforward" is only a word, which can probably be supplanted with a better descriptive label: conscientiousness and honesty are labels we can probably agree on that are always good qualities socially. And before being honest with others, one has to be honest with his self. Making assumptions about social standards is usually a slightly dishonest start, since honesty isn't without the context of truth, which in turn, is unknowable (another's style of consciousness is unknowable). Honesty only assumes not to know how another person would like to be treated, or if they would like to be treated at all.

The calculated part of the dark triad is Machiavelli. Narcissism and psychopathy are far more common and subtle in our culture than the sadist that plots and acts on his devices (psychopathy is more related to Machiavelli than narcissism; some would give primary narcissism a pass as healthy self love...not so sure I would myself, I describe this function as animal self-respect). But to say that the dark triad isn't impulsive? I can't concur. A person that thinks about all manner of things isn't necessarily manipulating others if he never acts on any of his thinking. This uncontrollable urge to formulate machinations and manipulations against others and to somehow act on these deceptions I'd say is precisely what defines the impulsiveness of the dark triad obscenity.

Culture can be a kind of unconsciousness. If two people from a certain area are exactly alike (socially) compared to two people from another area, I shouldn't like to meet any of them as they'll be automatons, devoid of individual self-organization. There will be those who have individuated , I'd hope, anywhere you look on the globe. E.g. - there are customs of U.S. culture I feel offended by even though I was born here, thus I never internalized sanctions communicating with these norms, even if most people I know have internalized these norms and their social sanctions. There are pathologies of normalcy in the social character that can only be dealt with if one has individual self -information-organization (self recollection). There are subtleties only more sensitive people pick up on in metacommunications and sensitives aren't in the wrong for this, they're more observant, actually (both self-monitoring and other-monitoring). To make another feel inferior is a subtle form of violence: to make a sensitive person feel inferior will be easier than making a thick-skinned person feel inferior.

It would vary from one individual to the next the extent each feels comfortable or uncomfortable being around those who say whatever crosses their minds. Silence isn't only a right, it's antecedent to sound or voice. To be straightforward in the sense of being frank and honest might be agreeable, but then we should ask what it means to be polite. People who lack cognitive filtering are straightforward, garrulous and not deceptive, however they're also often acutely impolite. Noble silence is the primordial condition of politeness. Being honest is to be mindful of the fact you don't know the disposition and sensitivities of those around you: to assume you do based on culture or any other reason would be a grave wrong assumption. Metacommunications are what give people away. There is often a gap between what people say, how they say it (tonality and prosody, etc.), body language, and so on. And though to do or say nothing is also a form of message (in a social situation), I'd hesitate to think of it as the same kind of metacommunication as what is done or said.

Another problem is that so many relationships have control dramas. And I'd go as far as saying none of these relationships are good examples for healthy socialization. What's more, everywhere people compete and compare themselves with each other (such as what U.S. culture begins indoctrinating in kindergarten) is a form of the dark triad. Narcissism and psychopathy are more prevalent, I believe, here in U.S. culture than most would admit. There are a lot of socially patterned defects, but no one willing to step outside of their internalized sanctions to see it as such. I think of Facebook mania. Facebookers love to share their every experience, taking photos of themselves and posting them on FB all in the name of sharing and being social and friendly...but what they are really trying to do is gain social capital and narcissistic power. Not that everyone uses FB like this, it is an example of something fairly unsettling that has become an unconscious aspect of the social character. Selfies are inherently narcissistic, but have made it into normative expectations of most people. Not sure what it means to be agreeable or straightforward in ironic contexts like this.

Whenever we ask "What are we allowed?" (meaning mankind as a whole) there is the problem to whom we possibly could address this question. For a believer it's simple: they only have to pick their preferred quote from a holy text and if they cannot find the answer themselves to ask their priest. But what about the sceptical earthling who does not trust the holy texts? Who then will allow or forbid him anything? — Kai Rodewald

Your problem lies in the first sentence: for example, what is "mankind as a whole"? I realize you likely mean the human species. But out of all species on Earth, individual humans are more different one to another because humans are idealists and have the faculty of metacognition to varying degrees: no other animals or kingdoms are disparate from one individual to the next as we are because they don't have metacognition as we do. There is no whom to ask what is allowed, only oneself. Each individual is allowed whatever seeps into and out of his own consciousness and there do seem to be inner laws which allow some thinkable thoughts, but bar others. Your consciousness isn't meant to be filtered through other people's ideas, priests, books, or otherwise. To give away the human gift of self awareness is a grave defilement. To confuse self and other is a grave defilement. Shifts of agency into religions or groupthink, or beliefs in collective consciousness are dangerous for mental health. To be responsible for oneself means not asking someone else what is allowed. One who is responsible for himself and has internal consistency finds errors in holy books and jurisprudence systems. Any anthropogenic system meant for everyone is an authoritarian hoax, likely to lead to fragmentation of one's schema.

In a world where humans have become so effete and fragile able to protect themselves from every possible inconvenience, it's worth remembering it isn't possible to safeguard against suffering and loss, it isn't possible to prevent suffering. Who said it was possible to avoid pain? They're quite wrong. If nothing else, an occasional trauma comes along to take a bite out of your life and what you thought you had under control.

I'm not sure if I choose pleasure or pain. Those who talk about being more positive, I've noticed are often quick to anger as though they don't trust their own impulse control disorder. Pleasure and pain are emotions, which are hard to cultivate purposively. Some must have everything tidy and when something happens that ruins their orderliness, they are quick to anger. We live in a time where there is so much convenience. When people must have all the conveniences, they tend to become brittle psychologically. Not only this, but when they have things in order and convenient, they will speak of you as being gloomy, though you may be thinking to yourself how irascible such people tend to be when things don't go their way. So, you don't choose pleasure and pain I wouldn't think. There are simple pleasures easily arranged, but when one starts thinking about whether there will be pleasure in the future or pain, it's mostly magical thinking. The future may have different plans for you. Minimizing pain is a fine notion, but the future may not obey you.