Karma -- Thoughts?
- Thread starter Boyd
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- Jul 26, 2010
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Re Andrea, Randy Yates:
"He should have been at her side through all of it"
I don't feel that way. What he should have done is given her her medication. She had a medical problem. This is not something that gets better through hugs and 'love' and rah rah rah. No one would try to 'support' someone away from heart failure or a broken leg. What helps psychosis is medication.
When psychotic, a person cannot think clearly because parts of their brain are being bombarded by a biochemical assault. They may try to jump out a window thinking they can fly, they may think they need to kill themselves or someone else, they may attack someone while laughing. People will then think they are 'evil' or however people interpret it related to their beliefs.
It isn't really 'the voices told me to so I did it'. The voices are just an expression of that impulse in the brain. In some cases, the impulse is so strong that the person 'has' to do it, but it is not like they make a conscious decision, 'the voice said do so so i did'. When explaining it later, they attempt to make it sound more rational than it is because what is really going on is so irrational and intolerably strange, 'the voices told me so i did it'. In actuality, they are suffering from impulsivity - the brain just starts doing something without any rhyme or reason.
It's complicated, though. The impulses and the hallucinations, and how a person interprets them, are all irrational. One of the worst things a psychotic person goes through is believing that just because some disordered biochemistry makes some thought pop up in their brain, that's some indication of their character, morals or inner workings. It is not. It just depends on what parts of the brain the disease is affecting, that's what sort of thought will pop up. A few weeks before the 'voices' start, brain cells start to die off. When one hears voices, some brain cells have died out around the part of the brain responsible for hearing. They are not evil or bad people. They are sick.
It's unfortunate that the disease damages thinking, but that is how it is. In fact, it used to be called 'dementia praecox', - early dementia. Because even 300 or 400 years ago, doctors could on autopsy pick up the brain and feel that it had lightened, that the wrinkles in the brain were shallower, that the brain had changed, markedly, substantially.
In the Bible, Jesus healed a psychotic man. But Jesus is not here any more, and the people who claim they are on par with JEsus and can heal psychotic people through their prayer, that they are that powerful, they are just on an ego trip. I've been to enough funerals to know that for sure.
That is indeed the height of arrogance, to put oneself on par with Jesus, and then run away and 'help' someone else when the person kills themselves. THose 'healers' aren't around when the mess they create finally blows up in their faces. Like Randy Yates, they just go get some other person to victimize. And it is the most cruell and evil victimization there is, to take advantage of a vulnerable person for one's own ego aggrandizement.
To me, Randy Yates is right on par not with Jesus, but with the Taliban. Who are thugs, and go around recruiting dumb, uneducated, hungry poor kids with no future, and brainwashing them, and then leaving them at the scene of the crime to be caught and prosecuted.
So no, actually. I don't think mentally ill people who commit horrible crimes are 'pure evil'. I think they're sick, just as a person who has diabetes or a heart condition is sick.
The fact that they refuse medication is due to the fact that they cannot understand that they are sick. The more severe the disease, the less they can understand and the more likely they are to refuse medication. Oh sure, they'll try to say something rational sounding that will appeal to people like 'I don't like the side effects' of the drug. People will just eat that up because they dislike 'Big Pharm' and psych medications to start with.
But a drug that works well for the person with out side effects can always be worked out, with effort. The days of the 'doped up mental patient' are gone. There are medications that are so good now that during drug studies, people have nearly rioted in hospitals rather than go back on what their doctor put them on 20 or even 10 yrs ago.
As one doctor told me, 'The part of their brain tthat would figure that out is GONE. Not asleep, not in need of tutoring - GONE'. It is not a matter of WON'T understand it's a matter of CAN'T understand. THAT is why people refuse medication.
What we ask psychotic people to do, basically, is to discount everything they perceive, and believe what we tell them to believe. It's small wonder few people are all that cooperative.
I think all true 'evil' is actually often not much more than selfishness. People who want something more than they care about other people. People who misuse religion for their own means (like the Taliban, for example, who I think is a bunch of thugs, not a bunch of Muslims at all, just a bunch of cheap thugs). I put someone who victimizes a sick person and goes around pounding their chest that they will save them through their own incredible religious abilities, just about on par with the Taliban. Selfishness and an ego trip to the highest extreme. So selfish, in fact, that they are willing to put it all on the religion they profess to love and cause people around the world to hate Islam and muslims.
"He should have been at her side through all of it"
I don't feel that way. What he should have done is given her her medication. She had a medical problem. This is not something that gets better through hugs and 'love' and rah rah rah. No one would try to 'support' someone away from heart failure or a broken leg. What helps psychosis is medication.
When psychotic, a person cannot think clearly because parts of their brain are being bombarded by a biochemical assault. They may try to jump out a window thinking they can fly, they may think they need to kill themselves or someone else, they may attack someone while laughing. People will then think they are 'evil' or however people interpret it related to their beliefs.
It isn't really 'the voices told me to so I did it'. The voices are just an expression of that impulse in the brain. In some cases, the impulse is so strong that the person 'has' to do it, but it is not like they make a conscious decision, 'the voice said do so so i did'. When explaining it later, they attempt to make it sound more rational than it is because what is really going on is so irrational and intolerably strange, 'the voices told me so i did it'. In actuality, they are suffering from impulsivity - the brain just starts doing something without any rhyme or reason.
It's complicated, though. The impulses and the hallucinations, and how a person interprets them, are all irrational. One of the worst things a psychotic person goes through is believing that just because some disordered biochemistry makes some thought pop up in their brain, that's some indication of their character, morals or inner workings. It is not. It just depends on what parts of the brain the disease is affecting, that's what sort of thought will pop up. A few weeks before the 'voices' start, brain cells start to die off. When one hears voices, some brain cells have died out around the part of the brain responsible for hearing. They are not evil or bad people. They are sick.
It's unfortunate that the disease damages thinking, but that is how it is. In fact, it used to be called 'dementia praecox', - early dementia. Because even 300 or 400 years ago, doctors could on autopsy pick up the brain and feel that it had lightened, that the wrinkles in the brain were shallower, that the brain had changed, markedly, substantially.
In the Bible, Jesus healed a psychotic man. But Jesus is not here any more, and the people who claim they are on par with JEsus and can heal psychotic people through their prayer, that they are that powerful, they are just on an ego trip. I've been to enough funerals to know that for sure.
That is indeed the height of arrogance, to put oneself on par with Jesus, and then run away and 'help' someone else when the person kills themselves. THose 'healers' aren't around when the mess they create finally blows up in their faces. Like Randy Yates, they just go get some other person to victimize. And it is the most cruell and evil victimization there is, to take advantage of a vulnerable person for one's own ego aggrandizement.
To me, Randy Yates is right on par not with Jesus, but with the Taliban. Who are thugs, and go around recruiting dumb, uneducated, hungry poor kids with no future, and brainwashing them, and then leaving them at the scene of the crime to be caught and prosecuted.
So no, actually. I don't think mentally ill people who commit horrible crimes are 'pure evil'. I think they're sick, just as a person who has diabetes or a heart condition is sick.
The fact that they refuse medication is due to the fact that they cannot understand that they are sick. The more severe the disease, the less they can understand and the more likely they are to refuse medication. Oh sure, they'll try to say something rational sounding that will appeal to people like 'I don't like the side effects' of the drug. People will just eat that up because they dislike 'Big Pharm' and psych medications to start with.
But a drug that works well for the person with out side effects can always be worked out, with effort. The days of the 'doped up mental patient' are gone. There are medications that are so good now that during drug studies, people have nearly rioted in hospitals rather than go back on what their doctor put them on 20 or even 10 yrs ago.
As one doctor told me, 'The part of their brain tthat would figure that out is GONE. Not asleep, not in need of tutoring - GONE'. It is not a matter of WON'T understand it's a matter of CAN'T understand. THAT is why people refuse medication.
What we ask psychotic people to do, basically, is to discount everything they perceive, and believe what we tell them to believe. It's small wonder few people are all that cooperative.
I think all true 'evil' is actually often not much more than selfishness. People who want something more than they care about other people. People who misuse religion for their own means (like the Taliban, for example, who I think is a bunch of thugs, not a bunch of Muslims at all, just a bunch of cheap thugs). I put someone who victimizes a sick person and goes around pounding their chest that they will save them through their own incredible religious abilities, just about on par with the Taliban. Selfishness and an ego trip to the highest extreme. So selfish, in fact, that they are willing to put it all on the religion they profess to love and cause people around the world to hate Islam and muslims.
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I wish that system really existed... think if Karma (or any other mysterious Big Guy) came around and 'took care of' those that harm others then the world would be a LOT better place... 1 the bad uns would be gotten rid of and 2 any future ones would think long and hard before stealing, raping, killing, etc.
In a way i believe in it, but for some reason every d-bag i know of just keeps skating through life with nothing bad happening to them.
^Yup, and really awesome people... like Ghandi/Mother Teresa Class suffer like a son of a gun.
- Jul 26, 2010
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I think we suffered more at Gandhiji's and Mother Theresa's death - Gandhiji accomplished his mission, something that the world has not seen before or since, an almost bloodless revolution in India and the formation of a new country - despite the hardship, it was far more peaceful than it otherwise might have been, had Gandhiji not been there. Mother Theresa, read her writings, she felt she worked hard, but suffering...I don't know. I don't think she viewed it that way. I think she viewed it as, 'yeah, whatever, get out of my way, I got a lot of work to do yet, and my time is short'.
The day she died, you could not have approached her place or even within 10 kilometers of it. Every single street was full of people paying their respects to her - for days.
There is good in the world. So much good. You can focus on the bad, you can remember that she died, or you can remember how long she lived, and how much she did, and how happy she was to do it. You can remember that the day that Mother Theresa died, that you could not even by force, have put a foot on the ground between the people in the street.
Fundamentalist Christians tend to be the ones who most often believe accepting Jesus as one's savior gets one into heaven, despite misdeeds. Not all Christians believe this.
One group will often say the other group has it wrong. The fact is, the Bible supports both positions, just as there are two different versions of the Crucifixion, there are lines in the Bible that would support just about any position, from vigilantism to beating one's wife to charming snakes. The reason there are so many contradictory things in the Bible is, I believe, because who created the Bible, intends for these things to puzzle us and make us make choices.
No easy rides.
The day she died, you could not have approached her place or even within 10 kilometers of it. Every single street was full of people paying their respects to her - for days.
There is good in the world. So much good. You can focus on the bad, you can remember that she died, or you can remember how long she lived, and how much she did, and how happy she was to do it. You can remember that the day that Mother Theresa died, that you could not even by force, have put a foot on the ground between the people in the street.
Fundamentalist Christians tend to be the ones who most often believe accepting Jesus as one's savior gets one into heaven, despite misdeeds. Not all Christians believe this.
One group will often say the other group has it wrong. The fact is, the Bible supports both positions, just as there are two different versions of the Crucifixion, there are lines in the Bible that would support just about any position, from vigilantism to beating one's wife to charming snakes. The reason there are so many contradictory things in the Bible is, I believe, because who created the Bible, intends for these things to puzzle us and make us make choices.
No easy rides.
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Quote:
Mine define me too...
Mine define me too...
I didn't mean literally those two, just those awesome/giving type people... *shrug*
Noodle that's me as well... for better or worse.
Last year for Mom's Day I did a painting for my mom... abstract, but with the phrase "Mom, because of you, I am Me" on it... those that know me know we don't have the best relationship... some days she's loving me others hating... so this is a sneaky phrase... on the days she's in a loving mood she can pat herself on the back... on the days when she's mad at me she's mad at herself neener neener...
Oddly enough she caught that... I wasn't expecting her to...
Noodle that's me as well... for better or worse.
Last year for Mom's Day I did a painting for my mom... abstract, but with the phrase "Mom, because of you, I am Me" on it... those that know me know we don't have the best relationship... some days she's loving me others hating... so this is a sneaky phrase... on the days she's in a loving mood she can pat herself on the back... on the days when she's mad at me she's mad at herself neener neener...
Oddly enough she caught that... I wasn't expecting her to...
- Jun 11, 2007
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Quote:
Cynthia, you should try to cut down on your verbiage...
Cynthia, you should try to cut down on your verbiage...
Boyd,
From your description, I think you are looking at atonement rather than Karma. Atonement is making amends for the wrongs we might have done; or changing our behaviour to make things right. In this case, you do it for yourself. Karma is more the idea that the wrongs or rights of the past will be revisited on you. You can try to make more rights bounce back on you by changing behaviour, but the wrongs will still come back to you. I think of karma in terms of Newton's "equal and opposite reaction", except that negative rebounds as negative, and positive as positive.
I still think that the highest moral choice is doing good simply for itself and the rewards it gives to you by making you a better person.
From your description, I think you are looking at atonement rather than Karma. Atonement is making amends for the wrongs we might have done; or changing our behaviour to make things right. In this case, you do it for yourself. Karma is more the idea that the wrongs or rights of the past will be revisited on you. You can try to make more rights bounce back on you by changing behaviour, but the wrongs will still come back to you. I think of karma in terms of Newton's "equal and opposite reaction", except that negative rebounds as negative, and positive as positive.
I still think that the highest moral choice is doing good simply for itself and the rewards it gives to you by making you a better person.
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